Announcing a Free 60 Page Long Edition of

The Traditions In Western Herbalism Newsletter

To Get Yours, Just Sign Up By May 27th

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This mega-long issue of the newsletter features:

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•Katja Swift reviewing last year’s TWH conference, and contributing an article packed with important tips for parents planning to bring children

•An exclusive interview with Big Daddy D, blues rock frontman for TWHC’s blues-rock band

• United Plant Savers and TWHC by UpS Director Susan Leopold

•Virginia Adi Reviews The Medicine Bear, and a Plant Healer Sneak Peak

•Complimentary excerpt from the upcoming Plant Healer interview with AHG Vice President Bevin Clare

•Complete 2012 TWHC Class Descriptions, including Kid’s Classes

and

•Announcements & details on discounts, conference books, class notes and more

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You must be a subscriber as of no later than the 27th of May,

in order to receive this issue of the Newsletter mailing out on the 28th.

For a Free Subscription, simply fill in your email address in the box provided

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(RePost and Forward Please)

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Here’s Your Sneak Peek at The
Summer Issue of
PLANT HEALER
The Magazine Different
Available for Download June 4th

Excitement abounds!  We are just this week completing production of the 7th edition of Plant Healer Magazine, the nearly 300 page long Summer issue available for download on the 4th of June.

As always, Plant Healer will bring to you a broad range of articles, photography and art covering every aspect of herbal practice and the diverse culture of folk herbalism, this time including:
•A half dozen plant profiles, case study, therapeutics and herbal actions by our awesome Plant Healer writers
•A new “Herbalism on the American Frontier” Department, beginning with an introduction to Traveling Medicine Show sellers by Sean Donahue
•Essential Plant identification with 7Song… plus a lengthy interview with Bevin Clare, revealing the thoughts and spirit of this tree-hugging vice president of the AHG as never before!
•An excellent introduction to Bioregional Herbalism by Lisa Ferguson, and important piece on plant conservation by United Plant Savers director Susan Leopold
•Herbs of the curandera, Susun Weed on Sweet and Bland, Greek Herbal Medicine by Matt Wood, and Phyllis Light’s Four Elements system
•23 full page art posters, herbalist humor, and Kristine Brown and Jane Valencia’s articles for kids
plus
•A full color photo spread of herbalist tattoo art, Aviva Romm on the use of cannabis in pregnancy, and the Virgin of Guadalupe as a powerful historic icon for rebels and misfits as well as for all herbalists and healers!

Now we ‘spect you know where the “different” comes from, in our motto “The Magazine Different”

To whet your appetites, a complete table of contents follows.  To subscribe in time for the Summer issue, please go to the:
Plant Healer Magazine Website

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PLANT HEALER
Vol.II #III – Summer 2012 Issue Contents:

Cover Art: The Summer Garden (photoshop composite)
Art Poster: The Door To Our Purpose by JWH
Art Poster: Folk Herbalism Defined – “Airmid” by Joanna Powell Colbert
Art Poster: Earth Provides The Medicine – “Traditional Healer” by David Gluckstein & JWH
The Healing Journey: What Herbalists Really Want by Jesse Wolf Hardin

Poster: Herbal Rebel Family – Paul Bergner and Tania with their New Baby
Happy & Full of Happiness!: A Review of The 2011 TWHC by Katja Swift
Art Poster: “Time Keepers” by Thea Summer Deer
Mountain Medicine: Four Elements by Phyllis Light

Art Poster: Czech Flower Girl – 1906 Postcard
Wise Woman Ways: Sweet & Bland: Part II by Susun Weed
Poster: Traditional Herbalist Wisdom Part I – If They Can’t Take a Yoik by JWH
Differentiating Herbal Actions & Properties by Jim McDonald
Art Poster: “The Green Man II” by JWH

Detecting False Heat by Rosalee de la Forêt
Herbalist Humor Poster: “Feelin’ Awful Pitta” by JWH
Case Study: Herbal Therapeutics for Post-Surgery ACL Recovery by Kiva Rose Hardin
Art Poster: Unfolding Spiral by JWH
Walking The Spiral by Jesse Wolf Hardin
Art Poster: Growth Is A Spiral Process by JWH

Mullein by Robin Rose Bennett
Burdock by Henriette Kress
Ocotillo by Darcey Blue French

Coffee by Charles “Doc” Garcia
Art Poster: Mullein Harvesting Woman by Sandra Crowell
Learning To Identify Plants – Part I by 7Song
Art Poster: 1880s Peruna Herbal Tonic Advertisement
Medicine Oils and Salves by Christa Sinadinos
Traveling Medicine Shows of Rural America and Early Regulation of Medicine by Sean Donahue
Basic Principles of Greek Herbal Medicine: The Four Qualities & The Four Degrees by Matthew Wood

La Virgen de Guadalupe by Kiva Rose Hardin
Los Remidios de la Guadalupe by Kiva Rose
La Curandera de Auza by Dr. Javier Alvare Caperochipi
Art Poster: “La Nuestra de la Yerbas” by JWH
Art Poster:    “Doña Rosa” by JWH
Art Poster: “Curandera” by Ochichi

Tattoo Bloom: Skin Art for Herbalists by Jesse Wolf Hardin
Art Poster: “Conception” by Thea Summer Deer
Cannabis in Pregnancy by Aviva Romm
Art Humor Poster: Unhelpful Herbalist Language #1 by JWH
Refreshing Mint (for kids) by Kristine Brown
Hawthorn’s Generous & Protective Heart (for kids) by Jane Valencia
Paloma & Wings (for kids) by Jane Valencia
Wildcrafting Cattails by Wendy Petty

Edible Bitternut by Samuel Thayer
Art Poster: “Gaia” by Holly Sierra
Piles of Greens (food recipes) by Loba
Art Poster: Cultivating A Culture of Healing by JWH
Growing Adaptogens: Gotu Kola and Jiaogulan by Juliet Blankespoor
Art Poster: The Green Scare by Anon
Sacred Groves: Activism & The Conservation of Plants by Susan Leopold
Herbal Humor Poster: 12 Steppe Program by JWH
Plant Healer Interview: Bevin Clare
Bioregional Herbalism: Ecological Relationship & Place-Based Practice by Lisa Ferguson
Healing Animals Heals Us & The Earth by Cat Lane

Photo copyright Henriette Kress http://www.henriettesherbal.com/index.html

Self Care, Part II: Decadence by Katja Swift
Magical Realism: Medicine Bear Review #1 by Charles “Doc” Garcia
A Jewell of a Story: Medicine Bear Review #II by Virginia Adi
The Medicine Bear (fiction for herbalists) Part III by Jesse Wolf Hardin
Art Poster: Ringtail Woman by Rebekah Klitzke
The Medicine Trail: Wild Rambles, Tales & Wanderings by Kiva Rose Hardin
Art Poster: “Keeping An Eye On Folk Herbalism” – 1915 Postcard

The deadline for article submissions for the Fall issue is July 1st.  And August 1st is the deadline to advertise in either the Fall issue or the upcoming 2012 Plant Healer Annual book.  Write for more information.

Thank you for RePosting and Forwarding this Announcement.

Love, Kiva ‘Ringtail” Rose

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Without Remedy: An Exploration of Scent, Plants, and Perfumery

Excerpted from the now available Spring 2012 Issue of

Plant Healer Magazine

by Kiva Rose Hardin

“Odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions, or will. The persuasive power of an odor cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs, it fills us up, imbues us totally. There is no remedy for it.”

- Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Scent, above all else, distinguishes. One lover from another, grass from tree, cream from honey, cardamom pod from vanilla bean, our child from all others. In the complex array of notes and tints of the aromas we’re daily immersed in, the unique nature of each person and place can be discerned just by breathing in. Each day I inhale the distinct maple and cinnamon notes of our daughter’s skin, the butterscotch and vanilla of the Ponderosa Pine forest that I live within, the sage and spice of the winds that travel the Gila. Each of these is unique to the rest of the world. No one else’s child smells like ours, no other mountains taste this way on my tongue as I exhale.

Smell is incredibly complex. For example, a single rose emits about 172 different odor molecules   and has a physiological impact on the human nervous system similar to Valium in its relaxing actions, and Gardenia jasminoides has a similar effect. For those who’ve had experience in aromatherapy or herbalism, this will come as no surprise, and probably elicit eye rolling at science’s somewhat belated attempts to catch up with what traditional medicine and the human senses have known for millennia.

While conventional medicine has, for the most part, removed itself from the realm of the senses, herbalism remains a healing art entirely interwoven with sensory knowledge even as we integrate more modern scientific ways of understanding illness, medicine, and the human whole.  One of the elements of herbalism I have invested the most time and energy in passing on, is herbal energetics. Energetics rely innately on sensory observation and interpretation of patterns and physical phenomena, both our own and those of the folks we’re working with.

The taste of a plant tells us an enormous amount of information about how it will interact with the body. Our sense of smell is also incredibly important in interacting with our medicines, not only in perceiving what actions the herb may have, but also in our personal connection with the ally. Scent evokes memory more intensely, insistently, and urgently than any other sense. What we learn or experience is forever tied to the scents of that time and place. Taste and scent tie us to a plant ally on a level so deeply imbedded in us, that it would not be amiss to term it cellular.

The human brain is also capable of what’s called predictive coding, which means that by the time you actually breathe in a potentially familiar scent, you brain has predicted what it’s most likely to smell. This can helpful when it comes to discerning spoiled food from good, or telling one flower from another, but if we’re not careful it can also allow us to slip into olfactory laziness where we forget to actually smell things because we’ve convinced ourselves that we have it already stored in our brains.

In addition to reminding ourselves of the true complexity of scent, practice will refine and expand our sense of smell. Another aspect of this practice takes us beyond simply being able to smell something, to what is called olfactory memory. This allows the skilled and sensitive nose to not only fully smell a scent but also to match it to its source or find its similarities to other smells. Strangely enough, this is not necessarily an inherent ability and even those with a developed sense of smell are unable to match an odor with its origin without a visual or other sensory cue.

Conversely, olfactory memory can be one of the strongest triggers for memory, for good or for ill, possible for the human mind. The signature perfume of a former lover, the scent of a beloved grandmother’s skin, the odor of spiced food from a lost homeland, the distinct wine richness and iron weighted smell of blood, the inhale of a wildflower-tinted breeze specific to a certain meadow, all of these can evoke intense pleasure or ravaging grief in the most stoic of us. Fragrance is a portal into our most primal selves, unlocking doors long barred and sealed with a single, poignant breath.

Some scientists say that intolerance to certain smells, usually chemical, is a sign of the sensitive individual’s lack of ability to adapt to new smells, but I have a problem with the idea that all smells should be adapted to as if safe or acceptable.  Some we should certainly be noticing and then removing ourselves from the effects of.  People who are chemical intolerant often have great difficulty in being near strong scents, primarily synthetic, such as perfumes, cleaning products, and room fresheners. The consequence of continued exposure for these people can range from sneezing fits to debilitating headaches to nausea and vomiting.

Referring to a dissertation by Linus Andersson this subject, Science Daily summarized:

“Sensitivity to smell impacts the entire body…. People who cough more when they inhale capsaicin, the hot compound in chili peppers, also have heightened reactions in the brain to other smells. Besides the fact that intolerant individuals perceive that smells grow stronger, effects are also seen in mucous linings and in the brain.”

Some of us are better than others at tuning out what we find unpleasant or unacceptable, or even elements we like, once we’ve become accustomed to them. Whether this tuning out of sensory input is a way of adapting to potentially overwhelming stimuli, or sensory numbness probably somewhat depends on the situation and level of shutdown. The normal mucus in our nasal passages act as a conductor to scent, and being in a somewhat humid and warm environment will also enhance our ability to smell things in a more complex and detailed way, whereas cold or dry conditions can make it more difficult to pick out subtle or faint scents. Humans have a comparatively weak sense of smell in relation to many other animals, and especially compared to most top tier predators. Nevertheless, what we do smell effects us intensely and intimately, touching the primitive reptile brain with a fierce kiss that invokes passion, rage, fear, and wonder in a way that little else can match.

Food of Gods, Seduction of Men: Botanical Scent in Adornment, Ritual, and Devotion

Asmodeus, god of lechery, enlists fragrance as his assistant, filling the night with lethal honeysuckle, unfailing acacia, wanton lime-blossom, to ravage hearts that remember and shatter ones that resist.

-Colette, Fragrance

Perfumery is an ancient art, and one that is intimately entwined with medicine, magic, seduction and religion. It has been revered, outlawed, and obsessed over by turn, depending on the cultural context of the time and place. We may first think of France when hear the word perfume, and certainly our perfumes even now are based in classical French methods. Nevertheless, the origins and reach of perfume are far older and broader.

One of the first known perfumers was a woman name Tapputi in ancient Mesopotamia, two thousand years before the birth of Christ, but the art of perfumery seems to have its roots in ancient Egypt, with records referring to perfume going back at least 3,000 B.C. Perfume as we think of it now only arrived in Europe in the 14th century, it’s popularity most concentrated in Hungary before spreading to Italy, and finally France in the 16th century.

Despite the elaborate and complicated history of perfume as precious and rare substances, new fragrances now seem to be released on the market every time a commercial flashes on the TV screen. These new perfumes are often represented by a scantily clad, surgically enhanced pop star and given the fact that they frequently smell like nothing so much as bubblegum, suntan lotion, and public restrooms, it’s not surprising that we often forget what an art fragrance creation truly can be. On the other hand, perfumery has also long been at least much about covering up what we don’t want others to smell as much as enhancing or creating a scent we want to impart. In Renaissance Europe, perfumes were tools of the privileged to mask the scent of unwashed bodies and the open sewers that ran through the cities, and were applied not just to skin, but to every surface that would hold scent.

I have very mixed feelings about the sustainability and ethics of large scale essential oil production, given the enormous amount of plant matter needed for even minute amounts of these precious substances, even from companies who claim sustainability. Nevertheless, there’s no denying the absolute pleasure of both creating and wearing botanical perfumes. Many complain about the short livedness of these fragrances, generally lasting from two to eight hours (depending on the person’s individual skin chemistry and the plant essences involved), and yet I much prefer the short-lived but lush authenticity of an entirely botanical scent  over the clinging longevity of chemicals that carry nothing of the wild spirit of the flowers, leaves, roots and resins that I consider the embodiment of true perfume.

Subjective as scent is, there are certain ones that have widespread appeal, not least the heady blossoms of Jasmine, and the dark richness and wild honey of Roses that make up the heart notes of the world’s most well known and loved perfumes. Deeper are the base notes, tenacious in nature and lacking the quicksilver volatility of top notes. From the butter-sweetness of Sandalwood to the forest berried notes of Spruce, Pine, and Fir absolutes. Perfume is an entanglement, an evolving seduction as layer after layer of scents evaporate on warm skin, blooming not on top of human flesh but in conjunction with our own unique aromas.

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To read the entire article, subscribe or resubscribe now to: www.PlantHealerMagazine.com

Conference Book and Class Notes
Extensive PDF from last year’s
2011 Traditions In Western Herbalism Conference

Last month we surprisingly ran across a single box of the 178 page-long 2011 TWH Conference Books, complete with extensive class notes with detailed information on a wide variety of subjects.  Since the moment last copy was sold and sent out, we’ve been getting so many letters asking for them that we’ve decided to format a full color PDF version that you can now download

$18

After you pay, we’ll send you a link to download your copy of the pdf book.

.
Class Notes Included:

1. 7 Song: The Art of Formulation
2. Robin Rose Bennett: My Ally, The Elder
3. Robin Rose Bennett: Women’s Self Care For Sexual and Reproductive Health
4. Paul Bergner: How To Become A Master Herbalist In 30 Years Or More
5. Paul Bergner: Herbs For The Spiritual Heart
6. Juliet Blankespoor: Growing At Risk Medicinal Plants
7. Juliet Blankespoor: Phytoestrogens Demystified
8. Howie Brounstein and Kristi Reese: Understanding and Treating Adrenalin Stress
9. Kristine Brown: How To Teach Kids To Use Herbs
10. Larken Bunce: The 5 Phases
11. Bevin Clare: Intake, Interview & Assessment
12. Rosalee de la Foret: Detecting False Heat
13. Sean Donahue: Plants For The Underworld Journey
14. Sean Donahue: Herbs For Asthma
15. Ryan Drum: Rural Pathology, Rural Herbs
16. Ryan Drum: Seaweed Solutions
17. Margi Flint: Living With Cancer
18. Lisa Ganora: Traditional Cannabis Medicines
19. Lisa Ganora: Herbal Constituents
20. Charles “Doc” Garcis: California Curanderismo
21. Charles “Doc” Garcia: Guerrilla Herbalism
22. Jesse Wolf Hardin: The Wild Herbalist
23. Kiva Rose Hardin: The Medicine Woman’s Roots
24. Phyllis Hogan: The 4th Sister Was Wild
25. Kathleen Maier: Entheogens and The Dying Process
26. Jim McDonald: Humoural Treatments
27. Jim McDonald: Teaching Herbcraft
28. CoreyPine Shane: Getting Specific With Pain
29. Christa Sinadinos: Constitutional Treatment of The Digestive System
30. Katja Swift: Plantain For Kids

(please re-post and share)

Thank you much,

Kiva Rose

Kiva Rose by Jesse Wolf Hardin

I like to periodically share offerings from other herbalists here and I couldn’t resist passing on the info for this free webinar being given by midwife, herbalist, doctor, Plant Healer columnist, and TWHC teacher, Aviva Romm. This 90 minute presentation will discuss first aid for summer, focusing on herbal treatments for the most common summer issues like bug bites, sunburn, and poison ivy. Aviva will also be covering how to build a first aid kit for your family and ways of getting the kids involved with the plants! The webinar is this coming Thursday, May 3rd, 8:30 pm Eastern time. Be sure to sign up beforehand, right here:

Outdoor Kids: Herbal First Aid for Summer

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
– Albert Einstein

Most of my readers realize by now what a love of fairytales and folklore I have. This affection is not born simply out of how I find  beautiful and interesting they are, but also because they’ve taught me so much. I struggled with rote memorization when I was in school, and found that the only way I could actually recall much of what I was supposed to be learning was by telling myself stories that included the information. Woven into the context of a tale of faery creatures, wild landscapes, and relatable characters, everything suddenly became so much more memorable and accessible.

Twenty years later, I’ve seen my daughter struggle with the same issue. Memorization and regurgitation is a poor substitute for the depth, color, and insight that can be provided by learning through story. Dates, places, and timelines slip in one ear and out the other, but if woven into an exciting tale, she’ll be retelling it for months. And as much as she loves plants, the same principle applies. Lists of actions or factual soundbites just don’t penetrate much, but tell her a story about where the plant came, how it grows, or how it helps someone, and suddenly it’s so much easier for her to understand and remember. Taught hand in hand with real life experience with the plants results in a profound understanding of and relationship with the plants!

Of course, this doesn’t just apply Rhiannon and I, but to what is probably the great majority of people. I certainly find it true for most of my students, that teaching stories are far more effective than information without context. The more I teach little ones, the more I understand how all of us learn, especially in connection with the natural world. Traditional cultures have known this all along, and usually see formal schooling as a poor substitute for how children learn and develop ~in context~ with their world. It is through stories (plus handson experience) that we learn about relationships, roles, and our place in our community.

In the past few years, I’ve been enormously excited to see more and more herbal material for children emerging online and in print! It’s been exciting to follow the work of Kristine Brown with her Herbal Roots Zine, which involves children in herbalism on many levels, from games to medicine making to stories to artwork, bringing kids into alliance with the plants.

And today, a wonderful new resource for children who want to learn about herbs has been unveiled! Kimberly and John Gallagher are parents, teachers, and herbalists who place a huge emphasis on accessible learning rooted in the natural world, and especially herbs. Kimberly has poured her heart into this new project, a series of 13 interactive fairy tale stories to help children learn about herbs! I’m so excited to see this material released and can’t wait to share it with many of my friends who are also parents and/or teachers of young ones. And of course, this is also a great introduction to the world of herbs for adults who learn through story as well. You can learn all about it at:

Herb Fairies

Plant Healer is 280 color pages of herbal and foraging information, art and humor.  For more information or to advertise or subscribe, go to:

www.PlantHealerMagazine.com

….

(repost and forward freely)

Cacomixtle: A Chimera’s Story of Transformation, Rebirth, and Becoming Whole

Part II

(if you missed Part I, you can read it here)

Elemental: A Remembering

“Tears have a purpose. They are what we carry of the ocean, and perhaps we must become the sea, give ourselves to it, if we are to be transformed.”
-Linda Hogan, Solar Storms

When I found my way to my wild canyon home nearly a decade ago, I felt wounded beyond repair. Exhausted from the weight of my pain, my body essentially shut down, and I spent years learning to work with the local plants to heal to the point where I could even digest food again.  Yet sick as I was, I felt secure for the first time in my life, safe from unwanted hands or the urge to medicate myself beyond self-recognition. And I slept soundly for the first time in over 12 years, as well, no longer waking in a silent start to protect myself from real or imagined threats. In the arms of newfound family, in the wild place my spirit craved, I found myself unpeeling the many layers of my masks, tentatively wondering if it might be safe to start showing bits of real self.

Then came the bear! During a several day and night long quest in the mountains, soon after my arrival in the canyon, I had an unnerving and vivid vision of a grizzly walking across the precipice in front of me, stopping, then turning to look at me before moving on. This is one part of the origin of my blog address/business name of Bear Medicine Herbals, and I came to know the bear as a role model and ally. Its fierceness gave me a previously unknown sense of feeling protected, while the bear’s affinity with the healing plants afforded me guidance.

Later, while working with my partner Wolf on our 5-element Anima Medicine Wheel, I began to understand the underlying elements and building blocks of how people’s bodies and personalities work, leading to the slow uncovering of my own most genuine, natural tendencies and character, revealing patterns so long buried beneath the artifice acquired for survival. I viewed myself as someone originating in the West, in the element of water, with insight, introspection, enigma, a need for story and propensity for solitude being emblematic of the West’s constitution. I realized I lacked the poise and confidence that often comes with that constitution, yet wrote it off as my being a damaged West person.

But as it turns out, West I am not.

Sacred Datura: Dreaming the Underworld

“Even if you’ve taken off every stitch of clothing, you still have your secrets, your history, your true name. It’s hard to be truly naked. You have to work hard at it. Just getting into a bath isn’t being naked, not really. It’s just showing skin.”
-Catherynne Valente

“The other side of the “sacred” is the sight of your beloved in the underworld, dripping with maggots.”
-Gary Snyder,  The Practice of the Wild

This past Winter found me exhausted, dealing with one minor virus after another, my immune system trashed even while taking the proper amounts of Vitamin D, whole foods, adaptogens, and all the right herbs. A kidney infection provided a good reality check for just how tired my body, spirit, and mind really was. While I was able to clear up the infection with herbs and rest, they didn’t cure my wounds on deeper levels. I could feel that I was reaching a time of transition, but didn’t even have the energy to sort out all the changes I felt occurring within me. But even without specific attention devoted to the process, the shift kept showing up in my dreams in the shape of very specific images. In my dreams I was kneeling on fragrant needles beneath towering Ponderosa Pines, listening to the wind whip across the ridges above me. Just in front of me was an aged grizzly bear skull, sun-bleached until its lacy framework was beginning to show through. Through its empty eye sockets a Sacred Datura plant grew, its lavender and white blossoms in varying states of unfurling as dusk settled over the forest. Under the Datura, fruiting Fly Agaric mushrooms were fruiting in all their fierce red glory. I’ve long had a close relationship with Datura, considering it one of the more archetypal plants connected with death and rebirth. While teaching, I often call it “the phonograph of the underworld” with its trumpet-shaped flowers and propensity for evoking strong emotions and sensations in humans, even without ever ingesting it.

In my dreams, the Datura and Fly Agaric were surreally vivid, their colors glowing against the growing dark of the forest around me. They seemed to be illuminated from somewhere below the ground, and when I peered into an open Datura flower I found myself falling into a flaming void before waking up with my heart pounding and a profound sense of dislocation and urgency. The dream reoccured so often that I asked Wolf to draw it for me in order to somehow be able to get a grasp on imagery in the waking world. Even without much description on my part he managed to replicate it in nearly perfect detail. As soon as I had the drawing in my hands, the dreams disappeared.

It didn’t take a great deal of interpretation to understand that my dream was speaking to me of an imminent death and rebirth. I didn’t know exactly how that would manifest, but I definitely felt an insistent attraction to the plants and symbols that portend and midwife transformation through vision, dreams, and death. Like pulling the Death or the Tower card in a tarot reading, I didn’t exactly view this as a gift. I’ve experienced so many transitions and periods of falling apart in my life that I’ve learned to dread the often painful process. When, instead of everything going to shit around me, I began finding new creative outlets in the creation of sensual botanical perfumes and sacred incense made from local plants, I felt wary. Rebirth usually hurts, and I was enjoying everything enough that I had myself braced for the backlash I was sure would come. I found myself luxuriating in flowery bath salts and other “girly stuff” that I’ve never had much of an affinity for, and spending far more time than usual (which is already a LOT) sniffing and touching everything in the natural world that I found interesting or appealing.

The flip side is that while my already hypersensitive senses were in overdrive, my sensitivity to other people’s energy and presence was also heightened, and I found myself turning down new clients and any other optional encounters with humans. I knew this was in part due to the inner work I was doing, but also something more. It grew to excruciating levels, where I was in tears at the very thought of having to talk to a stranger, and my childhood shyness, so long subdued, had returned with a vengeance. I wanted to curl into a ball with my hands over my head every time I spoke to someone.

This heightened sense of fear had me questioning the most primary parts of my sense of self. I was unable to break out the shell I felt progressively more trapped within, isolated and alienated from my senses even as my senses were demanding recognition. Curled up in a ball on the cabin floor, crying to Wolf about my brokenness, I looked up at him and said “I’m not really who I think I am, am I?” As soon as I was able to just say it, I felt the shell crack around me, as if it had been waiting for just this one admission. In that moment, all my illusions about my identity shattered. Laughing through my tears, it was suddenly easy to look in the mirror and see the curious, feeling creature on the other side and recognize her as an expression of the element fire, someone childlike and playful, deeply caring, and still innocent in ways I’ve tried to hide for my entire life. I now saw myself with the eyes of a Ringtail, stripped of my guarded grizzly artifice, and my fractured self at last made whole… and home.

El Sagrado Corazón: My Heart on Fire

“in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten…”
-Pablo Neruda

Like many breakthroughs, mine didn’t come all at once, in a flash of intuitive brilliance, but arrived in bits and pieces, through the insight and support from Wolf, and from hard-won insights that finally built into a crescendo I couldn’t ignore. Sitting on the floor of our little cabin, all my walls crumbled in on me as I realized just how unlike myself I’ve been for a long, long time. How the masks that had once protected me had become a prison of my own skin, no longer allowing me to grow or shift.

Just as with my relationship to the land, it wasn’t comfort that brought about transformation, but the need to adapt combined with the necessary sense of safety. Snakes tend to become irritable during the molting of their skins, and this has certainly been true of me as well, choosing to step away from most interpersonal communication and public exposure while I dealt with the discomfort and sometimes frightening perspective shifts that accompany rebirth. My old skins dropping away, brittle husks shed in New Mexico’s wild Spring winds. Underneath my skin is still tender and pink with its new exposure to the elements. The bear revealing herself as my protective guardian all these years, rather than being a reflection of my own self.

Dropping the masks has resulted in other changes as well, I find myself dressing more and more in vibrant colors instead of the dark greens and blacks I’ve favored for so many years, suddenly able to opt for expression over camouflage now that I feel more safe in myself. My long-time love for Mexican and Southwest folk art, music, and food has bloomed anew, the burn of the chiles on my tongue, and the flicker of flames around la Virgen de Guadalupe’s sacred heart echoing my own return to fire, the coming home to my original nature and role as a medicine woman filled with the vital spark of life – and with the stories that illuminate even as they heal.

In this newfound core of self, I have also found the true value of my medicine, and my work as a healer. One cannot be a “powerful” Medicine Woman without dropping all the pretense and posturing, stripping back down to our original blessed selves, embracing our true natures, needs and dreams.  Then the role that we assume is no longer something we acquire, add or wear, but who we are.

I am finally learning that my vulnerability, my childish delight in all things up-close and small, my inborn belief in the magic of this world, dreaminess, and insatiable curiosity are all parts of my gift and medicine, rather than simply ways that can get me hurt, or excuses for masks and armor.  I still struggle with letting myself be seen for myself, in words or otherwise, and I expect this to be a process I move through for some time. It’s difficult to share this intimate transformation with so many through this blog, to not cry at the very thought of allowing anyone to read about the parts of me I’ve kept protected for so long.

I have to remind myself over and over that I no longer need to be a tiny sparrow who can disappear into the mountains, or the combative bear, I can be the wild ringtailed girl in the tree that I really am, watching the moon rise, listening to the plants bloom in the canyon’s beautiful dark.

“I hope, in years to come, I shall hold my heart up and it will be a pane of clear glass, through which I see all, but nothing is distorted.”
-Catherynne Valente, The Folded World

Introduction:

Most all of you have a sense of who Kiva is from her emotive and illustrative writings, her personality and perspectives… but she’s not always been all that she seems, nor all that she truly is and can be, and some of us recognized – even before she did – the precious vulnerability and resilient innocence alternately frolicking and hiding beneath her confident Bear-like posture.  From the time she was a hurt young child, she has been trying to both understand and heal her self through the process of writing.  In a way, she has been attempting for over two decades to write the following piece, in her most authentic voice, and now it is done.  And now she is able to be wholly and openly her true self for the very first time!  This two-part post calls upon us neither to pity her for any suffering, nor exalt her for her arduous recovery of her true nature, but to find in her example the inspiration to be as honest in our own self explorations, as courageous about embodying and sharing who we really are, and as determined to fulfill a role that makes use of all the crap and magic, hurt and healing to help others.
-Jesse Wolf Hardin

Cacomixtle:

A Chimera’s Story of Transformation, Rebirth, and Becoming Whole

by Kiva Rose (“Ringtail”!) Hardin

Part I

“I will tell you something about stories. They aren’t just entertainment. They are all we have to fight off illness and death. You don’t have anything if you don’t have stories.”
- Leslie Marmon Silko

In the quiet of late evening, the red spotted toads trill their mating songs by the river while the Poor-Wills pick up the chorus, and several species of Owls call down into the canyon from their treetop perches. Hooves can be heard clattering against the stones as Mule Deer make their way down from the mountains looking for sweeter grass under the waning moon. And in the canopy of Evergreen Oak growing from the canyon wall, a smaller creature may be seen running head-first down a tall tree trunk. On silent paws, she moves through the understory of Cholla cactus and Redroot with her large fox-like ears twitching, taking in the sounds of her home. Up the rock face she leaps, purposefully sniffing out favorite berries and the occasional scorpion for a snack on her way. Once to her favorite spot on the cliff, she spreads herself out on her belly, a long black and white banded tail waving behind her as she rests on the cool stone. With a single wild gooseberry between her white paws, she sings out to the night, plaintive barks interspersed with small chirps that could easily evoke a bird if you didn’t catch site of the little animal that lays on the cliff singing to the crescent moon. Even if you did catch a glimpse, you might still wonder just what she was – perhaps a desert chimera made up of fox, cat, coon, squirrel, and mink.

Desert Chimera: The Medicine of Wholeness

“The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is… a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent…”
-Cormac McCarthy

Nestled high in the arms of a Juniper tree – its shreddy bark warm under my bare feet as I lean back against the branch, gazing out into the canyon’s brilliant azul sky through the blue-green foliage – I feel more at home than almost anywhere else. The red and black basalt of the steep arroyo glitter with inset quartz below me, and I can smell the butterscotch sweet scent of the Ponderosas Pines around me. Errant breezes bring the fragrance of the sacred sage, Estafiate, from the base of the mountains. The occasional blue-bellied lizard scurries past me on the branch, and chipmunks chide me from neighboring trees.

From here, I can watch the sinuous movement of the river in the canyon bottom, and a herd of Rocky Mountain Elk wanders down from the ridges to drink alongside a small band of White-Nosed Coatis that are nosing around near Prickly Pear growing from a stony outcrop. I continue watching them over my shoulder as I shimmy down the tree trunk and run the rock ledge to get a closer look at this gathering of critters by the water. Always, even at my most withdrawn and fearful, my curiosity has overwhelmed all my reservations to bring me closer to whatever holds my interest. While I would have denied it in favor of seeming more detached for many years, my foundational nature has always been defined by my curiosity and love of the close-up. I like nothing better than being a little girl in the top of the tree, examining the colorful lichens and tiny mushrooms growing from the bark.

I’ve known since I first arrived in the canyon that this place, in all its brilliant diversity and ancient beauty, was a huge part of myself and my identity that had been missing before I found my long way home. Arriving here, even with the difficulty and sometimes painful transformation it entailed for me, was a revelation of self-discovery. To realize so much of my spirit was tied to these red rocks, soft silver clay, and sharp-edged obsidian, was to finally see myself in the matrix, the context, I so needed to make any sense of myself.

Even now, when my work leaves me drained, confused, and sometimes hurt, I find my solace and source in the open arms of the land. Not everyone sees these Cholla spines and Lycium thorns as welcoming, but their fierceness and sharp edges have taught me how to better open to the intense and often challenging nature of this place. The opening has been slow for me, incremental steps toward my own tender inner self that I’ve spent most of my life trying to shut down and shut out in order to be less vulnerable. Shutting down in order to avoid being hurt by other people was in itself a questionable success, and also served to shut down my senses in many other ways, denying me intimacy with place, as well as people.

The canyon has a particular ability to wake me up, to poke at me gently until I pay attention. For nearly a decade, I’ve spent each day slowly becoming ever more myself, each dusky rose and blood orange colored sunset seeing me stripped just a little further down to the raw core at the center of me. Each layer lost changes the image in the mirror a little bit more, brings my face into slightly better focus. A more comfortable place would have likely allowed me to slip into a comfortable complacency instead of prodding me into continuous growth.

By the time I reach the water, scrambling over boulders and jumping down the small drop-off near the water, the elk have moved on and the Coatis have wandered further downriver in search of more insects and berries. I watch the Crawdads gliding below the surface of the water and lean over to get a closer look at a certain sparkly fish flitting in the current. And then I see my own face. I’m taken by surprise to see the laughing, child-like expression with wide, wondering eyes reflected back at me rather than the wary, contained woman I’ve been since my early teens. Instead of the swiping paw and intimidating largeness of the bear I’ve embraced for the last decade, I see the mischievous grin and small form of a Ringtail Cat.

As soon as I could admit this transformation to myself, Ringtails started showing up – literally – at my door. More than once on recent nights, we’ve heard the distinctly Ringtail barks and chatterings just outside the cabin. And one night while walking to the outdoor tub, a Ringtail ran along the roof of the water tank next to me, chittering until I shined the flashlight toward it to get a better look, which was greeted with indignant hissing until I shut the light back off. Then one of our resident helpers brought back a small skull from a walk that Wolf and I immediately recognized as a Ringtail with its Procyonid teeth pattern and distinct carnassial teeth, far more developed in a Ringtail than its Coati and Coon cousins, who are less carnivorous than the Ringtail. The skull still had bits of skin and hair clinging to it, and despite its somewhat gamey smell, I couldn’t help but hug it. While Ringtails have certainly been in the canyon all along, their sudden overt presence helped drive home this transition as I shift from self-protection to self-expression.

Nocturnal and shy, Ringtails are often mistaken for something else entirely during one of their rare sightings. With their black and white banded Raccoonish tails, fox-like faces, flexible bodies reminiscent of minks and cats, and sometimes multisyllabic  bird-like chirps, it’s no wonder folks can get confused by this elusive little tree-loving creature.  Ringtails have often been mistaken for other animals, and even named according to the confusion. Their Aztec-derived name, Cacomixtle, means “Half Mountain Lion” and their scientific name in Latin, Bassariscus astutus, can be translated to “cunning little fox” and even the common name, Ringtail Cat, infers another animal entirely. They’re also sometimes called Miner’s Cats  and California Minks, also adding to the general mystery surrounding their origins and nature. Ringtails actually belong to the Procyonidae, along with Raccoons, Kinkajous, Olingos, and Coatis, with the whole family being native to the Americas.

As the pieces of me come together into a whole, I am careful to be unfailingly conscious in the commitments I make and the roles I take on. To be as authentic as possible in how I present myself, the medicine I give, and the stories I tell. This tale is my own, itself a chimera created from what was once lost or broken, grown into the creature I am: storyteller, medicine woman, blazing fire.I’ve often felt similarly, frequently misnamed or misread by those around me, and even by myself, described as bits of pieces rather than any recognizable whole.  So many years of not recognizing who I really am have taught me the danger of wearing the mantle or mask of what I am not. While some illusions have purposes, to protect us when we’re vulnerable to help us move through a difficult situation, they also have a tendency to seep into our skin until we can no longer see where we end and they begin. Losing ourselves to any role, whether something as positive as being a caregiver or as blatantly negative as getting stuck in a victim stereotype, can not only limit us, but trap us behind walls of our own making or allowing.

Sparrow in Flight: The Fracturing

“There are parts of me he’ll never know, my wild horses and my river beds,
and in my throat, voices he’ll never hear.
He pulls at me like a cherry tree, and I can still move but I don’t speak about it.
Pretend I’m crazy, pretend I’m dead.
He’s too scared to hit me now – he’ll bring flowers instead”
-Heather Nova, Island

Many is the time as a kid, that I took refuge atop the red shingled roof of a three-story, abandoned house in Kansas City, watching the neighborhood below in the failing light, listening as playing children were called indoors. I felt safe there, squeezed between the gable and a tree branch growing against the house. I hugged myself with shaking arms, and told myself a story about a girl who could turn into a sparrow and fly away… above the city, and the dirty snake of the Missouri river, above the prairie and into the wild mountains far beyond where the tree spirits would teach her how to weave baskets from willow and gather food from the forest floor.

If there was one term used to describe me most frequently as a child, it was “oversensitive,” with “impatient” and “too curious” as close seconds. There’s no doubt I was thin-skinned and easily hurt, painfully aware of every vocal nuance and veiled look. This oversensitivity often translated into shyness, but not always, as I was more than once found dancing for strangers in the grocery store. Often enough though, it meant that I was fascinated by people and friendly until the moment I felt rejected or pressured, which was the point at which I would collapse into tears and hide under the nearest piece of furniture or up in a tree if possible. No doubt my propensity to take everything to heart endlessly frustrated those around me. It also allowed me to be broken by a world I didn’t understand, and by those who – wounded themselves – did so much harm to me instead of caring for me.

“Only do not forget, if I wake up crying
it’s only because in my dream I’m a lost child
hunting through the leaves of the night for your hands….”
-Pablo Neruda

It was clear early on, that I’d been born in a place and at a time where my innately dreamy and tender ways would cost me dearly. From the beginning, I saw how sensitivity could result  in you being hurt, and how dreaminess could get you labeled as lazy and useless, while incessant activity and ambitions were praised as admirable. A good mind was a useful mind, not like mine… filled to the brim with fairy stories and elaborate fantasy worlds, Pablo Neruda poetry and an endless recitation of fanciful flower names. I wanted to be a dancer, an artist, a poet who knew the language of animals and stones, a wild creature racing from one treetop to the next, a flame flickering with all of the passion of the living world.  And I wanted to really feel like I belonged someplace, but my dreams and desires all seemed impossible, festering in a radically conservative and terrifically dysfunctional family in the South, manipulated, controlled and physically abused by a bible spouting, paranoid preacher father, unprotected by a mother living in a constant state of delusion and denial. I don’t remember a second of feeling truly secure as a child, never felt safe being my real self or sharing my inner life, and I came to see my natural ways of being as an endangering weakness and serious liability.

My response to the combination of puritanical moralizing and immoral treatment, was to curl up tightly in a private place within myself. The only way I was able to release my pent up emotions through the vehicle of poetry, carefully crafting my poems in a coded language of symbols that only I could understand in order to protect my most vulnerable feelings from my parents’ prying eyes. I listened to forbidden secular musicians like Tori Amos, letting myself be carried away by the unrestrained emotionality. And I continued my childhood habit of sneaking out my bedroom window at night.

While these respites probably saved me in many ways, I was not whole. I was fractured.  I was not myself.

Mask of Roots and Water: A Confession

“Deeply I go down into myself. My god is dark and like a webbing made of a hundred roots that drink in silence.”
-Rainer Maria Rilke

By 17,  I’d escaped my family but was homeless and exposed.  Instead of the red roof of my childhood, I hid out high in trees of the city park instead, my face pressing against the rough bark, taking comfort in the arboreal company as well as in the fact that I was ensconced in the one place that neither the thugs nor the cops would think to look for me! Even with my purple hair and typical all-in-black goth getup, I felt camouflaged enough there to relax, to run my fingers over the self-inflicted wounds that lined my forearms, to breathe slowly and deeply instead of my usual panicked gulps.

Living on the streets, experiencing repeated rapes, ridicule, humiliation, and the kind of captivity no living creature should ever suffer, I felt like a living embodiment of an open wound, barely able to contain the infection of pain and fear that welled beneath my skin. Yet I would survive, even if it meant that I had to deny my born nature, wear a mask of toughness and worldliness and grow a hard veneer around me. I learned to talk fast and hard, to stare down men seeking to intimidate me with a convincing enough fury to back most of them down. To swagger with enough false confidence to keep the women from picking on me. To wear long-sleeved shirts so as not to show the bruises, the cutting, the burn marks. To wear enough makeup that finally all the tear tracks were covered.

The poetry I wrote at that time was rife with imagery of broken glass, an endless torrent of blood and the search for a way through – if not out of – the tangle that my life had become. Woven within were the strands of myth and story I told myself over and over again:

Breathe into me

stir the ashes

and raise me up

Lazarus with

Magdalena’s face

I am the Phoenix, a raging

and winged thing

wearing a necklace

of the white skulls

of my murdered child

of all my lovers long dead

of heroin, alcohol, and despair

Losing friends to drugs, suicide, and gang shootings shut me ever more surely into myself. I spent my days cranked on uppers and my evenings in a whiskey bottle, medicating my feelings into brittle submission. The amphetamines made my temper short and my fear less. I had enough energy and could work hard enough that no one would ever call me lazy or dreamy or spacey again. Complete emotional withdrawal followed my being pushed face first down a flight of icy steps and the violent miscarriage that resulted. I told myself I could survive anything, that no man could break me, that I would be okay, if I could just build the walls thick enough, make my facade convincing enough.

“So my steps were slow and my swagger deliberate

And if ever my heart grieved now my body must not confess it

No, she will not fail me, for she expresses the very line –

I’m steady on, eyes dead set on – my hips move left to right”

-Rykarda Parasol, Night on Red River

The masks I hid behind were made to show the world the story of a woman secure in her body and self, spelled against the disease of anorexia, anxiety, and self-hatred that ate at me just beneath the surface. Most of all, I crafted them so as to keep the sensitive little girl both hidden and protected. I figured what I needed least in my life was vulnerability, another way to be hurt, another avenue through which to be betrayed. I was adept at making my masks convincing, playing the jaded sex worker and cynical woman-child well enough to make money at it. I wore these disguises, these  prosthetic personalities so often and so deeply, that they affixed to my being and began to grow of their own accord.

Solace, I found only in nature and in the fairy tales I’d clung to since early childhood. I liked to read about the street kids and abuse victims in Charles de Lint’s stories and the ways they stumbled into magic and beauty, and I held the hope in my heart that I could be one of those characters that could turn trauma into powerful art, or at least a wondrously haunting song. I clung to the idea that maybe there was something beautiful and magical in me, too. Such a tiny tendril of story kept me searching through the years for a wild place, for a home, and for a sense of self beyond victimhood.

Part II will be posted later this week.

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Traditions In Western Herbalism Conference
2012 Class Descriptions!

New descriptions of our 2012 TWHC Classes posted here on the conference website.

We ask our many awesome teachers to go out of their way to provide you with unique, seldom or never-before presented classes that are “unscripted, deeper and more extensive, more personal, challenging, powerful and applicable” than ever before… and they came through with flying colors! I appreciate you reposting and forwarding.

For more information or to register, click on the:
Traditions In Western Herbalism Website

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7SONG

Plant Walk
On this walk we will look at the diversity of local plants and discuss their botanical details, clinical uses, ways to prepare and use them as medicine, current and historical uses and the occasional story. This will be a time to appreciate and learn about the local flora from an herbalist’s and naturalist’s perspective.

The Herbalist Street Medic
Street medicine generally refers to the various forms of medicine offered at protests and demonstrations, generally by people ‘on the ground’ rather than in hospitals and offices. In these ‘street’ situations, herbalists can offer a valuable service. This includes helping with conditions  ranging from being in a constant stressful situation( i.e., anxiety and insomnia), as well as injuries, gastrointestinal disturbances, and exacerbations of pre-existing conditions.

Patient Compliance and other Clinical Skills.
This is a clinical class on the herbalist’s consultation with a focus on helping patient compliance with taking the uncommon, odd, and often quite un-tasty medicinal preparations that we dispense. We will discuss affordability, accessibility, labeling, instructions, and devices that may help with compliance. We will also focus on other valuable clinical skills such as intake, body language, and non-herbal recommendations.

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PAUL BERGNER

How to Sit With a Plant
In the grasping utilitarian model of herbalism, we want to know what the plants are “good for.” In a vitalist model we want to know the plant on its own terms just for the sake of love and connectedness. Uses or powers of the plant may be revealed, and will be for most, but for the herbalist, what is learned by not using a plant may be more valuable than any medicinal use. Love and connectedness themselves may be more important to the healer than one more item for the materia medica. We will practice methods of clearing and stilling the grasping self, of perception in the “middle world,” and attunement to a plant on every level.

How to Sit With a Patient
Awareness skills for the herbalist. Awareness skills in a clinical setting go both ways; we are being present and aware of the patient, and also aware of ourselves and our own process. We will discuss and practice both sets of skills, including patient factors such as posture, clothing, complexion, vital tone, energy level, voice quality, and methods for identifying and processing our own reactions to the clinical experience.

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DARCEY BLUE

Trees of the Southwest: Tree Walk, Folklore, and Clinical Uses
In this interactive tree walk we will visit, experience with our five senses (taste, smell, touch, sight, and sound), and discuss the clinical applications, folklore and medicine of species of trees growing in southwestern North America. In addition to experiencing the tree medicines through our senses, the walk includes discussion of proper harvesting/wildcrafting technique for trees in sensitive environments, appropriate preparations for each tree and plant part, and specific clinical indications and applications for each tree. We will also discuss the folkloric knowledge of these trees and stories associated with these teachers to deepen our understanding of trees as wisdom keepers and allies beyond the medicinal applications.

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HOWIE BROUNSTEIN

Herbal Neurology: Seizure Disorders
Many herbalist shy away from working with this often frightening and debilitating problem. We will discuss both acute anti-seizure formulas and long term tonic protocols for overall reduction of seizure frequency and drug side effects. Herbal protocols, lifestyle changes, supplements, identifying triggers, and working safely with neurologists will be richly illustrated using case studies from my clinic.

Safety and Drop Dosage Botanicals (with Kristi Reese)
Drop dosage or low dosage botanicals are becoming popular with many herbalists these days. Although these medicinals can be extremely effective, the difference between poison and medicine is dosage. This class is about safely harvesting, processing, storing, and dispensing these herbs. This class is not about the specific uses of these herbs.

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LARKEN BUNCE

Understanding Herb-Drug Interactions: Drugs in Herbal Territory, Not the Other Way Around
As practitioners, we are constantly assuaging the fears of clients and physicians regarding the potential for the herbs we recommend to interact with the drugs people are prescribed. The assumption is that if there is any impact on the activity of a drug, then the herb should be discontinued. The plants are considered the interlopers; herbalists and herbs are the problem. I’ll explain the different types of interactions that can occur; how we can and cannot predict those interactions; and how we can take advantage of these interactions to benefit clients. We’ll explore the CYP450 enzyme family responsible for metabolizing both medicinal plant constituents and drug molecules to understand why they’re often central to this conversation. Finally, we’ll look at resources for researching potential interactions between particular drugs and herbs and how to assess the actual clinical significance of the information. My goal is for people to leave feeling they can engage more confidently in conversations with clients, physicians and anyone who’ll listen about the challenges and benefits of herb-drug interactions. Ultimately, we can best support expanded use of herbal medicine in our over-medicated society when we can critically assess and address this overblown, yet still relevant, concern.

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BEVIN CLARE

Teaching the Teacher: Training the Herbal Clinician
Cultivating the herbal practitioner goes far beyond supplying students with the necessary information to practice. The role of a practitioner is vast:  as a catalyst for change within the client, as the integrator of a variety of clinical, medical, sensory and human information in order to nudge health states, as a partner in finding wellness and balance within the ecosystem and community, and as an expert in the use of medicinal plants and foods. Learn about a model for training clinical herbalists and the components of the training and their individual use and significance. The class will be designed for both the student looking to seek the an education as a clinician, and the teacher looking to better teach their students.

Making a (Financial) Living as an Herbalist (While Being True to Yourself and the Plants)
Learn about how one can make a living as an herbalist while staying true to the values which guide them. Our trade as herbalists is a valid one with tremendous personal and global rewards, yet it can be difficult to navigate the mainstream, financial system and make ends meet at times. Find out about ways herbalists are thriving in this modern world and specific suggestions for ways you can follow your path and cultivate financial stability, all in a good way.

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SEAN DONAHUE

Healing Through the Veil: Entheogens and Trauma
Psychedelic or entheogenic plants and drugs are powerful tools for opening gateways to other realities.  Used wisely, they can be powerful tools for insight and conscious transformation.Used recklessly, they can open someone to deeply traumatic experiences.    Sean shares his own experiences and perspectives on herbal first aid for people having frightening and overwhelming psychedelic experiences, finding and addressing the existing wounds these experiences reveal, and the potential of entheogenic plants to both educe and heal emotional trauma.

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DOUG ELLIOTT

Ginseng, Golden Apples, Wise Women, Old Farts,, and the Rainbow Fish
Traditional herbal practitioners and Appalachian mountaineers offer unique perspectives on healing traditions, gender issues, roots and herbs, and wild apples, as well as insights into sustainable harvesting of ginseng and other medicinal plants, mycorrhizal fungal associations, tickling trout, etc. Elliott recounts one particularly noteworthy visit with Ray Hicks, an extraordinary elderly mountain wildcrafter, who tells traditional stories from “across the waters” about Jack, the archetypical naïve, but resourceful, Euro-Appalachian trickster figure. “Then after listening all morning to his plant lore and ancient tales, I stop along the way home to collect wild apples, herbs, and mushrooms; I find myself living out the kind of mythic adventure that I had just heard in Ray’s stories.” This gives insight into how every day, especially when we set out hunting for herbs, we are indeed on a quest –like they say in the ancient tales–“seeking our fortunes. ”
Poetry by William Butler Yeats and Ovid’s tales of Diana, Aphrodite, and Atalanta bring home revelations about the mythic qualities in all our lives.

Sense of Place Trail Hike
This is an opportunity to stretch out and roam along one of the most interesting trails in the area.  We’ll be checking out the herbs, for sure, but it will be faster-paced than the average herb walk. We’ll be taking in the bigger picture as well, the mountains, the forest, birds, and mammals–their tracks and signs.

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ROSALEE DE LA FORÊT

Starting a Community Supported Herbal Clinic, From the Ground Up
In the past year Rosalee has worked within her small rural community to set up an herbal clinic open to all people in need of care. In this class she will share her own challenges and successes and explore a broader range of topics to help those on their own journey of setting up a free or sliding scale herbal clinic in their own communities. Discussion will revolve around; How do we provide care sustainably? Do herbalists deserve to be paid for giving health care? Challenges of getting funded. Setting up a herbal apothecary. Benefits of bioregional herbs. Forming a community around herbalism. Working within special populations. Organization and record keeping. Business structures pros and cons. Scope of practice and referrals. Visions of a new health care model.

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LISA GANORA

Wolf Chemistry: How to Smell and Taste Herbal Constituents
As herbalists we learn to develop our senses of smell and taste to understand and judge the identity, potency, and quality of living plants, dried herbs, and herbal preparations. This way of understanding the messages and information carried by scent and flavor molecules in plants is a skill that all animals possess, as we easily see when we observe the focus and attention of a ground-sniffing companion animal on their daily rounds or at the food bowl. Science calls it “organoleptics” … using the senses to detect and evaluate the presence, concentration, and quality of constituents in foods and herbs. In many cases, we can train our senses to be just as helpful – or even more so – than expensive analytical equipment. Our wild relatives, including Wolf and Bear, are honored as traditional experts in organoleptics – understanding the food, medicine, or poison of a plant through deep sensory perception and instinct developed by constant practice and the necessity of life in the wild. Join us in this active journey where we will re-connect with these ancient skills to reawaken and train our senses for better understanding the constituents and quality of our healing herbs. Learn how to use the Scratch, Snort, Savor, and Spit method of phytochemical analysis with sample herbs and living plants from our conference environment.

Beyond Tinctures & Oils: Extracting Herbs with Honey
In Western herbalism, we commonly use alcohol (tinctures, fluid extracts), water (infusions, decoctions), and vegetable oils (oils, salves) to extract the healing constituents from herbs. While these are all excellent ways to concentrate and preserve herbal medicines, there is another traditional fluid that we often overlook – honey. A 10,000-year-old cave painting in Spain depicts women collecting honey; in Hindu tradition, honey is considered to be one of the five elixirs of immortality; in Islamic tradition, alcohol is general forbidden and village herbalists often use honey as a substitute solvent, and for its revered healing powers. The use of honey is also described in old Chinese texts. Honey is a very unique solvent with virtually magical powers to extract and preserve constituents from many of our favorite plants. The sugars in honey, along with numerous antioxidant compounds, have remarkable preservative abilities. Liquid honey, still perfumed with the aroma of essential oils, has been found in Egyptian tombs more than 3,000 years old. Honey collects numerous constituents from herbs and will take on the rich colors of various pigments, such as with Elderberry Honey. Learn how to make a traditional honey extraction and how to use herbal honey as a topical healer for burns and wounds; as an ingredient in elixirs and syrups; or for fermenting medicinal meads. Find out how to substitute herbal honeys for alcohol or glycerin tinctures. See how the constituents from a water extract can be coaxed into honey for preservation. We’ll also talk about the special ingredients of honey and see what we can learn from the many scientific studies that are being published lately about Manuka honey. Honey, the golden gift, is far more powerful than we might expect when we think of it as ‘just another sweetener.’  Class will include demonstrations.

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CHARLES GARCIA

Chronic Pain: A Hispanic Perspective
The use of native and Hispanic herbs are a given in this topic. But not so widely known are the use of colors, fragrance, hygiene, food and light in Hispanic pain control. These are not New Age theories. Rather they are the observations of a healer and a chronic pain sufferer whose family has used these techniques for over a century. This is not a topic for those who romanticize suffering to any degree. Chronic and severe pain is debilitating and must be eliminated or controlled for anyone wishing to live a productive life.

Death & Dying: Coping for the Herbalist/Caregiver
Not every herbalist sees or treats terminally ill clients. Some do. A few of us get more than our fair share of dying clients, friends, and family. A sense of professional may help for a time. But what happens when you’ve experience too much loss, professionally or personally? Do you turn to religion, philosophy, herbs, friendships, drink, drugs, sex? Perhaps in your life as a healer you must become a caregiver to a family member or a close friend? Do you treat them differently? Do you offer different options? Expect to hear ideas for coping, failures at coping, questions on ethics, questions of spirituality, rituals, and how we perceive death. Audience interaction is expected.

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LINDA GARCIA

Disaster Preparedness

Ice storms to hurricanes, earthquakes to flu pandemics. Every region of the country has it’s unique natural environment that sometimes becomes very inhospitable to the humans who choose to live there.  In this workshop, learn and discuss the various ways you can prepare for you and your family to survive whatever Mama Nature decides to throw at you.  Learn the order of survival necessities (food is at the very bottom of the list) and discuss ways to improvise what you don’t have–from shelter to water filtration to herbal first aid kits.

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CASCADE ANDERSON GELLER

Musculoskeletal Health with Wild Plants and Other Natural Remedies – (Advanced class)
In my practice, problematic conditions affecting the musculoskeletal system are all too common.  Inflammation due to injury, overuse, improper use, malnourishment, heredity, and other issues causes great suffering and impairment.  This class will focus on evaluating through the lens of the practicing herbalist, including the broad and highly specific views, that may aid healing or management of conditions as well as complementing other treatments such as physical therapy, manipulation, massage, energy, or allopathic.   The natural remedies and techniques to be discussed have been effective for conditions such as: fractures, sprains, strains, bruising, arthritic and other degenerative disorders, chronic pain, etc.  Emphasis will also be placed on prevention.  Herbal information will focus on a mix of native and non-native plants growing in many types of terrain:  Alnus, Althea, Arnica, Asarum, Encelia, Gaultheria, Hypericum, Larrea, Populus, Rumex, Salix, Sassafras, Symphytum, Taraxacum, Urtica, Valeriana and others.  Class discussion and demonstrations will include topics such as cold versus hot applications, useful first aid techniques, topical and oral formulations, case management strategies, etc.

Giving Voice:  Creating Social and Political Change with Special Emphasis on Topics of Interest to Herbalists
Cascade will share her experiences as an organizer around political issues relating to food, water , land, and especially herbs and herbalism.  The touchstone piece relating to herbs and herbalists pivots on regulation and standardization of aspects such as education, practice, and products.  This class will shed light on different camps of current thinking and action that affects herbalists, especially in regards to those involved with existing trade groups and associations.  Notable issues will include:  how herbalism in the U.S. is moving closer to harmonizing with global trade law and policy, animal research and it’s relationship to herbalism, and other topics.  The discussion may help participants understand why issues become divisive but how that energy can be redirected toward healing.  The class will help lay a foundation of understanding about how to get the voices of people and organizations heard even when not empowered by wealth or position.  Running a successful campaign takes thoughtful organizing and information but there are things that anyone can do.  This session will feature some tried and true methods to effect change using existing laws and institutions.  Participants can learn concrete ways to:  shed light when there is little, know what questions to ask and how to ask them, decide what to ask for, know how to initiate a public process and how to make good use of it, decide how to evaluate an organization, be engaged in decision-making of organizations, effectively serve on boards or committees, make a public records request, read between the lines, engage the press and other media.  Most of the amenities and rights we enjoy in the United States, and other countries, including public parks, schools, libraries, roads, bridges, voting rights, labor laws, municipally controlled drinking water, waste water treatment, land use and pollution regulations, etc., etc., exists only due to effective organizers in the present and past.  This class is dedicated to them.

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KIVA ROSE & JESSE WOLF HARDIN

Coming Home: Bioregional Herbalism & Sense of Place
Healing begins at home, growing from the same rich soils we spring from. The lives of these plant medicines are inextricably intertwined with ours: blooming uninvited outside the front door and at the wild edges of asphalt parking lots, growing from the terra cotta pots on our kitchen windowsills and rooting in well-tended community gardens. The allure of exotic herbs from far away countries has blinded some of us to the sources of healing closest to home, often hardy and plentiful plants in energetic relationship with the land that houses, feeds, affects and influences us.  Traditional healers of many cultures have long told stories of being intuitively drawn to the very species that can help us most, often growing in close proximity without our having realized its potential.  And once we have identified and built a relationship with our fellow locals/natives, we will come to understand the plants’ needs as well as our own, recognize when their kind is doing well and when they are being overharvested or otherwise suffering decline.  Bioregionalism is deep familiarity – and reciprocal relationship – with the watersheds and ecosystems where we choose to live, the wondrous “weeds” that coinhabit our cities and the rural and wildlands that surround them. In this class, we will describe the benefits of a biorgegional herbal focus on our lives and the ways that it increases the effectiveness of our herbal practices.  We’ll provide tools for exploring and deepening sense of place, the essential sense of belonging that literally grounds us and our work in the real, living, present world.  Be prepared to further awaken not only your senses, but a mythopoetic quest as well… to be as extensions of the land and conscious agents of its mission of healing and wholeness.

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PHYLLIS HOGAN

The San Francisco Peaks: Sacred Mountain of the West
For countless centuries the Navajo and Hopi people have respectfully gathered healing plants on the San Francisco Peaks (S.F.P.) in northern Arizona. This tradition is an indispensable part of their elaborate and intriguing healing systems. Navajo and Hopi regard the importance of where you gather plants as significant as what you gather, and the ritual of collecting includes making offerings and recognizing value in all living things. Of the over 800 vascular plant species documented for S.F.P. area, 237 species have medicinal or ceremonial significance. In my presentation I will share with you the five most utilized medicinal species found in the Ponderosa Pine vegetation zone. I will also take a look at the rare and endemic species growing at the Alpine Tundra vegetation zone and ceremonial species living in the Spruce –Fir and Mixed Conifer vegetation zones. We will also consider the differences between how and in what ways different cultures view and use nature.

A Peek Inside My Medicine Bag.
Betony (Pediclaurs parryi) Yerba Manzo (Anemopsis californica) Hamula (Brickelia spp.) Elephant-tree (Bursera microphylla) Desert Lavender (Hyptis emoryi)
Having lived my whole life in Arizona, I have had the opportunity to become close and personal with many herbs from the Sonoran desert to the riparian wetlands and up into the high lands of the mountains. Each environment has many offerings and blessings in a variety of medicine plants that speak to us nestled in and among the ancestral landscape. Some of my favorite medicine plants range from the delicate fernlike betony (Pediclaurs parryi) that hides in among the pine needle duff up in the Ponderosa pine forests of the mountains to the sculpted trunk of the aromatic elephant tree (Bursera microphylla) in the Sonoran desert. Or, the scrubby bushes of the bitter hamula (Brickellia spp.) that grows on the mesas and in the dry canyons to the thick green leaved riparian yerba mansa (Anemopsis californica). Another shrub that sings to my heart is the drought resistant desert lavender (Hyptis emoryi) whose sweet scent calls us in the spring enticing us to come and partake of the beauty as it offers up it’s medicine to us. These plants speak a language to humans by sharing their gifts to heal our imbalances and bring us once again back to harmony with ourselves and with the earth. Join me in as I open my medicine bag and share with you some of the important plants that have assisted me on my life path.

Sacred Plant Walk
Phyllis Hogan has spent her life plant-walking Arizona from the Sonoran Desert to the San Francisco Peaks.  She has worked with all of the native tribes of this area and has a vast knowledge of the ethnobotany and traditions tied to this sacred land.  Her walk focusing on the plants growing around Mormon Lake is sure to be not only an educational experience but also a sacred journey back to ancestral time.

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PHYLLIS LIGHT

Folk Herbalism and Science
Folk herbal traditions rely on observation and experience based on tradition. In addition, traditional knowledge may have secret methods of communicating information such as truths that are revealed by God, land-spirits, or intuition. Tradition links present practices with past ones. Science is concerned solely with truths that are revealed by man through measurement. It is based on observation, theory, predictions and experimentation. We’ll also discuss such questions as: How old does a tradition have to be to be a tradition? What is the nature of statistical evidence? Who funds herbal scientific studies? What about that isolated phytochemical constituent anyway?  Join Phyllis for an exploration of where folk herbal traditions and medical science intersect and how you can use both in your practice.

The Four Elements: Constitutions
In Southern Folk Medicine, constitutions are based on four elements and four tastes. This class will explore the four elements, fire, earth, air, and water, and the characteristics and personalities associated with each. Are you an airhead? How much fire is fueling your drives? Can you hold your water? Is earth holding you down? Understanding constitutions offers a very practical and traditional avenue of  assessment for the practitioner. And besides, it’s also really fun to find out more about yourself.

The Taste of Herbs
Come taste, savor and guess the name of the herbs. This class will explore a proving of three different simple decoctions based on their taste. Together we’ll discover what that taste has to say about the medicinal properties of the plant and how the plant can be used. This is a hands-on, or rather, tongue-on, experiential class. You’ll be surprised how much information a simple taste can reveal.

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KATHLEEN MAIER

Descriptions will be posted soon….

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JIM MCDONALD

Energetics and Aphrodisiacs
“Aphrodisiac” is a highly problematic term, predominantly because of the popular but mistaken belief that they can stoke interest in those who aren’t.  In addition to considering what “aphrodisiacs” ~don’t~ do, we’ll explore the things they can.  Looking at lists of plants deemed “aphrodisiacs”, we see everything from strong, druglike herbs (yohimbe) to culinary spices (ginger) to adaptogens (ashwangandha) and antispasmodics (kava).  What gives?  Well, just like all other aspects of herbcraft, one person’s turn on can put another person out… in other words, energetics apply here as well.  We’ll look at what indications make certain herbs appropriate to certain people, and give you some ideas to ponder with your partner(s).

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TANIA NEUBAUER

Tales from the Frontlines: Herbal Case Studies in Primary Care in a Nicaraguan Public Hospital
The innovative nonprofit Natural Doctors International operates a naturopathic medical clinic in collaboration with the public health system of Nicaragua. For 15 months, I attended every conceivable malady in collaboration with Nicaraguan doctors and nurses in an extremely successful and popular program that continues to this day. Because the clinic is on an island, with very limited access to high-tech interventions, I was able to use herbs, nutrition and bodywork to treat cases that might be considered emergency room referrals in the US. We will review cases that illustrate important warning signs in primary care that the herbalists may confront. We will discuss the keys to the clinic’s success. We will also learn about Central American herbalism and conceptions of health and disease.

Where the Rubber Meets the Road: Successful Models for Community Health Clinics in Natural Medicine
Many have dreamed of starting community clinics using natural medicine. What are the elements that allow such a clinic to be sustainable over the long term? We will review a number of successful models both in North America and internationally. Conferences are often a lost opportunity, where like-minded people of diverse bioregions are all in the same room, perhaps for the only time they ever will be. There will be space for participants to discuss clinics, organizations, and models they have been a part of, and why they have or have not worked, so that all will be able to exchange with each other.

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KRISTI REESE

Herbs for the Massage Practice
This class will introduce the massage therapist or body worker to the art of incorporating of herbs in their practice. We will thoroughly discuss a variety of herbs used externally as herbal oils, and internally as teas and extracts. The class will include such herbal therapies as muscle relaxants, analgesics, anti-inflammatories, tranquilizers, demulcents, and emollients. We will cover the herbal treatments for common complaints occurring in your practice such as muscles strains, sprains, tendinitis, whiplash, nerve traumas, pain, muscular and nervous headaches, general musculo-skeletal injuries, and more.

Safety and Drop Dosage Botanicals (with Howie Brounstein)
Drop dosage or low dosage botanicals are becoming popular with many herbalists these days. Although these medicinals can be extremely effective, the difference between poison and medicine is dosage. This class is about safely harvesting, processing, storing, and dispensing these herbs. This class is not about the specific uses of these herbs.

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AVIVA ROMM

Ecology and Activism in Women’s Health and the Role of Botanicals
“By comparing the earth to a woman: opulent and attractive but, in equal measures, temperamental and violent, the male scientific community justified its will for domination over them.”
“Nature to be raped, nature to be discovered, nature to be organized, nature to be controlled and nature to be exploited: these were the great ambitions of Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes, the    fathers of modern science.”   Carolyn Merchant. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution.
There is no coincidence that the top money making surgical procedures in the US are obstetric and gynecologic. Women (and our uteruses and ovaries!) have, for centuries, been subject to     propaganda and campaigns. Anti-nature and anti-woman attitudes are intimately connected. The healing of the environment and the healing of women’s health can be connected by a    reclamation of women’s healing arts and a rejection of unnecessary medical treatments aimed at women. this class will approach women’s herbal medicine as a radical, activist, and eco-feminist act. We will focus on botanical methods of treatment for key women’s health concerns including uterine fibroids, endometriosis, PMS, depression, and menopause, for which women are medically mistreated.

Roots Midwifery: Radical Pregnancy, Birthing, and Postpartum Botanical Care
Amnesty International has declared birth in the United States an infringement of human rights! The cesarean section is now between 30 and 40% and still escalating. natural birthing women are an endangered species. supporting natural birth is therefore a radical act. herbal medicines and an approach that respects nature and innate physiology are essential tools for the birth activist, helping women to move through pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum in health and without unnecessary and often dangerous medical intervention. this class will introduce you to innate pregnancy and birth,  and will provide you with a midwife’s basket of practical and herbal tools to preserve and protect natural human birth.

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CHRISTA SINADINOS

Detailed description to be posted soon….

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KATJA SWIFT

Treating Chronic Illness
For a cold or the flu, you can send your client off with your favorite remedies and your job is done. But when you have a client with a chronic illness, your work is more complicated. The constitution of the client becomes a more important part of your herb choice, and the herbs are only part of the story. Chronic illness demands changes in diet and lifestyle, even in the way the client moves through their day. This class will focus on creating a whole protocol for clients with chronic illness, with specific information about how to choose the herbs, how to succeed with dietary recommendations, and how to get your client moving/exercising in appropriate ways for their level of health.

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NICOLE TELKES

Weedcrafting: Redefining Wildcrafting for The Next Generation of Wild Foragers
Many people studying herbalism are drawn to the “roamance” and allure of wandering into wildlands and gathering medicinal plants to make their very special and unique medicinal preparations.  The reality is that the wild cannot sustain all of us, even herbalists without some serious altering of our habits as wildcrafters.  Many of us have the dream of having a bit of land to roam, and a small herb farm, or the like.  The reality again is that most of us are financially tied to surviving in cities and that there is not enough land for everyone to have their 30 acres.  How do we make peace as herbalists with the draw to be in the wild and connect with our wild plants, and be sustainable and conscious in our practices of collecting.  How do we really know if our impact is helpful or harmful?  As many of us relearn our wild plant medicines, and teach others how to find them and connect with nature, we become stewards and must also protect wild plants.  Weedcrafting is a redefinition of WIldcrafting.  Weedcrafting is the harvesting of plant material from wild and waste spaces that helps support the native ecosystem and promotes diversity.  Weedcrafting a type of wild gardening that looks at the ecology of a place as well as the species of interest and takes into account that the earth cannot sustain unconscious foraging in our wildlands. Weedcrafting is about not only tuning into the wild in yourself, but also looking past our cities at the wildness and weediness making medicinal offerings to us in the most unlikely of places

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MATTHEW WOOD

Greek Medicine for the Modern Herbalist

The Greek system of medicine and herbalism is locked up ancient concepts but it is actually a very insightful system that can help us to understand the properties of herbs today.  Many of our ‘herbal actions’ are the tail end of Greek concepts.  The basic energetics are hot and cold, damp and dry but these are not measurements of temperature and humidity.  They are categories of action: hot remedies are opening, thinning, warming (from the center outward), and burning, while damp remedies are lubricating, nourishing or thickening, softening or emollient, and laxative.  The sixteen categories of action tell us how hot, cold, damp, and dry work to regulate the organism and how herbs and food heal the imbalances.  They deepen our us of the tissue state model of energetics.  The Greek system also includes foods so that cooking was a part of medicine.

Specificity in Herbal Medicine

Folk medicine is based largely on direct experience (instead of theory), specific indications (symptoms and conditions obvious to the senses instead of complex diagnostic categories made by machines), and (usually) the doctrine of signatures.  Dr. John M. Scudder (1829-93) took the first two of these elements and fashioned them into a system of medicine which offers the most exact possible usage and knowledge of herbal properties.  Many of his specific indications came directly from the Indian people or the pioneers who learned from them.  Thus, Specific Medicine (as he called the system) preserved many basic remedies and the indications upon which they were used by the common and indigenous people.  This system supplements and makes more exact the tissue state model of energetics and other methods used by the physiomedicalists.

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BENJAMIN ZAPPIN

Oh, to Touch, Taste, and Feel

….and think really hard about comparative approaches to application of botanically related plants.

The aim of this class is to provide participants with a methodology for uniting their senses with information about plants from Chinese Medicine regarding flavor and nature, contemporary understandings of native plants, and botanical systematics in order to deepen our understanding of our local Materia medica. Case examples will probe the Apiaceae and Gentianaceae, genus’ Paeonia and Pedicularis and more. The class will include plant samples to touch, taste, observe, and smell!

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CHILDREN’S AND YOUTH’S CLASSES:

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7SONG

A Children’s Plant Walk
This will be a time for kids to meet and have fun with the local plants.

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KRISTINE BROWN

Herbal Sprouts: An Herbalism Class For Kids! (1.5 hrs)
This class offers a special edition of Herbal Roots zine created just for the kids attending the Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference 2012. This class will start with an herb walk to find the plant we are studying, explore the varieties located in the area, examine the growth habit of the varieties that we find. We will then go back to our area and learn all about the herb’s uses in a magical session woven with stories, songs, games, activities, crafts and recipes. By the end of the class, kids will be able to identify the herb, name some uses, have some medicine made that they can take home and use and have a craft plus be familiar with the song to sing to their parents. Ages 5 and up welcome.

Journaling and the Art of Herbalism for Teens (2-3 hours)
This class will show you how to create your own herbal journal to record your journey with herbs. We’ll talk about why it’s important to keep notes of your herbal experiences, how to sketch plants and more basics of journaling. Bring a blank journal with you (the Canson Multi-Media Paper Pad 7 x 10″/60 sheets is a great size) to decorate and begin your journaling journey. By the end of class your cover should be decorated to reflect your personal style and and an entry or two will be begin to fill your pages. A limited number of journals will be available for purchase but to assure you have a journal, please try to bring your own. Ages 13 and up welcome.

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LINDA GARCIA

First Aid for Kids

A basic first aid workshop for 6-10 year olds.  Everyone gets hurt: fingers get cut or burned, ankles get twisted, knees get scraped and toes get stubbed.  This workshop is intended to empower the children to take care of their own minor injuries.  They’ll learn how to stop the bleeding, clean, and bandage a wound so it doesn’t get infected; how to splint an arm that might be broken and wrap an ankle that might be sprained ; what to do with a burn; and, importantly, when it’s time to take the ouches to more definite care.

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KATJA SWIFT

Bones and Muscles for Kids

What are growing pains? What happens to your body when you wear high-heeled shoes? How can you best develop your muscles for sports? Why should you sit up straight, and what’s straight anyway? How can you speed recovery from a broken bone or a twisted ankle? This class will cover everything you need to know to have strong muscles and bones – from herbs that will help you grow strong and tall to simple exercises that will protect you from back pain when you get old like your parents. Be ready to learn, move, and play games!

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JANE VALENCIA

Wild Child Learning: An Herbal Class for Kids

(Inspired by the children’s herbal fantasy book by Monica Furlong)

How many of us have wished we could be like Wise Child, mentored by the herbalist and wisewoman healer, Juniper, in the arts that lead one to become a “doran” — one who senses the pattern at the heart of all things, and who is dedicated to loving and protecting it?  In this class we’ll adventure in a Wise Child “curriculum”, in which our immersive experience of the herbs includes poem-making, music, storytelling, secret languages (the language of plants as well as secrets hidden in scientific names), musing on  the nature of healing, nature awareness games, and even math (by way of nature’s patterns) and astronomy!
Come prepared for surprises and fun!

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GINGER WEBB

Plant Families for Young People
Using commonly known fruits, vegetables, herbs, grains, nuts and seeds, we will explore the world of plant families. For any new student of herbalism, these botanical categories create an entryway into the patterns inherent in the plant kingdom, helping awaken the intuition and experiential understanding of plant energetics. We will touch on lots of different plant families, and spend extra time exploring the Rose Family, the Mint Family, and the Mallow Family.

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Thanks again for reposting!  -Kiva

That girl, she was a Red Rock woman.
Soft as pine needles and strong as the stone
-Terri Windling, Red Rock

Many mornings, when I wake up gazing at the brilliant lapis of the New Mexico sky, and the dusky rose of the canyon’s cliffs, I entirely forget how I managed live anywhere else. The volcanic rock hums underneath my bare feet and the wild winds tangle my hair with errant bits of Juniper bark and Evergreen Oak leaves. There’s no doubt that not everyone feels at home in this arid, stark environment where the grasses dance golden for a good part of the year, and most anything you touch is likely to have thorns or claws attached to it. It’s hard to explain to people unaccustomed to or uncalled by the Southwest, how the spines sing to me, how the beauty is made more intense by the pain it sometimes causes me. For some, comfort or familiarity may seem to be the hallmark of home, but the untamed, and sometimes prickly, spirit of the Gila is one of the ways I knew it as a necessary part of me from the first moment I set foot here.

Now, whenever I travel away from my mountains and deserts, it’s as if the song of the world grows muted, perhaps overridden by the dirge my heart plays in grief as I move further from what feels very much like the center of the world for me. I wont pretend to be objective about this, I know how my heart feels about the land here, attached and interwoven in the most visceral manner until I my body hurts with the lack of it when I leave. In the same way my tongue and fingers know the feel of the words I’m looking for when I tell a story, or write about my beloved plants, so do my feet and heart know my home. By feel, sinew and soul deep.

I count the seasons here by which flowers are blooming, by the species of birds singing, by the animal tracks next to the river. Calendars mean so little when you reckon time by the cycles of a particular place. And so I realize it’s Spring when the Mountain Candytuft (Noccaea fendleri) begins to bloom under the Ponderosas, when the Golden Smoke (Corydalis aurea) unfurls in the dry hills and desert washes, when the Poor-Wills echo off the canyon walls with their nightly calls, and by the way the light slants across the cliffs each morning.

On the northern borders of the Chihuahuan Desert, the Mexican Gold Poppies (Eschscholzia californica ssp. mexicana) explode into a brilliant dawn blanket across the rocky slopes. It’s a yearly ritual for my family to travel down from our Saliz Mountains on the Continental Divide to harvest woven baskets full of this wild medicine. There’s a tendency to simplify this herb down to its ability to encourage sleep. And it can do that very well, being one of the most adaptable and diverse relaxant nervines I know of. Its effects are broader than this one use though, and I deeply value its mild but thorough ability to blunt all sorts of pain while easing the irritability and restlessness that so often accompanies pain. It’s also an effective anti-microbial when used externally. It makes a colorful and useful poultice when fresh, and also works well as a wash or compress when dried, or can be applied as a diluted alcohol tincture.

When I was recently wandering through the white bone forest of Sycamores (Platanus wrightii) along the Gila River, I happened upon a single Desert Buckthorn (a local Redroot species, Ceanothus greggii), in exuberant bloom, the lilac and cream blossoms fragrant with a scent I associate so specifically with here. With these wild lands I love. The Buckthorn is an important medicine in my practice, it’s blood red roots serving as a strong alterative and lymphatic, that I especially value when treating many chronic hepatic disorders. The wintergreen flavor of the roots and bark also make it one of Rhiannon and I’s favorite plants for chewing on simply for enjoyment. Nearby, the Cleavers (Galium aparine) grows lush in the shady spots beneath the trees. While people don’t often think of Cleavers actually growing in the desert, it surely does, along with an impressive array of other medicinal plants.

Just beyond the Desert Buckbrush, I climbed the box canyon’s wall to gather the twigs of Rabbit Thorn (Lycium pallidum), where purplish buds were just beginning to form in preparation for their delicately veined flowers so soon to come. Beneath the brush, rocks veined with copper and quartz glitter in the noonday light. Rambling through the Gila, it’s so easy for what we consider to be mundane reality to quickly shift into myth-time, the space in which we can better experience the more-than-human world, and our own magical place in the larger ecology. The medicine and stories of place rising up, undeniable, from the plants, animals, the very stones themselves. There’s a damn good reason New Mexico is called the land of enchantment, and it’s not just to bring in more tourist dollars. There is a palpable intensity to the mountains, grasslands, deserts, wetlands, and woodlands here that sets the human spirit afire.

Back down on the banks of the Gila river, the first golden blossoms of Monkeyflowers (Mimulus spp.) glow, and the Evening Primroses (Oenothera spp.) turn from white to pink under the desert sun. Both are gentle, nourishing medicines, and favored allies of mine. Their ability to calm anxiety and uplift the heart, speaks of their sweet but tenacious natures. Cottonwoods, Los Alamos, line the water, their aromatic buds just beginning to unfurl, and their spicy sweet scent travels on the breeze. At home in the wood stove warmer, several quarts of the sticky buds are infusing into grapeseed and olive oil in preparation for the annual medicine making of salves and liniments created to relieve aches and pains, chest/sinus congestion, and to heal wounds.

Standing with both feet in the shallows of the river, I look around at the healing found here in this patch of land many would call barren, and am awed by the power of the desert. Not just by its wealth of medicinal plants, but also by the myriad kinds of medicine that shimmer in the vital force, the anima, that ripples through river and its sands, through the wildflowers and trees, up out of the glittering bedrock and into the red rockface that rises up around me. To be a medicine woman here, is to recognize and learn the mystery and beauty of it all, to delve into the medicine that thrums through my body every time I open my eyes in the morning  to the sky and stones, ravens and ringtails, spines and flowers. Spring comes, and it sings in me.

Critical Intuition: Knowing The Difference Between Intuiting & Projecting

Excerpted from the Herbal Rebel Column in the now available Spring 2012 Issue of

Plant Healer Magazine

by Paul Bergner

In previous columns, I have spoken of a Four Directions model of obtaining knowledge, of study, that may be applied to herbalism or any other field of endeavor. In the North, we diligently study traditions and what previous generations have left for us in books or oral tradition. In the South we throw ourselves into practical experience, alone, in groups, or in our communities, tasting and experimenting the plants and the contexts of their healing, testing the promise of the studies of the past. In the East, in this era, we look at new information or perspectives that may be coming from the field of science, and we look to new plants or methods, entering our awareness from other lands or traditions. Finally, in the West, we study the reality of the plants and our healing methods with instinct and intuition. It is a mistake to be stuck in one of these four directions, four ways of knowing, while neglecting the other three. We can’t hope to actually help someone else by simply memorizing things in old books. Likewise we can’t expect to ignore what is in those books, and expect our empirical knowledge, or that of our colleagues, to fill all our needs. If we want to be Scientific Herbalists only, we will be up a creek as far as helping anyone, because the entire body of knowledge of “scientifically proven” herbs is not sufficient to treat anything other than a few symptoms or conditions. And finally, we can’t just be Spiritual Herbalists, ignoring our homework in the North, or just rejecting information from science out of hand, or not finding a way to test and ground our intuitive insights.  Especially, we can’t simply take our psychic impressions about a plant and what it can and can’t do, where it belongs on the medicine wheel, what its doctrine of Signatures implies, where it falls in the rulership in the zodiac, and think these impressions are infallible. The individual who is too invested in their naive first psychic impressions is as undeveloped as the individual who believes everything they are told by someone in authority without questioning it. We need to address these impressions with critical thinking. Or should I say critical intuition.

If the essence of critical thinking is to keep questioning, questioning new ideas, questioning old beliefs, questioning ones own motives, and to develop a living mental stream of persistent inquiry, then the essence of critical intuition is to develop an identical process about our intuitive insights. “Is this impression really true?” First of all, let me say I think intuition is an innate ability, and even if some have it to a higher degree than others, practically every human being has pretty good functional intuition. I say this because I have led many beginning students through awareness exercises with plants, where they try to intuit information about the plant, and most people can see things about the plant that are true but not immediately obvious to the senses. In a recent year, nearly every beginning student in a group of 36 identified the properties of Sickle-Topped Lousewort as cooling and relaxing, although not knowing its name, and not tasting or smelling it, after sitting near it for 20 minutes. Another exercise, which I learned in the Tracker School community, is to put a plant or plant part in an envelope, so that the individual cannot see, taste, or smell it. The person holds the envelope, and tries to sense the plant, and asks a series of questions.

1. Is it poisonous or not
2. Is it food or medicine
3. If it is medicine what is its use or body system affected.

I have done this exercise with beginning herb students, apprentices, and also with college students who knew nothing of herbalism. The students receive 4 envelopes, with a poison, a food, and 2 medicines. I do not know which envelope they are testing and cannot influence their impression.  For poison, I sometimes put poison hemlock seeds in one of the envelopes. Out of perhaps 60 student testings, only a handful of student have failed to identify the poison hemlock as poisonous. For most of the substances, the students are 80-90% accurate. Sometimes, unexpected but accurate information comes out. Once an apprentice intuited that Althea was both food an medicine, and that as medicine it was good for the nervous system. This is not conventional wisdom about Althea, but in her case, this nursing mother in dry-as-a-bone Colorado was dehydrated with nervous irritation from the dryness, and Althea indeed soothed the irritation.  We don’t want to rely on this method for studying unknown herbs, because “usually” and “most of the time” is not good enough for detecting poisonous plants.

I am convinced, after working with different types of students for nearly 40 years, that this innate intuition and instinct can be developed into a highly reliable and refined talent, and I’m also convinced that this is an essential talent to develop in order to work in the field of natural healing with plants. These, I think, are the essential points of practicing critical intuition:

1. Make the intention to set aside your preconceptions. When we make an intention, we put ourselves in the center of our being, we increase our awareness, we mobilize all parts of our physical and spiritual senses. We put ourselves in a positive state, rather than a negative, overly receptive state where we may become porous to vague impressions. In this first step we impress on our unconscious mind that we want accurate information, not confirmation of our previous prejudices or opinions.
2. Make a second specific intention that you want to consult your “highest and most accurate intuition.” We again impress the deep mind that we do not want impressions based on wish-fulfillment or ego-pleasing.
3. Ask your question in clear terms.
4. Be very open as to how the answer will come to your consciousness. It may differ between individuals, and also for one individual at different times. A person may “see” something, another may “hear” and a third may just get a vague sense of an answer.
5. When you get the impression, ask again if the information is accurate? Again, impress on the deep mind that you want accurate information as free from bias and projection as possible. A light, focused, but curious and playful attitude works better than a heavy and skeptical or overly serious one.
6. Finally, find some way to ground the answer, or test it in reality.

The same process can be used when working with plants. Some special considerations:

1. Make the intention to perceive the plant on its own terms, in its own essence, rather simply in its relationship to human utilitarians values.
2. Do not free-associate off the English plant name. Baby-blue eyes for wounds in childhood, Bleeding Heart for a broken heart, etc. The English name has nothing to do with the essence of the plant on its own terms. Release those associations.
3. Do not free associate on some form of plant morphology, Shooting Star for those who have failed to incarnate properly, etc because the flower looks to a human like a shooting star. Release that association and ask for the truth of the plant on its own terms.

Be aware of your own projections as much as possible. The question is not “Am I projecting?” but “How am I projecting?” Overcoming projection, this can only be obtained by strong intentions to do so, brutal honesty about ones own covert motives or inclinations to denial or dishonesty, persistent questioning and re-questioning, and long practice.  One herbalist made a flower essence set of several hundred plants, and fully 1/3 of them were either for disordered eating or for rigid religious attitudes. This practitioner in this case suffers from disordered eating, and uses distorted religious beliefs to rationalize the behavior. I once intuited 6 plants on the same day, and five of them said they were “good for people who suffer from overwork.”  Hmmmmm.

Ultimately, the final stage of grounding is necessary. And this brings us back to the Four Directions model. Each direction can act like a check or balance against the others. Is there some history of this plant use in old literature? Does science have anything to say about this? And ultimately, the proof come in the South, where we take the plants in repeated experimentation or use them clinically.

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Kids, Common Infections, Herbs & Antibiotics

Excerpted from the now available Spring 2012 Issue of

Plant Healer Magazine

by Aviva Romm

September 1, 2011, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released a report on the problem of unnecessary antibiotic prescribing for kids. They found that doctors are unnecessarily prescribing antibiotics for kids more than 50% of the time, most often for upper respiratory infections (colds, coughs, ear infections, sinusitis, and sore throats).

Inappropriate antibiotic prescribing is the primary cause of antibiotic resistance, which is a major global public health problem. Further, medical science is waking up to the fact that pediatric antibiotic exposure is not benign for the individual, and may lead to asthma, eczema, and the development of inflammatory bowel diseases such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease later in life. Finally, antibiotics that make their way into the environment whether through industrial manufacturing, use in animal husbandry or human excretion, also have an impact. While antibiotics can be lifesaving when necessary, when overprescribed and misused, the consequences can be deadly!

Antibiotics are often given unnecessarily for common pediatric infections because doctors think that parents want or expect them. Indeed, I’ve had to talk dozens of parents out of an antibiotics prescription, they are accustomed to doctors giving meds and they are afraid and don’t want their kids to suffer. Doctors also prescribe antibiotics because they are worried about missing a serious diagnosis, and then there is also fear of litigation for the rare missed or under-treated infection.

I’m a big advocate of avoiding unnecessary antibiotic use, and the fact is, for common pediatric infections, they’re unnecessary. And herbs can play a huge role in supporting health and comfort while avoiding unnecessary medications. It’s amazing, though, how many herbalists and naturally inclined folks are confident using herbs until it comes to their young‘uns getting sick. The fever of 103 degrees, the cough that lasts for 2, 3, or 4 weeks, or the middle-ear infection can bring even the bravest hearts to their knees at the pediatrician’s office. You find yourself tentatively taking that antibiotic prescription that is handed out as freely as candy on Halloween. And then there is the ensuing dilemma when you get home– do you give the antibiotic or do you stick with the herbs just a little longer? Too often fear trumps evidence and intuition.

Herbal Care or Medical Attention?

Here are symptoms to worry about. If you see any of these, a doctor’s appointment is appropriate and medications are likely warranted:

•Any baby less than 1 month old with a fever requires immediate medical attention!

•High (> 103.5 F) or persistent fever in any aged child

•A child is having to work extra hard to breathe or if her breathing is as fast, labored, or accompanied by stridor, whooping sounds, or wheezing

•Persistent pain (nothing relieves it) such as an earache, sore throat, severe headache or stomach ache

•Frequent vomiting or diarrhea if a child us unable to keep down enough liquids to urinate at least once every six to eight hours… this could be a sign of dehydration

•Thick eye discharge that doesn’t get better during the day

•A stiff neck, extreme lack of energy or the illness seems to be getting worse rather than staying the same for more than five days

•Blood in the vomit or diarrhea

•If the child has been exposed to a contagious disease such as mono, pertussis, measles, the flu, or has travelled out of the country recently

•If your treatment for a mild condition is not helping, and the condition persists or worsens

Reassuring signs that you can, in good confidence, continue to treat an illness botanically include:

•The child, in spite of not feeling well, continues to play and act generally normally, and is able to be awake, and alert even though he or she may be more sleepy than usual

•The child’s appetite may be decreased from normal, but he or she continues to take fluids and perhaps a small amount of food

•The child is peeing a normal amount compared to usual

•The symptoms slowly improve over the course of several days

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Cough

A cough is a reaction to airway irritation or inflammation, usually caused by viral upper respiratory infection (also called a cold) or something in the environment (i.e., dust). Asthma and gastroesophageal reflux can also cause cough. This is a discussion of cough due to viral infection. Coughs can last from days to even weeks. In fact, you might have noticed that sometimes after a cold, a child can have a lingering cough for even 6 weeks. This can actually be completely normal, is called post-viral airway reactivity, and is due to persistent irritation in the upper airway.

Antibiotics do not treat coughs due to viral infections and are almost never indicated for coughs due to colds.

Botanicals:

Aunty Aviva’s Cough Syrup Blend

This remedy is effective and pleasant for use with children.

•1⁄2 ounce dried mullein leaves (Verbascum thapsus)

•1⁄2 ounce marshmallow root (Althea officinalis)

• 1⁄2 ounce licorice root (Glycyrrhiza glabra)

• 1⁄2 ounce thyme (Thymus vulgaris)

• 1⁄2 ounce anise seeds (Pimpinella anisum)

• 1⁄2 ounce wild cherry bark (Prunus serotina) •1⁄2 ounce slippery elm bark (Ulmus rubra) •1 quart of boiling water

Combine all the herbs. Put 1 ounce of the mixture in a glass jar, add the boiling water, cover, and steep for 2 hours. Strain the liquid into a pot and simmer gently until it is reduced to 1 cup (discard the plant material). Sweeten with H cup of honey (for children under one year, omit the honey and replace with maple syrup or sugar to taste). After the syrup cools to room temperature, store it in a jar in the fridge. It will keep for up to 2 months.

Dose: 1-2 teaspoons as needed for children one to three years old, 1 tablespoon as needed for older children.

Quiet Cough Formula

This sweet-tasting, glycerin-based tincture is relaxing, expectorant, and antimicrobial for the respiratory passages.

•1⁄2 ounce anise seed tincture (Pimpinella anisum)
•1⁄2 ounce cramp bark tincture (Viburnum opulus)
•1⁄2 ounce thyme tincture (Thymus vulgaris)
•1⁄2 ounce elecampane tincture (Inula helenium)
•1⁄2 ounce red clover blossom tincture (Trifolium pretense)

•1⁄2 ounce black cohosh tincture (Actea racemosa syn. Cimicifuga racemosa)
•1-ounce vegetable glycerin

Mix all the ingredients in a 4-ounce dark amber bottle. Shake well before each use. It will store indefinitely. Refrigeration is not necessary.

Dose: Give 1/2 to 1 teaspoon up to every 30 minutes for 2 hours for acute coughing bouts, or two to four times daily for milder or chronic coughs.

When to Consult with a Doctor

•All babies under 1 month old with persistent cough should be evaluate by a doctor
•If the child is wheezing and has no history of asthma

•If the child has asthma and wheezing that is causing him significant difficulty breathing, with no relief from prescribed medications.
•If the child’s breathing is rapid and labored (fever by itself can cause breathing to be faster than usual, but it should not make a child work harder to breathe).

•The child’s lips or mouth are turning blue due to labored breathing or shortness of breath.

Ear Infections (Otitis media)

Ear infection is the most common reason for a pediatric office visit, and one of the most common conditions leading to antibiotic over-prescription. Antibiotics treatment is considered appropriate (though not always necessary) for babies under 6 months old with known or suspected ear infections, and sometimes for children ages 6 months to 2 years with severe infection.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends giving parents the option of waiting 48-72 hours to see if symptoms resolve on their own before using an antibiotic. Approximately 80% of kids with acute otitis media get better without antibiotics!

Botanicals

•Garlic-Mullein Oil (Allium sativum and Verbascum Thapsus) The classic herbal remedy for ear infections is garlic-mullein oil. In 30 years of herbal practice, I’ve rarely had to turn to anything else. Garlic is a natural antimicrobial, addressing infections of both a bacterial and viral nature. Mullein is an analgesic, relieving the pain associated with earaches. Never put anything in the ear if you suspect eardrum rupture or if there is drainage from the ear.

•St. John’s Wort (Hypericum perforatum) Oil is a natural antiviral and analgesic, and can be used as an alternative to garlic-mullein oil, though I prefer the latter.

•Jamaican Dogwood (Piscidia piscipula) – Cramp Bark (Viburnum opulus) tincture (a 50/50 combination) is a reliable alternative to ibuprofen or Tylenol for pain relief. Give 5-10 drops to children under 5; 10-20 drops to children 5-12, and 2-3 mL to older children. Repeat the dose in 15- 20 minutes, then every 2-4 hours as needed. Jamaican dogwood is said to cause respiratory paralysis in excessive doses; do not exceed the above doses and keep out of reach of children.

When to Consult with a Doctor

•Pain that won’t resolve

•High fever and persistent ear pain

•Drainage from the ear

•Neck pain or stiffness

Herbal pediatrics is an important but under utilized art because so many folks are afraid to treat kids, especially young children. It is critically important to know when medications are necessary, and also equally important to know when they are not. The health of the individual and the balance of the planet are at stake when medications are inappropriately and over used. Paying close attention to healthy kids, and spending time around kids when they are sick will help you to learn the difference. A family physician or pediatrician in your community can be an ally for you and your family or patients, and you an asset for him or her as many physicians treating kids want to know how to use alternatives but don’t know where to learn or who/what to trust.

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To read the entire informative article, subscribe or resubscribe now to: www.PlantHealerMagazine.com

To learn more about botanical pediatrics or to ask questions, go to Aviva’s website at: www.avivaromm.com.

From the new Spring issue of

PLANT HEALER MAGAZINE

The photo is a super closeup of an actual pollen release from river Alders.  Volume II Issue II is 288 full-color pages long, with articles for all ages, levels and types of herbal practitioner and aficionado… by many of herbalism’s leading voices.  To subscribe, resubscribe, submit or advertise, go to:

PlantHealerMagazine.com

Now Available

PLANT HEALER MAGAZINE

Vol. II Issue II – Spring 2012

As of today you can log in to your personal PH membership account to download this 288 page issue.

New column by Phyllis Light • Exclusive Interview with Matthew Wood

Columns & Articles by leading herbalists:

Paul Bergner • Christa Sinadinos • Juliet Blankespoor • Susun Weed

Rebecca Altman • Samuel Thayer • Ananda Wilson • Jim McDonald • Sean Donahue • Doc Garcia

7Song • Aviva Romm • Rosalee de la Forêt • Robin Rose Bennett • Henriette Kress • Wendy Petty

Virginia Adi • Kristine Brown • Sabrina Lutes • Michelle Czolba • Nicole Telkes • Katja Swift

Jane Valencia • Jesse Wolf Hardin and Kiva Rose

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Submit your articles for the Summer Issue by the deadline: April 1st

For more information or to subscribe:

www.PlantHealerMagazine.com

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