Facilitadores y Clases // Facilitators and Classes

As we collectively return to ancestral practices like herbalism, storytelling becomes essential in helping us archive our knowledge, ensuring it lives on for future generations. Rooted in cultural memory and community wisdom, this offering invites participants to reclaim storytelling as a tool for reflection, resilience, and resistance. Through guided prompts and shared narratives, we make space to remember what has been silenced, honor what endures, and carry forward the medicine that lives within our recipes and our words.

Our Caribbean herbalism practices come from a variety of origins; African, Indigenous, European, Indian and many others which characterize our understanding of how to work with plants. While each Caribbean nation has their own histories, practices and understanding of healing, we have more in common than we may think.

From our language and methods of preparation to uses and spiritual practices, this workshop will guide you through the many similarities of Caribbean herbal practices and how connecting with our Caribbean relatives and their forms of herbalism can help us better understand our medicines as herbalists.

An immersive virtual offering exploring the sacred art of Caribbean diasporic spiritual baths (baños) and sweeping cleanses (barridas). This workshop includes guided discussion, worksheets, and practical techniques to help you tend to the body on a spiritual, emotional, and physical level. We’ll cover the history, symbolism, and herbal allies behind these ancestral technologies, along with modern ways to integrate them into your own or your healing work. Perfect for those seeking protection, cleansing, and grounding during times of change.

This workshop introduces a deeper way of working with aroma beyond essential oils through the practice of herbal oil infusions. You’ll get a brief overview of infusion methods and how they differ from essential oils, then shift into an exploration of scent as medicine.

We’ll explore how natural aromas e.g., earthy, green, floral, spicy, can teach us about a plant’s energetic and therapeutic qualities. Together, we’ll walk through several plants that grow in Puerto Rico and discuss what their scent reveals about how they support the body and spirit when infused into oil.

This is a session for plant lovers who want to connect more intuitively with local medicine, rooted in the land and in ancestral ways of knowing.

The purpose of this workshop is to highlight the powerful healing potential of everyday, culturally-significant foods, many of which are already in our kitchens. It also seeks to emphasize that choosing whole some ingredients, harvested locally whenever possible, and preparing them from scratch strengthens our connection to the land and to the history we share as a people.

Finally, I wish to emphasize that many of these foods have been consumed in Puerto Rico since time immemorial and connect us with ancestral practices and knowledge.

NOTE: THIS INTEGRATION IS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC AS A PAY WHAT YOU CAN GATHERING WITH A SEPARATE REGISTRATION LINK: HERE. This gathering will facilitate the exchange of different people and projects in Borikén, Caribbean and diasporas that work at the abundant intersection of queer, collective, plants, and ecosystems. Let´s get together to keep growing our communities and share our knowledge on queer ecologies, the rights of nature, interspecies governance and alternative models of land ownership/stewardship, practices that unite human and non-human bodies in relational and collective ways, breaking through heteronormativity and opening fluid spaces within past, present and future.

This gathering will be in Spanish and English with language justice.

An email will be sent to those who register for this workshop with a form that will ask for names/projects, locations, needs, offerings, etc so we can get ahead on the exchange of projects and contacts.

This gathering is for all of us. It’s content and success will be collective, with the support of Tara as facilitator and organizer of shared resources. If you would like to offer support/collaboration in the preparation of this gathering please reach out. I am currently looking for support in: Collective Agreements for the gathering, Language Justice, Resources/Material, as a start…

Documentation is an act of love. Participants will learn about the power of cultural documentation as a mechanism for cultural sustainability. Through examples of Botánica Pictures' film projects (both narrative and documentary) we'll show how we share and advance cultural healing traditions (including foodways, land use, medicine and spiritual practice) through creative storytelling and media. Participants will share their own questions, ideas and practices related to documentation. We'll discuss ethics and decolonized praxis in our collective work.

Same workshop description as above.

This workshop is a group dive into the sounds of memory to explore the dynamics of plants in Puerto Rican music.

The music of Caribbean Islands such as Boriken are a rich archive of plant human interactions, not only through the musical instruments employed, but also in the verses of songs and the names of the band. These songs help to reinforce communal plant knowledge across generations......connecting to the traditions of the Taino Areito to Bomba, Plena, Seis Jibaro, Salsa, and even Reggaeton through the lens of plants and plant knowledge.

The impact of the session will plant seeds of healing and new understanding to the Indigenous identity in relation to land.

I will use photos and an agricultural slide deck to share the connection with my Borikua Taino roots, and how my journey has helped me navigate struggles with my identity, intergenerational trauma and grief to open a broader message regarding the power of cultura in inter-personal healing.

An open dialogue about the wounds that arise at the disconnection to land and lineage practices, what is present in our bodies as we listen? Introducing the energy of Bija flower essence in an guided meditation 

Your body is always speaking—are you listening? Join Joseph Octaviani of Life the Plant Way for an immersive herbalism workshop designed to help you reconnect with your body’s innate wisdom. Guided by time-tested, non-invasive practices, you’ll learn to observe physical cues like tongue, skin, and energy patterns, and map them to corresponding organ systems. Through guided self-assessments and daily check-in techniques, you’ll begin to identify what your body truly needs—whether that’s rest, nourishment, or herbal support. This hands-on experience will culminate in crafting your own personalized herbal blend, empowering you to integrate plants into your everyday routines with confidence and care.

We will learn stories of the aloe plant and a variety of its medicinal uses.

Aloe Vera or Sabila is not native but naturalized in the Caribbean and of African origin, and is one of the first medicines Ellenie learned of as a child from their mother who was born and raised in Guanica.

We will discuss the various applications, recipes and spiritual uses of the Aloe plant.

This class explores the deep roots and living traditions of African botanical knowledge in Puerto Rico. From the maroons who preserved healing practices in the mountains, to the herbalists and midwives who blended African, Taíno, and Spanish influences, we will trace the plants that carried resilience, medicine, and memory across the Atlantic.

Together we’ll learn about herbs that traveled in the hands, hearts, and stories of the African diaspora — plants like okra, hibiscus, moringa, and sugarcane — and how they were cultivated, adapted, and used for nourishment, healing, and resistance in Borikén.

What you’ll experience:
Guided storytelling on the history of African herbal traditions in Puerto Rico.

Plant profiles and materia medica of key African-introduced and African-influenced herbs.

Reflection on how these legacies continue to shape wellness, food, and identity today.

Who this class is for:
Students of herbalism, cultural studies, birthwork, and anyone seeking to honor the intertwined roots of African and Caribbean traditions in plant medicine.

In this integration circle, we’ll slow down and enter into dialogue with our plantita relatives.

Through guided reflection from the PDF ebook, journaling, and communal sharing, participants will explore what the plants are teaching us about care, remembrance, resistance, and our own healing journeys.

Together, we’ll create a space of connection, gratitude, and reflection, tending not only to the plants, but to our own spirits en comunidad

Enchanting our lives with pieces of bliss, love, passion, fertility and gentleness unveils for us all the things we have to be grateful for.  Though this may not be an easy road ahead, we have ancestral plant allies who have supported us for generations. In this workshop we will discuss the many ways to work with plants to invoke our inner lovers, nurturers and creators. In exploring various plant medicines, we will be considering plants native to the Caribbean and those naturalized into the cultural healing toolkit. Together we will dive into the many ways to use plants to invite more romance, self love, creativity and nervous system support. From herbal preparations like tea, baths and oils to spiritual applications like charm bags, candle dressing and more— opening and protecting our heart’s capacity to love has many doorways to be discovered!

In the Indigenous cultures of Abya Yala (the Americas), plants like the calabash tree (Crescentia cujete) are recognized as close relatives rather than resources. This plant has accompanied our ancestors of the Caribbean and the Americas as medicine, food, vessel, instrument, spiritual symbol, and much more. In this workshop I will share uses of this tree, from root to seed, along with preparations and stories. I also extend an invitation to transform our perspective: to see the calabash as a teacher and relative that shows us resilience, abundance, and connection. Together we will explore how to cultivate a relationship with this sacred tree and other plants, honoring the ancestral legacy that unites us in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean.

Gente will learn various plants they can grow in pots or in garden and ways they can work with plants to connect to the land and their ancestry for healing.