Share the Talking Stick

The Artwork of Deborah Koff-Chapin and Touch Drawing, Part Two

These powerful images were created by the founder of Touch Drawing, Deborah Koff-Chapin, while listening to Susun Weed speak at the recent Women of Wisdom conference. This is the second in a series of Weblogs featuring all of these profound, joyful and inspiring pieces of art.

Touch Drawing is a simple yet profound process where the fingers take the place of pen or brush. Paper is placed over a freshly painted surface. Wherever it is touched, an imprint is made on the back side. Impulses from within take form on paper through the movement of the fingertips on the page. A multitude of drawings can be created in one session, each a stepping stone to the next; guiding progressively deeper into the self. You can see video demonstration here.

Through this direct drawing process, even the least confident artist can experience interior images coming alive on the page. The hands become organic extensions of the soul, moving freely in response to the sensations of the moment. Read articles and interviews in which Deborah speaks in more depth about the process and how it emerged.

In a medium as immediate and transparent as Touch Drawing, previously unused channels of expression are opened, enabling uncensored feelings to flow forth. The act of creating with these feelings provides more than cathartic release: it unleashes vibrant healing forces which guide the psyche toward wholeness. Touch Drawing is a practice of creative, psychological and spiritual integration. There are countless applications of the process You can read stories here by people who are using Touch Drawing here.

From the Website: Touch Drawing is a simple yet profound way of drawing with your fingertips. It is used by people of all ages in a vast range of settings. Touch Drawing is a creative catalyst, healing art  form and transformational tool. I encourage you to explore how you can integrate it into your life and work. Find out more about Touch Drawing and the resources of this site here. Continue reading below to get the most current happenings. If you want to receive my 'Image Offerings' and Center for Touch Drawing news, sign our mailing list.

Susun Weed Shares Menopause Wisdom

Wise Woman Wisdom ... Susun Weed shares menopause wisdom.. Interview with Corinna Wood

Becoming butterflies: herbal empress Susun Weed shares menopause wisdom with local herbalist Corinna Wood
New Life Journal; 9/1/2005

Susun Weed, green witch and wise woman, is an extraordinary teacher with a joyous spirit, a powerful presence, and an encyclopedic knowledge of herbs and health. Ms. Weed's four herbal medicine books focus on women's health topics including: menopause, childbearing, and breast health.

Corinna: I want to ask you a couple of questions about menopause. Can you explain how the role of menopausal women is important at this time for our planet?

Susun: Yes. Let's go back to the three traditions we were talking about in the earlier interview (New Life Journal June 05).The Scientific Tradition that seeks to fix broken machines views menopause as a loss of estrogen.And so in order to fix the broken machine, they prescribe estrogen because that is what is missing, according to what they see. Now we know that women who are given estrogen have a higher rate of uterine cancer. So we add progesterone to that to counter the effects of the estrogen. Women who take estrogen for three years increase their risk of breast cancer by twenty percent. Women who take estrogen with progesterone for three years increase their risk of breast cancer by forty percent. All that progesterone does is slow down cellular replication in the uterus, but it increases the rate of cell replication in the breast and probably in the ovaries as well.

The Heroic Tradition comes in and says, no no no, it is not a lack of estrogen, it is too much estrogen. It is estrogen dominance. We are going to give them progesterone. I am so over the top about women's health in the face of the Heroic Tradition. I really fear that we are, by using progesterone cream, creating an epidemic of ovarian cancer. This is a powerful hormonal tonic. It is sold as a cosmetic; the people regulating it have no power over cosmetics. So, basically what is happening is that a very powerful drug is being sold with no regulation at all. The Food and Drug Administration will not approve any progesterone cream for long-term use, even the ones that are given to us by our doctor. The amount of progesterone in the products being sold to women in the health food stores as cream is one hundred times the safe dose as provided by the FDA. The amount that we put on our bodies at one time is one hundred times more than the FDA considers a safe dose.

The Wise Women looks at her body and asks, when I was born was I producing estrogen? And the answer is yes. A women is producing estrogen even in utero, the uterine environment is very high in estrogen. The ovaries of little girls who aren't even born yet are already starting to make estrogen in response to that. We make twenty-nine different kinds of estrogen by the time we are born. We continue to make those twenty-nine different types of estrogen every single day. At puberty, a very powerful estrogen begins to be made, called estradiol. Estradiol is only made between puberty and menopause. It is at high levels for only about twenty-four hours out of the month, because it triggers ovulation. Estradiol is called estrogen by the scientific community, as if it were the only estrogen, even though they themselves will tell you there are lots of other types of estrogen. But they consider the twenty-nine we make on a day-to-day basis weak estrogen and estradiol a powerful estrogen. That is why they are concerned about its lack. I will tell you as a woman, almost fifteen years past my last period, that I am not missing anything. I am still making plenty of estrogen.

One of things that is important to me, as a postmenopausal woman, is to be a butterfly. What do I mean by butterfly? A butterfly is a woman who is a least twenty years older than you are, who you would like to grow up to be. So on my bathroom wall is picture of Karina. When this picture was taken, she was ninety years old, she had celebrated her ninetieth birthday by for the first time in her life jumping out of an airplane with a parachute. That is who I would like to grow up to be! Right next to her is Helen. At eighty, she has just won eight national power-lifting competitions and has set- records in every single one of those. So again, that is somebody I would like to grow up to be.

Many people especially in our culture have a fear of the word old. And many people have told me, I don't want to get old. I look at them and ask them, do you understand what you are saying? Because either you get old, or you are going to die young. I want to live to a very old age before I die! I love being alive; I find life so interesting! Every day, I am day older. When we have butterflies in our lives, then we know that getting older doesn't mean losing it. Although there certainly are things you lose. Good riddance to the fear of what other people think: I will do all of the things I was afraid to do before because people would think badly of me.

But answering your question about the role of menopausal and postmenopausal women. Every age has its purpose, and for many of us in westernized culture, the difficulty is that over the past hundred years the path of the post-menopausal women has been removed, and we are less accepted than if we are the menstruating woman, the fertile women. As more and more of us pass through the menopausal passage, we are going to see more amazing older women about whom we can say, that's who I want to grow up to be.

Corinna: Could you tell us a little bit about your favorite herb for hot flashes?

Susun: This is a very loaded question. In the Scientific Tradition, hot flashes are a broken machine that needs to be fixed. You give a woman estrogen and that problem is fixed. In the Heroic Tradition, hot flashes are seen as the result of toxins; you need to get in there and cleanse to make her well.

In the Wise Women Tradition, hot flashes are undisputedly the movement of vital life force energy up through the body through the energy centers. In fact, what I can say is that the healthier the woman, the more hot flashes she will have. To get rid of the hot is to decrease the woman's vitality. I am of the opinion and Dr. Christiane Northrop is of the opinion that how we treat ourselves during menopause is going to affect us for the rest of our lives. This is one of the reasons I say it is so important that menopausal women need time off and do not need to be medicated by anything. I chose to go through menopause with out doing much of anything; I drank my nourishing herbal infusions. I have found motherwort tincture would reduce the intensity and the duration of the hot flash, although I basically didn't even use herbs. I wanted to see how bad it would be. Certainly during the summer it is a lot worse than during the winter. I would have dream after dream of being in a glacier, of walking through it.

In general, when I ask women if they have a problem with hot flashes, they say it's not that bad when I am alone; it is just embarrassing when in public. Which is one of the reasons I say, have time and space to yourself, where you can be up all night if you need to. When you can have hot flashes during the day, and lay down on the floor and go: "Oh no one has ever suffered like I suffer." Believe me, I have been there. I had hot flashes where I was so hot I felt like I have been dipped in boiling water. Sometimes I would cry because I felt so bad for myself. Just as my labor pains were also painful, and I knew that a baby was going to come at the end of those pains, with hot flashes, I knew that the crone was going to come at the end of those flashes.

I have always been willing to endure a certain amount of pain and suffering if I know that I was going to get something valuable at the end of it. I can tell you, giving birth to my daughter was very valuable and she is a very valuable thing in my life. Giving birth to myself as a crone was very valuable to me.

Corinna Wood is the owner of Red Moon Herbs, making herbal medicines business in Black Mountain from fresh, local plants for over 10 years. She did an extensive apprenticeship with Susun Weed in 1993, and continues to carry on the wise woman tradition through local classes as well as making herbal medicines.

COPYRIGHT 2005 Natural Arts
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group

http://www.newlifejournal.com/index.shtml

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Menopausal Allies

with Susun Weed

at Wise Woman University

This course will look at menopause as puberty prime, as a metamorphosis, and as the springboard for the last fifty years of our lives. You will mine gems of wisdom from how you dealt with your first puberty, recast your problems as allies during menopausal withdrawal, meltdown, and emergence, and learn how to use herbal allies to create yourself as wise old crone – juicy, vital, vibrant, strong-boned, hale-hearted, and gleeful. 

You will look at the facts behind some of the prevalent myths of and learn which herbal allies are better choices. You will learn about herbal allies for menopause: herbs for dealing with fertility, mood and emotion, sex, hot flashes, sleepless nights, lack of libido, and your own personal problems. I invite you to join our circle, a menopausal moon lodge, as it were, of women honoring themselves and reweaving the healing cloak of the Ancients.

Register for here for the four week online course starting May 3rd!

NEW Menopausal Years the Wise Woman Way:

Alternative Approaches for Women 30 - 90
by Susun S. Weed
Foreword by Juliette de Bairacli Levy.
304 pages, index, magical illustrations.
Completely revised with 100 new pages. All the remedies women know and trust plus hundreds of new ones. New sections on thyroid health, fibromyalgia, hairy problems, male menopause, and herbs for women taking hormones. Recommended by Susan Love MD and Christiane Northrup MD.
Retails for $16.95

 

read some excerpts :
Building Better Bones
Kundalini Meditation

Order New Menopausal Years in our Bookshop

 

The Artwork of Cathy Connolley...

The Artwork of

Cathy Connolley

 

I am a self-taught artist and have been drawing and painting for about fifteen years. I trained as a nurse and midwife but no longer practice. I was born in Kent but have lived most of my life in the Chiltern hills area of Buckinghamshire.

I have enjoyed a life long interest in nature and particularly trees and I find the beechwood landscapes of the Chilterns evocative and inspiring.

I also have an interest in photography and I often use my photographs as reference material for my artwork.Holidays spent in Ireland researching my family history have inspired a love of all things Irish and Celtic, especially the ancient landscapes of the Donegal, Roscommon and Sligo regions.

I love all animals and birds particularly rooks, domestic farm animals and swans. Many of these creatures find their way into my art along with my four cats. Myths and legends are another rich source of inspiration for my work.

Visit the artist's website here!

Seven Medicines by Susun Weed

 
 

Seven Medicines

by Susun S Weed © 2004

I love to separate this from that, as Vasalisa did during her stay with Baba Yaga in the chicken-footed house. Separating this from that -- making piles of similar things -- helps me make sense of the complicated world I inhabit.

Separating this from that especially helps me make sense of medicine. What to do with all the modalities, methods, and manners of healing? I sort them into seven medicines, based on their safety. This helps me maintain and regain health simply and safely.

The first four medicines -- serenity medicine, story medicine, energy medicine, and lifestyle medicine -- build health. The more we actively engage in them throughout our lives, the healthier we will be. The last three medicines -- herbal medicine, pharmaceutical medicine, and hi-tech medicine -- are life-saving in emergencies, but undermine overall health.

Serenity Medicine

The safest way to heal is to let Nature do the work. This requires nothing from us. And the more nothing we can provide, the more effective serenity medicine is. Unplug the phone, leave the computer turned off, enter the silence, cultivate acceptance, abandon the mind's ceaseless control, and be here now.

Story Medicine

The stories we tell ourselves, according to my mentor Jean Houston, create our lives and thus our health. What are the stories you tell yourself about your life and your health? This is story medicine.

When we seek diagnosis we are looking for story medicine. Different healers offer very different kinds of story medicine. Receiving information from people telling different stories can be very confusing, until we see the sameness in their stories.

I sort story medicine into Scientific, Heroic, and Wise Woman types: Something is broken and needs to be fixed (Scientific). Something is toxic and needs to be cleansed (Heroic). Something lacks nourishment and wants to be whole (Wise Woman).

Story medicine is information medicine. Information alone may be heartless, however. So we open ourselves to wisdom and intuition, to our unreasonable fears and longings, even as we search the internet and seek second opinions in story medicine.

Hands-off diagnosis is much less likely harm the questioner than -- and in skilled hands as good as -- x-rays, CAT scans, radioactive tracers, and exploratory surgery.

Energy Medicine

Chi, ki, veriditas, kundalini, life force, orgone, wankan tanka . . . even if we can't measure it or see it, we know there is an energy that animates and heals. Ways to use this energy are as myriad as our ability to imagine.

Hands-off healing, laying on of hands, Reiki, Muriel, comfort touch . . . we sense this energy in our hands and in the hands of healers. We know we can use the power of our intention to help direct this energy.

Homeopathy, flower essences, gem stone elixirs, mojo bags, rituals and ceremonies . . . energy medicine gives us physical things to focus our intention on, to help us envision our health, our healing, our reality.

Sound healing, color healing, art therapy, drumming . . . energy is vibration and vibration can heal. Resonance gathers our wholeness. Prayer, chanting, kirtan, focused meditation, visualizations . . . energy medicine attunes us to health.

Chakras, and auras, shamanic journeys, trances and hypnosis . . . energy medicine gives detail to our story and helps us change from the inside out.

Did someone say placebo? I'm fine with that. Instead of energy medicine I could call it placebo medicine. It still works, as science as shown us. And since placebo medicine does so little harm, I'm all for it.

Lifestyle Medicine

Nourishment and activity are the core physical components of health.

We nourish ourselves with all our senses. Nourishment occurs in single instances. The specifics of nourishment have been argued by Americans for hundreds of years, with no particular winners. My simple rules for superb nourishment: Eat foods without ingredients. Eat locally. Eat widely. Avoid high-fructose corn syrup, enriched flour, all soy foods except miso and tamari, and all oils pressed from seeds.

Tonification builds functioning, unlike stimulus, which erodes it. Tonification is rhythmic and, for best results, occurs regularly and repeatedly. Daily is usually too much for most people. Muscles are strengthened by being torn; they need several days rest to recover and gain tone.

Herbalists are especially likely to confuse stimulation and tonification.

Herbal Medicine
Herbal medicine does not stand alone here, nor is all of herbal medicine encompassed in this section. Nourishing herbal infusions and most herbal vinegars, for instance, are part of lifestyle medicine.

The medicines here stimulate and sedate. They include hydrotherapy, many massage therapies, and acupuncture, as well as herbal medicine.

I break this section into ten smaller sections so my sorting can give me more information on safety and make my choices easier. (1) Motherwort tincture sedates and tones, (2) skullcap tincture sedates and nourishes, (3) chamomile tea mildly sedates, (4) catnip tea sedates, (5) passion flower tincture can sedate strongly, (6) hops tea very strongly sedates and may be mildly addictive, (7) valerian root tincture sedates strongly and can be very addictive, (8) poppy head tea is a strong, addictive sedative, but it is not a narcotic, neither is the potent sedative (9) wild lettuce sap, but (10) poppy sap/opium is a narcotic.

Pharmaceutical Medicine

Morphine and heroin are drugs made from poppies; they are part of pharmaceutical medicine. I define a drug as something that does not grow out of the ground (thus opium is not a drug) and cannot be made in your kitchen. I include vitamin and mineral supplements and essential oils in pharmaceutical medicine.

Hi-Tech Medicine

So useful. So enticing. So dangerous.

Here we break boundaries: We stick our finger down our throats, we break our child's will, we run fluids up into our intestines (enemas and colonics), we control our feelings with psychoactive drugs, we open our bodies with surgery, injections pierce our skin.

So useful. So enticing. So dangerous.

Set a Time Limit
I have arranged the medicines according to the harms they are likely to cause, how likely those harms is, and how severe those harms may be. But all bets are off unless you set a time limit for working with each medicine. Neither rushing into hi-tech medicine, nor procrastinating about acting, will support optimum health.

For best results, when I have a problem, I start with serenity medicine. If I am not "well" in the appointed time, I go on to story medicine and again set a time limit. Without time limits it is easy to get pulled into frustrating repetitions of non-diagnosis and clashing opinions. Become your own expert; write your own story. And use the tools of energy medicine to make it real, within your time limit, of course. Change your diet if you need do; exercise more. But don't be afraid to use herbal medicine when your time limit there is through. And do go on to drugs if herbs don't do what you need in the time you set.

Sometimes surgery and hi-tech saves the day, but set a time limit on this, for sure.
In emergencies, I use all the medicines at once. Sorting them this way helps me cover all my bases instead of say, doing ten different energy medicines. All the medicines at once is integrative medicine, and it can work wonders in my experience. Just remember to set a time limit for leaving daily use of herbal, pharmaceutical, and hi-tech medicines behind and relying on health building with serenity, story, energy, and lifestyle medicines.

For permission to reprint this article, contact us at: [email protected]

Herbal First Aid: The Wise Woman Way

with Susun Weed

at Wise Woman University

Most of us suffer small injuries fairly regularly: scrapes, cuts, burns, bruises, muscle aches and swelling, insect bites and stings, and itching. Antibiotic ointments can delay healing. Getting stitches is not always the best response, even to a large gash. Learn how to identify, prepare, and use the common, abundant plants that grow near at hand as spit-poultices, healing ointments/oils, tinctures, compresses, and baths to soothe, ease, and heal these injuries, including surgical wounds. Then extend your herbal first aid for everyday aches in the teeth, stomach, head, and uterus, even treat food poisoning.

Join with Susun to learn the Wise Woman Way to handle everyday ailments. Register for this four week online course here!

Aaron Eagle Needs Sponsors...

Dear Motherpeace Friend:

Over the years many of you have kept up with my son Aaron’s progress through junior and senior high schools, Cabrillo College in Santa Cruz, and now Camphill California where he has lived for the past year in an adult group home. With funding cuts ripping into his support, we are looking to find other ways of helping to finance his living situation, and this upcoming Human Race Walkathon offers such an opportunity.The Walkathon is sponsored by Volunteer Centers of Santa Cruz and takes place in our little beach town. The runners and walkers go along the ocean, beginning at Natural Bridges State Park and along beautiful West Cliff drive. Each participant is sponsored by people who donate in his or her name. You can sign up to sponsor Aaron Eagle here.

All Aaron’s “earnings” will be donated to Camphill Communities California, where he lives and works. In case you missed my earlier messages about Aaron, in the last year at Camphill he has become a biodynamic farmer (in the Rudolph Steiner tradition) as well as a weaver.  He has simply never been happier in his life, as the attached photo might suggest.

To know more about Camphill Communities California, go to this link: http://www.camphillca.org/ I hope you will find it in your heart to make a small donation to Aaron’s participation in this 6K walkathon on May 7th. Thanks for all your loving support in the past and in the future.

Blessings,

Vicki

The Artwork of Deborah Koff-Chapin and Touch Drawing...

These powerful images were created by the founder of Touch Drawing, Deborah Koff-Chapin, while listening to Susun Weed speak at the recent Women of Wisdom conference. This is the first in a series of Weblogs featuring all of these profound, joyful and inspiring pieces of art.

Touch Drawing is a simple yet profound process where the fingers take the place of pen or brush. Paper is placed over a freshly painted surface. Wherever it is touched, an imprint is made on the back side. Impulses from within take form on paper through the movement of the fingertips on the page. A multitude of drawings can be created in one session, each a stepping stone to the next; guiding progressively deeper into the self. You can see video demonstration here.

Through this direct drawing process, even the least confident artist can experience interior images coming alive on the page. The hands become organic extensions of the soul, moving freely in response to the sensations of the moment. Read articles and interviews in which Deborah speaks in more depth about the process and how it emerged.

In a medium as immediate and transparent as Touch Drawing, previously unused channels of expression are opened, enabling uncensored feelings to flow forth. The act of creating with these feelings provides more than cathartic release: it unleashes vibrant healing forces which guide the psyche toward
wholeness. Touch Drawing is a practice of creative, psychological and spiritual integration. There are countless applications of the process You can read stories here by people who are using Touch Drawing here.

From the Website: Touch Drawing is a simple yet profound way of drawing with your fingertips. It is used by people of all ages in a vast range of settings. Touch Drawing is a creative catalyst, healing art  form and transformational tool. I encourage you to explore how you can integrate it into your life and work. Find out more about Touch Drawing and the resources of this site here. Continue reading below to get the most current happenings. If you want to receive my 'Image Offerings' and Center for Touch Drawing news, sign our mailing list.

Featured Website~Cedar Spring Herb Farm...

Cedar Spring Herb Farm 

www.cedarspringherbfarm.com

Our 7 acre site situated in Harwich, on Cape Cod, is an organic herbal oasis including walking trails, herb identification gardens, production gardens, treatment, classroom, picnic area, meditation and ceremonial spaces.

Our herb specialty shops offer our own organic herbal products, organically grown culinary, medicinal and decorative plants, and related botanical products.

Services available include wellness consultations, group lectures and tours, classes, apprentice programs, and ceremonial gatherings.

Cedar Spring Herb Farm is a registered United Plant Savers Botanical Sanctuary working to protect endangered medicinal plants and has signed on to the Safe Cosmetics Compact, a select group of companies dedicated to chemical free personal care products. We look forward to your visit and the opportunity to share with you our understanding of herbs as food and medicine.

About Donna

Donna holds a Chartered Herbalist degree from Dominion Herbal College and a B.S. in Psychology. Of Native American heritage, Donna has also studied with several North and South American healers to learn the spiritual and herbal healing techniques of native people. Working as an organic herb grower and landscape gardener on Cape Cod since 1982, has led Donna to the development of Cedar Spring Herb Farm. Nestled in the surrounding woodlands, Cedar Spring Herb Farm includes a treatment and teaching facility, herb specialty shop, walking trails, herb identification gardens, production gardens, herb drying loft, greenhouse, meditation garden and a purification lodge. A member of United Plant Savers
botanical sanctuary network, Cedar Spring Herb Farm is a place where all can learn about the bounty of the Earth.

Donna teaches a wide variety of herb, gardening and self awareness classes and is available for lectures and 'weed walks' that appeal to all ages. Groups of any size are welcome to schedule tours or lectures. Donna maintains a holistic practice combining herbalism, psychology and spirituality, working with her clients toward the healing of body, mind and spirit.

 

 

The Artwork of Sharae Taylor...

Site Reborn June 4, 2005

~ A Joyous Celebration ~

The Angel Art Gallery

of

Sharae Taylor

Angels by Sharae

~Original Fine Art Angel Paintings

Sharae is a licensed and galleried internationally known Angel Artist & Angel Intuitive,
whose paintings are in collections world wide. Her Angel paintings were in a group exhibition and gallery showing in Washington, DC that included other well known Angel Artists : Andy Lakey , Donna Terody Sheratan and K. Martin Kuri (Angel Artist and Author). Sharae has participated in many Angel Expos and Conferences which included Angel Authors ... Alma Daniels ("Ask Your Angels") and John Ronner ("Do You Have a Guardian Angel"). Her work has been exhibited at Conscious Life Expo's in Los Angeles, CA and the Mind, Body & Spirit Expo's in LA. and Pasadena, CA..

"My belief and knowingness of the Angels has led me on a spiritual journey that has literally transformed my life.
I invite you to participate in the journey "...  "I Shall Paint Angels"

You can contact the artist by visiting her website here!