<h3 align="center"><b>Louisah Teish</b></h3>

 
<p><b>Eco-Mythology</b></p>
<p><b>Conference description</b></p>
<p>Storytelling is an ancient art.  It helps us to understand ourselves and the world around us.
When we employ our imaginations to address contemporary problems amazing stories can emerge.  This is an invitation to experience the healing of our relationship to the natural world through story.</p>

<p>Listener benefits:
<ul><li>Will be introduced to stories from other cultures.</li>
<li>Will receive insights into the nature of myth and story.</li>
 <li>Will learn to access their imagination.</li>
<li>Will be offered stimulating assignments.</li>
<li> Will be encouraged and enabled to tell their own stories</li>

<li>Can you imagine a herd of red worms that consumes toxic waste and transforms it into compost for community gardens?  Can you hear the stories told by trees in an enchanted forest that dramatizes all they have witnessed for hundreds of years?  And if you were granted three wishes or acquired super powers what choices could you make to improve our world?</li></ul></p>
<p>These are just a few of the imaginings, possibilities, questions and choices to be  presented.
</p>

<p><b>Bio</b></p>
<p>Luisah Teish is a writer, performer and ritual priestess. She is the author of several books on African and African American Spiritual Culture and Feminist Myth.  They include &ldquo;Jambalaya: The Natural Woman&rsquo;s Book of Personal Charms and Practical Rituals&rdquo; a women&rsquo;s spirituality classic,  &ldquo; Carnival of the Spirit: Seasonal Celebrations and Rites of Passage &ldquo;, Jump Up: Good Times Throughout the Seasons with Celebrations from Around the World&rdquo;, and &ldquo;What Don&rsquo;t Kill Is Fattening Revisited: Twenty Years of Poetry, Prose, and Myth.&quot;</p>

<strong>Teish is an initiated elder (Iyanifa) in the Ifa/Orisha tradition of the West African Diaspora, and she holds a chieftaincy title (Yeye&rsquo;woro) from the Fatunmise Compound in Ile Ife, Nigeria. Presently she is the Chair of the World Orisha Congress Committee on Women&rsquo;s Issues. She is also a devotee of Damballah Hwedo, the Haitian Rainbow Serpent, under the guidance of Moma Lola.</strong>

<strong>She was awarded a Ph.D. in Spiritual Therapeutics from Open International University&rsquo;s School of Complementary Medicine in Colombo Sri Lanka in 1993. She holds an Inter-Faith minister&rsquo;s license from the International Institute of Integral Human Sciences. In 1969 she received initiation into to the Fahamme Temple of Amun-Ra in St. Louis, Missouri.</strong>

<strong>She later went on to study indigenous Native North and South American traditions (including the Caribbean).  She has conducted workshops on Black and Native American culture at Medicine Wheels (under the directions of Sun Bear&rsquo;s tribal elders).  And La Casa de la Poesia in Caracas Venezuela uses her book, Jump Up, as a text on the mythology of the Goddess Maria Lionza.</strong>

<p>A resident of the Bay Area for thirty years, Ms. Teish has been actively involved in teaching transformation, working to insure justice and peacekeeping.</p>