Dear friends ~ I’m so excited to be partnering with three other powerful practitioners on a topic that is very dear to my heart: our collective grief over disconnection from the land, which we often experience as anxiety around food and eating. Read our offering below to understand how growing your everyday consciousness around the foods you consume can lead you to a nourishing and symbiotic connection with the Earth.
The Demeter Intensive is a month-long immersion in the idea that you are not separate from the Earth. You may live in an urban environment, and the demands of your life might keep you from spending much time in Nature. But there is still a daily activity that gives you the opportunity to grow your awareness that the Earth nourishes your existence: eating. Everything we consume is ultimately grown in and by the Earth, and your consciousness that you are nurtured by this planet can provide a powerful perspective shift in your feelings of belonging and connectedness to the rest of the world.
Unfortunately, many people do not experience eating as a nourishing activity that grounds them in their physical existence. This has to do with various factors, such as 1) our separation from the land, 2) the prevalence of eating disorders and body image dysmorphia 3) the commodification of food 4) ancestral memory of famine and lack, and 5) an absence of the ethic of gratitude for the food that sustains life. It is our belief that growing your consciousness around our disordered ideas about food in this culture, and doing the shadow work to confront your personal food grief, is the key to becoming a more empowered steward of the planet which sustains us.
The entire course offering is priced at $110, and 10% of all proceeds will go to World Central Kitchen, which provides meals to areas experiencing humanitarian crises such as the Ukraine.
The Demeter Intensive includes one recorded and one live offering from a different practitioner each week, in the astrological month of Taurus. The order of the offerings is intended to 1) educate you about your personal food story 2) illuminate where anxiety over food and eating might live in your body 3) discover both ancestral trauma and sources of support in the way you relate to food and 4) connect you symbiotically to this planet and learn to say an authentic grace.
We are so excited to guide you in this journey into the nourishing fecundity of the Earth. Live participation is not required, though the weekly Saturday Zooms will allow you to have a more connected experience if you are able to attend (recordings of the live sessions will be made available for you to watch afterward). We will also host group discussion on Discord (similar to Facebook). You can read about each practitioner and their unique offering below.
Week 1: The Astrology of Ceres: Food in the Natal Chart
Live Zoom call: April 23rd, 10am to 12 noon Pacific time
Astrologer Thea Wirsching will share her original research on the planet Ceres (Ceres was the Roman counterpart of Demeter). In the natal chart, this planet can tell us where we might have struggles around food, from food insecurity to compulsive eating. Your Ceres placement also reveals an ideal way of eating that is unique to you. Thea will send out audio covering Ceres in sign and aspect, and then host a discussion of Ceres in the natal chart in the Saturday Zoom call that will allow you to ask questions about its role in your life.
Thea Wirsching is an Evolutionary astrologer and Tarot reader. She has been studying astrology for thirty years, and reading for clients for fifteen. The focus of Thea’s astrological counseling business, “The Pluto Babe,” is transforming trauma and releasing shame. Her Ceres readings provide an innovative way to address disordered eating in the natal chart.
Facebook: Thea Wirsching
Instagram: @the_pluto_babe
Website: www.theplutobabe.com
Email: theawirsching@gmail.com
Week 2: Liberating Food Grief in the Body
Live Zoom call: April 30th, 10am to noon Pacific time
Somatic Experiencing practitioner Kelly Goodell will assist you in slowing down your awareness to notice how anxiety and grief might be impacting your experience of eating and enjoying food. Kelly will send out a video during the week with some information about Somatic Experiencing, and model the techniques of grounding, orienting, and resourcing. In the live Zoom call on Saturday, Kelly will demonstrate how Somatic Experiencing can be used to move through your “sticky places” in order to have a more grounded and nourishing relationship to food. The focus will be on expanding your window of tolerance around the difficult emotions that come up around eating and nourishment.
Kelly Goodell practices medical intuition, psychic guidance, somatic work, and energy attunement. Kelly uses all of these modalities to show people the power of being present in their bodies, and how that presence allows for connection to their intuition, their spirit guides, their life purpose, their joy, and their authentic selves.
Facebook: Kelly Goodell
Instagram: @kellygoodelldotcom
Website: www.kellygoodell.com
Email: kellygoodell74@gmail.com
Week 3: Unearthing Ancestral Trauma around Food
Live Zoom call: May 7th, 10am to noon Pacific time
Many of the challenges we have around connecting to the Earth via food can be ancestral in nature. In the long history of your family line, it’s likely that your ancestors faced food insecurity because of traumas like famine, drought, war, or colonization. Many of us are also in grief around the way the food industry harmfully exploits the earth and its resources unsustainably today. Ancestral healer and ritual practitioner Trece Spalten will help establish a ritual container for these difficult feelings by sending out audio on how to ground and call in spiritual support. In the live Zoom call on Saturday, Trece will lead a group ritual for meeting a wise and well ancestor who can help heal our relationships to food, eating, and the Earth.
Trece Spalten is an intuitive medium, teacher, and healing arts practitioner specializing in connecting people with their inner wisdom and manifesting it through practical skills. His background in psychology (BA), Montessori education, bodywork (LMT), and extensive psychic training has deeply honed his skills of listening, guidance, and insight. At the heart of it, his work centers on helping those seeking greater purpose by rediscovering the soul-level resources that are vital to a whole, meaningful life. Descendant of the Finns, Germans, Norse, and people of the British Isles, Trece honors his ancestors as a profound source of healing and reconnection with the living Earth.
Instagram: @treceintuitive
Website: www.trecespalten.com
Email: trece.spalten@gmail.com
Week 4: Sacred Food and the Mycelial Connection
Live Zoom call: May 14th, 10am to 12noon Pacific time
Today, many of us struggle to connect with the living earth. Priestess and intuitive Elle Evans, a mushroom expert, will facilitate a writing exercise to help you bridge what you’ve learned in the Demeter Intensive into an authentic “grace” or blessing for the food you consume. In the live Zoom call, she will lead you in a ritual to discover a medicinal food, plant, or other ally that will support your walk on this planet. When we restore the consciousness of gratitude to the food that sustains us, we begin to understand ourselves as part of the interconnected web that roots us to the land.
Elle Evans is a priestess and Druid intuitive who works with mycelial networks and soil to connect people more deeply with the Earth. For Elle, writing is a magical practice, and she uses poetry and singing as her channels to the universe. Her background is in wilderness medicine and rescue.
Instagram: @poetess.mori
Website: www.poetessmori.com
Email: poetess.mori@gmail.com
Purchase and Connect
Click the button above to purchase the Demeter Intensive. 10% of all proceeds will benefit World Central Kitchen which delivers meals to areas experiencing humanitarian crisis such as the Ukraine. Please sign up for our list below to receive information about our FREE discussions of the Demeter myth in advance of the official beginning of the course. Your email address will only be used in relation to this event. We look forward to undertaking this deep Earth walk with you in April and May!