Upcoming Class & Workshop Offerings

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This is an in-person medicinal plant tour held at our 0.7 acre herbal sanctuary located in Northeast Baltimore (the full address is sent to all who register). As we stroll we will meet various herbal allies to discuss parts of their botany & their amazing therapeutic gifts. 

The Eclipta sanctuary is now home to more than 100 different medicinal plants who are a mix of native, naturalized & non-native species. We pride ourselves on being one of the most biodiverse ecosystems within the city & specialize in habit restoration which considers, soil health, climate change instability & the cultivation of both flood & drought tolerant plants. 

What does it mean to know the land? Why learn about the land around you? Learning the land where you live is about cultivating a relationship with the external & internal environment which then allows you to rise to the challenges of life by emotionally, physically & spiritually rooting to the earth under your feet. It is also about the importance of place based education as a radical act of climate change reversal.“Our severance from nature leaves us feeling as if we do not belong in the world, & that can be a source of anxiety & deep despair.” The simple act of working with local herbs on a daily bases can be a means of harnessing this connection again. “If we no longer feel nurtured by the Earth, we no longer belong to it, & because we do not belong to it, we do not feel responsible for it.”

This virtual class is offered as part of the Herbal Compass 12 month series yet is also offered separately in order to give you an idea of what the series is like & to get a better understanding of the symbols & various guide posts which we will follow throughout the year. Nearly every culture around the world which had or still has a connection to their land based wisdom practices will utilize an medicine wheel of some kind. 

Are you searching for a way to reconnect with the rhythmic changes of the seasons & reawaken your wild roots? Orienting yourself within the compass is a way of honoring yourself as a part of nature within the web of life & our relationship with the dynamic 5 phases of Mama Earth.  

This 5 phase/element (earth, fire, metal, water & wood) medicine wheel was created from aspects of both Celtic & Chinese land based traditions.

 Compass = compassion, guidance, orientation. Where am I? What am I? You can’t enact genuine compassion & healing without proper grounding & orientation. 

Taste works beyond simply making our food "taste better". Taste is & has been a crucial evolutionary information highway. Did you know that no matter what medicinal plant (or morsel of food) you have at your finger tips that you can detect & begin to understand beneficial qualities just by taste, touch & sensation? Flavor can inform you of an herbs organ affinity, energetics & medicinal actions. Besides being important in terms of matching the right herb to the right person learning the therapeutic profiles of flavor gives agency & autonomy within how we work with & understand herbal medicine. It is also integral to divesting in a one-size-fits-all modern healthcare paradigm. We will also take a look at the ancient Chinese technique of reading our tongue by noticing how we experience the sensation of the plant in our mouth & what that can tell us. Each participant will be able to (of course) taste, touch & smell at least one plant corresponding to each of the 5 flavors: bitter, pungent/acrid, sour, sweet, salty. 

This 12 month series engages our sensory system in the medicinal attributes of various plants according to the cycles & themes of the calendar wheel or Herbal Compass. You can start with just 4 classes or take all twelve. 

There are many ways in which we use a calendar;  but have you ever taken pause to reflect: that a calendar is not a timeline but an ever revolving wheel? Many aspects that keep us from leading a healthy vibrant lifestyle are from the modern cultural impositions that keep us disconnected from the revolving cycles of the land under our feet & the environments that surround us. This class offers the opportunity to embody these rhythms through the study of the therapeutic gifts of plants & the their catalog of dynamic application. Easy to grow, cultivate & harvest from our own home gardens medicinal herbs offer an internal & external compass which we can call on for any number of life’s challenges, whether it’s allergies, sunburn, heatstroke, hypertension, immune health, adrenal fatigue, liver toxicity, anxiety, depression, skin aliments & so much more. For ex. Nov. is a month where we practice discernment & define boundaries before going inward for winter. Our body, mind & spirit must question; What is it that I need to let go of & where is it that I need to nourish & build? Astragalus root helps build healthy boundaries while nourishing & protecting. 

"We can support the earth by staying solid in our cycles, as much as we can, with those of the earth, moon & sun." - Judith Berger, Herbal Ritual

"If we surrendered to the earth's intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees" - Rainer Maria Rilke

The 17th century French philosopher René Descartes declared that only humans are endowed with "mind," that matter is inert, lifeless & passive, & that animals have neither mind nor reason. This thinking is still pervasive--a pillar in fact of the materialist scientific perspective that has led us down a dark path of Earthly destruction. The scientific world is just starting to test & accept what indigenous peoples around the globe have known since time immemorial: that plant intelligence can be measured in its problem-solving ability, which can be explained by “swarm intelligence” which functions like an ant colony, shoal of fish or flock of birds. As a result of their cooperative & adaptive nature, plants have flourished for many millions of years longer than Homo sapien primates & make up more than 80% of Earth's biomass.

Herbalist Julia Graves writes: “Freed from all cultural superimpositions & what-we-prefer-to-believe, plants are patterns of unfolding energy that we can detect with our senses, with colors, shapes & tastes taking a predictable & distinct course of coming into being, exciting, & fading away. As witnessing bystanders to their mysterious dance, we are invited to listen to their song-beyond concept, & will not receive their secrets for as long as we try to make them march to our tune.”

In this class we will discuss, from an herbalist perspective, the meaning of plant language which is, in short, the ability to understand how & why a plant manifests the way they do in the world. We can detect this language through taste, touch & smell as well as looking at how the plants shape themselves in response to their environment. Also encoded within these sensory features are clues to their therapeutic uses which can be define as "the doctrine of signatures," “the art of signs”, "the green tongue”, etc. For example, Plantago major (plantain) is a low growing herb with a broad leaf, a skin-like texture & parallel veins resembling a human foot. Many colonial travelers to the Americas put plantain leaves in their shoes for blistered, sore feet. This plant is a widely accepted wound healing herb that grows in nutrient poor disturbed soils which can also be seen as "wounds" to the earth's surface. Join this class to delve deeper into the multi- sensory wisdom of reading signs & symbols of medicinal plant language.

The Invasive Apothecary is both art project and clinical herbal farmacy that takes an intimate look at the “worst of the worst” in terms of invasive plant species to propose very viable and effective creative solutions to the current capital-centric, xenophobic, war-like paradigm that is setting up policies for the management of these green beings.

This project challenges the current “alien”, “thug”, “nuisance”, “noxious”, “nasty” rhetoric of invasive plants by reexamining: 

                 1. their larger ecological role

                 2. the contemporary & historical human relationships to the land

                 3. and the use of invasive species as food, medicine & material resource..