The Sedona Equinox and Planting Festival
Floracopeia was in beautiful Sedona, AZ last week celebrating the Equinox at the Sedona Spring Planting Festival. This festival was part of a grass-roots movement promoting locally grown food through community gardens and an agriculture renaissance in northern Arizona, sponsored by Ruth Hartung and 7 Centers Yoga Arts.
The week was dedicated to community gardening, eduation and celebration of the spring cycle through music and dance. David, myself and Laurel (Floracopeia’s General Manager) all went down for the festivities.
As David pointed out at his ‘Replanting the Global Garden’
The week included a town-hall style public forum to discuss the future of Sedona’s community gardens, moderated by Floracopeia founder, David Crow, a concert with internationally renown chant artist, Snatam Kaur, a Dance of Universal Peace with Self and Soul Center founders Rod Birney and Suzanna Nadler, yoga classes with Ruth Hartung and myself, and planting at three community and school gardens. The week culminated with a Friday night presentation by David Crow entitled ‘Replanting the Global Garden’.
To me the event really helped set context for how important the seemingly small movement in Sedona truly is in the grand scheme of things. ‘Replanting the Global Garden’ is a multi-sensory presentation and photographic pilgrimage around the world to the places where aromatic plants and the people growing them are helping to create a sustainable future. For those of you who may think Floracopeia is just another essential oil company, you’ve got to attend this presentation. Each time I attend, it reminds me why I was drawn to Floracopeia in the first place. We also announced the first major Floracopeia-produced event hernandez soma fort lauderdale car accident lawyer that is taking place in Nevada City, CA this September (look out for more info on that very soon).
On Saturday and Sunday, David conducted his Contemplative Aromatherapy retreat. It was a great turnout and a lovely group (see the picture at the top). He’s teaching this course throughout the country almost every weekend of 2009. Check out our events page to see if he’s coming near you.
All the events throughout the week were very well attended and the mood remained consistently enthusiastic and enjoyable. We also found time to hike to the different sacred spots throughout Sedona. The picture here was taken from my phone from one of the many Sedona ‘vortexes’. We’re already looking forward to returning to Sedona again in the near future. Hopefully some of you may be able to join us next time.
Stay tuned for more Floracopeia adventures.
All the best,
Jai Dev Singh
Floracopeia CEO
It’s good to see the next level in Holistic Spiritual Living unfolding all around us.
Thanks to Floracopeia for your work in this field.
Keep in touch!
Being a part of the Verde Valley Spring Planting Festival, the classes, the teachings and leading earth focused Dances of Universal Peace was a moment of being part of the solution. It is so easy to lapse into despair and forget the wonderful opportunity for personal and planetary transformation that any crisis affords. Bringing in the olfactory world of the plant intelligences to meditation deepens practice and connection to essence in a simple and profound way. Many thanks to David Crow and the Floracopeia staff for holding this vision and opportunity for our world!
Well said Rod, thanks.
I am still absorbing David Crowe’s depth of information on the relationship of the elements, the plants, our bodies plus principles of balance and of course the oils from the equinox weekend Contemplative Aromotherapy retreat. I look forward to David’s return to Sedona for more on therapeutic uses of oils and ayurvedic balance. This has enhanced my meditation practice and profound appreciation of the plant essences. Thank you David for living your passion and being so willing to share.
The effects of the workshop have continued to blossom and expand within me as the days pass. Like David said, the first day brings exhaustion, but by lunch the second day I was euphoric and expanded. The depth that we took each botanical aromatic to was amazing. So much wisdom and insight was gained. I feel simultaneously more deeply rooted and more cosmically connected. This weekend Opened the door to remembrance of our actual oneness in existence. Not only is a weekend of meditation amazing in itself, but the scientific content of the presentation is so priceless. Thank you so much for sharing in the expansion of consciousness!
I attended the Contemplative Aromatherapy workshop this past weekend in Sedona. This was the first time I met or heard David speak. It was a deeply spiritual, uplifting and extremely informative weekend. Learning from and about the oils by listening to my senses taught me so much about myself and my connection to everything around me – specifically about the sacred plants on our planet and their immense role in healing us and keeping us alive. David’s passion of replanting the global garden really inspired me to live and carry this message forward. David is very generous in sharing his deep understanding of the connection between the plants and all other living creatures, how we can heal ourselves through awareness and allowing us to smell and experience many oils and their effect on us. If you have an opportunity to participate in one of these workshops, I highly recommend it.
If any of you who were at the events in Sedona have pictures that you took, we’d love to see them. You can post them on the Floracopeia Facebook page. It’s really easy.
I am so grateful to have been a part of this weekend’s workshop as well as David’s previous visit in November.
David’s connection to the plant kingdom and the awareness of a sustainable environment so simply go
together with the most amazing fragrant oils. This was my first opportunity to actually “sit” in meditation and feel the support of all the aromatic treasures in the voices of the plants. It was a very enchanting spiritual event.
DAVID COME BACK SOON!
Namaste
Ishti
What an amazingly rich week this has been. I received so much from every one of the events I attended.
I thank David and Ruth for putting this Festival together, Jai Dev and all who participated. The week end retreat with David was unlike any event I had previously attended. I knew I was in for something very special from the start: I love scents, Nature and the Beauty of Creation. But what I experienced far exceeded my wildest dreams. Exotic fragrances, one after the other, making their way to our olfactory senses, weaving their magic on them as well as on our mood and consciousness: from white lilly, Dawn Blooming Jasmine, the rich essences of Neroli, to Roses and rare Sacred wood essences, the opulence of the Earth ’s true riches and heritage. David’s vast botanical and Ayurvedic knowledge made this event riveting, as were the stories he had to share.
Being partial to flowers and scents, I was simply: in Heaven! Coupled with meditating, this was unquestionably a great vintage experience for me. Becoming acquainted with the intelligence of each plant, realizing that this Intelligence also flows through us and having a tangible experience of Unity Consciousness as a result was priceless. I left the retreat with a much more fluid, expansive ‘idea’ , or more accurately ’sense’, about ‘my’ self. Realizing that the 5 elements flow through me as they do through all of nature helped me to exercise reverence for the life force not just outside of me but also as I observed it within. And I who love the Earth find it neat to now be able to recognize its presence within me, inseparably from ‘outside’. I love the expansive and unified overall ‘picture’ that is emerging out of these changes in my perception.
It would be tempting to say that this was a unique experience, but thankfully I am going to be back for more in September, a true sign that we live in an Abundant Universe, for which I am thankful both to the Universe and to the Floracopeia team ! It was so nice meeting Laurel too and the rest of the Floracopeia team. To all of you: THANK YOU!
As a result, life without the exotic essences of Neroli, Rose or Jasmine is no longer an option !
There remains to thank David for producing these amazing oils in ethical and planet-sustaining ways, and in so doing, preserving our Earth’s heritage so it can be shared. I really applaud him for his unique contribution to replanting the Global Garden that it was a priviledge and much fun being part of it during the Sedona Planting Festival week. As was the community spirit!
Perhaps it will be the plants themselves, and the Intelligence within them, that will bring us back to our senses and help us wake up again to the beauty and diversity of the Garden, in time for it to be preserved, so that it, in turn, can preserve us.
Thank you everyone for your presence at the events, your contributions to the community, and your nice messages here…much appreciated!
It is so great to share in Verde Valley Spring Planting Festival in Sedona. A true honor to be a part of the Sedona community gardening experience. What a beautiful event for inspiring well being for all on an experiential level. We shared in yoga classes, gardening work, music and dance, and then we all experienced with our awareness the plant intelligences of various plants through meditations lead by David Crow. May all communities be inspired to promote community gardens because it feels great to come together in the gardens and share our abundance on earth…
How I regret not being able to attend this event ! But I’m not giving up on organising something here in France. I hope to be among you soon;
Always walking beside you from afar,
Melissa
Hi Melissa,
An event in France sometime would be lovely. We just finished skyping with a group in Prague for a couple of hours. They were taking an Ayurvedic course and David spoke to them on video…they seemed to love it and it was fun for us too. Lots of possibilities these days
I want to thank everyone who came to the Floracopeia events in Sedona during the Spring Equinox. It was such a pleasure and joy to meet all of you! I experienced my own shift in conciousness last weekend and it has been inspiring to hear about some of your individual experiences with the oils on the phone this past week. I look forward to going back to Sedona soon. Thank you for sharing your time, love, enthusiasm, and appreciation of the oils with all of us.
I am thrilled to be taking Jai Dev’s place next weekend, April 4-5, at the Southwestern Conference of Botanical Medicine in Tempe, AZ. I will have the oils & resins and would love to see some familiar faces. Blessings to you all.
Not to be redundant, the weekend was amazing. I feel like it ties together all my passions and aspirations, from food, to the environment, to health, to spiritual evolution and I find my direction in life emerging with greater clarity. Like David says, I think the plants themselves are guiding me. Since the spring planting festival, actual spring planting is really taking off! The garden at 7 Centers is really moving forward into a realm it has not seen in years past as we work towards our goal of supplying our yoga students with homegrown food. Thank you David, for your wisdom and inspiration.