Plants Bring Physical & Emotional Healing at Yarrow School in Hood River
Pictured: Keath Silva, Director at The Yarrow School of Collective Wellness tending to Yarrow School’s herb garden.
Over the past three years local transgender business owner, herbal healer, author, poet, and anti-racism workshop leader, Keath Silva has been deeply immersed in social justice and activism studies that have influenced his work in major ways.
Silva is the founder of the Yarrow School of Collective Wellness in Hood River. Yarrow School is a physical and virtual gathering place of healing, learning, activism, support and connection rooted in the soil of herbal wisdom. Yarrow School offers anti-racism, trans-awareness and herbalism workshops and offers one-to-one mentorships in herbalism. Keath also offers herbal consults and other holistic healing modalities in his private practice.
Silva has always loved plants and herbal medicine.
“I’ve had tons of direct experience witnessing how plants bring healing to folks, not just physically but spiritually and emotionally. It’s healing for the soul to reconnect with the plants,” said Silva.
Pictured: Keath Silva making a motherwort infused vinegar from Yarrow School’s garden.
How He Got His Start
“I went to five different herbal medicine schools before starting my own. And I started to notice that every single school was white run and straight and cis* run,” said Silva. “The majority of the time cis white men were my teachers. And all the books we were given to read were written by white people and I started to really wonder where the voices of color were and where was the acknowledgment for the land that these plants were growing on, land that indigenous people had tended from time out of mind”
The experience of attending so many schools of healing and seeing patterns of patriarchal, heteronormative, and racial bias still occur in spaces which are meant to be healing helped give him the idea of starting his own herbal program.
“I knew I wanted to have an herbal school that had social justice as a focus and had a diverse group of people teaching and was accessible to everyone,” said Silva. “Everyone, way back in our ancestry, has a deep connection with plants. And it can be deeply healing to recultivate that relationship.”
*Cis is short for cisgender, which refers to people who identify as the gender they were assigned at birth.
On Being a Transgender Business Owner
“It certainly hasn’t been easy being a transgender person in a transphobic society,” said Silva “I would love to extend my gratitude to the trans community and Holistic Resistance for supporting me on this journey.”
Pictured: Keath Silva busy working in the school’s apothecary.
Silva has had the help of diverse teachers that have helped him shape and deepen his practice.
“I’m so honored and blessed to have known Miss Beatrice Torres Waight, a brilliant Yucateca Maya healer from Belize” said Silva who was mentored by her for over 10 years.
Silva had the honor of transcribing and publishing Waight’s book.
“Many years ago she asked me to help her write a book. We have a book that’s full of her herbal knowledge and her wisdom and her history. Recently her family and I decided to update it,” said Silva.
The new edition of their book “Fire Heart: the Life and Teachings of Traditional Maya Healer of Belize Miss Beatrice Torres Waight” came out during Indigenous People’s Month last November. For the last ten years proceeds from the book have gone to supporting the education of Maya youth in Belize and will continue to do so.
Pictured: Book cover of Fire Heart: the Life and Teachings of Maya Medicine Woman Miss Beatrice Torres Waight
Yarrow School’s Anti-Racism Work
Pictured: Holistic Resistance helps guide the Wake Up group workshops hosted by Yarrow School.
Silva has also been mentored by Holistic Resistance, a black-lead organization with a diverse set of teachers that focuses on social justice, anti-oppression, anti-racism, relationship racial justice and trans awareness workshops for children and adults.
“I’m so grateful for the Holistic Resistance’s mentorship,” said Silva who now hosts events called ‘Wake Up’ Groups which was founded by Jennie Pearl, an anti-oppression facilitator at Holistic Resistance. The Wake Up group is co-facilitated by Silva and Heath Kowaleski and other Holistic Resistance community members.
“There are wake up groups all over the country and now we have one in Hood River,” said Silva “The wake up group is a group of white folks talking about racism together so we can dismantle the racism inside ourselves so there’s less impact on people of color.”
The Wake Up! Group meets on the 1st and 3rd Thursdays of every month via zoom. The group will start meeting in a socially distanced fashion starting May 6th and continuing on through the spring and summer months.
“We come together with white folks and mixed heritage folks who also have white as a part of their heritage to talk about racism and we talk about it in a relational way, we focus on connection and compassion rather than judgement and calling each other out. And we bring in the plants, we bring in herbal teas and the healing energy of plant allies to support us as we step into the difficult conversations,” said Silva.
Pictured: Keath Silva points out a Yarrow plant in the school’s garden.
Each group starts with some herbal tea, singing, plants, grounding and meditation. The purpose of the group is to develop listening skills and allow racist beliefs to come out from beneath the surface and learn to release and heal from racist beliefs in a supportive group setting.
Giving Back
Pictured: Keath Silva, founder and director of Yarrow School.
On top of their workshops, other activism work which the school has participated in includes herbal care and support for immigrants being held at the border, providing herbs to local Indigenous communities, providing herbal medicine to Holistic Resistance's Grief to Action Program, LGBTQIA+ community building, and ethical herb and plant sourcing education.
Whether it’s body work, herbal consultations and classes, trans poetry readings, transgender acceptance workshops or anti-racism groups Silva seems to do it all but despite the wide range of services he offers, he says there’s still so much to learn and do.
Here’s to learning more about our neighbors, loving the land and plants and helping our communities heal.
