In this video I want to address one of the biggest holes that I see right now in the world of plant
medicine and herbalism. We've gotten very focused on individual constituents, on plants broken down
into their parts, that we've lost the bigger picture. Not only the bigger picture of plants
as multi-dimensional beings seconds help us heal in many levels, but even losing the bigger picture
of land itself. A couple of years ago I developed this idea of a class series called Medicine Sits
in Places. The title was a riff off of the book title of Keith Basso, called Wisdom Sits
in Places, about the language and lifeways of the Western Apache. The central thesis of his work was
the idea that indigenous peoples lived their lives in co-creation with the land. That all lifeways,
down to the very words that we use, are truly just art forms, creations, that are informed by the
land. We've lost this a bit in our contemporary culture. And even within our herbal world,
this revolution of plant medicine, we've forgotten that land itself, the complex ecology that we're
a part of, is healing. In truth ecology is just the relationship between living beings with the
living land. So a plant receives its medicine by being in an ecology. This is why plants have
certain constituents to begin with— dealing with certain environmental instances like, for example,
pests coming in, or disease, or other plants that they're growing nearby. These are all adaptations
to being in an environment. And I truly believe that we can receive medicine just by going out
and being in relationship to land. Truly this is an edge, a frontier, that we're being asked to
remember and re-experience. Because this is a part of who we are as human beings. In so many ways we
are trying to remember, especially those of us who are transplants in a newer land, how to be
indigenous— how to be of a place once more. So I see this as really vital to this plant revolution
that we're in right now, to actually start to engage with the land from this level. So in my
Medicine Sits classes, we go out to a land base, we take medicine specifically made from that land,
and we spend time just listening— what kind of feelings, emotions, sensations, do you get from
this land? Each land space will be different and will hold its own medicine. So wherever you are
in the world— perhaps you're just on the edge of spring, or maybe in full-blown spring, or maybe
if you're in the southern hemisphere, moving now into and through fall— you can connect into this
by simply taking time, wherever you are, out of doors with the land. Just sit and experience here,
find yourself a sit spot and get quiet for half an hour to an hour and see what comes through.
I know for me that my medicine practice and my ability to recognize intuition just became
prolific when I really spent a good amount of time connecting to the medicine of land. Because
the truth is that we all have a deep and unique bank of knowing— our earth intuition. A way of
really not only being in incredible relationship to this world around us, but receiving guidance
on our path. So if you're interested in this idea of opening your earth intuition,
I've developed a whole free online video series just about opening this unique gateway that is
created for us by nature. So if you're interested in seeing the series, you can sign up with a link
below. Thank you so much for watching, and thank you for being a land tender and caretaker that I
know that you are— for picking up small pieces of micro trash, or even just watching the Sun as it
moves across the sky. You, just being here and being in relationship to the land that you call
home, is part of the medicine of this world. So from my heart to yours, I sincerely thank you