Ann Armbrecht, founder Sustainable Herbs Initiative (SHI)
Thirty-one members of our sales team will be joining us in Carlsbad tomorrow to take part in a two-day Learning Journey. The sessions will take place on Thursday and Friday in our facility and will be co-led by Ann Armbrecht, founder of the Sustainable Herbs Initiative (SHI).
This past summer a couple of us from evanhealy participated in a four-day Learning Journey in the Applegate Valley of southern Oregon. Reflecting on that time, I described Ann as a wizard, who simply follows the beating of her heart. During those long, glorious hot sunny days, she moved quietly amongst us, sometimes unseen in her willowy frame, evoking Gandalf’s quiet knowing ways. She’s an anthropologist, writer, and filmmaker. She holds a PhD in anthropology from Harvard University; is a 2017 Fulbright-Nehru Scholar documenting the supply chain of medicinal plants in India; author of Following the Herbal Harvest. A Search for the Healing Promise of Plant Medicines; co-producer of the documentary Numen: the Nature of Plants; and author of the award-winning ethnographic memoir, Thin Places: A Pilgrimage Home, based on her research in Nepal.
Learning Journey in Oregon
Learning Journeys are experiential. Exercises celebrate the importance of listening. Through activities such as beach walks, we’ll dialogue with other participants. Conversations like these allow us to explore events and people that have shaped who we are. In deep contemplation, we’ll connect with plants as a means to better see the wholeness of life. We’ll enjoy evanhealy self-care treatments allowing the rituals to open doors of intuition. Prompts will be used to deepen our connection. My memory of the summer journey is being asked by Ann, more than once, What’s alive in you today? Or what are you curious about now? In small groups of 8-10, we’ll tour our facility meeting and chatting with the people who do the work – the folks that mix our butters and balms, oils and infusions; the ones that answer your questions on the phone or email; and the teams that pick, pack and ship our products to you.
We’ll dive deep into such questions as Why are you doing what you are doing? What is your vision for yourself? What is your vision for your company? For the planet? Why does it matter? We’re gathering here to find our own story. Via journaling, imagination, conversation, inner exploration.
We’ll be challenged to imagine that we are the bards of evanhealy, that we travel with the story not to convert or sell but to invite new awareness about health, wellbeing and beauty. Which is part of our responsibility as humans for the soil and this planet. And ultimately my favorite question, where is the magic and mystery for each of us in our own story?
Jeff and Elise Higley
At dinner one night in Oregon, Jeff Higley of Oshala Farm shares a thought from motivational speaker Zig Ziglar. The way I recall it, he says, ‘make other people’s dreams your dreams’. It strikes a deep chord in me. I tell him that I’d like to be part of his dream. He responds, I want to be part of yours. I later look the quote up and it reads, ‘If you can dream it, then you can achieve it. You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.’ I like Jeff and his adaptation better.
The relationships formed in Oregon are inspired by Ann’s inner guide: bring people together and magic and dreams will happen. Following the Oregon Learning Journey we connect with Elise Higley, Jeff’s wife and partner, and arrange to purchase twenty herbs from them. Some will be ready to ship immediately, others will have to wait until the 2025 harvest. Serendipity has brought us together. Not long after our time together Oshala is certified as Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC). For the past dozen years we had purchased herbs from a family farm in Colorado. Though organic we did not certify due to the cost. Quality was our priority. Certification could wait. Now that our colleague in Colorado is slowing down, it is the perfect time to source herbs from Oshala. Certification has arrived with an extended and more powerful imprimatur.
The starting point of the SHI graphic treatment and mission
In the months that followed the Oregon Learning Journey, a few of us worked with Ann to give wings to her mission. While the graphic treatment and articulation of the SHI mission is still coming to life, this is the starting point of what we came up with (pictured above). I share it here as another means to give clarity and appreciation to what we’re all engaged in – and inviting you – to make happen.
- David Gordon,
Co-Founder and CEO of evanhealy.
The Magical Mystery Tour.
Follow our rag-tag alchemists traveling the world on a regenerative journey.