Monday March 8: Cease Wyss – Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Ethnobotany
Monday March 15: Muneera Wallace – Ayurveda 101 for Artists
Monday March 22: Jhaimy Alvarez-Acosta – Traditional Curandero (Healer)
Monday March 29: Desiree Dawson and Alysha Brilla – Yoga and Sound Healing
Monday April 5: Sara Brooke Cadeau – Lightning Conductor
Monday April 12: Jillian Christmas – Writing the Divine Body
Here at Vines, we believe that artists are so much more than just folks who can wield imagination and harness the ability to create thought provoking art that changes our communities. We believe in the many levels of care for artists to succeed in their many passions. We are excited to introduce our Artist Wellness Cultivation sessions, inviting generous teachers from many backgrounds to lead guided sessions for artists within the Vines Community to explore new ways to take care of yourself with our help. Artist Wellness Cultivation is our way to showcase and share the many brilliant ways in which we share cultural knowledge and prioritize the deep Ancestral knowledge within our brilliant Vines ecosystem. Join us every Monday from 5 to 6:30PM PST! Prioritizing intersectional identities, specifically Black, Indigenous, of colour, migrants, disabled, houseless, queer, and trans folks to participate. This will be online until provincial health orders allow for outdoor socially distanced gatherings, weather permitted.
Cease Wyss
T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss’ diverse heritage includes Skwxwu7mesh, Sto:lo, Irish-Métis, Hawaiian and Swiss. An artist, she has extensive experience producing various formats of media art for almost 30 years, and works as an ethnobotanist with traditional training by Indigenous elders. Wyss combines culturally focused teaching with storytelling as a means to share knowledge.
She recently co-authored Journey to Kaho’olawe, covering more than two centuries of the Kanaka family’s migration to the Pacific Northwest coast, and was also a recipient of the City of Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award for film and new media in 2010.
Among her long list of artist residencies and presentations is the Stanley Park Environmental Art Project, where she helped create public artworks after a storm devastated Stanley Park in 2006.
Muneera Wallace
Muneera is an Ayurvedic health coach. She has been living and sharing Ayurveda for the last 18 years. Muneera helps people use the wisdom of Ayurveda to master their habits and routines for more energy, lightness, and calm.
Muneera runs an online foundational health program called Be Radiant, and joyfully brings Ayurveda to her community through events and workshops here in Vancouver, on the unceded lands of the Coast Salish First Nations.
Read more about her work at radiantlivingvancouver.co
Ayurveda 101 for Artists with Muneera Wallace
Being an artist in our crazy world usually can mean having two very opposite experiences.
One of incredible joy from being connected to creative flow, and immersed in the bliss of making and sharing art (yes, so good!)
The other is that of emotional upheaval, and feelings of uncertainty. These include the self-doubt that comes before/after creating, the anxiety of surviving as an artist, and the general lack of consistency in anything from one day to the next.
What if I told you that this does not need to be your modus operandi? That there is a way to take these challenging aspects of life as an artist, and turn them into an easeful and supportive way of being?
In this workshop I will offer you simple tools from the traditional wisdom of Ayurveda to help you find stability and grounded-ness in your everyday life.
Ayurveda comes from a culture where artistry is revered as the highest expression of the divine. We know how to support our artists, and I am thrilled to bring this knowledge to you.
JHAIMY ALVAREZ-ACOSTA is a Traditional Curandero (Healer) from Cusco, Peru who has been trained and initiated in the Wisdom Teachings of the Andes. Jhaimy began his initiation onto this path at a young age as an apprentice to his Traditional Elders and has now walked the committed path of a Wisdomkeeper for over 25 years.
As a keeper of Ancient Wisdom Jhaimy has been invited to share his knowledge and lead ceremonies at conferences, workshops and specialized tours throughout South America, Europe and North America. He holds a degree in Tourism from La Universidad Andina del Cusco, is the Founder of TAM Tours in Peru and has been an invited guest speaker at several universities including Trent University and McGill University.
He is Co-Founder of Children of the Seven Rays and C7Rays Foundation, and is a spiritual teacher and guide best known for his heart-centered and humble approach to healing and spirituality.
Today, Jhaimy continues to be committed to the SERVICE OF LOVE and through ceremony, ritual and healing practices he supports people in moving past their limitations in order to liberate and connect with their heart and their purpose.
Alysha Brilla and Desiree Dawson both have a passion for community healing through sound, breath and movement. They decided to join forces to create this Yoga and Sound Healing offering. The combination of meditation, gentle physical movements, restorative poses and live music offers the participant a rest and reset for the nervous system and a space to drop into a deeper connection to self and to community
www.desireedawsonmusic.com
www.alyshabrilla.com
Sara Brooke Cadeau
Sara Brooke Cadeau is a mixed race and Anishnaabe woman whose family is registered to Garden River in Ontario.
Sara is a two spirit woman born and currently living on unceded and un surrendered Coast Salish territories. She has been studying and applying the energetic, creative and healing arts for over thirty years. She works and trains amongst multiple nations in trauma release and the reclamation of women’s medicine bundles.
Moving towards the grandmother years, she is focusing on assistance in the rebuild of traditional matriarchal and community governance systems.
Lightning Conductor with Sara Brooke Cadeau
Examining the relationship between the Creator and Creative.
What stands in our way of allowing the energy of our gifts to ground, shine , land and soar ?
Examining how fear and trauma contributes to artistic self sabotage and stagnancy.
How is this attached to our pain and how can we move that out of our bodies
Through a few mixed medium exercises, we will develop a practice where we begin falling in love with our healing possibilities. Let us continue along the artist’s path with curiosity, marvelling at its intersection with our bodies, spirits and gifs through art form(s). In doing this, we move out of the shadows, placing our faith in the muse who brings us into the hollow reed. In following them, we move from the pain and suppression of the abyss into the sunlight of the spirit.
Sara will be doing quick teachings inspired by years of assisting others with their own wellness through body work and trauma release, voice and writing exercises designed to excavate.
Let’s examine together how spiritual self care and release work creates and cultivates the inner space to do our real work, and ultimately to direct our energy to it’s best outcomes and maximum impact and ripple effects.
The offerings will be informed by the seven sacred ways of healing, the artist’s way and some other medicines which can not be named.
Please bring a matt or blanket, small pillow, pen , paper and you <3
Jillian Christmas
Jillian Christmas is a queer, afro-caribbean writer living on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam people (Vancouver, BC). Jillian works as an artist, educator, curator and consultant, she is the long-time spoken word curator of the Vancouver Writers Fest, and former artistic director of Verses Festival of Words. She has won numerous Grand Poetry Slam Championship titles and represented both Toronto and Vancouver at eleven national poetry events, notably breaking ground as the first Canadian to perform on the final stage of the Women of the World Poetry Slam. She has presented poetry and theory in a multitude of venues including the BC Civil Liberties gala, the SFU 2018 grad conference closing keynote, and numerous panels focussed on the intersections of critical race theory and contemporary art. She is the author of The Gospel of Breaking (Arsenal Pulp Press 2020), and the forthcoming children’s book, The Magic Shell (Flamingo Rampant Press 2021).
Writing the Divine Body with Jillian Christmas
“…what is a body of pleasure
collective knowledge delight
in motion How will we know it
unless we go searching
through the roughness
of being alive…”
– (excerpt from a home I can only leave once – The Gospel of Breaking)
Is there a quiet place on your body that is aching to be listened to? A corner calling to be dripped in honeyed lyric? What abundant beauty can we offer to ourselves, from ourselves in this moment of quiet isolation? What generous miracles can we discover in our own blessed company? Join in joyous exploration as we write, dream, paint, and speak love into our own soft places.
The tiny cut on the tip on my thumb, accidental carving of a meal made with love. The bruise on the back of your heel that begs to be pressed into remembering. This crease in this palm that will be named “holy”, claimed by our own open mouths. Call it a home we can only leave once, call it a body, divine.
Things you will need: a cozy, quiet space for writing and gentle movement, something to write with (paper/ pens), water (stay hydrated so you never have to get hydrated), some non-toxic art supplies (watercolour paints, non-toxic markers, make-up, washable pens/ paints).
