Founder & Artist
Amaya Rose
Current Musings and Upcoming Exhibitions
WILLOW + Tea Altar Installation located inside Ancestral Wellspring Collective
2026 ~ 2027 ~ Artist in Residence at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History ~ Evergreen Cemetery ~ Plants as Ancestral Memory
Walking between worlds
Born, Alissa Maya is a folk herbalist, multidisciplinary artist, steward of a third space, grief work facilitator, adoptee, birthmother, survivor, and ceremonialist raised in the redwood forest of Amuh Mutsun, Ohlone Tribal Lands (now known as ~ Santa Cruz, California)
She draws inspiration from the rich natural environment of her upbringing, and the deep wells of grief she experienced as a child. Growing up in spaces that couldn’t hold her, couldn’t see her nature became her place of refuge. The place she could truly call home. She channels her deep connection to the land into her art, and all of her offerings.
Amaya carries with her a reverence for ancestral wisdom and a passion for holistic healing, Amaya blends traditional herbal remedies with ceremonial rituals to nurture both body and spirit.
Guided by the cycles of nature, she invites others to rediscover their innate connection to the Earth and embrace the healing power of plants.
A note from our founder
My journey as an artist and previous business owner, has been anything but linear. I have open and closed businesses. I have learned hard lessons and I have had to began again and again and again.
For reference I now reject the term owner of anything I am a steward, a guest, a space tender, a co creator, I do not own any of the knowledge I receive from the plants, or the dreams, the art, its an impulse of light, of creative energy being channeled through me. The current is so much more expansive than I could ever put into words.
The unique ways that this current takes root in the physical through my artistic expression will be a lifelong devotion and exploration into new worlds.
I enjoy many different forms of multidimensional expression. Through cooking, herbal medicine making, altar crafting, collaging, dance, drumming, singing, crafting an herbal tea, poetry, doing ritual, massage, making a fire, grief tending, slowing down, burning incense while the sun soaks into my brown skin, taking a salt bath, and many others.
I am deeply passionate about co creating spaces where multidimensional creatives can thrive. An environment where being multi talented and expressive is celebrated and your depth is welcomed. You don’t just have to be an herbalist, or just an artist or a poet or just a survivor. Many of the women I know, such as myself, walk between worlds and create entire eco systems of living artworks through how they care for others to their paintings, their ritual tattoos, poetry, you name it! They express it.
We are all in service to the Great Mother.
Weaving tapestries across time and space. Calling on our foremothers and the land, the plants, the waters to support us.
With this new project the Ancestral Wellspring Collective, it needed to be able to hold all of that both physically and energetically. I found a historically landmarked building built from the very ancient redwoods that raised me in the heart of the north beach neighborhood of San Francisco. A building thats walls have held space for the expression of the marginalized since its birth. It was perfect.
For me the process began. Listening to the space. Staying malleable and open to what wants to take root here.
I co create spaces that move, that breathe, that change shape and frequency in response to the collective field of energy that is present. It is a multi-sensory experience.
Thank you for being here. For staying open and malleable and trusting the mystery
~ With love
Amaya Rose
PRESS
Dive even deeper into Amaya’s work and ethos….
Certifications & Trainings
Certifications
Trauma Aware Womens Work Facilitator ~ Wild Essence School ~ 2021
Rape Crisis Councilor ~ SFWAR ( San Francisco Women Against Rape ) ~ 2025
Trainings
Full Spectrum Doula + Well Womb Care Training ~ 50 hours ~ Original Instructions School ~ 2025 ~ Present
Herbalism + Advocacy Training ~ 150 Hours ~ Original Instructions School ~ 2025 ~ Present
Year 1 + 2 Sacred Plant Medicine with Gaia School of Healing ~ 50 Hours ~ ongoing education ~ 2020 ~ present
Hours of Service
Medicine Making Hours ~ approx 7,000 hours over 8 years
Client Hours ( working 1:1 ) ~ approx ~ 300 hours over 6 years
Group Facilitation + Peer Support
approx 100 hours over 6 years
Education & Lived Experiences
My learning has been shaped first and foremost by the earth, the elements, the plant nation, land spirits, and my ancestors. Over the past 15 years, I have engaged in immersive study, mentorship, and community-based practice in herbalism, somatic based trauma-responsive care, embodiment practices, and earth-rooted ceremony.
Being able to survive and adapt and thrive through traumatic and life altering experiences I look to
My living and passed on teachers include; Octavia Butler, Bells Hooks, Angela Davis, Harriet Tubman, and all of the other queer neurodivergent black women in our history who created worlds for others and themselves to thrive in.
I have had to pleasure to be taught by Jessi Marino of Wild Essence School, Sage Mueher of the Gaia School of Healing & Earth Education, Brittany Jade Wilson of the Original Instruction School, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, and Susan Weed.
I began my formal journey with herbal medicines while growing cannabis on a remote farm in the hills of Calaveras County back in 2015. It was there that I discovered how deeply the plants could support my healing journey not just on a physical level but on a spiritual level as well. This lead to many synchronistic events that eventually landed me with a one way ticket to Kauai.
Two years later I founded Akasha Apothecary (est. 2017), an herbal womens wellness line of remedies and tonics that eventually received the Best CBD Product Award in Santa Cruz County in 2021. These herbal offerings made their way all across the world. Supporting many wombs along their way.
During the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex fires, I expanded this work into the Renegade Apothecary Project, a mobile mutual-aid apothecary that offered free herbal care, community support, and donated supplies to families, first responders, hospitals, and farmworker communities.
Since beginning this work I have traveled all across California many times, survived homelessness, addiction, DV, food insecurity, poverty, and continued to adapt and thrive through it all. Not without the help of community, true earth angels and people in my life never giving up on me. Most importantly I never gave up on myself.
Somatic, Psycho, and Psychedelic therapies have also been a huge catalyst for integration and healing CPTSD. EMDR, Brainspotting, IFS, Acupuncture, psilocybin, cannabis, embodiment practices, ritual, communal sweat lodge, massage, nutrition, ceremony, ancestral healing modalities, ayahuasca, hapé have all been threads of my tapestry.
I share with others what has worked for me on my journey to wholeness and remembrance. The beauty of how our grief and communal ceremony can be a powerful portal to transformation and alchemical mastery. How our art and creative expression in whatever form it takes shape is beautiful and vital for our survival and connection to others on this planet. How the plants can support our healing on every level of our being and that sometimes all we need is a flower bath a cup of tea and a very long nap.
Contact Us
Amaya is currently open for the following collaborations
Speaking Engagements
Workshops on Plant Spirit Mediation, Inner Landscapes, & Plants as Ancestral Memory Keepers
Grief Circle Facilitation
Altar Design
Collage/Mural Work
*Travel fees, and deposit are required at time of booking
