Join in for a packed & potent 2-day distillation workshop at a beautiful medicinal herb farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Gather your curiosity & bring your prima materia!
This weekend is for folks interested in how to work a traditional copper alembic to distill plant medicine, both essential oils and hydrosols, and to discover how this process also works within us to distill the self.
You'll walk away with a hands-on, embodied understanding of plant distillation and distillate medicine, and also be introduced to the esoteric knowledge of this alchemical process. We’ll touch on the 7 stages of alchemy, their planetary associations, and how these archetypes and energies are reflected in our lives.
The prima materia is what we bring to be transformed. It’s the patterns and stagnancies we are holding and ready to transmute into knowledge that will guide our evolution deeper into our authentic self. We will be taking our lead and discovering how it may become gold, and how the physical process of distillation that will be our weekend background will create a medicine to take home and continue working with on this journey.
If you are like what is prima materia, great! This weekend will help you understand that concept! It's said simply understanding what prima materia refers to is half the problem solved. This is a weekend of curious, open minds and questioning.
Kestrel is my most favorite place to teach. Having access to this incredibly beautiful land that's been carefully, organically & regeneratively tended means we get to meet the plant, take part in careful harvesting practices and see it through the process of distillation. On the second day we will discuss how distillate medicine is supportive and take some time to explore what we've created.
Just as the distillation process requires a strong vessel and the circulation of air and water through our physical, earthly matter, we will start each morning with a short movement practice to strengthen our own vessel and get our energetic channels moving and prepared for the day's work. This optional but recommended flow will be held by trusted tantric yogi Brooke Sullivan of The Wild Temple. I wouldn’t be adding this to the weekend if I didn’t think it was so powerful!
Included are 3 simple vegetarian meals: lunch & dinner on saturday and breakfast on Sunday. Along the lines of A big lunch salad, lentil stew, oat meal, fruit and eggs.
If you are looking for a more focused 101 class on how to distill please check out this class the week before, which is also a great option to help set you up for this weekend as well. click here
Since this is the first time I am offering a class of this kind I am keeping it small and intimate in hopes we can create a safe space, held by the land and the work, to really dive deep.
Times:
July 8-9
Saturday 10:30-7:30 (hour break for lunch, yoga from 9:15-10
Sunday 10:30-2 (yoga 9:15-10) 2-3:30 is pack up and any purchases from Kestrel Farm
Campers can arrive in the afternoon of July 7th
Facility:
Kestrel Herb Farm in Sandy Mush, NC (about 35 minutes from Asheville, NC)
More details will be emailed with welcome packet.
Camping is availably Friday & Saturday night for $20. Available are two bathrooms, a shower, a hot plate, kettle, plenty of fresh clean water, a pond, pups to pet, flowers to sniff and all of kestrels herbal products and you-pick-herbs for anyone interested to take home more medicine.
About the instructor:
Ash Sierra is driven by a desire to bridge gaps between the human and plant worlds. She is the heart and soul behind Ritual Botanica, a small-batch Appalachian apothecary specializing in botanical distillation & herbal medicine. Her background as a clinical herbalist, farmer, distiller, and astrologer are wrapped up in a practice focused on mental wellness and empowerment through an eclectic range of modalities including medical astrology, hermeticism, eco-psyschology and vitalism. She’s dedicated years of her herbal journey to the craft of distillation and loves sharing it with other like-minded plant allies, the type who enjoys a bit of magic and a bit of science. You can find her tending land in the Blue Ridge Mountains of NC. For medicine and magic visit: www.ritualbotanica.com
