SEEDS AND CYCLES
Planting the seeds from our ancient past in the soil of today
Reconnecting to Jewish Wisdom through our hands, heart and soil
with Tali Weinberg and Sarai Shapiro
Sonoma County locations | February through May 2022
includes 5 Sundays and 2 one night campouts, March through September
The Shmita (“Sabbatical year”), is the sacred Hebraic culmination to the 7-year agricultural cycle of the Jewish calendar which instructs us to let cultivated land lay fallow and forgive debts. This “Shabbats of Shabbats for the land” offers a year-long opportunity to come back into balance through rest, reflection and re-design of our relationships to ourselves, each other, and the natural world.
This Shmita Re-Bloom Series will support you to use this sacred time, which we are currently in, to deepen your relationship with both the wild and the cultivated aspects of the natural world, and the wild and cultivated parts of yourself. Its content is part nature connection practices, part permaculture series, and part personal growth work.
It will leave you with a deepened sense of relationship to the wilds as well as elevate your skills in the realm of growing your own food, medicine, soil and seeds. It will connect you more deeply to your ancestors and root you more firmly inside yourself.
DURING OUR TIME TOGETHER WE WILL
Use the Jewish calendar to deepen your connection to earth cycles
Learn about ancient practices and laws of Shmita and how that applies to your life today
Discover how Shmita can be used as a blueprint towards justice and social liberation
Explore what it means to relate with these ancestral land practices in the diaspora
Set your intentions for how you are aiming to re-bloom in this Shmitta cycle
Deepen your connection and knowledge with the more-than human world in your local watershed
Learn about wild listening and awareness practices through having a sit spot practice
Cultivate an ongoing dialogue with the earth through intentional nature wanders
Explore wild plant spirit and physical medicine - plant journeys, ethical harvest, medicine making
Renew connections with your local wild animal species
Choose one local plant and animal species to apprentice to through this Shmitta journey
Explore Permaculture topics such as:
principles / observation and sector analysis
preparing beds for planting
building soil fertility / compost
planting and seeding
fruit trees and perennial foods
seed saving and other propagation techniques
gardening techniques for saving water
preserving the harvest/ /food as medicine / connection with ancestry
food as foundation for building healthy culture
TO LEARN MORE SET UP A CONVO WITH TALI
Reach out to her at mornintal@gmail.com!
The ancient ones, who cycled with and observed the Shmita with intimacy, experienced it as a year to be lived with great reflection and intention. Shmita was designed as both an opportunity to reflect deeply upon their personal lives as well as bring back into balance the larger collective social/economic systems and earth practices that they engaged with as a society. This year-long cessation of “business as usual” offered the time to re- evaluate what was healthy, what was working, what needed refinement, and what was in need of an utter design overhaul.
As modern peoples, we clearly are in desperate need to reset our systems and re-new our connection to the natural world. As our planet shifts and changes with lightning speed, there is a great need to slow down, sit together and evaluate the ways in which we are relating to the earth. Cultivating this quality of intentional time and space together is an imperative part of helping turn around the destructive path our planet is on and re-orient to one that is more life- giving, beauty-filled, and capable of sustaining life for generations to come.
As the Jewish tradition teaches, we humans are inseparable from the earth, from where we come, and to where we return. The Shmita just as powerfully beckons us as individuals to slow down, observe, and course correct the parts of our own inner lives that are asking for change. As we renew our connection to the natural / outer world we are invited to a renewed relationship with inner ecosystems; our patterns, our shadows, our dreams, and our life’s work.
In this way, Shmita is not only one of the greatest of the ancient jewels passed down to us by our ancestors, it is a radical, holistic, full-systems re-set to our society, from the level of the individual soul to the soul of the collective.
We could think of nothing more important than to gather together to reflect upon and renew our relationships at this time. The earth needs us to do this work!
SERIES FORMAT
* 8 Evening Group Classes (Online) - Wednesdays from 4:00-6:30 PST / 7:00 -9:30 EST
* 1 Daylong Group Retreat (Online) - Sunday, March 13th
* 4 1:1 personal mentorship sessions (you schedule with guides)
* At home earth connection, permaculture, self-inquiry practices and rituals
RE-BLOOM GROUP SESSIONS SCHEDULE
All Wednesday sessions will be held via Zoom from 4:00-6:30 PST/ 7:00-9:30 EST.
Wed Feb 9th ~ 8 Adar I
Wed February 23 ~ 22 Adar II
Sunday March 13th 10am-2pm ~ 10 Adar II Pre purim
Wed April 6 - 5 Nissan ~ Pre-Pesach
Wed May 4 - 3 Iyyar ~ Yom HaZikaron, counting of the Omer
June 1 - 2 Sivan ~ pre Shavuot
July 6 - 7 Tamuz ~ summer descent
Aug 3 - 6th of Av ~ pre-Tisha B’Av/Tu B’Av
Aug 31 - 4 Elul ~ Tshuvah
Four One-on-One Mentorship Sessions: Part of this offering is the opportunity to schedule four 1:1 sessions, two with Tali and two with Sarai, with a focus on how to best support your own personal growth and reset during this potent time.
The uniqueness of this class is that it not only will empower you with general practices to deepen and expand your connection to the natural world,it also provides individualized mentorship that reflects the unique path, growing edges, aspirations, and healing trajectory that you are on. The container of this program is aimed to meet you not only where you are, but to support you in moving where you want to take yourself in your life. Using the foundation of this powerful time of re-set, the guidance provides through this work will help you clarify your path, support you in course-correcting places where you may feel out of alignment, and set you firmly back into your life’s work and purpose with earth connection as a steady anchor.
TUITION
Sliding Scale $1200-$1500
Early Bird ($200 off) $1000
Payment plans available, just inquire and we’ll set you up.
Please pay as your means allow on the higher end of the sliding scale. This allows us to offer lower cost for folks who need extra financial support.
It is our intention to turn no-one away for lack of funds.
REGISTRATION
Select your payment within our sliding scale. Early bird ends Jan 22, 2021.
For payment plans reach out to Sarai (sarainicolina@gmail.com) and she will set that up for you!
ABOUT YOUR RE-BLOOM GUIDES
Sarai Shapiro (she/her) Refer to Sarai’s bio HERE
Tali Weinberg, R.Ac (she/her)
Tali is a healer, a farmer, and a cultural worker who is passionate about the intersection between village mindedness, just culture, food system resiliency, earth medicine, and personal liberation. Over the past 15 years, she has worked as farm manager and educator in the context of rural farming/leadership internships such as the Adamah fellowship in the Berkshires as well as co-founded and designed the Urban Adamah farm in Berkeley, CA back in 2010. She has mentored and empowered numerous fellowships and community members with knowledge about food sovereignty and resiliency. She became a seed saver and advocate after working with Salt Spring Seeds back in 2008. Her journey led her into the study of permaculture for 2 years as an intern at the renowned Bullocks Permaculture Homestead on Orcas Island, WA as well as serving as the intern coordinator for their well known internship program. She helped to coordinate and co-found the Tel Sheva Desert Medicine Learning Site through the organization BUSTAN in the Negev desert, working with Bedouin project partners to create a traditional medicine sustainability site rooted in Bedouin traditional knowledge around plant medicine and natural building. She coordinated a Permaculture Design Certification in partnership with Permaculture Action Network in Berkeley and has also taught numerous workshops pertaining to sustainability including seed saving, soil building, fermentation, grafting and fruit tree propagation, and co-taught an Introduction to Permaculture course at Seattle University. In response to the renaissance of emerging interest in shifting the food system, she founded the FB group Resiliency Rising Permaculture Group through which she curated a practical online class series on various topics pertaining to regenerative earth culture. She is currently practicing Traditional Chinese Medicine at the Madrona Integrative Health clinic on Salt Spring Island, BC on the unceded territories of the Hul’qumi’num and SENĆOŦEN speaking peoples.