about ‘me’
This is me in one of my favorite places, with two of my most favorite people, my kids. I learned to belong to a landscape in Sonoma County, Ca., where I lived (in or near) for 22 years. Now I am learning to belong to Montague, a small town in Western Mass. along the Connecticut River, ancestral home to the Pocumtuck tribe. I am finding home under a towering canopy of red and white oaks with tasty acorns and good bird watching perches. My human lineage includes ancestry from my father who immigrated from East Prussia/Poland, and from my mother whose roots stretch from Scotland into the Smokey mountains of East Tennessee and Louisiana.
I have known since I was small that the natural world was a place of healing and orientation, a place for me to find my compass. I learned early to trust my surroundings, and trust my body in it.
I grew up in a family that couldn’t afford health insurance. From seeing my mom reset my little brother’s dislocated elbow to allowing my grandma to wash my sun-blistered back with apple cider vinegar, I knew full well that we didn’t go to the doctor unless something was broken. Those simple lessons of how to care for oneself without the help of an allopathic doctor grounded me in my conviction that we should all know how to care for ourselves and each other in illness and dis-ease. It is our forgotten birthright that we are now re-membering, and it is vital for the health of the earth that we do so.
the herbalist part of the story:
I began my formal study of the plants in 2007 at the California School of Herbal Studies, completing their one year, 3 days a week, immersive Roots Program. From there, I trained continuously over 3 years in western clinical herbalism, completing rigorous courses with Aviva Romm and Matthew Wood, and apprenticed with medicine makers Terri Jensen and Karen Aguiar. Apprenticing with the Herbal Apothecary for those 2 years, I learned to make pristine, potent medicine from the plants that grow right under our feet. As I began seeing clients in 2013, I quickly found diagnostic modalities lacking in western herbal medicine. Over the next 4 years, I embarked on a journey into reading the tongue, pulse, and facial diagnostics under the direction of Margi Flint, Matthew Wood, Brian LaForgia, and most importantly Will Morris, L.ac., working in the traditions of William LeSassier, Shen/Hammer Pulse Method, and William Morris’ Neo-Classical Pulse. This path lead me to Daoist medicine and a complex system of viewing the body/earth through an indigenous framework, which in turn has lead me back to my personal Baltic pagan roots.
I have worked in herbal first aid as a member of the MASHH Collective, volunteer with the Botanical Bus and the People’s Medicine Project, taught advanced coursework through Gathering Thyme Herb School and Scarlet Sage’s Verse School , and am a Registered Herbalist with the American Herbalists Guild. I began and ran Taproot Medicine from 2010-2019, developing a line of potent herbal syrups that continue to be available throughout the Bay Area and beyond, now made my a stellar group of herbalists.
I am so grateful to the generations of indigenous people who have protected and tended the land I am privileged to inhabit. In addition to my gratitude, I offer my efforts toward reconciliation and reparations to the indigenous people and cultures of this place with humility and awe. Go here for info about Western Mass. Indigenous Support, here for how to support for the Traditional Tribe of Sonoma County, the Kashia Pomo, and here to inspire an indigenous land tax in your own home place. It is imperative we address and right the imbalance we stand upon as Americans, living on stolen land.
I offer myself to this work in honor of my ancestors, those who are yet to come, and those of us working to heal the bridge of time through our own well-being. Gratitude to all my teachers, and as always, I honor the plant people with the utmost respect for their teachings and offerings on our collective healing journey.
the movement part of the story:
It is with the kind of surrendered joy to gravity in the photo above that I aspire to approach living with a body. I have been a dancer all my life, from practicing tap dance down the grocery aisle as a kid to lying prone on the dance floor for hours, feeling into my fluid systems in college. Below is some of my training, but really, I am a mover and a watcher, and in watching, I copy: birds, grass, children, and qi masters alike.
Bennington College, dance and composition major
Study in SF/NYC/Berlin with post modern teachers such as Kathleen Hermesdorff, Sara Shelton Mann, Hiroko Tamano, Anna Halprin, Leslie Seiters, Terri O’Connor, Inkboat, among many others. Forms most studied: bodyweather, post modern technique, contact improvisation, compositional improvisation, qigong.
8 years professional dancer with Scott Wells and Dancers, Sara Shelton Mann, Leslie Seiters, Body Cartography Project, as well as making dances for my own group, Taproot Dance Project with Melecio Estrella, Melanie Elms and Meadow Evans (2002-2006).
In 2006 I began qigong practice intensively. QiGong teachers include Roger Janke, Margit Galanter, Ming Tong Gu, Teja Bell, Damo Mitchell, Lindsey Wei, David Wei, Sara Shelton Mann, Hiroko Tamano, and Jill Basso. This movement practice overlaps with my study of herbalism, five element theory, taoism, buddhism, and Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Go here to read why I do qigong.
