ABOUT
Nala
To further describe who I am, and what I do,
allow me to share a few sentiments from writer Sonia Horowitz,
responding to the question:
“Where will people who need help turn?”
They will turn to the same places they’ve turned since time immemorial. To the edges and the hedges, to the woods and the wilds. There they will meet the women with twigs in their hair and soil under their fingernails. Hags they called them, cunning women, cut wives and witches. For centuries, through all the twists and turns…these wise women have kept their hearth fires burning, ready to comfort and warm the frightened, the grief stricken, the weary and the wounded. They offer medicine, but are not allowed to call it that. Medicine is only for the sterile white walls and echoing halls of hospitals and universities after all… But when those hallowed halls are closed to many by bureaucracy and politics, you will find her speaking to plants and tending her simmering cauldrons with a wise and patient heart. She is keeping ancient knowledge alive…The cycles will turn, as they always do…There will be dark days, and there will be days filled with glorious light, but still the wise woman will persist. Because she must. —Sonia Horowitz
SHORT OVERVIEW about NALA
For over two decades, Nala Walla has been devoted to healing “the Body” in all senses of this word, assembling a toolkit of embodied technologies in service of personal, community and ecological health. She holds a masters degree in Integrative Arts and Ecology and is known for her writings on the topic of Ecosomatics, which weave the connection between inner and outer ecology.
Nala’s work as a ritualist, author, educator and homesteader assists humans to dress the wounds we have suffered, and repair the wounds we have inflicted, in order to create a world worthy of our children.
Nala Walla served for 15 years as director of the BCollective, aimed at the creation of healthy and sustainable culture through the embodied arts. She is currently directing the nonprofit foundation The Well, a wisdom school where we learn to fulfill our birthright to connect with the Sacred Waters within each of us. Using ritual technology in service of actual change in our communities, The Well supports us take action to protect and heal our local lands and waters, supporting multiple pathways to liberation and reparation. The Well is the proud sponsor of Save Chimacum Springs, a campaign to return our local springs to black and indigenous stewardship.
Nala has been in deep with ritual arts for decades. She learned Flamenco with Juana Amaya in Sevilla, studied TinTaal rhythm with Marco Zonka, danced Butoh Mexicano with Diego Pinon, taught contact improvisation for years, performed in an anti-racist ritual theatre troupe with Dr. Tawnya Pettiford-Wates, and performed on dozens of stages across the country with the eco-educational children’s show, The Harmonica Pocket.
And that’s just a short list.
Nala has also been putting ecosomatic philosophy into practice with her family on their permaculture homestead, located on Washington’s beautiful Olympic Peninsula for over 15 years. She is deeply honored and grateful to live and practice on the traditional lands of the Chimacum and S’Klallam people.
Nala completed her undergraduate degree in Race, Class and Gender at Dartmouth College, and her masters work integrating arts and ecology at the University of Washington and Gaia University. A firm believer in lifelong education, she is always up-leveling her studies. A few examples: the Moving On Center, Bridging Somatics and Performing Arts for Social Change, the Nutritional Therapy Association, the Grief Recovery Institute, Ancestral Medicine, and The Emerald. Nala is a practitioner of Ancestral Healing and Lineage Repair, trained under Dr. Daniel Foor. She mentored for many years with Laurence Cole in Community Grief Ritual and song, and she is currently thrilled to be studying embodied myth and ritual with the brilliant teacher Joshua Schrei.
Nala has been Certified in Permaculture Design for nearly twenty years, and is the current leader of the Jefferson County Chapter of the Weston A. Price Foundation. She is a mother, a foodie, a lover of hip-hop and trance music, and is an incurable performing artist. You can sometimes catch her onstage with the The Harmonica Pocket, or in spontaneous and unauthorized Butoh ritual in the forest or on the beach.