Plant-based Healing for Mind, Body, and Soul

There are three things our culture has forgotten: basic health, healing, and holiness. All three words have the same linguistic root, and the concepts have the same goal: sanity, integrity, completeness, salvation, happiness, liberation, magic.

-Holger Kalweit, Shamans, Healers, and Medicine Men


Plant Teacher Sessions can be useful for anyone wanting to develop a deeper relationship with the Self or as a means of furthering one's connection with the spirit world in general. The many emotional issues that we encounter under various names (e.g. Depression, Childhood Trauma, PTSD, Compulsive Fear, etc.) are really avenues to guide us toward an initiation into our true selves. Working with the plants can help us transform these "blockages" and foster our continuing spiritual unfoldment in the quest for wholeness, balance, self-acceptance, and empowerment.



Listening to the Plant Teachers

The best teachers don't force their students into rigid forms of learning. They allow the student to see and understand the ways that he/she best acquires knowledge and the way that they may best creatively express themselves. In this way the potential for true change and growth is made possible.

Unlike pharmaceuticals which force the body into action, plant-based medicines work in concert with the body's own energetic patternings. Of course, some herbs will cause certain reliable physiological changes, but when we begin to work with plants on ever more subtle levels, it is important to develop relationships with them. Much as one would begin a course of study with a renowned teacher−with respect and a sincere desire to learn, we should approach plants with humility and an understanding of their wisdom. After all plants not only help to heal but are the very basis of human existence. They create the air that we breathe, they directly or indirectly provide all of our nourishment, and they supply us with much of our clothing and shelter.

Mugwort
Artemisia ludoviciana


Working with plants on the level of essence is a highly personal experience. This, in and of itself, is essential to the healing process because it is the sense of a separate self that often leads to mental and emotional disturbances. When a plant that may be beneficial is identified and one can begin establishing a relationship with that Plant Teacher a deep and true healing can begin that reconnects the soul with the greater spirit.

It is no accident that at this time in history there is a resurgence of plant-based healing. The plants cry out ever more loudly as we continue to destroy the biosphere. Every year, interest in the use of medicinal plants for healing grows. Sacred medicines are exploding out of the jungles of the equatorial regions of the earth with messages of cooperation and harmony. Something has gone wrong−so many of us have become disconnected from our true and essential natures. The role of the heart has been supplanted by an increasing reliance on the mind. Is it really any wonder that heart disease is the #1 killer in the U.S.? Something is trying to get our attention.


The Psychological Aspects of Plant-based Healing

The body has an innate healing wisdom. Much like the symbols of a dream, the symptoms of illness are ways for the inner self to get our attention. If we only treat the symptoms, we may miss out on an opportunity for increased self-awareness and a relief from our sense of separateness. We may even drive the "disease" process deeper into the body which will require the organism to speak louder (i.e. create a more critical imbalance).

Yarrow
Achillea millefolium
When we are disconnected from parts of ourselves, we lose trust and begin to doubt our reactions to sensory or energetic inputs. Our hearts and minds become out of synch. We are in denial of what in any given moment is our personal truth. We know that something is not right, and we feel anxiety. We not only fear the darkness, the pain, and the sadness that dwell deep within each and every one of us, but many of us also fear our joyous, light, and powerful parts. We need to acknowledge and accept all aspects of our being−even the mad ones. It is far more painful and sad to deny some aspect of our being its existence.

There is nothing to be fixed−we just need to allow our true, whole, multi-dimensional selves to emerge. Plants can teach us how to do this.

For example, Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) brings new levels of self-awareness, teaching us how to be aware of the ways that we deceive ourselves and showing us how to manage the body's energy field. (i.e. it brings greater awareness to the ways that energy from within and without effect the mental/emotional and spiritual aspects of our beings.) By bringing more awareness to the way that our projections twist our perceptions, we can exist in ever greater states of health, wholeness, and truth.


The Energetic Being

All folk medicine traditions acknowledge that the body is a network of energetic pathways. In Chinese Medicine, these are described as meridians that run throughout the body. When any part of this system becomes blocked, whether this results from physical, mental/emotional, or spiritual reasons, disease occurs. A very important part of the healing process is allowing the body to resume its free flowing state.


The Role of the Healer: Putting it all Together

We thus seek the 'vessel' and the paradox of process, for the vessel alone can contain the mysterious, mad aspects of our being, indeed allow us to discover their mystery, and allow for a felt experience of the relation between the world known through 'parts' and their link of a larger sphere of oneness.

-Nathan Schwartz-Salant, The Mystery of Human Relationship


The "healer" can be a conduit for the healing energy of the universe and and a holder of awareness for the person seeking healing, but really he/she does nothing more than create and hold a safe, grounded space for others to do their own healing work. It is important to remember that we are all in the process of unfolding, healing, and becoming whole. We are in a global process of awakening−a grand, alchemical project whose goal is the reconnection of spirit and matter. We need to help each other wake up. We can look to the plants to help. They are waiting.




Call 503.522.6906 or email scott@cascadiafolkmedicine.com for more info. or to schedule an appointment.

$60 per hour (sliding scale available)

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