Allies in healing…connecting with plant medicine
My son attends an urban forest preschool with a lot of focus on connecting to the natural world. Over the month of January, they have been talking about the concept of hygge (A Danish concept meaning creating a warm atmosphere and enjoying the good things in life with good people - From the website https://www.visitdenmark.com/denmark/things-do/danish-culture/what-hygge). As part of their discussion and practice of hygge, they have been enjoying a lot of hot tea and even had the opportunity to blend their own teas. They had approximately quite a few herbs available in bowls (mint, lavender, echinacea, lemon balm, chamomile, rose petals and some preblended bulk teas), and they carefully blended their own herbal teas paying attention to the visual appearance of the herbs, the names, and their traditional uses. My 4 year old came home with a tea blend containing echinacea that he said was to help keep sicknesses away. Hearing about the kids’ excitement connecting to the plants and to the beauty of the ritual of making tea really warmed my heart and prompted me to reflect on my own relationship with plants as medicine.
My relationship to plants really began in my early 20’s when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in a small community in rural Paraguay. In Paraguay, they drink yerba maté and tereré (yerba maté served ice cold) multiple times a day. Both are usually prepared with fresh herbs. The maté water was either prepared the night before or early in the morning with fresh or dried herbs. We usually started drinking tereré in the mid-morning and whoever was preparing the tereré would collect fresh plants and herbs from around the yard to put in the tereré water. Some of these were cultivated intentionally (like lemongrass or the citrus leaves) but many of them were native plants that grew wild. Sometimes the herbs and plants chosen were for flavor but often they were chosen for their traditional medicinal value based on their belief to either be health promoting or to ease an ailment (like an upset stomach). In addition to this daily ritual of intentionally choosing the plants for nourishment, when someone was ill, they would create a medicinal tea of various plants intentionally chosen. Everyone had some knowledge of the traditional uses of the local plants but there were people in the community (often mothers and grandmothers) who were the experts and keepers and teachers of this wisdom.
I think I became so accustomed to this daily ritual of intentionally choosing plants that I didn’t even realize that it wasn’t something I did before Paraguay and it had become a part of me. Drinking maté is still my favorite morning ritual. Although I don’t have access to or knowledge of the wide variety of plants that my Paraguayan family used, I keep an assortment of dried herbs that I use in my maté every day. I also keep pots of some of my favorite herbs for cooking and for fresh teas or maté and tereré.
In my integrative medicine training, I deepened my knowledge of herbal medicine (and though I know much more than I did before beginning that training, I still feel that I have only scratched the surface). In recent years, I have also deepened my connection and understanding of essential oils. My teacher and mentor who blends oils and has a deep reverence for our plant allies said recently that when you are receiving the scent of the oil, you are receiving the life cycle of the plant. I use oils almost every day and carry them with me everywhere. I have some scientific knowledge of the uses of oils from my training, and yet I do not think that I had every really connected the scent with the life cycle of the plant before. I had not consciously pondered that the plants I’m smelling are being harvested and giving their life in order for our oils to be made (usually) much in the same way we receiving the life of the plants when we eat them. Where the plants are grown and their life cycle also gives the oils unique qualities. For example, lavender grown in different places and climates has slightly different smells (and slightly different chemical compounds of course).
Plants can offer healing in so many ways (we haven’t even touched on plants in our diet here or plants that have given us pharmaceuticals, like aspirin). For me, the intentionality of choosing my herbs, of consciously cultivating a relationship with the medicine of the plants, choosing oils to help me in a certain way, all of these are so powerful, especially when we repeat them over and over. I am so grateful for my teachers and for these relationships and rituals that plants have given me.
My favorite easy ways to cultivate a deeper relationship with plant medicine:
-Herbal tea: ritual of drinking tea itself is powerful. Taking the time to choose a tea to meet a need in your body (like a tea that relaxes you if you are feeling stressed or a tea that helps invigorate if you are feeling low energy) can add another layer. When you choose a tea, pay attention to the blend. What plants are in your tea? Does the label tell you what part of the plant the tea is made of (flower, leaves, root?) Feel gratitude for the plants that are giving you this moment.
-Essential oils: choose your favorite oil (either single note or a blend). Smell it in the bottle. Notice the fragrance. Notice how you feel. Put a drop on your wrist or temples (if your skin tolerates oils, some skin doesn’t) and notice how it smells on your skin. Feel gratitude for the plant. Take a moment and read about the oil or the plant.
Happy deepening and much gratitude to our plant allies in healing.
