Nature Evolutionaries

As a gardener, teacher, and mother, Erin O'Neill speaks of the seeds and how they are always waiting to be born and longing to grow. She invites us all to remember our common ancestry of planting, gathering, foraging, hunting, and knowing our food. Exploring these seeds of ancestral food memory helps us to reconnect and work with the forces and natural abundance at our fingertips and under our feet.   

During this Teleseminar, Erin discusses the importance of reclaiming the sacred act of gardening including the broader scope of nourishing and cultivating life in all forms.  As we engage with and are guided by Earth, we heal our perceived separation and come Home to ourselves and grow in alignment with our landscapes.

About Erin
Erin O’Neill is a tender, teacher, and steward and is deeply committed to helping all life grow and thrive. She is the founder of Growing Home and a guide on the journey of deepening our connection to place and the living whole. For the past 20 years, Erin has been planting, gathering, and seed saving in the high desert, where she is growing home on 1/5 of an acre in a fertile valley that has been providing food for people for thousands of years. Erin is a Waldorf-inspired mother-of-three and brings the beauty of song, storytelling, puppetry, and the natural world to her family and extended community through Wildflower Parent & Child classes. She deeply understands the transformative journey both parent and child are on in this life and is devoted to nurturing families as they grow. As a consultant and garden educator, she helps members of her community collaborate with the land in creating abundance and partnership with nature.

To learn more about Erin’s work visit her at her website or on Instagram.
www.eringrowinghome.com
https://www.instagram.com/eringrowinghome/

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For over forty years, David Dalton has been working with plant and gem essences to support the healing of himself, others, and the Earth.  Flower and gem essences offer a natural way to support our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual wellbeing.  As vibrational remedies, essences boost vitality and resiliency by introducing new “frequencies” into the human system.  Essences provide an opportunity for us to shift our patterns, heal our traumas, and evolve into our wholeness.  As we heal individually and collectively, new essences offer themselves to aid in our mutual co-evolution.

During this teleseminar, David will discuss a few of the essences who are offering support for us at this time, while also sharing his incredible journey with the Plants and Gems and how we can utilize the healing gifts of these Essences for our own evolution and healing.

About David

David Dalton has been making flower essences in his New England research gardens and in natural habitats throughout the world for over forty years. He is the founder of Delta Gardens which has been dedicated to flower essence production, research, clinical practice, and education since the mid-1980s.

From the beginning of his unique flower essence adventure, David has combined clinical thinking, intuition and a strong relationship with nature to create an extensive collection of essences that support emotional, mental and physical health.  As an essence producer and practitioner, David has realized two important truths that have guided his work - Partnership with Nature is essential in creating high quality essences and in addition to affecting the mind and emotions, flower essences can have a profound effect on the health of the body.   David is the author of Stars of the Meadow.

To learn more about David and his work visit www.deltagardens.com

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Businesses - be they clothing stores, auto repair, consulting firms, or in Julie's case, an herbal apothecary - have a life force all their own. Join us as Julie explains how she's learned to consciously connect with the life force of her over 23-year-old business, Humboldt Herbals, and how that connection informs her work as a community herbalist. She'll discuss the role of plant medicine in the social health of a community, and offer suggestions for how everyone, herbalist or not, can engage with plant sentience and the interconnected web of life for community transformation.

About Julie Caldwell, MA
Originally from Alabama, Julie grew up with a plant-talking granny, a pharmacist father, an artist mother, and loads of fiddle-playing, guitar-picking relatives. Her first serious relationship with a plant began almost 50 years ago at age 5, when she became great friends with a wild black cherry tree her granny called Crazy Doug. Julie’s “formal” education includes a BS in research psychology and biology, a MA in contemporary American poetry, and many, many herb classes including extensive studies with Pam Montgomery that have greatly influenced her herbal approach. She serves on the Visioning Council for the Organization of Nature Evolutionaries and continues to enjoy a long history of spiritual exploration with wise ones from various traditions around the world.

Julie offers personal sessions, classes and herb walks in the Humboldt County area, and facilitates ongoing retreats in Northern California. To learn more about Julie’s classes, services, and herb shop, you can sign up for the Humboldt Herbals monthly newsletter at www.humboldtherbals.com.

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It is our relationship to food that keeps us connected and bound to the life force of the plant kingdom, where the 5 elements of earth, water, fire, air, and ether continually exchange energy, transmuting into each other to create atoms, molecules, minerals, foods, and other life forms.

How do we feed ourselves and honor the relationship with Mother Earth and all her living beings?  

We can behold the genetic blueprint of a seed that follows its cosmic destiny in the cycle of natural forces. When this seed is fed by the minerals of the earth, watered by the heavens, warmed by the sun, and pollinated by the birds and bees we have already followed a miracle of life-giving nutriment.

 All of this can be an invitation for us to develop a profound relationship with the food we eat and how we live our lives. 

Come and join Laura for an enlightening, engaging conversation about food and life in her kitchen. No previous cooking or gardening experience required, only an open mind and heart! She will be sharing seasonal recipes that engage all the elements while honoring the divinity that lives within us all.  Visit our website for Laura's printable recipes https://www.natureevolutionaries.com/teleseminars-1/2021/plant-consciousness-food-you-with-laura-parisi

About Laura
Laura Parisi is a Food Shaman, Holistic Health Coach, Gardener, Artist, and Energy Healer. She teaches others a different way of looking at food that combines her knowledge of food and plant spirit medicine along with a heart-centered love of cooking and tending the land with gratitude for what Mother Earth has provided for us.  To learn more about Laura and her work, please visit her website, Rooted Angel.

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Old-growth trees are such incredible teachers, healers, mentors, and friends. Witnessing and being in relationship with these amazing planetary elders, we can learn so much about how to be clear conduits both aligned with the Divine self and rooted into the Earth through this time of great transition on the planet. 

Every old-growth tree has multidimensional healing and wisdom to share. During this teleseminar, we will explore how when we tune into their essence with heart-centered practices, we can connect directly in Love and relationship with the trees and learn from their experience of Presence and wise ways of being.

About Sara
Sara Artemisia, MS, CMC (she/her) is a Plant Spirit and Flower Essence Practitioner, Multidimensional Abundance Coach, and Akashic Records Reader. She helps Wellness Professionals and Empaths clear their inner blocks and clarify their life purpose. Sara has been coaching individuals to move through obstacles for over twelve years and loves facilitating life-changing retreats in Mt Shasta. She shares this work with people on the journey of understanding how the conscious wisdom of Nature can help them fully embody their soul's purpose. 

To learn more about Sara and her work, please visit https://www.saraartemisia.com/ and on Instagram @akashic.plantspirit

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The rosary is one of the most readily identified symbols of Catholic faith yet hold this circle of beads from the loop with its cross dangling down and it reveals the first of its many secrets: The rosary forms a symbol for woman that is far older than Christianity.

Bead practices are ubiquitous around the world and lead us back to the spiritual ways of our ancestral grandmothers, gathering nuts and seeds to sustain their communities while murmuring protective prayers, spells, and mantras to guide those they love through life and death. Unlike meditation practices derived from hunting behaviors that privilege stillness and silence, the rosary is a story that invites us to tell our story, listen and bear witness to each other’s joys and sorrows, and reopen the channel of conversation with our plant and animal allies in the natural world.

Perdita and Clark will explore the pagan roots of the traditional rosary and its origins in the rose garlands once offered to the Great Mother. We’ll discover how powerful worry beads can be, and have been for tens of thousands of years, and how having something, and someone, to hold on to can infuse our lives with rest and renewal, courage and compassion.

In almost every one of Her modern apparitions, the Lady has invited everyone, regardless of religious background or belief, to pray the rosary with Her. Together, holding on to each other and to Her, we will find our way back to the garden of the earth.

About Clark and Perdita

Clark Strand and Perdita Finn are co-founders of The Way of the Rose, an inclusive fellowship of rosary friends dedicated to the Earth and to the Lady “by any name we wish to call Her.” Strand is the author of numerous books and articles on spiritual practices, including Seeds from a Birch Tree: Writing Haiku and the Spiritual Journey and Waking Up to the Dark: Ancient Wisdom for a Sleepless Age. Finn is the author of The Reluctant Psychic and the forthcoming Take Back the Magic: Getting to Know the Dead. They live with their family in the Catskill Mountains.  

To learn more about the work of Clark Strand and Perdita Finn visit www.wayoftherose.org.

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Join us in conversation with Nadine Canter Barnicle, a professor of the practice and community engagement specialist at Middlebury College in VT as we discuss deepening our relationship with nature by approaching sustainability from the roots through unlearning and re-learning. 

At Middlebury College students may choose a course of study that goes beyond the traditional academic. Through community-connected learning and a study of the dominant ontologies (the study of the nature of being) rooted in our 10,000+ year history of agriculture, students who take coursework as part of the “The New Perennials Project” find themselves exploring what it is to be perennial by re-considering the practices that created civilization and culture. Through a perennial focus on education and the ideas of learning and unlearning students put ideas into practice working with practitioners in the Champlain Valley of Vermont from the Creative Arts, Healing Arts, Education, Food/Ag Systems, and Sacred Practices spheres. Through their inter-being projects and classroom contemplative practices rooted in re-connection and embodiment, New Perennials students are called upon to develop deep and personal spiritual knowings with the natural world. Nadine is part of a 3-person team teaching and establishing the New Perennials Hub of the Champlain Valley. The New Perennials Project was founded by Bill Vitek and his colleagues at The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, founded by Wes Jackson.

In her teleseminar, she’ll tell us about this initiative and unfold for us the story of her own journey as a sustainability practitioner.

About Nadine

During her decades working in the government and non-profit sectors while also teaching in higher ed, Nadine recognized: “we can’t correct climate change or our industrial agriculture practices, or the lifestyles we are beholden to and sick from if we continue to live a material existence that comes from being trapped in our heads.” As Yuval Harari states, ‘we have imagined our planet into its current form.’ By making the invisible visible, her work focuses on the hope that humans can learn from “our kin in the forests, in the estuary, and on the plains that if we stop, listen, and open our hearts we can re-imagine our way to a life of reciprocity and mutuality and all beings can flourish.”

Nadine has a 30-year career in strategic community engagement, journalism, advising, mentoring, facilitation, and teaching that began with a master's degree thesis focused on the collaborative community process to protect river segments under the Federal Wild and Scenic River Act. Much of Nadine's work focuses on strategic coalition-building in the areas of land use, transportation, air quality, conservation, and climate change. She is a student and teacher of contemplative practices including Tai Chi. Her roots are in New England including 23 years in Vermont, but she also calls the Pacific Northwest home.

She describes herself as a “pattern hunter” who has sometimes felt as if living “in the shadows of Sisyphus and Cassandra” (Greek heroes given impossible tasks and the gift of prophecy no one believes) while working within systems of government and non-profits.

She says these lines from Denise Levertov’s poem “Sojourns in the Parallel World” describe her life’s journey:

“A world parallel to our own though overlapping. We call it ‘Nature’; only reluctantly admitting to ourselves to be “Nature” too.”

To learn more about Nadine and her work please visit her website at http://www.wooddragonadvising.org/ or New Perennials at http://www.newperennials.org/

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To see images that correspond to this episode please see the complete video on our website at https://www.natureevolutionaries.com/teleseminars-1/2021/hummingbirds-with-rocio-alarcon

Hummingbirds have long captured the hearts and imaginations of people worldwide.  Many Indigenous communities have celebrated Hummingbirds as messengers and teachers, particularly helping us celebrate the joy of life.  Dr. Rocío Alarcón, an ethnobotanist with ancestral roots in the lineages of the curanderas of the Ecuadorian Andes, writes, “In my healing work with clients I have observed that the iridescent colors of the feathers of hummingbirds have the ability to change the brain’s electrical frequency and modify a person’s mental state. When sunlight touches their plumage, they send rays of light. When the rays touch the person, these iridescent special colors produce changes in his or her brain like a phenomenon of bioluminescent that generates changes in the emotional states of the person.”  

During this Teleseminar, Rocío will share with us the magic and healing power of Hummingbirds.  She will discuss their unique connection with Plants and how they can help uplift our everyday lives, bringing us into the present moment with happiness and joy, offering healing for our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual bodies, and ultimately, shifting our consciousness. 

About Rocío

Rocío Alarcón is a healer for our times.  She has worked tirelessly for decades to preserve indigenous cultures and land both in the Amazon and in the Andean community where she grew up, under the tutelage of master healers. She has lovingly brought many modern seekers, as well as skeptics, into the fold of the healing traditions of her ancestors, teaching especially about our relationship with the “divine forces” in the natural world. Rocío’s grandmothers held intimate connections with the forces of nature, particularly the plants and the hummingbirds, whom they could call upon for the healing of their communities.  Recently, Rocío has been bringing forth this particular ancestral heritage.  

Rocío brings to her inherited knowledge a scientific understanding of the co-evolution of plants and animals and ecosystems, as well as understandings of healing based on modern neuroscience.   She weaves this all together in her teachings on the healing power of the plants and the hummingbirds.  For those who may not be able to witness first hand the rich diversity of hummingbirds native to Ecuador, she has created an Oracle Deck of cards containing exquisite portraits of 37 species by artist Luisa Acosta, each with a description of its physical and spirit-healing qualities. The cards themselves are meant to be messengers of beauty, light, and healing.  She will gift us with a taste of this magic in this teleseminar. 

To learn more about Rocio’s work visit the Iamoe Center’s Facebook page.

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During this episode, Jen Frey shares her experiences of working co-creatively with Nature to create Heart Springs Sanctuary. Her stories include the occasional struggles as well as the joy of being guided by nature and learning to deeply listen.

In May 2017, Jen Frey moved to a place, which would become known as Heart Springs Sanctuary, with the intention of working with the Nature Spirits to co-create a Sanctuary. Shortly after moving there, Jen realized that she was in a form of “school” and had much to learn through her experiences with the Nature Spirits. For the last nearly four years, they have co-created a place where all Beings are welcome and honored. 

Nature is able to guide us through this time of great change, if we are willing to listen. When we work with Nature through co-creative partnership, we can create a more beautiful world (or even backyard). It is time that we remember our rightful place as part of Nature.

Co-creative partnership is at the core of ONE’s work and offerings.  Some find this to be a vague process or are overwhelmed by the concept.  Though once you begin to engage in this, you discover that working with Nature requires much less energy than trying to control Nature and you are able to find solutions and create projects beyond your imagination.  Jen will give simple and concrete examples of how to engage in Co-creative partnership during this call and will expand further in a webinar on this topic “Deepening Your Relationship with Nature through Co-Creative Partnership”  for ONE Members and Affiliates on January 27th at 7:00 PM EDT.   To become a ONE Member or Affiliate click here.

About Jen

Jen Frey is a Healer, Mentor, Earth Advocate and Voice of the Plants. She is the Founder of Heart Springs Sanctuary, where she helps people deepen their connection with nature through plant communication. With over 20 years of experience with plant essences, energy work, and herbal practices her private consultations and plant based protocols are known for helping clients through emotional life transitions, physical health crises, and chronic conditions. Jen has dedicated her life to the spiritual path of plant work. Her apprenticeship certification programs, ceremonies, retreats and workshop offerings are designed for people wanting to open their hearts, fall in love with plants and deepen their relationship to the planet. Jen is a Visioning Council Member for the Organization of Nature Evolutionaries. 

Visit www.Brigidsway.com to learn more.

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