Knowledge Share Description
Sauna is an ancient healing medicine of Finnish peoples. Once upon a time we, like all people had a complex, intricate medicine system comprising of plant remedies, various healing modalities, and spiritual practices. Many of these exist now only in lore, and anthropological record, while others are slowly being recreated and uncovered by practitioners like myself, but Sauna is one that's alive and thriving throughout Baltic, Slavic and Scandinavian lands. Our own twist on medicinal healing baths, Sauna is a living ancestral tradition in all of our modern cultures, with a continuum of practice stretching all the way to The Stone Age.
In this knowledge share we will discuss the Finnish Sauna in historical and modern context, learn about Finnish water medicine, herbal baths, and spiritual practices associated with Sauna work. We will explore healing properties of water both from ancestral and scientific perspectives, learn medicine bath practices for self-care, and make offerings to The Spirits of The Sauna. These practices are helpful and powerful even in a context outside of having access to a steam room, or being of Finno-Ugric, Baltic or Slavic extraction. They are the magical of mundane, or that practical otherworldly which marks all of my people's ancient folk practices. These everyday rituals of bathing well are some of the oldest continuous traditions on the edges of "Old Europe", and some of the most vibrant and accessible.
Knowledge Share Includes
Folk Magic from birth to death and everything in between
Water as a healer/ guide/ conduit
Bathing with plants
Folk healing with herbs
Bathing as a spiritual practice
Offerings to the ever present other realms
Mundane Magic of Daily ritual
Private and Communal acts of care
Resource Package
1/2 oz smoke sauna essence for the spirit of the Sauna
1 oz bath herbs for dreams. Ingredients: Mugwort, Pine, Birch, and Angelica
1 oz pine body oil
Exchange
$35 (Knowledge Share)
$77 (Resource Package + Knowledge Share)
$80 Pay-It-Forward (Does NOT include resource package)
$100 reparations (Includes Knowledge Share + Resource Package. If you have financial abundance, this is our pay-it-forward option to fund our scholarships and work redistributing resources to Black and Indigenous Land Projects)
For scholarships please email herbancura@gmail.com with subject Sauna
Access
*ASR Captioning provided
*Spanish interpretation available (Si requiere interpretacion por favor mande un email a herbancura@gmail.com)
Virtual Gathering
Zoom link will be sent out via email 1-2 days before knowledge share
4-7pm EST
Class will be recorded and available for 30 days
Facilitator
This Knowledge Share will be facilitated by Milla Prince of Fireweed & Nettle.
I grew up in the endless boreal forests of Eastern Finland, about two hundred miles from the Arctic Circle, and a hundred miles from the Russian border. My work as a writer and folk herbalist is grounded in my people’s ancestral folk medicine and my culture’s surviving land-based practices. I am also a student of my paternal side’s Palestinian medicine, and love exploring both the striking differences and surprising similarities of the two cultures. Among my many passions are connecting people with their own ancestral folk lineage with plants and writing about the intersections of old ways, ancient practices and the modern world. Through my work, I hope to share plant medicine, ancestral herbalism, community resilience, reciprocity, land-based healing, animism and folk magic for the wild and wooly times we live in. I’m an immigrant to what we currently call the USA, and live on a small island on unceded Coast Salish Territory. In English I use she/her pronouns. My website is (constantly under construction) www.thewomanwhomarriedabear.com and that's also my instagram.