I am excited to be supporting my dear friend Siobhan from Kindred Womancraft, in her year-long offering "Braiding Belonging" for the second time in 2027. This year (2026) has been a gorgeous journey into the skills of belonging to place and each other and I can't wait to do it all again next year. I support with the medicine making ritual days and the weekend retreats. If you have any questions, I recommend getting into contact with Siobhan on the link above or registering for the waitlist below.
I loved this conversation with Danny from The Passing Through podcast. I highly recommend his other conversations, where he chats to some of my most beloved teachers and influences.
A powerful and intriguing tribute to Earth Poet, Animist and Herbalist Stephen Harrod Buhner, featuring the magnificent Skye Cielita Flor. In this episode, Stephanie and Skye discuss the potency of SHB’s works, their impact on their own lives and teaching styles, and break some of the key points he covers in his book ‘Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realms’.
Miraz and I recently had a beautiful conversation with Jaime K Lehner of Wankawi Wisdom of the Earth for her upcoming Summit "Living the Sacred".
We spoke about our Curanderismo apprenticeship in the jungle with our Shipibo maestros and our many years facilitating Ayahausca retreats, about our past and current relationship with the plants, about our journey of integrating that profound depth experience into our current context, some of the ways that we have woven Deep Ecology and Plant Medicine together and some of our views on the unfolding Psychedelic Psychotherapy movement
"Stephanie Hazel interviews Folk Herbalist, Deep Ecologist and traditionally trained Shipibo Curandera Skye Cielita Flor. In this episode, we explore questions such as:
What does it mean to take a plant out of context?
What do we leave behind when we extract a single active chemical from a medicinal plant?
What do we lose when we take a single aspect of Shipibo culture, like ayahuasca ceremonies, but leave all of the cultural nest of animistic relationships with plants and land behind?
Feeling to add my two cents about some of the big shifts currently unfolding in the global psychedelic movement. Particularly the legislation of certain substances for use within the context of Psychedelic Assisted Therapy. I'll say off the bat, that I'm ultimately for full legislation within all contexts and generally prefer an atmosphere of trusting adults to make their own decisions about what they do and don't ingest for whatever reasons they choose. A healthy ecology has diversity, and a diversity of approaches feels more necessary now than ever in my opinion. However, with the exception of a handful of countries like Peru, that is not our reality at this moment. Instead, we are seeing mostly only psychiatrists and in some places, psychotherapists being given the green light to administer these medicines and only within the therapeutic context.
Having a background as a traditionally trained Ayahuasca ceremonialist within the Shipibo tradition, part of me has felt quite ambivalent about this sudden enthusiasm around psychedelic plant medicines and the ways they are now being embraced by mainstream psychology (I'm speaking specifically to plant medicines, not MDMA, Ketamine etc. which I think is fantastic!). Until very recently, these institutions have demonised and pathologized these medicines and the altered states they engender (of course there have always been certain individuals who are/were exceptions, Stan Grof being one of the many who comes to mind), so it seems a little bizarre to me that they are now the only legal keepers of these medicines.
THE EMBODIMENT CONFERENCE
We are delighted to be part of The Embodiment Conference. It will be a rich opportunity to come home to your body, in our chaotic world. Many of the planet’s best teachers will be there, and it costs nothing to be a part of. It’s free to all, online, and boasts keynote speakers such as Charles Eisenstein, Philip Shepherd, Judith Blackstone, David Abram, Bayo Akamolofe and many more.
Slowly emerging from the cacoon of dieta... Tender and slow...
The stillness reverberating, and me, rocked gently in its arms... Unpealing my wild mind... finding shapes hidden inside... shapes other-than-human to occupy and old tongues flapping... Long out of use, finding their voice. In me. Again.
“The crucible of making human beings is death. Every culture worth a damn knows that. It’s not success, it’s not growth, it’s not happiness. It’s death. That’s the cradle of your love of life; the fact that it ends.” — Stephen Jenkinson
