About Kiva Rose:

KIVA ROSE is a traditional herbalist whose practice is focused on a vitalist approach to local plants, sustainability, whole person/whole plant understandings and earthy, practical ways of teaching people to work with the plants themselves rather than being dependent on experts. Her focus is on accessible, grassroots herbalism that empowers the individual and serves the community, both the human component as well as the larger earthen community. She believes in restoring health at all levels and approaches healing from the understanding that the body is a diverse and intelligent ecology, integrally connected to the planet as a whole. As such, she frequently works in an integrative style, including herbal medicine, nutrition, counseling and other holistic therapies in her practice.

Kiva is a codirector and instructor at the Anima Lifeways & Herbal School, and also serves as a director and herbalist for the Anima Healing Arts Health & Herbal Clinic on an 80 acre botanical sanctuary located in southwest New Mexico near the village of Reserve. As a cofounder of the Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference, she is intensely interested in facilitating the continuance and spread of traditional, grassroots herbal medicine.

With a passion for the preservation and restoration of wild land, native plants and biodiversity, Kiva is actively involved in the healing and growth of the Anima Lifeways & Herbal School's 80 acre botanical sanctuary and wildlife refuge. Through the reintroduction of indigenous plant species, propagation of existing species and an ongoing biological survey of the land, she continues to fall ever deeper in love with the unique beauty of the Gila bioregion of New Mexico. In addition to her teaching work and clinical practice, Kiva is also responsible for co-creating the curricula for the Anima correspondence courses and personally teaches all of the herbal courses as well as classes in ethnobotany, botany, foraging, edible wild plants, traditional lifeways and primal nutrition. She has garnered international attention for her inspiring and informative Anima Healing Arts blog.

"Kiva, it is true that we learn from the plants and experience but without the encouragement from you and your teachings I am not sure I would be the herbalist I am today. Your class and counsel has been transforming for me and I continue to reap the benefits of your teachings daily. Words cannot express how grateful I am to have you both as a dear friend and mentor. Your canyon medicines are amazing! "

- Angela Goodloe, Herbalist and Medicine Woman Mentorship Student

"Kiva Rose inspires me. Her passion, fascination and perpetual curiosity of plants, people, nature, and the relationship that binds them in wholeness stirs those touched by it; encourages our own listening, our own insights and musings. Making it all better, she writes beautifully. Her ability to capture and convey the spirit of the plants she writes about and the essence of the ideas that guide their use is a gift shared with both humility and mettle. Kiva, in a word, rocks."

-Jim McDonald, Practicing Herbalist, Teacher & Author

"Your writing voice is beautiful, you write from the gut and heart, and your words challenge your readers to open themselves and look closer and acknowledge the wildness in their lives. Deep, lush… and vital!"

-Cristina Eisenberg (author Dire Wolves, former managing editor of SageWoman magazine)

About Jesse Wolf Hardin:

JESSE WOLF HARDIN has been a leading voice of and for the natural world for nearly 4 decades, his work earning praise from a wide range of contemporaries from Gary Snyder and Edward Abbey to Leslie Tierra and Rosemary Gladstar. Hardin’s public appearances and published works have helped inspire deep personal inquiry, healing, and life-enhancing changes, as well as increased self sufficiency, grass roots organization, conservation legislation and community activism in this country. He was a featured presenter during the 1980s ad 90s at hundreds of universities, community centers and conferences nationwide, sometimes in cross cultural collaborations called “Medicine Shows” that melded his spoken word with the musical performances of well known Americana, Native American, Rock and Reggae bands.

Hardin is the author of over 600 published magazine articles and 7 books, including I’m a Medicine Woman Too! (Hops Press 2009), an illustrated tale of herbal wisdom and personal empowerment for all ages, and Home: Reinhabiting Self, Place & Purpose (Sweet Medicine Press 2010). His work appears in The Encyclopedia Of Nature & Religion (Continuum 2005), The Soul Unearthed (Tarcher/Putnam, ‘96) and How Shall I Live my Life? (PM Press 2008). He is also the interpretive artist for several herbalist’s logos, and is currently contributing plant illustrations and writings to his partner Kiva’s upcoming herbal book. With the help of fellow author Loba, they tend and restore a riverside botanical and wildlife refuge in S.W. New Mexico, the base for the Animá Lifeways & Herbal School and host to herbal workshops, a shamanic intensive, vision quests and retreats. It is thanks to a donated solar powered satellite internet connection, that they are able to interact with publications, allies and correspondence course students from the heart of their remote wilderness home.

Hardin’s connection to the plant world goes back his childhood preoccupation with all thing green and growing, followed with him as he ran away from military school at age 13, inspired his art as he opened his Mt. Unique Gallery in Taos in 1978, and was part of the reason for his moving to the sanctuary in 1980, seven river crossings from the nearest road. It led to his dedicating the land to the purposes of a botanical refuge for protecting or reintroducing native and especially medicinal plants, and to joining Kiva in envisioning a school and curricula focused on increased abilities for healing not only the self and others but also the natural world that is “more than our pantry and pharmacy... it is us.” The Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference is a natural extension of their work, and an act of love.

"Hardin's word and voice is the haunting cry of a wild-voiced wilderness seer.... the ecstatic song of an Earth lover, a man intoxicated with the beauty and diversity of life.”

-Prof. Ralph Metzner author of Green Psychology

“Hardin’s voice inspires our passion to take us further — seeing the world whole — even holy.”

-Terry Tempest Williams Naturalist In Residence, author of Red

“I'm a Medicine Woman, Too! is a wonderful book to connect children with herbal traditions. The story role-models an ethic of healing and caring for other people and honoring our elders... compelling us to become healers too."

-Thomas J. Elpel, author of Botany in a Day

“Jesse Wolf Hardin addresses the need of human beings to search within themselves, and within their bioregions, and to make the connections that may save our sanity, and the planet too. I know of no-one more thoughtful or articulate or inspiring.”

-Jerry Mander author of In The Absence of The Sacred

“Jesse sings us Full Circle to the raw, sweet wildness within...”

-Joanna Macy, author of World As Self, World As Lover

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