Photo credit, Luisa Porter, Catfish Alley Magazine
Welcome to Lindsay Kolasa’s site ~
Herbalist, Naturalist, Soul-worker
With 10 years experience in social work and non-profit management, I steadily began to shift from my work-life into my current life-work in 2009.
I make plant medicine, I teach, I muse and write, and I help people along their path through soul-work.
Join me for a 10-month, distance program using the Medicine Wheel, starting February 2020.
I am fifth generation funky, urban New Orleans and sixth generation rural, red hills Mississippian. My roots go back further than that on both sides, but these two places are what constitute most of my childhood memories and what I am made of…as well as the stories that have been passed down to me. My people were a mix of potters, farmers, lumberman, seamstresses, seltzer truck drivers, minor league baseball players, stevedores, and musicians. I am but song of my ancestors. I am their unhealed things, their triumphs, and their memories.
I start with this as I was taught the importance of place-based understanding some time ago by an elder. So then, I shared with you some of my culture and my roots.
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The core of my work centers around herbal medicine, traditional food ways, soul-work, dream-work, ancestor-work, and art. In particular, I am interested in mental health, digestion, trauma & recovery, and auto-immune disorders. Basically, topics I have been exploring during my own journey to heal from a health crisis back in 2001.
My work leans on common sense, the slow & natural, and the soulful. In my practice and personal life I have noticed that when we get closer to the basic elements of life, our system can find balance and align itself for healing. Over the years, I have helped people reconnect with their sensibilities and their own inner healer so that they are more sure-footed on their healing journey.
As well, I’ve witnessed the gratifying process of meaning-making as it unfolds in my own life and in others’ lives. It comes easily and naturally when we are given permission to personally understand and explore our own story and the greater story it is woven into.
Truly…it seems like some of the deepest medicine is in the simple act of remembering…re-membering our tattered souls through the work that heals.
Feel free to explore the tabs to see upcoming workshops & retreats, to learn about my consultations, and to read blog posts on herbalism, whole foods recipes, and other gems.
Thank you for visiting…
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If you are interested, check out my zine Seasonal Living with Herbs & Food of the Deep South and my mobile, contemplative art piece, a medicine wheel bandana…
If you are up for some reading, here are some of my most viewed blog posts:
A Survivor’s Guide to the Essential Oil Craze
Long-lost, Long-leaf: The Return of a Forgotten Forest?
Poke: A Deep South Herb for Deep Work
I Was Born to Do This (an exploration of psychosis)
“To be healthy is to be whole and to be holy.
It is to acknowledge the great goodness that our bodies are linked to the bodies of other people, to the bodies of plants and animals, indeed to the earth, the sun and moon, and the other heavenly bodies. It is to receive the awareness, at once humbling and exhilarating, that we are a part of Creation, one with all that we live from and all that, in turn, lives from us.”
~ Wendell Berry
