Category Archives: Workshops

Ceremony, Children's Circles, Creating for Creating's Sake, Drums, Medicine Objects, Moccasins, Rattles, Wing Medicine, Workshops

Autumn 2015 Offerings

Leave a comment

Children’s Circles:  September 12, October 10 and November 14 – Our gatherings begin at 1pm and generally complete by 6pm.  We gather with respect for one another and our Mother Earth.  All the nations our Mother supports are greeted with gladitude and gratitude.  We come together to learn and to have fun, share a healthy meal, create, explore and vision for ourselves and the future.  Our Circle welcomes all ages and identities with open hearts.  Bring your parents of other adults to share this time. Suggested exchange $40. 

Drum Birthing:  October 18 and November 15, 9am until complete.  The medicine of the Four-legged and the Standing Ones come together in a sacred way when we set our intentions towards birthing a drum.  Each workshop is held in a respectful way, honoring tradition and ourselves in the process.  Drum birthing is ceremony, a time for joyful prayer and a labor of love that lasts a lifetime.   Please RSVP allowing me to properly prepare for your presence and your drum.  Exchange $225.

Fire Circle Drum Birthing:  September 27, 9am until complete – private circle.

Visioning Drum ReUnion: September 19, 7pm-10pm on Echo Lake.  An invitation is extended to all drums that have been birthed at Soul Proprietor over the years.  Migrate back to the waters of your birth to join in a Drumming Circle to Vision for the rebalancing what is needed at this time.  Let’s come together with joy-full hearts, clear intentions, prayers and expansive dreams for the future – our drum beats and voices raising the frequency in a good way with a fire as our company to transmute the challenges of our times.  Bring your friends no matter where their drums were born, they are welcome.

Feeding the Fire Ceremony:  September 26, 4:30pm until complete.  Women and girls of all ages are invited to gather for a Feeding of the Fire Ceremony where we will learn more about honoring the feminine through the natural way.  We’ll light a fire, share stories and songs, we’ll feast afterwards.  RSVP please for further details.

Rattle Crafting:  Turtle Shell Rattles October 11, Rawhide Rattles November 1, noon until complete.  Craft and sew in a good way an ancient instrument to call yourself home to yourself,  move the energies, releasing what may be stuck from this lifetime as well as ancestral times, celebrating your wholeness.  A rattle is a tool for shamanic healing work and personal ritual.  Every voice is unique, every stitch a prayer.  Sit in community, share yourself to whatever degree you feel called to, sing, laugh and create – the possibilities are as limitless as the sky.  Please RSVP your intention to join in allowing for proper preparation.  Exchange $75.

Moccasin Crafting:  October 24 & 25 and November 21 & 22 – our moccasin workshops are taught in two day workshops – 9am to 7pm each day.  Tough yet tender, Buffalo medicine supports your walk in the world and shares with you the abundance of right action.  Buffalo hide moccasin are incredibly comfortable and can be worn daily as well as for ceremony or special occasions.  These moccasin are custom fit to your feet, a measurement and foot tracing is needed in advance allowing for a pattern to be sewn prior to the workshop.  This is easily arranged between us.  Style choices and the adornment possibilities are endless.  Exchange $275.

Medicine Bags:  October 4, noon until complete.  A medicine bag is personal.  What strengths do you wish to support?  What needs to be augmented at this time?  Craft a medicine bag for your connection and protection.  Whatever your needs, medicine is the grounding and underpinning that shelters you in life.  As always, a prayerful protected container holds us in our work together.  These days are community days yet the deeply personal component often makes for times of silence and reflection – it is always the right combination of call and response between each person and the Mystery.   Please RSVP your intentions allowing for proper preparation for you.  Exchange $75.

Talking Sticks:  November 8, noon until complete.  At this time, many are coming together in many ways for the rebalancing of our lives and for our Mother.  Coming together in a Circle is powerful healing medicine.  Using a Talking Stick while in Circle creates greater respect for the person speaking, for their story and the heart behind their words.  Are you leading a Circle at this time?  Perhaps doing so has tugged at you for a long while.  Now is the time.  Now is the time for each of us to step up and step into our power to birth forward the future.  We are here at this time by agreement, by our choosing – let’s come forward in a good, true and beautiful way speaking our truth, allowing others to do the same.  There is healing work to be done.  Crafting a Talking Stick brings powerful medicine and voice into the world.  Please RSVP your intentions allowing for proper preparations.  Exchange $100.

Wing Medicine:  September 13, October 31, November 28, noon until complete.  This is where my work with medicine began.  My Uncle, from many lifetimes ago called, reminding me why I came here at this time.  The joy I feel for the Winged Ones was not the whole story, there is so much more.  The Winged Ones are a powerful ally offering themselves as healing tools.  There is no limit to their healing potential – what is needed?  These ally are here to help.  Feel free to bring your own medicine if you already carry something and receive the guidance for crafting a secure handhold that protects your medicine.  Please RSVP your intentions so I may properly prepare for your presence.  Exchange $75.

With Gratitude

Mitakuye Oyasin  ~  All My Relations

 

Ceremony, Drums, Moccasins, Workshops

A Handle On It

Leave a comment

How am I doing?

My front screen door has never fit well into the frame.  A few days ago, I am pulling hard, it takes an effort to close the door and snap.  In a split second, I’m on my butt with the handle broken off in my hand.  Unharmed and laughing.  I right a stack of books, toss the handle in the trash.  Then toilet won’t flush – the handle mechanism rusted through.  Hmmm.  Two broken handles in one day.  What is this telling me?

How am I doing in the practical?  How am I doing in the mystical?

NTD kitchen – No dairy.  No grains. No broccoli. No shellfish. No sugar.  No problem.  The menu and shopping list and time.  There is such abundance, we will eat well from the bounty of our Mother.  In gratitude, I offer a blessing for the water, the earth and the hands who tended the seeds, the salmon, fisherman and four-legged.  The meadow remembers the patterns of our feet dancing gratefully to give back to our Grand Mother Turtle, for her infinite generosity.  She knows we are coming.  I feel my connection.

Moccasin commission for a dance helper – completed  with the help of Osprey, Eagle, Pileated woodpecker and Dragonfly.

A drum birthing day is scheduled for the day after my return from the Night Turtle Dance ceremony.  I have prayed and prepared, hides and hoops are waiting.

The screen door handle remains broken.  The old toilet handle has been replaced with a “universal” handle.  Oddly this mundane object leaves me feeling a connection to the whole.  I feel the need to test it by reaching out, speaking – connecting the desires of my heart with the want of the mind.  How am I doing?

There’d been a chartreuse green cricket-like bug in my bathroom, I’d seen it on two consecutive nights.  This morning I found it treading water in the toilet (ironic), I scooped him out, set him free.  A juvenile Nuthatch crashed into the slider – there seemed to be a collision between him and a gray squirrel, the squirrel ran off.  I gathered up the little bird, flopping on his back, held him tenderly and singing until he flew away into the Noble fir.  And a Crane fly tangled in an abandon spider’s web, I rescued him from the stickiness and watched him fly free.  Not even noon, already three lives saved.

“…and there was a new voice, which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do – determined to save the only life you could save.”  Mary Oliver, The Journey

There’s an orphan juvenile Wood Duck on the lake, doing the only thing he can, saving himself.  How am I doing?

A’ho Mitakuye Oyasin  ~  All My Relations

Summer 2015 Workshop Schedule

Rattles, Thoughts About This and That, Workshops, Yoga

Kurmasana

Leave a comment

“Your body is a spiritual tool. Appreciate the miracle that it is.”                     ~  Swami Radha

My body found its way into Kurmasana in this mornings practice, one of my favorite poses.  As I rounded my spine, folding forward to become the tortoise my mind flashed back to my teachers Swami Radhakrishnananda, then Deborah and then Charles.  The beginning of consciousness and spiritual awakening – studying myself through yoga.

Settling into the asana, hips release.  Noticing the depth and ease of my breath.  Lengthening the curve of my spine, soles together, chest nearly touching the floor, forehead rests against heels, arms extending until my hands become flippers.  I am at rest, buoyant on the water of our Mother.  Tears fill my eyes.  Water is life, it courses through me.  I feel deep connection.  No separation.   The wisdom of the tortoise allows me to see myself from above through her eyes – see myself as Light, as Water.  I am both star stuff and from the earth’s molten core.  I am the water.  I send up a blessing for the Water – protection and restored health, for its purity.

I relax even more into the pose.  My breath slows.  I can feel my heart beating, the electromagnetic force of love.  My mind moves gently, tracing the path to this moment.  Eastern philosophy comes full circle to Turtle Island.  Grandmother Turtle, my home.  I am at home within my skin.  My shell (home) a place to pull into and a place to extend out from.  Safe.

I survey my entire body.  Can I relax further?  Can I deepen still?  Can I know myself as the wise tortoise, as the Mother, not only in this moment but into every moment?  I’d like to stay this way forever.  I allow myself a few more minutes – breathing, at peace, mind still knowing I am in the right place.  Precious silence.

Regretfully I must move.  Thankfully I am moving towards medicine crafting.  Buffalo awaits, a client soon to arrive, new rattles are coming forward.  More gifts from our Mother, from our brethren.  I feel incredibly supported, connected and free.  In gratitude.  Om…

Mitakuye Oyasin  ~  All My Relations

Creating for Creating's Sake, Rattles, Workshops

I’m Hearing Voices

Leave a comment

Rocking gently. A tremble at first.  Steady.  Dropping in, a rhythm takes over. The sound of the stones striking rawhide. Rolling off the internal surface of the skin, the stones trill and growl.  A soothing voice calling me deeper.  Shaking the rattle I journey.  Seeking. 

I have been sewing rattles for several days, give-aways for a sister and friend.  Many people in our community are helping to fill her blanket offering, as she is honors her commitment to dance her prayers.  Sewing my own prayers into these rattles, I am hearing voices – in my head and my heart.  Making medicine is a powerful time.

All my sense perception are engaged in the crafting.  Consciousness and unconsciousness communes with the Mystery and the invisible.  My sense of touch a constant from beginning to end.  The sense of smell alighted with the various tree medicines.  And wet buffalo hide, patiently yielding into form, drying into shape, an evolving fragrance.  My eyes see what has become while I held the needle.  My heart is tantalized by stones, the three sisters – what will my ears hear?  What voices will be  coming through?   I can taste the healing, sweet elixir of buffalo on my finger tips.  Thinking of the good vibrations these rattle will send… more prayers from someone else’s heart – a spiral dance, the Circle widens.  We are one.

No two rattle are alike.

Questers will sew  their medicine rattles this weekend for their time on the hill.  Will the forecaster’s promise of sunshine hold true?  Can we sit by the lake sewing our prayers with the water and breeze, the bird song?  There will be many voices will accompany us, whether we are outside or in.

May 3, 2015 a rawhide rattle crafting workshop is open.   Perhaps a turtle shell rattle is calling you.  Let’s co-create a time together.

From the Iroquois creation legend of Sky Woman come the story of the Three Sisters – it was love that kept them together and it is love that creates their voice.   To the Iroquois People, corn, beans, and squash are the physical and spiritual sustainers of life.   ~  “A long time ago there were three sisters who lived together in a field. These sisters were quite different from one another in their size and way of dressing. The little sister was so young that she could only crawl at first, and she was dressed in green. The second sister wore a bright yellow dress, and she had a way of running off by herself when the sun shone and the soft wind blew in her face. The third was the eldest sister, standing always very straight and tall above the other sisters and trying to protect them. She wore a pale green shawl, and she had long, yellow hair that tossed about her head in the breeze.”

Let it be love that keeps us all together.  Love will light the way.

With gratitude.  Gather Light.

Mitakuye Oyasin  ~  All My Relations

 

Creating for Creating's Sake, Drums, Leather Goods, Medicine Objects, Moccasins, Moms and Kids, Rattles, Wing Medicine, Workshops

Spring 2015 Workshops

Leave a comment

The door is always open.  Come in, make yourself at home as you are welcome for the Spring Workshops at Soul Proprietor.

April 4 – Wing Medicine, noon until complete

April 5 – Leather Works, noon until complete, what do you need?

April 11 – The Night Turtle Dance Fund Raiser Auction, 5pm – 8pm

April 12 – Rattle Crafting, 10am until complete

April 25 – Medicine Bag Journey, noon until complete

April 26 – VQ Rattle Crafting (closed)

May 3 – Medicine Repair Day, noon until all repairs are complete

May 9 – Children’s Circle, 1pm – 5pm

May 10 – Drum Birthing Day, 10am until complete

May 16-17 – Moccasin Workshop – Bainbridge Island Bodhi Center

May 23-24 – VQ Moccasin Workshop (closed)

June 6 – Children’s Circle, 1pm – 5pm

June 7 – Turtle Shell Rattle Crafting, noon until complete

June 20-21 – Moccasin Workshop, 10am -7pm each day

Ceremony, Creating for Creating's Sake, Drums, Medicine Objects, Moms and Kids, Rattles, Thoughts About This and That, Wing Medicine, Workshops

Concentric Circles

Leave a comment

“Starting from within, working in a circle, in a sacred manner, we heal ourselves, our relationships and the world.”  ~  Chief Phil Lane, Jr.

Dense.  Fog.   Not the dark mercury fog of deep winter.  Instead a thick membrane of white-gray.  Seeming impenetrable while the light is already beginning to suffuse the placenta birthing this day.  Silhouettes emerging.  A circle.  The Standing Nation, tall, shoulder to shoulder.  The semi-round waxing moon had been present very early this morning, casting light onto Echo Lake, now she is on the other side of the fog.  Only milky white, shadows in the distance.   The lake is an altar.  It is a circle before me every day.  Surrounded by the circle of trees. The concentric circles begin within me, working their way out into the world.

Offering prayers to the North, to what remains of a non-winter, the trees tell me to go to the core of things within myself.  I go seeking to understand what lay beneath.  What is the motivation?  What are the emotions?  What is at the heart of me?  At  my very core?  Often in the forest I find pieces of wood that are just that, the core, the place of connectivity, of a branch growing from trunk.  I’ve kept some, one particular piece was sanded smooth becoming a talking stick for the Children’s Circle.  There are many circles – symbolic, metaphoric and physical in this reality that are part of my life.

Many circles.   Circle of life.  The circle of the seasons.  The astrological wheel a continuous circle.  Many Sacred Circles of Peoples.  The hoop of a family.  The hoop of a drum.   The waft of a feather fan, begins in the circle of a nest, sage smoke moves out into the Universe.   The round of a rattle allowing the contents to emanate voice.  A stone tossed into the lake creates ripples that move, even if interrupted, to the shoreline, meeting that circle of earth surrounding the circle of lake.  It is all connected.  Concentric circles.   Starting from within.  Working in a circle.  In a sacred manner.

The work at Soul Proprietor happens in a circle.  A container created by prayer, by intention and by the people who come to create.  Over the years numerous Teachers have begun to send their students to me, to craft in a good way their ceremonial and sacred objects.  Each of these Teachers carry a unique piece of a healing perspective.  I integrate these threads of wisdom into my life, woven fabric.  This past Sunday another new Circle, eight beautiful women came to birth drums.  The guidance that came forward for me to share with them was to learn the sacred songs, using their drums to send up a voice.  A healing.  Their teacher is one who carries the songs.  Their hearts begin the circle.  Starting from within.  Working in a circle.  In a sacred manner.   We heal ourselves.  Our relationships.  And the world.

I am filled with gratitude.

Brother Phil asked me and the entire Circle to memorize the opening quote to this post.  He asked also that we live it.  Make it our walk in the world.  With it comes so much honesty, so much hope, optimism.  I am inspired.  The fog has lifted completely, the pale blue sky boldly colors the water.  Trees reflect their strong imprint on the surface of the lake – their crowns pointing towards me – look within to the core of things they say.  Starting within.  Working in a circle.

I have an old dog who is preparing to cross over.  She still has all four feet in this reality and she is preparing, closing in on completion of the circle that is her life.  Somewhere a litter of Doberman puppies are gestating.  My father’s wife is preparing too, for her own transition, dancing between life, disease and death.  And a baby will be born.  Each life begins and ends – a circle, complete within itself and a part of the whole.  My heart is both heavy and full, buoyed by these ways of living and working in a circle.

A’ho Mitakuye Oyasin  ~  All My Relations

Creating for Creating's Sake, Drums, Leather Goods, Medicine Objects, Moccasins, Moms and Kids, Rattles, Wing Medicine, Workshops

Soul Proprietor’s Winter Workshop Schedule

Leave a comment

“There is no difference between the Creator and creation, just as there is no difference between the ocean and its waves.”  ~  Amma

Calling all seekers and artists.  Come.  Have fun.  Craft in a sacred manner – medicine objects – tools for your practices at home and at work, tools for your rituals and ceremonies.  Bring your good intentions.  Come and create just for the sake of creating.  Working with animal, plant, and mineral medicine is joyful, it centers and teaches in surprising ways.  A workshop day slows our pace  and can create peace of mind – an extra gift to yourself.

Working together in a good way – there is something quite special about sitting in a circle, with community.  One heart.  One mind.  Each working individually yet together.  Spiraling up.  Gathering light.  What is needed to support you at this time?  What is calling to you?

Mitakuye Oyasin  ~  All My Relations

https://www.soulproprietor.org/events/

January 2015
10 The Ceremonialist Children’s Circle
11 Wing Medicine Learning Workshop
17 Drum Birthing Day
18 Turtle Rattle Crafting Learning Workshop
24 Drum Birthing with Soul Sisters (closed)
25 Wing Medicine with Regine della Luna (closed)

February 2015
8 Wing Medicine Learning Workshop
14 The Ceremonialist Children’s Circle
15 Rattle Crafting Learning Workshop
21 Drum Birthing with Soul Sisters (closed)
28 Drum Birthing @ Bodhi Center (Bainbridge Island)

March 2015
1 Wing Medicine Learning Workshop
8 Drum Birthing with Hazelnut Circle (closed)
14 The Ceremonials Children’s Circle
15 Drum Birthing Day
22 Rattle Crafting Learning Workshop
28 Moccasin Crafting Learning Workshop Day 1
29 Moccasin Crafting Learning Workshop Day 2

Drums, Workshops

Illuminate Also My Heart

Leave a comment

It’s a frozen morning here at Echo Lake.  A thin crust of snow covers everything.  The Standing Ones are magnificent with glittering frost illuminated pink in the with the rising sunlight.  Pale blue sky.  All the Steller’s Jay are here it seems, likewise with the Oregon Junco and Song Sparrow.  Anna Hummingbirds are vying for their place at the feeder.  Many ducks on the water.  Will the juvenile Bald Eagle come again today, having no hunting success here yesterday?  Deer were in the upper yard when I rose, casually browsing, ever vigilant.  Just in the few moments it’s taken to write these words, several Towhee have come to the porch.  Many voices, everyone is awake.  Cold mornings like this – extra seed, another suet, swap out the hummingbird juice as it’s already getting slushy.

The medicine of Buffalo and Horse have been prepared.  Cedar hoops await.  A circle of women will birth new drums today.  I am blessed to be their midwife.  Witnessing their process.  All hands joining together to pull the laces tight.  Their joy.  The tenderness.  The hard work.  The delight and self-satisfaction.  The admiration for their new drums.  I honor these women.  I put up gratitude for my teacher who brought these ways into my life.  Pilamaya!

You who are the source of all power, Whose rays illuminate the world, Illuminate also my heart, So that it too can do Your work.   ~Gayatri

The sunlight is making its way slowly down to Mother Earth illuminating everything.  Good Morning World.

May All Beings know a moment of peace today.

All My Relations  ~  Mitakuye Oyasin