Testimonials

Monique Andrette Mccomas  I am Yaqui and Lipan Apache, when I was a young girl my mother passed and my father and myself were adopted by Aloysius and Bernice Tail, 5 generations full blood Lakota Sundancers on the Pine Ridge reservation, in South Dakota. I am a Sundancer and carry the sacred Chanupa, so I am of service to the world to help all who are in need. My spiritual beliefs are the White Buffalo Calf woman’s, sacred Chanupa and the 7 ceremonies. Inipi and Hanbleceya are the 2 ceremonies I was gifted to do for my family and community. I pour water for the sacred Inipi purification ceremony and a spiritual midwife. I mentor for a class of girls called “SHE’S ALL THAT,” an empowerment class and rights of passage, my mission is to share and support them to being fully who they are. I love to do ceremony, it’s what feeds my spirit, I live a good life. My commitment to Omitakuye Oyasin, all my relations is to be of service for the betterment of our world, look forward to this beautiful life and sharing it with all of you.

 

Ana Flecha has been teaching movement and body based therapy for fifteen years, during which time she has given workshops in Canada, Estonia, Hungary, Finland, Poland, Thailand, Brazil and in the US.  She studied pilates with Kathy Grant at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts from 1991 to 1993, and was certified in Gyrotonic in 2000, at which time she opened Body Language Gyrotonic and Pilates Studio in Soquel, California.  In 2006 she was certified to teach the Axis Syllabus by founder Frey Faust, and worked closely with him for several years, assisting workshops in Greece, Austria, and California.  She began studying contact improvisation that same year, receiving instruction from Nita Little, Karl Frost, Scott Wells, Kirstie Simpson, Martin Keogh, and many others, and began teaching in 2008.

Currently Ana and her husband Fabio Flecha are developing two different cultural sites in Canoa Quebrada – Espaço Flecha do Mar and the Eco Aldeia Flecha da Mata, producing events which combine dance, body consciousness, music, yoga, capoeira angola, permaculture, bioconstruction and shamanism, as well as various different kinds of ceremonies, benefiting the local population and attracting visitors from all over the world.  They hosted month long dance events based in the Axis Syllabus in 2010, 2011 and 2012, in which Ana was a principle teacher, receiving students from all over the world.  She began offering body consciousness workshops called ReinCORPOra in 2012, and includes this workshop in permaculture events at the Eco Aldeia in order to enlighten our relationship with our bodies as a means to achieve true sustainability.  In 2013 she and Fabio began receiving groups of students from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte as well as from local elementary and high schools, using the Eco Aldeia as an example of the quest towards sustainability.  In 2014 they created a month long event coinciding with the World Cup, (Copa do Mundo,) called Copa das Arvores, (tree top,) offering different events and courses promoting health and sustainability.

In recent years they have hosted ceremony with various distinguished spiritual and cultural leader, including representatives of the Yawana tribe from the Amazon, Leo Artese and Fany Carolina from São Paolo, Marcos Ninguem who is now based in Canoa Quebrada, and Chefe Aurélio Díaz Tekpankali and his partner Yaci Orquera from Mexico, opening the Sacred Fire of the Itzachilatlan Nation at the Eco Aldeia Flecha da Mata in 2013.  Ana experienced the sacrament of Santo Daime for the first time in 2004 and received her star from Luzia Krull in 2009 at the work of the Virgin of Conception in Santa Cruz, California.  Since 2012 she has been the secretary of the Daime church Flor da Canoa in Canoa Quebrada, host church to EMFLORES-NE 2014, an annual gathering of women daimistas. Ana has worked with her spiritual mentor and Madrinha, Luzia, over the past several years, assisting in ceremonies and private sessions, and has accompanied her to Mapia in the Amazon forest three times, participating in many different spiritual works and healings. She is very much looking forward to deepening her work as a part of “Adult Girls into Women.”   

 

Kristen Joy Galbraith Kristen Joy Galbreath lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Originally from California, her life journey has brought her through 27 countries so far. She is a student midwife, medical assistant, and student working towards eventually becoming an integrative nurse practitioner. She speaks Spanish, Portuguese, basic Navajo, and sees cultural and traditional knowledge as being important parts of medicine. Her time spent living and traveling in Latin America exposed her to working with plant medicines and traditional healing practices.

When she isn’t studying or working, Kristen performs semi-professionally in the circus arts as an aerialist, clown, and stilt-walker. She sees circus and physical theater as opportunities to convey powerful messages in a way that is meaningful to the audience and performer. It is also a place where complex stories can be told, difficult topics can be addressed, and healing can happen through movement.  She is currently working on a one-woman show about modern womanhood, which she hopes to debut in August 2015.

 

Dr. Kathryn Dusseau Kloos is a board certified Naturopathic primary care physician, herbalist and licensed massage therapist. She graduated with a Bachelor’s of Science at Bastyr University’s first ever Herbal Science degree in 2003. As a licensed massage therapist, she has over 10 years of experience in treating musculoskeletal conditions using myofascial massage, deep tissue and intuitive energy work.

Her deep reverence for nature and sincere desire to learn herbal medicine led her to South America where she spent 6 months experiencing the traditional healing practices of Chilean indigenous healers and Amazonian folk healers. Witnessing the extraordinary healing power of nature inspired Kathryn to pursue further training as a naturopathic physician. She graduated from the National College of Naturopathic Medicine in Portland, Oregon with special interests in physical medicine, women’s health and pediatrics. Her practice focuses on strengthening overall health through nutrition, herbal medicine, homeopathy, massage/bodywork, Holistic Pelvic Care™ and lifestyle counseling.

At home, Kathryn is nourished by her vivacious two sons who constantly remind her about the magic of life.  She is also nourished by good community and her husband’s support and commitment to his work as an herbal educator and founder of The School of Forest Medicine. Their combined mission is to help people regain their health by connecting to the healing that nature has to provide.

 

Luzia Adult Girls Into Women is the newest expression of my life’s work as a medicine women. Through my clinical practice, formerly Psycho-Spiritual Integration, now called Integrating Spirit. My eyes and heart were opened to the sincere yearning and necessity my female clients expressed for Rites of Passage. As a pastoral counselor and an initiated women, I realized that this is not an event, it is a process which merits deep consideration and guidance on all levels. Within my reflections, a form began to emerge, a journey around the medicine wheel and the recreating of ourselves in each direction. The ideas for this program have been percolating in my consciousness for a few years. Suddenly, six months after my 60th birthday, the spirit of Adult Girls Into Women took me over and moved me into action. I feel blessed that so many wonderful, talented and accomplished women, friends, colleagues and God-daughters have joined me and are bringing their gifts to this program. I believe the process of Self Realization, through Initiation, provides us with the mental, emotional, and spiritual resources we need to become well balanced, productive and creative members of the society we live in; and enables us to serve more fully our Mother Earth and the Creator we pray to.

My Integrating Spirit work includes Pastoral Counseling, Bio-energetic Analysis, Amazonian Flower Remedies and B.R.E.T.H work for individuals, including children, adolescents and couples. I offer personal retreats at my home and temple in Felton, California, for individuals, couples and small groups. These retreats are self-designed and reflect the needs and desires of the participants.

I also offer “Encounters with the Divine”, a 2-4 day residential workshop that includes plant spirit medicine rituals, B.R.E.T.H work, body work and group sharing. I am co-creator of “Circles of Light, Self-realization Work,” a ritual based in the Santo Daime tradition and “Daime Therapy” which are individual Diame sessions combining medicine work, intention and prayer. For more information on my life and work, please visit my website: www.integrating-spirit.com.

 

Inna Dagman Inna has had a passion for dance her whole life, however, finding belly dance represents a transformative moment in her evolution as a woman, artist, and healer. This ancient feminine form of movement first entranced Inna in 2010, in San Francisco CA at the legendary Fat Chance Belly Dance studio, the birth place of the now world-renowned American Tribal Style Belly Dance. She witnessed women of a variety of shapes, ages and backgrounds, proud beautiful bellies exposed, dancing together as empowered sisters. The room was filled with joy, pride, and the magnetic power of the feminine. Inna was hooked.

Since that moment years ago Inna has become an acclaimed tribal belly dancer, teaching and performing regularly in the Santa Cruz area. Inna has also completed an extensive internship focused on the healing effects of dance, at the Center for Arts in Medicine at the university of Florida in Gainesville, and the adjacent Shands hospital. She has had the honor to learn from and then teach and present along side her dear mentors in the field of healing with the arts, Michael Samuels MD and Mary Rockwood Lane Phd. She has facilitated workshops on healing dance at hospitals, universities, and in private settings. In the last two years Inna has also entered private practice as a healing bodyworker, specializing in Craniosacral therapy. She is also deeply on the spiritual path – immersing herself in Native American wisdom and ceremony, drumming and singing, and shamanic teachings.

In her offerings she weaves together that rich background – whether teaching belly dance, giving bodywork, or leading a ceremony, the intention is the same – to help create a space where energy moves towards healing, empowerment, wholness, and an illumination of the spirit.

Websites: Healing bodywork: http://www.wildcreekhealingarts.com    Professional belly dance troupe: http://www.persephonedance.com/

 

Julia Onnie-Hay is a certified herbalist, holistic health counselor and yoga teacher on a mission to reconnect people to the healing forces of plants. Before diving deep into her study of herbs, she earned a B.A. in cultural anthropology from New College of Florida in 2005 and a graduate certificate in holistic health counseling from the Institute of Integrative Nutrition in 2008.

Julia has studied folk healing traditions in the Peruvian Amazon, Ghana, Jamaica, and throughout the United States, including the Big Island of Hawai’i, northern California, and North Carolina. She earned her certification as a Family Herbalist from the Florida School of Holistic Living in 2012 and is a lifelong student of herbalist elders and the plants themselves. She’s coordinator and a teacher for the South Florida branch of the Florida School of Holistic Living and is a founding member of the South Florida Herbal Community. Last year, she earned her 200 hour yoga certification from 305 Yoga & Outreach and became a certified Curvy Yoga teacher. Julia combines her love for yoga and herbs with her Plant-Spirit Medicine Yoga practice.

In addition to her work and studies with plants and yoga, Julia is full-time nonprofit program administrator with a decade of professional experience in wellness policy, the out-of-school time (OST) field,  leadership development (youth and adult), food justice issues, and drug policy reform. Julia also hold certifications in permaculture design, teaching yoga to at-risk youth, and as a birth doula. Born in Washington, D.C. and raised there and on the small island of Salt Cay in the Turks & Caicos Islands, Julia is based in Miami, Florida at the Earth ‘n’ Us Farm in the Little Haiti neighborhood. Lately, she’s really into working with wildcrafted Florida flower essences, making tinctures with tropical medicinal weeds found around the urban farm where she lives and singings hymns to the Atlantic Ocean. For more information please visit my website: www.blessbotanicals.weebly.com

 

Penny Slinger was born in London, England in 1947. She graduated with a first class honors degree from Chelsea College of Art, London in 1969. She had a number of solo exhibitions of her two and three dimensional Surrealist inspired collage work in England during the 1970s, bringing a feminine sensibility to the genre. At the end of the 1970s she moved to New York and co authored and illustrated the best selling book ‘Sexual Secrets, The Alchemy of Ecstasy’, introducing Tantra to the modern western world. She also created ‘The Secret Dakini Oracle’ divination system. She then moved to the Caribbean where she resided for 15 years, making a series of art works dedicated to the indigenous people of the region, the Arawak Indians. In 1994 she moved to California after meeting Dr Christopher Hills and has resided here ever since. She is an ordained minister of the Goddess Temple, runs a multi media studio from her property, working in many media, including video. A recent project was the 64 Dakini Oracle. She travels regularly to London, New York and LA for exhibitions of her work and has published several books.

Theresa Diaz

Erin Woods