Old Ways Wisdom offers nature-based soul work in conjunction with ancestral arts and earth skills at the place where the mountains and the plains meet on the front range of Colorado.
We are in service to the remembrance of our wild selves;
To a partnership between nature, creativity and soul;
And to the wisdom carried in our bones waking us up to what is most important in our lives.
We believe that the way forward is intimately connected to the ways of our ancestors and our relationship with the land.
Who we are
Hello, I’m Mandy.
I’m the founder of Old Ways Wisdom and I'm a nature-based ritualist and guide dwelling on a small farm in the front range of Colorado. I’m also a folk-herbalist, an artist, a dancer, a weaver and an overall lover of life. In all of my musings I am following a golden thread of relationship to self, land and spirit, continually apprenticing to the Mystery and the old ways.
My work and my life is deeply informed by my own lived experience recovering from a traumatic spinal cord injury and head injury, and the ways I’ve discovered to guide myself through the emotional and spiritual healing from this experience. Shapeshifting how I tell my story and learning to make and create with the land are some of what has helped me through challenging times, and what I love to share with others that I mentor.
Hear about my story and how this body of work came about.
Time Stamps:
Who I Am & What I Do - 0:26
My Story of Surviving Trauma - 1:14
The Secondary Layer of Healing - 5:10
The Meaning of It All (Guiding Others) - 8:03
Ways I Work with People - 13:20
My Message to You - 15:55
our offerings
Nature-Based Soul Work
Whether we are diving deep into Sacred Storywork and ritual art, making medicine or weaving baskets with our hands
we believe all of these paths lead to the same place—Soul.
Pathways for Working Together
Upcoming Workshops
Classes & Events
past Workshops
Join us for a 6-hour workshop to learn to weave sweetgrass coil baskets in honor of and gratitude for our ancestors and friends in the other world. Nourishment and tea from the land will be provided, as well as all materials needed.
In this 7-day intensive, we will begin to explore what establishing right relationship with these animals could look, feel, and taste like. Throughout the week, we will be learning the art of brain tanning—tanning elk hides in a traditional way with fat and smoke—creating elk hock bags from the legs of the elk, and connecting more deeply to the more-than-human world through land-based practices and connection.
A 3-hour workshop to learn how to tend to wounds and ailments with the wild plants that grow right there in the field! This includes a gentle hike, medicinal plant ID walk, and some hands-on in the field preparations.
A fun little 3-hour workshop to learn how to make cordage from wild foraged plants. Making cordage is a process of taking plant materials and twisting them together to make string or rope. In this workshop we’ll work with several different varieties of locally foraged plants. Once you know these techniques, you’ll be able to make cordage from just about anything, even banana peels!
In this 4-hour workshop, we will talk about the ancient skill of courting fire by friction using a bow drill. We’ll cover the tools of creating fire with a bow drill kit, how you can create your own kit to practice with, and get hands-on with creating your own coal and fire together!
Our Blog
Musings & Other Adventures
Our latest reflections on relationship with the land, ourselves, earth wisdom and the old ways of our ancestors.
In nature, there are some seeds that cannot germinate unless they go through extreme freezing temps, scarification, or even fire. For some of us, the seed of our genius and the medicine we carry for the world must go through a challenge before we can unfold and begin to take root. Through the telling of our stories we get to discover what lies inside the seed and allow it to begin to emerge into the world and grow into the fullest expression possible of ourselves.
HOW TO MAKE A WILD FORAGED COUGH & COLD SYRUP ~ Did you know that all of the medicines you need for soothing and healing inflamed throats and lungs grow right from the land in this Front Range area? Here’s my recipe for how to make a wild foraged medicine for coughs and colds.
TREES AS MEDICINE ~ Mid-June is linden tree time. Besides being a super handsome and amazingly scented tree, linden flowers are medicinal and powerfully healing energetically as well. Quite often (and very popular in Europe) folks make linden tea with the dried flowers. But you can also make the best honey ever with their flowers. Learn how to harvest and make this insanely good treat for yourself.
HEALTH, RELATIONSHIOP & RECIPROCITY ~ One of my favorite ways to slow down and reconnect is to do a little thing I call “tree breathing”. It just takes about 5 minutes to do. And the practice does wonders for your health and, I believe, for the health of the land too.
HOW GETTING LOST ISN’T THE WORST THING THAT’S EVER HAPPENED ~ We get lost. It is a given. You are not a total failure to feel lost. In a way, perhaps you are even right on track to be questioning and questing. Sometimes getting lost is the exact medicine we need in order to truly find ourselves.
REFLECTIONS FROM THAT WILD HEARTED FULL MOON ~ Though my brain and my old patterns want me to make a plan, getting ready for the new year ahead, my heart knows something different. The animal nature of my body calls for something different entirely.
HOW 20 MINUTES IN NATURE CAN HELP ~ What happens when we see or read something traumatic is not all that different in our bodies from when we experience something traumatic. Our brains don’t really track the difference between what they think about, what they see, and what they experience. Find out how 20 minutes in nature can help balance, regulate and recharge your body and mind.
HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN TEA FOR NERVOUS SYSTEM HEALTH ~ Learn how to create a powerful tea blend that helps calm, sooth and rebuild the nervous system so that you can help yourself through these days of mental and emotional stress.
EVEN WHEN OUR WORLD IS FALLING APART ~ We simply cannot get into a creative state or shift into the person we want to be in the world without learning to cultivate our resilience. Take this Self-Care Self Assessment Quiz to get an idea of how you’re doing with the 4 different areas of self-care, and to gain some ideas for ways you might cultivate your own resilience.
As the ground of our country shakes and seems to break open, I am called to pause and listen. To acknowledge and try to truly hear the voices and the painful reality that my Black brothers and sisters have experienced and are continuing to experience in my community and around the country. This is my commitment to listening more, to educating myself, and to taking action where I can—and a sharing of some anti-racist resources that I’ve found helpful.
FINDING & CREATING TEMPORARY STRUCTURES ~ One thing that can help significantly when our regular lives have become suddenly irregular is to create new structures in our day to find a sense of normalcy and regularity. Here are some ideas for how you might create some structure as you adjust to your new norms.
8 THINGS YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW TO KEEP YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM STRONG ~ There are some amazing and truly powerful things you can do right from your very own backyard to boost your immune system and help keep you healthy and strong. Read more to learn 8 ways.
SPRUCE TIP & ROSE HIP TEA ~ While most of the land sleeps or gestates deep underground, the conifers maintain providing food and medicine for us year round. And they provide JUST the exact medicine our bodies need most during this time of year—loads of vitamin C. Learn how to harvest and make your own Spruce Tip & Rose Hip tea to brighten up this time of year.
HOW TO TWINE CORDAGE TO MAKE A CORNHUSK BRACELET ~ During these shortest of days, I like to make cordage with the corn husks, remember the Mayan story about the people of corn, and let this Corn Lady come to life and hang on my wrist as a good reminder of the old ways.
HOW TO CREATE AN EVERYDAY PRACTICE that you actually stick to ~ To really step into the changes we want to see in ourselves and in our lives, we have got to practice every day for long enough that it just becomes our everyday practice. Learn how to break the code to truly create an everyday practice that you will actually stick to.
AN ANTIDOTE TO POISON IVY ~ Grindelia (or gumweed) is indigenous to the Americas and has been used throughout the ages to treat afflictions of the lungs including bronchitis, pneumonia and asthma, and to relieve skin irritations of all kinds. Learn more about this often overlooked plant and how you can use her medicine on the spot, especially as a remedy for poison ivy.
WALKING THE EDGE BETWEEN FEAR & TRUTH ~ The truth is we have but moments in this fragile life. And within each one is the potential for us to share love, connection and create beauty with each other if we recognize it. This is part of what I learned six years ago on that hospital bed.
WILDCRAFTING A SIMPLE COUGH SYRUP ~ Monarda Fistulosa (also known as bee balm, wild oregano, oregano de la sierra, wild bergamot, oswego tea, and purple wizard head) is highly antibacterial, anti fungal, antiseptic and anesthetic. Learn more about this ancient herb including how to harvest and make a simple wildcrafted cough syrup to store away for those sicky days ahead.
THE ETERNAL QUESTION ~ I go through the world, as maybe you do too, motivated by and driven to be the person I want to be in this world. Gently holding the question in my hand, “Who am I and how do I want to be?” At times in my life I’ve chased after that question. Desperately actually. Kneeled down and pleaded for an answer to show itself to me.
WILDCRAFTING FOOD & MEDICINE ~ Stinging Nettles are a nutritious wild superfood, an ancient whole-body medicine, a traditional textile plant, food for important pollinators, and a super compost activator and soil nutrient. To me, she is an honored elder who’s been here for thousands of years supporting us in powerful and mysterious ways. Learn more about this incredible plant and how to work with her.
TRUSTING THE NATURAL PROCESS OF CHANGE ~ We are all going through life living by these unspoken agreed upon rules—intertwined, blindfolded and bowed to the religion of the clock. But how much are we just trying to keep up with systems that exist outside of ourselves rather than how we actually want to live?
A SIMPLE PRACTICE THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING ~ There is a very simple practice that has the potential to literally change your life. It’s so simple it is hard to believe it’s worth the extra time in the morning to do it. It’s hard to believe it actually has the potential to change your life. But truthfully, it most certainly has changed mine.
WILDCRAFTING BLACK COTTONWOOD MEDICINE ~ Learn how to wildcraft Cottonwood tree buds to make the ancient and famed Balm of Gilead— a potent panacea for many ailments from arthritic joints to sunburns.
HOW A SIT SPOT PRACTICE CAN BENEFIT YOUR HEALTH AND THE LAND ~ We have evolved over the past 2 million years from the land, as the land, and living closely with the land. Relationship with the land is hard wired into our DNA. Having a sit spot practice is a simple practice with benefits that are immense for our overall wellbeing and for the land itself. Learn all about this practice and the scientifically proven benefits for your health.
THE DANCE OF NATURE CONNECTED COACHING ~ All great truths are big enough, wide enough, and deep enough to hold great paradox. And Nature Connected Coaching is one such paradox. Masculine and feminine. Earthly and Spirit. And when these opposing forces are held together, something truly magnificent begins to alchemize.
WILDCRAFTING THROUGH THE WINTER ~ Learn about Horehound’s origins and how to make a healing cough syrup even in the dead of winter.
LIFE AS A WORK OF ART ~ I had a dream of a wise woman I trust and admire who was warning me that creating shifts and making changes in the culture is hard work. Slow work. I awoke thinking, yes. Maybe. But time moves fast and this life is just a blink, and what is it all for anyways?
MYSTERIOUS MEDICINE ~ The Black-billed Magpie is a surprising and mysterious bird, commonly misunderstood and misrepresented. In the same family as crows, jays and ravens, magpies are known to be one of the most intelligent creatures around—right up there with dolphins, chimpanzees and humans.
We so often spend our days preparing ourselves for our life that is to come. Doing tasks that we think will get us closer to a life that we really want, a life that is different than the one we have—a dream of someday. But life is—and always is—right now.
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Writing has always been my refuge, my creative sanctuary, my sanity. But for the past year—actually for the past 15 months or so—I have not been able to get to the page. This is where death has taken me.