An Intimate Relationship with Plants and the Human Spirit

Colin is a practitioner of traditional African medicine, based in Cape Town, South Africa and the UK. He receives clients from all over the world, and facilitates international group processes relating to natural law, transformation, healing & personal power, sacred sites, and cross-cultural cosmology. His work bridges major world cities with ancestral homelands and forgotten wilderness, taking him from the Amazon Basin to Los Angeles, the sacred sites of Venda to the urban grit of Johannesburg, and remote Ethiopia to the City of London. Colin co-founded and co-runs a training school in Botswana for traditional doctors and sangomas with his brother Niall Campbell. At the age of eleven he was called to be trained and initiated as a traditional doctor and sangoma. He thus acquired a deep knowledge of Tswana culture and its traditional medicinal and spiritual practices.

Don Aurelio lives in Amatlán, Mexico and is of Nahua origin. He is heir to the legacy of four generations of traditional healers. At the age of 12, he received the calling to become a granicero or weather worker, who are spiritual workers that are related with weather beings. They are intermediaries that work to protect the harvest and prevent disasters that could destroy their crops. As a young child, Don Aurelio was hit by lightning and started to know things about the weather after that incident. Today, he sees patients at his house in Amatlán, Mexico and has been invited to participate in several events around the world to share the ancestral wisdom of his people.

Sofia grew up in Chiapas, Mexico. Culturally she is a Tzotzil Mayan. Sofia has been a curandera or promotora de salud comunitaria (a healer and health educator for the community) for over twenty years.  As a healer and teacher, Sofia is dedicated to the healing arts, promoting and keeping alive Traditional Mexican Medicine and knowledge of Medicinal Plants through courses, workshops in Mexico and around the world. Having grown up immersed in the traditional ways, she has a vast knowledge of the wisdom and medicinal qualities of plants and traditional healing methods. Ever humble and modest, she is a treasure to her people and all she comes into contact with.

She is the founder and director of Sacred Plant Traditions, a center for herbal studies in Virginia. One of her greatest accomplishments has been to train many clinical herbalists who have gone onto to begin other schools, apothecaries or open practices. Kat teaches internationally at universities, conferences, and herbal schools. She is a founding member of Botanica Mobile Clinic, a nonprofit dedicated to providing accessible herbal medicine to local communities. Kat also served as president of United Plant Savers and was the recipient of the organization’s first Medicinal Plant Conservation Award. She is coauthor of Bush Medicine of San Salvador Island, Bahamas and author of Nautilus Gold Medal  Award winning book, Energetic Herbalism: A Guide to Sacred Plant Traditions Integrating Elements of Vitalism, Ayurveda and Chinese Medicine.

Tieraona Low Dog, MD, is an internationally recognized physician, educator, author, and expert in integrative medicine, dietary supplements, herbal medicine, and women’s health. Dr. Low Dog is a four-time National Geographic author, international speaker, and consultant to Fortune 500 companies. A co-founding member of the American Board of Integrative Medicine, and Presidential Appointee under Bill Clinton, Dr. Low Dog has received many meritorious awards from academia, public health, and the natural products industry, including Time Magazine’s Innovator of the Year in Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Pat is a Diné (Navajo) mother, grandmother, activist, artist, writer, ceremonial leader, and international speaker. She is a voice for global peace, and her paintings are created as tools for individual, earth and global healing. She draws upon the Indigenous sciences of Thriving Life to reframe questions about sustainability and balance, and she is devoted to supporting the next generations, Women’s Nation and Men’s Nation, in being functional members of the “Hoop of Life” and upholding the honor of being human.

Eliot was a visionary in the spiritual and healing world, author and teacher of Plant Spirit Medicine, Founder of Blue Deer Center, a healing retreat center in upstate New York and its Huichol Art Project that supports an ongoing relationship to the Huichol people of the Sierra Madres Mountains of western Mexico. In his quiet way, Eliot was a pioneer and force for bringing the traditional ways of living and healing to many people. His passion was to bring spiritual healing to the human heart.