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In the year 2000, Animá Center (then called the Earthen Spirituality Project) introduced a women’s center component, providing safe/natural/sacred space for women’s vision quests, retreats, counsel and study, as well as single gender events beginning with the Wild Women’s Gatherings that Loba hosted and taught. Experience showed that women don’t have to have been overtly abused to feel a need for, and benefit from, time in a healthy supportive sanctuary. And all the better, when that devoted space nests within the encircling arms of the mother earth, affording the chance for intimate contact with both the natural world and our own inner natures. Animá Women’s Center provides an ages old place of mirroring and nurturing, challenging and supporting, helping and healing, where one can drop their guard, walls and armor and be wholly all they are... exposing the grief, fear and self criticism, as well as letting their playfulness, fierce insistence, hope and beauty shine. It was only a few years later that Kiva Rose – with the help of Jesse Wolf Hardin – developed what has become an exciting and popular new tradition for the most intensely sensitive, earthen, gifted and called of women: The Animá Medicine Woman Tradition. It answers the need for a female-centric study and practice, devoted to emotional, spiritual, bodily and planetary healing... melded with a new Gaian/holistic understanding of wild herbs and plant medicine.
Throughout human history there have been certain women who felt called to the demanding role, as truth-sayers, healers, agents of nature and the great mystery, intermediaries between the visible and invisible or spirit worlds, and repositories of wisdom and story. Such women have been suppressed or even persecuted over the course of the past 500 or so years, and been increasingly sidelined in the modern age by invasive allopathic practices, the synthetic drug industry, and a hegemony of institutionally indoctrinated male doctors. While holistic herbalism and naturopathy are on the rise again, they often follow the same errant Heroic model of intervention and cure that besets the larger industry. Likewise, models of alternative medicine often suffer from superficiality, commercialism, well meaning nonsense and New Age superficiality. The Medicine Woman tradition is a return to earlier iconic practices, reviving the role of the Wise Woman healer who points out the lessons and benefits of trauma as well as the miraculous natural means for wellness. And like never before, this is a tradition dedicated not only to the wholeness of the self, but also to the whole of life. Does existence or career as you know it now, seem to lack something crucial to your spirit, and does there seem to be some purpose encouraged by Gaia or destiny that you have not yet wholly undertaken? Do you feel a special affinity with plants, and does the natural world strangely seem to be trying to communicate with you? When you were little, or lately in dreams, pictured yourself not dressed as you are in your normal existence, but in the cloth or fur vestments of a curandera, as someone to whom the rest of the tribe comes for needed wisdom as well as essential healing? Or have you imagined your hands busy not with rote and meaningless tasks, but reverently gathering wild herbs from the precious places they grow, or planting a medicine garden, or grinding ingredients with an old mortar and pestle? Are you sensitive to people’s energy, and are you drawn to contribute to their wholeness and balance? If so, then the Anima Medicine Woman Tradition may be for you. You can get a more thorough feel for this work by reading Kiva’s “Medicine Woman’s Calling” essay.
• Every Medicine Woman has an original nature, inherent potentials to be developed, dreams to be realized and a personal, most meaningful purpose to be fulfilled. Such purpose is in inevitably unique to the individual but also connects them to and helps them serve the collective whole. • The Medicine Woman acts always out of compassion, truth, expression of real self and what matters most... the bettering or beautifying of the world. • The Medicine Woman not only promotes but embodies integrity to the best of her ability. She practices radical honesty regardless of what it may cost her. Subterfuge, pretense and denial are not the ways of the Medicine Woman. • A Medicine Woman develops and adheres to a personal code of honor in all matters at all times. Taking on this role begins the moment we commit ourselves to the principles and take on the challenges and doesn’t end until the moment we die. The Medicine Woman obeys nothing and no-one, but attends what matters and heeds what’s right. While she accepts discipline from no-one, it is through her self-discipline that she best realizes, actualizes and benefits. • The Medicine Woman opens to reward, savors success and embodies bliss.
Requirements & Creed • The Medicine Woman is wild (willed), true to her own nature, not subject to the whims of others of the constraints of society. She revels in uninhibited sensual engagement with the world. Expresses her authentic being and fulfills her purpose, with no regard to so-called edicts or the systematic inculturated fears of the healing profession. • Ability is not defined by age, but by experience, gifts, sensitivities, wisdom and results. The archetype of the wise woman is usually that of the elder, but of course not every elder is wise and even (or especially) children - unhindered by the imagined limitations and the fog of cultural perception - can have the capacity to afford us profound insights or have a pronounced healing effect. • Authority rests with the individual, and certification of any kind does not guarantee or imply wisdom, ability or skill. The Medicine Woman Tradition is meant to be tested against the individual’s own experience, rather than simply accepted as prescribed dogma. Thus, the Medicine Woman Tradition does not accredit anyone. We impart a set of perceptual and practical tools that you can use to empower yourself, find your unique personal path, gather experience and earn credit when deserved. With any kind of service, real accreditation is bestowed by the people who are helped through our insights and efforts. Credibility accrues with wisdom and results, though the Medicine Woman is not dependent on anyone or anything outside herself to validate her. • The Medicine Woman Tradition is not just about service to individuals, but to the greater whole that begins with the health of the self and that of the earth. A Medicine Woman can be fully solitary from other humans and yet her medicine is evoked in every moment, in the way her meals are prepared, her food gathered and her home tended. In the love she lavishes on herself and her fellow creatures and the discernment she hones in every decision. • The Medicine Tradition is a practice rooted in ancient wisdom within the contemporary context. In a hurting world and a destroyed or denatured landscape, reduction in diversity and more confusion about roots, authentic culture and real belonging. The Medicine Woman Tradition reflects both our authentic, ancient nature and the current situation, so that we can better understand and effect ourselves and the world. • The source of the Medicine Woman Tradition is Anima (the animating spirit of all life), made available through relationship with specific instructive place by the sensorial, intuitive and instinctive self. Rather than excerpting from the established ways of any one ethnicity or culture, the Medicine Woman Tradition is based on personal experience and direct relationship with Anima and earth. • Eclecticism can be just as dangerous as adherence to exotic and often romanticized cultures. By picking and choosing what we are most comfortable with or find easiest, one can end up with a generic, feel-good system providing permission to do nothing. The Medicine Woman knows that some of her greatest lessons are marked by discomfort and difficulty. • The Medicine Woman Tradition is in many ways the antithesis of what they call “New Age,” being more about engagement and responsibility than escaping, transcending, or being consoled. Neither is it associated in any way with the sensationalist “Medicine Woman” novel of some years ago. • The Medicine Woman Tradition is not a religious one, and Anima can be described in secular or scientific as well as spiritual or magical terms. • The Medicine Woman Tradition is an art form, and each individual will have different degrees of potential. This tradition is distinguished by its emphasis on making truths proactive, and it’s really not the Medicine Woman Tradition unless its principles and tools are applied and employed. Practical and hands on, the Medicine Woman manifests her healing and service in tangible ways. This result is personal responsibility that avoids victimhood, and that embraces a perspective that sees every moment as decisive, every choice as conscious, and every commitment significant. She takes on the responsibility for her part in the co-creation of her reality, the world around her, and the future course of events. • Despite the title, men are not excluded from the Medicine Woman Tradition. It is available and accessible to any male who feels strongly called to it. The term Medicine Man has been trivialized and commercialized beyond being of any use, and so we invite males – with the sensitivity and penchant to follow the Anima Medicine Way – to fully utilize the Medicine Woman materials and lessons, principles and practices.
Healing Self & Others • Healing is defined as ever growing wholeness through holistic reintegration of all the parts, and the Medicine Woman understands that the whole is always greater than the sum of the parts. • Medicine is defined as anything that contributes to that wholeness. • The human body is a complex and diverse ecology to be nourished and supported, not a machine, battlefield or temple to be fixed, won or cleansed. • We assist the body in regaining equilibrium, by nurturing the vital spirit without suppression. This is done through nourishing unique, individual people rather than eradicating pre-defined diseases. • The Medicine Woman does not treat healing as a a battle. While she may also be a warrior, she understands that disease is not our enemy, but rather an ally and learning tool. She knows viruses and bacteria as integral parts of the whole, inspirited beings with the innate desire to thrive and proliferate. • Healing is composed of both nourishment and challenge at all times, as two sides of the same leaf, the Medicine Woman knows that we need both. • Each wound, problem or illness is a gift, lesson or portal -- an opportunity for further growth and wholeness. • The Medicine Woman works with the whole person in the context of their lives, relationships, home and place. Only through the whole person and picture can full healing occur. • The Medicine Woman has a conscious response-ability and commitment to use her gifts, skills and healing to contribute the integrity of the larger whole
Relating to the Plant World • Plants are animate, inspirited parts of the earthen whole, just as we are. Every plant is a medicine plant, and all have some interspecies benefit whether we’re aware of it or not. • Their effect depends on the person using them individual constitution, their relationship to the plant as well as how the plant has be harvested and prepared. The medicine of the plant will always be stronger when it has been taken and prepared with love, honor and consciousness. • We are made worthy of their gifts to us when we honor their intrinsic value, apart from what they can do for us. Plant life, like all life, functions according to the principles of reciprocity, which is to say that it is both a willing recipient (nutrients etc) and provider, giving back to the soil even in death. • Every plant has intrinsic value apart from any benefit to humans. Yet as extensions of Anima, they join us in working together to heal and nourish the whole. • Plants exist as members of a dynamic and interdependent network that include all life-forms. Plants, and communities of plants, have individually – but especially collectively – an awareness or consciousness different from but not lesser than that of animals and other life forms. • Plants are sentient, aware beings, but they are not humans. To expect them to behave and communicate as such is to shortchange both ourselves and them, and impose our imaginings on the surprising multi-dimensional relationships that we can have with them. • Different levels of communication are possible through sensory signals, impressions and feelings. Communication with plants involves not the transmission of words but of qualities, sensibilities and intention – an evocation of essence that we then translate into a known dialect. What is imparted between humans and plants is far more significant than language, deeper and more intense. The plants communicate in ways non-verbal, non-linear, instinct driven, responsive, generally not anticipatory. The seemingly most instructive plants reveal possibilities rather than telling us what to do. • Healing systems and structures are useful as we are learning, but are less necessary and sometimes even become hinderances once we have developed our intuitive abilities and deepened our personal understanding of and intimate relationship with the individual plants. • The Medicine Woman works with the whole plant, not isolated constituents... just as she works with the whole person rather than isolated organs or elements. • The Medicine Woman primarily works with plant allies that are local and sustainable, as a way of becoming intimate with the land and plants as well as respectful to the earthen whole.
For the Medicine Woman intentions evolve into commitments and all worthy commitments are kept.
For the most intent we recommend applying for an Anima Studentship. 4 different Anima Correspondence Courses are available for women, including the Medicine Woman Tradition Core Path and Medicine Woman Tradition Herbal Path.
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Annual women-only Gatherings & Workshops are special opportunities for learning, sharing, encouragement and support, and include: • The Medicine Woman Gathering We also recommend the mixed gender events such as: And for those of you looking to clarify, decide on, deepen or enrich a marriage or relationship, we suggest bringing your partner with you for the
Life changing and quandary solving Quests are led by your women Guides, and can be scheduled at any time of the year, weather permitting.
For those seeking an inspirited refuge in which to recharge and re-envision, we offer Retreats that include either a lovely primitive cabin or a tenting area, and rapturous dinners. Study or counsel is totally optional. Suggested length, from 3 days to 3 weeks..
Kiva Rose and Loba provide empowering Counsel in which a woman shares what she most needs help with, what hurts and what gives her hope, receiving recognition, understanding, affirmation, clarification and guidance in turn. They have assisted women to: • Understand, accept and better love their selves • Reconnect to their wild, willful, playful inner natures, and to the natural world that can instruct and sustain them • Heal from abuse, feelings of unworthiness, self-torture, and the sickness that comes from ignoring your deeper needs, hungers and hopes • Understand how their fears, self-judgments, habits and perceptions are holding them back from needed change, from wholeness and satisfaction • Better understand their true gifts, and how to creatively put them to use • Better understand their sexuality and gender issues • Awaken their sensual and emotional engagement with the world • Find the magical in the mundane, the joy and possibility for excellence in whatever the decide to give their hours to • Understand their issues with their parents, and what remains internalized • Take responsibility for their lives, decide how they want to live, and make scary empowering life changes • Deepen and heal, or end, unhealthy relationships with lovers/spouses • Re-create their relationships with their children, in ways that truly serves all concerned • Access, and then either evolve or switch careers • Decide what serves their wholeness and happiness, and start insisting on that in their lives • Determine what hurts their spirits or drains their energy and joy, and begin to move away from those people, activities and things • Take the chance of living their dreams, satisfying their hungers, embracing their joy, giving the gift that is them... while fulfilling their most meaningful purpose Counsel is usually scheduled as part of a Retreat.
I remembered a wonderful rememdy you wrote about - a sage/rose/lavender tea that you've used for women who've lived through a lot of fear or abuse and need to relax and gain energy. I drink it every day I have the herbs. it's helped me to have some of my first peaceful nights of sleep in 46 years. Thanks and blessings to you. - Shea Medicine Woman, Healer and acclaimed Herbalist Kiva Rose is available for private consultations regarding your individual health and wholeness. During a consultation, she will first discuss your feelings and observations about your health with you, noting any patterns or cycles that have either benefitted or detracted from your overall well-being. Kiva will then recommend shifts in those patterns through nutrition, herbs and lifestyle. She can provide you with a recommended herb or herbal formula from her own herbal line at a discounted price, or she can provide you with the information needed to prepare it for yourself. Followups or further consultations can be done at any time and are highly recommended for those with chronic imbalances. Please contact Kiva for further details or to schedule a consultation.
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Long before the canyon property was dedicated as a women’s center, the vast majority of seekers who came for learning or transformation were female – grateful for a safe place in which to open their sensitive hearts to nature and spirit, nurture what had not been nurtured, consider difficult but essential choices... and reinvigorate their journey of wholeness, purpose and power.
