Classes & Workshops

Heart Medicine for the Holidays: An Online Herbal Class for Surviving the Holiday Season
Thursday December 15th, 2022
6-7:30pm PT, Online by Zoom
Register at Eventbrite

The winter holiday season is here, and let’s be real, it’s not an easy time of year for a lot of us. It’s a season that can be a beautiful time of rest, reflection and connectedness, however many of us experience feelings of grief, anxiety and overwhelm as we navigate our own personal stressors and triggers during the season. Whether it’s complicated family dynamics, lack of family, mourning loved ones who are no longer here, or feeling stressed and busy, there’s a lot that can come up for us.

In this online class, we’ll explore working with different herbal allies that can support us to slow down and lovingly tend to our hearts. We’ll practice tuning into the gentle and restful energy the winter season can provide through learning about seasonal plants, modeling self care practices like herbal oiling, and providing guidance on teas and tinctures that can help reduce stress and anxiety.

This class is open to people with any level of experience with plants. This is an online class. A recording will be shared with class participants.

Rebekah Sze-Tung Olstad (she/her) is a community and clinical herbalist dedicated to the health and wellbeing of individuals, organizations, and ecological communities. Through her private practice, Red Autumn Apothecary, she supports people’s health one-on-one, teaches workshops, and makes herbal remedies. In addition to her work with the plants, Bekah has spent the past decade supporting environmental and human rights non-profits through communications strategy. She organizes cultural healing spaces for people of the Asian diaspora and is also a volunteer organizer supporting the restoration of salmon and Indigenous lifeways with Run4Salmon. She is grateful to the plants for the healing they provide our communities! Learn more at www.redautumnapothecary.com.

Tending the Hearth: Creating Sacred Space & Daily Routines at Home
7 week online course
Thursdays 6-8pm PST, May 20th - July 1st
Energy Exchange (Cost): $275; 2 Full Scholarships for BIPOC available (UPDATE: Both scholarships are claimed. Please contact me if you need a sliding scale.)
Class size: 8 participants minimum, 16 participants maximum
Class is open to all.
Apply Now

In this course we will take a deep dive into the realm of the hearth. The hearth, or home space, has traditionally been the center of all activities. The hearth can be one of the foundational places to nourish ourselves physically, emotionally and spiritually. The goal of this course is to create a supportive environment to explore our relationship to home and the foundational habits that can support our personal wellness.

Home is a place where we can experience rest, relaxation, and joy. Conversely, home can be a place of challenge, strife, and even trauma. Some of us don’t have access to stable housing. For many of us, the pandemic has also shifted and highlighted balance and imbalance in our relationships to home. In this course we are invited to meet ourselves with gentleness of where we are at now, and to ask how we can bring a sense of sacredness and calm to our spaces and our daily practices.

As a small cohort, we will have time to reflect and support each other as we explore these topics. There will be opportunities to do self assessments, exploration, and personal goal setting for creating sacred space at home and solidifying daily routines. We will draw inspiration from ancestral and cultural healing practices of tending the hearth with love and care. We will center the interconnectedness of healing in community and healing from the oppressive systems of colonization and racial capitalism.

Class Syllabus & Flow (Subject to Change)  
*Classes taught by Rebekah Sze-Tung Olstad, with guest teachers noted.

May 20th - Intro Class
May 27th - Creating intentional & sacred space at home. Guest class with Melissa Reyes
June 3rd - Nourishing Ourselves with Sleep, Movement & Mindfulness
June 10th - Designing Harmonious Spaces at Home with Feng Shui. Guest class with Kathleen Lucas.
June 17th - Creating Healthy Relationships with Technology in the Home
June 24th - Tending the Kitchen Hearth & Garden Path
July 1st - Closing & Celebration

Technical Information:
-Classes will be conducted on Zoom. Computer access is preferable for use of collaborative tools.
Video recordings will be available; live attendance is encouraged whenever possible.

-We will have a Slack channel open for participants to connect with each other outside of class. Participation on the Slack channel isn’t mandatory, but will hopefully be a helpful and meaningful tool to stay connected.

-Zoom fatigue is real! I love teaching online and know we can create a special and connected space together through the web. That being said, I believe you’ll get the most out of this course if you have the time and mental & emotional bandwidth to be available and online for two hours each week in addition to your other online obligations.

Energy Exchange:

$275 for 7 week course.
2 full scholarships are available; available to POC. (UPDATE: Both scholarships are claimed. Please contact me if you need a sliding scale.)
Are you interested in supporting more people to access this course? I’m welcoming community support through donations (Venmo @RebekahOlstad and Paypal - rebekah.olstad@gmail.com) and will update the site with community scholarships as available.

Questions? Please feel free to contact me at rebekah.olstad@gmail.com with any questions about the course.

Ready to join? Apply Now!

About the Teachers:

Testimonials From Former Students