We had the good fortune of connecting with Zephra Eden and we’ve shared our conversation below.
Hi Zephra, can you talk to us a bit about the social impact of your business?
I started “Mountain’s Daughter” to be of service to my community. There are several branches of my business, some of which are still evolving, that are of service in different ways. The first branch involves creating hand-crafted goods from post-consumer materials. These are materials that would normally be disposed of (such as scrap fabric, old jars, ect) that I have repurposed and up-cycled. Waste has always been a concern of mine, specifically waste that results from packaging and I’ve often wondered why we keep circulating this paradigm. It’s also important to consider where these materials come from, who is doing the labor, what is the impact on local communities in the areas where the resources are extracted and in what ways can we improve or avoid participating in this process. I think it’s easy to buy new things, order online, ect. But the real work in creating a sustainable world and resilient life ways is going slow, using what you already have, and in some areas refusing. I source all of my packaging and materials as ethically as possible – either second hand or from local sources – and make products that I think are either necessary for health and wellness or enhance life in meaningful ways. I try to make these products as accessible as possible price-wise, while still valuing my work and compensating myself for my time. In this way, I can feel good about the products I am providing for my community and their total ecological imprint, and my community can feel good about supporting a small, local, women-owned business.
The second branch of my business is called Seed & Soma and involves holistic, body-based and earth-centric interventions specifically geared toward stress management, post traumatic growth and regulating our nervous systems. This is the result of the union of my MSc in Ethnobotany, my credentials as a 200hr RYT, certification in Usui Reiki levels I, II & III, my upcoming certification in Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy, and (in two years) I will be a registered herbalist able to design and create individualized herbal medicines. I am constantly pursuing continuing education programs and certifications to add to my tool belt including working with polyvagal theory and cognitive behavioral therapy. My primary goal is to support individuals from a unified mind-body perspective, which honors the person within their environment and ecology and helps to foster intimacy with the natural world. I believe that the health and wellness of each individual is intimately dependent on the health and wellness of all other individuals within the community, including our other-than-human relatives. Besides ISTT, I will also be offering reiki and yoga. These services will be available on a sliding scale, so that they are accessible to a range of people. I also plan to create a community health fund that anyone can participate in that will help provide services for people who would otherwise not be able to afford them. I plan to open the doors to Seed & Soma in February.
I am also an author and have recently published my first book, The Dharma Files. I elected to self publish and make these by hand. This felt important not only because this first book is just as much a piece of art as a piece of writing, but because I wanted to have a say in how it was made, where and with what materials. The way I see it, everything is neural programming. We are “perceiving” and responding to things we don’t even realize and the impacts have echoes in our body-minds. This is called neuroception and is not actually “perception” – but that’s another conversation. I have a deep appreciation for doing things the old fashioned way and I like to think of my book as part of the “slow media” movement, which has a lot to do with choosing what we consume and how we consume it. I sourced the paper from a company that acquires their resources from sustainably managed working forests and is certified by the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC). This means that each copy is made with third party certified renewable resources. Every copy is put together by my hands. Every paper is folded, every stitch is sewn, and every cover is placed completely by me. This has made the whole process very intimate and a true offering of my mind, heart and efforts. Moving forward, I probably won’t hand stitch every book that I write, but for this project it felt important to do it that way. Zephra Eden is actually my pen name and the name I choose to go by in public spheres. Maybe one day I will reclaim my birth name, but for now I am enjoying a bit of anonymity.
Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
So much of my work is in service of bridging the gap between humans and the environment with the goal of fostering both intimacy and resiliency. I went to graduate school to study ethnobotany. Originally, I was interested in examining human relationships with naturally occurring entheogenic plants. However, this pursuit drew my attention to the fields of conservation, stewardship and biodiversity management. While I think that there can be amazing, transformational, transcendental, and seraphic experiences when one is in communion with naturally occurring psychedelic plants, the message that continues to come through these encounters is that we are living ecology, intimately interconnected, that the health of all beings is interdependent, and that the environment is alive, intelligent and interacting with us. I think of what I create as where art meets environmentalism. I draw both on our metaphysical and physical relationships with the world and each other – a bit of a head in the clouds, feet on the ground approach. I also do a lot of research on the neurobiology of trauma, how we can resource and regulate ourselves, and how we can show up both for ourselves and our communities feeling grounded and centered, so that we can not only live in a good way but collectively make decisions and take actions that are necessary for our total ecological health.
There are a lot of challenges that I encounter in my work, some of the biggest being sustainability and accessibility. It’s easy to find mass produced, cheaply made materials to use in my craft. However, it is more difficult to find suitable post-consumer or ethically and sustainably made materials. Another challenge is navigating value and self-worth as juxtaposed to accessibility. Beyond that, dealing with imposter syndrome has been a big deal. The more I learn, the more I realize I have more to learn. It’s been a challenge for me to feel competent, but at a certain point I felt that “good enough” and “safe enough” were going to have to get me where I’m going and that I can continue to learn and improve and release myself from the expectation of perfection. I like to think I am walking the tightrope of confidence and humility.
I think it’s important to do things very slowly. I believe that slowness is medicinal and necessary to create sustainable life-ways. This is a cornerstone in all facets of my offerings. I’ve learned a lot about effort and persistence but most importantly I’ve learned about my values. I would rather reach a small group of people that really see the value in what I bring to the table than a large group that only sees the surface. I would love for people to know that I really care. I am not looking for profit or popularity, I just want to do good work and show up in a good way – to do my part to be of service in community and to be seen and heard for the truth that is living through me. And for all of this to be able to sustain me.
If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I have only lived in this area for a few months and am just starting to explore it myself, so I am not as familiar with everything as I would like to be. But if my friend were visiting me for the week, I would want to show them as much as I could. We would of course spend some time in Boulder, on Pearl street, eat at Thrive, maybe go shopping and check out some local bookstores. However, my main goal would be to take them up into the mountains. I would show them Nederland and grab some coffee at New Moon, wander into Golden, Estes Park, Lyons, Gold Hill, Idaho Springs, hike around, catch some sunsets, enjoy some hot springs, visit Fort Collins and go to the drive-in, catch as many farmers markets and art markets as we could, or if it were winter get out on the mountains and go snowboarding.
Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
There are so many people and institutions that deserve recognition as potent contributions to my path and aspirations. I will start with some of the most well – known figures who have influenced my thoughts, beliefs and conduct including Alan Watts, who expanded my cognition of God; Carl Jung, who revealed the symbolic ways through which the planes of consciousness communicate; Ram Das, who reminded me of my capacity to feel the omnipresent guru in every moment; Lau Tzu, who taught me the value of emptiness and fluidity; and Terrence McKenna, who divulged the capacity of knowledge inherent and emergent in our multidimensional existence. I am grateful for Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Kurt Vonnegut, Walt Whitman and others who have influenced my mind and writing.
I have so much love for the instructors at Soul Space Yoga in Connecticut who held me and helped me through a tender time of transition.
I also owe a lot of gratitude to Dr. Andreoletti who was my advisor during my undergraduate program at CCSU, the entire ethnobotanical faculty at the University of Kent in Canterbury especially Dr. Waldstein, the community that I have formed and that has formed around me including my spirit mother Molly, my mentor Surana, my soul sister Dakota, and all of the people who have supported me along my path and shaped who I am… my mom and sister, Roz, Oli, Mishka, Chloe, Sarah, Joe, Laszlo, Bita, Ciara, Mo, Larry, Danielle… the list could go on!
Instagram: @mountains_daughter
Other: patreon.com/zephraeden
Image Credits
Four of the photos were taken by Brian Blyth. The one with me in the background and the herbal sachets in the foreground, the one of the stitched binding, the image of the notebooks stacked on top of each other, and the image of my hands sewing a button on the cover of a notebook.