Henna / Plant Medicine

For thousands of years, the art of "Mehndi" has been a tradition practiced in India, Africa and the Middle East to honoring Rites of Passage, like marriage.  Unlike a tattoo, henna is a temporary, non-invasive, natural plant dye that can be painted on the skin. It lasts anywhere from a few days to a month.  I discovered it at a fair, one summer. Lines of mostly girls, waited in the hot sun to receive this beautiful body art from an artist who was also a calligrapher. She wrote “you do not have to be good” from Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese” on the underside of my forearm and finished it with a lotus. I loved it. It lasted for weeks.

I learned how to mix my own henna paste and draw traditional and original Mehndi designs. Then, over ten years ago, I began teaching Henna classes. One of my favorites: "The Nexus of Henna and Sacred Geometry” was co-taught with a Princeton math teacher who received a grant through The Talking Stick learning center.