"Gaia existed before everything; she existed before time. Gaia, the eternal, prehistoric earth mother goddess, is fertility incarnate, moist, mysterious, strong. She is life energy itself; everything that lives, breathing or not, overflows with her life. She is the earth and all the powers of the earth.

Gaia is not always a consoling goddess: standing for life and generation without thought of consequence, she has an energy and a power that must be approached carefully. All bodies eventually return to her, into the black, fertile earth, to be devoured and to receive her life to live again.

As goddess of the soul, Gaia reminds us that the soul develops in dark places and that ultimately soul must be rooted in body, in earth. She is a reminder that we must ground ourselves in the reality of nature and incorporate all sides of ourselves, be they pleasant or unpleasant, light or dark." - From Goddess Knowledge Cards

     Gaia is our earth mother, who nourishes, heals, and teaches us. At The Gaia School we believe that our teacher is the earth itself. Through developing a deeper connection to the earth we heal ourselves- mind, body, and soul. Gaia is our guide, her spirit supporting us through our life walk. Her hands - the trees, plants, and animals, all her many voices here to teach and guide us back to wholeness. We work with the spirits of Gaia to find our way back to union with her and all of life.

     Gaia teaches us the rhythm of change, of movement and cycles. She helps us remember the spiral dance of life, death, and rebirth we see in all living things. She teaches us to learn when to be active and when to rest, when to allow for illness to transform us. Gaia teaches us what living medicines we can use to support our mind, body, and spirit as we move through life.

     Gaia reminds us of our history as a people, our ancient practices that helped us to flourish on this earth for hundreds of thousands of years, before we began to manipulate and use her earth body. It is only when we began to lose our connection to the earth mother and take from her in over abundance for our own benefit - creating serious illnesses of mind, body, and spirit. It is when we lost the connection to Her, our earth the nurturer, the life giver, the healer, that illness and confusion found us. It is only through healing our mother who gives us life, that we can heal and create wholeness for ourselves.

     At The Gaia School we are seeking to find our home again, our root, a way of living in connection to the earth mother, a way of healing ourselves and the damage we have caused and still cause on the rest of the living beings we share this earth with. We are seeking to find new and old ways of living which support a diversity of life on this earth, necessary for our own survival and the earth's survival. We understand that we are a part of one living system, interdependant and existing only from to our inter-relationships with other living things.

     We learn from the plants as our most wise grandparents. They teach us of our often confused and anxious minds, how to heal our bodies we have lost touch with, how to listen to spirit and to ourselves. They help us to connect to open our dreaming minds to see beyond our limited structures. We call on the plants and the earth to teach us a deep knowing of life and death, and the way back to inter-relationship. From this place of wholeness, we begins working to heal ourselves and each other.


Sustainability
     Through learning sustainable ways of living our lives on earth mother, we return to a life of mindfulness and loving kindness to all other living beings. By understanding how to grow our own food and medicine, live simply and naturally, following the natural cycles of the earth, we come back into a state of harmony with all of life. We end our participation in the killing of our mother, learning to give back to her and take our true place as stewards of the earth. We remember how to use our intelligence and compassionate hearts to care for the living beings we share her land with. We remember that we are open systems, dependant on the health of all other living beings.

What is Sustainability?

     "Sustainability can be described as each of us doing our part to build the kind of world-economically, environmentally and socially-that we want to live in, and one that we want our children and grandchildren to inherit. It means becoming aware of all interconnections-visible and invisible-in which our day-to-day choices affect the intricate balance of social, economic and ecological systems."

-Sustainable Leadership Institute

     It is in the spirit of sustainability that we teach about living in harmony with all of life on earth, working to heal ourselves, our families, communities, and Gaia. We practice mindfulness when we harvest our medicinal plants, re-planting endangered and over harvested medicinal plants that have been taken for profit, and teaching respect towards all living beings.

We seek to re-learn and re-educate ourselves in the old ways of living, producing and re-using our own resources, conscious of the impact we have on Gaia and other living beings. We join with others who wish to live simply and sustainably, teaching each other about affordable, local plant medicines available to all, supporting sustainable agriculture and business practices. In the spirit of union rather than competition we learn to serve each other, living not just for ourselves and our own gain, but for the well being and health of all Beloved living beings.


    We honor all life as sacred, and we choose to honor our place as stewards of the earth,
listening to all voices, not just our own, human and nonhuman.


The Gaia School of Healing & Earth Education

    The Gaia School of Healing & Earth Education founded by Sage Maurer in Boston, Massachusettes, has offered a variety of courses and workshops in earth magic and healing over the years in Vermont, Massachusetts, and Hawaii, since 2001. We offer 9 month long apprenticeships in magical and medicinal herbalism, plant spirit medicine, shamanism, ritual & meditaion, energy bodywork & chakra healing, earth magic, spiritual ecology, goddess spirituality, and journeying with plant devas and earth spirits. We also offer monthly moon-lodges, meeting at The Green Woman each full moon. Courses run throughout the year in Southern Vermont.