Eco-psychology + Traditional Amazonian Medicine as a Framework for Healing
Summer 2024
This course is the class that I wish all healers, therapists, and journeyers would take.
Over 4 weeks, this class will explore the basic principles of eco-psychology, including the liquid substance of the soul, the systems dynamics organizing consciousness, our own “ecological unconscious”, and basic applications of eco-psychology in therapy. Then we will look at Traditional Amazonian Medicine, or curandismo, as an incredible ancestral example of healing the whole self with the help of the nature’s intelligence.
In an age where even expanded state therapies can become quite reductionistic and medicalized, we need to remember the indigenous cultures that have been mastering these medicines for many generations. Their ways of working and the deep reverence they have for the spirits of nature is a foundation and guide for how we develop safe and powerful spaces for our journeys.
Moreso, this class blossoms from my deep love for the earth and her sentiences. This course is intended to help any nature lovers and consciousness explorers to connect more deeply with the wisdom of nature and to learn practices for communing with nature with love, play, and joy.
Class Intentions
1. Learn the 4 levels of Eco-psychology as a framework for healing and their applications in psychospiritual counseling therapy
2. Take a deep look into how Traditional Amazonian Medicine exemplifies eco-psychology through worldview, relationship, and practice
3. Learn practices for deepening your own connection with the sentiences of nature that you can apply in your journeywork and healing practices
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Curriculum
Our class will meet on Tuesdays from 6-8 PM PST starting July 30th. The online portion class will consist of 4 weekly sessions and one half day immersion in Marin County, CA (optional).
Week 1: Remember Our place as the Earth
Understanding "Soul" and the Substance of Consciousness
Basic qualities of consciousness that guide healing
Exploring Our Own Worldview + Cosmoview
Practices for Personal Inquiry + to Offer Clients
Week 2: Ecopsychology: A Systems View
Practices for Personal Inquiry + to Offer Clients
Three principles of the eco-psychological system + their implications in therapy
Personal practices for connecting more deeply with the living intelligence of natural systems
Practices for utilizing the principles of Systems Theory in psychology with clients
Week 3: Ecological Unconscious: Communicating with the Earth
How does the ecological unconscious guide us towards individual and collective health?
Accessing how traditional cultures listen, feel, and dream into the realm of consciousness imbued with ecological wisdom
Personal practices for engaging our own ecological and psychospiritual intuition
Working with terra-psychology and the archetypal dreams and images of clients
Week 4: Case Study: Traditional Amazonian Medicine
Studying how Traditional Amazonian Medicine exemplifies communication with the ecological, including the archetypal realm of nature
Understanding the cosmology behind the traditional Amazonian dieta
Creating a personal practice for working with the archetypal energies of nature
Half Day Immersion with Guided Living Nature Education Walk with Nicho Nutzu / Date TBD
Jordana Ma holds a Masters in Transpersonal Psychology from California Institute of Integral Studies, where she focused on the psychotherapeutic use of entheogenic plants, as well as training in Hakomi Somatic Psychotherapy, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, and the Hendricks Method. Jordana is a lineage carrier in the Asháninkan tradition of Traditional Amazonian Medicine and continues to study indigenous healing methods and the integration of transformational experiences. She is a student of the Diamond Approach and a long-time practitioner of yoga and zen. Jordana's primary teacher and love is the natural world.
Class Dates: 4 Tuesdays starting July 30th to August 20th 6-8PM
Cost: $200
All classes will be recorded and accessible for at least a year.
This is a special class that draws from 15 years of my personal experience, academic study in transpersonal psychology, and over a decade learning with Ashaninka and Shipibo elders and the Amazon. I am so honored to offer this class in the way that is true to my own experience and yet pays homage the elders I’ve learned from. Most of all, it’s a gift from Nature and a gift to Nature herself.
Registration will be open until the first class.
If the cost is prohibitive for you, then please just email me at siripiari@protonmail.com. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. Your contributions are appreciated to keep our practice sustainable.
““There is a communal ritual way of addressing trauma in which the trauma is never even mentioned. Traditional cultures don’t tackle things as isolated issues. It’s not like ‘Here’s the trauma, and here’s your hour to talk about your trauma.’ It’s like ‘Here’s your regular ritual,’ and the [collective] ritual reinforces social bonds and takes us into the deep states of consciousness necessary to repattern bodies [nervous systems] which have interwoven within them trauma and joy, longing and pain....
So the individual trauma cycle becomes linked into larger cycles of nature and addressed through ritual enactment in communion with these larger cycles of nature…”
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