The practice of living gratefully rooted…
… is about relationship - to the plants, the land, the waters, our food, our bodies and every other member of the living whole. It's about waking up to the recognition that nothing is separate and everything impacts everything else - from our microbiome and the micro-organisms in the soil to our biological need and capacity for community and connection. It’s an invitation to fall in love with life - to cradle our whole selves in gratitude for the breadth of human experience knowing that we are here to walk with each other as stewards of life itself.
Our Herbal hOMestead’s mission is to gather people and plants. We live in a culture of disconnection and fragmentation. Whole plant medicine honors that life is more than the sum of its parts. It holds sacred the unseeable spaces of relationship between the parts, the elements and the outer environment. The Gratefully Rooted Herbal hOMestead CSA & Yoga studio offers opportunities to take solace in gathering together, to learn, practice, and nourish, to connect with the land, other plant people, and yourself because we humans are more than the sum of our parts too.
Let’s reclaim what it means to be human - as responsible and regenerative participants in the family of earth things.
Hi, I’m Aly. It’s just me and my son, animated by a dream and ignited by love, supported by the most incredible community of wholehearted humans.
Gratefully Rooted officially began a couple of years into my motherhood journey but it had been forming underneath the surface for over a decade. I grew up feeling that there was something missing, that I was somehow broken, not quite right or good enough and not meant to BE an integral part of the life thing. This fed the beginning of building an adult life that was modeled after societal norms and pressures laced with distractions from the emptiness that I truly felt. I tuned into some inner guidance that thankfully led me out of the unhealthy, disconnected and unconscious choices I was making to a real homecoming, living on the land in Southern Oregon.
While this time in my life was far from perfect, it taught me so much. It revealed the deep healing inherent in my connection to nature and how reverence for this sacred connection was the exact medicine I needed to transform the inner turmoil I had been experiencing into fertile ground for life to grow.
Nature inspires me. She speaks right to my heart through my bare feet most days. I am grateful for every time she reminds me that I am made of her. Society doesn’t make living close to the land and in her rhythm easy, most of us have fallen out of harmony, and a lot of life is suffering. We have grown accustomed to searching for wholeness and meaning through individual desires and disintegration.
We are the conscious ones - given this beautiful gift to choose how we participate, what we contribute to, what we practice, and how we relate to ourselves, each other and the earth. I became a teacher of yoga because my practice reminds me of my essential nature and invites me to take responsibility for my choices. It gives me the strength and stamina needed to stand at the frontier who I think I am and what I am becoming and who I think WE are and what WE are becoming.
I aspire to live a life in tune with the rhythm of nature and her cycles and I want to build a space that invites people to do the same. Tommy, my son, lives with autism spectrum disorder and we homeschool. We are building a life that works for us. Thank you for being a part of it.
TESTIMONIALS
“I’ve enhanced my meditation experience from Alyson - one session actually changed my life. Her preparation, her themes- she introduced the Yamas and Niyamas to me. In Alyson’s class I began to discover that yoga is so much more than just the asanas. Alyson, in sharing her path of yoga with me, has inspired me to commit to and travel on my own path of yoga.”
“I love taking Aly’s classes, she is so knowledgeable and has a way of conveying that knowledge in a way that is refreshing and calming. Her voice transcends you to a very happy peaceful place that makes life better.”
“I fell in love with Alyson’s teaching style while taking her yoga classes at Beloved Yoga [in Reston, Virginia]. She honors where you are and has a generous and kind disposition. I then took 2 of her four week Plant and Yoga series. The classes were small and intimate and so lovely. She is an amazing person and being in her company makes you feel better.”
“Aly’s Vinyasa classes are clear, challenging yet accessible for all, and inspiring. She was one of the teachers who inspired me to enter the teacher training program and become a teacher myself!”
“I find Aly to be very in touch with the depth of life that is most important but that I tend to gloss by in my daily life. She is enlightning and informative. I love all the plant information. I had no idea there were so many, what their purpose is and how beautiful they are. I find her writing always interesting. She is also an excellent yoga instructor!”
