(counts as credit toward Clearpath School of Herbal Medicine certification for qualified participants)

Participants are encouraged to attend all three classes, however, the 1st and 2nd can stand alone. Attending the first 2 classes is, however, a prerequisite for the 3rd class.

1. The Physical Language
Date: Saturday, July 10, 2010
Time: 10:00 AM – 3:30 PM
Location: Smith College Gardens/Northampton Community Gardens

2. The Language of Plant Personality (Sat. August 14) location TBA
3. The Intuitive Language of Connection (Sat. September 11) location TBA

It is said that long ago the Two-legged Nation (humans) forgot the One Language shared by all of Creation. We now live in a time where we have grown perilously separate – to the detriment of all life – from the rest of Creation. Most Earth-based cultures have considered our world, and everything in it, to be alive and conscious. We humans are the youngest and most naive of all the creatures. There is an essential wisdom to be learned from our elders, the animals, the plants, and the Elements, who are patiently waiting to be remembered and recognized.

Steeped in First Nation (Native American) tradition, this three-part course helps us return to the fold of the One Language by way of the Green Nation of plants. Over the course of three class sessions of increasing subtlety, theoretical knowledge and intellectual curiosity eventually give way to intuition and direct experience as we engage Nature on its own terms. By course’s end, participants will have gained a set of tools that will have expanded and deepened their native intelligence and intuition so that they can better communicate – and commune – with Nature and all of their fellow beings.

Class 1, July 10: The Language of the Physical
We will first engage the One Language through our physical senses, meeting the Green Nation in its own realm, learning how plants speak to us through their preferred habitats, form, color, taste and aroma. We will learn to identify plants, and to read what they are telling us about their qualities and their uses as food or medicine. Participants will learn valuable exercises and tools for experiencing nature in a deeper way.

Class 2, August 14: The Language of Personality
With our heightened awareness from the physical study of plants, we will now connect with plants at a deeper level, seeing them as the sentient beings they are, and not as the unconscious life forms modern culture would have us believe they are. We will encounter plants as living, breathing personalities. We will learn about plant societies, plant tribes and sacred plant elders. This wiser understanding of the plant world will reveal how we can make and use medicines that work more profoundly on the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual levels – deepening the healing available to ourselves, our families and our communities.

Class 3, September 11: The Language of Connection
In this class, we enter fully into the realm of the Subtle, or Intuitive, Language. Indigenous cultures speak of the One Language shared by all life, elements, and energies. The One Language is present all around us and within us, but we have forgotten how to access it. This class investigates methods and tools – gifts each of us already possesses – that reconnect us with the One Language. Emphasis will be placed on direct “communing,” or “attuning” with the plants that call to us, to which we are drawn, and we will learn how to approach these plants in respectful, sacred ways. Participants are asked to bring notebooks, pens, colored pencils, even musical instruments, for plants speak to us and through us in many ways.

In all three classes participants will learn ways to continue to open their minds and hearts and deepen their re-connection with plants, Nature, and the One Language. We all have the potential and capacity to re-learn this connected way of being with our true home. It does, however, require practice, patience and persistence. Nature is always there, waiting for us, singing to us, but we must at least walk through the doorway.