The Dream Seeding Studio is the creative home for Shel’s offerings, including the Creations by Florea apothecary and the BIPOC Dream Seeding Writing Circle.
Shel (they/them) is a poetic herbalist bringing gentle healing spaces to Kumeyaay Land and beyond.
Their art and community engagement pay homage to their lineage of Black and Chinese warrior-healer spirits.
Read Shel’s published poetry in For the Wild, Braided Way, Lucky Jefferson, New Words Press and Ebony Tomatoes Collective, including three self-published compilations, their most recent being Fish Songs (2024).
Shel began their apothecary Creations by Florea in 2017 on Piscataway Land (DC).
The apothecary continues to service our immediate community with small batch, simple and holistic remedies. In the online shop folks will find healing salves, tinctures for easeful menstruation and oxymels for burnout recovery, digestion and immune support.
Herbal remedies come alive with channeled names and the transformative stories behind them: Ouroboros explores revolutionary shape-shifting with the support of homegrown nervine mints. Gaia’s Love offers nourishment and roots us back into the Earth, who tells us the oldest love story. It’s in this space that herbalism becomes herbal art, where an apothecary owes its magic to the realms of ecopoetic intimacy.
Creations by Florea provides immersive herbal education through Poetic Herbalism workshops. Participants receive all the materials needed to create their own batch of an herbal remedy, like a digestive oxymel or a nourishing tea blend. Through hands-on education and collaborative knowledge-building, we deepen our relationship to medicinal plants amidst a culture that seeks to flatten our connection. These workshops root folks in story and creative expression with plants through group exploration of BIPOC-authored ecopoetry. Each Poetic Herbalism portal is a living altar of embodied and shared knowledge, a celebration of plants as muses, relatives and friends.
As a community herbalist, Shel crafts seasonal oxymels for mutual aid. These oxymels, safe for most folks to use, are offered to community members at no cost through the apothecary.
As the apothecary completes its 9th year Creations by Florea continues to deepen and expand, while rooted in Heart-led reciprocity and joy.
After returning to Kumeyaay Land (San Diego) in 2022, Shel birthed a new extension of their Heart-led offerings: the Dream Seeding Circle for BIPOC writers.
These monthly circles fuse ecopoetic study with somatic sharing and herbalism. Participants connect the subtle energetics of plants through poems that celebrate the Earth, scanning the texts to see where herbalism may influence form & content.
Drawing heavily on Poetry as Spellcasting, Dream Seeders are encouraged to write towards collective liberation through visualization, affirming possible futures, and rooting their practice in relationship.
The Dream Seeding Circle has had several iterations, first as a month-long container for BIPOC with seasonal community sessions open to all, eventually landing on its present rhythm as a monthly drop-in space for BIPOC. Future visions for the Circle include gatherings in-person and peer-supported workshopping.