Returning to Love: A Half-Day Winter Solstice Ceremony

Join Medicine Woman and cross-cultural expert Patricia James and contemplative teacher and emotional scientist Eve Ekman for a half-day workshop integrated from multiple lineages exploring our rich emotions of grief, anger, and fear—transforming them into pathways for love and joy.

Gathering on the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year, we’ll honor this potent threshold as a time for reflection, release, and planting seeds of new intention. Together, we’ll dynamically compare and reflect on the similarities from wisdom techniques and practices that move us through the layers of our emotions. Guided meditations, drum journeys, and small group reflections will help us deepen embodied awareness and reconnect with our shared humanity.

Patricia brings her decades of experience weaving indigenous ritual, psycho-spiritual mentoring, and cross-cultural wisdom into a grounded, accessible form of ceremony. Eve offers insights from contemplative science and practical tools for emotional awareness rooted in Buddhist tradition and psychology. Together, they offer a “braided way” of healing that is both sacred and practical.

Held at The Alembic, this workshop is a space to return—to your body, your heart, and the love that can arise when we meet our emotions fully, illuminated by the quiet power of the Solstice.

Patricia's Patricia James, a Cheyenne pipe carrier and priest, is a medicine woman of Seminole heritage and a cross-cultural expert. Her work is informed by nearly four decades of mentorship and initiations in Indigenous spiritual traditions and transpersonal healing modalities.Patricia is an instructor and consultant with the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) Certificate Program in Psychedelic Therapy and Research (CPTR). She is also a board member of the American Psychedelic Practitioners Association (APPA), where she convened the APPA Elder Council, an interdisciplinary and indigenous advisory group supporting efforts for the balanced inclusion of psychedelic medicines into the healthcare system. Based in the Bay Area, Patricia maintains a private practice of Psycho-Spiritual Integration, mentoring, teaching, speaking, and writing. She facilitates ceremonies and workshops for groups and individuals.

Eve Ekman Ph.D, MSW is a contemplative social scientist and teacher designing, delivering and evaluating interventions to support emotional awareness in the fields of health care, and more recently through technology.

Eve did her MSW and PhD at UC Berkeley and Post Doctoral Training at UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine. Her research area is compassion, emotional awareness and meditation training to address burnout. Eve is the Wellbeing Lead at Apple on the Health Team, Director of Cultivating Emotional Balance Training, a Senior Fellow at the UCB Greater Good Science Center and with the Mind and Life Institute and is consulting for the training program at the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics

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