About
Iris
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​Welcome to Madrona's Pulse Teachings. If you're on this page, you're wanting to know a little more about me. If you'd like to know more about the Madrona Tree, the namesake for my business, scroll down a little more.
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I have a PhD in Comparative Literature. I've done extensive training in philosophy, literature, myth & the archetypes. Since before I entered university, I've been drawn to the contemplative life. Much of my academic training focused in contemplative studies with St. Augustine, Dante & modern philosophy, especially the phenomenological hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur. Later in my professional and academic life, my focus grew to integrate my scholarship in phenomenology and poetry with feminist trauma theory and cultural studies, which I still teach and publish in. In addition to my formal education, I've trained in Expressive Arts Therapy, Evolutionary Astrology, and other healing modalities such as meditation & Yoga.
As a woman committed to supporting others on their healing journeys, I believe in an ancient, raw & earth-born witchy spirituality as a pathway to healing & thriving. This path that I teach is rich & deep and it's a wild dance with the archetypes.
I absolutely love Evolutionary & Embodied Astrology. For me, it's a sacred practice that I articulate as astrowitching. This makes my practice a little different from other evolutionary astrologers. What is astrowitching?
Simply put, it's reclaiming the wise elder wisdom that power over-ideologies attempted to silence through the witch trials and so many other persecutions connected to patriarchal institutions and gender based violence.
In this way, my practice & teachings are rooted in what's always an elemental-based witchy reclaiming along with my extensive philosophical training & scholarship in feminist trauma theory. Astrology, like all meaning making traditions in the West, is infused with biases bred by the intersections of patriarchy, colonialism & capitalism. I try to stay away from these uses of Astrology. Astrology also gets very shallowed out by pop culture in our current mediascapes.
I do not practice pop astrology.
I love Archetypal & Evolutionary Astrology for its depth and never-ending fields of interconnected meaning making. I love to work with others and open up their charts with them- for me this is a gift of a vocation that comes with great responsibility that I'm grateful to carry in this life. It requires me to live a very particular type of life style, that of a solitary witch along the path of a disciplined scholar & artist.
I absolutely love teaching integrated & embodied archetypal astrology in groups and as a healing & reclaiming path- I'll be doing a lot more of this as the years unfold.
Co-creating with the elements, earth & ocean, our bodies & our spirits, and weaving it all through with creativity- for me, it's the most delicious & healing work there is.
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The Madrona Tree
The Madrona Tree, better known as the Arbutus Tree in Canada, is a tree indigenous to the Pacific North West often found on ocean bluffs. The Madrona has a rich history in Indigenous culture and its Latin name translates as the "Strawberry Tree" for the bright red berries they grow.
For me, the Madrona speaks an ancient langage, one that all of nature speaks, but for some reason it was the Madrona that helped me to remember my own intuitive connection to this earth, to my womanhood and to see the integrated beauty and wisdom that comes from laying bare our own knots and twists out into the world, just as this tree does. Spending time quietly by the ocean with the Madrona has taught me much about what it means, for me, to be a woman. In the way their branches curve, knotted and twisted as they are, the marks and scars and shedding of skin-like bark, I see so many stories of womanhood. The way the light catches their leaves and the vibrancy of their red berries. Simply put, they are beautiful.
When I first moved to the Pacific Northwest in 2007 and lived in Washington State, I immediately fell in love with the Madronas and the rhythm of life that they and the ocean reawakened to my conscious self. It felt as if I were seeing family members I had not seen in quite some time. The pulse of the Madrona that I felt then and continue to feel in my body and psyche, for me, sounds out the intuitive gifts of wisdom I believe we all have access to and sometimes need support remembering how to call up from the depths our society and personal experiences teaches us to banish intuition to. My calling to teach is to offer this support and to help others learn to see the absolute beauty in laying bare and integrating their own knots and twists and supple beauties of self into holistic and honest presence, just as the Madrona tree has taught me to do.