Spencer Nielsen

Spencer Nielsen is a guide to Nature inside and out: in the wild lands, gardens, and consciousness. He is a perennial student and teacher of Ecology, Permaculture, Yoga, Qigong, Ayurveda, and Herbalism. With over 15 of experience farming, landscaping, and gardening, Spencer currently teaches permaculture at the Natura Institute for Ecology & Medicine in Bolinas, CA and Sivananda Yoga Farm in Grass Valley, CA. He is an herbalist weaving Ayurveda, Chinese Medicine, and Traditional European Medicine, and bioregional California herbs, completing multi-year programs with both the East-West School of Planetary Herbology and the American Institute of Vedic Studies.  Spencer has worked on and designed farms and gardens around the world, studying ethnobotany along the way. Beyond plants and permaculture, his service path includes guiding youth nature connection, teaching ancestral skills, leading wilderness rites of passage, and sharing yoga and qigong. Spencer has guided hundreds of teens and adults on wilderness rites of passage over the last decade, facilitating journeys of reflection and discovery. A lover of life, Spencer maximizes his time at his half-acre homestead, where he tends his garden and enjoys drinking tea and playing music.

Workshops & Presentations

  • Permaculture and Ayurveda: Power Plants for Personal and Planetary Healing

    60 min | Altar of Earth

    This workshop will provide a short introduction to each Ayurveda and Permaculture, and then dive into a set of powerful plants that can be used to heal bodies and landscapes. The focus will be on herbs that most people can use to upgrade life, rather than treating conditions of imbalance. The role of healing plants in permaculture design and the language of Ayurveda to communicate ecological concepts will weave the themes together beyond the plant allies. Spencer has shared Ayurvedic Agroforestry at Lucidity and will deepen the journey this year, providing more details to bring home to the garden, wild lands, and medicine-making kitchen. The focus will be on the temperate landscapes of California landscapes. Come sample herbs and get stoked on what you can grow in a garden to activate healing of the land, the ecology, and your own body-mind-spirit.

  • Visionary Panel: Rites of Passage and Inter-Generational Connection

    60 min | Altar of Spirit

    What role does the rites of passage play in our evolution from cradle to grave? How has the meaning of the “rites of passage” shifted in modern times, and how can we honor the rites of passage in a culture that doesn’t have conscious ritual around the ongoing changes of a person from youth to adulthood and beyond? How do we bridge between youngers and elders to create a strong inter-generational connection rooted in our understandings of individual and collective growth?