Dream Medicine

Most people have an essential question in their life. This question is their beacon. Some would even say this question is their karma. Abrah’s question is: how can life’s intoxicating beauty co-exist with the depth of despair and suffering life can bring? This question has led Abrah to work in hospice supporting the dying, train as a doula to hold women while they labour, travel to all continents on this planet, and spend a year in retreat in the Yukon wilderness.

Abrah’s practice of herbal medicine, she has been practicing Clinical Herbal Medicine for 17 years, has nourished this question and deepened her understanding of the transformation from illness to health, from despair to hope, and from disconnection to connection. Abrah is the author of The Weaving: Plants, Planets and People, The Herbal Apprentice: Plant Medicine and The Human Being, and the Herbal Apprentice Workbook. More about Abrah can be found on her website www.abraherbs.com or on Facebook at Abrah Herbalist in the Woods.

Mark has had a connection and cultivated an appreciation of Nature since childhood, growing up near the wooded parklands of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. He furthered his appreciation of Nature through practicing Tai Chi Chaun and probing the mysteries of the mystical movement of energy this practice creates. Later in life, Mark deepened his practice through a Teacher Training Course in Qi Gong with Lee Holden.  

Traveling, visiting, and living on different parts of the Earth; the desert near the Dead Sea, the mountains of the Canary Islands (living in a cave), and the beauty of the Greek Islands furthered Mark’s love of Nature.  Mark engages in the study and practice of Tibetan Buddhism, which brought him the experience of Caretaking a 400-acre property of a Meditation Centre in Ontario, for six years, where his bond with the livingness of the land profoundly impacted his spiritual life.  There Mark met his lovely and inspiring wife Abrah. After leaving the meditation centre, Mark and Abrah spent nine months in a deep wilderness retreat in the Yukon, experiencing the vast silences and changes of light of that forest environment, combined with encounters with black bears, lynxes, mosquitoes, and owls.  

Mark finds it deeply saddening to watch the convulsions of the Earth changes happening now on this planet after having been involved in Environmental activism in the past. In the 1990s Mark remembers canvassing for Greenpeace door to door talking about the dangers of Global Warming.  Mark’s aspiration is to continue deepening his bond with the Earth and sharing that with others.