Anna M. Maynard

Upcoming Events

Gratitude Ceremony

November 17, 7:30pm The Flowjo
Join us for an evening dedicated to praise and gratitude. We’ll deepen into our prayers of gratitude with live music (tbc) and sacred plants to open the heart to the full gift of our embodied existence. From this place, we can dance and sing prayers for our lives.
Criollo variety heirloom cacao provides the base for a gentle yet potent brew, combined by house herbalist Jonathan Edwards with plant allies such as Rose and Mimosa flower to help open hearts and move through blockages to love and connection. Partaking of the (vegan-friendly, refined-sugar free) cacao is, of course, optional.
Guests are welcome to enjoy the music and medicine in stillness or gentle movement. We’ll also open the circle for a medicine song or poetic offerings by guests.
Bring water bottle, song &/or instrument, pillow, mat, blanket or back-jack to create your nest for the evening.
7:00pm Doors Open, Settle In,
7:30 pm Opening Circle, Ceremony
$25 – 45, Register here

Ongoing Events  

Ecstatic Dance at The Flowjo Carrboro

I regularly facilitate and weave music for dance on Sundays, 11am & Wednesdays 8pm, See Ecstatic Dance page for more details

Past events

Ancestral Circles & Workshops

Monthly ancestral healing circle at The Flowjo in Carrboro (currently on hold)

Cacao Ceremony, The Flowjo Carrboro

Monthly ritual with live music to support connection with plant allies and our own heart.  Julia mixes a cacao brew and creates the container.

All Soul’s Day Event ~ Group Acupuncture & Ancestral Dance

A group acupuncture treatment will help drop you into your body and attune you with the fall season and its corresponding element, Metal. Metal cuts away what’s inessential, leaving you clear to pursue your unique destiny and connection with spirit.
From here, with channels open, we’ll go on a guided journey exploring the state and impact of four of your blood lineages, setting boundaries with any less-than-vibrant energy along the way.
The evening culminates in an Ancestral Dance, a ritualized dance form weaving improvisational movement and ancestral lineage healing. These group rituals provide opportunities to directly commune with well ancestors, make offerings and dance in service of healing the not-yet-well dead of a lineage.
For more on Jonathan, visit AxisMundiHealingArts.com
6pm Gather, brief opening circle
6:20 Group acupuncture
7:30 Guided lineage exploration
8:15 Ancestral Dance
First half only (group acupuncture and lineage exploration) $30-60, Second half only (ancestral dance) $20-30, Entire evening $40-80

Technologies of the Sacred

Every human has allies in spirit and can relate directly with them through ritual. Cultivating relationship with elemental energies, ancestors, plant & animal spirits and other helpers can offer emotional support, understanding, healing and guidance in many facets of life. In this monthly circle, participants will learn foundational ritual skills for relating with the larger web of relationships including prayer, offerings and visioning with the spirits.  Topics include: connecting with allies, guides, teachers;
protection & energetic boundaries; offerings & altar work; prayer & invocation.

Women’s Pleasure Retreat, on the Haw River

During Beltane weekend, we’ll weave embodied practice, ancestral connection, elemental ritual to open ourselves to healing and pleasure.  With the support of somatic & ritual techniques and helpful ancestral & elemental guides, we’ll seek to reconnect to our bodies, sensual pleasure, the earth and to life force energy.  Together, we’ll seek antidotes for the personal, familial and cultural inheritance of shame, repression and body/earth-disconnect.

Women’s Hoop & Embodiment Retreat 

With hooping as our base practice, we’ll weave somatic inquiry, dance, ritual & visioning to find expanded states of consciousness, stillness, inspiration and purpose amidst these challenging times.  With the support of somatic & movement techniques and elemental guides, we’ll seek to connect to our bodies, voices, expressions, the earth and our deepest passions.

Julia Hartsell & other guest instructors.  $325.  Participants must provide their own meals & lodging.  Some camping possible here along the river.  (Optional welcome event Thursday night at The Flowjo)

Preparations & meditations for crossing the threshold

As the season shifts, we’ll gather to meditate on death, the ultimate transition and our mini-deaths along the way. With the support of somatic practice, ancestral connection, visioning practice & elemental ritual, we’ll focus on the threshold, prepare for our own passing and feel into how we can embrace life while blessed here.

Death Meditation

Meditating on death can bring inspiration to life.  Together, we’ll journey to our death beds to imagine how we’d most like to cross, see what’s left undone and potentially receive wisdom for how to live.  Most have left this meditation inspired, touched and peaceful.  Next online & in-person date TBA.

Death Preparations

In these weeks together, we’ll begin some of the necessary work of preparing for death through meditation, visioning, dialogue and addressing practical matters.  Diving into the practical and emotional realms of this inevitable transition, we can begin to shift the cultural inheritance of death-phobia and begin to envision more beautiful crossings. With the support of community, we’ll be in the process, wherever we are in our life cycles, to prepare for this sacred event.  Befriending death may transform the way you live.

This is an opportunity to explore and communicate what you ultimately want for the end of your life in a non-denominational, non-judgmental space.  A printed booklet of documents will be provided.  Next online & in-person date TBA.

Hoop Convergence

Julia is the founder of Hoop Convergence, a yearly hoop dance conference featuring workshops, jams, ritual held in Efland, NC (2008-2016)