Class Menu
Here's a menu of class possibilities, from past classes. Request a class below, modify, or create something totally new for you or your organization.
Chinese Medicine
We reflect natural rhythms, seasonal changes, and universal shifting cycles. Examine your place in the world from an ancient Chinese world- view of Five Element theory, or wu xing 五行. The Five Elements organize Chinese medicine’s understanding of everything from life cycles, to the minutiae of our organs and body systems. Explore the primary associations of each Elemental phase, including meridians, seasons, and emotions.
Explore the five phases of Chinese medicine and their correlating five seasons. Learn traditional Chinese food energetics, including the five flavors, nature/ temperature, and meridians. Understand Chinese dietary principles for eating and living through the five seasons, with optimal foods, herbs, and cooking practices.
Wu xing (五行), or the Five Elements, form one of the core principles of Chinese medicine. Guided by movement, sound, and flavor with a representative herb, we’ll journey around the Five Phase cycle, exploring the primary associations with each phase, including direction, season, emotion, spirit, meridians, energetics, and personality.
Visit five special places on this land that embody Chinese medicine’s Five Elements (五行). Experience your personal relationship with the Elements by purposeful yet spacious connection with places, plants, and people. Deeply connect within and without through journaling, drawing, stillness, and sharing. Explore each Elements’ primary associations, including direction, season, emotion, spirit, meridians, energetics, and personality. Please bring a journal, and appropriate clothing and footwear to both sit, and walk.
We have 361 classical acupuncture points, or xue 穴, on our bodies, and an infinite number of unlisted points. These points are nexuses of qi 氣 in the body, or energy. By applying pressure to acupressure points, we can trigger physiological and psycho- emotional responses elsewhere in our bodies, minds, and spirits. Learn specific acupressure points to elicit intentional therapeutic actions.
Learn 29 soothing acupressure points for self massage. Understand basic acupressure techniques, Chinese medicine principles, and the 12 primary and 2 extra meridians.
Meditate with soothing acupressure points for self massage. Breathe with awareness while massaging specific Chinese medicine points to release stress, relax your face, ground and center, digest well, and sleep peacefully.
Chinese medicine includes more than just acupuncture and herbs. Learn about cupping, scraping, and moxa on our Acupuncture page, and through one of these informative hands- on classes.
Got aches and pains? Let’s get physical. Explore basic Chinese medicine non- insertive techniques by giving and receiving cupping, scraping, and moxibustion along meridians and acupressure points. Come in comfortable removable clothing, with something to lie on the ground, such as a yoga mat, cloth, and/ or pillow. Bring a partner to work on, or find one in class.
Ancient cultures burned plants for food, medicine, and spiritual connection. Fire is an integral part of our lives and history. Chinese Medicine connects plants and fire via moxibustion and incense. Moxibustion burns mugwort on or near various parts of the body for pain relief, and qi activation. Incense transforms our spaces, and enlivens our rituals and ceremonies. We’ll explore various methods of making and using both.
Herbs
Identify local plants. Discover their edible/ medicinal uses and folklore. Deepen your botanical understanding and appreciation through plant walks, herbal medicine-making, body systems' materia medica, botany, and more herb classes.
Understand different plants and their medicinal properties with our practical, informative, and fun materia medica classes.
Learn 12 relaxing herbs for soothing your nervous system, nourishing digestion, calming sleep, and healthy boundaries. Understand basic herbal preparations, categories, rituals, and resources in an accessible and welcoming way.
Our ancestors came to understand herbal medicine through direct sensorial experience. Reconnect with your senses, through botanical connections. Understand the underlying foundations of herbal medicine through an experiential exploration of herbal energetics. We’ll explore taste, temperature, movement, location, constitution, and more.
Explore local first aid plants and kitchen herbs/ spices. Using herbal medicine in acute situations is one of the best ways to learn, through hands-on practice in everyday life. Learn to herbally address common first aid concerns, such as open wounds, infections, digestive disorders, headaches, emotional distress, bug bites, sun protection, and more.
Plants and people have coexisted since the dawn of time. Our ancestors walked from continent to continent carrying familiar plant allies, and meeting new plant friends. How do we continue these traditions in our modern era? We’ll explore supportive plants and practices for adventures near and far, identifying and using common first aid plants and plant families, and taking it home.
Experience and experiment with a variety of herbal medicine- making techniques and menstrua (solvents). Topics may include preparing teas, tinctures, oils, salves, honeys, sugars, glycerites, vinegars, flower essences, elixirs, oxymels, incense, and food.
- Also available as an Herbal Medicine- Making class series
Experience and experiment with a variety of herbal medicine- making techniques and menstrua (solvents). Topics may include preparing teas, tinctures, oils, salves, honeys, sugars, glycerites, vinegars, flower essences, elixirs, oxymels, incense, and food. Students are invited to bring their favorite preparations, recipes, stories, and more to share after class!
- Aka. "Welcome to Herbalism"
- This class can be online, indoors, or in the field ("Field Medicine- Making")
Making herbal medicines involves understanding a simple set of techniques, then repeating and adapting them, under a variety of circumstances. We’ll do a plant walk, botanizing along the way, practicing plant connection exercises and ethical wild-crafting, then explore a variety of field medicine making skills, including drying methods, plant storage, tinctures, oils, honeys, glycerites, liniments, and vinegars. Be prepared to be outdoors, and bring a lunch!
- 5 hours
The chosen menstruum, married to the plant, creates the medicine. We’ll learn about the properties, creation, and usage of different menstrua to make different medicines by viewing, discussing, sampling, creating, and experimenting with a variety of these important pieces of the medicine-making puzzle!
Understand plant actions, and learn how to make simple herbal salves, oil and other infusions, and formulations. Make and take home your own herbal first aid salve!
Beautify and love up on your face naturally. Nourish yourself with a handmade spa treatment. Make, use, and take home an herbal clay mask, nourishing toner, and decadent crème.
Meet your aromatic botanical neighbors via a diverse array of plant connection activities including botany, journaling, meditations, mandalas, and movement exercises. Then, enter the world of smoke, scent, and sensuality. We’ll discuss and create a variety of incense blends, and explore how to use them.
What’s an “aphrodisiac”? We'll explore aphrodisiac plants, uses, and formulation. Focusing on roses and cacao, we’ll concoct decadent herbal chocolates, and luxurious rose coconut oil.
- Aka. "Botanica Erotica"
Meet your local plant neighbors! Come take a walk, exploring botanical family patterns and edible/ medicinal properties.
Let’s stroll around the land, exploring the lore, usage, plant identification, family characteristics, and more information and inspiration about the local plant world, especially the wild weeds! Wear your walking shoes.
Knowing plant families opens up a whole new way of viewing and knowing the natural world around us. We’ll embark on a plant walk adventure that explores major plant families, hones our observation skills, and introduces us to basic botany terminology and concepts. Make sure you come prepared to walk, with covered shoes, a hat, and water!
- Aka. "Botany Walk"
Understanding botany is essential, for conclusive plant identification and safe/ effective medicine making. We’ll discuss basic flower anatomy, then embark on sensory explorations, and practice “keying out” plants using botany tools and books.
Explore local edible and medicinal plants. Understand and connect with your internal and external ecosystem. We'll engage in a sense meditation, movement explorations, plant walk, and plant meditation, allowing the rhythms of the land to guide our footsteps.
Slowly walk the land, feet bare across sacred Earth, bodies soft, breathing gentle. Engage with plants with all our senses open and aware, gentle yet powerful. Here, we sense, walk, sit, and share with plants, the Earth, and each other. Welcome.
This class fuses botany, art, and intuition into a phyto-poetic work of botanical art. We’ll adventure into the landscape to press plants, draw plants, botanize, and further cultivate relationships with the green world. Come prepared to walk, with shoes, a hat, and water!
Understanding botany is essential, for conclusive plant identification and safe/ effective medicine making. Learn leaf/ flower anatomy + terminology, plant family patterns, and useful tools for botanical explorations in the field!
Understanding botany is essential, for conclusive plant identification and safe/ effective medicine making. We’ll explore basic flower and leaf anatomy, then key out plants using botany tools and books. Be prepared to be outdoors, and bring a magnifying loupe (for sale, as needed).
Welcome to the wonderful world of botany, where we uncover the elegant intricacies of patterns- based plant identification. We’ll explore basic flower and leaf anatomy, and some key family patterns.
- Aka. "Botany 1"
We’ll practice using a flora to “key out” plants: look a plant up to its species name. Keying out a plant allows for more clarity and confidence in medicine making. We’ll be walking and sitting, spending time with just a few plants. Please bring a loupe and flora, if you have one! This class requires some prior background knowledge of botanical characteristics.
- Aka. "Botany 2"
Learn botanical identification terminology by observing, dissecting, then drawing flowers and leaves. Utilizing local plants, we will explore patterns and family characteristics to create pattern recognition sheets that serve as templates for continued self study and creative exploration. Focusing on field botany, we will walk a little, and stop often. Please bring a journal (unlined pages preferred), and appropriate clothing and footwear to both sit and walk.
Plants have traveled with us through time as food, medicine, clothing, shelter, beauty and more. Explore eight plant families commonly seen and utilized across the globe via botanical characteristics, and traditional and modern uses. Learn botanical identification tools for both backyard explorations and global adventures. Deepen your sense of place through understanding plant and people interconnections.
Enjoy delicious tea, community, and conversations nourished, informed, and inspired by diverse teas.
Move with awareness and spaciousness throughout the entire process of being with your tea. Slow down, simplify, and savor subtle sensations of colors, textures, smells, and sounds. Please join us with a cup of your favorite tea!
Share tea and classical Chinese wisdom with us, learning botanical properties and preparations along the way. Reflect on Dao de Jing (道德經) passages, discovering and deepening your personal relationship with philosophy, tea, community, and life.
- Also available as a Way of Tea class series
Movement
Choose from a blend of flowing Vinyasa, traditional Hatha, invigorating Power, and nourishing Restorative style yoga classes. Link breath with movement with attention to alignment, poetical Earth- inspired metaphors, and Chinese medicine holistic concepts. See yoga classes for more info.
Enjoy private sessions, public classes, and retreats. Jiling integrates yoga, ritual, creative improvisation, and other therapeutic practices into your treatment plan.
Welcome your new day with sunrise rituals. We begin with tea in silent awareness, then move into seated meditation, chanting, and yoga asana practice. After either an extended shavasana or journaling, we unite our hearts and minds to begin our day in community with gentle discussion, and gratitude.
Explore creative movement in a supportive environment. Movement explorations may include contact improvisation, ecstatic dance, contemplative dance practice, Five Rhythms, and other somatic practices.
Contemplative Movement Practice combines seated meditation with free movement explorations. We examine and integrate our outer and inner worlds, alone and together. Barbara Dilley developed this form in the 1970’s, as inspired by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche at Naropa University. This three- part process includes seated meditation, personal body-mind awareness practice, then “Open Space” group practice. All are welcome. No dance experience necessary. Wear comfortable clothes to move in.
Interplay is an active, creative way to unlock the wisdom of the body. Notice your body data, knowledge, and wisdom. Connect with your internal authority. Cultivate easy focus. Move unwanted energy out of your system. Nourish body wisdom practices to create more grace in your life. Practice incrementality and affirmation. Have fun in this "sneaky deep" group practice!
Connect with the Five Elements of Chinese Medicine within and around you through the Interplay tools of improvisational movement, sound, and storytelling. Play with your body wisdom, guided by the elements of Water, Wood, Fire, Earth, and Metal. Align with your innate gifts to fulfill your highest potential, and have fun doing it! Bring a journal, wear comfy clothes, and be prepared to move! See our Interplay page for more info. Join us for upcoming events!
Class Series
Deepen your understanding of a topic with a class series. Take "Class series" classes individually, or all together on a weekly/ monthly basis.
Learn how to make your own herbal home remedies with plants that grow around you. Each class includes a tea party, lecture, and demonstration. Students make and take home a useful natural product with recipes, resources, and an abundance of information and inspiration.
Deepen your relationship with medicinal plants through sensory engagement. Connect with one plant each month through tea, art, and medicine-making. Learn historical and scientific practices and perspectives, while cultivating experiential intuition. Projects vary by month.
Art processes hone observational and technical skills, and encourage multi-media exploration, through charcoal and color drawing, ink print-making, book-binding, and journaling.
Creating herbal preparations empowers health resilience. Rotating projects include salves, tinctures, honeys, vinegars, and incense. Take home herbal preparations, art projects, and informed inspiration for optimal life expression, wellness, and thrival.
Share tea and classical Chinese wisdom with us each month. Enjoy rotating monthly teas, blends, and herbal tisanes, and learn their basic properties and preparations. Reflect on Dao De Jing (道德經) passages, discovering and deepening your personal relationship with philosophy, tea, community, and life.