Green Man Ramblings

New Offerings for 2012!

2012-01-14T21:32:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year everyone!

I wanted to let you know about a few new offerings:

The "Herbal Asthma Strategies" recordings are available now at http://www.bardicbrews.net!

On February 11, I will be teaching in Boston about herbal and nutritional strategies for addressing depression, and on February 18, I will be teaching in Barrington, NH about herbal and nutritional strategies for addressing asthma.

From April-September, I will be teaching a new online course -- "Talking with the Plants."Pay by January 31 and get a 50% disc Margi Flint'sount!

I'm happy and proud that my work will be included in the next issue of Plant Healer Magazine.

I'm also excited that I will be teaching at the Third Annual Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference in Coconino, AZ, September 13-16.

I am deeply honored to be teaching in Margi Flint's Herbal Immersion program this summer.

Watch in the weeks to come for the resurrection of my blog --
http://greenmanramblings.blogspot.com/, and for announcements about workshops in Michigan, Wisconsin, British Columbia, and California!

Hawthorn and the Third Road

2011-09-21T19:48:00.000-07:00

The Harvest Moon shines brightly as you wander through the mist to the Hawthorn on the ridge above the river bank.

In May her flowers seduced you with an otherworldly perfume, heavy with the scent of sex -- and death.

Now, in the last days of summer, she is heavy with fruit that bends toward the earth where it will break open and decay, leaving the seed to wait in darkness for sun and rain to return in spring.

The old stories tell us that when the world became overrun by men who wielded swords and cut the earth with iron ploughs, the people who taught our ancestors to sing the songs that called the fruit trees to blossom disappeared beneath the hills. At the gateways to their world they planted Hawthorns to tangle and repel the brutish and unwary, but nourish the hearts of those who grieved for lost worlds.

Thomas the Rhymer fell asleep beneath such a tree and woke to find the Queen of Elfland who showed him three roads he might travel -- each road corresponding to another way of being in the world:

"O see ye not that narrow road,
So thick beset with thorns and briers?
That is the path of righteousness,
Tho after it but few enquires."

The road to righteousness is the road laid out by the rules and laws of civilization -- rules that bind instinct with tangled thorns and briers that threaten to cut all who would deviate from the path. It is marked by the logical consciousness that is centered in the brain -- the consciousness that divides the world into categories that mark clear lines between what is right and true and acceptable and what is "beyond the pale." Its origins lie in the construction of the first walls that separated the city from the "wilderness" -- the name people gave to the living world around them when they began to forget they drew their life from it.

"And see not ye that braid braid road,
That lies across that lily leven?
That is the path to wickedness, Tho some call it the road to heaven."

The road of wickedness is the road of instinct uncoupled from any sense of consequence -- a sense that arose organically when people experienced themselves as inextricably woven into webs of human and ecological connection. With disconnection came alienation, and with alienation came unassuageable hunger and insatiable lust that rip and tear at the fabric of being. The road appears broad and easy because all sense of limitation is lost, it appears to lead to heaven because its the path of following unchecked desire, but it leads further and further from the source of being and life that offers the only true fulfillment of those desires.

Rather than bringing satiety, this path that disconnects us from the heart, brings agitation that can grow into panic as people desperately seek pleasure to take the edge off their feeling of emptiness, and as each moment of pleasure fades find themselves feeling the emptiness more acutely, more frantically seeking to stave off the gnawing feeling inside them. The true destination of this path is the realm of the hungry ghosts who have mouths but no stomachs and so eat and eat but are never full.

"And see not ye that bonny road,
That winds about the fernie brae?
That is the road to fair Elfland,
Where thou and I this night maun gae."

The third road -- leading from the Hawthorn -- is the path of the heart. Its a path that leads to a wilder place, a place outside all ideas and judgements of right and wrong, good and evil, a place beyond and beneath and before the stories of guilt, fear, and shame we all carry. A place of wild innocence, where you can re-member your connection to the world around you, and your desires arise from your response to its unspeakable beauty.

The Chinese traditionally taught that the heart is an earthen vessel that holds the Shen -- the individual spirit.

When the heart becomes agitated, the Shen becomes disturbed -- leading to restlessness, anxiety, and insomnia.

Hawthorn nourishes and calms the heart, helping to settle the Shen. At the same time, her thorns offer protection from those who would harm you. Calm and protected, you can breathe into the center of your chest, opening to the core of your being.

Standing in that stillness and openness, the third road opens to you -- leading you deep within where you come into contact with the part of you that remains connected with All Things and experience pure ecstasy.

Thomas followed that road and disappeared from civilization for seven years. He returned with the blessing and the curse of the "tongue that could not lie." He was no longer able to participate in the lies of politics and commerce that are necessary to operate within he framework of society. But he was also no longer able to lie to himself, no longer able to deny his own beauty and power. The luminosity of the other world shone from his eyes. Its music flowed from his lips.

Tonight the Queen of Elfland stands again beneath the Hawthorn. She points to three roads.

Which one will you choose?

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Deep gratitude to Paul Bergner, Stephen Harrod Buhner, and Karina B. Heart for their teachings about the heart, which inform and infuse these words.

Is Herbalism in Danger of being Outlawed?

2011-09-07T22:21:00.000-07:00

European regulations on herbal commerce. Codex Alimentarius. FDA rules on "Good Manufacturing Practices" for herbal products.

It seems like every few weeks I am reading about a law or regulatory regime that opponents fear will mean the end of herbalism as we know it.

Some of these threats have a degree of reality to them -- the "Good Manufacturing Practices" regulations, for example, have caused some small tincture makers to go out of business and created significant problems for others. (Paul Bergner has a great article giving a balanced view of these regulations in the current issue of Plant Healer Magazine.) Others are largely overblown -- I have yet to read any convincing evidence that Codex Alimentarius actually threatens anyone's attempts to sell herbal products.

But none of them actually threaten to stamp out herbalism -- because stamping out herbalism is impossible.

What they do threaten to do is make it more difficult for companies that sell herbal products to do business. And certainly this is a real problem. I'm not in favor of any kind of government regulation of herbs prepared in traditional ways (though I would love to see supplement companies required to disclose whether they use toxic solvents in extracting plant constituents like Quercetin!) And most herb companies make a tremendous contribution to the herbal community through education, through support of conferences like the Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference and organizations like United Plant Savers, and by providing practitioners and the general public with high quality, sustainably grown and harvested herbs.

But if all the herb companies in the country were shut down by government edict tomorrow, herbalism would not die.

People would continue growing herbs in their backyards and carefully and respectfully gathering herbs from the forests, fields, mountains, deserts, and swamps around them. They would continue giving Elderberry syrup to sick children and Chaga decoctions to people with cancer. And the people in each community who devoted their lives to working with plants would continue to share their knowledge with people who wanted to learn and to help people who were sick and in pain just as they always have.

Paul Bergner points out that the jailing of herbalists like Nicholas Culpepper and Samuel Thomson failed to break their spirits or keep others from continuing their work.

And if you want to look at how successful governments have been in outlawing plants take a look at Cannabis or Poppies or Coca.

To me the core of herbalism is about helping people take their health in their own hands and connecting them with the living world around them by spreading knowledge about plants and about the workings of the human body. And the approaches to herbalism that excite me most are those that involve people working with plants that grow in their own bioregion -- something I am increasingly trying to do in my own practice, though I will likely always still work with a few beloved allies that can't grow where I live.

In this society, such ideas and practices are somewhat subversive. And I don't think we can expect a society so based on domination and control to make it easier for us to teach self reliance and mutual aid. But I also think its important to remember that no system of government, no matter how totalitarian, has ever succeeded in preventing people from healing themselves and each other with plants.

And as long as people are working with plants as medicine, herbalism will be alive and well.

Goldenrod: September's Golden Twilight

2011-09-04T18:07:00.000-07:00

(Photo by T. Parrish, Parrish Photography via Wikimedia Commons)

By the solar calendar, autumn is still a few weeks away. But here in Maine, summer is already fading -- there is a soft golden light as afternoon turns to evening. Everywhere, Goldenrod (Solidago spp.) blooms.

Gail Faith Edwards notes that Goldenrod is the last of the bright yellow flowers left blossoming in New England fields. Warm and aromatic, it carries the energy of these last warm days of September, and the medicine we make from it can bring sunlight into the darkness of winter, lifting the spirit.

Just as it lifts waning spirits, Goldenrod brings wonderful relief to sore, tired muscles. A massage with Goldenrod oil or a Goldenrod bath will do wonders after a hard day of working outside or a tough workout at the gym. Kiva Rose has used Goldenrod successfully for more acute muscle injuries as well.

And its warmth and astringency make it a perfect remedy for allergies marked by red, irritated eyes and a running nose that make you look and feel like you haven't slept in days,

Restoring strength when energy is flagging indeed seems to be a keynote for Goldenrod's medicine. Matthew Wood writes that:

"All summer long, while other plants are flowering, Goldenrod is steadily raising its single stalk towards the sky. Finally, around the middle of August, the golden-yellow spires appear. Both a staff and a spire are included in the picture. It is like the tarot card showing a man walking along a road with a heavy burden on his back, a walking staff in his hand. His head is bent down, so that he does not see a church spire rising in the distance which shows that the distance is within his reach. The message of Goldenrod is to endure to reach the goal."

Wood makes an interesting connection here with Goldenrod's ability to restore the kidneys' ability to pour in blood -- a necessary function for the processing of both chemical and emotional burdens in the body. When Goldenrod is called for, the kidneys themselves are tired -- often manifesting as lower back pain right around the kidneys. Wood notes that:

"In some instances, the urine is light and copious, as fluids are drawn through the kidneys, but not minerals. There may be edema of the legs. In other instances the urine is dark and concentrated"

Indeed, my first use of Goldenrod was in response to the edema that accompanied a nasty case of Poison Ivy several years ago at a point when I was also under tremendous emotional stress. My leg had swollen up under the rash. Goldenrod, in combination with a small amount of Horsetail, helped the kidneys clear the fluids.

I think of Goldenrod as bringing the last summer sun to rekindle the kidneys' fire.

It will be enough to carry us through the dark time until the sun returns.

Awakening to the Wild: A Year Long Online Journey

2011-04-24T21:02:00.000-07:00

June 1-2011 - June 1, 2012 (note change of date - - registration extended)

$50-75 a month (not including the cost of books and materials)

$500 if paid in full in advance or in two payments of $250

The world is alive and speaking to us. All we have to do is remember how to listen.

We are all born knowing this simple truth, and begin our lives in a world rich with meaning. But in our culture, the voices around us are quickly drowned out by electronic noise, and we are taught to ignore the bits of song we still hear on the wind or risk insanity. Eventually we reach a point where we no longer trust our own senses.

But for some of us the vibrant memory of the world we knew as children is stronger than the fear of madness.

The wildness of our souls can be recovered, just as a forest can grown from an abandoned field.

Through discussion, meditation and direct experience of the natural world, we will explore:

-- How our culture separates us from our wild selves and how we can reclaim them

-- Engaging nature through engaging our senses

-- The use of the heart as an organ of perception (drawing from the work of Stephen Buhner)

-- Developing and deepening relationships with the land where we live and its other inhabitants

-- Nourishing our wild selves

-- The healing power of the wild

-- Reclaiming space for wildness in our lives, our communities, our world

In the end though, our journey will take its own shape.

This course will be intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually rigorous. Please be ready to be challenged, opened, and transformed. A short interview will be required for admission.

To apply e-mail seandonahuepoet@gmail.com

__________________________________________

SYLLABUS -- SUBJECT TO CHANGE AS THE WILD WORKS THROUGH US

The syllabus is intentionally more bare bones in the later months, to allow us to flesh out the course together.

May-June

What is wildness?

What is civilization?

What do we fear in the wild? What wildness do we yearn for?

Uncovering our personal histories with the wild.

Text: My Name is Chellis and I am in Recovery from Western Civilization by Chellis Glendinning

June - July

Coming to our senses: taste, smell, sight, sound, and touch

Elements of life: earth, air, fire, and water in us and in the world

Text: The Earth Path by Starhawk

The Secret Teachings of Plants by Stephen Harrod Buhner (really more for the next month but it is dense!)

July-August

Centers of consciousness: Brain, Heart, and Gut

Heart-centered consciousness

Plants from a heart-centered perspective

People from a heart-centered perspective

Text: The Secret Teachings of Plants

August-September

Working with grief, loss, and alienation

Text: Becoming Animal by David Abram

September-October

Connecting with the history of the land

Text: A Language Older than Words by Derrick Jensen

October - November

Ancestral connections: How did your ancestors relate to the land?

November - December

The underworld journey

Stories of descent and return

Intimacy with death

December - January

Communities, human and wild

January - February

Ecologies of the body, mind, and spirit

February-March

Nourishing the body, mind, and spirit

March - April

Fertility and Ecstasy

Queering the Wild

April - May

Carrying wildness into the human world

Awakening the wild in others

Herbal Allies for a Changing World

2011-04-24T20:59:00.001-07:00

Peak oil. Wars, revolutions, and uprisings. Economic crisis. Earthquakes, storms, and floods. Nuclear disaster.

We are living in a world undergoing tremendous change -- a world giving birth to itself. And all of that is mirrored in our individual lives as well. The old structures are breaking open. The new ones have not yet emerged.

Now is the time when the world most needs us to bring our gifts forward. What can help us step up and accept the challenge?

Plants and fungi are our biological ancestors. They have lived on the Earth far longer than we have, and they can teach us how to let go of our grief, fear, and shame and remember how to stand in the fullness of our beauty and our power. And connecting with them connects us with the wisdom of the living Earth.

Sean Donahue is an herbalist, poet, activist, and witch who believes that personal, community, and planetary healing are deeply intertwined. In a six week series of teleseminars he will share his perspective on how we can work with plants and fungi to prepare ourselves for the roles we have to play in healing our communities and our planet -- the work we were born to do.

People are invited to take part in all six calls or just one. There is no charge for the teleseminars (except from your phone company for a long distance call) but donations are welcomed. Each call will begin at 7:00 p.m. EDT and run between 90 minutes and two hours with time for questions and comments. Calls will be recorded.

April 21 -- Grounding and protection
April 28 -- Working with grief
May 5 -- Cooling the head -- fear, anxiety, and anger
May 12 -- She changes everything She touches -- opening to change
May 19 -- Dreaming and visioning
May 26- Stepping into action

The call in number is (605) 475-4000 and the Participant Access Code is 355068#

Because questions may come up after the call is done, I have also set up a discussion group on Google. You may go to http://groups.google.com/group/herbal-allies-for-a-changing-world to subscribe.

These calls are free of charge. The only expectation is that you will use this knowledge to better do your own valuable work in the world.

However, the work of preparing and delivering this information does take a lot of time and energy. If you can afford to, and are so moved, I would greatly appreciate a donation. Be it $5 or $500, every gift sincerely offered is an important contribution to moving this work forward. Donations may be sent by Paypal to seandonahepoet@gmail.com or via the link below.

For those seeking personal guidance I am available for private consultations either by phone or in person in Portland, Turner, or Hallowell, Maine. E-mail seandonahuepoet@gmail.com

To listen to a recording of the first call go to:

http://www.seandonahue.org/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/groundingandprotection.mp3

To donate click here

Awakening to the Wild: A year long online course

2011-03-23T10:00:00.000-07:00

May 1, 2011 - May 1, 2012

$50-75 a month (not including the cost of books and materials)

The world is alive and speaking to us. All we have to do is remember how to listen.

We are all born knowing this simple truth, and begin our lives in a world rich with meaning. But in our culture, the voices around us are quickly drowned out by electronic noise, and we are taught to ignore the bits of song we still hear on the wind or risk insanity. Eventually we reach a point where we no longer trust our own senses.

But for some of us the vibrant memory of the world we knew as children is stronger than the fear of madness.

The wildness of our souls can be recovered, just as a forest can grown from an abandoned field.

Through discussion, meditation and direct experience of the natural world, we will explore:

-- How our culture separates us from our wild selves and how we can reclaim them

-- Engaging nature through engaging our senses

-- The use of the heart as an organ of perception (drawing from the work of Stephen Buhner)

-- Developing and deepening relationships with the land where we live and its other inhabitants

-- Nourishing our wild selves

-- The healing power of the wild

-- Reclaiming space for wildness in our lives, our communities, our world

In the end though, our journey will take its own shape.

This course will be intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually rigorous. Please be ready to be challenged, opened, and transformed. A short interview will be required for admission.

To apply e-mail seandonahuepoet@gmail.com

__________________________________________________________________

Sean Donahue is an herbalist, poet, activist, and witch committed to healing and transformation through connection with the living Earth.

As an herbalist, Sean works primarily with the wild plants of the forests and fields of New England. He views the plants as teachers, helping the body, mind, and spirit learn to correct imbalances that stand in the way of health.

As a teacher, poet, and ritualist, Sean works to connect people with their own wild nature and with the life of the world around them.

As an activist and journalist he has documented the human and environmental impacts of U.S. policies in Latin America, organized against nuclear power and nuclear weapons, trained hundreds of activists in techniques of nonviolent resistance, helped military families tell the stories of how the war in Iraq impacted their lives, and advocated for the rights of medical Marijuana patients.

He believes that personal, community, and cultural healing are all deeply intertwined with the healing of our planet.

Updated Thoughts on Radiation Exposure

2011-03-12T18:38:00.000-08:00

I've been watching the news of the accident at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant with grief and horror.

What will happen next remains unclear. In the best case scenario, every reactor will be successfully cooled, and Japan will be left with a disaster area to contain and manage and try to heal while also recovering from the devastation of the earthquake and the tsunami and with a small to moderate population of people dealing with the after effects of radiation exposure.

My thoughts are first and foremost with the people of Japan, and with the plants and animals and land and water and sky. I have been offering prayers all day to the Great Mother in her manifestation as Quan Yin, Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion.

But I have also been thinking a lot about friends on the Pacific Coast of North America. If a meltdown occurs and the wind patterns are right , radioactive material could potentially reach the west coast of this country.

Whether or not that happens, my focus has been drawn to herbal protocols to minimize the damage from radiation exposure. This is not an area where I have any clinical experience, but here are the suggestions I am sharing with my family and friends:

PROTECTING THE THYROID

Radioactive Iodine 131 is a byproduct of nuclear fission and is be released in the event of a meltdown or possibly in the event that the fuel rods have degraded and fission products are carried with the steam vented from one of the reactors. Iodine 131 has been detected in the area around the Fukushima plant.

Fortunately for those of us in North America, the half-life of Iodine 131 is 8 days, and radioactive material will likely take a week to be reach our west coast if indeed it is carried that far. But there is still some threat of radioactive Iodine exposure for west coasters and certainly a more substantial threat for those in and closer to Japan.

Because the thyroid takes up Iodine, and Iodine 131 is highly unstable, there is a large risk of thyroid cancer from exposure to Iodine 131. The best way to minimize the Iodine 131 uptake is to provide the thyroid with large amounts of Iodine 127. Standard procedure in the event of a nuclear disaster is to distribute Potassium Iodide to people in affected areas. And Potassium Iodide will certainly do the job. (But be careful to make sure you aren't overdoing it!)

Personally, though, I prefer food based sources of Iodine that are gentler on the body.

Seaweeds are the best natural source of Iodine. Larch Hanson says that Laminaria digitata, a Kelp species, has the highest Iodine content, but other brown Kelps are excellent sources as well. Any seaweed will give you some decent amount of Iodine.

Shellfish, ocean fish, and red meat also contain Iodine in lower but appreciable levels. (Make sure your sources are ethically and environmentally clean!)

(One caution: people with hyperthyroid conditions such as Grave's Disease and people taking medications for hypothyroid conditions should not increase their Iodine levels without consulting an experienced practitioner.)

Because radioactive isotopes of other minerals may be released as well its advisable to eat bone broth and/or drink mineral rich herbal infusions (Nettles, Oatstraw, etc.)

Robin Rose Bennet, who has dealt with chronic radiation exposure herself, notes that "Russian scientists have found that sunflower seed pectin offers a great protection against deposition of strontium 90 in the bones. "

MISO

There is evidence that a diet including large amounts of Miso may have reduced rates of cancer and radiation sickness in some Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors. There are a couple of possibilities here: One is that this was simply a factor of increased Iodine intake since Miso was traditionally served with fish and sea vegetables. But it is also possible that the beneficial bacteria in Miso may have played a protective role.

Because Soy is detrimental to thyroid health I would suggest Miso made from other legumes (South River Adzuki Bean Miso is my favorite!) For those who can tolerate gluten, Robin Rose Bennett reports good results with Barley miso.

IMMUNE MODULATING MUSHROOMS

One thing stands out to me in the photos I see of the forests around Chernobyl: the abundance of Chaga. I am struck by the abundance of Chaga in the forests of southeastern Vermont and southwestern New Hampshire as well, downriver and downwind from the troubled Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant. Its presence in both places certainly long predated the nukes but it got me thinking.

Beta Glucans in a number of mushrooms including Chaga, Reishi, Turkey Tail, Matiake, Mesima,Birch Polypore, Lion's Mane, and Maitake help to modulate immune activity, and have been used with great success by a number of clinical herbalists working with cancer patients. Reishi and Mesima mushrooms have been shown to inhibit angiogenesis (See George Vaughan's great chapter on "Mushrooms in Cancer Therapy" in Margi Flint's The Practicing Herbalist.)

These qualities put medicinal mushrooms on my short list of medicines to look to in cases of radiation exposure.

I personally like Mushroom Harvest's 14 Mushroom Powder which Darcey and I regularly use in our soups, sauces, and gravies. (Thanks to Margi Flint for that tip!)

Other immune modulating adaptogens such as Eleuthero and Ashwagandha may be of benefit as well. I have seen Asian Ginseng (Panax ginseng) suggested elsewhere but I am wary of it because it is highly stimulating and heating and traditionally indicated only for the weak and infirm. American Ginseng is far less stimulating and would be appropriate here, but remember that it is highly endangered and only buy from cultivated sources.

LYMPH MOVERS AND BLOOD MOVERS

Gentle lymph moving herbs like Red Clover and Calendula are worth using, especially to keep the lymph moving around the head and neck. I might consider a gentle alterative like Burdock as well to support the body's natural detoxification systems as they move any radioactive materials out of the body.

Robin Rose Bennett also suggests salt water and baking soda baths -- which I agree are excellent for aiding in the body's natural detoxification process. Adding herbs to the bath can be nice as well. Calendula is a wonderful bath herb. I like Chapparal baths for releasing both physical and emotional toxicity.

Contrary to popular belief, Cilantro will not chelate heavy metals. Ground Ivy does appear to help the body flush lead, however, and MAY be applicable in the clearance of other heavy metals as well.

Two Self Paced Online Courses

2011-03-04T17:38:00.000-08:00

Study at your own pace from the comfort of your own home!

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

STRESS: A VITALIST PERSPECTIVE with Sean Donahue

$100 -- Six Lessons

Our bodies have developed an amazing set of responses to help us respond to danger.

But life in our fast-paced society puts many people perpetually on edge -- and that constant stress throws us out of balance with serious consequences for our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health.

In this course we will explore herbal and nutritional strategies for supporting the body, mind, and spirit in times of extreme stress -- and helping bodies that have been under stress for a long time remember how to relax into a natural state of relaxation that allows for healing and rejuvenation.

The emphasis will be on nourishing the body, identifying and removing "obstacles to cure," and supporting the body's natural healing processes.

Topics covered will include:

-- The Biology and Energetics of Stress

-- Nourishing the Adrenals

-- Nourishing the Nervous System

-- Understanding Adaptogens from a Vitalist Perspective

-- Stress and Physical Tension

-- Acute Anxiety

-- Trauma and Anxiety

________________________________________________________________________________________________

ELEMENTS OF HEALING

An Online Course with Sean Donahue

$150 -- Ten lessons

Participants will be expected to buy some herbs for this course as well

Where do magic, biology, and healing intersect?

In this 10 week course, we will examine the body and the herbs that help to heal and nurture it through the five elements commonly identified in Western magical traditions — Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Ether/Spirit. We will also briefly touch on other systems of energetics as well.

This will be a journey of discovery into our own bodies and an exploration of how plants change our consciousness, our sensations, our emotions and our health.

We will move through the elements one by one, exploring how each manifests in our bodies of the course of one week, and how different herbs act on that element within us during the following week.

No prior experience in herbalism or magic is required — just an openness to new experiences and a willingness to learn.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

To register, e-mail seandonahuepoet@gmail.com

Bare Bones Energetics: Part 1 -- Energetics of the Human Body

2011-01-21T09:35:00.000-08:00

A lot of times people will ask me "What's the best herb for a stomach ache?" or "What's the best herb for a respiratory infection?"

My response invariably begins with "It depends." Followed by a lot of questions about symptoms and signs that may at first seem entirely irrelevant.

That's because as an herbalist I work to support the body's healing processes rather than to eliminate a specific symptom. And in order to support the body's healing, I look toward energetic patterns, and find herbs that will shift those energies in ways that will bring the body back toward health.

Because most of us living in the U.S. in the twenty-first century don't have a language for describing those patterns, a lot of herbalists tend to borrow heavily from Chinese and Indian traditions to explain the energetics of people and plants. But newcomers to our craft can be quickly confused and overwhelmed by a proliferation of unfamiliar terms.

Its well worth taking the time to sink your teeth into Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and other energetic systems -- both because they provide terms to discuss herbs and conditions with other practitioners, and because they provide rich models for understanding the interaction between plant medicines and the human body.

But its best to begin working with a simple, largely intuitive approach to energetics. Here's my attempt to lay one out.

(Before I go on though, let me say that I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Matthew Wood, Margi Flint, Paul Bergner, and Jim McDonald for helping me understand the core concepts I use here.)

ENERGETICS OF THE HUMAN BODY

At any given moment, all of the tissues of our body are to some degree warm or cold, moist or dry. They may also be tense. Or atrophied. Or both.

Each person has places on these spectra where they tend to fall. Together they define a person's constitution. The constitution is analogous to the climate. Miami will almost always be warmer and wetter than Denver.

From day to day, from moment to moment, any part of their body or their entire system may become warmer or cooler, wetter or drier, tenser or more lax than usual. These qualities define the condition. And different conditions can prevail in different parts of the body at different times. The condition is analogous to weather. Just because Denver is generally cool and dry doesn't mean you can't have rain and high temperatures there in August.

Physical signs can help you interpret what's going on in the body. Reading the face and tongue for those signs is an art that takes time to learn well. (And I highly recommend Margi Flint's The Practicing Herbalist as a guide to that art.) But there are some basic indications that can help you get a quick sense of what's going on in someone's body.

HEAT signs include red on the skin and on the tongue, rashes, rapid pulse, extreme thirst, swelling (the body brings in fluid to try to cool the heat,) dark, scanty urine, and restlessness and irritability . Because heat rises, symptoms will move upward -- liver heat producing headache and nausea, heat in the stomach producing heartburn. If there is an infection, mucus will be yellow or green.

COLD signs include pale skin, constipation, dull aches and pains, pale mucus, lethargy, and a slow deep pulse. Symptoms move downward (as a lingering bronchial infection cools down it moves into the lungs and becomes pneumonia.)

Heat moves from the center to the periphery.

Cold moves from the periphery to the center.

Generally speaking, heat is associated with the vital force, and so hot conditions are usually conditions of excess and cold conditions are generally conditions of deficiency.

I'll talk about the exceptions as I address dampness and dryness.

DAMP conditions are marked by puffiness.

Matthew Wood divides damp conditions into two categories: flowing and stagnant.

Flowing dampness is marked by lots of free flowing fluids -- sweat, urine, thin mucus, sweat -- it is a condition of excess.

Stagnant dampness is marked by swollen, weak tissues infiltrated with water and with metabolic waste. All that excess fluid makes the body cold but it is nevertheless a condition of excess for the affected tissues (though it is often linked with deficient or congested kidney or liver function.)

DRY conditions are marked by dry, rough skin, scanty, dark urine, and creaky joints.

The depletion of fluids heats the body and can lead to what Chinese medicine refers to as "false heat." The body is deficient but appears to show heat signs (ie. redness across the cheeks or a red tongue.) Leslie Tierra describes this condition as marked by:

night sweats, a burning sensation in the palms, soles, and chest [ . . .] dry eyes, blurred vision, dizziness, nervous energy, taking fast but tiring quickly [ . . .]

CONSTRICTION is marked by tension and shaking.

THERAPEUTICS

In addressing any of these conditions our goal is to help the body return to its healthy state.

The great nineteenth century Physiomedicalist physician Dr. T.J. Lyle wrote

"in the art of curing disease we can but influence to contract and relax with varied degrees of rapidity and energy in imitation of nature's way of using these structures in health."

In doing so, its necessary to find the imbalance -- the obstacle to cure -- that is preventing the body from healing itself, and remove it.

Usually that occurs through choosing plants that will create an equal and opposite reaction to the imbalance. Lyle wrote:

"In the work of restoration the attempt must be to restore to some extent the opposite condition of that abnormally existing. If the parts are congested apply heat and relieve the circulation. If the body is emaciated give proper food and sustain digestion. If there be too much relaxation, stimulate to the relief of such abnormal relaxation. If there be too much rigidity, relax to the relief of that rigidity."

But in doing so its important to differentiate between disease and the body's response to disease. And assess whether the body's response to the problem is under appropriate control.

Fever, for example, is something we have been trained to think of as pathological. But in reality, a fever that develops in response to an infection is part of the body's attempt to eliminate the infection. And the hypothalamus will not allow a fever to rise to a point where it becomes dangerous. So in the case of fever, the best course of action is to support what the body is doing. Keep the body hydrated. If the body is seeming limp and tired give warming, stimulating herbs to move the heat from the core to the periphery. (I'll talk about which herbs those are in the next section.) If the body is seeming tense and hot give herbs that will relax the body and open the pores to let heat escape.

On the other hand, inflammation of the respiratory tract is also part of an initially healthy immunological response to infection. But the body doesn't have the same kind of fail-safe mechanisms for reining in the production of inflammatory cytokines that it does for body temperature. So at the point when inflammation begins to interfere with breathing it becomes important to cool it down.

This is where healing becomes an art, and where we learn from watching people's bodies and paying attention to the knowledge and wisdom of experienced keen observers. I highly recommend reading the works of some of the great nineteenth century physicians like William Cook, T J Lyle, and Finley Ellingwood to get a sense of the energetics of the human body.

(COMING SOON TO A COMPUTER SCREEN NEAR YOU: The energetics of plants.)

Touching the Heart of the World Online Intensive

2010-12-31T13:37:00.000-08:00

TOUCHING THE HEART OF THE WORLD:

An Online Intensive with Sean Donahue

January 18 - February 22

$100-200

Stephen Harrod Buhner writes that "Members of most ancient and indigenous cultures make an interesting assertion; when asked where in their body they live, they gesture to the region of the chest. Members of our culture, on the other hand, point to the head, generally an inch above the eyes and about two inches into the skull."

What does it mean to live from the heart?

In this six week intensive we will draw on the insights of biology, magic, herbalism, cultural history, and poetry to answer this question. And we will journey inside ourselves to explore new ways of listening to the world around us.

We will explore:

* The role the heart plays in how we experience emotion, respond to stress, and gather information from the world around us.

* How the place where we live in our bodies effects our experience of the world and shapes our culture.

* Techniques for listening to and working to heal wounded parts of ourselves.

* Learning to work with the heart as an organ of perception.

* The connections between personal, cultural, and planetary healing.

This promises to be a powerfully transformational, and at times emotionally intense journey. My goal as a teacher is to provide a safe and supportive space for that work. But I am not in a position to serve as therapist or counselor for students. Please bear this in mind as you consider undertaking this work.

Payment for this class is on a sliding scale from $100-200 The price reflects the work that I put into preparing and teaching this course. The higher end of the sliding scale is intended for people who can regularly afford things like eating out, going to concerts, and attending workshops and retreats. For those who are deeply committed to this work but are not able to afford even the low end of the sliding scale I am willing to discuss payment plans and partial or full barter arrangements. If enough people pay at the higher end of the sliding scale, I may be able to offer a few partial scholarships to students who would not otherwise be able to take this course.

If you are interested in enrolling, please e-mail me at seandonahuepoet@gmail.com.

Discovering Herbalism: A learning opportunity in Avon, ME

2010-12-31T13:35:00.000-08:00

January 29-30, February 19-20, March 12-13, April 23-24, May 14-15

Summer and Autumn Dates TBA

$100 - $150/month, payment plans and thoughtful barter proposals will gladly be considered.

Sean Donahue and Darcey Blue French are offering an opportunity for beginning and intermediate herbalists to develop or deepen their relationships with the healing plants of New England through a series of weekend intensives at our home in Avon, ME.

Through lectures and discussions, readings, meditations, ceremony, and direct experience, participants will learn about:

* Listening to and learning directly from the plants themselves

* The art and ethics of wildcrafting

* Making herbal medicines

* Understanding the energetics of herbal medicine and of the human body

* Nourishing the body, mind, and spirit

* Therapies for chronic and acute injury and disease

* Working with plants in ceremony and magic

* Plant identification and Materia Medica

* Establishing herb gardens

For more information or to register, e-mail herbalists@brighidswellherbs.com

Floor space and limited couch or bed space will be available for those traveling.

Breakfast will be provided. Lunch and dinner will be potluck.

The Myth of the Herbal Detox

2010-12-25T11:37:00.000-08:00

Its the most common question herbalists get, especially in the days between Christmas and New Year's: "What herbs will help my body detox?"

And my answer is always the same:

Drink water. Eat good, healthy, local, food -- organic or wild if possible, mainly meat, fish, and vegetables. Move in ways that feel good to your body. And most of the time your body will take care of itself -- we are designed to clean out whatever doesn't belong inside us and a little holiday indulgence doesn't make you "toxic."

But, you might ask, what's the harm in giving your body a push? Well it turns out you can do a lot of damage.

Forcing your colon to clear itself with stimulating laxatives -- be they herbal or pharmaceutical -- in the best of circumstances will put a lot of stress on your gut lining, and in many cases can create a dangerous dependency. When laxatives are used regularly, the body's ability to set into motion its own process of elimination atrophies, and a person can begin to need higher and higher doses of laxatives to make any bowel movement at all.

Taking in a lot of fiber in a short period of time can damage the lining of the gut. Oh and those "herbal cleanses" that tell you they are clearing out "mucoid plaque"? They are made of Psyllium husks and clay. The strange substance they cause you to excrete is the combination of the two.

If your digestion is a bit sluggish (marked by slow transit time for food, a thick white coating down the middle of the tongue, bloating and constipation) warming herbs like Ginger, Cinnamon, Black Pepper, Fennel and Cardamom can help give it a gentle nudge. Best before meals. Add more bitter foods to your diet as well, and consider taking some old fashioned digestive bitters before you eat.

If you are experiencing abdominal bloating, there is a significant chance that the problem is in the lymph that surrounds the gut. Much of the lymph in your body exists there. When the gut lining becomes damaged by inflammation from food allergens, stress, repeated antibiotic use, laxatives, and so on, it can become permeable and food particles can leak from the gut into the lymph. This triggers an immune response. And in many cases this can lead to autoimmune disorders when your body develops a heightened immune response to proteins that resemble those of our own tissues -- ie. Gluten which is structured like our connective tissues and Soy which is structured like our thyroid tissues.

This kind of condition usually requires the help of an herbalist. A combination of demulcent herbs like Marshmallow and Slippery Elm with wound healing herbs like Calendula and Plantain can help heal the gut lining. Gentle lymphatics like Cleavers and Red Clover can get the lymph moving again. Immune modulating mushrooms and herbs can bring the immune system back into balance. Probiotics can restore the gut flora. And dietary and lifestyle changes are necessary to prevent future damage.

If you are experiencing chronic constipation, the problem may be with your liver failing to produce enough bile to stimulate digestion.

The answer here is to support the liver, and possibly gently stimulate it, not to do a "liver flush."

The popular liver and gallbladder flushes involving Lemon juice and Olive oil that cause people to excrete round green objects they think are gallstones are actually just creating balls of soap made in the intestine from the oil and juice with bile. They are causing more stress to the system.

Milk Thistle seeds help to protect and support the liver. They don't in and of themselves "cleanse" the liver but they can increase liver clearance of toxins by improving liver function.

Bitter herbs like Dandelion, Burdock, Turmeric, and Oregon Grape Root do increase liver clearance by stimulating bile production. But they need to be used with some degree of caution. If the liver tissues are already compromised, further stimulation can cause further damage. And if you are going to stimulate the liver the herbs need to be gauged to the person's constitution and condition. If you can't gauge whether your liver function is being compromised by heat and inflammation or cold and stagnation, seek out an herbalist who can.

Some herbs like St. John's Wort directly increase the liver's clearance of toxins. But its important to understand what you are trying to eliminate and make sure it has a clear channel to leave your body. And its also important to pay attention to interactions with pharmaceuticals -- the body treats synthetic chemicals as toxins, and if you are dependent on a particular synthetic compound to maintain your health, increasing your liver's clearance of it can do serious harm.

And its important always to look at what is stressing your liver -- food allergens, excess alcohol, excess fructose, environmental toxins, and viral infection are all possibilities, and any of these need to be addressed thoroughly and carefully.

So my answer in the end is be good to your body. Nourish it and exercise it well. If that's not sufficient, investigate the specific problem. There is no one size fits all "herbal detox." Any product or protocol that makes such a claim is likely to do more harm than good.

Notes on Solomon's Plume

2010-10-13T16:58:00.000-07:00

(Photo by Darcey Blue)

I first met Solomon's Plume (Smilacina racemosa) when I found her growing in abundance outside the van where I was living for a summer on a friend's land in central Maine.

That should have been a clue that this would be a powerful medicine for me.

But the first name I knew the plant by was "False Solomon's Seal," and I hadn't yet heard of people working with her medicine, so I dismissed her as "Not Solomon's Seal", not the medicine that had helped my knee to recover from a nasty fall the winter before.

So it caught me by surprise, when at a workshop in Vermont with Stephen Harrod Buhner, Solomon's Plume grabbed my attention and my imagination.

I saw in her form a graceful arc and then a sudden leap, bridging between worlds. I felt my chest relax and open, a cool influx of breath.

When I described what the plant showed me, Buhner told me that he found the medicine of the plant's root to be extremely useful for relaxing the connective tissues around the lungs.

Months later, when I had a chance to dig some of the roots (cutting the root several inches away from the plant to allow it to keep enough to continue growing and thriving) and tincture them, I found that my own experience matched Buhner's. I find this medicine combines particularly nicely with New England Aster (Aster Nova-angliae), a medicine which relaxes the musculature associated with the respiratory tract. The combination is great for asthmatics who are able to recognize the tightening in their chest that precedes an acute attack. (Thanks to Jim McDonald for the New England Aster part of this formula.) Its also great, in combination with breathing exercises and lung and kidney building herbs, for helping people who have developed patterns of shallow breathing from chronic respiratory disease to begin allowing themselves to breathe deeper.

The root is also profoundly cooling and demulcent -- and maintains its demulcent quality in tincture form for reasons that defy my phytochemical understanding -- and so is an excellent medicine for respiratory inflammation.

It makes a decent substitute for Solomon's Seal (Pologonatum spp.) for moistening and restoring pliability to dried out connective tissues throughout the body, particularly where there is also inflammation -- I used it with great success for a minor weight lifting injury in my right shoulder last winter.

Solomon's Plume has a strong affinity for the liver.

Matthew Wood writes that "It is restorative to the [liver's] cells or tissues and functions." And also reports that "William LeSassier said that constipation will always be present in a case requiring False Solomon's Seal. This may indicate that Smilacina improves bile secretion, hence lubrication of the stool." This may also explain its use by the Delaware and the Navajo as an emetic.

Michael Moore notes that "the root tea is also useful in frontal headaches caused by or accompanied by indigestion" -- which suggests to me that it cools liver heat.

I've had great personal success using the root tincture for constipation, indigestion, and headache associated with heat and congestion in the liver following exposure to gluten or casein.

As a liver cooling herb, Solomon's Plume also helps to cool the temper. The root smudge, which smells faintly of burnt gingerbread, was traditionally burned to soothe anger and irritability associated with PMS.

There is also a strong association of the plant with invisibility -- Solomon's Plume tends to make herself known when she wants to be seen but otherwise is often surprisingly inconspicuous for such a distinctively beautiful plant. Legend has it that Geronimo carried the root of Solomon's Plume as an invisibility charm and that it aided him in evading capture.

My own magical experience of the plant suggests an even stranger reality: The deep, cool peace of Solomon's Plume feels like it aids in slipping briefly outside ordinary space and time. Journeying with the plant, I felt myself in the center of a well-shaft that opened to distant stars, apart from a chaotic reality unfolding outside around me. I saw the face of Obatala, the Orisha associated with calm judgment who "cools the head." Perhaps Geronimo never actually became invisible, but slipped into this place instead.

This is a plant of cool, deep waters, that keeps revealing more dimensions of its medicine over time.

Why I eat meat

2010-10-13T13:43:00.000-07:00

I was a vegetarian for seventeen years. And in the end, it was reflecting on the same questions that led me to stop eating meat that made me start eating it again.

Throughout my years as a vegetarian, I subscribed to the idea that a plant-based diet required less use of water, fossil fuels, and other "resources" than a diet that included meat.

But that's not necessarily true.

Here in New England, the soils are rocky and the growing season is short. A vegetable-based diet requires the importation of protein and fat from distant places, using tremendous amounts of fossil fuels. But the land here is great for grazing sheep and cattle. Eating the flesh of a grass-fed steer who lived out its life on a farm a few miles down the road costs the life of one animal, eating soy trucked across a continent costs the lives of many.

In many parts of the world, agriculture is a large scale operation that destroys habitat. Here in rural New England, small scale animal-based agriculture is an essential part of preserving land that would otherwise be more intensively developed.

The answers to questions about the most sustainable diet is vary widely from place to place depending on soils, climate, population density, and the history of land use.

Some may argue that its not sustainable or realistic for everyone everywhere to eat a diet that relies on sustainably and humanely raised or hunted meat. But I am not necessarily making the argument that it is. Sustainability is not a simple equation. There is not one diet that is appropriate for everyone everywhere. (Though from a health standpoint there are some pretty good indicators of what our bodies did and didn't evolve to eat -- see http://www.toddcaldecott.com/index.php/food/diet/146-diet-a-short-history.)

Every food choice we make has its costs in plant and animal lives.

For a long time only the animal lives matter to me -- for the same reason that for many people only human lives matter, and for others only the lives of humans of the same ethnic background matter -- because we most easily see ourselves mirrored in the lives of beings who closely resemble us and whose sentience is expressed in ways similar to our own.

But when I came to know plants more intimately I came to realize that they too are sentient beings with a desire to live.

Many vegetarian have misinterpreted this as a mockery of their beliefs. (Which oddly echoes the arguments I heard in my years of advocating for animal rights that talking about animal suffering somehow made a mockery of human suffering.) But the emerging field of plant neurobiology is demonstrating that plants have complex neural networks and recognize the difference between self and other. And as an herbalist when I write about talking about the plants, I am not speaking metaphorically --- I have conversations and relationships with Skunk Cabbage and Ghost Pipe as deep and meaningful as my human and animal relationships.

There is no choice of not killing. Our lives depend on the deaths of others. Just as the lives of cattle and bison and salmon and turnips and kale and redwoods do. To truly follow the philosophy of deep ecology and view ourselves as "plain members of the biological community" we need to recognize that we are as much a part of that web of life and death, eating and being eaten as any other species.

There is a sacredness in that. For me I have found that as an omnivore I am more conscious of the ethical and ecological choices I make about food than I was as a vegetarian. When I look back at myself as a vegetarian I see someone who was concerned primarily about what kind of organisms were represented directly on my plate. (And I know this is not true of all vegetarians.) As an omnivore, I am concerned about the web of relationships represented by the food on my plate, and the questions I ask about my impact on that web don't have simple answers.

Eating for me is a sacred act. And I give thanks for all who died to give me life, and honor them as best I can by living a life of working for love, justice, healing, and holy pleasure.

Green Man's Guide To the Flu: Part 2 -- Dealing with the Flu

2010-09-25T19:29:00.000-07:00

So, despite all your best efforts, you get the flu. What should you do?

First and foremost: go to bed. And do not get up for a week. You will feel better on the third day and be tempted to go back to work. Don't. People who don't get enough rest when they have the flu are more prone to secondary respiratory infections that can turn into pneumonia.

Secondly, reach for Elderberries. In most any form -- tincture, elixir, syrup. Tea would be fine but you'll likely have a hard time getting enough of it into your system to have the desired effect if you are feeling nauseated. Take it every hour that you are awake -- at least a teaspoon of syrup or a dropper of tincture or elixir. Elderberries stop viral replication and also modulate your immune response, limiting the inflammatory cytokines that flood your system a few days into an influenza infection. Respiratory inflammation is the second leading cause of death or serious illness associated with flu, after secondary infection. Excessive exertion is usually a contributing factor here.

Keep taking your Vitamin D3. It will modulate the immune response in your respiratory tract as well.

You can address respiratory inflammation directly with cooling herbs that have an affinity for the respiratory system: Elder flower works wonders here. Peach leaf is cooling to the lungs and also calming to the digestive system. Pleurisy Root brings down inflammation in the lungs while also helping to regulate fluid levels. Wild Cherry bark or leaf are ideal for calming racking coughs, cooling inflammation, and helping you get to sleep -- indicated when the cheeks turn cherry red. Marsh Mallow, Slippery Elm, and Siberian Elm will help to moisten the mucus membranes, making coughs more productive.

If you are feeling nauseated, take small sips of Ginger tea. You just need a little bit of Ginger to calm your stomach.

At the outset you will likely feel cold. Wrap yourself in blankets. Take warm baths. Put some Thyme in an old sock and throw it in your bath. Drink Ginger tea.

After a while, your temperature will begin to rise and you will develop a fever. Fever is your friend -- it helps to kill off influenza viruses and any opportunistic pathogens that may follow in their wake. Fevers that develop in response to infection will not rise to dangerous levels. The only reason to treat a fever is to make yourself more comfortable.

Stay hydrated, stay in bed, and do not eat until the fever breaks.

Avoid acetaminophen and NSAID's (ibuprofen, aspirin, etc.) at all costs. They suppress fevers and also suppress immune responses in the respiratory tract. They also damage your gut.

If your fever becomes uncomfortable, use diaphoretic herbs -- herbs that work with your body's natural fever response rather than suppressing it.

Stimulating diaphoretics like Ginger, Osha, Cayenne, and Thyme help the body move heat from the core out to the periphery. They are ideal when you are feeling weak and miserable.

Relaxing diaphoretics like Elder flower, Vervain, and Pleurisy Root help to relax tension at the surface to allow heat to escape. They are ideal when you are feeling tense, especially if you are hot but unable to sweat.

Some plants like Catnip, Yarrow, and Lemonbalm combine these actions.

Boneset is ideal for alternating fever and chills or for a fever accompanied by pain that feels like it goes down to the bone -- it also helps with the general body aches that come with the flu.

Teas are ideal here since they keep the body hydrated, but tinctures will do in a pinch or if nausea makes teas difficult.

Once the fever goes below 99 degrees begin slowly reintroducing food, starting with something easily digested and deeply nourishing like bone broth. Avoid chills. And keep taking it easy.

Trust your body, and give it the time it needs to heal. It may be hard to give yourself a week of rest -- but remember you may be saving yourself a month or more of dealing with bronchitis or pneumonia.

Green Man's Guide to Flu Season -- Part 1: Prevention

2010-09-24T19:51:00.000-07:00

Driving around town today, I saw signs everywhere for flu shots -- at the supermarket, at the pharmacy, even at the newspaper.

The effectiveness of influenza vaccinations is questionable at best. Paul Bergner writes that “among healthy adults, the percentage of individuals in a vaccinated population who develop severe disease, miss days at work, or require hospitalization is the same as in an unvaccinated population” A 2008 study in The Lancet found that flu vaccinations did not reduce the incidence of influenza-related pneumonia among the elderly. (Pneumonia resulting from secondary infections in a respiratory tract compromised by the flu is the most common cause of flu-related deaths.)

The effectiveness of the vaccine also depends on the virus relatively unchanged throughout the flu season – a highly unlikely prospect.

And influenza vaccines have been implicated in rare but very serious neurological damage.

If vaccination were the only way to prevent the spread of the flu and were demonstrated to be effective, I might be inclined to consider it a worthwhile risk.

But there are other, better ways to prevent infection. (And if you do choose to vaccinate, they are fully compatible.)

PREVENTING THE FLU WITH HERBS AND NUTRITION

The best way to prevent the flu is to support the immune system.

That begins with nourishing the body.

One of the great paradoxes of our time is that while we as a nation are struggling with obesity, we are also struggling with malnutrition. Often the two go hand in hand. Our agriculture policies have made calorie rich, nutrient poor foods cheap and plentiful. The diets of most Americans – and especially of poor people who don't have the option of buying more expensive foods – are dangerously deficient in several nutrients essential to immune function.

And because our soil has been so severely depleted of minerals, even someone eating a well balanced diet of whole, organic foods can have serious nutritional deficiencies.

Food is the best way to get most nutrients, but supplementation can play an important role in giving the body the nourishment it needs for proper immune function.

Vitamin D is a steroid hormone essential to healthy immune function in the respiratory system. The body naturally produces some of its own Vitamin D through sun exposure each day. each day is sufficient to provide the Vitamin D we need. But anywhere north of Atlanta, GA its nearly impossible to get enough sun exposure to produce the Vitamin D we need after October or so. Its no coincidence that colds and flus are more common in the fall and winter when its hard to get extended full body sun exposure at northern latitudes like ours.

For optimum health, an adult needs 10,000 IU of Vitamin D a day – the equivalent of the amount the body would produce through extended full body exposure to mid-day sun. Few foods have Vitamin D in usable forms – egg yolks and cod liver oil do, but its hard to consume either of them in sufficiently high levels. Leading Vitamin D researcher Dr. John Jacob Cantrell recommends daily doses of 1,000 IU of Vitamin D3 for children under the age of 2, 2,000 IU of Vitamin D3 for older children, and 5,000 IU of Vitamin D3 a day for adolescents and adults. I personally take 5,000 – 10,000 IU of Vitamin D3 a day from the Fall Equinox to the Spring Equinox with the amount depending on the amount of sun exposure I get each day. (Note that Vitamin D2 cannot be used by the body in the same way as D3.)

Speaking of cod liver oil, a number of studies have shown that daily doses of cod liver oil reduce the incidence of respiratory infections. Besides being high in Vitamin D, cod liver oil has high levels of Vitamin A and essential fatty acids which are deficient in the American diet and essential to immune function. Bergner suggests a tablespoon a day. Make sure you buy from a company that tests for heavy metals! Canned cod livers are equally beneficial.

Zinc and Selenium are also important for the immune system, and deficient in most people's diets. Vegetarians have an especially hard time getting enough Zinc because chemicals in grains and legumes (especially unfermented soy) block Zinc absorption. Bergner suggests that adults take 40 mg of Zinc and 200 mcg of Selenium daily. 4 Brazil Nuts a day can give you the Selenium you need. A can of Oysters will give you enough Zinc for a week.

Herbs can provide support to the immune system as well.

Echinacea is certainly the most well known herb for boosting immunity, but it is not appropriate for all people or all situations. Echinacea is an immune stimulant, kicking the immune system into action. This can be dangerous for people with auto-immune conditions like fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis. I find Echinacea most effective when used in high, frequent doses at the onset of an infection. I shy away from its use as a daily tonic.

Echinacea is for sprints,. Flu season is a marathon.

There are a number of herbs that support the immune system without overtly stimulating it. Medicinal mushrooms like Reishi, Shitake, Maitake, and Chaga provide deep nourishment to the immune system and are appropriate for daily use.

Astragalus is used in Traditional Chinese Medicine to strengthen the body's defenses against respiratory infections. Astragalus is available as a tincture or a tea but is also sold as a vegetable in some places and makes a wonderful addition to winter soups. Discontinue use if an acute infection sets in.

Schizandra, Holy Basil, and Ashwagandha are also great herbs for supporting and modulating the immune system and most people respond well to them. I personally like to use Eleuthero for immune modulation in the fall and winter for the extra kick it gives me during the season when my metabolism begins to slow down, but people who run hot constitutionally tend to find it too stimulating for daily use. American Ginseng is great for immune support in elders and others who are somewhat depleted. Chinese and Koren Ginsengs tend to be too stimulating for all but the very frail.

Elderberry is a great immune modulator too. Its well known for its use in acute viral infections, but can be used to prevent infection as well -- 30 drops of tincture or a teaspoon of syrup 3-4 times a day. (The syrup is great in seltzer water!)

The very best way to support healthy immune function is to make sure you get enough sleep. 8 hours is the minimum amount of sleep an adult should get each night. Those who are in sleep debt (most of the adult population) really need 9 or 10 hours of sleep for their bodies to function well.

If you suspect you've been exposed to a flu virus, there are further steps you can take. Burning aromatic herbs like Sage (either Salvia or Artemesia spp.) or Juniper or using essential oils of Frankincense and Myrrh in a diffuser is a great way to kill airborne pathogens in your home. And daily saunas will help to kill any pathogens that are beginning to make their home in your respiratory tract before they actually make you sick.

If you begin to feel that first tickle in the back of your throat that lets you know an infection is setting in, begin taking large (60-90 drop) doses of Echinacea tincture hourly, and hourly doses of Elderberry tincture or syrup as well -- and go straight to bed! Using Echinacea to fight off recurrent infections without allowing the body to rest and recover can cause MUCH bigger problems down the road.

What do you do if all of this fails and you find yourself dealing with a full blown case of the flu? I'll deal with that in my next post .

Swamp Lotus: Skunk Cabbage and the Underworld Journey

2010-08-25T19:52:00.001-07:00

NOTE: This is a work in progress. I plan to report more fully later this fall when I've had a chance to explore the entheogenic aspects of Skunk Cabbage medicine more fully.

Also please note that fresh roots, flowers, and leaves of Eastern Skunk Cabbage should never be consumed as they contain oxalate crystals. Drying, heating, or tincturing is necessary to render the medicine safe.

A purple flower blossoms in the still-frozen swamps of New England in March.

Beneath the surface, tentacle-like roots draw down energy from the spathe at the flower’s center, melting the earth around them.If the water dries up, the roots will slowly expand and contract, moving the plant to a new location. Through this mechanism, some Eastern Skunk Cabbages (Symplocarpus foetidus) are able to survive to be 1,000 years old though swamps expand and recede around them.

Since I began working with Skunk Cabbage, I’ve understood the plant as a gatekeeper between worlds -- earth and water, above and below, conscious and unconscious, waking and dreaming.

Herbal traditions of many cultures teach that a purple flower is one sign of a plant that will shift consciousness. And the shape of the flower of the Eastern Skunk Cabbage is uncannily similar to the shape of the pineal gland, which produces the Melatonin that helps to regulate or cycles of sleep and dreaming and possibly the DMT that is implicated in the ecstatic experiences connected with childbirth, orgasm, and death.

Skunk Cabbage is also the first food eaten by black bears when they emerge from “hibernation.” Across many cultures, bears are associated with medicinal knowledge, and especially the knowledge of roots, in part because people in many places learned about root medicines by watching which plants the bears would dig. The bears’ descent underground in winter also connects them with dreams and the watery darkness of the underworld and the womb where all things sleep awaiting their birth.

Chemically, Eastern Skunk Cabbage contains 5-hydroxy-tryptamine, an analogue to one of our own neurotransmitters (Serotonin.)

At low doses, the tincture of the root induces a deep sense of stillness and calm, like the waters of a vernal pool. William Cook described it as “a simple and reliable nervine, of the most innocent and effective soothing character."

At higher doses, the tincture begins to have an entheogenic effect. The world becomes more fluid. Distinctions between thought and emotion dissolve.

Tryptamines work to reorder the ways in which we process the information we get from the world. As entheogens, both Eastern Skunk Cabbage and Western Skunk Cabbage (Lysichiton americanus) seem to work with the integration of the rational consciousness of the brain and the emotional and transpersonal consciousness of the heart. (Its not clear whether L. americanus contains tryptamines. But Stephen Harrod Buhner first observed this phenomenon with a snuff made from L. americanus roots, and I’ve observed similar effects with the tincture.)

Eastern Skunk Cabbage has a strong affinity with the lungs (contemporary and traditional use as a stimulating expectorant), the heart (traditional Menominee use for “weak heart”), and the waters that flow through our bodies (affinity for the kidneys and uterus.)

Thus, at commonly used medicinal doses, Eastern Skunk Cabbage will help to clear the physical manifestations of grief that gets buried in the lungs.

At entheogenic doses, it begins to address such grief at a soul level through reconnection to the dreaming mind of the Earth.

In both cases, the healing work is not to be undertaken lightly -- the pain released needs a container, and the journey back to the self is a journey through a world fraught with its own perils and challenges. Ecstatic methods require focus to avoid becoming purely chaotic and unleashing unintended consequences.

The journey begins with confronting our fear of seeing ourselves in the mirrors of the dark waters of the world from which the Skunk Cabbage emerges.There is a mythic resonance here with the story of the Fisher King. The Fisher King sits on a throne by the water's edge, blood pouring from a gaping wound in his thigh. And because the king is wounded the land has become barren. The wound never heals because everyone is afraid to ask the one question that would stop the bleeding and restore the king and the land to health -- “What is the source of the wound?” The answer to the question lies beneath the waters the king is afraid to dive into.

Skunk Cabbage can be a vehicle for traveling beneath the surface of the waters of consciousness, to encounter the source of the wound, and move through it and past it, undoing its power to shape consciousness and define identity. The perils lie in the potential to become so immersed in the pain and grief that the journey is never completed. But when the journey is completed, the wound is transformed from a source of pain to an opening between worlds that initiates the traveler into the compassion that comes from understanding grief and into the wellspring of healing that lies beneath the surface and comes from the heart of the universe and rises from the center of our heart from whence it flows outward, blessing and transforming all worlds.

The Jungian analyst, Robert Johnson writes that “fisher king wound is the preparation for consciousness (our modern word for shaman power) and the suffering is the training for the future healer or genius."

The mirror image of the Fisher King is the tarot’s King of Cups who has dived into the waters of the unconscious, come to terms with the darkness, and emerged transformed -- he sits on his throne holding a cup that overflows with healing water. As the bearer of the chalice he is a servant of the Great Goddess, the cup a symbol of her womb and the sacred blood of its mysteriesHaving healed his own wounds, the King of Cups has access to the power to bring the world around him back to life.For the heart that is prepared.

Skunk Cabbage can offer an opening to the realms where such transformation is possible.

(Photo by Darcey Blue)

The Magic and Medicine of Plants: A 12 month online correspondence course

2010-08-18T06:08:00.000-07:00

with Darcey Blue French and Sean Donahue
November 1, 2010 - October 31, 2011

Plants are our ancestors and teachers– throughout history, people have looked to them for healing,
guidance, and transformation. In this year long course, herbalists Sean Donahue and Darcey Blue French
will help you connect with the wisdom, magic, and living medicine of the plants growing around you.

Through online lectures and discussions, readings, meditations, ceremony, and direct experience, you will
learn about:
* Listening to and learning directly from the plants themselves
* The art and ethics of wildcrafting
* Making your own herbal medicines
* Understanding the energetics of herbal medicine and of the human body
* Nourishing the body, mind, and spirit
* Therapies for chronic and acute injury and disease
* Working with plants in ceremony and magic

Tuition is $75 a month (or $750 if you pay for the entire year in advance.) Paypal & Checks accepted.

Register by October 21, 2010- herbalists@brighidswellherbs.com/ (520)429–2654

Three Fall Intensives from Brighid's Well Herbs

2010-08-18T06:03:00.000-07:00

Talking To Trees: Exploring the Medicine of the Tree Nation Sept 21, 2010 – Nov 15, 2010: Online herbal intensive

Sept 21, 2010 – Nov 15, 2010- 8 week online herbal intensive
$150-$200 sliding scale

• Learn about the major medicinal trees of North America
o Ecology and biology
o Energetic, medicinal and practical uses
o harvesting, preparations, medicine making
o Tree essences
o folklore and more

• Make your own medicinal oils, tinctures, teas and smudges
• Learn how to identify and work with trees unique to your bioregion
• Share experiences and learning with other herb students, herbalists and plant lovers.

Weekly lessons sent via e-mail, and group discussion on an e mail list forum is expected as part of the course. Some additional books and supplies may be needed.

Please register with a $50 deposit by Sept 14, 2010 by e mailing shamana.flora@gmail.com
Payment plans available, please inquire.

Listening to the Wild:Online Intensive with Sean Donahue

September 1 – October 1
Sliding Scale — $150 – 200

The world is alive and speaking to us. All we have to do is remember how to listen.

But for some of us the vibrant memory of the world we knew as children is stronger than the fear of madness.

The wildness of our souls can be recovered, just as a forest can grown from an abandoned field.

In this six week online workshop, we will engage in an intense process of connecting with the living Earth and awakening the wildness within themselves.

Through reading, writing, meditation, and direct experience of the natural world, we will explore:

– Our personal, familial, and cultural histories of relating to the land we live on and the beings that inhabit it
– Engaging nature through engaging our senses
– The use of the heart as an organ of perception (drawing from the work of Stephen Buhner)
– Developing and deepening relationships with the plants that grow around us

Participants will share their experiences with each other and build community through an e-mail discussion list.

Payment for this class is on a sliding scale from $150 – 200. The price reflects the work that I put into preparing and teaching this course. The higher end of the sliding scale is intended for people who can regularly afford things like eating out, going to concerts, and attending workshops and retreats. For those who are deeply committed to this work but are not able to afford even the low end of the sliding scale I am willing to discuss payment plans and partial or full barter arrangements. If enough people pay at the higher end of the sliding scale, I may be able to offer a few partial scholarships to students who would not otherwise be able to take this course.

If you are interested in enrolling, please e-mail me at seandonahuepoet@gmail.com.
I would like to have a brief, informal e-mail exchange with potential students before the course begins to make sure everyone understands the intensity of this work. A $50 deposit is required by August 20 to enroll in the course.

TRADITIONS OF THE NEW ENGLAND ROOT DOCTORS with Sean Donahue

Online, October 1 – December 1
$150
50$ deposit to register by Sept 25, 2010

In the eighteen and nineteenth centuries, rural New England root doctors blended some of the energetic understandings of British folk medicine with what they learned from Native peoples about the plants around them and developed a system of medicine based on working with and supporting the actions’ of the body’s vital force. Samuel Thomson of New Hampshire condensed this system into a series of easy to understand principles and practices, and launched a movement that sought to empower people to take their health care back from the physicians of the day whose methods relied heavily on bloodletting and the use of toxic compounds like Mercury.

Building on this foundation, a later generation would develop the science of Physiomedicalism which informs many strains of contemporary herbalism. This course will explore the philosophy, energetic systems, and therapeutics of the New England root doctors and the Physiomedicalists, and look at how we can apply their insights today.

Crab-Apple Magic

2010-07-20T14:05:00.000-07:00

‎"Our wild apple is wild only like myself, perchance, who belong not to the aboriginal race here, but have strayed into the woods from cultivated stock." -- Henry David Thoreau

My people aren't from here.

But my bones are.

My biological ancestors come from places where the invaders began clearing the forests and outlawing traditional religions 500 years before that same genocide reached the shores of this continent.

My great-grandfather came from "beyond the Pale" -- the line that separated the "civilized" English speaking parts of Ireland from the "wild" Gaeltacht. He was a Captain in the IRA who left at the age of 21 with a price on his head. The last person in my line to be born in his ancestral homeland.

So when I invoke the magic of my blood ancestors, I am invoking the magic of places I have never known.

But I have lived all my life in New England. The water I drink, the air I breathe, the food I eat are of this place -- every cell of my body comes from this land.

I've known these forests and fields and swamps and this seashore since I was born. The bullfrogs and spring peepers sang me to sleep throughout my childhood.

It was in the forests of Maine that my adult self first realized that the trees and lichens were speaking to me. And it was in the swamp behind my parents' house in North Andover, MA that I realized Skunk Cabbage had been singing to me in my dreams since before I could speak.

So as a pagan who believes that the world is alive where do I look for the ceremonies and rituals and magic that shape my practice? And as an herbalist what traditions do I look to guide me in connecting with the wild medicines around me?

The gods of my ancestors come when I call them, they recognize something in my blood. But their traditional rituals are connected with the stones and water and forests of another time and place -- forests that were burned or cut over a thousand years ago.

Their healing traditions teach ways of approaching and understanding plants, but the plants that I find when I am out wildcrafting are a hodge-podge of European and North American species.

The traditions that do come from this place belong to people who have survived genocide and are living under occupation (much as my great-grandfather did) and understandably don't want descendants of Europeans appropriating and claiming their medicine and ceremony as their own.

And yet, as someone who has devoted my life to serving the wild and feral plants that are themselves ancestors of mine from a time before humans knew such divisions, it behooves me to pay attention to the healing and ritual technologies of the people who have lived on this land the longest.

Its a fine line to walk -- honoring the traditions of my blood ancestors while understanding that to be true to their spirit I need to find new forms that fit this time and place. Looking to the knowledge of those who best understand the physical and spiritual geology and ecology of the place where I live without claiming their traditions as my own.

Like my great-grandfather's people, I've put myself beyond the Pale, outside the wall that defines the border of the civilization that dominates the world around me. But unlike them I am an interloper on this land.

My body, and my spiritual, magical, and herbal practices are very much like a Crab-Apple tree -- ancestral seeds from Europe planted in North America, their DNA changed by the place where they take root.

I trust the wind and water and soil to guide me in that process of becoming something new.

Traditional Healing for a Modern World: A Week-Long Herbal Intensive

2010-07-18T16:29:00.000-07:00

August 2-8 -- Boston, MA
www.commonwealthherbs.com
with Katja Swift, Sean Donahue, Darcey Blue French, Ryan Midura, and Mischa Schuler

Throughout history, most people around the world have depended on the plants around them as medicine for their bodies, minds, and spirits.

Here in New England, we have our own living herbal traditions, drawing from the knowledge and practices of Native American and European herbalists. Each new generation adds its own insights and experiences to the mix.

Come spend a week in Boston learning from practicing herbalists whose work is rooted in Traditional Western Herbalism, informed by science, inspired by the beauty and magic of the living Earth, and grounded in their own direct experience working with the medicine of the wild, feral, and cultivated plants that grow around them.

This intensive will provide beginners with a solid foundation in the fundamentals of herbalism as well as providing more experienced herbalists with an opportunity to deepen their knowledge and sharpen their skills.

Topics will include:

-- Herbal energetics and herbal actions
-- Plant identification and ethical wild crafting
-- Nutrition, food allergies, and food as medicine
-- Techniques for making and using tinctures, elixirs, decoctions, infusions, oils, and salves.
-- Clinical skills
-- The language and intelligence of plants

Tuition for the week is $950. Participants will bring a bag lunch and will be responsible for their own lodging.

Teachers include:

Katja Swift -- Katja Swift is an herbalist and teacher working to help adults, children, and families rebuild their relationships with their bodies and with their own ability to heal. By teaching people how to eat real food and use plants as medicine, she helps them to reestablish their connectivity to the earth, to themselves, and to one another. Katja believes that traditional medicine and modern medical practices can coexist as allies, and works to help people make good choices about which methods to use to bring about better health in their own lives. Katja trained with Rosemary Gladstar and later with Guido Masé, and presently runs a family practice in Brookline, MA. She has a beautiful seven-year-old daughter who would like to tell you all about linden, plantain, and dandelion.

Darcey Blue French -- Darcey Blue French is an herbalist & nutritionist, wildcrafter, gardener, food lover, Earth lover and wild woman. She was trained as a Clinical Herbalist & Nutritionist at the North American Institute of Medical Herbalism under Paul Bergner, and studied under Rosemary Gladstar and Charlie Kane. Darcey has been using and learning from the plants, both wild and cultivated since childhood, and it is her deep love of the wild Earth and its creatures that fuels her passion for healing and teaching about plants, wilderness, spirit, nourishment and healing. She spends her time leading Edible and Medicinal Wild Plant walks, Plant Spirit Medicine groups, teaching herbal and nutritional classes and intensives both in person and online, creating nourishing and delicious meals, wildcrafting and making medicines from the plants, seeing clients and enjoying the wild places on the earth.

Sean Donahue -- Sean Donahue is an herbalist, poet, activist, and witch committed to healing and transformation through connection with the living Earth. As an herbalist, Sean works primarily with the wild plants of the forests and fields of New England. He views the plants as teachers, helping the body, mind, and spirit learn to correct imbalances that stand in the way of health. As a teacher, poet, and ritualist, Sean works to connect people with their own wild nature and with the life of the world around them. He believes that personal, community, and cultural healing are all deeply intertwined with the healing of our planet.

Ryan Midura -- Ryan Midura began his formal herbal training with the apprenticeship progam at the Boston School of Herbal Studies, with Katja Swift and Mischa Schuler. He continued with the advanced training program, led by Tommy Priester and Madelon Hope. He's become good friends with sage, solomon's seal, and the salamander living inside ginger; he's learned to feel the kidneys' fire in the pulsing of a wrist. As he develops his attunement to the world green and growing, he looks forward to sharing its gifts with the people all around who are in need of care and compassion, and those who seek to understand the connections from all things to all things.

Mischa Schuler -- Mischa Schuler is a community herbalist specializing in women's reproductive and sexual health . She also counsels on choices around natural contraception and general emotional and physiological health. She works with adolescents to support the menstrual cycle, ease allergies, and improve skin concerns and with children and infants to support the immune system in cold and flu. She has an M.S. in Herbal Medicine from the Tai Sophia Institute and has also studied and worked with Rosemary Gladstar, Deb Soule, and Dr. Mary Bove. She is Adjunct Faculty at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy. And she is currently working with Robin Rose Bennett on a national study on the use of Wild Carrot as a contraceptive.

Stuck in the mud with snow on the ground : Digging Skunk Cabbage roots

2010-07-17T08:36:00.000-07:00

This post is part of the "Adventures in Herbalism" Blog Party hosted by Darcey Blue French at http://www.gaiasgifts.blogspot.com/

Sometimes the things that make a plant so amazing also make it extremely hard to gather.

So it is with Eastern Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus).

Autumn would theoretically be the best time to harvest roots in a swamp in New England. The trouble is that by that time, the leaves of the Skunk Cabbage have died back. So why not just mark the location of the plant earlier in the season and then come back to it?

Skunk Cabbage has contractile roots -- and those roots allow the plants to move slowly across the swamp.

So if you want to dig the roots at the point when the plant's energy is concentrated underground, you have to do it in spring.

The trouble is that what a Skunk Cabbage calls spring in New England is quite different from what we call spring.

You see, Skunk Cabbage in a thermogenic plant. It generates heat to melt the ground around it.

So the flower of the Skunk Cabbage begins to appear when the ground is still frozen and there is often still snow on the ground.

And the time to harvest the roots is when the bud of the flower is still green -- before it opens and turns purple.

So that means slogging out over thin ice into a still frozen swamp.

When you find a bud peaking up through the frozen muck, its time to begin digging it up.

As you dig, the chilly water the plant melted begins to flood the hole and try to suck the plant back down.

And with a shovel its hard to really find how far the root goes down.

So once you have broken the ground, you really need to reach down and start digging with your hands, grasping the plant at its base with one hand, and beginning to extract the long tendrils from the mud.

Some of the plants can be hundreds of years old. And even a fifty year old plant has pretty big roots. And on the surface the one year old plant and the 300 year old plant look just the same. The only way to choose which one to harvest is to ask the plants. And sometimes its the old Grandfathers that will most want to provide their medicine.

So you soon find yourself stooped over in the swamp, almost elbow deep in the muck.

In order to be able to feel the roots you don't want anything thicker than a pair of rubber kitchen gloves. And they don't offer much insulation. And they only reach to your wrists. So you get cold fast. And after a while the tannins in the swamp mud begin working on your skin too -- along with the oxalate crystals of the Skunk Cabbage itself.

And when you are done digging that one plant and are ready to get up and move on to the next, the swamp sucks at your feet. Last March I lost the sole of one of my shoes after digging the roots of one Grandfather and finished the day's harvest with my foot wrapped in a garbage bag.

So I guess it says something about the kind of herbalist that I am that I look forward to the Skunk Cabbage harvest all year long.

Because part of the medicine comes in the harvest.

Harvesting any root is an act of connecting with the Underworld.

Harvesting Skunk Cabbage is almost an Underworld initiation in its own right.

It forces you outside your comfort zone, bringing you bodily into the world beneath the surface of the swamp that you would normally never see.

And you come back with a medicine that helps to dredge up the things that keep you from being fully present in this world -- be it phlegm deep in the lungs, deep depression, or fluid built up anywhere in the body where it doesn't belong. And it calms the tremors and convulsions of that birth -- be it coughing, epilepsy, or uterine spasms.

You can't be born again without going through a dark, wet tunnel.

Harvesting Skunk Cabbage can bring you to the entrance of one passage that will carry you through.

NOTE: Since writing this, I've heard from an herbalist whose family has been harvesting Eastern Skunk Cabbage roots in summer for several generations. Apparently drying the roots in an oven will eliminate enough Calcium Oxalate crystals to make the roots safe to use in a decoction.

Never the less, I do still think early Spring is the best time to harvest the roots -- the plant's energy remains concentrated in the roots at that early point before flowering.

Wendy Snow Fogg tells me that William LeSassier taught his students to harvest the roots in early spring by putting a knife into the center of the spathe.

Ghost Pipe (Monotropa Uniflora)

2010-07-04T16:00:00.000-07:00

Ghost Pipe (Monotropa Uniflora)
Family: Ericaceae
Common Names: Indian Pipe, Ghost Pipe, Fairy Smoke, Ice Plant, Corpse Plant, Birds' Nest, Fit Plant, Convulsion Root7
Energetics: Cold, Relaxing
Herbal Actions: Nervine, Antispasmodic/Anticonvulsive, Diaphoretic
Flower Essence Indications: "Expanding awareness of the presence of universal love; [ . . .] seeing and feeling the love in every moment." -- David Dalton

I felt myself beginning to get sucked into the existential whirlpool of panic that has a way of pulling me down into debilitating depression. So I went into the woods.

A short way up the trail, I stopped and sat down in the cradle of the roots of a very old White Pine. Leaning back against the trunk, I began to feel grief and fear and its companion, doubt well up, overwhelming me. Where did I belong in this world? What was my work? What if my life amounts to nothing?

At the edge of panic, I opened my eyes, and about fifteen feet away from me saw the othreworldly white stalk and bell-shaped flower of Ghost Pipe. Just two days earlier, I had scoured the forest and Ghost Pipe was nowhere to be found. I felt a cool euphoria spread from the center of my chest throughout my body.

I walked over to the plant and knelt down and offered Tobacco. and soon saw that there were clusters of Ghost Pipe spread out all around me throughout the forest. The plant sang to me:

Pray for the medicine and it will come,
pray for the medicine you must become.

Grateful to the point of tears, I began gathering the stems and flowers of the plant. Walking deeper and deeper into the forest, I felt my panic subside, my grief dissipate, and my doubt disappear.

And it struck me that that's the essence of Ghost Pipe's medicine: its the medicine that pulls you back from the edge.

(Of course, in the process I got incredibly lost in woods I thought I knew well, and found my way home after three hours that felt like 45 minutes -- the price of the kind of clarity a medicine like this brings often involves the loss of bearings in space and time. That truth is as old as the oldest stories of Faery.)

Exaggerated claims of toxicity

Before going further I want to address the sudden panic some of my readers might have had when they read that I was gathering the stems and flowers of Ghost Pipe.

Going back to the late nineteenth century, herbals and field guides have routinely warned that the stems and flowers of the plant are toxic and that only the roots can be safely used.

But the only recorded case I have been able to find of a significant adverse reaction attributed to the plant is one from the late nineteenth century involving a woman who had handled but not ingested the plant and then developed a rash. The author of the account, A. H. Young, had consulted a physician after seeing the woman and hearing her story, and the physician had concluded based on his description of the symptoms that she had probably come into contact with Poison Ivy (Rhus toxicodendron). Young insisted this was impossible based solely on the fact that the woman claimed "that she was not susceptible to Rhus poison."

Despite the fact that there is no clinical evidence of Ghost Pipe ever having caused any more serious poisonings, many insist that it is potentially deadly because the plant contains a glycoside called andromedotoxin, and people have become seriously ill from consuming honey made by bees that have pollinated other plants containing the same compound.

Yet the aerial parts of the plant were traditionally used internally by the Cree and the Mohegan.

And a number of contemporary herbalists have worked with the aerial parts as well. Ryan Drum reports eating an "ounce or more of the young flowers and stalks" and feeling only "slightly nauseous." And I know several herbalists who have been working with the whole plant tincture for years.

As any herbalist knows, a plant is more than the sum of its chemical parts, and the mere presence of a potentially toxic constituent does not a poison make.

The first time I harvested the plant, I gathered and tinctured only the aerial parts. After reading and learning more, I set that batch aside and made a new one, using the entire plant. When I ran out of the whole plant tincture, I decided to experiment with the tincture made from the aerial parts only, and I found its actions identical to those of the whole plant tincture. I gave some to another clinical herbalist to experiment with and she found the same thing.

So now I spare the roots, taking a few stems and flowers from any given cluster of Ghost Pipe in hopes of leaving a viable cluster behind.

So, having dealt with the issue of toxicity, lets move on first to the ecology and then to the medicine of the plant.

Physical and Spritual Ecology

Ghost Pipe is a plant without chlorophyll that obtains water, nutrients, and carbon dioxide by tapping into the symbiotic mycorrhizal networks of the plants and fungi of the forest.

From a strictly materialistic standpoint this appears to be a purely parasitic relationship.

My own belief is that there is no such thing as pure parasitism.

Ghost Pipe to me is the distillation of the consciousness of the forest -- of the deep peace that comes from complete integration in the cycles of birth and death to the point where the distinction ceases to have meaning. Simultaneously, it is a watcher at the edge, taking in all it perceives without judgment and feeding information back into the mycelial networks that form the nervous system of the forest.

As such, it also seems to have an affinity for other liminal spaces as well -- especially the borders between life and death and embodiment and disembodiment.

My first encounter with Ghost Pipe two summers ago along a dirt road in Sumner, ME illustrates this.

Finding the ghostly plant by the side of the road, I got down on my knees to inspect it more closely. The flowers smelled of pickling vinegar. The stem seemed a tunnel to the world beneath the forest floor.

I felt my breath slow and deepen and a cool, mild euphoria come in through my chest and move up and down along my spine, radiating throughout my body. I smelled and felt rich, moist forest soils.

The plant told me to put one of his flowers in my mouth. I chewed on it for several minutes, and felt a tingling in my mouth. I spit it out and stood up slowly.

I was very clearly in another state of consciousness. I was acutely aware of the forest around me -- especially of the vast interwoven network of roots beneath the surface, and the communication across them.

I began walking down the road, deeply grateful for the worlds Monotropa was opening to me.

About fifteen minutes later I became very hot and began sweating profusely.

It occurred to me that I knew next to nothing about the flowers of this plant and that I might have poisoned myself.

And I began to imagine my death I knew that I had a four or five mile walk home down roads that don't see much traffic. I imagined collapsing and rolling down the bank and then rotting into the forest floor, becoming food for the life around me. And I felt completely at peace with that possibility.

And at the same time, I was acutely aware of work I wanted to do in the world, of experiences I wanted to have. So I began negotiating with Monotropa, saying that I wanted to go back into the world to be a voice for the forest.

The whole experience felt like a kind of initiation -- and I was left with the understanding that anyone doing healing work needs to become comfortable in the space between life and death.

Several people I've shared Ghost Pipe with have had similar experiences, suggesting that this is one aspect of the plant's medicine that presents itself in the right time and place.

Putting the pain beside you

It comes as no surprise, then that Ghost Pipe is a medicine most known for its action on the nervous system -- and particularly the ways our bodies deal with sensory information.

In its physical form, Ghost Pipe resembles a spinal column and a brain stem.

And one of the gifts Ghost Pipe offers is its ability to keep us from being overwhelmed by pain.

In the 1898 edition of King's American Dispensatory, Eclectic physicians, Harvey Wickes Felter and John Uri Lloyd noted that the powdered root could be used "as a substitute for opium, without any deleterious influences."

Tommy Priester, the herbalist who introduced me to Ghost Pipe, told me that he uses the tincture to help people in excruciating physical pain put the pain "beside them" -- they remain intellectually aware that the pain is there, but don't feel its overwhelming sensation. He works with the tincture of the whole plant, and told me that with the first dose you give someone 3 drops and see if that works. If 3 drops don't help, 5 or 10 won't, so you jump right up to a 30 drop dose. I have found similar effects with the same dosages of the tincture of the aerial parts.

My current theory is that the medicine works with the sensory gating channels -- limiting the amount of information processed as sensation, but allowing the information the brain needs to assess the situation to pass through.

I see the medicine as having potential in helping people come off addictive opiate pain-killers.

Putting your problems outside you where you can see and work on them

Of course, our bodies use the same mechanisms to process both emotional and physical pain and fear.

Last summer, when I first began working with Ghost Pipe, I told a lot of my friends about the amazing ways this plant could help people deal with pain. So my friend S. made a batch of her own tincture.

Our mutual friend, C. was visiting S. when he received some emotionally devastating news. He began having a panic attack. When S. walked in and saw him doubled over, she asked him what was wrong, and the only words that he could utter were "The pain! The pain!" She assumed he was in physical pain and gave him a dropperful of Ghost Pipe tincture.

C. said that the medicine helped him put his worries and problems outside of himself where he could look at them and work with them without feeling their full emotional impact.

C. came to visit the next day and told me the story. I told him about what Ghost Pipe does for physical pain, and said that his experience told me that it does the same for emotional pain. I gave him a formula of nourishing nervines and adaptogens to help him deal with chronic anxiety, but suggested that since Ghost Pipe was working so well for him, he should continue using it for acute panic attacks.

A month or two later, I ran into C. and asked him how the herbs were working for him. He told me that he had continued using Ghost Pipe whenever he felt anxiety coming on for several weeks after that first incident. Then one day he went to reach for the tincture, and he heard the plant telling him he didn't need the tincture anymore. He managed to call up the memory of the frame of mind the medicine put him in and put his worries outside him by himself. The plant had taught him a new means of dealing with pain and terror.

Since then, I have given the plant to a number of people dealing with acute anxiety attacks. All have had great results with it, though none have gone through quite the transformation that C. did. Sometimes the right plant is just the right teacher for a particular person at a particular time.

I have also begun experimenting with using the plant in combination with Holy Basil for trauma survivors in situations where their memories of trauma are being triggered. Early results are promising.

"Bad Trips" and Vitus Dance

In addition to helping people put their physical and emotional pain outside their bodies, Ghost Pipe can help bring people back into their bodies.

Part of my practice involves doing first aid work at festivals where a lot of people are under the influence of a lot of different mind-altering chemicals.

I always end up dealing with men in their late teens or early twenties who are having their first experiences with LSD, find old traumas triggered, and become agitated and disruptive.

When I first began researching Ghost Pipe, I came across Ryan Drum's account of using the medicine to help sedate a man who was having a psychotic episode.

Based on that account, and based on my own theory that psychedelics work in part by opening the sensory gating channels to a degree we don't normally experience, I decided to start using Ghost Pipe in these cases.

In every such case where I have used it, a 30 drop dose of Ghost Pipe has rapidly worked to slow the onslaught of sensory information coming into the subject's brain. Pupil dilation and response to external stimuli change in matter of minutes.

In most cases, the men in question either become calm and coherent, or fall asleep quickly and wake up hours later, calm and coherent.

In a few cases I've witnessed though, the LSD had brought underlying issues to a head, and the men found themselves experiencing what a shamanic practitioner would call spirit possession and a psychiatrist would call a dissociative episode. In these cases, physical cues told us that the drug was no longer acting on the brain, but disturbing behaviors continued -- in one case "speaking in tongues," in others, physical violence and endless shouting of threats and profanities.

In the cases where these men were physically violent, the phrases they kept repeating suggested they were remembering childhood sexual abuse -- an experience with up-regulates norepinephrine. We also later learned that all of these men were on Adderall. My working hypothesis is that their Post Traumatic Stress Disorder caused them to act in ways that led them to be misdiagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperacticity Disorder. LSD made them more susceptible to having their repressed memories triggered, and the stimulation of Adderall coupled with the sensory overload of the LSD experience pushed them into a fearful and violent state.

In cases like these, further measures are necessary, and those fall outside the scope of the article.

An interesting side note -- Ghost Pipe was used widely in New England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to treat a condition called "Vitus Dance" -- that involved spasms and convulsions often attributed to divine or demonic possession. Most of these cases were likely rheumatic fever, and here Ghost Pipe's traditional uses as an anticovulsive/antispasmodic and as a diaphoretic likely came into play. But in some cases Vitus Dance was likely an effect of Ergot poisoning -- Ergot is a fungus that grows on Rye that can causes hallucinations and convulsions when ingested. Ergot is also the source of Ergotamine, the chemical from which Albert Hoffman derived and synthesized LSD.

Its also worth noting that St. Vitus is the patron saint of mushrooms.

Perhaps early New England root doctors were using Ghost Pipe for the same indications for which I now administer it at the festivals?

Various and sundry other medicinal uses

David Winston notes that Ghost Pipe is a diaphoretic and was traditionally used by the Cherokee for fevers accompanied by pain and for febrile seizures. I've not used the plant this way before, but after eating the flowers I have certainly felt its profound diaphoretic effect.

The juice of the fresh plant has traditionally been used as a remedy for inflamed eyes, sometimes combined with Rose water. Earlier today I crushed a flower onto my closed, inflamed eye and rubbed in the juice and felt rapid relief. Jean Auel made this use famous in her novel, The Clan of the Cave Bear.

Lloyd and Felter note that the juice combined with Rosewater can be used to treat "inflammation and ulceration of the bladder." I've not explored this possible use yet, but may soon, as it explained why I got an intuitive hit on Ghost Pipe when I was wondering what plant to use for the people I've been seeing at the festivals who are having bladder problems from Ketamine use. Prolonged recreational use of this horse tranquilizer can lead to inflammation and scarification of the bladder -- and eventual bladder failure. (Of course another important part of the therapy may involve pointing out that it is difficult to dance with a urinary catheter.)

Magical correspondences

I associate the medicine of Ghost Pipe strongly with Obatala -- an Orisha of the Ifa, Santeria, Voudun, and Hoodoo traditions who is cloaked in white and helps to "cool the head," bringing calmness and clear judgment to those who work with him.

Ghost Pipe also clearly has a strong association with the Fey, given its association with the boundary between worlds. Fairy Smoke is one common name for the plant, a name likely given by Scotch-Irish people in Appalachia who would have afforded such a name to a plant with great care, noting its connection to otherworldly states of consciousness.
________________________

Photo by Darcey Blue French

This Root Doctor does not intend to diagnose or treat medical conditions . . .

2010-07-02T19:06:00.001-07:00

When I first began practicing as an herbalist, I resented the standard disclaimer we are all taught to put on our intake forms and our websites -- "These products and services are not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any medical condition."

I felt like these words diminished the importance and power of the work I was doing. And it seemed somehow dishonest given that many of my first clients were people who were eschewing the medical system altogether, people for whom I was the primary health care practitioner.

But the deeper I have gone into this work, the more I have realized that my work has nothing to do with diagnosing or treating medical conditions -- though occasionally the protocols I've recommended have probably helped to cure them.

You see, contemporary medical science and practice for the most part, views the human body as a collection of parts. Diseases and injuries are identified by their symptoms and surgical and pharmaceutical strategies are developed to correct these particular symptoms by manipulating particular chemical and mechanical functions in particular organs and systems.

This approach works remarkably well to reverse symptoms in acute situations -- resuscitating someone who has had a heart attack or stopping an aggressive blood infection. We can do these things with herbs too, but medical procedures have a higher success rate here.

But the longer a condition persists and the longer a treatment is continued, the less predictable the outcome will be, and the more unintended consequences begin to develop. Steroid inhalers do a great job of opening the airways of an asthmatic in the short term, but over time lead to problems with the adrenals that contribute to the underlying autoimmune condition.

Some herbalists would suggest that the problem is that pharmaceutical drugs are too biochemically crude and that herbs can work better for chronic conditions because the plants that pharmaceutical drugs are derived from often contain chemicals that counteract side effects of the isolated compounds used in those drugs. And this is certainly true to a point. Many then take the next step and say that herbs can be used to replace pharmaceuticals in the treatment of chronic medical conditions and that we need to identify which herbs can most reliable be used to treat which diseases using which chemical pathways. And then find ways to standardize their cultivation, processing, and use.

This is where I take a sharp turn in another direction.

Because to me medical conditions are nothing but taxonomic descriptions of particular states of particular organs or systems in particular moments.

And they are meaningful only when the primary focus is on addressing the immediate symptoms.

But just as the laws of physics change when operating on different scales of space and time, so too medicine's description of the workings of the body and the actions of certain medicines in the body tends to break down when you change the frame of reference.

The body turns out to be more than the sum of its parts -- it is a living, self-organizing system. And changing a particular aspect of the operation of that system can have a host of seemingly unpredictable consequences to those who apply strictly mechanical and biochemical models to a dynamic system with a complex logic of its own.

I align myself most strongly with the rural New England Root Doctors of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries who, working with insights gleaned from European folk medicine and what knowledge they could gather of Indigenous traditions, worked to treat the person, not the disease, attempting to understand and work with what the body was trying to do to heal itself and bring itself back into balance.

Their philosophy was best articulated by some of the heirs of their tradition, the great Physiomedicalist physicians of the middle and later nineteenth century. Dr. William Cook wrote in 1869 that ""The living body is held in life and action by a living force" and healing is best promoted by supporting the actions of that force. His contemporary, Dr. T.J. Lyle said that "in the art of curing disease we can but influence to contract and relax with varied degrees of rapidity and energy in imitation of nature's way of using these structures in health."

In doing so, its necessary to find the imbalance -- the obstacle to cure -- that is preventing the body from healing itself, and remove it through an equal and opposite corrective action. Lyle wrote:

"In the work of restoration the attempt must be to restore to some extent the opposite condition of that abnormally existing. If the parts are congested apply heat and relieve the circulation. If the body is emaciated give proper food and sustain digestion. If there be too much relaxation, stimulate to the relief of such abnormal relaxation. If there be too much rigidity, relax to the relief of that rigidity."

The simplest ways to do this involve meeting the body's unmet needs for sleep, exercise, hydration, and nutrition.

But sometimes its necessary to bring in outside agents to effect change by warming or cooling, moistening or drying, stimulating or relaxing, in accordance with what the body itself is trying to do. This is at the core of my work.

Because plants have bodies remarkably similar to ours, they are constantly developing strategies for dealing with stresses remarkably similar to those experienced by our bodies. Like our bodies, theirs are trying to obtain or maintain balance. So plants that live in wet areas develop strategies for dealing with excess moisture. Plants that live in hot, dry conditions develop strategies for cooling and moistening their tissues.

And like us plants are more than the sum of their parts. In the laboratory it may be possible to identify particular compounds that produce particular results in particular conditions, but these are not the whole of the plants' medicine.

Plants operate as deep teachers to our bodies, helping us learn new strategies for correcting imbalances.

My work as an herbalist is the work of connecting people with plants that can help them find physical, emotional, and spiritual balance.

Any resemblance to work intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions is purely incidental.

Green Man Rising Intensive Begins June 21

2010-06-07T12:56:00.000-07:00

GREEN MAN RISING: Recovering the Wild Masculine
An Online Intensive with Sean Donahue
June 21 - August 1
Sliding Scale $150 - 200

The face of the Green Man, leaf-bearded god of regeneration, appeared etched in stone churches throughout Europe well into the early modern period. The stories surrounding him have largely vanished, but he is widely understood to represent the irrepressible virility of the wild -- its rebirth in spring from the seeds that fall from dying plants in the fall, and its survival in the face of attempts to contain it and push it back. And he represents the vital force of the wild masculine -- before patriarchy bound ideas of masculinity to ideas of violence and domination.

Any attempt to transform our culture has to take into account the need to redefine and reshape masculinity, to provide channels for masculine energy to flow that meet and match and dance with the incredible strength of the feminine rather than seeing to subjugate it.

In this intensive, we will work with myth, magic, poetry, and direct experience of the living world to re-imagine masculinity and reclaim our own relationship to the wild masculine within us and within the people around us.

This class is open to people of all genders, sexes, sexualities, gender identities, and gender expressions. We will strive to create an environment of respect and openness where it is safe to take risks and to try on new ideas and identities.

To apply e-mail greenmansean@gmail.com by June 15.

A note on payment:

This class is offered on a sliding scale. The higher end of the sliding scale is intended for those who are regularly able to afford "extras" like restaurant meals, concert tickets, and yoga retreats. If enough people are able to pay at the higher end, I will be able to afford to offer partial scholarships to passionate students who cannot afford even the lower end of the sliding scale.

If you are interested in this course and cannot afford even the lower end of the sliding scale, please contact me and we will endeavor to make an arrangement that is fair to all involved.

_____________________
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR:

Sean Donahue is an herbalist, poet, activist, and witch committed to healing and transformation through connection with the living Earth.

As an herbalist, Sean works primarily with the wild plants of the forests and fields of New England. He views the plants as teachers, helping the body, mind, and spirit learn to correct imbalances that stand in the way of health. As a teacher, poet, and ritualist, Sean works to connect people with their own wild nature and with the life of the world around them. As an activist and journalist he has documented the human and environmental impacts of U.S. policies in Latin America, organized against nuclear power and nuclear weapons, trained hundreds of activists in techniques of nonviolent resistance, helped military families tell the stories of how the war in Iraq impacted their lives, and advocated for the rights of medical marijuana patients.

He believes that personal, community, and cultural healing are all deeply intertwined with the healing of our planet.

May Blog Party: Herbs For Sexual Health and Vitality

2010-05-15T21:10:00.000-07:00

How do you promote healthy, vital, joyful sexuality?

Its May, and with the sap risen and the world coming into blossom, this month's Blog Party focuses on herbs (and complementary strategies) for sexual health and vitality -- from aphrodisiacs to contraceptives to herbs for the reproductive system to herbs that help to heal our emotional and spiritual relationships to our bodies and our sexuality.

Karen Vaughan writes about a holistic response to sexual dysfunction --
http://www.acupuncturebrooklyn.com/alternative-health/herbs-for-sex-and-sexual-response

Cory Trusty writes about a use for "Horny Goat Weed" that's quite different from what you might expect --
http://aquarianbath.blogspot.com/2010/05/use-of-epimedium-for-exhaustion-and.html

Yael Grauer writes about self-care in the aftermath of sexual assualt --
http://www.dirttime.org/2010/05/04/somatics-staphysagria-and-regaining-wholeness/

Rachel Fee-Prince writes about motherhood and sex --
http://thefamilyherbal.blogspot.com/2010/05/motherhood-and-sex.html

Lisl Meredith Huebner writes about the use of Queen Anne's Lace seeds as a contraceptive --
http://herbalisl.blogspot.com/2009/11/queen-annes-lace-conscious-choice-for.html

Henriette Kress writes about "sexy herbs" -- and the fundamentals of good health for a healthy libido --
http://www.henriettesherbal.com/blog/sexy-herbs.html

The Sensory Herbcraft blog features a post on the flowers of Beltane --
http://sensoryherbcraft.blogspot.com/2010/04/may-blossoms.html

Kristine Brown writes about using some familiar herbs to support sexual vitality --
http://lunaherbco.com/2010/05/may-blog-party-herbs-for-sexual-health-and-vitality/

Cynthia Froelich writes about the magic and medicne of Pink Lady's Slipper --
http://www.seeddream.blogspot.com/

And I do too --
http://greenmanramblings.blogspot.com/2010/05/confessions-of-floraphile.html

And Lisa Allen writes about a comprehensive holistic approach to birth control --
http://aartiana.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/my-6-step-herbal-contraceptivebirth-control-program/

The Erotic Flowering of Wild Innocence

2010-05-15T16:37:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the medicine of a plant is delivered by its mere presence:

Coming across a Pink Lady's Slipper in the forest there is a sharp, involuntary intake of breath and a sudden warmth that begins in the chest and spreads out throughout the body.

There is the awe of the presence of the sacred -- but something else as well:

an ecstasy tinged with astonishment felt not just by the spirit but by the body too.

At once. One and the same. A bliss of the embodied spirit taking pure delight in the sensual pleasure of the gorgeousness of the flower.

The experience is erotic in the truest, purest sense of the word. Terry Tempest Williams writes:

"Erotic means 'in relation.' Erotic is what those deep relations are and can be that engage the whole body - our heart, our mind, our spirit, our flesh. It is that moment of being exquisitely present."

Precisely the kind of engagement and presence we are jolted into by the haunting beauty of this delicate orchid blossoming in the New England forest in May.

And this is the response which the flower evolved to elicit.

The beauty of the flower exists for the purpose of seduction -- drawing in bees whose wings and bodies are dusted with the pollen of another Lady's Slipper, that will fertilize the ovum that will become the seed in autumn.

Our biology is not that different from that of the bees. We too are seduced by pink blossoms in the forest, and are ravenous in the presence of beauty -- held back from consuming it only by our reverence and awe.

Kate Gilday writes that Pink Lady's Slipper flower essence aids us in "Releasing shame" and finding "delight in our sexuality, opening one to a deeper level of intimacy."

I believe that it accomplishes this by bringing us in direct contact with our sexuality in a way that is unmediated by the language and stories of our culture. Aspects of our sexuality that predate the evolution of mammals.

The human female reproductive system is a variation on a flower. Vaginal fluids are a kind of nectar, that keeps the petals moist and draws in the tongue of the lover with its scent and taste.

The human male reproductive system is a further variation on the same theme -- and our misnamed "semen" is akin to pollen. Stephen Harrod Buhner writes:

"Semen is Latin
for a dormant, fertilized
plant ovum --
a seed.
Men's ejaculate
is chemically more akin
to pollen.
See,
it is really
more accurate
to call it
mammal pollen.

"To call it semen
is to thrust
an insanity
deep inside our culture:
that men plow women
and plant their seed
when in fact
what they are doing
is pollinating
flowers."

Present to beauty we can't contain in words, we move outside the lies contained in our language, beyond metaphor and back into visceral memory.

To the place where our erotic desire is as innocent as the desire of the bee for the Lady's Slipper.

Knowing that truth doesn't undo the lifetimes of trauma endured in a society where sex has become a weapon. And it doesn't in an instant erase all the lies we have believed about our own sexuality.

But it points us in the direction of possibility, allowing the healing to begin.

Spring Online Classes from Brighid's Well Herbs

2010-04-21T09:45:00.000-07:00

There is still room left in the three online intensives, Brighid's Well Herbs is offering this May and June. E-mail herbalists@brighidswellherbs.com to register.

TOUCHING THE HEART OF THE WORLD -- May 1 - June 21

FOOD ENERGETICS AND NOURISHMENT -- May 3- June 21

GREEN MAN RISING: RECOVERING THE WILD MASCULINE -- June 21 - August 1

___________________________________________________

TOUCHING THE HEART OF THE WORLD
May 1 - June 21

What does it mean to live from the heart?

In this six week intensive we will draw on the insights of biology, magic, herbalism, cultural history, and poetry to answer this question. And we will journey inside ourselves to explore new ways of listening to the world around us.

We will explore:

* The role the heart plays in how we experience emotion, respond to stress, and gather information from the world around us.
* How the place where we live in our bodies effects our experience of the world and shapes our culture.
* Techniques for listening to and working to heal wounded parts of ourselves.
* Learning to work with the heart as an organ of perception.
* The connections between personal, cultural, and planetary healing.

This promises to be a powerfully transformational, and at times emotionally intense journey. My goal as a teacher is to provide a safe and supportive space for that work. But I am not in a position to serve as therapist or counselor for students. Please bear this in mind as you consider undertaking this work.

Payment for this class is on a sliding scale from $150 - 200.

___________________________________________________

FOOD ENERGETICS AND NUTRITION
May 3, 2010 - June 21, 2010

*Learn about the ways traditional healing systems such as Ayurveda and Chinese Medicine see food energetics, and use food as healing tools on a day to day basis.
* Explore your relationship with food, your body, what you eat and why.
* Discover your natural physical constitution, and how you can use food to help you stay balanced.
* Be prepared for a deep exploration of food and our relationship to it, this can be uncomfortable and emotional, as well as enlightening and sensual. Food is a deeply influential factor in our psyche, social interactions, and cultures. All students are expected to be sensitive to others and compassionate and respectful.
*Appropriate for food enthusiasts & practitioners alike.
*Very HANDS ON, expect to be preparing foods, meals and weekly assignments for the duration of the course. This is an EXPERIENTIAL class, not just book work. I will provide resources and readings, but the bulk of the work will require the actual preparation and consumption of food.
* This is not a cooking how to class. You should feel comfortable cooking and working in your kitchen. There will be recipes and ideas shared during class discussion, and pointers and questions are always acceptable.
*Requires access to e mail and the internet on a weekly basis. Class discussion is a part of the learning process. Arrangements may be available for those with limited access. Please inquire.

Sliding scale $60-$80 per student

___________________________________________________

GREEN MAN RISING: RECOVERING THE WILD MASCULINE
June 21 - August 1

The face of the Green Man, leaf-bearded god of regeneration, appeared etched in stone churches throughout Europe well into the early modern period. The stories surrounding him have largely vanished, but he is widely understood to represent the irrepressible virility of the wild -- its rebirth in spring from the seeds that fall from dying plants in the fall, and its survival in the face of attempts to contain it and push it back. And he represents the vital force of the wild masculine -- before patriarchy bound ideas of masculinity to ideas of violence and domination.

Any attempt to transform our culture has to take into account the need to redefine and reshape masculinity, to provide channels for masculine energy to flow that meet and match and dance with the incredible strength of the feminine rather than seeing to subjugate it.

In this intensive, we will work with myth, magic, poetry, and direct experience of the living world to re-imagine masculinity and reclaim our own relationship to the wild masculine within us and within the people around us.

This class is open to people of all genders, sexes, sexualities, and gender expressions. We will strive to create an environment of respect and openness where it is safe to take risks and to try on new ideas and identities.

Payment for this class is on a sliding scale from $150 - 200.
_______________________________________________________

ABOUT THE SLIDING SCALE

The price reflects the work that we put into preparing and teaching these courses. The higher end of the sliding scale is intended for people who can regularly afford things like eating out, going to concerts, and attending workshops and retreats. For those who are deeply committed to this work but are not able to afford even the low end of the sliding scale we are willing to discuss payment plans and partial barter arrangements.

_________________________________________________________

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTORS:

Darcey Blue French is an herbalist and food lover, who has over the years explored various ways of eating, interacting with food and preparing food. Educated as a Clinical Nutritionist at the North American Institute of Medical Herbalism in 2008, she has been in private practice since that time. She has experience in Ayurvedic Cooking, Vegetarian, Allergen Free, Primal/Paleo diets and the philosophies of Dr. Weston Price. Food is far more than fuel, and Darcey is passionate about food that not only nourishes the body, but also the spirit, and tastes wonderful too. She works closely with plants, both wild and cultivated that provide both food and medicine. She is an avid forager of wild foods, gardener of organic vegetables, and is passionate about local and sustainable food systems, and how our relationship with the land, nature and wilderness impacts our physical and spiritual health and wellbeing. She truly believes that one cannot separate the health of the people from the health of the ecosystem in which they live.

Sean Donahue is an herbalist, poet, activist, and witch committed to healing and transformation through connection with the living Earth. As an herbalist, Sean works primarily with the wild plants of the forests and fields of New England. He views the plants as teachers, helping the body, mind, and spirit learn to correct imbalances that stand in the way of health. As a teacher, poet, and ritualist, Sean works to connect people with their own wild nature and with the life of the world around them. He believes that personal, community, and cultural healing are all deeply intertwined with the healing of our planet.

Sweet Birch: The Green Man in Spring

2010-04-04T11:10:00.000-07:00

Birch is the youthful Green Man in spring, sweet sap rising fervently.

Birch is Beith, the first letter of the Celtic Ogham alphabet, marking renwal and beginnings. In the medieval Irish Word Ogham of Cú Chulainn , Beith is associated with the phrase "Maise malach" -- "Beauty of the eyebrow." In facial diagnosis, thick eyebrows indicate vitality and fertility.

There is a lusty fertility to young birches -- one of the first trees to come back after a fire or a clearcut, shortly after the Quaking Aspen. But their virility is not strictly heterosexual -- in far northern climes birches reproduce without pollination.

Birch saplings's bodies are marked by the lithe, supple, androgynous strength and grace of adolescence.

But to me there is also an urgency to the energy of young birches that reminds me of boys at the edge of manhood and men just past boyhood.

So its fitting that Darcey and I should venture out on Easter Sunday, the first warm Sunday in spring, to gather Sweet Birch (Betula lenta) twigs and buds in Robin Hood Park.

The sun was shining brightly, and the trees along the path were mirrored in the still waters of vernal pools where frogs and salamanders bred.

At the top of a hill ringed by White Pine, Sweet Birch saplings sprouted up between ancient glacial erratics.

The new growth on the saplings was red -- hinting at the way the tree's medicine stirs and cleans the blood in springtime.

The buds have a marked stimulant action and are somewhat warming -- after eating several I felt alert, energized, and slightly aroused, in part I think because of the medicine's tendency to move blood to the periphery..

The instant welling up of copious clear, thin, sweet sap wherever we cut off a twig suggested the way in which the tree's medicine moves fluids up and out -- both as a blood mover and as a diuretic.

This tendency may also explain the marked expectorant action I felt a few minutes after first tasting the buds -- something not accounted for in any of the sources I've read. The expectoration was surprisingly gentle for such a stimulating medicine -- just a single gentle cough that cleared my bronchi and throat.

The sweetness of the Birch masks its astringency -- delayed but pronounced.

There is a seeming paradox in the fact that this stimulating medicine is also a potent analgesic -- birches have abundant methyl salicylate. Doubly paradoxical because while the overall medicine of the tree is warming, methyl salicylate is cooling. Herein lies the tree's poison as well. Think of the adolescent romanticization of death as a warm sleep without pain.

In its own death, like the mythic Summer King, the Sweet Birch gives life. As Birches near the end of their life cycle, they become host to Chaga, a fungus with powerful immune modulating and adaptogenic qualities that may help the body fight some cancers, particularly those associated with radiation. (Chaga is abundant near Chernobyl.) And when they finally die and lay down their bodies, Birches enrich and sweeten the soil so that it will nourish the Maples and Oaks and Hemlocks that have sprouted in the shade of the Birch grove.

As much a sign of renewal in its dying as its birth, Sweet Birch connects us to the wild fecundity of the forest, the ecstatic desire of life to burst forth wherever a new opening is made.

Online Classes with Sean and Darcey

2010-03-15T09:36:00.000-07:00

Darcey and I will be offering several online intensives over the coming months.

We are also accepting new clients. We currently offer consultations in Keene, NH, Brookline, Lawrence, and Beverly, MA, and Richmond, VT. We also consider working with long distance clients on a case by case basis.

To arrange for a consultation, register for one of our classes, or inquire about having us offer a workshop or plant walk in your community, e-mail herbalists@brighidswellherbs.com

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ELEMENTS OF HEALING
An Online Course with Sean Donahue
April 5 - June 7
$100 - $150

Where do magic, biology, and healing intersect?

In this 10 week course, we will examine the body and the herbs that help to heal and nurture it through the five elements commonly identified in Western magical traditions -- Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Ether/Spirit. We will also briefly touch on other systems of energetics as well.

This will be a journey of discovery into our own bodies and an exploration of how plants change our consciousness, our sensations, our emotions and our health.

We will move through the elements one by one, exploring how each manifests in our bodies of the course of one week, and how different herbs act on that element within us during the following week.

No prior experience in herbalism or magic is required -- just an openness to new experiences and a willingness to learn.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FOOD, ENERGETICS, AND NOURISHMENT
An Online Course with Darcey Blue French
May 3 - June 21
$60-80

*Learn about the ways traditional healing systems such as Ayurveda and Chinese Medicine see food energetics, and use food as healing tools on a day to day basis.
* Explore your relationship with food, your body, what you eat and why.
* Discover your natural physical constitution, and how you can use food to help you stay balanced.
* Be prepared for a deep exploration of food and our relationship to it, this can be uncomfortable and emotional, as well as enlightening and sensual. Food is a deeply influential factor in our psyche, social interactions, and cultures. All students are expected to be sensitive to others and compassionate and respectful.
*Appropriate for food enthusiasts & practitioners alike.
*Very HANDS ON, expect to be preparing foods, meals and weekly assignments for the duration of the course. This is an EXPERIENTIAL class, not just book work. I will provide resources and readings, but the bulk of the work will require the actual preparation and consumption of food.
* This is not a cooking how to class. You should feel comfortable cooking and working in your kitchen. There will be recipes and ideas shared during class discussion, and pointers and questions are always acceptable.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TOUCHING THE HEART OF THE WORLD:
An Online Intensive with Sean Donahue
May 1 - June 21
$150 - 200

Stephen Harrod Buhner writes that "Members of most ancient and indigenous cultures make an interesting assertion; when asked where in their body they live, they gesture to the region of the chest. Members of our culture, on the other hand, point to the head, generally an inch above the eyes and about two inches into the skull."

What does it mean to live from the heart?

In this six week intensive we will draw on the insights of biology, magic, herbalism, cultural history, and poetry to answer this question. And we will journey inside ourselves to explore new ways of listening to the world around us.

We will explore:

* The role the heart plays in how we experience emotion, respond to stress, and gather information from the world around us.
* How the place where we live in our bodies effects our experience of the world and shapes our culture.
* Techniques for listening to and working to heal wounded parts of ourselves.
* Learning to work with the heart as an organ of perception.
* The connections between personal, cultural, and planetary healing.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

GREEN MAN RISING: Recovering the Wild Masculine
An Online Intensive with Sean Donahue
June 21 - August 1
$150-200

The face of the Green Man, leaf-bearded god of regeneration, appeared etched in stone churches throughout Europe well into the early modern period. The stories surrounding him have largely vanished, but he is widely understood to represent the irrepressible virility of the wild -- its rebirth in spring from the seeds that fall from dying plants in the fall, and its survival in the face of attempts to contain it and push it back. And he represents the vital force of the wild masculine -- before patriarchy bound ideas of masculinity to ideas of violence and domination.

Any attempt to transform our culture has to take into account the need to redefine and reshape masculinity, to provide channels for masculine energy to flow that meet and match and dance with the incredible strength of the feminine rather than seeing to subjugate it.

In this intensive, we will work with myth, magic, poetry, and direct experience of the living world to re-imagine masculinity and reclaim our own relationship to the wild masculine within us and within the people around us.

This class is open to people of all genders, sexes, sexualities, and gender expressions. We will strive to create an environment of respect and openness where it is safe to take risks and to try on new ideas and identities.

_________________________________________________________

Sean Donahue is an herbalist, poet, activist, and witch committed to healing and transformation through connection with the living Earth.

As an herbalist, Sean works primarily with the wild plants of the forests and fields of New England. He views the plants as teachers, helping the body, mind, and spirit learn to correct imbalances that stand in the way of health. As a teacher, poet, and ritualist, Sean works to connect people with their own wild nature and with the life of the world around them. As an activist and journalist he has documented the human and environmental impacts of U.S. policies in Latin America, organized against nuclear power and nuclear weapons, trained hundreds of activists in techniques of nonviolent resistance, helped military families tell the stories of how the war in Iraq impacted their lives, and advocated for the rights of medical marijuana patients.

He believes that personal, community, and cultural healing are all deeply intertwined with the healing of our planet.

---------------------------

Darcey Blue French is an herbalist and food lover, who has over the years explored various ways of eating, interacting with food and preparing food. Educated as a Clinical Nutritionist at the North American Institute of Medical Herbalism in 2008, she has been in private practice since that time. She has experience in Ayurvedic Cooking, Vegetarian, Allergen Free, Primal/Paleo diets and the philosophies of Dr. Weston Price. Food is far more than fuel, and Darcey is passionate about food that not only nourishes the body, but also the spirit, and tastes wonderful too. She works closely with plants, both wild and cultivated that provide both food and medicine. She is an avid forager of wild foods, gardener of organic vegetables, and is passionate about local and sustainable food systems, and how our relationship with the land, nature and wilderness impacts our physical and spiritual health and wellbeing. She truly believes that one cannot separate the health of the people from the health of the ecosystem in which they live.

Skunk Cabbage: New England Bear Medicine

2010-03-01T07:37:00.000-08:00

This post is part of the March Blog party hosted by Karen Vaughan at http://www.acupuncturebrooklyn.com/

Thanks to Shannon Donahue of the Great Bear Foundation and to Georgia Stillwell for information used in this post.

__________________________________________________________________

Black bears dream all winter, listening to the songs the plants sing underground while waiting to emerge back into the world.

Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus/Dracontium foetidus) is the first of plant to poke its head through the ground in the swamps of New England, budding just before the first bears come out of their dens. It melts the ice and snow around it by generating heat through a chemical process remarkably similar to that used by hibernating animals to raise their temperature as they rouse from sleep.

Depending on how many acorns are left on the ground, Skunk Cabbage will make up from 50% - over 99% of a black bear's diet in this part of the world.

To the extent that Skunk Cabbage is known today as a medicinal plant, it is known for the effectiveness of the tincture or decoction in treating respiratory conditions including asthma, tuberculosis, and whooping cough. But the plant's association with bears provides a useful framework for rediscovering other aspects of its medicine.

The Micmac use of a decoction of the root to treat diabetes (sometimes in combination with Lady's Slipper) suggesting that the plant may have some impact on regulating blood sugar or general metabolism. The Haudenosaunee ("Iroquois") peoples used the plant to rid children of parasitic worms. And Skunk Cabbage is somewhat diuretic. These actions may suggest some of the roles Skunk Cabbage plays in the bears' spring diet

In more southern climes, black bears eat a lot of Willow catkins. Like Willow, Skunk Cabbage contains high levels of salicylates, which partially account for its analgesic (pain relieving) and diaphoretic (reducing fever by dissipating body heat) qualities. According to Daniel Moreman, many peoples use a poultice of crushed Skunk Cabbage leaves topically to treat pain -- a use I dreamed about long before I read this. The fact that Skunk Cabbage is also powerfully anti-spasmodic may make it a superior topical remedy to other salicylate bearing plants for throbbing muscle pain -- I've used the root tincture internally for this indication, but massaging the tincture directly into the affected area may be effective as well . Some women report excellent relief from menstrual cramps from taking 5-10 drops of the tincture at 15 minute intervals.

(A note of caution before we proceed -- Skunk Cabbage contains high levels of calcium oxalate crystals throughout the plant, making the raw plant potentially deadly in high enough doses. Heat and drying will break them down. NEVER use Skunk Cabbage roots that have not been dried. After drying, tincturing will slow the deterioriation of the relevant medicinal compounds. Untinctured dry Skunk Cabbage root is only good for about a year.)

Like many root medicines associated with bears (Angelica, Osha, Spikenard, etc.), Skunk Cabbage promotes a dropping down into the openness and receptivity that mark the parasympathetic nervous state. Our cultural conditioning makes us think of the parasympathetic state as lethargic and the sympathetic state as alert. But in reality the sympathetic state is marked by a narrowly focused awareness best suited to evading a single immediate physical threat, while the parasympathetic state is associated with broader sensory awareness to everything in one's surroundings.

Many Native peoples in Eastern North America use Skunk Cabbage as a medicine for "calming the nerves." William Cook wrote in 1869 that the plant had a reputation as a narcotic, but that he viewed it more as a nervine "of the most innocent and effective soothing character" --a description that very much matches my own experience. Its combined nervine and anti-spasmodic qualities likely account for its historic use in the treatment of epilepsy (first by the Haudenosaunee and later by the Eclectics.)

Stephen Buhner reports that the powdered root of the plant's western cousin, Lysichiton americanus, also known as Skunk Cabbage, taken as a snuff, immediately initiates the user into the warm and deeply open state that he associates with the centering of consciousness in the heart. Interestingly, our eastern Skunk Cabbage is used by the Menominee to treat "weak heart" and by the Passamaquoddy to treat various heart conditions. I plan an experiment this spring to see if our Skunk Cabbage has the same quality Buhner has discovered in the western species.

Another quality that Skunk Cabbage shares with other bear medicines like Osha and Angelica is an affinity for the female reproductive system. The flower is shaped like the uterus. Mooreman reports that the Haudenosaunee use "a compound decoction of upper parts and seeds for 'falling of the womb'" (uterine prolapse?) and a decoction of the stalks as a douche for "displacement of the womb." He also makes the mysterious and intriguing note that the Haudenosaunee "pass [the] seed over the genitals to bring about childbirth." This is an uncanny confirmation of information I've received directly from the plant about uses in inducing both abortion and childbirth that it is not ready to reveal in greater detail until I have worked with Skunk Cabbage for many years.

Skunk Cabbage seems to want to re-emerge as a medicine for our culture and our times much like a bear emerging from its den in spring. Tomorrow I go to dig the first Skunk Cabbage roots of the year. We'll see what lessons this season's harvest brings.

NOTE: Since writing this, I've heard from an herbalist whose family has been harvesting Eastern Skunk Cabbage roots in summer for several generations. Apparently drying the roots in an oven will eliminate enough Calcium Oxalate crystals to make the roots safe to use in a decoction.

Never the less, I do still think early Spring is the best time to harvest the roots -- the plant's energy remains concentrated in the roots at that early point before flowering.

Wendy Snow Fogg tells me that William LeSassier taught his students to harvest the roots in early spring by putting a knife into the center of the spathe.

Stirring the sluggish body and spirit

2010-01-04T11:42:00.000-08:00

This post is part of the January Blog Party: Warming Herbs hosted by Yael Grauer at http://www.dirttime.org

I love the beauty of New England winters, and the rich dreamtime the darkness brings, so I have always been reluctant to think of myself as suffering from seasonal depression.

But the reality is that cold, damp weather tends to slow the body down -- and for us kapha types that can mean both physical and emotional stagnation that very easily lead to depression.

In recent years I've found that several gentle warming herbs have helped me tremendously during the winter months:

Holy Basil (Ocimum sanctum) -- Warm and aromatic. David Winston suggests Holy Basil for the treatment of "Stagnant Depression." I find that Holy Basil can prevent stagnant depression as well -- for me it quite quickly dispells mental and emotional fogs before they can set in too deeply. It is also a great upper respiratory decongestant which is important to me because I tend to store emotion in my lungs, and dispelling mucous and maintaining clear airways helps to prevent that. Holy Basil honey is particularly nice on a cold day.

St. John's Wort (Hypericum perforatum) -- St. John's Wort's usefulness for relieving seasonal depression is well known, but tends to be attributed to the fact that the plant is such a wonderful nervous system tonic. Supporting healthy brain function is certainly one way St. John's Wort helps. But to me it is not the most important.

Kaphic seasonal depression often has a strong hepatic component -- exacerbated by the tendency to eat so many sweet, heavy foods in the winter, especially around the holidays. St. John's Wort is wonderful for gently stimulating bile production in the liver.

Two cautions here: First, if you are taking a prescription medicine that is metabolized by the liver, St. John's Wort may dramatically alter the level of the medicine in your bloodstream.

Secondly, when doing anything that might speed up the body's natural detoxification process it is very important to make sure you have clear channels of elimination to allow freed toxins to exit the body efficiently -- otherwise they can build up in the bloodstream. Constipation and slow bowel transit times can be significant issues for people with a kapha imbalance. I usually take Triphala and/or Chaga when I am taking St. John's Wort to keep things moving in my lower digestive tract.

Elecampane (Inula hellenium) -- Because I tend to hold emotion in my lungs, this warm, stimulating expectorant has helped me tremendously when deep depression and deep lung infections have hit me in winter. In Chinese medicine, the flowers are used for liver stagnation, and I find that the root has some benefit in this manner as well. Next year I hope to experiment with a whole plant tincture.

Eleuthero (Eleutherococcus senticosus) -- Eleuthero gives me the boost in energy and stamina that I need to get and keep my body moving in winter. "True" (Panax) Ginsengs tend to be too hot and too stimulating, and can be jarring to my system and make my heart race -- but Eleuthero gives my body just the nudge it needs to exercise when the cold and dark make me think I want to stay still.

Why I don't participate in the "health care system"

2009-12-28T17:56:00.001-08:00

"Whatever people say they believe in terms of spirituality and religion, what they do when they are sick and in need reveals the true basis of their belief system."

-- Matthew Wood, The Practice of Traditional Western Herbalism

When dogmas reach a certain level of acceptance they begin to be treated as self-evident facts beyond questioning.

So it is with the notion that "people without health insurance cost us all money" because "everyone will eventually need to go to a doctor, a hospital, or an emergency room."

The idea that health care is a service that we receive from doctors is so deeply ingrained in our culture that it is impossible for most people in our culture to imagine anyone choosing not to participate in the "health care system."

In order to understand why I refuse to participate in that system its necessary to understand its history and its nature.

------------------

In traditional societies around the world everyone knew some of the medicine that the world around them provided.

The art and science of medicine were practiced by witches, shamans, midwives, herbwives, medicine men and women -- people who were responsible for maintaining the soundness, wholeness, and integrity of all things. The health of the individual, the health of the family, the health of the village or tribe, and the health of the land were inextricably linked.

Knowledge and technique were passed down through oral tradition. But the medicine itself came through direct interaction with the living world. It was deeply relational.

The healer was responsible for making all things sound. And the community supported the healer.

This approach to healing and medicine continued to prevail throughout rural Europe well into the early modern period until it was systematically suppressed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (It is still the primary approach to healing in poor communities around the world, including parts of the U.S. like the rural south.)

But in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, new social and economic forces caused knowledge to become a regulated and privatized commodity.

The Catholic Church had already made some attempts to suppress these practices because of their ties to traditions that taught that the divine was present everywhere and healing grace was abundant and freely available. As Starhawk writes in Dreaming in the Dark:

"The Catholic Church had for centuries served for a model for an approved body that dispensed approved grace. Many of the charges against Witches and heretics can be seen as charges of dispensing 'Brand X' grace, one that lacked the official seal of approval"

But while this ideology held sway in the cities, in rural areas where people continued to work the land together, older beliefs still held sway. And many feudal landlords looked the other way, seeing old customs, old beliefs, and old festivals as outlets for energies and impulses that might otherwise feed rebellion.

But other forces began to come into play. Over farming and over grazing (a result in part of pressures on the countryside to provide food of the cities) were leading to diminishing returns on the land at the same time that the infux of stolen gold from the Americas was causing massive inflation in Europe, leading landlords to break up and sell their holdings. The Witches who were both healers and priests to their communities were responsible for the rituals that reinforced peoples' ties to the land. And so they were persecuted.

At the same time, the urban market economy was expanding into the rural areas. With its spread, Starhawk writes, "Knowledge itself began to be an 'intangible commodity.' It was something to be sold only to those who could afford to buy it." It became the property of licensed professionals. And medicine was one of the first professions to be licensed. Just as the clergy had been the guardians of the soul and sanctioned dispensers of grace prior to the Protestant reformation, in the newly emerging and more materialistic society, doctors were the guardians of health and sanctioned dispensers of medicine. Licensure was the legal instrument by which they established their monopoly.

The story we are told is that this is the point in history at which medicine became a science and it became necessary to have means of certifying that practitioners were sufficiently well versed in the appropriate knowledge. To say this is to belittle the richness and complexity of the body of knowledge and wisdom passed down from practitioner to practitioner throughout human history prior to the 1600's.

There is no evidence that the licensed physicians of the time had better results in treating their patients than the unlicensed herbwyfes, midwives, and witches who they condemned.

As Starhawk writes, citing the work of Jean Baker Miller:

"Licensing is supported by the premise that it protects the consumer of services from incompetents, charlatans, and unethical practitioners. In reality, licensing protects those with approved credentials from competition by allowing them to limit their own numbers and raise their fees. It is one of the primary ways in which 'functions that a dominant group prefers to perform . . are carefully guarded and closed to subordinates.'"

In the case of medicine, the system of licensure led to the criminalization of traditional healers and the marginalization of their methods and knowledge. Fortunately the fact that women's work in the kitchen was largely invisible and innocuous to the powers that be allowed some traditional knowledge to continue to be passed on from woman to woman.

In North America, the mingling of kitchen witch traditions with Native American and African healing traditions led to the development of rich healing traditions in many rural areas which in turn informed the rise of the Physiomedical and Eclectic medicine in the nineteenth century. These threats, along with the emerging threat from European homeopathy, was dealt with through the establishment of the American Medical Association which successfully lobbied for the passage of new licensing regimes.

--------------------------------
Well into the first half of the twentieth century, no matter how mechanistic their model of healing was, physicians used plants as the basis of most of their medicine. Healing was still about a chemical and electromagnetic conversation between living beings.

But after World War II, doctors began switching to pharmaceuticals made from synthetic chemicals primarily made from petroleum products -- the long decayed bodies of ancient plants and animals.

The biochemistry of plants is remarkably similar to the biochemistry of our own bodies. Plants create medicines to address their own chemical imbalances and to support the healthy functioning of their own systems. When we ingest a plant medicine, our body recognizes its structures, and over time can begin to imitate them. Subtle medicines can bring profound healing over time.

But ecause of our limited understanding of the chemistry of life, synthetic pharmaceuticals act at a very crude level, stimulating or suppressing a particular chemical reaction in our bodies.

This can have a host of unintended consequences. Our bodies can become too dependent on these outside stimuli, allowing our natural feedback loops to atrophy. And turning one reaction on or off can have a cascade of consequences elsewhere in the body.

Bacteria and viruses quickly learn and pass on new responses to these simple chemicals, setting off an escalating arms race between the chemists of the pharmaceutical industry and the infinitely more innovative infectious microorganisms that grow resistant to each new generation of drugs.

And since our bodies don't recogize these chemicals, we excrete most of them and they end up in our wastewater. They are taken up throughout the environment with often devastating results -- excreted Prozac in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico is altering shellfish mating patterns and excreted synthetic hormones are altering the sexual development of fish, amphibians, and possibly humans. (See Stephen Harrod Buhner's The Lost Language of Plants for an in depth exploration of these issues.)

-------------------

I spent much of my own life dependent on asthma medications that kept me breathing but taxed and weakened my body.

In the winter of 2006, I was introduced to Elecampane, an herb that would help my lungs release everything they were holding onto.

Mischa Schuler, the herbalist who introduced me to Elecampane, also introduced me to the possibility of learning directly from the plants, transforming my sense of the world as alive from an abstract belief to a literal reality.

Over the next few months, the plants began speaking to me more and more directly. They healed and transformed my body in profound ways.

They also transformed my sense of myself -- I had believed my body to be a broken machine in need of constant support. I came to see it as a living entity just like the forest capable of regenerating itself given the right conditions. That transformation required faith in my body's ability to heal and faith in the plants as teachers.

That faith was tested dramatically in June of that year when I contracted Lyme disease. Most of the people in my life were telling me that I risked debilitation and even death if I did not take antibiotics. Instead, I opted to put my faith in my body and the plants, and immediately began a complex herbal protocol that spared me from the dire consequences my friends and family predicted.

My relationships with the plants around me deepened, and I spent a lot of that summer walking in the woods alone, listening. By the end of the summer it was clear that I would spend the rest of my life deepening those connections. And it was clear to me as well that I could never again take the synthetic pharmaceuticals that had created such dangerous imbalances in my own body and the body of the living Earth.

Many herbalists I respect greatly continue to use pharmaceuticals themselves for various reasons -- and I don't think any less of them as a result. I am in no position to place judgement on anyone else's relationship to medicine.

But the integrity of my own relationship with healing plants and with the living Earth requires a radical trust. That includes trusting death's place in every life, and knowing that the time will come when it is time for me to die, and that I would rather die in right relationship with the world around me than prolong my life through methods that violate the sacred trust I have placed in my plant teachers and allies.

As an herbalist, I place myself firmly in the tradition that sees the health of the individual, the health of the community, and the health of the land as of a piece. I cannot justify trying to heal my body with chemicals that will damage the forests and fields that provide my medicine any more than I could justify digging up ever Lady Slipper root in the woods around me. Either would represent a betrayal of everything my work is about.

And I will not comply with any law that insists that I pay money to health insurance companies with a vested interest in maintaining a model of health care that insists that we cannot heal ourselves without poisoning our planet.

Consider me a conscientious objector. I will not obey.

LISTENING TO THE WILD: AN ONLINE WORKSHOP

2009-12-08T05:28:00.001-08:00

Six Weeks Beginning January 11
Sliding Scale -- $40-60

The world is alive and speaking to us. All we have to do is remember how to listen.

We are all born knowing this simple truth, and begin our lives in a world rich with meaning. But in our culture, the voices around us are quickly drowned out by electronic noise, and we are taught to ignore the bits of song we still hear on the wind or risk insanity. Eventually we reach a point where we no longer trust our own senses.

But for some of us the vibrant memory of the world we knew as children is stronger than the fear of madness.

The wildness of our souls can be recovered, just as a forest can grown from an abandoned field.

For poet and herbalist Sean Donahue, that process of recovery started when he began listening to the voices of the forest -- voices that guided him on a journey of healing, discovery, and transformation.

In this six week online workshop, Donahue will lead participants through an intense process of connecting with the living Earth and awakening the wildness within themselves.

Through reading, writing, meditation, and direct experience of the natural world, we will explore:

-- Our personal, familial, and cultural histories of relating to the land we live on and the beings that inhabit it
-- Engaging nature through engaging our senses
-- The use of the heart as an organ of perception (drawing from the work of Stephen Buhner)
-- Developing and deepening relationships with the plants that grow around us

Participants will share their experiences with each other and build community through an e-mail discussion list.

To register, please send an e-mail to seandonahuepoet@gmail.com before January 1.

The class will be limited to 20 students, so please register today.

Early Succession

2009-12-02T19:10:00.000-08:00

The Quaking Aspen is one of the first trees to come in, behind the raspberries and the sumac, reclaiming abandoned fields, heralding the forest's return.

In the autumn wind, the Aspen's leaves seem to tremble with desire to return to the Earth, giving themselves over to become the soil that will feed the Maple, Oak, and Pine that follow.

Sometimes I think this is the role I was born to -- to make the fertile soil where the forest will grow again.

In this generation, we are witnessing the end of a civilization that seemed poised to make the world unlivable just before it began to collapse under its own weight -- like an old barn separated from its foundation and caving in on itself.

My home is at the edge of the field behind the barn, where the wild begins to creep in again. In the soil where I plant my roots there is still the memory of the forest that came before, It is enough to begin calling it back into being.

In this life time, in this body, I may never know the damp fullness of the deep forest, or the luminescent green of its lichens and mosses.

But I will know sunfire and rain and from them make a trunk and branches and leaves. My sap will run in spring time, making me supple and strong. And in autumn I will know the bliss of surrender, letting parts of me fall and feed and become Her fertile darkness.

And my descendants will know sweetness because I lived here, celebrate me in the scarlet passion of the Swamp Maple in October.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

I wrote these words long before I admitted to myself that the world is alive and speaking to me. Fourteen years later, they take on new meaning:

I apprentice myself
to the quaking aspen,
setting down roots
in thin soil
at the clearing's edge.
Here in bright sun,
autumn brings
pale yellow
resignation.

Someday,
sweet darkness
will bring forth
maple red.

Hanover, NH -- 1995

Breath and Power: My Journey With Elecampane

2009-11-19T11:36:00.000-08:00

"The same war //continues. /We have breathed the grits of it in,/ all our lives, our lungs are pocked with it,/ the mucous membrane of our dreams/ coated with it, the imagination/ filmed over with the gray filth of it:"

-- Denise Levertov, "Life at War"

Grief is a watery thing, that works its way into the lungs, moving downward.

When the waters become stagnant, infection can set in.

Since early childhood, I have struggled with asthma and frequent bouts of bronchitis, born of grief breathed in and pushed down deep.

My great-grandmother took her own life on Christmas Eve when I was five months old. She had a long history of developing breathing problems when she would become emotional. And she also had a long history of drinking -- perhaps to dull her senses. She was a psychically sensitive, college educated widow living in conservative suburban upstate New York.

I shared a strange bond with her. I was supposed to meet her the day she died, but I had bronchitis so my mother didn't take me to see her. Months later my mother saw her ghost move my crib across the bedroom.

I inherited her patterns of breathing. I stuffed down grief and let it fill my lungs until I couldn't breathe. When it overflowed, I would swallow it, and experience horrible gas and indigestion. When it got bad enough I would throw up, which allowed me to breathe again.

Sensitive to the world, I worried from an early age about endangered species and nuclear war. I was a melancholy, otherworldly child and a depressed teenager. I felt like I lived in a drowning world and could only pull more of its water into my lungs. Catholic theology twisted in my mind to make me believe that by taking that grief into myself I could somehow transmute it. The struggle for breath coupled with that theology to alienate me from my body.

As an adult, I made a profession of being a carrier of other people's stories of suffering.

In December of 2005, a few weeks after returning from gathering stories of torture, displacement, and the loss of land and culture in Oaxaca in the south of Mexico, I developed severe bronchitis that had me bedridden on New Year's Eve.

A chance phone call that day from a very perceptive herbalist I met at a party the night I returned from Oaxaca resulted in my introduction to Elecampane.

Elecampane is a medicine that reaches deep into the lungs and gets things moving again -- releasing and cleansing buried grief just as it brings up old, infected mucus.

In The Earthwise Herbal, Matthew Wood writes:

"Elecampane is a warming, stimulant, pungent, aromatic bitter that permeates the bronchial tree. It resolves bacterial infection, reducing heavy, thick, green mucus down to yellow and eventually to white or clear mucus. It is specific to yellow and green mucus, indicating bacterial infection. The removal of the layer of old, adhesive mucus allows for the secretion of a new layer of thin, clear mucus that is impregnated with immune factors. Meanwhile, the bitters protect the stomach against indigestion caused by mucus that is swallowed. Very typically, the person needing elecampane (often a child) swallows the mucus."

Wood, of course, is describing word for word, the pattern of disease I had developed.

I still remember the warm zing of the first drops of Elecampane tincture on my tongue that winter.

The day after I started taking Elecampane, I was breathing well enough to take my dog on a long hike through the Bangor City Forest -- the very place where six months later, the Usnea lichen would begin to speak to me, claiming me as his own, bringing me deeper into relationship with the wild, and beginning to lead me on the path of becoming an herbalist in my own right.

Elecampane gave my my breath, and my breath brought me into my body, allowing me to begin to move and transform it, coming into the world in a new way.

------

"Come away, O human child!/ To the waters and the wild / With a faery, hand in hand,/ For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand."

-- William Butler Yeats "The Stolen Child"

Elecampane takes both its common name and its Latin name (Inula hellenium) from the legend of Helen of Troy. Wood writes that

"The legend is that when Helen was kidnapped by Paris the plant sprang up from where her tears fell. Afterward the plant was known as 'Heart of the campagna' -- elecampane."

and notes that the plant is indicated for a person who has been "'torn away from one's home', causing grief and suffering."

I believe that the plant is also often indicated for those who have never felt at home in their surroundings to begin with.

Its a familiar archetype: the bookish, asthmatic child whose imagination is captivated by stories of other worlds that sound more like home than this one. At once distant and emotionally sensitive. At times deeply empathetic and perceptive and at other times completely oblivious to social norms and cues. Asthma in these cases is often closely associated with social anxiety. Breath is a tenuous thread barely keeping the child present in this reality.

Sometimes the distance can be associated with an early trauma -- as in the case of Elizabeth Bishop and her mother's mental illness (Marilyn May Lombardi explores this in a fascinating essay called "The Closet of Breath" in Elizabeth Bishop: The Geography of Gender -- but just as often there is no obvious external cause.

In another time and place such a child might be called "fey" -- perhaps a changeling, a faery child left in place of a stolen human one. And indeed Elecampane is a plant strongly associated with the faerie realm. In England, it was once commonly known as Elf Dock. And according to Alma Hutchens in her oddly mistitled Indian Herbalogy of North America "

In Russia they call it De-via-sil, or Deviat Sil, which means nine powers. Also Di-vasil which means fair or magic power."

(Hutchen' book is a far better source on Russian folk medicine than on North American ethnobotany.)

Such feelings of being born into the wrong world and the wrong body can linger into adulthood. And by the time such a child has become an adult he or she has often internalized a lifetime of stories about being broken, powerless, and insufficient, eroding confidence.

This can lead to an attempt to deny and suppress the sensitivity and vision that are the core of such a person's identity. More emotion pushed down into the lungs, continuing the pattern of illness.

This may suggest the plant's possible historical use to treat "elfshot" which Wood describes as "wasting and preoccupation caused by being shot by an elfin arrowhead."

At the time that I was introduced to Elecampane, I was emerging from a period of my life where I had tried to suppress my imagination and my spirituality to gain acceptance in relationships and and in the culture around me. This meant denying fundamental aspects of both my childhood and adult experiences. It is the classic experience of the "dysfunctional shaman."

In his book, Fire in the Head, Tom Cowan writes that

"From the vast literature on mysticism and shamanism, it is clear that once the faculties of perception have been expanded, they cannot be restricted without causing mental or even physical illness. The malingering illness that results from denying the initial vision is well documented by reluctant shamans around the world. Most frequently the disease clears up when they commit themselves to shamanizing."

Elecampane can be a powerful ally in bringing gifts from the other side of the veil between worlds into this one, integrating spiritual awareness with physical reality, and bringing the spirit into the body. Breath is powerful too for altering consciousness, and restoring the fluidity of breath can help someone to make the transition between different levels of reality more fluid.

Just as Elecampane works at the physical level to resolve the associated respiratory disease, the plant's flower essence can help such a person bring the gifts gained from a lifetime of gazing into other realms more fully into this world, gaining confidence and stepping into power.

Elecampane brings moisture up from damp soil to feed a bright yellow flower that grows high above the ground.

Christine Tolf of Lichenwood Herbals writes that:

"Elecampane is an essence for the experience of 'initiation'. This essence helps people adjust to new spiritual growth spurts. The process of spiritual emergency is more easily accepted and integrated when Elecampane flower essence is taken. Elecampane gives confidence in the intellectual mastery needed to adjust to spiritual growth, and trust that you will make appropriate choices."

For me that choice involved coming more fully into my body and into this world without denying the reality of the music I heard from the other side of the veil. It meant allowing the pagan concept of a living Earth that I professed to become real and embodied by listening to the forest and working with plants to bring healing to others and to myself.

Elecampane gave me my breath. My breath gave me life and power.

Update on Monotropa Uniflora

2009-11-18T17:27:00.000-08:00

A brief note on a few clinical experiences I've had with Monotropa uniflora (Indian Pipe/Ghost Pipe/Fairy Smoke) since my first encounters with the plant this summer:

-- A client had a panic attack while visiting a friend. She found him doubled over and only able to say "The pain! The pain!" She assumed that he was in excruciating physical pain and reached for the Monontropa uniflora tincture she had on the shelf and gave him a moderate dose (I don't know for certain but I suspect 10-20 drops).

He came to see me a few days later and told me that "The Indian Pipe took everything I was worried about and put it outside me, in front of me, where I could work on it." I told him that was almost exactly how people described the plant's effect on physical pain. (Tommy Priester says that it puts you "beside your pain" where you are aware of it without feeling it.)

Over the next two weeks or so, he continued using the tincture for acute panic attacks that were coming almost daily. When I saw him next he told me that one day he began having a panic attack and began thinking about the plant and remembered the way it worked inside him. He said he realized then that he didn't need to take the tincture anymore. Despite dealing with some large setbacks in his life since then, his emotional health has remained excellent.

-- A client had been experiencing severe migraines since sustaining a Traumatic Brain Injury in the first Gulf War. As he described his experiences, I immediately saw Monotropa uniflora, its form resembling the brainstem. I told him to take 3 drops for acute migraine pain. He came back to me the next day and told me it was the first medicine that had ever touched the pain of his headaches. (I also gave him a formula including Ashwagandha, Wood Betony, Oat Milky Seed, and Clematis for daily use but have not heard back about the effectiveness of that formula.)

-- On two occasions, I have used Monotropa uniflora with people experiencing acute psychotic episodes brought on after taking large doses of psychedelics. (As Jim McDonald and others have pointed out, psychedelics don't cause psychosis, but they can bring out an underlying psychosis.)

In the first instance, I gave 30 drops of Monotropa uniflora and 30 drops of Monotropa uniflora to a man who was disoriented and very verbally agressive. After a short time he became much more subdued though still severely disoriented, and a little while later fell asleep. He was lucid when he eventually woke up.

In the second instance, I was part of a team working with a man who had gone into a full scale dissociative state after taking 5 hits of LSD and had become extremely physically and verbally violent. We initially gave him 10 drops of Monotropa uniflora tincture with no response. Over the course of the next hour we gave him two 30 drop doses of the tincture. (In addition to Mimulus to address his panic.) After the second dose his pupils became less dilated and his eyes became more responsive and he began to respond more directly to outside stimuli. Our sense was that the Monotropa uniflora had brought him "down" from the trip at a physical level.

However, it didn't touch the underlying psychosis. He remained physically violent, emotionally agitated, and verbally incoherent for the following four hours. Eventually he became physically exhausted enough for friends to take him to a hospital at which point we lost touch with him.

(We had avoided calling 911 because we knew there was little that an Emergency Room could do in this instance that we couldn't and that an ambulance would have required police assistance. Given the near certainty that he would have assaulted the officers trying to help him, we erred on the side of sparing him from facing felony charges.)

Green Man Botanicals Holy Basil Tincture

2009-10-06T17:06:00.000-07:00

Holy Basil Tincture
(Ocimum sanctum)

1 oz -- $10 2 oz -- $18 4 oz -- $35
Leaves and Flowering Tops in 80 proof alcohol

Adaptogenic – helps the body adapt to respond to stress.
Helps the immune system respond to changing conditions.
Helps to release stagnant energies and emotions.
Traditionally used to improve memory and energy and to treat coughs, colds, and indigestion.
Contains antibacterial, antiviral and antioxidant compounds

NOTE: These statements are for educational purposes only and have not been reviewed by the FDA. Neither this product nor this information are intended to diagnose, treat or cure any medical condition.

To order e-mail seandonahuepoet@gmail.com. Check or paypal accepted. $5 shipping per order (shipped Priority Mail.)

A Swampy Medicine for Swampy Lungs

2009-09-29T13:11:00.000-07:00

This post is part of the October Blog Party: Bio-regional herbs for the Cold and Flu Season being hosted by Rosalee de la Foret at www.methowvalleyherbs.blogspot.com

Photo by Darcey Blue French

My relationship with Eastern Skunk Cabbage began with a dream about digging its roots to treat my own asthma -- a journey chronicled in an earlier post.

Recently I have been finding that many of my own experiences with the plant are consistent with the discoveries and practices of the Eclectics who knew the plant as Dracontium foetidum. (By the 1890's, most botanists were using the name by which the plant is known today, Symplocarpus foetidus, but I much prefer the older name.)

I believe Eastern Skunk Cabbage deserves a place in the Materia Medica of modern New England herbalists as an excellent ally in treating asthma and respiratory infections -- including the stubborn, lingering respiratory infections that often follow when someone does not get enough rest to fully recover from a serious bout of the flu. We have a tremendous amount to learn from earlier generations' usage of the plant.

The 1898 edition of King's American Dispensatory describes Skunk Cabbage root as "a stimulant, exerting expectorant [. . .]" Just as the plant's contractile roots reach deep into swampy soils to drink up moisture, the root as a medicine brings up excess mucous from deep in the lungs. Energetically it is neutral to warm -- well suited to treating the kind of deep, cold congestion that can set in with a stubborn lingering case of bronchitis or pneumonia.

Yet as a diaphoretic herb it can also help to release the excess heat associated with influenza and the ensuing inflammation of the lungs.

The Eclectics frequently combined Skunk Cabbage with Lobelia in their formulae. Lobelia would help to open the airways while Skunk Cabbage would help to bring up phlegm.

Both medicines are profoundly antispasmodic, and Skunk Cabbage is slightly narcotic, so the combination would also help to quell violent coughing fits and allow a sick person to sleep.

Skunk Cabbage root is also a nervine. King's American Dispensatory notes that "Its action upon the nervous system is marked, relieving irritation, and it has a tendency to promote normal functional activity of the nervous structures." As an asthmatic I know that the shortness of breath caused by the contraction of my airways is always compounded by the wave of panic that ensues when I can't get enough oxygen. Skunk Cabbage helps tremendously in calming that panic.

I harvest the roots Eastern Skunk Cabbage in March, when the green buds of the flowers have emerged but have not yet turned purple. There is usually still snow on the ground -- Skunk Cabbage is thermogenic and melts the ice, frost, and snow around it to become the first plant emerging in the swamp in spring. I dry the roots for a few days as a precaution because drying diminishes the levels of calcium oxalate crystals present, and then tincture them in 100 proof vodka. For acute respiratory infections I use 5-15 drops 4-6 times a day.

For bronchitis and bacterial and fungal pneumonias I usually use Skunk Cabbage along with Usnea.

For persistent, deep, cold, wet bronchitis and pneumonia I use Skunk Cabbage along with Elecampane and Pleurisy Root.

Large doses of Skunk Cabbage root may be emetic -- and in one nineteenth century formula, Skunk Cabbage was combined with Lobelia, Wild Ginger, Pleurisy Root, and Bloodroot as an "emetic for children and infants, [. . . ] safely used in croup, whooping-cough, bronchitis, asthma, convulsions, and in all cases where an emetic is required." When my asthma was at its most severe growing up, I often felt relief only when I would throw up, forcing some of the mucous from my bronchi in the process. In my own practice, I am not quite ready to revive old emetic therapies for acute bronchial and pulmonary congestion, but the idea is worth thinking about.

September Update

2009-09-18T19:30:00.000-07:00

GREEN MAN HEALING ARTS
September Update

In this issue:

Green Man Botanicals -- New this month: Holy Basil, Self-Heal, and Ghost Pipe
Seeking venues for talks and workshops
September Special for new clients -- sign up for a first consultation and get your second one free!
2 Herbalists and a dog seeking work and a winter home

GREEN MAN BOTANICALS

The forests and fields of Maine have continued to be bountiful, and I am pleased to have more tinctures and flower essences to share. All are made from organically grown or ethically wild-crafted plants.

None of this information and none of these products are intended for use in the diagnosis, treatment, or cure of any medical condition.

TINCTURES AND ELIXIRS

All tincgtures are made using the Simpler's method.

Holy Basil (Ocimum sanctum) -- Traditionally used in India to treat memory loss, fatigue, colds, asthma, and indigestion. Some practitioners have also had great success in using Holy Basil to alleviate stagnant depression and help release thoughts and emotions stuck in the past. Research indicates that the plant may also aid in the modulation of immune responses. Flowering tops and leaves in 80 proof brandy. -- $10/oz

Self-Heal (Prunella vulgaris) -- Used in Europe traditionally for inflamed topical wounds and in Traditional Chinese Medicine to soften hard masses and swolen lymph nodes and to treat conditions connected with rising Liver Fire. Many herbalists also use Self Heal to relieve fevers without lowering the body's temperature too far. In addition, Self-Heal has antiviral, antimicrobial, antibacterial, astringent, carminative, vulneary, and antispasmodic actions. Flowers in 80 proof brandy. -- $10/oz

Ghost Pipe (Monotropa uniflora) -- A powerful plant to be used with great care in small doses for short periods of time to relieve intense physical pain or severe acute anxiety or in cases of acute dissociative episodes. Whole plant in 100 proof vodka. $10/ 1/2 oz, $15/oz

Oxeye Daisy (Chrysanthemum Leucanthemum) -- The Eclectic Physicians of the nineteenth century classified this plant as tonic, diuretic, and antispasmodic. The 1898 edition of King's American Dispensary suggested its use for "whooping cough, asthma, and nervous excitability." Some contemporary practitioners have noted its affinity for the upper respiratory system. Aerial parts in 80 proof brandy. $10/oz

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) Glycerite -- Yarrow has traditionally been used to release trapped heat from the body, stem bleeding, ease pain and spasms including menstrual cramps, bring relief from colds and flus, and aid in divination. Flowers and first year leaves in vegetable glycerin. $10/oz

Red Clover (Trifolium pratense) Elixir -- Traditionally used to nourish pregnant women and lactating mothers, smooth the transition into menopause and andropause, promote fertility, and support the lymphatic system, among dozens of other uses. Flowers in a blend of vegetable glycerin and brandy. $10/oz

FLOWER ESSENCES

Stock essences -- $15/oz, $8 1/2 oz Dosage bottles of any essence or combination -- $10/oz, $8 1/2 oz

Eastern Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) -- For those who walk between worlds.

Trillium (Trillium Erectum) -- An ally in giving birth to the self.

Pink Lady's Slipper (Cypripedium acaule) -- Cradles and supports the heart, allowing it to open to healing love and healing eros, human, wild, and divine.

Self-Heal (Prunella Vulgaris) -- Restores faith in our ability to heal ourselves.

Black Cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa) -- Aids in emerging from abusive patterns and relationships and emerging from dark depression.

_____________________________________________

Payment accepted by check or Paypal. To order e-mail seandonahuepoet@gmail.com . $5 shipping per order.
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TALKS AND WORKSHOPS

Sean is looking for venues to give talks and workshops on the following themes this fall, winter, and spring:

COMMON SENSE ABOUT FLUS AND PANDEMICS

There is lots of frightening and confusing information in the press and online about "Swine Flu" right now. And panic itself can be a factor in the spread of disease as stress first amps up and then wears down our immune systems. Herbalist Sean Donahue helps put the threat in perspective and gives practical herbal and nutritional strategies for preventing and dealing with flus.

HERBS FOR STRESS

The daily stresses of living in a culture that is so wildly out of balance take their toll on our bodies over time. Herbalist Sean Donahue explains the biology of stress -- how it plays out in our bodies and how it contributes to disease. And he shares how herbs, nutrition, meditation, and lifestyle changes can help our bodies, minds, and spirits deal better with the frustrations, anxieties, and fears that are part and parcel of living in these times.

HERBS FOR THE IMMUNE SYSTEM

Stress, pollution, and poor nutrition all combine to take their toll on the immune system. Some of us have immune systems that are dangerously depleted, leaving us vulnerable to infection, others have immune systems that are revved up too high, causing our bodies to attack themselves. Herbalist Sean Donahue will talk about how nutrition and herbs can help to restore and support healthy immune function.

LISTENING TO THE WILD

The world is alive and constantly speaking to us – we just have to learn to listen. Throughout history and throughout the world, indigenous peoples have used their hearts as organs of perception to take in messages from the living Earth – this is how the great healing traditions of the world were born. Herbalist Sean Donahue explains the philosophy underlying this approach to the world, the biology of the heart as an organ of perception, and simple techniques that can open the hear to the world around us.

CONSULTATIONS -- EVERY NEW CLIENT IN SEPTEMBER GETS A FREE FOLLOW-UP SESSION!

Our bodies have a tremendous ability to heal themselves given the right support. Working with herbs, flower essences, nutritional and lifestyle changes, energy work, and ceremony, Sean Donahue helps people find the support they need for physical, emotional, and spiritual healing.

An initial session involves an in depth exploration of the history of the issues a client wants to work on and the client's health history. Intake sessions typically last 1 1/2 - 2 hours. Clients are also asked to fill out a questionnaire before the first session.

Future sessions will be shorter. Depending on the client's needs they may include energy work, ceremony, and adjustment's to herbal protocols.

Sean works on a sliding scale, charging between $100 - 150 for an initial intake session, and $30 - 40 per half-hour for each follow-up session. He can also often provide herbal forumlae for an additional fee of $10-15 per ounce depending on the plants used. THIS MONTH ONLY, EVERY NEW CLIENT WILL RECEIVE A FREE FOLLOW-UP SESSION 2-6 WEEKS AFTER THEIR INITIAL CONSULTATION.

Barter is also joyfully accepted. Installment plans can be negotiated as well. No one is ever turned away for lack of funds.

Sean is currently available to see clients at the Center for Mindful Living in Lawrence, MA and at Nezinscot Farm in Turner, ME. He also sees clients in the Boston area. Soon he will also be seeing clients in Bethel, ME and Richmond, VT.

While it is ideal to meet in person, Sean is also able to offer long distance consultation by telephone and e-mail. Long distance consultations are a starting point and are not a substitute for an in person consultation with a local herbalist.

If you have questions or would like to make an appointment, please call Sean at 978-809-8054 or e-mail him at seandonahuepoet@gmail.com.

FREE TO A GOOD HOME -- TWO HERBALISTS AND A DOG

My Siberian Husky, Trill, and I have been tremendously lucky to spend the Spring and Summer in a wonderful community in Sumner, ME.

But we will be moving on this winter. My partner, Darcey Blue French, an amazing herbalist, nutritionist and chef will be making the cross-country trek from Tuscon, AZ to join us this winter. And so we are looking for a winter home for our little family, hopefully in New England or upstate New York.

We are looking for a low cost living situation, and between us can come up with a small amount for rent and utilities each month. We are also glad to provide free health consultations and herbs, delicious healthy meals, running errands, care for children, elders, pets, or plants in exchange for reduced rent. Our needs are simple -- we would be very happy with a bedroom and access to a kitchen and a bathroom or outhouse in a family or communal home, or would be delighted to take care of a cottage or cabin for the winter as long as there is a way to heat it.

In addition, we are both looking for work this winter. I have extensive experience in writing, editing, and political organizing. Darcey has extensive experience in the natural products/health food industry, retail sales and management, gardening and indoor plant care, writing and editing.

Please e-mail me as seandonahuepoet@gmail.com with any leads.

Fall and Winter Workshops

2009-08-31T09:37:00.000-07:00

Sean Donahue is available to give the following workshops and presentations this fall and winter:

COMMON SENSE ABOUT FLUS AND PANDEMICS

HERBS FOR STRESS

HERBS FOR THE IMMUNE SYSTEM

LISTENING TO THE WILD

_______________________________________________________________________________

Sean Donahue is an herbalist, activist, poet, and journalist dedicated to promoting personal and planetary healing through connection to the living Earth.

Through herbs, flower essences, nutritional and lifestyle coaching, and ceremony, Sean works with people to find ways to restore the dynamic balances necessary to maintaining physical and spiritual health. He can be reached at seandonahuepoet@gmail.com

St.. Johns Wort, Viruses, and Exorcism

2009-08-29T16:00:00.000-07:00

The St. John's Wort was so late in blooming this rainy summer that I thought it would never come. But by the middle of July it was in full blossom, and I found myself lying in a field of St. John's Wort at the end of a logging road, eating the flowers as Darcey and I gathered them.

I thought about St. John's Wort's traditional use as an herb of exorcism. Maude Grieve writes that

"Its name Hypericum is derived from the Greek and means 'over an apparition,' a reference to the belief that the herb was so obnoxious to evil spirits that a whiff of it would cause them to fly."(1)

Contemporary herbalists have associated this historical use with the plant's antidepressant qualities. Matthew Wood writes:

"St. John's wort and wood betony were the two most important remedies for psychiatric problems in the Middle Ages -- what were then called the ill-effects of witchcraft and demons. Both plants strengthen the enteric brain, seat of the instincts, and its in this manner that they 'drive away evil influences' -- the person gets stronger, so as not to fall under the domination of untoward people. Today, Hypericum is used for depression and anxiety."(2)

But as I ate the flowers, St. John's Wort began to tell me that he performs exorcisms on another level as well.

Gail Faith Edwards writes that:

"Many studies have proven that St. John's Wort inhibits a variety of viruses, including herpes simplex types 1 and 2 and HIV-1 viruses associated with AIDS."(3)

St. John's Wort explained to me that a viral infection is the cellular equivalent of possession.

Viruses work by injecting their DNA into cells and using the cell's bodies to reproduce, destroying their hosts in the process. St. John's Wort acts to contain a viral infection, protecting healthy cells from being taken over by outside entities that would use their bodies for their own purposes.

St. John's Wort also explained that civilization is a psychic and spiritual virus that can only be checked by "eating the wild."(4)

Civilization -- the idea that we must carve place outside of wildness, and subdue the wildness in ourselves in order to survive within this new territory emerging around us through human action -- moves from person to person in the places where many congregate in close proximity. It replaces our memory of the fluid darkness from which we emerged with a bright blinding light that keeps us from seeing anything outside its field. It replaces the bone-deep knowledge of who we are with a new identity, the identity of citizens, cells in the body of a new organism. Cells whose prime directive is to pass down the genetic code of the virus to another generation of beings born human and wild and divine but soon robbed of all three identities by the infection passed down to them from their parents and the other people around them.

Growing at the edges of landscapes shaped by humans -- fields and road sides -- and when rubbed his petals stain fingers red with oils the color of our blood. Blood connects us to our origins -- both to the womb of our mothers and to the stars where the iron which gives it its color was forged.

Even at the moment in history when civilization was beginning to try to rout the wildness out of Europe's rural populations, St. John's Wort was associated with the figure Stephen Harrod Buhner calls "the Wild Redeemer." Matthew Wood writes:

"Hypericum blooms around the Feast of St. John the Baptist. Just as Christmas Day is the official church holiday associated with the winter solstice, St. John's Day is the holiday near the summer solstice. In the Biblical account, St. John the Baptist was Jesus' cousin, born six months before him, so naturally his feast day fell at the summer solstice. Just as Jesus took over the functions of the dying and resurrecting pagan god of winter, St. John was associated with the pagan god of summer vegetation and life. The Bible recounts that St. John went off to live by himself in the wilderness 'dressed like a wild man,' feeding on wild plants. The medieval Catholics recognized his resemblance to the 'Wild Man' or 'Green Man" associated with the blooming fertility of summer. These associations were transferred to St. John's plant, which not only blooms at Midsummer, but had long been used as a fumigant to remove diabolic and dangerous influences from the home."(5)

Anyone with a passing knowledge of Shakespeare knows as well that Midsummer was associated with bawdy celebrations of an unabashedly pagan nature well into the sixteenth century. In Celtic lands it was the traditional moving time of the Fae-rie court, a night of powerful magic. A plant associated with that feast is a plant associated with that magic. (Wood also speaks of St. John's Wort as a plant associated with the Fae-rie.)

And so it comes as no surprise that St. John's Wort would reveal himself to me as I was on my hands and knees in a summer field with my lover, eating flowers picked with my teeth.

St. John's Wort acts by casting out the forces that would possess our bodies, minds, and spirits, by feeding the fire at the core of our beings with a bright infusion of sunfire turning from yellow to red, by reminding us of our wild wholeness.

Eat him and be transformed.

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1. Maude Grieve. A Modern Herbal. online at http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/s/sajohn06.html
2. Matthew Wood. The Earthwise Herbal: A Complete Guide to Old World Medicinal Plants. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2008.
3. Gail Faith Edwards. Opening Our Wild Hearts to the Healing Herbs. Woodstock, NY: Ash Tree Publishing, 2000. (Edwards notes elsewhere that Hyssop, another traditional herb of blessing and protection, also inhibits HIV replication.)
4. "If we eat the wild, it begins to work inside us, altering us, changing us. Soon, if we eat too much, we will no longer fit the suit that has been made for us. Our hair will begin to grow long and ragged. Our gait and how we hold our body will change. A wild light begins to gleam in our eyes. Our words start to sound strange, nonlinear, emotional. Unpractical. Poetic. Once we have tasted this wildness, we begin to hunger for a food long denied us, and the more we eat the more we will awaken." -- Stephen Harrod Buhner. The Secret Teachings of Plants. Rochester, VT: Bear & Company, 2004
5. Matthew Wood. The Book of Herbal Wisdom. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1997.

Teleseminar With Sean Donahue and Iris Weaver Wednsday 8/26

2009-08-24T11:34:00.000-07:00

Spiritual herbalist, educator, healer, and professional speaker, Iris Weaver has invited me to be the guest for her first monthly teleseminar this Wednesday. Iris writes:

I am really excited to be having my first monthly teleseminar on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 at 7:00 p.m. My guest will be Sean Donahue, Herbalist, poet, and ritual technician.

Sean has an amazing rapport with plants, and I am so happy to be able to talk with him about plants, healing, and lots more.

I will also be introducing my friend plant Ox-eye Daisy, a truly wonderful flower.

So please join me on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 at 7:00 p.m. The number to call is 218-339-3600. When you dial the number you will be prompted to enter your pin code: 1082063#.

If you should have any questions you would like answered on air, please e-mail your questions to me at rootsheal@juno.com

Healing Through the Veil: Field Notes on Psychedelic First Aid

2009-08-22T15:32:00.000-07:00

Anyone who has spent time accessing other states of consciousness -- whether through fasting, meditation, ecstatic dance, magic, plant medicine, or synthetic chemicals -- knows that the worlds we enter on the other side of the veil are very real, and so are the dangers we face there.

Psychedelic plants and chemicals can rapidly bring people to realms that practitioners spend years trying to reach through other means. This can make them very efficient tools for deep transformational work. But it also means that they can bring people who don't have the well developed psychic defenses of a trained shaman to worlds subtly but powerfully different from anything they have experienced before -- a potentially dangerous situation.

Working as an herbalist at festivals where a lot of psychedelics are moving through the crowd, I have begun to develop both a model of what is happening inside a person who is having a "bad trip" and some protocols to help them through what they are struggling with. What follows are some notes on my approach and understanding that will hopefully spur more discussion among herbalists and other healers working with people who use psychedelic plants and chemicals.

A Biological Model

Psychedelic compounds move the plants, animals, and humans that ingest them into a highly creative nonlinear state of consciousness.(1)

In humans they seem to operate by opening the sensory gating channels that bring information about sights, sounds, sensations, tastes, smells, and electromagnetic field fluctuations from the heart and the other sense organs to the neocortex. The neocortex works to extract meaning from the signals it is receiving. In this heightened state of sensory awareness, the neocortex has to work harder to extract meaning from the information coming in from the world around it, forcing it into a state of nonlinear creativity.

For some, though, this flood of sensation and information coupled with the discovery of new meanings in once mundane things can trigger acute anxiety. And for those who have been severely traumatized in this realm, that feeling of anxiety can bring back body memories of their original traumas (in some combat veterans and some survivors of sexual trauma, even Cannabis, with its milder psychedelic qualities, can trigger full scale dissociative episodes.)

The sense of metaphysical vertigo can be traumatizing in and of itself -- and can have lasting effects when a person returns to "ordinary" consciousness. My interpretation of "acid flashbacks" is that they have nothing to do with residual chemicals in the spine, but rather are PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) related dissociations brought on by external triggers that remind someone of some aspect of a moment of terror on either side of the veil.

A Magical Model

The purple-blue tinge of the bruised flesh of mushrooms of the Psilocibe genus is a signature of the opening of the Third Eye and the Crown Chakra.

The sudden and dramatic opening that the medicine of these mushrooms and the similar medicines of various other plants, fungi, and chemicals bring on can open someone to states of consciousness that reveal the existence of other worlds, other orders of reality.

These worlds are populated by their own flora and fauna and even societies with complex behaviors, rules of etiquette, and feeding behaviors.

Shamanic and magical traditions prepare people to navigate these worlds through years of practice in sensing and moving energies. Just as a city dweller suddenly dropped into the middle of the desert or the forest would be at a loss for how to survive, those who have not prepared for a journey on the other side of the veil between worlds can find themselves stumbling into difficult and dangerous situations. The fact that the territories of these worlds overlap and layer over each other can lull travelers into a false sense of familiarity and security.

As one teacher of mine says, not all beings without bodies have our best interests in mind. Beings that prey on us have been known to wear very seductive forms on the other side of the veil.

In helping people struggling with acute panic during a psychedelic trip its important to acknowledge the reality of what is happening in and around her -- her experiences are not metaphorical, they are lived experiences that occur in another world.

Handling an Acute Psychedelic Crisis

My first response when someone is panicked but lucid during a psychedelic trip is to get the person to a physically comfortable place, preferably accompanied by one or two friends, verbally let her know that she is in no physical danger and that she will come back from the place where she is, and encourage and model slow, calm breaths. Then I offer a calming tea.

During a festival I always keep a big pot of tea going containing Skullcap/Blisswort (Scutellaria spp.), Passionflower (Passiflora spp.), and Wood Betony (Stachys officianalis.) Note the violet/blue color of these flowers.

Passionflower is specifically indicated for "irritation of the brain, nervousness, restlessness, sleeplessness with muscle twitching, or circular thinking"(2) -- symptoms typical of the overstimulation brought on my psychedelic plants and chemicals. While some practitioners are concerned about the theoretical possibility that as a mild MAO Inhibitor, Passionflower could be dangerous for someone taking a Selective Seretonin Reuptake Inhibitor (eg.Prozac), I have not been able to find any documented cases of this kind of negative drug interaction, and my experience and that of other herbalists I have talked with suggests that Passionflower is generally safe for most people. However since depending on someone's degree of coherence during a psychedelic trip, it may be difficult to ascertain whether that person is taking an SSRI, those concerned about the theoretical risk the interaction presents might choose not to use the herb in this kind of situation.

The inclusion of Blisswort is more a product of intuition and habit than a carefully reasoned decision -- she tends to be an excellent adjunct to Passionflower and as a nervine that is not sedating she has an ability to help level off energies without bringing someone "down" too hard and too fast.

Wood Betony serves multiple purposes in this instance. As an herb with a strong affinity for the solar plexus, it is strongly grounding, helping to move consciousness into that region of the body, anchoring it to a degree in the physical world. Darcey Blue French writes that Wood Betony "helps to ground people here on earth, for those stuck in repetitive mental patterns, or in mind/head stuff who need to come down and think from their center, and be in their body."

Wood Betony is also a traditional herb of exorcism and psychic protection. French writes:

"Stachys has long been used as an agent of protection from evil ‘spirits’, nightmares and visions, and to repel venomous creatures like snakes. It was planted in churchyards as protection against evil, and the Greeks said, 'it shields him against visions and dreams.' It is claimed in folklore when surrounded in a ring of wood betony leaves, snakes would fight and kill each other. Those who wear it as an amulet would find 'good against fearful visions, and driving away devils and despair.'"(3)

Yarrow Flower Essence or an energetic dose (a few drops) of a Yarrow flower tincture may also offer a degree of psychic and energetic protection.

Occasionally if the tripping person seems mired in dark thoughts I add Lavender flowers to the tea. Tulsi (Ocimum sacnctum) might also make sense here because of its ability to disperse stuck thoughts and emotions.

For cases of more severe emotional trauma, bordering on and moving into dissociative states, some members of the Anemone family can be of great assistance. In an article on using various Anemone species to treat panic attacks, 7Song describes using Anemone to treat people having "bad trips" and people having trouble sleeping after taking LSD at Rainbow Gatherings.(4) Michael Moore used Pasque Flower (Anemone pulsitilla) to treat these conditions.(5) Buhner suggests that Pasque Flower works to regulate the sensory gating channels. (6)

It is important to note that in a small number of people, primarily those with constitutional tendencies toward excess heat, Anemone species can be agigating rather than calming.

So far, I have worked exclusively with a tincture of Anemone tuberosa. In mild cases, a 2 or 3 drops of the tincture will often help to calm a person immensely. In one more severe case, I gave 30 drops of Anemone tuberosa tincture and 5 drops of Monotropa uniflora tincture in water to an agitated, incoherent, and borderline violent 200 pound man who had taken a large dose of LSD, and he was docile within 10 minutes of drinking the water he was docile, within 30 minutes he was asleep.

I made the decision to include Ghost Pipe (Monotropa uniflora) in the formula I administered in this case based on Ryan Drum's reported success using the plant to calm an agitated and menacing man whose state was brought on by "sleep deprivation, dehydration, too much recreational medication, and no real food for many days."(7) and my intuition that, like Anemone pulsitilla and Anemone tuberosa, Monotropa uniflora acts on the sensory gating channels.

The plant's form suggests both the spinal column and brain stem and a tunnel between worlds. The irridescent violet of the tincture suggests an affinity for the Crown Chakra. Energetically it is cooling.

In my view, hospitalization is to be avoided unless you are unable to prevent a person from being violent toward herself or others, the person may have ingested a toxic substance while tripping, or the person has sustained physical injuries. Emergency room treatment for a "bad trip" will always involve taking a frightened and disoriented person with heightened emotional, sensory, and energetic awareness and putting that person into a place full of frightened people, many of them in extreme pain. It will often involve physical restraint and/or the administration of heavy anti-psychotic drugs designed to bring the patient quickly back into consensual reality -- a potentially traumatic ripping from one world into another. It will usually involve the administration of treatment by people who do not acknowledge the reality of the experiences the patient is having and are not concerned about the possibility that the person may have been subjected to psychic attacks.

Thoughts on further treatment

As an herbalist administering first aid at festivals, I seldom have a chance to follow up with the people I have helped in the midst of psychic and emotional traumas connected with the use of psychedelics. But I would like to offer a few thoughts on follow-up treatment for people recovering from a traumatic psychedelic experiences:

-- It is of the utmost importance that the person be given an opportunity to integrate her experiences. When she is ready to share them she should be treated with the same respect and support as a survivor of a traumatic event that took place in ordinary reality

-- Two herbs seem likely to be of great benefit to someone recovering from this kind of trauma:
Tulsi (Ocimum sanctum) is useful when the "patient is fixated on a specific traumatic event, and complains of fatigue and mental fog" according to David Winston. (8) Pam Montgomery writes that "Besides being a great protector plant it helps in soul retrievals, as it is able to locate exiled souls and bringing them home."
-- Wood Betony (Stachys officianalis) may help to address some of the lingering energetic attachments from time spent in other worlds. In his monograph on the plant, Jim McDonald writes:

"Another of Wood Betony's virtues, [. . .] is it's ability to dispel evil and ward of spirits of ill intent. The manifestations of that need not be supernatural (though I think it good protection from bad magic and those who deal in that and Matthew Wood has used it on several occasions for those suffering PTSD from alien abductions) sometimes we may know or be related to such people. To access these more esoteric virtues, one might carry the herb with them in a medicine bag, or rub doses of the tincture into their wrists or temples. Sure, this may make you question how very weird your belief system is becoming, but when you see situations change around you in a way that reinforces this usage a few times, you can just flow with it. It's quite likely, after all that your friends and family already think you a bit 'eccentric.'" (10)

Its worth noting that "alien abduction" may be a modern interpretation of the ancient and universal experience of being taken or led by strange beings into other worlds. It stands to reason that a plant that helps survivors of these experiences would also be of assistance to those who enter those realms voluntarily but return scarred.

The flower essence of Eastern Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) is, in my experience, specific to smoothing the transition between worlds.

-- In some cases, especially when someone's personality or behavior seem dramatically changed after a traumatic psychedelic experience , the assistance of a shaman or root worker may be necessary to retrieve parts of the self left behind in other worlds or to dispell spirits and energies that have attached themselves to a person.
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UPDATE -- OCTOBER, 2010

With another season of festival first aid under my belt, now seems like a good time to make some updates.

For cases of mild to moderate anxiety associated with psychedelics where the person doesn't necessarily want to "come down" I'm now generally using variations on a formula including Wood Betony (for grounding and protection), Mimulus spp. (for feelings of dread), Passionflower (for circular thoughts and to cool the mind), and Schizandra (to calm disturbed Shen, especially where breathing is fast and shallow.) If there are strong heat signs or if there is an edge of anger to the anxiety I'll sometimes add Melissa. If there is fixation on a particular negative thought or emotion I'll add Holy Basil. If the heart is racing I'll add Motherwort.

I realize there is some concern that Passionflower as a possible MAOI may further potentiate tryptamines, but a) I have never seen this happen at therapeutic doses and b) if a person is merely hitting a rough spot in a journey, the goal is to bring grounding and protection, not necessarily to abort the trip, so further potentiating tryptamines is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself.

Phyllis Light mentioned to me at the Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference that she has calmed people on LSD by having them drink a glass of milk. When Darcey and I recently had a phone call from someone who was having a bad trip and didn't have access to the herbs we would normally use we had her drink a glass of milk and put her feet in warm water. This succeeded in calming her to the point where she was able to lie down and sleep it off.

In cases of severe anxiety marked by agitation I have stopped using Anemone in part because I am concerned about the potential of paradoxical reactions -- I've not seen this happen in a situation related to psychedelics but I have seen people who tend to run hot become more agitated by a very small dose of Anemone tuberosa, and given that the kind of aggressive agitation I have seen in some cases of people having "bad trips" feels like a Pitta excess to me I'd rather play it safe and use other herbs instead.

What I've been using in its place has been Ghost Pipe. In a dozen or so cases in which someone has come to the first aid tent because she wants her trip to be over or someone has been brought to the tent because he has become aggressively agitated on LSD, and in one case of someone experiencing tremors and terror from PCP, I've seen 30 drops of Ghost Pipe tincture administered between one and three times calm people down to the point where they are able to relax and usually sleep (and then wake up without any major disorientation.)

I have seen two cases in the past year of men in their early twenties becoming physically violent and completely dissociated while on LSD. In both cases they were men who had always seemed kind and gentle to their friends (which I believe because in both cases their kind and gentle friends helped us hold them over the course of several hours and never lost their tempers.) In both cases we later found out these men were also on Adderall. In both cases the things the men were shouting about while trying to attack people suggested the strong possibility of childhood sexual trauma. And in both cases multiple health care practitioners involved felt the very clear sense of another entity partially controlling their actions.

The Adderall connection feels important here for two reasons. The first is that I think PTSD in young men is often misdiagnosed as ADHD, and the suppressive therapies used to treat their symptoms may prevent emotional release, worsening the underlying condition. Secondly I theorize that when LSD brings up buried trauma, a stimulant like Adderall may act to further stimulate the adrenals and to increase physical energy and stamina increasing the likelihood of physical aggression.

In the first case, we were able to administer Ghost Pipe orally, and we watched as our patient's pupils contracted and his eye motion became more responsive to external stimuli. But he continued to kick, bite, and scream for another several hours. We made the choice not to evacuate him because getting him in an ambulance would have required police assistance and we did not want to see him face charges of assaulting a police officer. Once he was physically exhausted his friends took him to a hospital.

In the second instance, we were unable to administer any herbs orally in doses capable of making a difference -- a few sips from a water bottle with various herbs added was the best we could do. We initially applied Rescue Remedy to the temples and wrists and smudged with Tobacco, Osha, and White Sage. Eventually we were able to get the patient to smoke a combination of Skullcap, Tobacco, and Cannabis (an Indica-dominant strain) and chew a small piece of Calamus root. This combination seemed to have a calming effect, and he was eventually able to leave with his friends still tripping but no longer aggressive. Several of us had side conversations with his friends about the importance of encouraging him to seek counseling in some form.

Ironically, in both these situations, I could see entheogens in a controlled, ceremonial situation under the guidance of an experienced healer being useful medicines for helping the patient work with the repressed trauma. But clearly the chaotic setting of a festival is not the right place for that work to begin.

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(1) Stephen Harrod Buhner. "The Ecstatic Journey and the Sacred Teachings of Plants" workshop at Sage Mountain, East Barre, VT, June 26-28. The subsequent information about sensory gating channels and the neocortex reflects my own extrapolation from Buhner's comments.

(2) David Winston. "Differential Treatment of Depression and Anxiety with Botanical Medicines." (C) 2006, Revised 2007. http://www.herbaltherapeutics.net/Differ_Treat-Depression.pdf

(3) Darcey French "Wood Betony: Stachys officianalis." Unpublished monograph, March 2008.

(4) 7Song. "Herbalists's View: Anemone for Panic Attacks." http://7song.com/files/Herbalists%20View-%20Anemone%20for%20Panic%20Attacks.pdf

(5) Darcey French, personal communication.

(6) Buhner

(7) Ryan Drum. "Three Herbs: Yarrow, Queen Anne's Lace, and Indian Pipe." http://www.ryandrum.com/threeherbs.htm#IndianPipe

(8) Winston.

(9) Pam Montogmery. Plant Sprit Healing. Rochester, VT: Bear & Company, 2008.

(10) Jim McDonald. "Wood Betony -- Stachys officianialis." http://herbcraft.org/betony.html

My Place is at the Edge

2009-08-06T15:57:00.000-07:00

The headline of a recent action alert from the American Association for Health Freedom urging support for provisions of the omnibus health care legislation now in Congress that would require insurance companies to cover treatments by all health care professionals licensed by the states they live in (including may naturopaths and accupuncturists) asks "Has the Time Come for Complementary and Alternative Medicine to Join the Mainstream?"

While I understand and appreciate and share the organization's goal of giving people more control over the choices they make about how they take care of their own bodies, the language of the question troubles me.

As an herbalist, I am not providing an alternative or a complement to anything. I am practicing an art and science and magic at least as old as humanity-- the practice of working with plants to help people remember how to recover and maintain the dynamic balance of health. It has nothing to do with the effort to "diagnose, treat, or cure" disease because it is older than the concept of disease.

What authority I have comes from my relationships with the plants and people I work with. It is a sacred trust, not something that can be judged and regulated by any agency or licensing board.

The licensing of doctors and the prosecution of those who practice medicine without a license has its origin in the witch persecutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Well into the 1600's, most rural people in Europe were Christians in name only, believing and practicing in traditions that bound them to land they worked in common. Their medicine came from that land, and its knowledge and traditions were kept alive primarily by women -- midwives and "herbwyfes."

Outlawing these traditional forms of medicine and making medicine the work of a small class of wealthy men trained in universities was part and parcel of an effort to break rural people's connection to the land and to strip midwives and herbwives of the power they still had in their communities -- a power that came from the intimate relationship these healers had with the living Earth. This was bound up with the replacement of living oral traditions of medicine with a single fixed approach that could be altered only with the permission of the recognized authorities of the new profession. All of it a patriarchal game.

Schemes to regulate and license herbalists reflect the same thinking that underlies the licensing of doctors -- the idea that there is a set body of knowledge, an established set of approaches and practices, to which all herbalists must adhere. But the plants themselves don't follow the rules others would set out for them. They are constantly changing in response to the world around them. Those who would work with them need to be able to flow with those changes and trust the messages the plants give them more deeply than they trust anything they learn from the best book or the greatest human teacher.

To those who would argue that the licensing and regulation of herbalists is necessary to protect the public from bad herbalists, I say that the existence of the medical malpractice insurance industry and the legions of medical malpractice lawyers provides us with ample evidence that the licensing of doctors hasn't protected the public from bad doctors. The best protection people have is a sense of responsibility for their own health and the intimate knowledge of their own bodies that gives them a sense of when something is moving them closer to health and when it is moving them further away.

I have no interest in obtaining certification from any government or even any board of herbal elders.

Nor do I have any aspirations toward being part of the mainstream -- the nature of my work involves dancing at the boundaries of the human and the wild.

The shaman, the witch, the healer have always lived at the edge of the village or outside it -- serving the community without being fully part of it. Only by living and working outside the constraints and customs and assumptions of the culture is it possible to maintain the fierce innocence necessary to maintain relationships with plants, animals, and gods.

My place is at the edge. Come, meet me there, where we can both be transformed.

Fairy Smoke: The Worlds of Monotropa uniflora

2009-08-01T17:16:00.000-07:00

Photo by Darcey Blue French

Ghost Plant. Indian Pipe. Fairy Smoke.

The names suggest the strange, otherworldly nature of Monotropa uniflora, the white, non-chlorophyl producing parasitic plant that grows in the damp of the forest floor.

I began to know Monotropa this June on a walk down the River Road. Finding the ghostly plant by the side of the road, I got down on my knees to inspect it more closely. The flowers smelled of pickling vinegar. The stem seemed a tunnel to the world beneath the forest floor.

I felt my breath slow and deepen and a cool, mild euphoria come in through my chest and move up and down along my spine, radiating throughout my body. I smelled and felt rich, moist forest soils.

The plant told me to put one of his flowers in my mouth. I chewed on it for several minutes, and felt a tingling in my mouth. I spit it out and stood up slowly.

I was very clearly in another state of consciousness. I was acutely aware of the forest around me -- especially of the vast interwoven network of roots beneath the surface, and the communication across them.

I began walking down the road, deeply grateful for the worlds Monotropa was opening to me.

About fifteen minutes later I became very hot and began sweating profusely.

It occurred to me that I knew next to nothing about the flowers of this plant and that I might have poisioned myself.

And I began to imagine my death I knew that I had a four or five mile walk home down roads that don't see much traffic. I imagined collapsing and rolling down the bank and then rotting into the forest floor, becoming food for the life around me. And I felt completely at peace with that possibility.

And at the same time, I was acutely aware of work I wanted to do in the world, of experiences I wanted to have. So I began negotiating with Monotropa, saying that I wanted to go back into the world to be a voice for the forest. And Monotropa listened.

I rounded the final bend past the pond where Jonathan was tending a fire. I told him "I either just ate a potent psychoactive plant or a potent toxin." He knew me well enough to just nod.

Back up at the house, still feeling very much under the influence of the plant, I began a frantic google search for information about Monotropa toxicity.

Was I poisoned?

There is a warning of unknown origin repeated verbatim in many articles about Monotropa online -- "Safety undetermined; possibly toxic -- contains several glycosides."

However, I've been unable to come across any documented cases of human or animal poisonings from ingesting Monotropa -- except a bizzarre nineteenth century account of a woman getting sick from eating honey made by bees that pollenated Monotropa flowers.

As best I can tell the concerns come from the known toxicity of Azaleas and Rhodedendrons, Monotropa's closests relatives. And while this suggests a certain prudence is in order, it seems a bit much to extrapolate that Monotropa is cardiotoxic based on its taxonomy.

The one actual account of eating the flowers that I eventually came across was quite different from my own experience. Ryan Drum wrote simply "I ate an ounce or more of the young flowers and stalks and was slightly nauseous. I did not want to eat it again. "

Plants do not always work the same way for different people in different places in different times. I think that under certain circumstances, Monotropa can become potently psychotropic.

Within a few hours of being placed in 100 proof vodka, Monotropa turns the clear liquid a deep, almost black blue, strangely reminiscent of the color of a bruised Psyolcibe cubenis mushroom -- could this be a signature for entheogenic actions? Ryan Drum notes that "consumption of 15 ml or more of Monotropa tincture can bring deep sleep and ultra vivid dreams, often bizarre, frequently erotic."

My intuition is that Monotropa was moving me through a particular intitiation -- facing death and embracing its beauty. No healer can promote life without an intimate relationship with death.

I believe the plant has played this role for many in North America over the millennia. And the need for this role is one of the reasons Monotropa has become so abundant this summer.
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There are other gifts Monotropa is here to bring us as well.

David Winston notes that Monotropa uniflora is a diaphoretic especially well suited to fevers with pain (and from my experience of sweating profusely shortly after eating the flowers it seems it is an especially powerful diaphoretic) -- this suggests its use in illnesses from malaria to West Nile virus to serious influenza infections. He also notes its antispasmodic and anticonvulsant properties.

But it is the anodyne and sedative properties Winston notes are among its most unique and amazing gifts.

The plant itself resembles a spinal cord and a brain stem, suggesting its affinify for the nervous system.

Tommy Priester describes Monotropa as a plant that takes your pain and puts it beside you. You remain aware of the pain but you no longer feel it. He speaks of a friend able to calmly watch surgery performed on his own foot after taking Monotropa tincture.

I speculate that Monotropa may act on the sensory gating channels, preventing the sensation of pain from reaching the neocortex while still allowing non-sensory pain signals to reach the brain.

Monotropa also shows great potential as a sedative for people having dissociative or psychotic episodes. Ryan Drum tells a story of using the plant for this purpose:

"A very agitated distraught large young man came by at dawn one day. He was gesticulating wildly, speaking very loudly, rapidly, angrily, rather disjointedly and a bit menacing. ALIENS WERE IMPLICATED, threats, large weapons, revenge, cleaning up the place (of undesirable neighbors) plus grossly inflated assumptions of personal grandeur. Charming.
"He claimed not to have slept for at least three days and nights and that his head was boiling with unsolicited thoughts and images. His history included perennial meanness and medicated behaviour. I diagnosed sleep deprivation, dehydration, too much recreational medication, and no real food for many days, extreme anger, social isolation, and a desperate attempt to stop his delirium. Finally, during the first break in his rapid rambling 3-hr monologue, I asked him what he wanted from me. Besides potential sanctuary, he wanted herbal help to sleep and start thinking clearly. At that time I did not know he had been menacing neighbors and family. I told him I would give him a potion to do both, the strongest medicine I had. If it did not work in 4 hours or less, it wouldn't work for him. I gave him 2 ounces of a mixed tincture of Monotropa and Sea Blush Roots (an abundant annual marine valerian, Plectritis congesta) which he drank at once. Shortly after he left me, he napped, made circumstantial peace with his family, and voluntarily boarded the law enforcement plane for his involuntary journey to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation"

This could conceivably be the result of action on the senory gating channels or the neocortex as well. People having psychotic episodes often project meaning onto everything around them, possibly indicating an overly stimulated neocortex. Reducing the sensory stimuli flowing to the neocortex may help to sedate someone in this kind of situation. Anemone pulsitilla and Anemone tuberosa seem to work in this way.

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Over the past few months, a half dozen other herbalists have told me they have been discovering a new fascination with Monotropa. And this year this frequently rare plant seems more abundant than ever.

I don't believe that Gaia makes mistakes.

The rains this summer offer a partial explanation.

But I am also noticing that a lot of plants appear a short while before their medicine is greatly needed.

I don't know if there are energetic patterns that signal the coming of mass trauma -- but something tells me that the forest is bringing us this plant right now because we will need its medicine soon. We would do well to begin exploring the medicine of Monotropa more deeply.

Sweet Divination: Yarrow Gylcerite

2009-07-31T12:59:00.000-07:00

The following is my contribution to the "Sweet Medicine" Blog Party being hosted by Kiva Rose at http://bearmedicineherbals.com/
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Yarrow (Achillea spp.) was traditionally used as an herb of divination because its subtle but strong psychoactive properties allowed the mind to drop below ordinary consciousness to a place where it could hear the world speak -- a place of heart-centered consciousness.

Kiva Rose writes that "In ancient Europe, it was said that if anyone were to hold a bunch of yarrow flowers over the eyes, they would be given the ability to see into the land of fairy."

Seeing or crossing into the land of fairy was traditionally associated with a distorted sense of time and disorienting euphoria that brought access to other ways of knowing and seeing.

Ryan Drum describes an experience with Yarrow that combines many of these elements:

One particularly fine day whilst harvesting Yarrow on a steep talus slope above the sea, I felt suddenly quite giddy. The feeling resembled benign sunstroke; however, I had been harvesting in complete cliff shade for 3 hours. Involuntarily I sat down and happily laid back into several ancient Yarrow clumps with 3-foot stalks and huge flat umbels 8-10 inches across. Their delicious odors smothered me. As I looked up and all around, all I could see was Yarrow and blue sky. Paradise.

After about 20 minutes I was startled and alarmed to hear my aluminum skiff banging on the rocks far below from the rising tide; harvester’s consciousness cancelled my wonderful Yarrow euphoria. I wondered what had happened. Was it TIA , dehydration, sunstroke (no sun), Alzheimer’s? Lightheaded, I carefully assembled my harvest bags and slowly descended to my skiff and rowed back to the distal road end. [ . . .]

Apparently, several hours of harvesting had resulted in significant percutaneous molecular movement of Yarrow-sourced mood and mind-altering substances into my hands and arms. Similar percutaneous molecular oassage probably occurs during the prolonged handling of Yarrow flower stalks (harvested whilst green with half-ripe flowers on top) during the ritual Yarrow stalk sorting associated with the consultation of the I Ching, a Chinese book of divination. Accumulation is always followed by dispersal. Yarrow has cleistogamous flowers which are self pollinating and this may encourage polyploidy.

The fact that European cultures also associated the plant with divination -- and later with forbidden knowledge of other worlds as suggested by common names such as Devil's Nettle and Bad Man's Plaything -- lend support to this hypothesis.

My own accidental discovery of these qualities, described in an earlier post led me to begin exploring how to make Yarrow preparations that would maximize these effects.

Those with a predilection toward attributing plants' actions in the body to particular chemical compounds tend to hold the theory that Thujone -- a chemical also present in many pyschotropic Artemesia species -- is responsible for the changes Yarrow brings in human consciousness.

While I tend to view such models as excessively reductionist, they do sometimes provide a good starting point. Thujone is similar in structure to cannabinoid molecules and has some impact on cannabanoid receptors.

My own experience has taught me that glycerin tends to be a better menstrum for extraxting cannabanoids from plants than alcohol -- so I hypothesized that glycerin might also be the best menstrum for extracting thujone and related compounds from Yarrow. So I gathered more Yarrow and put it in glycerin to see what might happen.

This afternoon, a rainy and unseasonably chilly one here in Maine, I sampled the sweet medicine -- and found that after taking 30 drops, I felt the warmth, soft focus, and mild euphoria that I associate with Yarrow mind. I've only experienced similar effects with Yarrow tinctured in alcohol at significantly higher doses. I did, however, experience similar effects after drinking half a cup of Yarrow-Mugwort-Rose mead on my birthday two weeks ago -- effects that everyone else drinking the mead seemed to experience as well.

This makes me wonder if some quality of the sweet taste itself may contribute to the experience. One advantage of being a late comer to this blog party is that I have had a chance to read a few of the other contributions. Darcey Blue writes that:

It is important to remember that the six tastes effect the spirit and mind just as much as they do the body, and the sweet taste will nourish the heart and spirit, build strength and energy of heart and spirit, and calm states of deranged pitta or vata (think bouts of anger, emotional upset, ungroundedness, bitterness, dryness or lack of luster and verve for living.) It’s not a surprise then that we crave sweet foods to console ourselves in times of emotional upset, or to soothe sensations of physical weakness, or deprivation.

Is it possible that the sweet taste of the glycerite and the mead sooth the heart, mind, and spirit enough to allow them to open to the energies of Yarrow that put us in touch with the other side of the veil?

Whatever the reason, the sweet medicine of Yarrow glycerite and Yarrow mead are wonderful vehicles for exploring Yarrow's uses as an herb of divination.

Green Man Botanicals -- Tinctures and Flower Essences for Sale

2009-07-29T19:09:00.000-07:00

The forests and fields of Maine have blessed me with great abundance this year -- and I am offering the first in my line of ethically wildgathered Tinctures and Flower Essences for sale.

Watch later this summer for more Tinctures and Flower Essences from plants gathered on my journeys into the wild or lovingly grown at Nezinscot Farm, a biodynamic (and certified organic) farm in Turner, Maine.

I currently have the following tinctures and flower essences available for sale -- $10 for 1 oz, $8 for 1/2 oz, $5 shipping per order. Ask about prices and availability for larger amounts. To order, e-mail me at seandonahuepoet@gmail.com. I accept PayPal, checks, money orders, and cash -- and am also very open to barter.

Please note that none of these products are intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any medical condition. Notes on the uses of these plants and lichens are strictly ethnobotanical in nature.

TINCTURES

Usnea (Usnea barbata) -- Commonly known as "Old Man's Beard," this lichen was traditionally used as a wound dressing to prevent infection. More recently, herbalists have found this lichen very effective in supporting the immune system and in helping the body fight off bacterial infections, especially in the lungs. Whole lichen inctured in 100 proof vodka.

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) Glycerite -- Yarrow was traditionally used as a plant of divination. This preparation was made in the spirit of the plant's magical uses. Flowers and first year leaves in vegetable glycerin.

Red Clover (Trifolium pratense) Elixir -- Traditionally used to nourish pregnant women and lactating mothers, smooth the transition into menopause and andropause, promote fertility, and support the lymphatic system, among dozens of other uses. Flowers in a blend of vegetable glycerin and brandy.

Coming soon: Self-Heal Tincture and Forsythia Flower Tincture.

FLOWER ESSENCES

All essences are Stock Essences.

Lady Slipper and Solider's Heart

2009-07-07T21:35:00.000-07:00

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons, photographer unknown)

Stephen Harrod Buhner describes the medicine of Lady Slipper as being like two loving hands cradling the heart.

In the wake of the Civil War, the shattered hearts of soldiers cried out for the Lady Slipper's medicine, and she was gathered almost to the point of extinction.

Plant medicines produce a direct and immediate impact in the body to alleviate suffering. At the same time they work to help the body remember the way back to health. This deep and often subtle healing happens best when space is opened for the plant to work deeply inside someone over time, penetrating further into the consciousness and the heart field.

These forms of healing are, of course, inextricably linked. But in a culture that has forgotten that the plants are our ancestors and teachers, the living medicine of the plants we use is often forgotten and ignored. Too often plant medicines are applied in a mechanistic way to create a specific result in the body. The medicine is still the medicine -- but when we don't give it space and time to do its work, and we don't engage the plant, much is lost.

I imagine the shape of the Lady Slipper's blossom -- a heart open in the center shielded by wing-like petals -- and I imagine the way she could teach a heart forced shut by the brutality of war to begin to allow healing in again. And, knowing enough Veterans who left pieces of themselves on distant battle fields, I also know something of the incredible patience and strength that opening takes.

Did the doctors treating "Soldier's Heart" in the wake of the Civil War bring their patients to the woods to be with the plants that would become their medicine? More likely the tinctured root was administered to a patient who was taught little about its source. In the parlance of the day the plant was known as "American Valerian," used primarily as a sedative. Plants are generous, using their bodies to create the medicines that will restore the imbalances in the ecosystem they perceive through the chemical and electromagnetic information they take in from the world around them -- including the imbalances in the bodies of the humans who share their habitat. But the imbalances created in our culture are too big for the plants to correct through chemistry alone.

There wasn't enough Lady Slipper in all of North America to heal all the pain and terror and loss the people here experienced as a result of the Civil War.

And at the same time a single Lady Slipper could have taught the culture all it needed to know about how to reshape itself in ways that would give hearts the space they needed to heal and open again like pink orchids in the understory of a shady forest.

Even more than we need plants as physical medicines today, we need them as teachers. And to know them as teachers, we need to come to know them in the wild. Wildness is a fundamental part of their medicine. And wildness itself is the best medicine for the diseases of civilization -- violence, alienation, stress, numbness, grief, and rage. Former Green Beret Doug Peacock has written and spoken eloquently about how time with Grizzly Bears in the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains saved his life when he came back from Vietnam angry and devastated and wanting nothing to do with the culture that sent him to war. Those of us living in that culutre would do reflect on the more subtle injuries we sustain from accepting brutality as an inevitable part of life.

In a culture at war with the Earth and with the wildness inside its own people, we all suffer from a variant of Soldier's Heart -- it is only diagnosed in those who show the most severe symptoms -- Veterans of war and survivors of torture and physical and sexual abuse. But in their pain we see our own amplified ten thousand fold and mirrored back. I am not speaking metaphorically -- nobody who has been exposed to the ravages of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (as Soldier's Heart is now called) even in passing could ever view such a profound psychological injury as a metaphor. Rather I am speaking of the fact that in the most violent culture in history, trauma is universalized, and diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress is a matter of differentiating the most extreme cases from the mental and emotional health state of the general population.

Psychotherapist Chellis Glendinning describes the traumatic break that all of us have experience as a result of the dissonence between what our bodies know and what our culture telss us and makes us experience -- a break far more subtle but chillingly similar to that experienced by those who survive war, rape, and abuse:

"And as goes the outer, so goes the inner. The psyche that, by all accounts, had been a worthy reflection of the unity of seasons, wind and waters, soil and rock, stars, plant and animal life was shattered and scattered too. I see this breakage as the traumatic response – the splitting and sending into unconsciousness those experiences the organism is not designed to process, the seat-of-the-pants clawing for function and meaning in what is left of the conscious mind. And so the onslaught that appears to us as the unending march of harsher forms of technological systems, the grasping for control by global corporations, the splitting of community into those who have it all and those who have nothing -- this is reflected in a parallel inner onslaught that manifests as the march of abuse, a grasping for rationalization, and the splitting of psyche into denial and numbing on one side and unspeakable suffering on the other."

All of this has its physical consequences as well. Pam Montgomery writes in Plant Spirit Healing that:

"Heart disease is the single leading cause of death in the United States, claiming more lives than the combined next four causes of mortality. [ . . . ] According to heart surgeon, Dr. Philip Bhark, only half of heart attacks are caused by known risk factors like tobacco and obesity. What then is causeing such massive heart disease? Could it be that we are dying from broken hearts? And if so, what is causing them to break? The heart is made up of 10 billion cells that synchroinize in electical wavelike patterns. Dr. Bhark says that more than half of heart-related deaths are from sudden cardiac death, which is the abrupt disruption of electrical patterns in the heart. It seems that high levels of stress interfere with the electrical rhythm of the heart. Stress is not just a fight or flight reaction. It can also result from tension created in the body while having to process varying degrees of ever-present external challenges, then disrupting our inner connection with the laws of nature and even affect the synchronization of our natural rhythms. Additional tension can also result from the interference of manmade electrical fields. The natural wavelike pattern found in nature is one cycle per second, which is the same rhythm as the heart's. Could it be that the loss of connection to the natural world, created by modern life, is the original wound and this primary seperation is causing our hearts to break?"

(And could it be that war, on the collective level, and violent crime, on the individual level, are the way broken hearts replay their wounding, projecting it outward -- the result of being so deeply wounded that we come to believe woundedness and wounding are our fundamental nature?)

As an herbalist, I treat stress-related disorders with adaptogens and nervines -- much as Civil War doctors used the tinctured root of Lady Slipper. These medicines are important -- I have seen them help people who were prisoners of anxiety reclaim their lives.

But walking the forests of Maine where the Lady Slippers are coming back in greater and greater numbers, I remember that the most important work I do involves connecting people with the living Earth that is the source of their healing.

That's the medicine that makes hearts whole again.

Ground Ivy

2009-07-01T17:39:00.000-07:00

Image from Wikipedia, source: Prof. Dr. Otto Wilhelm Thomé Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz 1885, Gera, Germany

[This post is my contribution to the Blog Party being hosted by an amazing herbalist, Darcey Blue French, at http://desertmedicinewoman.blogspot.com/ on the theme of "Weeds of Summer that you love to love, that others love to hate...."]

Weeds are the outlaws of the plant world -- plants that escape cultivation and resist eradication, slipping in where they aren't wanted, subverting the gardener's idea of control. Medicinal allies of the common people, dismissed by the medical profession throughout history (think of the plants whose Latin binomials contain the word vulgaris.)

Neither of Ground Ivy's Latin names (Glechoma Hederacea or Nepeta Glechoma) contain the word vulgaris, but Ground Ivy otherwise fits the definition well. According to a website maintained by Purdue University's School of agriculture "Ground ivy is difficult to control and it is a problem in 31% of lawns maintained professionally in Indiana." The State of Connecticut officially made Ground Ivy an outlaw, banning its cultivation in 2004. They were, of course, a bit late -- the tiny creeping mint came over with the first colonists who used it to make medicine and ale.

(Alehoof was a common name for the plant a few hundred years ago, reflecting its use as a bitter in beermaking prior to the standardization of beer composition that began with the German Beer Purity Law of 1516, a law designed in large part to end the production and consumption of psychotropic and aphrodesiac beers. See Stephen Harrod Buhner's Sacred and Healing Herbal Beers for more on this history.)

Ground Ivy was popular in British and American folk medicine well into the nineteenth century. Maude Grieve wrote:

"From early days, Ground Ivy has been endowed with singular curative virtues, and is one of the most popular remedies for coughs and nervous headaches. It has even been extolled before all other vegetable medicines for the cure of consumption.
"An excellent cooling beverage, known in the country as Gill Tea, is made from this plant, 1 OZ. of the herb being infused with a pint of boiling water, sweetened with honey, sugar or liquorice, and drunk when cool in wineglassful doses, three or four times a day. This used to be a favourite remedy with the poor for coughs of long standing, being much used in consumption. Ground Ivy was at one time one of the cries of London for making a tea to purify the blood. It is a wholesome drink and is still considered serviceable in pectoral complaints and in cases of weakness of the digestive organs, being stimulating and tonic, though it has long been discarded from the Materia Medica as an official plant, in favour of others of greater certainty of action. As a medicine useful in pulmonary complaints, where a tonic for the kidneys is required, it would appear to possess peculiar suitability, and is well adapted to all kidney complaints"

Despite (or more likely because of) its popularity, Ground Ivy was not well regarded by physicians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1869, William Cook wrote that "the marvelous repute it once enjoyed in England, has very properly faded away." The 1918 edition of the Dispensatory of the United States of America said:

"The herb was formerly official, and still enjoys some credit as a domestic remedy. It has a peculiar, disagreeable odor, and a bitterish, somewhat aromatic taste, and imparts its properties to boiling water. It is very prone to have galls developed on it, and to be infested with certain fungi."

But in recent years, the herb has made its way back into medicine, and even into commerce.

I was introduced to Ground Ivy by Madelon Hope of the Boston School of Herbal Studies who spoke of the plant's affinity for the upper respiratory system I gathered the flowers this spring and tinctured them in 80 proof Vodka. The tincture was ready just as I had a number of clients come to me complaining of head colds marked by severe sinus congestion, slight throat irritation and inflamation, and minor swelling of the lymph nodes in the throat. I used Ground Ivy in a formula with Yarrow and Elder Flowers and Berries at a dosage of 30-60 drops every 4 hours depending on body weight, and most clients reported relief from all symptoms by the end of the first day. I have found Ground Ivy very effective in relieving my own sinus congestion and inflamation.

David Winston speaks of several uses I have not yet explored in his section on the plant in his American Extra Pharmacoepia, including:

clearing toxic heat from the liver and gallbladder and promoting bile excretion
getting the blood moving and reducing swelling in traumatic injuries
increasing lead excretion in urine

Winston also notes that Ground Ivy has antiviral qualities -- which supports the emerging sense among many herbalists that rapidly spreading plants tend to be effective in treating rapidly spreading diseases.

This little outlaw who grows close to the ground and quickly overtakes yards and pastures is fast becoming one of my favorite medicinal plants.

Blood

2009-06-29T18:11:00.000-07:00

"Your blood flowed before your heart was formed." -- Stephen Harrod Buhner

Your blood
began moving
before your heart
was formed,

humming and buzzing
through your veins

until you heard
a rhythm
through the waters
of the womb

calling you
like a humpback whale
singing
across oceans

and muscle
and nerve
came together
to form a magnetic drum

that set the iron
spiraling
in an wild dervish dance.

Joy on Earth: Yarrow Divin-ation

2009-06-22T14:44:00.000-07:00

"Sing, feast, dance, make music and love, all in My Presence, for Mine is the ecstasy of the spirit and Mine also is joy on earth."

-- The Charge of the Goddess

Three days of dancing barefoot in the rain on Harry's Hill and practicing the seat-of-the-pants art of holistic field medicine brought an undeniable ecstasy.

But a few days in the human world always leaves me hungry for time alone with wild plants.

So this afternoon, when the rain let up I put on my lined flannel shirt and set off to gather Yarrow.

Yarrow is one of the plants I use most frequently in treating clients. I love Yarrow's ability to help the body released trapped heat. I also love the way the plant has both analgesic and anti-spasmodic actions, making it a wonderful ally for those experiencing muscle cramps and spasms. Combined with the plant's ability to regulate the menstual flow, these qualities also make the Yarrow an excellent ally for women with menstrual cramps. And I frequently use Yarrow and Elder together to treat colds and flus.

But Yarrow fascinates me most as a psychotropic plant, bordering on the entheogenic. ("Entheogen" is an ethnobotanical term for plants that induce profound spiritual experiences, bringing out the divinity inherent in all things.) Maude Grieve noted in A Modern Herbal (the source of the illustration above) that Yarrow "was one of the herbs dedicated to the Evil One, in earlier days, being sometimes known as Devil's Nettle, Devil's Plaything, Bad Man's Plaything, and was used for divination in spells. "

These names were, of course, given to the plant by medieval and early modern Christians who were trying to seperate people from seeking out the direct experience of the wild divinity of the living Earth. Divination, after all, is also the process of revealing the presence of the divine in all things -- and the wilderness was the place where people traditionally went to align their human and divine natures. This posed an obvious threat to those who would insist that the consciousness of the divine could not be accessed without their intercession and that the presence of the divine could only be felt in their churches.

What was so dangerous to these people about Yarrow?

I got my first glimpse of the answer last summer during my vision quest in the Pemigiwassett wilderness. On the third day of fasting, a throbbing headache was keeping me from being fully present. Yarrow was the one analgesic herb I had in my pack, so I began taking it -- just a dropperful at first, but then several more over the course of the next two hours. I felt my senses heighten and warmth radiating throughout my body. When I stumbled from my tent to the edge of my circle of stones, the Usnea growing on a fallen Hemlock branch became illuminated and began to speak to me.

To be sure, fasting, solitude, and the magic of the Usnea himself played big roles in shaping that moment -- but Yarrow was an important part of the mix. And the presence of a thujone, hypnot cannabanoid compound in Yarrow provides a partial biochemical explanation of what I experienced -- but

Today, as I gathered Yarrow, I was tasting the blossoms and some of the young leaves to try to find the patches with the strongest medicine. I felt that familar warmth and heightening of my senses. Though it was cloudy and it was late afternoon everything brightened.

I continued up the dirt road where we live toward the old Lincoln place. I noticed a fresh bundle of Yarrow flowers, recently picked, on the ground. But nobody has been in that place this summer and no cars came up or down the road today and my housemates had been inside all day as had Tom and Joanna up the road. I gathered them up and put them in my jar -- exactly enough to fill it the rest of the way to the top.

I turned around and the wind brought the scent of roses. Right across from me were blooming Prickly Roses that I had never seen in that place before.-- Rosa acicularis, a rose common to disturbed areas in boreal forests.

The scent alone opened my heart wide, and I felt at the edge of tears of gratitude and joy.

I looked up and a hawk circled overhead.

The porous nature of the boundaries the self became clear. Rose mind, Hawk mind, Yarrow mind, seeped into my own consciousness.

Something about Yarrow seems to facilitate the operation of the heart as an organ of perception -- or to drop the consciousness into the heart where the heart's perception plays a larger role in the self's processing of reality. Maybe this is the nature of divin-ation, the art of opening the heart wide enough to fine tune its sense of the electromagnetic flow around it, giving the mind access to information it would not normally be able to access. In that state, the unity and interconnectedness of living things becomes real -- and we have access to a web of information larger than ourselves, an ecological brain we might call Gaia.

And in the fractal reality that opens us to, all beings feel pleasure in our pleasure, and we become joy on Earth. At once human, wild, and divine.

Mutations and Opportunities

2009-06-09T16:54:00.000-07:00

Donald McNeil Jr. wrote about potential mutations of the H1N1 "Swine Flu" virus in today's New York Times. After explaining the highly unlikely process by which the virus could become considerably more lethal, McNeil noted that:

A much more likely change, scientists have said, is that the H1N1 swine flu will become resistant to the antiviral drug Tamiflu. A gene for Tamiflu resistance is now almost universal in seasonal H1N1 flus.
If that happens, the world’s Tamiflu stockpiles will be all but worthless, and doctors may have to switch to Relenza, which is a powder used with an inhaler, which makes it more expensive and harder to take.
Depending on the mutation, older antiviral drugs like rimantidine may be useful, but so much resistance to them developed in seasonal flu that they were largely abandoned a few years ago.

This is one of the biggest problems with modern, synthetic pharmaceuticals. As complex as they may seem to us, they are far simpler than the chemicals produced by living things -- be they viruses, bacteria, plants, animals, or humans. So it doesn't take long for a virus or a bacteria to crack the code and develop an effective technique to resist our pharmaceuticals. But rather than seeking a different approach, most of the medical community looks to new generations of pharmaceuticals to combat viruses and bacteria that resist existing drugs.

Modern pharmaceuticals do have the advantage of causing quick and dramatic changes in the body that can buy time for healing in life threatening situations. But those advantages are lost completely when the drugs are used so widely that resistance to them becomes widespread.

Herbal medicines have the advantage of more complex chemistries than synthetic pharmaceuticals. As James Duke writes in the foreword to Stephen Buhner' Herbal Antibiotics:

It is easy for a rapidly reproducing bug to outwit (or out-evolve) a single compound by learning how to break it down or even to use it in its own metabolism, but not so easy to outwit the complex compounds found in herbs. Scientists are recognizing this fact and developing more complex compounds such as the AIDS cocktail and multiple chemotherapies for cancer. The same super-scientists who downplay the herbalists' claims of synergies that account for the effectiveness of particular herbs and herbal formulas, are now resorting to synergies of three or four compounds in their pharmaceutical formulas.
It is certainly easier to demonstrate how two compounds can work together synergistically than it is to figure out how 200 or 2000 different compounds (and more, as are present in all herbs) can work synergistically. So the scientific community will be reluctant to consider the remarkable synergistic suites of compounds that have evolved naturally in plants. But we really cannot afford to ignore these. For nature favors synergies among beneficial, plant-protective compounds within a plant species (with antibacterial, antifeedant, antifungal, antiviral, and insecticidal properties,) and selects against antagonisms.

What's more, plants are constantly modifying their chemistries in response to environmental changes -- the same changes our bodies are experiencing -- while the chemistry of synthetic pharmaceuticals remains fixed.

But speaking in these terms, we are still missing something important.

Influenza, or any other diesease, isn't caused simply by the presence of a virus. Rather it is the result of a virus opportunistically multiplying out of control in a body whose natural defenses are already weakened and whose internal ecology is already out of balance. The virus is necessary for the disease to occur, but not sufficient.

Because the presence of the virus is the one common recurring element in the bodies of different people presenting similar symptoms, modern medicine tends to focus on eliminating the virus. In so doing, it tends to ignore the different factors that made each person susceptible to infection, and the differences between them and the people who are exposed to the virus but don't get sick.

(Think, for example, about the fact that the majority of sexually active adult women who have had multiple partners have been exposed to strains of the Human Papiloma Virus linked to genital warts and/or cervical cancer, but only a small percentage of the women exposed to HPV ever develop these diseases.)

Traditional herbalists and other holistic healers tend to look at these differences in detail, and employ therapeutic protocols that support the body's own ability to fight off infection and restore healthy function to all of the body's systems. In treating severe acute infections such healers will sometimes rely on high doses of certain "anti-viral" or "anti-bacterial" or "anti-fungal" herbs or even synthetic pharmaceuticals to address an emergent situation -- but these medicines serve primarily to open the way for other medicines to do the subtler work of helping the body heal itself. As Matthew Wood writes in The Practice of Traditional Western Herbalism:

Biomedicine is constructed upon a materialistic interpretation of nature, which looks to its molecular structure as a guide. Holistic medicine is founded on the concept and experience that the organism is a functional unit or whole under the guiding hand of an intelligent, self-regulating, self-correcting guiding force or energy. Since Nature in the organism is self-maintaining and self-healing, holistic medicine is further based upon the assumption that the organism can be cured, that is, returned from an unbalanced state to one of balance or homeostasis.

The molecular level is, of course, very real. But it is also a level of reality whose existence we have only recently discovered. And we are tinkering there before we understand its logic, its flow, and its guiding principles.

It is the height arrogance to think that we can understand whats happening in our cells at a molecular level so well that we can afford to completely ignore the big picture of what is happening in our bodies, or that our creations can surpass the genius of the medicines that plants have developed over billions of years.

The proliferation of drug resistant viruses and bacteria provides us with an opportunity to reflect on and correct that arrogance while choosing another path -- one that uses synthetic pharmaceuticals sparingly and as a last resort, while relying primarily on the insights of the 150,000 year old science of herbal medicine to restore and maintain health. In the process, we just may remember that we are part of a living planet -- something essential to our prospects for survival.

Will Write or Wildcraft for Food

2009-06-06T15:19:00.000-07:00

Actually, I have food and shelter through October thanks to some very generous friends . . . .

But I am in need of some work to earn money . . .

Over the years many of you have been very generous in sponsoring my travels to Latin America to report on people's resistance to this empire.

My journey now is taking me to a different kind of exploration and a different frontier of resistance -- helping people to change their relationships to their bodies, their hearts, and the living world around them through work with our oldest ancestors, the plants.

So, I am working to build a practice, working with clients one on one, and writing and speaking about plant medicine. But it takes time for a practice to grow.

So in the meantime, I am asking for your help in finding work that will allow me to pay for medicine and books and travel and my continuing education as I grow as an herbalist.

I am looking for people to help me find:

People and organizations who need someone to do writing or editing work on a contract basis -- including grant writing.
Herbalists willing to pay or trade for wildcrafted herbs from the forests and fields of Maine.
Herbal clients in the Boston or Lawrence, MA areas or central or western Maine (or in southern Maine or the NH seacoast area within a half hour drive from route 95.)
Businesses, schools, and organizations willing to host talks about herbal medicine.
Donors willing to support popular education about herbal medicine.

I am also open to other kinds of part time contract work that I can do from rural Maine or on a short trip somewhere in New England.

Thank you for all your support in all its forms.

5,002

2009-06-02T17:00:00.000-07:00

I awoke this morning to the news that 5,002 U.S. troops have now been killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

An inconceivable number dwarfed by the number who have died of accident, overdose, or suicide as a result of the things they saw and did and lived through in these wars. Too many friends have come too close to being counted among that number.

By late morning I was interviewing Warren Henthorn, the father of Jeffrey Henthorn who died in Iraq on February 8, 2005 at the age of 25. He told me:

"“Way too many have died on all sides of these wars. If I remember correctly, President Obama won the Democratic nomination based on the promise to end the war in Iraq. But, between Iraq and Afghanistan, at the end of this year we will actually have more troops in harm’s way then we did at the height of the ‘surge.’ That’s just as bad as we had it under President Bush. These wars now belong to President Obama. The blood is on his hands.”
His words plain, and direct hit me deep in my chest.

I felt the enormity of all that had been lost. And ached to know how the world could ever be made whole again.

I walked down the dirt road to the garden by the edge of the pond where I had planted Marsh Mallow and Elecampane and knelt down on the ground by the biggest Elecampane plant and put my hands at her base and felt the medicine flow through the soil from her roots and work its way into my lungs.

I looked up and watched the wind on the water. This too was real. Just as real.

The world is already whole -- whats fragmented is our conception of it. Our inability to embrace paradox, to accept more than one truth at a time is at the root of the wars that killed these thousands of troops and tens of thousands of Afghans and millions of Iraqis.

But the wholeness is there. And the plants bring us down into the rich soil which reminds us of the original darkness in which we all last fully knew that wholeness.

Aspirin or a Willow Tree?

2009-05-31T16:06:00.000-07:00

The difference between herbal medicine and pharmaceutical medicine is the difference between aspirin and the bark of a Willow tree.

Aspirin is acetysalicilic acid, a synthetic chemical modeled on compounds called salicates originally found in the bark of Willows that reduce fever, inflamation, and pain.

But aspirin can cause gastrointestinal bleeding -- Willow bark does not. (In fact, at the turn of the century, Maude Grieve wrote in A Modern Herbal that White Willow (S. alba) bark "has been used in dyspepsia connected with debility of the digestive organs." And the bark of both White Willow and Black Willow (S. nigra) can be useful in treating diarrhea.)

This is because though modern medicine considers sacicates the "active compound" in Willow bark, they are not the only medicinal compounds in Willow. And biochemists have not yet decoded the chemistry of Willow bark (or Yarrow blossom or Skunk Cabbage root or any of the many other botanical medicines that contain salicates) well enough to understand how the many chemicals in the plant work together to negate the negative side effects that saclicylic acids have when they are introduced into the body alone.

Unlike the bark of the White Willow, aspirin is useless in treating infestations of parasitic worms. Unlike the bark of the Black Willow, aspirin is ineffective as an aphrodisiac and has no history of being used to treat cancers or stimulate hair growth.

And even if pharmeceutical companies completely decoded the chemistry of Willow bark and succeded in creating a synthetic pharmaceutical that could do all of these things, that pill could never sing in the wind or provide shade on the banks of a river on a hot summer day or teach us about strengh, grace, and bending. Or inspire words like "wise and witch." All of this is as much a part of Willow's medicine as its ability to ease pain an relieve fevers.

The humility to know that our minds cannot surpass the brilliance of a living, changing planet, and the vision to understand that the medicine is in the whole and not in the parts is the fundamental difference between pharmaceutical medicine and herbal medicine.

Rethinking "Invasive Species"

2009-05-30T12:16:00.000-07:00

Last month in Tommy Priester's Shamanic Plant Journeying class, I felt some resistance come up when I heard that we would be working with Japanese Knotweed. The idea of working with an invasive species that is seen as crowding out native plants didn't sit well with me.

The spirit of the plant told me -- "You aren't from here either."

Neither are many of the plants I work with -- Elecampane, Plantain, Dandelion, Apple all came to this country with early European colonists. But they have been part of herbal traditions on this continent for so long that most of us don't think about their origins. Some, like Elecampane, have been here for so long that tribes like the Maliseet and the Delaware long ago found uses for them that the immigrants who planted the first seeds of the species on this continent never imagined.

One interesting thing about more recent "invasive" species is that they tend to provide medicines that help address newly emerging diseases. Stephen Harrod Buhner writes in Healing Lyme that:

"[For North American herbalists] part of the importance of Japanese Knotweed as a new medicinal useful in clinical practice, is understanding that invasive plant species are specifically indicated for use with invasive or emerging diseases such as Lyme, West Nile encephalitis, SARS, hepatitis C, HIV, and so on. The use of invasive species of plants in treatment reduces the impact on non-invasive medicinals and begins using plants that are accompanying invading pathogens as they move into new ecoregions."

Indeed, I've been told that Japanese Knotweed seems to be extending its range in the same areas where the spirochetes that cause Lyme disease are expanding theirs -- though I don't know if anyone has researched this phenomenon in depth. Japanese Knotweed is also one of the plants most likely to be helpful in treating Swine Flu -- it is a great anti-inflamatory with a strong affinity for the respiratory system and most people who die from the flu die from respiratory inflamation. Another "invasive" species, Purple Loosestrife shows great potential for dealing with the effects of flus on the digestive system because as a plant that is both astringent and muscilaginous it both tones and soothes tissues. (See Jim McDonald's excellent monograph on Purple Loosestrife.)

(If there are any Native herbalists or ethnobotanists or medical anthropologists reading this, I would be very interested in knowing whether there is any evidence of eastern North American tribes using the plants the European invaders brought to treat the diseases the European invaders brought.)

Both Japanese Knotweed and Purple Loosestrife tend to colonize areas with highly polluted soil and help remediate the toxins. Jim McDonald writes:

"This brings to light an entirely new consideration as to the role of Purple Loosestrife in the environment: Is it coincidence that the plant has become invasive in environments that it just happens to be able to cleanse pollutants from? Or, in some way, does this tendency exhibit the unforeseen ways in which Nature tends to and heals itself?"

As tempting as it is for us to want to believe that we can someday restore this continent to the state it was in prior to the European invasion, that is not something we or are children or even our great-grandchildren are likely to accomplish. North America is not the same place it was two centuries ago -- culturally or ecologically. The people and species that are here now shape and are shaped by their environment. The solutions to our problems will emerge from that reality.

That means that we can't afford to ignore the role recently introduced plant species have in healing damaged bodies and damaged land. Living systems work with what's at their disposal and do what they can to find balance. As herbalists doesn't it make sense for us to do the same?

Listening to the Forest: What the Lichen Told Me

2009-05-27T17:50:00.000-07:00

Tree doctor. Green Man's Beard. These are the names Usnea whispers to me when I find him in the forest.

The lichen helps to filter the air for the trees where he grows and produces broad antibacterial and selective antifungal compounds to protect the trees from infection.

While he grows in many places, energetically Usnea is a medicine of the north, a bear medicine, with a strong affinity for the lungs and an ability to restore a healthy balance of bacteria in the body's mucous membranes by culling overgrowths of Gram positive bacteria and gently supporting the immune system.

Matthew Wood writes that in many North American indigenous traditions, "To dream of the bear brings empowerment in healing and work with plants."

So it makes perfect sense that this bear medicine was the forest medicine that initiated me into my work as an herbalist. (Never mind that Usnea isn't really a plant.)

He first spoke to me in the late spring and early summer of 2007, when I was wandering the Bangor City Forest, my heart breaking as I felt someone who had seen and touched and transformed me deeply slipping out of my life. (I had yet to learn that nobody who touches and is touched that deeply really ever disappears from your life forever.) Usnea reached his green threads into the cracks in my heart and began working to awaken my primal memory of my connection to all things, and my power as a healer.

I returned to that same forest this week, to listen deeply to Usnea again.

He spoke with grief and concern for the health of the forest.

Bangor City Forest is on the southern edge of the great boreal forests. The trees Usnea has been doctoring are feeling the effects of climate change. Within a generation or two, the forest here may transition completely to the kind of eastern temperate forest found in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

The retreat of the boreal forest marks the retreat of the north -- the place of darkness, of deep winter dreams, of ancestral memory. Something fundamental is lost when we lose touch with such a huge part of the original darkness and wildness from which we emerged.

Two centuries ago these woods were full of caribou and timber wolves. Polar bears would sometimes range south searching for food.

With settlement, we lost that degree of wildness. And now climate change threatens to take the boreal forest itself from large parts of Maine.

Usnea is calling on us to reawaken that wild darkness within us that can help us dream our way back into connection with the living Earth and let her work through us to help us remember ways of living that will let the forest breathe, grow, and thrive.

Pandemics, Trauma, and Fear

2009-05-02T20:02:00.000-07:00

Pandemics don't happen just because pathogens mutate. Pathogens are mutating all the time -- a process accelerated in our own time by the indiscriminate use of antibacterial and antiviral medications, increased presence of synthetic chemicals and ionizing radiation in our environment, and the creation of environments that produce the perfect crucible for viral and bacterial mutation (ie. cesspools at industrial farms filled with the feces of livestock who have been fed massive doses of antibiotics throughout their lives.)

If our bodies got sick everytime they were exposed to new bacteria and viruses, we would never be well. The truth is that we are not discrete organisms whose bodies malfunction when they are infiltrated by microscopic creatures. Our bodies are more akin to ecosystem made up of many kinds of cells many kinds of cells, some of which can't survive on their own and some of which function independently but symbioticly. We maintain health by maintaining that ecological balance.

But that balance itself is disrupted by physical and emotional stresses. The body responds to all stresses as though they were threats to its survival, gearing up for a "fight or flight" response -- and preparing its immune system to respond to the need to prevent possible wounds from becoming infected. When the body is kicked into that kind of response over and over again, the immune system becomes burned out and depleted. That increases the chances that bacteria or viruses will begin go reproduce out of control in the most vulnerable parts of the body.

This is why pandemics tend to strike in times of collective trauma -- trauma leaves people in a vulnerable state. The flu of 1918 took its greatest toll on a generation that had either fought in World War I or watched sisters and brothers and lovers come home injured, "shell-shocked," or dead. The current flu emerged in a country plagued by extreme poverty, violent repression, and the disintegration of families and communities due to mass migration and spread from there into a country plagued by layoffs, foreclosure, and economic collapse. Its no mistake that one of the first Mexican states to report deaths from this flu was Oaxaca, a state where the government brutally put down a popular uprising two years ago.

Collective panic about a pandemic contributes to the existing stresses people are under, increasing the likelihood of its spread. As herbalists, the best thing we can do is help to put people's fears in realistic perspective and then help them to take control of their own health by taking sensible preventive measures like washing with vinegar, feeding their immune systems with healthy foods, and working with herbs that will support the immune system without stimulating it like astragalus and usnea and herbs that help to regulate stress responses and immune responses like ashwagandha and eleuthero while avoiding herbs like echinacea that can overstimulate the immune system.

We can also share the knowledge that if the epidemic does spread, the plants that will cure the disease will become more abundant and more apparent as well. Much as we try to seperate ourselves, we are part of the ecosystems around us, and what we exhale and excrete prompts plants to produce chemicals to balance out our chemistries -- there is a natural feedback loop that allows the system to maintain homeostasis. "Invasive" species like purple loosestrife and Japanese knotweed show great promise in providing medicine for viral pandemics as do the sumac the sumac that grows in places where fields are slowly beginning the long process of becoming forests again and the sweetfern that grows in disrupted areas. [Thanks to Tommy Priester and Madelon Hope for much of this information.]

We are children of a generous universe, living on a planet generous enough to offer us medicine to heal the diseases that result from the violence we do to Her and to each other if we will open our hearts to the information Her plant children offer us. The way out of the pandemic is to create balance in our bodies, our communities, our ecosystems, and our planet.

Of Rumi, Heartbreak, and Elecampane

2009-04-17T19:42:00.000-07:00

Rumi wrote:

Heartbreak pulls up the roots of old happinesses
So a new ecstasy can stroll in from Beyond.
Heartbreak pulls up all withered, crooked roots
So no root can stay hidden.
Heartbreak may pull many things from the heart
But in return it will lavish kingdoms.

(translated by Andrew Harvey)

Such is the work of Elecampane -- a plant which was used widely in Persian medicine. Maude Grieve wrote in A Modern Herbal that Elecampane "grows well in moist, shady positions." Not surprisingly, Elecampane's roots are excellent medicine for deep, cold, moist, congestive lung conditions -- helping to break up the congestion and draw it up and out as well as soothing damaged lung tissue.

The Malecite's use of Elecampane to cure heartache (cited by Gail Faith Edwards in Opening Our Wild Hearts to the Healing Herbs) points us to the fact that Elecampane can work in the same way on old grief stored deeply in the chest.

Elecampane's roots reach deep to pull grief up and out.

But the plant herself reaches from the cold, wet soil up straight and very tall to blossom in wildhaired yellow glory -- reminding us that the cold, wet grief within us can also be transmuted into something radiantly beautiful.

Rumi writes too that

Until a mother feels the pain of childbirth,
The child can find no way to be born.

Deep enough grief breaks us open, allowing who we are at the core to begin to emerge. Every initiation begins in the breakdown of the old in order to allow the new to be born.

And Elecampane's flower essence is a medicine of this last stage of initiation, helping us claim newfound strength and power and wisdom as our own and bring it out into the world.

And so she brings us out of heartbreak and into the lavish kingdoms we create when we remember our repsonsibility to claim our sovereignty and flower fully.

Skunk Cabbage Dreams -- a work in progress

2009-03-22T22:01:00.000-07:00

(U.S. Forest Service photo)

It began last April with a dream. In my waking life, my lungs had been congested and my neck and shoulder were sore. Before bed, I sat at my altar and burned sage and asked for a plant ally to reveal itself to me while I slept.

In the dream, Jason sat across from me in the grass on my parent's front lawn, and as we talked he told me he was having trouble breathing too. He remembered a great aunt, a Narraganset woman, who had used Skunk Cabbage as medicine.

We began drumming and singing and walked into the swamp behind the house. We came on a giant, glowing skunk cabbage plant who told us to dig up his roots and make a tincture to help our lungs and to take his leaves and make a poultice of his leaves to relieve muscle pain.

A friend confirmed that Skunk Cabbage was a medicine that could be used in those ways, but told me that by April the plant was too full of calcium oxylate for the roots to be used safely. So it would be almost a full year before the plant would begin teaching me directly . . . .

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Skunk Cabbage is not a plant for the faint of heart. The leaves and flowers smell like a skunk when bruised -- perfume for those who like their pheremones strong, unbearable odor to those who prefer subtle scents. The roots need to be harvested in early spring, best dug when the flowers are still green and have yet to bloom.

A trickster, Skunk Cabbage lures you out into the swamp, ankle deep in barely melted water in places where the mud has thawed just enough to suck your feet down. The roots are notoriously hard to harvest A U.S. Forest Service website says:

Skunk Cabbage is a perennial herb that has contractile roots that contract growing down into the soil. These roots pull the stems of Skunk Cabbage deeper into the wet mucky substrates found in wet forests, swamps and along streams. Eventually the entire stem is below surface level. After several years of being pulled further into the soil it is nearly impossible to dig up.

But Symplocarpus foetidus also has a way of setting roots deep in the imagination. So when winter began to subside I let it be known that I was determined to harvest Skunk Cabbage roots this year.

My mother called me in mid-March to tell me that she had seen the first Skunk Cabbage coming up in the swamp I had visited in my dream. By the time I got there, a few days later, the flowers of the plants she had found at the edge of the woods were purple and blooming. Thinking that I had come too late, I thought about going home, but I decided to offer some tobacco to the flower and offer prayers in hopes that maybe skunk cabbage would reveal his secrets next year.

The first surprise came when I realized that the plant that had seemed so masculine in my dream was speaking to my heart in a feminine voice. She told me to go deeper into the swamp. So I walked out as far as I could, following a trail of strange purple flowers.

I came to the edge of a shallow pool, and looked up and saw two deer standing directly across the water. We watched each other for 10 minutes, and when they slowly began to walk away I followed them until I stumbled on a green skunk cabbage flower sprouting up out of the water. Wading in up to my ankles, I dug very carefully around the plant, and then reached down into the mud, cradling the plant in my hands, and pulling up slowly. To my surprise, the plant yielded itself to me. I shook loose the dirt, put it in my bag, and followed a stream flowing from the pool to find three more young plants willing to give themselves for medicine.

____________________________________________________________

The Skunk Cabbage rhizome is thick and woody. The roots are tough and snakelike, pulling themselves deep into the mud. They are also powerfully thermogenic, thawing the ground around them.

Their medicine works in a similar way. The form of the roots suggests the bronchii (and the form of the round spiky green fruit suggets the alveolii -- though the fruit itself is not used medicinally). The medicine works its way deep into the lungs, bringing up mucous. The anti-spasmodic action of the plant's medicine simultaneously eases the violence of the coughing generated by the plant's expectorant properties. It works best in combination with other herbs -- elecampane suggests herself to me as a plant whose medicine complements Skunk Cabbage nicely.

As a diaphoretic, Skunk Cabbage helps to open the pores, relieving the heat of early fever -- just as heat rises outward from the plants' roots into the soil.

The shape of the flower suggests an inverted uterus hinting at the use of the roots in childbirth -- used to ease contractions. Interestingly, the Makah of the Pacific Northwest chewed on the roots of the distantly related Western Skunk Cabbage (Lysichiton americanus) to induce abortion early in a pregnancy, and the Quileute used the juice of the pounded and boiled root to ease labor. (Erna Gunther and Jeanne R. Janish. Ethnobotany of Washington. University of Washington Press, 1973,) My intuition tells me that Symplocarpus foetidus may also have abortifacient properties in early pregnancy, but that those secrets are likely to reveal themselves to an herbalist only after many years of working with the plant.

_________________________________

Skunk cabbage has strange and powerful medicine on a magical level as well.

The plant's energies alternate between being intensely masculine and intensely feminine -- and sometimes the plant seems to hold both energies at once. With fire rising from its body, roots deep in earth and water, and flowers and leaves giving off their musky scent, Skunk Cabbage combines the four elements of western magical traditions.

With its paradoxical nature and its dwelling place at a boundary between worlds, Skunk Cabbage as a natural ally for shamans and midwives.

The flower whispers strange names to me -- "The Faerie Shoe" that allows one bestowed with the plant's blessing to join in the dancing of the Sidhe without wearing through the soles of the dancer's feet. "Mystery Flower" -- dark and smooth inside, reaching down into moist, fertile darkness -- allowing us to hold a connection to the place from which life emerged while remaining present to the world into which it was born.

Its shape also suggests the form of the pineal gland, frequently associated with the third eye. The pineal gland produces melatonin which, among other things, helps us to dream. There is a resonance here with the slight narcotic quality of the medicine of the root. Dr. Rick Strassman has theorized that at birth, at death, and at moments of extreme pleasure or pain the pineal glands also produces dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a powerful psychedellic/entheogenic compound also present in many plants (most famously in the ayahuasca vine) that seems to facilitate the spirit's journey into and out of the body. If the shape of the Skunk Cabbage flower is in fact a signature revealing the plant's affinity for the pineal gland this suggests that at a magical level, and perhaps as a flower essence, Skunk Cabbage may help to ease the transition of shamanic practitioners as they move back and forth between worlds.

The contractile roots pull skunk cabbage deeper and deeper into my consciousness -- their heat burning new pathways for mind and spirit to explore.

Mental reservations

2009-01-19T20:34:00.000-08:00

Commenting on the oath of office this morning, a friend wrote that "having' mental
reservations' would actually be a sign of wisdom." I don't claim wisdom, at least
not on behalf of the part of me that speaks in words, but I want to speak my own
mental reservations: I want to believe in Barack Obama. The significance and
power of a nation whose wealth was built through the enslavement of people
kidnapped from Africa electing the son of a Kenyan to be President is not lost
on me. Nor is the reality that the margin of difference between the policies
promised by the new administration and those enacted by the last is a margin that
represents life or death for millions. And who could not be moved by Rev. Joseph
Lowery speaking the benediction that evokes a god older and more loving and
more real than the God of bondage evoked by Rev. Rick Warren?

But there are truths that burn so hot that the veils that once covered them can never
be repaired. And they keep me from celebrating wholeheartedly.

Barack Obama intends to keep 50,000 -- 80,000 troops on the ground in Iraq
indefinitely. And he plans to escalate the war in Afghanistan.

Those wars and the dozen proxy wars our taxes will continue to fund are waged to
ensure the continuation of the mindless growth demanded by the system we live
under -- the growth that Edward Abbey called "the ideology of a cancer cell," the
growth that consumes forests and mountains and deserts and lives and whole
nations and whole species.I don't doubt that President Obama wants to reduce
the damage done, to render the system a little bit less brutal. And again, any
diminishment of brutality means less suffering .

But at the same time, the commitment to continuing that brutality means an
acceptanceof more "collateral damage." President Obama said "we will not
apologize for our wayof life or waver in its defense." But only when we do finally
apologize for the wayin which we have been living at the world's expense
(including apologizing to ourselves for the ways in which we have cut ourselves
off from the living Earth) can we "put aside childish things" and learn to live in a just
and sustainable way .In this country we tend to ignore the fact that systems have a
reality and mind of their own, and that they always operate to ensure their own
survival. In pledging himself to the idea of America, President Obama
surrendered a part of his own will to the systems of control that bind themselves
together under that name.

But a witch bows to no one. And I will not offer my own allegiance to that system.
I offer my love and support to a man named Barack Obama wrestling to hold
onto his humanity in a situation where great powers conspire to rob him of it.
But I have no loyalty to President Barack Obama as he undertakes the work
of attempting to guide and steer violent systems of control. My own allegiances
are to mysel(ves/f), the truth, and the living universe.Those loyalties may brand me
as an outsider -- but such has always been the way of the poet and the shaman .
Like Tomas the Rhymer I will kiss the lips of the Queen of F(a)eri(e) and be
transformed, given the gift of a tongue that will not lie that makes it impossible
to ever again be at home in a world woven from the enchantment of falsehoods
repeated so often that we no longer hear the din or imagine the possibility that the
imagination can stray outside the bounds set by that wall of noise. The tongue
that speaks the truth cuts a hole in that wall, revealing a road that leads into the
sweet, fierce ,loving wildness of the heart. I am setting out along that path.

Poetic fragments in progress

2009-01-02T13:02:00.000-08:00

Maybe its the Scorpio rising
that makes the smell of
sex and death cling to my skin
when I slip between worlds,

reminding you of when
I let my godself rain down
where apples rotted
back into rich dark soil

watering seeds
broken open by the heat
of burning cities
and melting concrete.

Your body never quite sure
what to do with the feeling stirred
when you catch my scent on the wind,

never sure what to do with darkness --
the last time you tasted it
it all ended in blood and fire,

but something in you hungers
for the metalic pungence of that blood
and the searing blue
at the center of the flames.

And the crescent moon
you wore around your neck
was born from blackness
to which it cycles back,

but not before it shines
in silver fullness,

moving the waters in me
and calling down the rain.

This is the year . . .

2009-01-01T18:20:00.000-08:00

"If every rebellion begins with the idea
that conquerors on horseback
are not many-legged gods, that they too drown
if plunged in the river,
then this is the year."

-- Martin Espada, Imagine the Angels of Bread

This is the year we were born to live in.

This is the year when we begin to live as who we are, who we always have been at the core, who we were born to be.

The year we have prepared for all our lives.

After so many lifetimes of believing that the path of liberation lay in going up and out of our bodies, up and out of the world, this is the year we finally begin to come fully into our bodies, to know that their skin and bone and muscle and blood and nerve and flesh are the instruments through which our highest aspirations can be realized,

that the pleasures of our senses feed a bright and fierce fire that rises within us

and that this time instead of burning ourselves at the stake we can set that fire loose in the world,

burning away the illusions that have made people believe that there is no alternative to a life based on the brutalizing assumptions of scarcity, danger, and fear,

already we are watching the fire start to burn away the screens onto which those illusions have been projected as markets crash and an empire comes up against the limitations of its power to subdue the rest of the world through the threat or reality of starvation or bombardment.

Yes, the suffering around us is real. And yes, those still caught in fear lash out in terrifying ways as they falsely believe the fire has come to burn them instead of free them.

But at the same time billions are realizing they no longer have to surrender their wills to the disembodied spirit behind the burning curtain.

And the fire melts the pavement and the ash covers our feet and we take root again in the soil and draw up water from the Earth

and rain it back down to feed the seeds that have waited 500 years to be called back to life.

This is the year when we know for certain that those seeds will give rise to flowers and fruit again.

Rejoice!

Burning the robes

2008-11-07T10:21:00.000-08:00

For most of my life, I have feared my own power and my own desires.

I have tried to suppress and deny and cloak them.

At a deep level, I have embraced the archetype of the priest in an attempt to contain them. I have worn that identity for so long that I began to mistake it for a second skin.

I sought an ideal of purity. I sought to lock my own desires away deep inside me, believing that I did not deserve to be loved completely and that there were parts of me that needed to be purified or burned away before I could show all of myself to anyone. At the same time I was afraid that allowing my core to be touched was a threat to my purity. Purity was my vestment.

The robe served to cloak my nakedness, to keep everyone from seeing the primal, virile, wild self that existed at my core, for fear that it might threaten or frighten or repulse people who came close to me. I did not believe that part of me could be loved or desired.

The robe also serves to shield me from the world, to keep out the air and sun and water that might feed that primal self while I tried to suffocate it out of existence.

Wearing that robe, I invited an intimacy that flowed in one direction. Come to me, show me all of who you are, and I will love you without judgement, I will support you through everything, I will take your pain as my own, I will pleasure you without expectation of return. But I will remain cloaked in my robe, hidden from you.

Sometimes, when I trusted a lover enough, I would shed that robe -- but the expectations and terms and dynamics of the relationship were already in place, and often those lovers would be confused or frightened when that all suddenly changed. And those experiences reinforced for me the idea that deep inside I was monstrous and hideous.

A very few saw through the robe from the beginning -- but convinced that if they saw deeply enough they would find something dark inside me I pushed them away.

It has taken me a long time to look deeply enough in myself to see all that I tried to conceal.

I see now that my wildness and strength are beautiful, just like the wildness and strength of the women who stir my desire.

I see now that in refusing to be seen and desired I have denied those who have tried to come close to me the very experiences I sought from them -- the pleasure of giving pleasure, the pleasure of feeling love and lust, the pleasure of touching deeply.

I see now that my wildness is at the core of my heart, that it is the wild part of me that is in love with the world and seeks to defend it, and that to tear out my wildness would be to tear out the beating heart that pumps my lifeblood.

Yes, I live in a culture that fears love, that fears strength, that fears wildness, that fears anything it cannot control.

But any fear our aggression I might trigger and inspire is far less a threat to my survival than my own attempts to sabotage myself.

I am throwing my robes on the fire.

And letting the rising flame illuminate me, revealing me in my nakedness.