Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
A medicine for our time
The cars zoom by, the supermarket checkout beeps, we down a quick coffee and do everything to keep business running as usual. How far have we humans travelled into understanding our purpose? How far away from the extraordinarily creative intelligence of the natural world we inhabit? It is not so easy to fully notice the beauty of a so-called weed, bound as we are by crushing time constraints and centuries of conditioning. So what might a small apparently insignificant plant be doing here besides waiting to sting us or irritate an otherwise perfect border or flower bed?
Accidental decoration, oxygen supplier, concrete cracker, future furniture, garden ornament, parks benefactor, beauty supplier, foodstuff, weave potential, herbal wonder: our plant friends are inextricably linked with our lives and our survival, no matter in how many plastic wrappers we try to disguise the fact and deny our dependency. Our minds are used to thinking of plants as commodities for our use along with the earth they and we grow from, the water they and we drink, and the air they and we breathe. Yet since ever there was a need our plant allies have been there to supply it. It is the great good fortune of the authors of this book to be part of an awakening to their great generosity and the deeper gifts they offer.
This awakening is happening alongside the unprecedented environmental destruction of all time, when dozens of species are going extinct every day as a result of human actions — a rate of something like 10,000 times more than happens naturally. Ingrained in us by centuries of conditioning is an all-pervasive superiority complex which insists that humans hold all the answers. It's a big stretch for us to consider that the natural world itself might hold a wisdom and knowing far beyond our own. Our cultural expectations may not enjoy the reminder that we are related to lowly weeds and common or garden plant life, although an amusing fact is that we are said to share up to 60 to 70 per cent of our genes with the oak tree. Our cells and plant cells are extremely similar to look at.
The stuff of our blood, haemoglobin, which enables us to transport the oxygen needed for all our cellular function is almost identical in structure to the chlorophyll which is similarly central to plant physiology — the difference being that haemoglobin is centred upon iron while chlorophyll contains magnesium. How fine it is to have daffodils as our cousins!
And equally wonderful is that modern DNA research has confirmed the long-held knowledge of indigenous peoples: that all life on earth is related. Thomas King, First Nations writer, describing the meaning of the Native saying "for all my relations", puts it beautifully:
"All my relations" is at first a reminder of who we are and of our relationship with both our family and our relatives. It also reminds us of the extended relationship we share with all human beings. But the relationships that Native people see go further, to the animals, to the birds, to the fish, to the plants, to all the animate and inanimate forms that can be seen or imagined. More than that, "all my relations" is an encouragement for us to accept the responsibilities we have within this universal family by living our lives in a harmonious and moral manner (a common admonishment is to say of someone that they act as if they have no relations). (Thomas King, All My Relations: An Anthology of Contemporary Canadian Native Fiction, 1990)
Despite the many nutritional and even herbal uses we modern humans have for plants, we have tended to disinherit them from our human families, convincing ourselves of their inanimate nature and forgetting how to listen to their wisdom. Listening in itself is a poorly practised art in the human domain as we are often busy competing to be heard, never mind taking the space to listen to voices in nature. If we ever do stop to think about it, the idea that plants might possess wisdom is still by and large considered the domain of the naive, insane, or misguided. Those who commune deeply with nature may still bear the stigma of suspicion even as most of us seek out beautiful countryside to relax and enjoy ourselves in. High pressured lifestyles are often rewarded with a leafy environment yet how often have the plants themselves been acknowledged and thanked? It has become very well known to "use" plant medicines as healing agents, and gardeners and growers often love their plants, yet there is still a tendency for the plants themselves to be objectified in another form of our insatiable consumerism.
Using a plant-based medicine rather than a drug-based one in an attempt to remove symptoms that arise from the imbalances within our society misses the point. We can't fix things out of the same place that has caused the problem.
Our teacher Eliot Cowan developed plant spirit medicine as a natural progression from his practice of five elements acupuncture, his herbal knowledge, and his calling to earth medicine or shamanism. Five elements acupuncture is a healing modality with its roots in ancient China. It is a very distinct and complete medicinal paradigm which sees the cause of disease as being an energetic or spiritual imbalance. The imbalance can be read by signals in the form of colours that are seen in a person's complexion, particularities of body odour, and sound of voice, and something about the emotional flavour — or its lack — with which a person goes through life. Eliot feels that because of his grounding in this elegant and rigorous system of medicine, he was ideally suited to hear the call of the plants. Did the plants call him to plant spirit medicine?
Well, plants often have a feminine way of directing me. Like a wise wife, they make their guidance seem like my own choice. Until I moved to Vermont in my early 20's I had no interest in plants. Suddenly I found them fascinating. At the time I thought the fascination came from inside me, but looking back, it seems the plants made themselves fascinating as a way of getting me to pay attention to them. They had a lot to show me. Plants on my farm healed my "terminally ill" goat, and this put me in pursuit of natural healing. The pursuit led me to become an acupuncturist. Later I discovered acupuncture had given me a language with which to converse with plants. Those conversations led me to rediscover and bring forth a long-forgotten medicine, which I called Plant Spirit Medicine. Later, an invitation from a sacred plant called the "Wind Tree" showed me I had been called to the healing tradition of the Huichol Indians of Mexico.
Plant spirit medicine involves building relationships with, rather than "using" local plants. It addresses the spiritual and emotional roots of disease. More than simply a healing modality for us struggling humans, it is a path to rediscover our connection with the divine natural world and how to live in it.
When something is described as divine, sacred, or holy we are immediately led into a need for definition and to take a look at our feelings about forces beyond the human. This can be problematic for those who favour a mechanistic world view or who have suffered psychological indoctrination of a particular religious perspective. It seems unavoidable, it really isn't possible for us to approach the subject objectively given our history of bloodshed and hypocritical power abuse in the religious and spiritual domains. The existence or not of gods or divine forces appears to be so highly contentious that it continues to be the cause of ongoing war and bloodshed.
Considering the perfection created in each leaf, snowflake, and insect and animal species, the mystery of our emergence into the world makes a compelling case for a creative force beyond our capacity to name whatever we choose to name it. Moreover, most of us have had at least some experiences in life which are above the ordinary — which touch us in some mysterious way and seem to involve a capacity that is beyond the understanding of materialism.
Whether we are conscious of it or not we are culturally conditioned away from an indigenous perspective that implicitly understands its place in the reciprocal scheme of things. Ours is a world of strong forces that have removed us from connection with the divine elements of nature, leaving us bereft of an easy sense of belonging, purpose, or direction. In truth, we are so very lost that we don't even know there was anything to lose. Plant spirit medicine is a powerful and gentle antidote to this. Through relationship with the plants, the healer match-makes between patients and their plant allies which are able to offer us what we really need. Their profound and mysterious capacities promote movement towards greater balance and harmony on all levels.
There are various ways of describing the innate energy of a plant — plant spirits, plant awareness, plant consciousness, and so on. All refer to the same thing — that same life-force or soul that we understand as inseparable from the body of the plant, just as our own spirits are inseparable from our bodies while life is within us. But what actually is plant spirit medicine? It can be understood as a medicine, a help or healing, from the plant spirits and to our spirits. But what do these words invoke in us? In the mixed soup that is our modern culture, there is much diverse interpretation, assumption, and cultural difference in experience that affects how we hear words. When we are in a group introducing people to plant spirit medicine, we explore what people understand by these words. It's not a test, and is entirely subjective, but as a way of starting from scratch so we can get on the same page it's interesting to hear how we make associations and thereby also assumptions.
The word "plant" can conjure anything between green growing thing and dig-into-the-ground, and lots beside and beyond: friend, tree, help, food, weed, root, ally, messenger, beauty, herb, flower, everywhere, compost, leaf, growing child of nature, medicine, poison, compost, jungle, rainforest, chlorophyll, photosynthesis, oxygen, necessary. Such a wide range of interpretation from one simple word.
The word "spirit" can evoke ghosts, the unseen force, the ether, energy and soul, that which underlies everything; as well as whisky or any other good stiff drink, invisible, chi, dynamism, that which cannot be named, and willpower. It feels important that we find some level ground from which to launch our inquiry and besides, it's a great game to play with words and clarify communication so we can learn from each other what we actually understand.
The word "medicine" elicits an equally wide response from yuck to healing, doctor to pill, power to disease, and causes us to mentally range through hospital, drug, sick, well, health, elixir, poison, answer, placebo, alternative, natural, pharmaceutical, and making things better. This word, medicine, has a much deeper meaning in many indigenous cultures than it does in our own. For many indigenous peoples of the Americas, including Canada, who comprise many distinct tribes, the word has a much broader and richer meaning than simply something used to treat disease or enhance wellness. Medicine refers to the energy of a person, place, object, natural force, or event — the "energy" can mean its presence, its power, its spirit — that which is intrinsically there within a person, animal, plant, rock, place, or other thing. This can be seen also as its mystic potency or innate qualities that go well beyond its physical or external appearance. It is this indigenous idea of medicine that is meant by our use of the word "medicine" as we talk about the plants.
This is not an easy concept to put across in words on a page. We will not pin down the butterfly. Words point towards knowing, but they can't lead us to wisdom. It takes experience to do this. The indigenous view is more experiential, more of the body and senses. It actually is impossible to experience it while reading a book — yet we hope here to give you a taste of its trail, and more than that, a yearning to take things further and build your own relationships with the plants. However much you have already been touched by nature, our prayer is to be part of opening that door still further. So now, before proceeding further, put the book down and find a living plant.
If you are able to, go outside and find a plant which is growing of its own volition (rather than one planted although trees are a happy exception, being old enough to have outgrown the human intervention). If you can't get outside, sit with a house plant. Allow yourself the moments to observe your leafy cousin and be together as if you'd made a date. Notice your feelings, notice your breathing, notice the machinations of your mind (which might hate this exercise!), and notice the plant; its structure, form, colours, shape, way of relating to its environment, and so on. After some minutes, see if anything has changed — how do you feel now in your body? How do you feel emotionally?
Our world, and our plants, are in increasing danger from the relentless consumerism that characterises much of our human endeavour. Unprecedented numbers of humans are living on the earth today, and perhaps the majority of these live in ways far removed from nature. The lost words of our time are a striking illustration of how far and fast we in the UK are moving in this direction. The most up-to-date English children's dictionary has had to drop more and more vocabulary as the new words of our technology-rich culture multiply. We lost almond, blackberry, and crocus, replaced by analogue, block graph and celebrity in the Oxford Junior Dictionary in 2007. Catkin, chestnut, and acorn also got axed, giving way to cut and paste, chat room, and attachment. This is expressed with exquisite art and poetry in Robert Macfarlane's beautiful children's book, The Lost Words (2017).
At the same time, many are aware of how important it is for us to regain, and retain, our sense of connection with nature. Japanese studies of the practice of shinrin-yoku, forest bathing, or spending time in natural green spaces, show that this pastime reduces the stress hormone cortisol, calms the brain, helps the cardiovascular system, and boosts immunity. The Japanese are leading in this type of research — a 2008 study published in the Journal of the Japanese Society for Horticultural Science even showed that high school classrooms filled with potted plants for a four-month trial period significantly reduced visits to the infirmary compared with age-matched students attending classes without the visible plants! Variations on this study have been repeated in other countries with similar results, including showing improved grades for maths and science! And closer to home, forest schooling is becoming increasingly popular as educators realise the power of the natural world to facilitate healthy learning.
According to Dr Miles Richardson, head of psychology at the University of Derby, there is research evidence that proves exposure to nature can reduce hypertension, reduce respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses, improve vitality and mood, improve depression and anxiety, restore attention capacity, and relieve mental fatigue. He conducted a study looking at 18,500 people who took on "doing something wild" every day for 30 days. Feeling a part of nature has been shown to significantly correlate with life satisfaction, vitality, meaningfulness, happiness, and mindfulness, and lower cognitive anxiety. Fully 30 per cent more people reported their health as being "excellent" after the period of the study — and many of them loved it so much they continued on afterwards. "These correlations are of a similar magnitude to those found between wellbeing and other variables, such as marriage and education, whose relationships with wellbeing are well established" (Richardson, Cormack, McRobert, & Underhill, 2016). He adds that recent analysis found people with a stronger connection to nature experienced more life satisfaction, positive affect, and vitality at levels associated with established predictors of satisfaction, such as personal income. "There is a need to normalise everyday nature as part of a healthy lifestyle."
Lucy McRobert of the Wildlife Trust who was a partner in the research says, "Nature isn't a miracle cure for diseases, but by interacting with it, spending time in it, experiencing it and appreciating it we can reap the benefits of feeling happier and healthier as a result." All who love plants and the outdoors know this through their own experience; however, those of us who work with plants as healers know they have infinitely more to offer than is yet fully realised — a lifetime working with them only ever reveals more that is still unknown. While we in the modern world are far removed from the nature that sustains all life, working with plant spirits or allies has been part of every indigenous culture's healing toolkit. Just as the bodies of plants have been used for healing our bodies since human and animal time began, so there has always been an understanding of the spiritual assistance that plant spirits offer.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Touched By Nature"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Pip Waller and Lucy Wells.
Excerpted by permission of Aeon Books Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
