PMS is honored to have Claudia Ford sharing her brilliance & guest facilitating a knowledge share with us !

Ethnobotany for Herbalists

Working as researchers and practitioners within the herbal legacy forces us to confront questions about the limitations of our historical information on medicine, health, and medicinal plants. We face the challenge of educating ourselves and our clients while studying the available archives that were created by authors who projected their bigoted and incomplete beliefs on to what they observed yet frequently did not fully comprehend. Our herbal legacy was too often created in ways that abused Indigenous peoples and silenced their traditional plant and medical knowledge.

This discussion explores ways to attend to the sources, silences, and challenges of our herbal legacies, so that we might be able to practice herbalism in a manner that discontinues harm to communities, repairs relationships between plants and people, and that privileges, without appropriation, the voices and expertise of the original plant knowledge holders.

About Claudia Ford (she/her)…

I am unhoused but right now on the traditional unneeded land of the Haudenosaunee.

Dr. Claudia J. Ford has had a career in international development and women’s health spanning four decades and all continents. Dr. Ford is professor and chair of the department of environmental studies at State University of New York, Potsdam. She has a BA in Biology from Columbia University, MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts, MBA in Health Administration from Antioch University, and PhD in Environmental Studies from Antioch University. Dr. Ford is a midwife and ethnobotanist, who teaches, conducts research and writes about traditional ecological knowledge, spiritual ecology, entheogenic plant medicine, women’s reproductive health, and sustainable agriculture. Dr. Ford has served on the boards of the Soul Fire Farm Institute, and The Black Farmer Fund Pilot Community, both organizations committed to supporting Black farmers, and ending racism and injustice in the food system. Claudia is currently writing a book, Black Ecological Wisdom, revealing the environmental traditions of the Black diaspora for the purpose of planetary healing at this time of environmental crisis. Claudia is a writer, poet, and visual artist; and a single mother who has shared the delights and adventures of her global travel with her four children and two grandchildren.

A Virtual Event Series

Tuesday October 15th, 7-9 PM EST

*Please note that these events are for PMS students (enrolled or alumni), and other PMS guest facilitators ONLY!

PMS is honored to have Natalia Rathbun sharing her brilliance & guest facilitating a knowledge share with us !

Adopted by Plants

This offering explores herbalism and cultivation as modes of connection, through the lens of transnational adoption. Together we consider: how do plants as a community help us to realize the connection that can feel lacking, and how does this lead us to a sense of expansion? This discussion may start at adoption, but the themes are broadly applicable to diasporic peoples. We will explore herbal preparations for grief and grounding, as well as share experiences of connection with our first mother, the earth.

Natalia Rathbun…

(she/her) was born in the traditional homelands of the Guarani people and now resides on gayogo̱hó nǫɂ homelands. Natalia arrived to herself when she began working on a farm as a teen, and realized that even far away from bloodlines and ancestral lands, we live with everything we need to feel connected and at home.

A Virtual Event Series

Tuesday October 8th, 7-9 PM EST

*Please note that these events are for PMS students (enrolled or alumni), and other PMS guest facilitators ONLY!

PMS is honored to have Mario Ceballos sharing his brilliance & guest facilitating a knowledge share with us !

Indigenous Fungi Uses

In this knowledge share Mario will lead a storytelling discussion about indigenous fungi uses and how we can honor our ancestors by reconnecting with our fungal relatives. Throughout the world people have been using mushrooms and fungi for food, medicine, and divination since time immemorial and we too can share in the medicine that allowed our ancestors to survive and thrive. As we connect and learn our ancestral practices we intend to build stronger more resilient communities and more sustainable relationships with the land we live on.

Mario Ceballos…

(he/they) is an Indigenous Scientist and a parent of three who has dedicated themselves to learning from fungi and trees as to how to build resilient communities that support and care for each other. Mario is the co-founder of the POC Fungi Community and the co-chair of the Yaquis of Southern California. Mario leads nature walks with youth and families with the intention to share the healing that nature has provided for Mario and their community as well as leading ecology summer camps for youth with a emphasis on reclamation of ancestral knowledge and wisdom.

A Virtual Event Series

Tuesday September 17th, 7-9 PM EST

*Please note that these events are for PMS students (enrolled or alumni), and other PMS guest facilitators ONLY!

PMS is honored to have Samrah Shoaib sharing their brilliance & guest facilitating a knowledge share with us !

The Art of Incense Making with Herbs, Trees, and Resin

For as long as we can trace back human history, the use of aromatics has been part of our existence. Whether used in ceremonies or other sacred rituals, the power of scent and smoke throughout many cultures predates the commodification of incense. In this workshop, we will spend some time diving into the history and significance of incense, as well as the benefits of aromatherapy. We will be discussing incense as a spiritual tool of protection, clarity, and one that helps us move through joy and grief.

Participants will learn how to use accessible plant material to make their very own incense. We will tap into the spiritual benefits of different plant materials and how they can be used to help create incense for our individual spiritual and emotional needs.

Samrah Shoaib…

(they/she) is an herbalist and lover of plants from Brooklyn NY, by way of Pakistan. Samrah’s passion lies at the intersections of food sovereignty and gender equity work. Through her journey as a youth worker, she came to understand her passion for food justice and combating food insecurity in Black and brown communities. It is her deep love for plant medicine that guides her to do work that centers this land and all of its offerings.

Samrah is currently the Program Manager of the Humanities Institute at the New York Botanical Garden, where she curates food and plant humanities programming for the Bronx community. Formerly, she was part of the Rootwork Herbals team for two years and she is also a People’s Medicine School graduate.

A Virtual Event Series

Tuesday September 10th, 7-9 PM EST

*Please note that these events are for PMS students (enrolled or alumni), and other PMS guest facilitators ONLY!

PMS is honored to have Olatokunboh Obasi sharing her brilliance & guest facilitating a knowledge share with us !

Place Centered Herbalism

The practice of herbalism is vast. Amongst many ways that we express it, we also prepare plant medicine formulas, write, teach, grow, and interact spiritually with them. Developing relationships with our plant medicines is key to understanding how they work. This process can be personal and intimate. The plants around us are the best plants to explore deeper as they are always available to us. This class will explore the many ways that we can commune with plants, why it is important to commune with plants around us and how we can cultivate deeper meaning in our relationship with them.

Olatokunboh Obasi…

MSc, CNS, RH (AHG) she/her is the Owner of Omaroti Salud y Bienestar, an apothecary and clinical practice in herbal medicine and wellness located in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, Boriken. She is a board certified nutritionist, medical herbalist and birth doula.

Olatokunboh Obasi has been working in the wellness field for almost 20 years. She is the visionary of the Caribbean Herbal Symposium and executive director of the project. She shares her leadership skills in health advocacy, as a guest educator of several schools across the United States and beyond. She finds movement a necessary key to wellness, and therefore has devoted years of study in the following; a forever student and Shiromani in the Sivananda Yoga tradition, as well as a certified dance instructor in Synergy Dance.

Committed to community holistic health, social justice, and education, she works heavily in community service and Afro Indigenous Medicine. Currently, a Board of Director of the American Herbalist Guild, she was the 2019 award recipient for her notable work in supporting, diversity, equity and justice in herbalism with the organization. Her commitment to training students in clinical herbalism and healing arts through her school Well of Indigenous Wisdom School is an important purpose as it represents leaving the earth responsibly for the future generations.

Originally from Africa, her travels around the world are extensive as she integrates traditional knowledge of herbs, with her western education. She received her Master’s of Science from Maryland University of Integrative Health. Olatokunboh is a mother of 3 young adults. She continues to learn from her children through challenge and tribulation as she shares her journey of life with them and the human family.

A Virtual Event Series

Tuesday August 21st, 7-9 PM EST

*Please note that these events are for PMS students (enrolled or alumni), and other PMS guest facilitators ONLY!

PMS is honored to have Randi Moore sharing her brilliance & guest facilitating a knowledge share with us !

Body Medicine: weaving the embodied practices of somatics and plant medicine

What is possible when our bodies and plant bodies meet and encounter each other? As we engage in relationships with plants, how do we experience these encounters not only through our physiology but also through the entirety of our felt sense? As herbalists, how do we weave these possibilities through our partnerships with plants to offer ourselves and our communities whole body medicine?

The word “soma” refers to the living body in its wholeness and provides us with language through which to remember the multitude of ways that are in the world. As we remember and practice these ways within our relationships with plants, we can open portals and expand possibilities for healing and care through whole body medicine.

In our time together we will explore and practice ways to meet plants as a soma through somatic practices, personal reflection, and collective discussion. Participants will be invited to bring their plant partner to this class in physical or representative/symbolic form.

Randi Moore…

(she/they) is a parent, partner, farmer and land steward, community herbalist, somatic facilitator, and artist living on the traditional land of the Nacotchtank people (east of the Anacostia, Washington, DC). Her work is to facilitate healing relationships to the body, ancestry, place and community through plants, words, food, art, embodiment, and the reclamation of the creative power of her lineages.

A Virtual Event Series

Tuesday August 13th, 7-9 PM EST

*Please note that these events are for PMS students (enrolled or alumni), and other PMS guest facilitators ONLY!

PMS is honored to have Ayo Ngozi sharing her brilliance & guest facilitating a knowledge share with us !

Plants, Healing & Story Weaving

In this class, we'll link plant medicine and radical imagination as we harvest plant wisdom found in traditional and contemporary stories and literature of BIPOC writers and storytellers. We'll be reading from Ntozake Shange and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Zora Neale Hurston and Judy Lin, and storycrafters whose names we no longer know, but whose tales and teachings have become cultural encodings. We will also take some (optional) time to share our own creative works incorporating plant medicine and healingways.

Ayo Ngozi…

(she/her) is a descendant of agrarian Black folks who left the South during the Great Migration, passing forward their practices of gardening and foraging. She has worked as an herbalist for over a decade, with a practice that centers the land, the community, Spirit, and ancestral ways of being. Ayo has co-created several projects, including Planting Reparations and Black Mystery School (an Afrofuturist learning community dedicated to liberatory healing, knowledge and practice), serves on the faculties of the Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism and Wild Ginger Herbal Center, and sits on Seed Soil + Spirit School’s Wild Foraging in Right Relationship and Rooted Medicine’s advisory councils. She is currently expanding her vision and practice on the land as a '23-'24 Braiding Seeds and '23-'24 Narrative Design Lab fellow. Ayo lives and grows in on Yamacraw land (Savannah, GA) with her family.

A Virtual Event Series

Tuesday July 16th, 7-9 PM EST

*Please note that these events are for PMS students (enrolled or alumni), and other PMS guest facilitators ONLY!

PMS is honored to have Shabina Lafleur-Gangj sharing her brilliance & guest facilitating a knowledge share with us !

Ganja: Herb of the immortal

Colonial forces have led a direct assault on traditional knowledge systems and Indigenous Peoples globally. This has resulted in the criminalization of traditional practices, including the ancestral use of Ganja across the African and Asian continents. Further, the cannabis industry has played a large part in erasing traditional plant knowledge for profit.

Together we will discuss traditional stories, medical use, indications and energetic concepts of cannabis in South Asian Medical systems. We will also discuss the legacy of trade between South Asia and various regions of Asia and Africa and colonialism's impact on our traditional understandings of this medicine.

Shabina Lafleur-Gangji!…

(she/her) is a community herbalist, acupuncturist and with clinical experience trained in Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurvedic Medicine, Western Herbalism and some Unani Medicine with over a decade of education. She is the co-director of Seed Soil Spirit, a grassroots Herb school run by and primarily for Black, Indigenous and other racialized peoples. Shabina also tends to a half acre medicine garden in "Guelph" in Dish With One Spoon territory.

A Virtual Event Series

Tuesday July 9th, 7-9 PM EST

*Please note that these events are for PMS students (enrolled or alumni), and other PMS guest facilitators ONLY!

PMS is honored to have Cyrée Jarelle Johnson sharing his brilliance & guest facilitating a knowledge share with us !

Radical Intuition

From Harriet Tubman's dreams, to Nat Turner's astrological timing, intuition has always been a part of black struggles for liberation.

Intuition, which as I define it is a mix of deep listening, self-understanding, and faith, is available to everyone. It is a muscle, and a skill that those who work with marginalized folks can (and possibly should) build.

We'll do self-trust assessments, find new ways to know what our bodies need, and map our own intuitive landscape. We'll also practice listening to the earth and non-human allies.

This ties into herbalism on a personal level, because the deep listening required to work with plant allies ethically is a form of intuition.

Cyrée Jarelle Johnson…

(he/him) is a poet and gifted reader from Piscataway, New Jersey. He is the author of SLINGSHOT, the winner of the Lambda Literary Award in Gay Poetry, and WATCHNIGHT, winner of the Laughlin Prize. He has run his cartomancy service, Collective Cartomancy (fka Temperance Queer Tarot) for the past twelve years. He was raised in Lenapehoking, and still lives there. Find him online at cyreejarellejohnson.com or collectivecartomancy.com

A Virtual Event Series

Tuesday June 18th, 7-9 PM EST

*Please note that these events are for PMS students (enrolled or alumni), and other PMS guest facilitators ONLY!

PMS is honored to have Lucretia VanDyke sharing her brilliance & guest facilitating a knowledge share with us !

Looking at the Whole Self in Holistic Healing Protocols

Our ancestors and Indigenous culture’s healers always looked at the entire person's body, mind, and spirit to co create a whole healing arts protocol for people who came to them for help. Oftentimes we know the right plant formulas to get our bodies back on track ,but are we looking deeper into ourselves and our clients to bring more synergy into our practice. Let us dive into the plant world to truly embrace the full magic of the plants to assist us to utilize them for all of their healing power.

We will explore:

• Food for the soul- how to take your ancestor’s recipes/folk remedies and add more plant medicine in your diet.

• Botanical skincare- create personal ceremonies of self care with herb infused face serums, spiritual bathing, kitchen spa products, pain remedies and more!

• Plant spirit meditation- creating a more sacred space for you, your apothecary, and introducing yourself to the plant world.

• Herbal formulations for the spirit- what herbs help with grief and other emotions

• Wholeness womb medicine- look deeper at inter-generational womb trauma to assist in these trying times ,as a call for deeper medicine protocols to address the trauma in the body when history repeats itself.

About Lucretia VanDyke…

With a journey that began when she was a little girl mixing herbs, muds, and roots on her grandparents’ farm, Lucretia VanDyke has had a lifelong connection to the plants and been in the wellness industry for over 25 years. Her quest for knowledge and storytelling has led her all over the world to learn about remedies, traditions, and ceremonies from indigenous healers. Born on the land of the Cherokee nation and currently residing in New Orleans what Choctaw named the area “Bulbancha,” meaning Land of Many Tongues.

Author of "African American Herbalism, a practical guide to healing plants and folk traditions" She is one the foremost experts on southern folk healing arts, Lucretia integrates ceremonies, plant spirit meditation, holistic food/herbal medicine , and ancestor reverence into people’s practices.

Lucretia has worked and trained with many internationally known spa and skin care companies. She is a Holistic Educator, Speaker, Herbalist, Sacred Sexologist ,Ceremonialist,Spiritual Coach, Intuitive Energetic Practitioner, Diviner, Author, & world traveler. Lucretia has studied with some of the greatest minds of our time ,she brings her vivacious spirit and her message of ancestral connection in herbal practices to inspire others to embrace their unique relationship with the plants.

Her work with herbs and ceremony honors African and indigenous healing arts and herbal practices, Women's Wholeness Medicine, grief work, trauma, self love, Sacred Sexology, & botanical skin care.

Teaching herbal classes, cooking ,storytelling, travel, and foraging in the woods learning native medicine is what charges her soul.

A Virtual Event Series

Tuesday June 11th, 7-9 PM EST

*Please note that these events are for PMS students (enrolled or alumni), and other PMS guest facilitators ONLY!

PMS is honored to have Darren Le Baron sharing his brilliance & guest facilitating a knowledge share with us !

Black Mental Health & Psychedelic Healing Potential

Darren will share his research that looks at the important historical and current events that have impacted and shaped the lives of African people in the diaspora. He will provide insight into some of traumatic experiences that the current generation inherit and how it affects us all today.

Exploring some of the healing modalities accessible through rites of passage which include the use of entheogenic plants, Darren will highlight some ground breaking research that supports these activities as a way to start the healing process.

With the psychedelic renaissance gaining momentum, how do we ensure that all people across the world, from all backgrounds, are represented at the table and consulted about the future applications of these psychedelic experiences?

Darren Le Baron…

is an educator specialising in mycology and psychedelic research, and is based in the UK and Jamaica.

Known around the world for his Shroomshop Master classes he is a keen mushroom cultivator and teacher. He has been growing gourmet and medicinal mushrooms for ten years and has translated his home growing experiences into a social enterprise.

Darren is a knowledgeable and dynamic speaker who is passionate about sharing his research and findings on ethnomycology, ancient African plant medicines and their various applications.

He is a member and presenter at the London Psychedelic Society, a chair and Breaking Convention committee member. He is also a regular presenter at the Detroit Psychedelic Conference, Ozora, Noisily and Lightning in a Bottle Festivals, as well as numerous gatherings around the world sharing his extensive research on psychedelics and how they can help support humanity in the here and now.

He is also an Organic Horticulturist and Permaculture tutor who supports schools, businesses and so called hard to reach communities around the world to create holistic and sustainable working systems.

Collectively his work aims to inform and empower individuals from diverse backgrounds to cope with social challenges and contribute to community development as well as self-improvement in an innovative, creative, culturally-aware style.

A Virtual Event Series

Tuesday May 21st, 7-9 PM EST

*Please note that these events are for PMS students (enrolled or alumni), and other PMS guest facilitators ONLY!

PMS is honored to have Kale Mays sharing his brilliance & guest facilitating a knowledge share with us!

We Live in a Place

Where are you? How did you get here?

As land stewards, we are constantly swimming in questions of how to best honor the land we are growing on. However, in the swirl of seed starting, harvest, and medicine-making it’s easy to get lost in the swirl of the day-to-day. Kale asks us to step back and re-contextualize our existence and resistance on slices of soil that contain untold layers of bones, blood, sweat, and tears. In this workshop, we will explore methodologies of exploring the deep geological histories of the ecosystems we grow medicine on. We will also hold stories about the enslaved African people who laid the infrastructural foundations for farming in upstate NY, and their journeys to self-liberation from plantation agriculture by any means necessary.

Kale Mays…

(he/they) is a deep city memory worker who seeks to repair our relationships to this hyper-settled land on which we've experienced both bondage and freedom, greeting the spirits who peer out from the cracks in the concrete. They are a descendant of enslaved and self-liberated african people in the black soil territories of south carolina, virginia, florida, and arkansas. Their lowcountry ancestors joined with Mvskoke relatives to resist the US government and became known as "Seminole". They draw their knowledge of territory from ecosystem, elders, and archives -- diving deep into the realm of traditional research, then pulling out to ask elements, ancestors, and more-than-human kin which stories are ready to be shared.

A Virtual Event Series

Tuesday May 14th 7-9 PM EST

*Please note that these events are for PMS students (enrolled or alumni), and other PMS guest facilitators ONLY!