Living Ground has been growing into this for a long time. It started with the barren, destroyed land and then moved into the soil creation, the compost, the gardens, the food, the medicines, the microbes, the store and café, the hostel rooms, the microscope work and all the things I have been trying to understand and put into practice along the way.

I have spent years learning, making mistakes, experimenting, applying what I have learned, changing things when they did not work and trying again when they did.

I am at a stage now where I want to teach. I don’t want to teach just from theory. Theory isn’t how I have learned any of this. I want people to come here, work with the microscopes, get their hands into the soil, walk through the gardens, make things in the kitchen and see how these different parts fit together when you actually live them.

That is why I am opening Living Ground for a series of small, hands-on workshops here in southern Ecuador.

There are four different workshops, each with its own focus, but all of them come from the same way I have learned to look at health, soil, food and microbes. I don’t separate those things very easily anymore because I see how closely they are connected.

Live Blood Analysis

There is something quite different about seeing your own blood alive and moving under a microscope. You are not looking at numbers on a page. You are watching the cells, the plasma, the movement, the spacing and the activity happening right there in front of you.

I have worked with Live Blood Analysis for a long time and I want to teach people how to actually do it properly. We will work with sample preparation, microscope technique, photography, pattern recognition and how to begin putting observations together without simply memorizing a chart. You will work with your own blood throughout the workshop, which makes the learning much more personal because you begin connecting what you see with food, hydration, minerals, herbs, ferments, stress, movement and daily life.

Terrain Theory is also a big part of what I teach. I am interested in the conditions within the body and how digestion, circulation, elimination, microbial balance, minerals, hydration and many other things influence each other. Live Blood gives us a way to observe some of those relationships directly and then look again after changes have been made.

Dried Blood Analysis

Dried Blood Analysis gives us another way of looking at the terrain. A series of blood drops are allowed to dry naturally on the slide and the patterns that form can give us a very different kind of information from what we see in Live Blood.

This workshop is also very hands-on. You will learn how to prepare the samples, work with the microscope, photograph what you are seeing and begin recognizing the different patterns that appear. I want you to learn how to look at the whole picture and how different observations relate to each other, rather than treating every marker as a separate problem.

Every participant receives a copy of my book, a Student Manual and a personalized Dried Blood Analysis report at the completion of the workshop. I want you to leave with something practical that you can continue working with after you go home.

Soil Food Web: Beyond Organics

This workshop takes us outside and into the soil. I trained as a Soil Food Web Consultant through the work of Dr. Elaine Ingham, and Living Ground has given me a place to take that training and actually apply it on land that needed rebuilding.

This isn’t really a workshop about compost. We will make a microbe-rich compost, but the bigger subject is the microbial life in soil and how we can grow, enhance and encourage it. We will learn about bacteria, fungi, protozoa and nematodes, look at samples under the microscope and begin assessing what is actually happening in the soil.

Once you start seeing soil under a microscope, it changes the way you look at gardening. You are no longer only thinking about fertilizers, amendments or whether something is organic. You begin asking what organisms are present, what is missing, what the plant needs and how the biology can be encouraged.

We will learn how to assess, troubleshoot and apply Soil Food Web science in a practical way. And yes, you are going to get your hands dirty and awesomely infected with great microbes.

Plant & Kitchen Alchemy: Food, Medicine & Microbes

This workshop brings together a lot of the things I use in my own daily life. We will work with wild plants, medicinal plants, food, herbs, sprouting, fermentation and the microbiome, with a big focus on self-reliance and learning how much we can actually do for ourselves.

We will spend time in the gardens and in the kitchen. You will learn how to recognize useful plants, grow foods and medicines, make herbal preparations and begin discovering which plants make sense for you personally. We will also work with foods as medicine and with simple ways of creating a kitchen that supports your health rather than just feeding you.

Fermentation will be a big part of this workshop because it is such a practical way of working with microbes. We will make ferments, talk about what is happening microbiologically and look at how we feed the human microbiome through diverse plant foods and living ferments. We will also work with sprouting because it is one of the simplest and most useful forms of food self-reliance and is perhaps an answer to a lot of problems that exist.

Participants will receive my book on wild plants that grow throughout much of the world, along with my fermentation book. I want you to take these home and actually use them.

What Is Happening at Living Ground

A lot is happening here now as has been since the beginning. That is part of why I feel ready to open the project more fully for teaching. The Gratitude Café is operating, the gardens continue to grow, the apothecary is expanding, the guest rooms are being used, and the microscope work has become a very important part of what I do here. The rooms are ready. The team is ready. It has taken massive intention and attention.

And, we are also developing the spa area, which I am very excited about. There will be a sauna, yoga room and space for different treatments and therapies. My aim is to apply the Ayurvedic lessons into this spa space. And, I want people who come here for a workshop to have somewhere to rest, recover, be treated and enjoy the property as well, because there is a lot to take in during a week of learning.

Living Ground is not a finished retreat center where everything has been staged and polished. It is a working project, and there is always something being planted, built, repaired, fermented, tested, changed or figured out. I actually like that people will see that side of it because that is real life. If you are interested in self-reliance, soil, food or health, you need to see the process, not just the finished result.

When I was young, I learned the phrase “bloom where you are planted,” and it has stayed with me all these years. To me, it has always meant that wherever you are, whatever your circumstances, whatever you have or do not have, you do the best you can with what is in front of you. You learn, you adapt, you grow, and you become the best version of yourself you can within that place and that moment.

That idea is also part of the intention behind these workshops. I don’t want people to come to Living Ground, have a beautiful week, learn a lot and then leave it all here. I want you to take what you learn back into your own home, garden, kitchen, practice and community. I see it almost like a spider web, with each person carrying a strand back to where they live, applying what makes sense there and sharing it with the people around them. In that way, the learning does not stop at Living Ground. It keeps moving outward, and each person gets to bloom where they are planted.

The workshops are intentionally small because I want time with the people who come. I want you to be able to ask questions, use the equipment, work with the materials and go back over something when it doesn’t make sense. I would much rather work with a smaller group who really understands what they are doing than fill a room and rush through the material.

You don’t need to arrive as an expert in any of these subjects. Some people will come because they already work in health, soil, herbs or food and want to take their knowledge further. Others may simply want to understand more about their own health, their garden, their food or the plants growing around them. Both are welcome here.

We have workshops beginning in 2026 and continuing through 2027 and 2028. Accommodation is available at Living Ground, meals are prepared through the Gratitude Café, and there is the option to stay on the property and make the week a fuller experience.

I have spent a good part of my life learning these things because I needed them for myself first. and foremost. Living Ground has given me a place to apply them, test them and keep learning from them.

I feel ready now to share more of that work with people who want to come here and learn it for themselves.

You can see all of the workshop dates, details and application information here: