Equinox is Friday, September 22, 2017 at 1:02 pm PDT.  This is our northern hemisphere’s time of officially entering fall. Our hopes are eternal for an ‘Indian’ summer here in Oregon, unless it means more fire danger. Grass will be speaking green again soon, and leaves will be melting into the compost heap.  The love produced from spring and summer cultivation is reigning supreme now.

Saturday the 16th, from 3 pm, lets celebrate a harvest time with an attitude of gratitude, and smiles to share all around.  Come with some healthy finger food, your reflections journal and pens, journey blanket, and your own ‘take’ on how we are all blessed right now.  Looks like it will be comfortable weather, but cooling off, so bring a layer.

I am so grateful for you in my life. And because of you, the world is a much better place.  Me? you say…  Yes! You!  You are part of this circle, and the quantum entanglement is enriched, enlivened, and blesses us all. 

• Thank you for your quiet kindnesses that are most likely not noticed but by the one receiving, because you are changing the world one heart at a time.
• And, for how you continue to polish your life’s reflecting mirror, being responsible for your part of this co-creation.
• Also, thank you for how you extend yourself to be a good friend and confidant to the world around you…this camaraderie is the reminder that we are each really safe, that we have ways, like a container that holds water, to offer our intimate selves to the world, and that we are deepening in the emotional spelunking adventures we share.
  

To go into fall fully aware of the drawing down of the season, is the way to get the most out of winter, which is the basis of manifesting your heart’s desire next year, so besides just enjoying the flourishing colors and relaxation of summer’s job-well-done, lets take it to the next level so we are thriving and not just surviving in the coming times.  There is so much good in the world, if we can pause and see it, without filtering our perceptions using a barrage of senseless veils. 

I’d like to take some time as well to talk about how we all may be struggling with some sovereignty concerns, from the largest scale of choosing global peace over world domination, down to the smallest personal issues.  Are any of things that are getting under your skin, waving flags to you about boundaries, and changing up your perspective about them being crossed?  Are there some new ways of looking at the perpetrator without the stereotype?  Can the current group of challenges be interpreted in terms of sovereignty, your ‘rights’ in this lifetime (rather than obligations), and whether there is someone’s behavior or attitude that ‘makes you (or someone else) wrong’?  Interesting thread to wrap up.  Summer has shared a wealth of opportunities to explore sovereignty!

Saturday will be an experiential journey into earth-speak to dream about what guidance can come from listening and hearing the mother-ship.  Thank you for all you bring to our lives!

Join us on April 23rd for an Earth Day Celebration at Thyme Garden!

Children welcome.  See the details under the picture below.

We will be doing a healing circle at 2 pm, incorporating their wonderful water and forest setting. Looking forward to bringing focus ​to healing our earth and our selves!

Please let me know whether you are able to come and be part of our circle. I will be bringing drums and rattles, so let me know what you can bring, and that you will be present to help me carry out the vision!

Thanks much!  Jaiaen

Herbs & Healing at The Thyme Garden; An Earth Day Celebration

Sunday, April 23rd

Join us for a day of learning and fun as we look at herbs for healing, ways to care for our environment, and come together with a special healing ceremony to wrap up the day.

The gardens are a perfect place to enjoy the coming of spring. The nursery will be bursting with beautiful herb starts; the craft shop open for gifts and goodies. Be sure to bring the kids for an Earth Factoid Scavenger Hunt in the garden—find all the clues and you will receive a free plant!

Herbal refreshments will be available for purchase 11-2.   Homemade Thyme Garden Vegan Potato Nettle Soup, fresh baked bread, and assorted treats.

EVENT SCHEDULE

11:00 Story time with Ms. Nancy. Alsea’s local librarian will enchant the young ones with stories focused on caring for the Earth and ourselves.

11:30 The Healing Garden

Making your own herbal medicines from plants you have nurtured takes natural healing to a whole new level and enriches both the grower and the garden. Led by Jaci Guerena, Sunnyside Herb School, Corvallis.

12:45 Forest Tours

Group 1: Stream Restoration Walk. Learn about The Thyme Garden’s amazing project to create beautiful spawning habitat for the native Coho salmon and explore the magical Coast Range forest.

Group 2: Spring Herb Walk. Learn about the powerful plant allies that are growing all around us. Gain appreciation for healing plants, the importance of responsible wild crafting, and using native plants for medicine.

2:00 Healing the Earth and Ourselves. Join us as we create a sacred space for the earth and ourselves, led by Jaiaen Beck, founder of Circle of Well Being and Ancient Ways. Jaiaen is a teacher of shamanism and alternative healing approaches. Share in a mystical and uplifting experience. Let’s send positive energy out there for our Mother Earth and each other! Children welcome.

The Thyme Garden is a nursery & herb garden nestled in the Coast Range Mountains of Oregon, established in 1989. They are pleased to offer the Northwest’s largest collection of hops, herb seeds and plants. Their beautiful display gardens are open to visitors spring through summer. They also host herbal luncheons, tours, special events and weddings.

Directions: Head west from Corvallis and take a left at the Y in Philomath, on Hwy. 34 to Waldport. Continue 3 miles past Mary’s Peak turnoff. Venue on left.

For more information, please contact Emily Stimac, 541-487-8671.

In the wee hours of the morning Monday March 20th spring equinox raises its sleepy winter head and greets all the potentiality for the next year.  How do you find yourself … really ready for spring, like just craving more sun and gardening, or really hankering for more hunkering down with winter comforts reminding you of gratitude for relaxation and repose?

Lets explore that together on Saturday March 18th starting at 4 pm.  Come at 3 pm to help gather branches. 

Bring healthy finger foods, your journey blanket and journal, pens, and rattle or drums if you like.  Feel free to bring a friend or newbie.

We look to winter as a time to:

• store up the energy required to manifest the year,
• finish grieving any losses of last year to be able to “get on with living life”, and
• dreaming up new beginnings and seeing how to slice through the illusions that stop us from planting the seeds of our truest desires.

What seeds are you clearly wanting to plant? Is this what you think, or what you feel?  Is there any debris from 2016 (and before) that you want to remove…things that in themselves create obstacles and/or just sit there obstinately reminding you that you have tripped over them many times before?

• Emotions yelling your name on your map of reality, saying “dig here”, but which have been ignored?
• Mental constructs holding pretenses and preconceived limitations for you and everyone else, that you hold expectations of fitting, like a bad shoe?
• Spiritual “beliefs” that keep you in a box, trying to contain the immeasurable?
• Body stuff, like self-images that are worn out and hold absolutely no truth about who you really are?

What are the things you can shed over the next week to 10 days?  Give it your attention! How do you ask your spiritual allies for help with that (you know, Great Spirit/Creator/God/Infinite One, Power Animals/True Ones/Angels, Great Ones, Dear Ones, etc.)?  Can you be willing to (be willing to be willing to) surrender all of those meaty pieces of your old life, just like snow melting? Giving it up?  Allowing the new that comes with the birth of daffodils springing up?

Now is the time to really take time and form your seeds of intention for 2017. 

Do you want life to be different this year?  Now is the time to invest in yourself, as our mother earth is also reaching towards the next unfolding!  We are supported NOW in shifting our delusions about it all. And, in dreaming up a new way forward.

Let me know if you will be able to make it! 3-18 4pm Here.  Thanks!
Jaiaen

Brrrr….what a sweet end to fall!

Solstice, very early this coming Wednesday, is the official beginning of our wintertime blessings.  And, as long as the warming trend starts up as predicated, the Circle of Well Being will come together on Monday evening, the 19^th for a few hours.  It looks like we will be in the 40’s by then!

We will gather branches at 4 pm, so do come with your boots and coat to experience the spirit of that!  Please arrive no later than 5 pm and bring:

• A natural fiber journey blanket, journal and pens, pencils, colors if you like.
• Some healthy finger food to share.
• Drum or rattle if you like (there are plenty here if you don’t)
• A friend or co-hort – anyone is welcome, no journey experience is needed.

FOR THE HOLIDAY SHOPPER please feel free to come from 1 to 4 pm, or stay late, to check out Oregon Mineral and Mercantile’s full spectrum of holiday gifts. Here are some pics!  Besides the obvious stone world, there is an unusual selection to consider for your gift buying, with some real superb deals starting at 25 cents for the thrifty shopper with lots of people in mind! Members of Ancient Ways, or Circle monthly class members take 10% off!

So what is it about winter that is such a blessing?  Isn’t it just dark and cloudy with a lot of rain? Let’s imagine for a minute that you are the creator of your experience.  And, that you are beautifully entangled with everything on our earth.  You are another part of the generous and bountiful eco-system and terrain that envelopes everything in your life.  You benefit directly, obviously and richly from the sustenance and nurturing we call Mother Nature.  Depending upon where you live, you see the changes of the seasons.  Here in the Pacific Northwest we receive the most dramatic shows of colorful growth, as well as shedding.

Our fall has again been blessing us with shedding everything that we are willing and able.  Maybe a small annoying habit has left your life.  Maybe you surrendered an attachment to a belief in how things must work to be fair and just.  Maybe you let go of dreaming up the outer world as being what empowers you, and instead decided to imagine yourself able to influence the outcomes with different choices, not letting the material, political, economic, religious, or familial “world” hold dominion over you. Lots of shedding this fall!  So now, we get to go into our cave!

YES to this sweet inside time to re-dream our lives!  Hunker down and watch the embers of your soul.  Observe what makes them flicker.  See what stirs your spirit. Be really okay with slowing down and going inside.  If you do this now, while the earth here is also sleeping, you will awaken in spring quite renewed with enough inspiration and hope to generate and grow a new year in an empowering and vital way.

We are heading into a wonderful time of restoration, but we must look within.  The kingdom of heaven is within, and that is where we find that full spectrum of possibility.  The potential that is ignited in the fire of our life is fueled first and foremost by our choice, by our preferences, by our decision to BE.  I AM.  Winter is a beautifully creative time to go inside and see how you want to finish that sentence…I AM…  Making the choice to be authentic, be genuine and true to your heart, your path, your self.

Give the last few days of fall your best, and keep “shedding” up until late Tuesday night when your head hits the pillow, then ask for any remaining leaves on your tree to dissolve into the night.  When you wake up on Wednesday, it’s like another form of holiday has arrived and it’s time to let yourself rest and naturally dream a new way forward.  We are given 3 months to paint the blank canvas, when we will check in again at Spring Equinox and see what seeds you chose to plant for 2017.

Come and share your life and love with this community!

Feeling autumn all around you?  Cooler weather, colors evolving, tasty harvests, and smells only this time of year can bring…just saw my first flock of geese on a trajectory.  Feeling gratitude for a mind-blowing reaping time – 7 puppies just about 6 weeks old, 5 performing opportunities this month,  burgeoning marimba newbies, wonderfully kind, new and old friends, and the gardens blessing us all.

Autumn equinox is officially upon us – Thursday the 22nd early morning.   Feel free to join us for an equinox celebration at the regular time (3rd Saturday – the 17th, from 3 to 8 pm, beginning no later than 4 pm).  Help yourself to the earth’s bounty and use the power of nature to shift your life into fall gear.

Bring your drum/rattle, journey blanket, eye cover, table and pen and your favorite healthy finger food.  Be prepared to be outside. The new forest trails that opened for the Bana Kuma retreat this summer are beckoning!

Don’t hesitate to bring a friend…this is a good place to bring someone without journey experience.  Please call with questions!

Looking forward to seeing you and sharing a summer wrap up with a re-charge for the next phase of this year. And if you can’t make it…

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields
and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of His hand.

(traditional Gaelic blessing)

Annette will be here from 10 am to 3 pm in case you have not made your appointment.

1/2 hour is $45, 1 hour is $75 for that much-needed vacation, and 1.5 hours is $95 for those who appreciate a longer trip.

Feel free to call 503-510-4587…she is a busy gal so just leave a message.

May 15th Massage day is cancelled due to a death in Annette’s family…please send her your Large Love!

Hoping May is going well for you and the seeds you planted during Equinox are growing well!

Now is a great time to think about your tending…are you taking time to weed, to water, to wonder? Are they getting enough food, air circulation, sunlight?

This is a great check in time so you aren’t waiting until next month when we greet Solstice and find your seedlings are buried in brambles, choked out by too many other concerns, or spindly without good roots, etc.

Personally I’m challenged by having taken time out of my winter cave, gone to the other side of the world where it was summer, and not had enough hibernation and rest to really keep up with this warm flush we’re in. Wow…what a great spring!

See some of you next weekend for May’s Explore the Intersection classes!

Some of us have been talking about the massage room being open for you.  This is a reminder that April 30th, next Saturday, Annette Boyajian will again be here from 11 am to 3 pm. Please give her a call to set up an appointment.

1/2 hour is $45, 1 hour is $75 for that much-needed vacation, and 1.5 hours is $95 for those who appreciate a longer trip.  Feel free to call 503-510-4587…she is a busy gal so just leave a message.

Here is the plan:

• April 30th, 11 to 3 pm
• Also for Mother’s Day, May 15th here, same hours.  Book yourself a treat!
• From June to November she will be here on the Last Saturday of the month, same hours.

I have found Annette to be consistent in her approach, and able to move into my space, finding those places that need special care.  She knows much about working with injury, tension, and just plain feel-good techniques.