Classes

  • Group Facilitation as Ceremony: Ceremonial Design & Spaceholding Skills (4 hours)


    For thousands of years, entheogenic plant medicines have been utilized in human cultures for personal and collective healing within group ceremonial contexts. Rooting ourselves in indigenous, eco-centric, and animistic worldviews, we will explore the intentional use of psilocybin mushrooms and other plant teachers for the purpose of healing. Together, we will seek to answer the question: How can we create group psychedelic experiences that support health, are authentic for our time, place, and culture, and which honor indigenous peoples and the web of life? 


    As a course participant, you will:

    • Immerse yourself in a supportive, collaborative learning environment

    • Explore holistic worldviews and their relevance for plant medicine facilitation

    • Deepen your relationship with the plant medicines you work with, as well as your spiritual resources

    • Learn about basic ceremonial formats, and design your own authentic ceremonial structure

    • Practice spaceholding skills designed to maintain both the physical and energetic integrity and safety of the ceremonial container

  • This professional development course focuses on multicultural considerations and understandings of working with psychedelics in addiction recovery. It offers a client centered approach informed by a holistic perspective that brings in the relationship between addiction recovery and psychedelics.  

    We will explore different models of addiction, their underlying assumptions, and discuss how they perpetuate oppression and marginalization of BIPOC communities.  BIPOC communities are overrepresented in the criminal justice system based on drug related crimes.  The consequences of drug use and addiction unfairly impact communities of color in ways that collude with existing systems of oppression and marginalization.  Communities of color are under diagnosed in mental health disorders increasing the risk of self-medication using substances that can lead to addictive use and dependency.  Psychedelic medicines have been shown to reduce the impact of race related trauma therefore increasing potential for successful addiction treatment.

    A variety of practical approaches and applications will be offered to assist participants to creatively develop their own ways to attend to preparation and integration for their clients who have decided to seek a psychedelic experience to aid their recovery.  Psychedelic preparation and integration includes working with people before and after the psychedelic experience, independently of that experience regardless of whether the provider is involved in that experience or not. 

  • This course examines ethical considerations that impact the overall and long-term experience of clients who receive psilocybin-assisted facilitation.  It reviews current research on ethical issues, and harm reduction interventions in psychedelic-assisted therapy practices. It offers a review of ethical anthropocentric and biocentric perspectives on working with psychedelic medicines. It also reviews current Oregon law for facilitators.

Singing Circles

We gather regularly to come together and sing a variety of songs in a relaxed communal setting, often focusing on improvisation, shared vocal exploration, and building connecting through our voice and music.  No prior sining experience is necessary.  We are lead by Veronica Vargas, who will guide the group through warm-ups, song selections, and incorporates elements of call-and-response and spontaneous harmony creation.  The intentions of this group is to foster a sense of community and creative expression through shared singing.

Foraging Adventures

We gather and head on a nature adventure to forage for mushrooms. On these excursions, people will learn how to identify different types of wild mushrooms, distinguish between edible and poisonous varieties, understand habitat preferences, practice proper harvesting techniques that includes proper cleaning, storing and cooking of the mushrooms found.  The day will be guided by a knowledgeable instructor in a PNW forest.     

Psilocybin Facilitation 

    Our licensed facilitators will work closely with you and the mushrooms at a service center.  This is a collaborative process, relying on the inner healing  intelligence of the individual, the wisdom of the mushroom, and scared and intentional space holding of the facilitator.  Please contact us to get a list of our community members who are licensed facilitators in the state of Oregon.

A time to commune together in gratitude and beauty

Modern life constantly encourages disconnection from ourselves and the natural world, leaving us with a sense of deep separation, longing, sadness, and despair. It is time to devote our time, intention, and action to reconnecting us with our earth home and creating belonging and reciprocity in journeying with others and communing with the Ninos Santos.

Weaving Bridges offers four ceremonies per year to gather in deep gratitude and beauty and in the openness of the uncertain and the unknown. In the arms of the possibly human container, we open up to sit the yet to be known to be in relationship with unknown parts of ourselves and unknown parts of relationships with others (human and other than human). 

Our ceremony is about reciprocity. We start with giving our presence, attention, emotions, prayers, and offerings. We work with the Ninos Santos to experience, learn, and heal in community. We offer our songs, movement, and art practices out in nature to build back the memory and practice of connection with all beings. In our hearts, our relatives extend to all things sentient and not, across all aspects of the natural and cosmic realms, reverberating through time and space into the non-ordinary realities of everything inextricably interconnected. This is healing for humans and the other-than-human world.

These sacred ceremonies will be offered 4 times a year, giving us a place to realign with nature and the other-than-human world.