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5th Annual Maine Women's Herbal Retreat

July 14-16 2023 | Registration is now open!

The 5th annual Maine Wombmen's Herbal Retreat is an invitation to drop in to this weekend portal of transformation, allowing yourself to be held and supported within a larger circle and community of wombmen!

This weekend is so very sacred to all of the women who have been a part of it for the last several years, some since the very beginning in 2019. This is an invitation to listen to the call.  To honor the deep desire to gather with intention, in an intimate community of unconditional support surrounded by women softened into their feminine in a way they didn't know possible. The softening into the feminine and sharing pieces of the depths of your soul is guaranteed this weekend. You Deserve this, Wombman.

We begin the weekend in ceremony, calling in the directions and elements, blessing and opening our weekend circle as a safe and sacred container. To experience feeling seen, honored, and held in your fullest expression and to have the experience of being supported in community in this way is a gift that will permanently shift your inner landscape, and bring many moments of remembering. A feeling of coming home to yourself. A DEEP REMEMBRANCE.

Our weekend will be greatly entwined and entangled within the root and mycellial networks below our feet, as we connect deeply with the plants and earth medicine surrounding us.

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Herbal Retreat Details

Aside from the incredible food cooked by our amazing chef Sarah Korman and educational workshops by inspiring teachers, we will have also feature interactive and transformative creative and herbal learning. This year we will be hosting an Alchemy of Sound portal with Lauren Aloisis of New Moon Wellness as well as a Dream Weaving nature workshop with Kate Gaudette, just to name a couple of our special guests! The first fire will be accompanied by a Tea Ceremony with Plant Spirit Journey along with intoxicating herbal mocktail libations and a drumming circle on Saturday evening! 

Here is our TENTATIVE weekend schedule:

Friday:

11-1~ Arrival & Set Up

1:11 ~ Opening Circle & Weaving Ceremony

3 ~ Alexandra with Herbal Dye Portal

5 ~ Lauren brings the Alchemy of Sound

645 ~ Dinner with Sarah

830 ~ Tea Ceremony & Plant Spirit Meditation with Kelly

9 ~ Sound Bath Under the Stars with Lauren

 

Saturday:

7-8 ~ Herbal Womb Massage with Melodie Fallon

8 ~ Breakfast with Sarah 

9:45-11:15 Spiraldance Breathwork with Tania

Snack***

11:45 ~ 130 Tanya’s Crystal Reiki Portal

1:30~  Lunch with Sarah

2:45 ~ Alyssa’s Lotion Making Workshop

5~ Sacred Tobacco ~ Exploring Hape’ with Andi

6:45 ~ Dinner with Sarah

Mocktail Bar with Cassandra of The Remedy

Dance of the Elements with Kelly ~ A Guided Ecstatic Dance Experience

Drum Circle Fire Portal

 

Sunday:

6:30-7:30 Kundalini with Andi

7:45 ~ Breakfast with Sarah

9-10:15 ~ Solar Plexus Herbs and the Fire Element, Portal of Summer South with Kelly

1030-12 ~ Nature Dream Weaving with Kate

12 ~ Lunch with Sarah

1:15 ~ Fire Ritual with Sarah and Closing Circle

 

Weather Permitting practice of adaptation~ We will have a back up plan for rain as this has happened every year at least for a few moments!

Experience Package Includes:

2 Breakfasts, 2 Lunches, 2 Dinners, Snacks, Fruit, and Tea + Elixir Bar

All Workshops and Classes throughout the weekend

A Custom Spiral Mug by Ellie at HoneyBee Stoneware

Welcome Bag with little offerings from teachers

Camping anywhere on the Land

Cold Tubs and Sauna for the Weekend (if desired, we definitely were thankful for the ice tubs last year!)

Membership to Earth Spiral and access to a private online portal, all other events and offerings, sauna, special member-only plant medicine support, and 1:1 with Kelly

A Forever transformed radiating feminine Soul ~ Guaranteed 🙂

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Nourish

One of the most important aspects of our weekend is our Nourishment - and this year we have Sarah Korman returning to provide us not only with high vibration, local, organic, nutrient dense foods, but she also will weave feminine cyclical nutrition education and elements into our meal times together.
I am incredibly thankful for this connection and opportunity and I know its going to add a very special element to this aspect of the weekend. ~ Kelly

Read more below about Sarah and our other incredible guest teachers for the weekend!

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Sarah Korman

Welcoming back our beloved Chef!

Hi! I'm Sarah, a Cyclical Guide, Student of the Moon, Metal Smith Artisan and Seasonal Cook. I work with women, guiding them home to the nature of their cyclical bodies while exploring the energetic phases of their monthly cycle.

I was drawn to this work after my mother passed away in 2016. Feminine dis-ease had run in my family and I always knew I would be called to break the chain. Cyclical Awareness has been absent from our common culture for ages and it is clear to me that this womb wisdom has been a missing link in my own lineage and others beside me. I have been studying the menstrual cycle, moon cycle energy, and self care for the past 6 years while creating wearable symbolic amulets to anchor our intentions.

 

Living in tune with my cyclical inner and outer seasons brought me home to a place of understanding within myself. A place of self love where dis-ease can be balanced with self trust and thrive. 

One of my favorite ways to connect with seasonal living and cyclical awareness is through food. Food has always been my happy place, and after I left my career in restaurant management to follow my artistic passions, I have found a reclamation in food service. Through providing clean, and healing nourishment shared in community, my intention here is to inspire you to explore and reclaim nourishment and meal time for yourself, and the many ways in which that’s possible. I believe that food has always been our medicine and can also be art. And like any worthy art piece, when taken in through all our senses, it helps us to digest. When we slow down for meal time, become present and in gratitude, we digest not only in our gut but in all the experiences of our lives. My meals consist of fresh ingredients from local farmers, and the gardens of my friends. I highlight the flavors of the season in simple, comforting, delicious and creative ways. Many of my herbs, flowers and wild weeds come from the rocky Maine coast, lined with medicine that I am honored to forage and prepare. Cooking is one of my love languages, and I am thrilled to be able to share my happy place with you!

About Your Host

Greetings! I’m Kelly - the owner and creatrix of what was previously Mindful Earth Herbals, now transitioned to my new passion project with my partner, Earth Spiral Community.. I have had a very broad spectrum of human experience and professional training that has led me to this place, and my mission and purpose in this earth realm existence is to support others on their path of healing, freedom, expansion, and plant medicine.


After an open heart surgery in 2006, I spent several years roaming the streets of Boston hopelessly addicted to narcotics - and was in and out of treatment facilities nearly 30 times in 4 years.
In 2010, I experienced my first series of yoga and meditation classes in one of these treatment facilities. FINALLY, I noticed a glimpse of a very real shift within, and it provided inspiration and true motivation for my soul. That was the last time I went into treatment, and I have never looked back.


I completed a 9 week residential Bikram Yoga training in 2012 and taught at Maine Hatha Yoga in Portland, Maine for 2 years until I birthed my son in May of 2014. I completed a local 200hr training in 2015, and several Trauma Informed Yoga trainings during that period, including a Trauma Sensitive Yoga training at Bessel Vanderkolk’s Boston Institute of Trauma. In 2015, I started a local chapter of the non-profit, Pure Action- Yoga is Medicine and had the opportunity to teach in local treatment facilities working with women who have endured substance use disorder, sex trafficking, and domestic abuse.

My plant path began in 2013 - I was transitioning off of multiple pharmacological drugs and I was searching for gentle, safe, & natural support. There happened to be a huge lemon balm plant in the yard of the log cabin we were then residing in. This plant called to me so strongly every day ~ and I would sit with her and just breathe her in and experience my body softening and relaxing. I finally had to find out who she was. When I found out that her name was Melissa and she soothed the nervous system and induced feelings of joy through her high volatile oil content, I was in complete awe and admiration.


The never-ending spiraling rabbit hole that is herbal medicine will be a lifelong journey for me - for once you are on the Plant Path and are engulfed and entranced by their magick and wisdom ~ their medicine, spirits, and songs will never leave your side.

I have participated in apprenticeship circles locally with clinical herbalist Mischa Schuler, and have studied rather extensively these last four years with internationally known Sajah Popham, through his Alchemical Herbalism Course, and now clinically through the Vitalist Herbal Practitioner Clinical Skills Course at the School of Evolutionary Herbalism. I have also sat in a year long online apprenticeship circle with Marysia Meirnowska from the School of the Sacred Wild, and some of my other inspirational influences and teachers along the way these last 11 years include Matthew Wood, Stephen Harrod Buhner, Rosemary Gladstar, Gabor Mate, Anodea Judith, Hafiz, Michael and Angela Weymouth of Maine Hatha Yoga, and Susun Weed (I do in any way support or condone this woman's behaviors, please be aware of her emotional, physical, and psychological abuse towards her students and her racial tendencies. Her earlier work in the realm of the Wise Woman Ways has influenced me deeply).
My perspective on plants has shifted quite a bit these last few years. I came into herbal medicine from an allopathic symptom based mindset because that was ingrained in me from 3 semesters of nursing school and my entire upbringing coming from a family of nurses. I now work with plants based on their spirits, energies, intentions, physical and ecological effect, and other ways they can support our humanness.

I am overflowing with joy as I start preparing for our weekend together!

Our retreat time expands into something new and transformational with every year that passes and our circle energy penetrates the very fabric of our existence. The everlasting ripple effect is rather profound and undeniable. This year our workshop presenters are sharing their deepest passions and knowledge and our weekend is filled with pure plant and fungi Magick!

~ Earth Spiral Community Co-Founder, Herbal Retreat Host & Teacher Kelly Benson

Introducing our Guest Teachers

Discover more about our incredible line up of guest teachers in 3 ways: clicking on read more on our site, visiting our full guest teacher bio document link below and checking out each of their business pages.

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Tania Zuckerman

Spiraldanc Breathwork

Workshop

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Alyssa Pittera

Feed Your Skin Apothecary Workshop

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Lauren Aloisio

Alchemy of Sound Ceremony

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Sarah Korman

Retreat Chef & Fire Ceremony