::PRESENTER BIOS::
Aaron Justice Cantor
Aaron
Cantor is a freestyle yoga ninja. Part wild cat, part meditative monkey,
and totally committed to creative embodiment. He teaches
internationally integrating ancient practices and contemporary
understanding into playful ways to effectively prepare the whole being
for anything.
Peter Champoux
Peter Champoux is the author of Gaia Matrix, the landmark work on New
England’s sacred landscape. His original material came from direct
communion with the Earth while working as a classical stone mason for 25
years. His life long immersion in all things stone has given him a
wholly unique and informative perspective on ancient and contemporary
sacred landscapes. See more on his work at his website: www.geometryofplace.com
Lisa DePiano
Lisa DePiano is a certified permaculture designer/teacher and faculty member for the Yestermorrow Design/Build School. She is co-founder of the Montview Neighborhood Farm, a human powered urban-farm and edible forest garden in the Connecticut River Valley, and rides with the worker-owned collective Pedal People. She received her masters degree in Regional Planning from the University of Massachusetts and loves working with communities to create the world they want to live in. After escaping the suburbs of her youth she headed to the hills of West Virginia and became a community organizer working on issues of Mountain Top Removal, Militarism, Fair Trade and Global Justice. She discovered permaculture while living in Guatemala and was immediately drawn to its systems and solutions-based approach. For the last decade she has been sharing this passion with others. She has studied permaculture with Starhawk, Penny Livingston Stark, and Dave Jacke and has taught in courses all over the United States, including Alaska, New York City, the University of Vermont and Wesleyan University.
Sean Donahue
Sean Donahue is an herbalist, poet, activist, and witch committed to healing and transformation through connection with the living Earth.
As an herbalist, Sean works primarily with the wild plants of the forests and fields of New England. He views the plants as teachers, helping the body, mind, and spirit learn to correct imbalances that stand in the way of health.
As a teacher, poet, and ritualist, Sean works to connect people with their own wild nature and with the life of the world around them.
As an activist and journalist he has documented the human and environmental impacts of U.S. policies in Latin America, organized against nuclear power and nuclear weapons, trained hundreds of activists in techniques of nonviolent resistance, helped military families tell the stories of how the war in Iraq impacted their lives, and advocated for the rights of medical Marijuana patients.
He believes that personal, community, and cultural healing are all deeply intertwined with the healing of our planet.
As an herbalist, Sean works primarily with the wild plants of the forests and fields of New England. He views the plants as teachers, helping the body, mind, and spirit learn to correct imbalances that stand in the way of health.
As a teacher, poet, and ritualist, Sean works to connect people with their own wild nature and with the life of the world around them.
As an activist and journalist he has documented the human and environmental impacts of U.S. policies in Latin America, organized against nuclear power and nuclear weapons, trained hundreds of activists in techniques of nonviolent resistance, helped military families tell the stories of how the war in Iraq impacted their lives, and advocated for the rights of medical Marijuana patients.
He believes that personal, community, and cultural healing are all deeply intertwined with the healing of our planet.
Michael Dunning
Michael Dunning is a shaman - healer, writer and teacher from Scotland. He directs the Sacred Yew Institute offering workshops and trainings in Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, Yewshamanism, and the holistic - occult aspects of human embryology and functional morphology. In 2010 Michael was a featured presenter in US at the Clark University, Higgins School of Humanities series “Difficult Dialogues” and at the ARC (Alternative Research Community) Convention in Bath, England. Michael’s written work is available in the book “Soul Companions” and in “Sacred Hoop” journal. He is also a visual artist and a musician, and has performed in Europe, US and Japan. Michael is currently writing a book about his initiatory illness and the ensuing ten–year period of healing and rejuvenation that he experienced with the land and with an ancient, and sacred yew tree in Scotland. Michael believes that the yew tree is the original Tree of Life known in Norse tradition as Yggdrasil. Based on direct experience and extensive research he has been able to demonstrate that the yew was the most important sacred tree of the pre-Celtic Druids in Ireland and Scotland. The yew was thought to hold the key to the mystery of the ‘breath of life’ and for this reason Michael refers to it as the ‘embryonic’ tree of life. See more at:
www.yewshamanism.com and www.sacredyewinstitute.com
Margi Flint
Margi
Flint owns and
operates EarthSong Herbals, a busy family practice and herb school with
clinic in Marblehead MA. Her filters of wisdom include over thirty
years of labor coaching, polarity therapy, and herbal practice. Margi
regularly speaks at nationally known herbal seminars in the States and
in
Europe. She has been Adjunct Professor at Tufts University School of Medicine and Massachusetts College of Pharmacology, and continues to teach at The School of
Traditional Western Herbalism, North Shore Community
College, and Bastyr University. Margi's most revered teachers are the plants and her
clients. She sees clients for consultations, continues to teach casual
herbal study programs, Intermediate Studies and Advanced Clinical
Studies. See more on her website - www.earthsongherbals.com
Darcey Blue French
Darcey Blue French is an herbalist & nutritionist, wildcrafter, gardener, food lover, Earth lover and wild woman. She was trained as a Clinical Herbalist & Nutritionist at the North American Institute of Medical Herbalism under Paul Bergner, and studied under Rosemary Gladstar and Charlie Kane. Darcey has been using and learning from the plants, both wild and cultivated since childhood, and it is her deep love of the wild Earth and its creatures that fuels her passion for healing and teaching about plants, wilderness, spirit, nourishment and healing. She spends her time leading Edible and Medicinal Wild Plant walks, Plant Spirit Medicine groups, teaching herbal and nutritional classes and intensives both in person and online, creating nourishing and delicious meals, wildcrafting and making medicines from the plants, seeing clients and enjoying the wild places on the earth.
Darcey practices in the the Vitalist tradition of herbalism, which fosters the interconnection and nourishment of body, mind, and spirit. Through the use of nutrition, herbal formulas, flower essences, and connection with nature, she aims to support the vitality of all aspects of the human being. Visit her blog to read more at Gaia's Gifts.
Darcey practices in the the Vitalist tradition of herbalism, which fosters the interconnection and nourishment of body, mind, and spirit. Through the use of nutrition, herbal formulas, flower essences, and connection with nature, she aims to support the vitality of all aspects of the human being. Visit her blog to read more at Gaia's Gifts.
Abbi Jaffe
Abbi Jaffe grew up in the coastal plains of Virginia and moved to Vermont (where she still lives) in 1999 to embrace the support she feels around mountains. For three years, she worked full time as a wilderness instructor for Outward Bound (Maine/Oregon/California) in the summers and for a primitive skills at-risk youth program in the wintery desert of Utah. After studying social work at the University of Vermont, Abbi helped the City of Burlington create a Parallel Justice system for victims of crime.
A student of yoga for 10 years, she still vividly remembers walking out of her first class being delighted to feel her breath, steady and calm. Abbi had an active Thai Massage practice for 5 years, and now focuses her studies on Body Mind Centering. Her deepest passion and soul food is contact improvisation dance.
While she works to weave dance community in Vermont, Abbi teaches Circus and Partner Yoga to kids and adults. Her most current adventure is cultivating Dharma Door Retreat - a community meeting ground, retreat space, and permaculture designed homestead in view of a big beautiful mountain in Underhill, Vermont. Please check out dharmadoor.com for more info!
A student of yoga for 10 years, she still vividly remembers walking out of her first class being delighted to feel her breath, steady and calm. Abbi had an active Thai Massage practice for 5 years, and now focuses her studies on Body Mind Centering. Her deepest passion and soul food is contact improvisation dance.
While she works to weave dance community in Vermont, Abbi teaches Circus and Partner Yoga to kids and adults. Her most current adventure is cultivating Dharma Door Retreat - a community meeting ground, retreat space, and permaculture designed homestead in view of a big beautiful mountain in Underhill, Vermont. Please check out dharmadoor.com for more info!
Walker Korby
Walker
Korby has been dancing in and out of the illusion of nature separation since
his teenage years as a Boy Scout and a student of Jon Young, the first
person to be mentored actively by the world renowned tracker and
wilderness survival teacher, Tom Brown Jr. His passion for
reconnecting people to their natural selves led him to teaching and he
has been expanding the senses of students of all ages in many different
venues - from 4th graders in a school yard, to adults on back country
wolf tracking expeditions in Idaho. His attentiveness and sense of play
make for workshops that can engage and inspire people at any point on
their Nature Connection journey. He currently lives in Montague,
Massachusetts.
Lani Nahele
Lani Nahele danced with the Trisha Brown Dance Company in NYC for seven years and later throughout the North and South Americas and Europe. Teaching for 30 years, she is certified in Body-Mind Centering, Gyrotonic, Gyrokinesis and Pilates. The practice of QiGong and a process called Feeding Your Demons are sustenance of late. She has a studio in Florence MA, Studio rEvolution, where she runs her private practice, dances and creates dance wear.
Lydia Russell-McDade
Lydia Russell-McDade is an Anusara-Inspired™ Yoga teacher and herbalist. She has been practicing yoga since 1996 and teaching since 2005. Deeply influenced by Tantric yoga philosophy, as well as by the shamanic traditions of her own European ancestors, Lydia’s uplifting teaching style is rooted in the cycles and rhythms of the Earth, and is a playful celebration of the delicious gift of embodiment. A poet and story-teller, Lydia infuses her yoga classes with her love of words, nature, and myth as she offers precise alignment instructions and fluid posture flows designed to reveal the grace, power, and radical freedom inherent within all beings. Guided by her greatest teachers, the plants, she created “Plant Spirit Yoga” in 2005 and is honored to share this meditative and healing practice at WEAVE.
Please visit Lydia at: http://sapremayoga.blogspot.com or www.saprema-yoga.com.
Please visit Lydia at: http://sapremayoga.blogspot.com or www.saprema-yoga.com.
Timothy Scott
Timothy Scott is an herbalist, acupuncturist, gardener and author of INVASIVE PLANT MEDICINE, living in southern Vermont. He received a Master’s Degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and since 2002 has been in private practice specializing in chronic disease and mental/emotional disorders. Tim runs an herbal medicine business focusing on Lyme disease protocols and invasive plants, and at his homestead grows and wild-crafts medicinal plants and food. Tim also gives talks and workshops on herbalism, natural healing for Lyme disease, native medicinal plant cultivation, and the benefits of invasive plants.
Kristen Stake
Kristen Stake is a poet, dancer, and healer. She has studied dance improvisation with Danny Lepkoff, Barbara Dilley, Martin Keogh, Kirstie Simson, Chris Aiken, Angie Hauser, among others. Most recently she has performed with Katarina Erikkson in a group improvisation piece called Awkward Silence. She has an MFA in Poetry Writing from Vermont College and is a student at the Easthampton School of Massage.
Venus Zephyr Free
Venus Zephyr is an Artist, Activist, Poet, Plant Spirit Practitioner, Herbalist, Doula & Mama to Sela Jade.
Venus brings a deep passion and lifelong exploration of the green world to her practice. Imparting wisdom from traditions Wise Woman Ways from cultures around the Globe, Plant Medicine, Healing and Sustainable Living, Venus is dedicated to empowering people and resurrecting our power through art and traditional healing as a tool to bring us forward to living our most authentic self. With Plant Consciousness Venus forges a path for herbal healing to remain a people's medicine and realign with the revolutionary consciousness that is being birthed in our global village.
Venus also practices the ancient art of Spiritual Plant Bathing taught in the tradition of South and Central America. She imparts her intuitive wisdom with the teachings of Rocio Alarcon(Ecuador), Rosita Arvigo(Belize) and her Plant Spirit Teacher Pam Montgomery(Vermont) into this beautiful healing technique. Venus is available for group herbal discussions, private herbal consultations and spiritual bathing/plant healing ceremonies for births, weddings, blessingways,rites of passage,moon rituals and compassionate healing workings. Contact Venus @[email protected]
Venus brings a deep passion and lifelong exploration of the green world to her practice. Imparting wisdom from traditions Wise Woman Ways from cultures around the Globe, Plant Medicine, Healing and Sustainable Living, Venus is dedicated to empowering people and resurrecting our power through art and traditional healing as a tool to bring us forward to living our most authentic self. With Plant Consciousness Venus forges a path for herbal healing to remain a people's medicine and realign with the revolutionary consciousness that is being birthed in our global village.
Venus also practices the ancient art of Spiritual Plant Bathing taught in the tradition of South and Central America. She imparts her intuitive wisdom with the teachings of Rocio Alarcon(Ecuador), Rosita Arvigo(Belize) and her Plant Spirit Teacher Pam Montgomery(Vermont) into this beautiful healing technique. Venus is available for group herbal discussions, private herbal consultations and spiritual bathing/plant healing ceremonies for births, weddings, blessingways,rites of passage,moon rituals and compassionate healing workings. Contact Venus @[email protected]
