Alderroot Healing & Renewal
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Tender & Kind
A late winter class for nourishing steady calm and compassionate response
Compassion practices and calm earth-based meditations to help you discern: What is my most compassionate response in these times?
A 4 week series with Dr. Heather Burns and Irene Elle Bailey
Live & Virtual
Wednesdays 5:30-6:30pm (PST)
March 4, 11, 18, & 25
Bring a cup of tea and get cozy
Sessions will be recorded in case you need to miss
Open to all. $99 for the series.​​
4 sessions of calm connection
Honey, you are tired and things feel unpredictable. It's a lot to be in the heavy swirl of social and ecological unraveling that is currently happening, while still holding up a mountain of daily responsibilities. You're getting tired of constantly reacting to the news-- because it's alarming, disheartening and is wearing you down. You care deeply and you're enraged, frustrated, sad, lonely, scared and unsure about how to take action, especially about things that you can't directly fix.
Even as our hearts break and life feels heavier by the day, many of us agonize over these questions:
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Am I doing enough?
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What else should I be doing?
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In what simple ways can I contribute to a world that is more tender and kind?
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In this class, we'll gather together with purpose. We'll practice accessing calm stability. We'll guide you in practices that help you touch into compassion for yourself, for our earth kin, and for all the suffering that is happening in our world. And we'll help you turn toward this question and discern with clarity: What is my most compassionate response at this time?
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As you care for your tender heart and deeply feel your connection with earth-life, you can deepen your trust in yourself and you can discern your own right way of turning toward this crisis with a compassionate response. You can get clear about what response is right for you.
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We believe that the earth shares her wisdom and support generously, offering guidance, grounding, and a source of stability. We believe that practicing loving compassion offers a calming balm for what ails us right now. And we believe that this connection to calm and grounded stability is absolutely needed right now.
You'll leave this class with new compassion practices to ground you, a stable and visceral sense of earth-based support, and more clarity and trust about your own compassionate response.
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Here’s what we’ll explore in each of the 4 class sessions:
🌿 Inner compassionate response (for cultivating calm and trust)
🌿 Communal compassionate response (for cultivating loving community)
🌿 Earth-based wisdom and compassionate response (for inner stability and wise ways of being)
🌿 Discernment: What is my compassionate response? (for knowing what is ours to do in times of crisis)
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Sessions will be recorded. If you can't make a session, no worries.
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Come as you are. Sessions are informal and relaxed.
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At the end of each session, we will offer you one simple (optional) invitation for practice between sessions so that you can deepen into the experience of compassionate response on your own.
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Meet your Facilitators
Dr. Heather Burns
Heather (She/her) is an eco-spiritual teacher, facilitator, coach, writer, and forest therapy guide. She is professor emerita of Portland State University, where she taught and published on topics of eco-spiritual teaching and learning, sustainability education, spiritual leadership and contemplative practices. She designs and facilitates experiences of belonging and renewal that invite whole person learning and real connection with each other and the living earth. Heather is also a reiki master, a certified Forest Therapy Guide, and the creative director of Alderroot Healing and Renewal. You can read more about Heather here.
Irene Elle Bailey
Irene (she/her) is a designer and facilitator of nature connection and mindfulness offerings that support the remembering that we are intimately and inseparably connected to all life. As a creator of spaces for cultivating trust, courage, intuition, and wisdom, Irene has supported hundreds on their path to living a more connected, authentic, and joyful life. Irene holds an MS in Leadership for Sustainability Education, is a certified Forest Therapy Guide and has trained with the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies as a Buddhist Eco-Chaplain. She is the founder and director of Temenos Rising where she shares retreats, workshops, forest bathing walks, and mentorship, all held in deep relationship with the natural world.