The *Core Nature of Plants
by Kiva Rose
Our relationship to the plants is an ancient one, and we humans are well designed to engage the magic and medicine of the living earth we are a part of. All we need is right here – the vast and verdant world of the plants that speak to us, [...]
The foundation for experiencing and understanding herbal energetics and human constitutions is to learn to speak with the natural world (including plants and the human body) through our senses (which is what they’re there for, after all). Thus, one of the most important practices of the aspiring or practicing herbalist is to thoroughly awaken, engage [...]
I just posted the second part part of my new Talking With Plants essay over on the Animá blog, I suspect all my regular readers here will enjoy it and strongly suggest that my students read it closely as it is very relevant to the courses. Here’s an excerpt to tempt you:
The truth is that [...]
The most effective systems or types of herbalism tend to use a system of energetics to understand the way a plant works in the human body. In TCM, terms such as yin or yang, hot or cold may be applied. In ayurveda or humoral theory other terms may be used. Most systems of energetics [...]
For those of us who were taught, and came to accept, that the Universe is a machine, the journey back to wild water is a long one. We find our way one step at a time.
-Stephen Buhner
Down on our bellies on the grass, we take a flower’s view of the world — the huge blue [...]
Using Energy Moving Herbs for Connection, Presence and Groundedness
In the last few years I’ve had various students, guests, blog-readers and the like confide in me that they’re unable to really “feel” the plants on an energetic level. That no matter how much they meditate, garden, guzzle tinctures or go to herb conferences, no matter how [...]
In the stillness I looked inside and saw the wound laid down within all of us… The wound that comes from believing we are alone amid dead uncaring nature. And then I took a breath and began to share stories of a time when the world was young, when everyone knew that plants were intelligent [...]
Here we begin the Talking With Plants series of posts, but before we dig in I recommend reading Jason Godesky’s excellent blogpost called “Plants Are People, Too”. It’s an in-depth exploration of the ways plants communicate and feel, and their inherent personhood. He quotes Stephen Buhner as well as lots of recent and not so [...]
