Where I am From

Like you, all that comprises this body was cooked up in the heart of a dying star and then scattered into deep space, to go on to become the myriad forms before the one that writes these words now…. but in more recent times, I am the descendant of mostly peoples of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England and to a smaller extent, a mix of peoples from Italy, Scandinavia, Holland and an Ashkenazi Jewish lineage from Eastern Europe and Russia.

Some of these ancestors became part of the first wave of colonial settlers in South Africa in the 1600s, others came during the gold rush in the late 1800s and early 1900s. I was born during the final death throes of apartheid. I grew up on a 10-acre homestead, along the banks of the Klein Jukskei River and a stone’s throw from the Magaliesberg Mountains, on the ancestral lands of the San Bushmen people and of the Sotho-Tswana Bantu people, which is currently known as Gauteng, South Africa.

I now live near the banks of the Birrarung River in Melbourne, Australia. These are the unceded ancestral lands of the Wurundjeri Aboriginal people, who are part of the larger Kulin Nation.

What I’m Passionate About

  • Coming back into an embodied, felt-sense relationship with my wider, ecological self
  • Reclaiming animist/ pan-psychist perception and my ability to experience a living, breathing, sentient and co-creative world capable of relationship
  • Ritually tending to my other-than-human, ancestral and place-based relationships
  • Bioregional grassroots folk herbalism and food foraging
  • Creating safe passage and community ritual for the metabolisation of grief of all kinds, but particularly ecological grief
  • Recreating soul-centric developmental containers for the maturation of psyche and soul
  • Finding ways to live in a gentler, more sustainable and reciprocal partnership with my wider Earth body
  • Reclaiming mythopoetic imagination, the feeling sense and soulful dreaming capacities.
  • Bridging neuro-gnostic/ entheogenic plant medicines, ecological awareness and cultural healing… and finding ways to engage them within a deep ecological and relational context.
  • Contributing to the non-linear emergent movement toward cultural renewal and ecological healing
  • And ultimately, participating in the collective liberation from the painful delusion of a separate Self.

I achieve this in many ways, but primarily through my work as a facilitator of Experiential Deep Ecology (WTR), As a co-facilitator of a year-long course by Josh Schrei called ‘The Mythic Body’, as a facilitator of various study groups on Practical Animism and Grief work, as Nature Connection Mentor, Folk Herbalist, Plant Medicine Ritualist, Naturalist and as someone who spends a lot of time outdoors, in ritual or in focused practice on the land.

Teachers and Influences

Some of my primary human influences at this time are: 

Joanna Macy, John Seed, Stephen Harrod Buhner, Francis Weller, Bayo Akomolofe, Martin Shaw, David Abram, Susan Murphy Roshi, Josh Schrei, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Thomas Berry, Brian Thomas Swimme, Joan Halifax, Jon Young, Stephen Jenkinson, Bill Plotkin, Daniel Christian Wahl, Sharon Blackie, Lama Tsultrim Allione, Martin Prechtel, Tokopa Turner and Sylvia Linsteadt

Relevant Training and Experience:

  • In Plant Medicine Ceremony, Plant Dieta and Folk Herbalism: I spent five years (2011-2016) living in the Peruvian Amazon, four of which were in a full-time apprenticeship with the Amazonian Curanderismo tradition of the indigenous Shipibo people, particularly that of the Mahua-Lopez lineage. They introduced me to many plant teachers through the profound practice of Plant Dieta. I also worked as a facilitator for a well-known Ayahuasca healing centre during that time, facilitating hundreds of people through retreats ranging from 2 to 10 weeks in length. This provided me with a solid foundation as a group work facilitator. In addition to my training as an Ayahuasca Ceremony and Plant Dieta facilitator, I was also taught traditional diagnostic techniques and how to harvest, prepare and administer appropriate herbal medicines all within a deeply animistic framework. That experience has been instrumental to me on many levels and is something I am still in the process of integrating. It remains a strong influence in all that I do, although I do not claim to represent that tradition in my current practice.
  • I have undergone a 3-day training in Trauma-Informed Plant Medicine Facilitation (2020) with Atira Tan and continue to learn from her when opportunities arise. I am also a co-author of this trauma-informed ceremony document.
  • My mother ran an herbal apothecary called FeverTree, alongside two of her close friends, when I was growing up. Her love of the plants strongly influenced me; I participated in harvesting and preparation whenever I was allowed. I still have clear memories of walking through lavender fields as we gathered plants for her Still and the strong smell of her homemade oils and hydrosols. I feel like this is what ignited my love of plants and medicine-making at a young age.
  • I am a current student of Sajah Popham from The School of Evolutionary Herbalism
  • I facilitate Study Groups that dive into the profound body of work by the late Bardic Naturalist, Deep Ecologist, and Folk Herbalist, Stephen Harrod Buhner. We study his book, Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm and practice The Exact Sensorial Imagination, which is a process for entering into deep communication with other-than-humans without having to ingest Plant Medicines.

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  • In Experiential Deep Ecology / The Work That Reconnects: I was introduced to Deep Ecology / The Work That Reconnects through the workshops of one of its co-founders, John Seed, in Australia in 2017. This work had a profound impact and cohered many of my experiences from living in Peru into a whole system, giving me language and frameworks to embed those experiences into and rituals to deepen those pathways in my own context. I have been mentored by John since then and regularly collaborate with him on both online and in-person workshops, webinars and podcasts. Here is a webinar that I co-facilitated with him fairly recently, which is a great intro/overview to this precious work. I am also one of the co-founders of this Deep Ecology website and associated online Deep Ecology course.
  • I spent two years studying The Work That Reconnects with Lydia Violet, through The School for the Great Turning (2018-2020). This is Joanna Macy’s version of Experiential Deep Ecology. John and Joanna co-founded this work together in the 70/80s, and then two branches developed, each of them a bit different from the other. I wanted to be versed in both versions of this work, so along with my in-person mentorship with John, I underwent two years of online facilitator development at Lydia’s school, where I was fortunate to learn live from Joanna Macy via Zoom.

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  • In Grief Work: In addition to 7 years of experience running grief rituals as part of the Deep Ecology workshops mentioned above, I completed a 5-month Grief Ritual Training (2024) with Francis Weller, Erin and Carl Rabke, Holly Truhler and Alexandre Jodun. I also spent two years in Francis Weller’s Soul Convivium (2021-23) where I had live classes with Francis weekly. We went deeply into many topics regarding his framework around tending to individual, communal and ecological soul in the time of what he calls “The Long Dark”. I have also completed his Apprenticeship to Sorrow (2022) workshop.

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  • In Animism, Mythic Imagination, Storytelling, Devotional Ritual and Ancestor Practice: I assist Josh Schrei from The Emerald Podcast in his year-long course “The Mythic Body“, an immersion into Myth, Storytelling, Ritual, Nature-Based Immersion and Threshold Practice (2021-26). I have assisted with this course since its inception in 2021 and am now a co-facilitator of the course’s content and a community support manager. Josh’s work has been very influential and has given me so much insight into my experience and a clear map to take that work forward.
  • I have undertaken three of Sharon Blackies wonderfully in-depth online courses: Courting The World Soul, This Mythic Life and Celtic Studies. I have found her work an invaluable addition to my exploration into the Mythic Imaginal and my own ancestral inheritance via my Celtic lines (2023/25).
  • I spent 6 months studying with South African sangoma, Guy, of Bone Seed Wisdom and the ceremonial leader of SOTEMS (2018). We underwent a deep journey into ancestral healing, ritual possession, connection, myth and earth-based ritual.
  • I have done an in-person 3-day Ancestral Lineage Healing training with Daniel Foor and have also participated in several of his online courses on Animism and Ancestor work (2018-19).
  • I participated in a 4-month training with Bayo Akomolafe called We Will Dance with Mountains, where we investigated some of our habitual responses to the current socio-ecological crises and experimented with shifting frameworks and worldviews around justice-seeking. Bayo’s work has been a profound influence. (2020)

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  • Somatic Body-Based Healing and Energetic Work: I spent 3 years (2007-2010) studying tui na massage, acupressure, cupping, moxa, qi healing, qi gong meditation, Taoist philosophy and martial arts with TCM practitioner Dr. Jeff Lan at the International Kim Loong Wushu Centre in Cape Town, South Africa. It was there that I received my first holistic systems view of the body and an understanding of its energetics. Although I no longer practice most of these teachings in a traditional sense, they continue to permeate much of my life, including my healing practices and work.

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  • Nature Play and Wilderness Guiding: I spent 5 years (2000-2005) hand-raising and rehabilitating a wide array of wildlife species (primarily lions and baboons, but many other species too), most days after school and on the weekends alongside well-known wildlife carer Kevin Richardson. I also grew up on a farm where I fostered many injured or abandoned animals. I consider myself a skilled wildlife carer, particularly with mammals, but also reptiles (birds are not really my strong point in this arena).
  • I spent a year (2010-2011) studying and working as a wilderness guide (FGASA) at Eco-Training and at a wilderness reserve in the Limpopo province of South Africa.
  • I completed a year-long certification in Nourishing Early Childhood through the Waldorf/Steiner framework (2019), which I used to help support me in creating my Nature Play experiences for kids.
  • I have a certificate as a Nature Play Mentor for children through Nature Academy (2020) and have run outdoor/bush playgroups and one-on-one nature connection work with young children since 2017. I was also one of the lead Nature Connection Mentors for the Wild by Nature Family Camps run by Firekeepers.

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But really, more than any human or system, I have been raised and moulded by Place- especially the place where I grew up and my relationships to the more-than-human kin that inhabited it; the river that ran through the bottom of my farm and the little crabs that could be found there, the poplar forest that grew along the edges of our summer creek and the weavers who nested in their branches, the massive oak tree in whose bough I spent many hours lost in imaginative worlds, the rocky outcrop with the sun baking lizards… By the summer lightning storms, the cicadas, crickets and flocks of Guinea Fowl singing the evening chorus, the burst of spring wildflowers and the smell of bushveld after the rain. It was these teachers who taught me how it feels to belong to the land beneath my feet.