9.24.2018

Fall equinox - terre sicule

The myth of the seasons usually highlights the renewal of spring - stark contrast to the winter months. But in the southern Mediterranean, things are different. At this equinox, balance comes in unexpected ways.

What you call the end
Is the opening thrust:
Wild yeast charges the fruit
And the air is sour with must.
Jasmine blooms along stone walls,
White stars on prickly, furrowed fields
That sprawl, burlap-brown, in the bite of heat,
Bitter, craggy, water-starved.

The landscape is the medicine,
If you can stomach it.

Kore couldn't, but now returns
Because she felt wheat berries push
Into that earth, all acrid-red,
That soon will see a new green blush
Spread, and grow, and bring the bread.
She knows new wine will flow at last.
Ede, ede! Tachy, tachy!
Come now, come now.
Come fast, come fast.



6.04.2018

Herbal Medicine: the thread that keeps us connected to the ecology

The following are some thoughts that were part of my presentation to the Bastyr community during the recent Herb and Food Fair (20th anniversary!). I am an endless optimist - in sum, I believe we can have access to the amazing technologies we've developed as a species, and stay sustainable, too - but only if we use those technologies judiciously, do not let them drive our lives, and stay connected to the ecological context that shaped, and still shapes, our phenotype (the physical incarnation of our genetic instructions). Cell phones, yes - but put them down and walk outside without them sometimes. Antibiotics, yes - but not as a first-line intervention. Cars, yes - but not if walking or biking is practical. Cities, yes - but not without green roofs, community gardens, and living machines. You get the idea. Herbal medicine can teach us all this, and more.

The technologies that we've developed stand tall, almost overpowering, on the horizon as we move into the 21st century. The present us with remarkable, powerful tools. They allow us to build and work in ways we never would have thought possible even one hundred years ago. But at the same time, we're finding that these technologies present new and complex challenges: from the ecological sustainability of energy and food production, to the sometimes overwhelming hold that our information systems can have on our attention and psyche, it seems that our modern tools could eat us alive. Already people feel a loss of connection to spirit, and creativity, and focus - which begs the question: do our technologies work for us, or are we working for our technologies? Is there a way to harness our modern tools but also keep a firm footing in our shared humanity, our shared life on this biosphere, our shared creative source?

I am reminded of the story of Ariadne, Theseus and the minotaur. When Theseus, heir to the throne of Athens, arrived on Crete to enter the labyrinth and challenge the minotaur (generations of children had been lost to its unyielding hunger), Ariadne (the master weaver) presented him with a thread he could use to find his way back out. After killing the minotaur, his work done, Theseus was indeed able to wind his way out of the twisting passages by following the thin thread Ariadne had tied to the front entrance. Without it, even if his work had been successful, he still would have been lost. But as the story goes, Theseus quickly forgot Ariadne, and left her behind, though she'd been the true hero in this story.

For me, plant medicine and the art of herbalism are what can help us stay connected to what really matters. There are many reasons why this is the case, but they all come down to this: nature has built-in threads everywhere that serve to keep all the pieces of an ecological system connected and engaged, so that the whole can function well. We see them in the stream of phytochemistry that travels from the plants, through mycorrhizae and bacteria, into the animal kingdom. This stream connects to long-preserved genetic memory: we hold plasticity in our genes, the ability to alter who we are based on environmental conditions. And, just like caterpillars who modify the plants they consume to help deal with infections, our behavior is different when we are exposed to the phytochemical signals that weave their way through the ecology. Our appetite and metabolism change. Our mind and spirit change. Our heartbeat, the elasticity of our vessels, change as well. Without this thread from the world around us, we suffer - especially if we work, day in and day out, in an environment that is radically different from the one in which we evolved. Most of us do.



So when we engage with the world, we incarnate into our individual reality, and inevitably we are changed by that with which we interact. This is a good thing: we learn, we grow, we evolve. But the world demands its pound of flesh: we may leave some of ourselves behind, and in some cases, we may leave it all behind. This is dangerous: the minotaur can devour us, or we can get lost forever in the labyrinth. What we need is a charioteer, one that holds the reins of the creative spirit, the inspiration, the deep connection to life that we're all born with, and also the daily work, the technology, the physical progress we use to make our mark in the world. Give too much power to one, and you fly apart, and accomplish nothing. To the other, and your spirit dies, congeals, gets stuck, accomplishes nothing. This charioteer is not an overpowering force, a dictator, or a containing power - rather, it is thin, and subtle, like a lighthouse in the mist. It is a thread that allows us to engage, accomplish our work, and find our way home, too, once the day is done. It is Ariadne's thread: for many, a spiritual practice, a loved one, or a shared passion provides this tether. But our soma, our physical body, needs this as much as our spirit does: as plant people, we are lucky to have a thread that holds both, reuniting us to the memory of home and our evolutionary context by helping to regulate our gene expression, while also igniting our spirits with the fire of the wild world, our birthright and our creative source.

The art of herbal medicine, who is  Ariadne, the wise and beautiful one, hands us this thread - how can we help but fall in love?  But unlike Theseus, let us not abandon her wisdom, rather let us fight to keep her by our side. Then, we will be able to help others find her too, and they too will grasp that all-important thread, and live full lives, and thrive in the modern world. What greater gift could we dream of? We all here are so lucky.

11.27.2017

Connecting the ecologies: micro-macrocosm awareness and patterns that nurture the creative spirit

This piece originally appeared in Plant Healer Magazine. Forgive its length; the subject focuses on spirit sickness and how, often by using herbal medicine techniques, we can begin to recognize how to fill some of the voids we feel as we travel through our modern lives.

Culture has powerful, and often unseen, consequences. We are all steeped in our cultures: we make assumptions, engage in behavior, and even form opinions on ethics and beauty based on the culture we inhabit. It might be tempting to think that we retain individual control over every aspect of our lives, but this is not the case: where we are born, the halls in which we walk our daily lives, shape us almost as much as any conscious choice we make. Our choices are, in fact, constrained by our cultures: think of something as simple as clothing or food to get a sense of this.
In Western culture we’ve been seeing some interesting threads over the last few decades. There are obvious pieces, like the dietary choices and approaches to food processing, which have become pervasive and are spreading globally. But there are also more subtle pieces, linked to mood, mental health, and spirit, that are less discussed but nevertheless important pieces of our culture. Prescriptions for mood-altering medications have been increasing for some time. Opioids – prescribed for pain, but abused for other reasons – are pervasive. Overall, a combination of escapism (through media, chronic alteration of mental states, or a literal reframing of reality) and an obsession with material gain seem to be important drivers of Western culture today. Our appetite seems, at times, insatiable. 
At the same time, there are other threads too. Through popular fantasy, and reflected in an increasing interest in what is magical, wild, or more generally “green”, people seem to be drawn towards that which is unknown, powerful, and somehow linked to nature. This is a good thing! But in many cases, this non-specific desire isn’t clearly articulated, nor are the reasons for it explored with any clarity: we’re all so busy, so tired at the end of the day, expected to be constantly “on call” and plugged in to endless streams of information, that the idea of spending time nurturing an unknown, hidden side of life seems like a luxury at best.
Many think we may have this backwards. Nurturing the creative soul, digging into the soil to find the well of inspiration for our lives, may be our most important task – not an afterthought to be observed, far removed, in movies or literature. The lack of emphasis on this basic need may be at the root of what we see as “spirit-sickness” in our culture – and while the raw uncertainty and shifting truth of the postmodern world may have precipitated it, we are doing ourselves no favors de-emphasizing the rituals, ceremony, and attention to dreamtime so valued by all traditional cultures.
MarionWoodman, a Jungian researcher and therapist, puts a fine point on this issue by contrasting this attention to “stuff” (entertainment, cars, homes, etc…) with the root of true nourishment in human life, which crops up as a veiled desire for magic, a longing for the green world. Interestingly, she frames it in terms of the difference between “matter” (stuff) and “mater” (literally “mother” in Latin): we’ve replaced the nourishing all-mother with a lot of material possessions, in the hopes that we’ll get the nourishment we need. Of course this will never happen: this nourishment comes from something much deeper and mysterious – something you can’t buy! – and the lack of this matrix, this yin, leaves us feeling untethered and permanently homeless. We’ve built ourselves up and surrounded ourselves with all sorts of neat things, and many of them are so useful, but the practices that truly feed us have been left behind.
She goes further, to discuss how the archetypal masculine – the yang that strives for clarity and seeks to explore new spaces and horizons – has been shackled into a dominating, oppressive force that – of course – serves to suppress the archetypal feminine and pervert its essence to a drive for material substance (matter vs. mater). Couple this with an unrealistic expectation for perfection, and you have a recipe for the forces that shape Western culture. Nature, on the other hand, favors imperfection: but this argument rarely gets traction in the boardroom or halls of government.
Fortunately, culture is not static: it grows and evolves, much as a living being does, and we have the opportunity and privilege to participate in its remodeling. But as we herbalists move into the twenty-first century, we may need to think of our role as cultural stewards as a responsibility instead: more and more, we are seeing that the threads of Western culture do not always come together into sustainable patterns. From the medicalization of spirit-sickness, to our relationship to resource extraction and capital markets, can anyone see this trajectory continuing for the next fifty, not to mention two hundred, years? So the question becomes: in what ways should we work towards cultural remodeling? How can we, who are drawn together by the experiences we’ve had working with plants, begin to build the case for a mindful, nature-based, cultural remodeling program?
I believe the answer lies in observing nature – the matrix in which we are inextricably embedded. But this is not a straightforward task, even if we can see and hear the signals she offers us. Part of the difficulty lies, again, in the paradigm we’ve created for ourselves in the Western world, so different from the paradigm that underlies almost all other traditional cultures. If we are to restore a collective mythology that can create cohesion and meaning in our daily lives, we will quickly run into resistance, a sort of paradox: for a collective, nurturing matrix stands in opposition to the cult of individual power, it implies that the good of the community should come before our own personal interests, and this is a difficult idea to embrace in the western world at the threshold of the twenty-first century.

If you take the time to observe traditional cultural systems, still intact in many areas of the world, you uncover a very different perspective: the apparent paradox of living a life that simultaneously values self and community melts away. The key is recognizing that we are shaped and directed by our culture, and that no will is truly ever completely free: the community in which we live has as much to do with our behavior, health, and happiness as do our individual choices. My friend Mangoye, part of an extended Maasai family, makes daily choices related to his children, cattle, hunting, drinking and foraging, along with longer-term plans that help trace the arc of his individual life. But as we were talking about his plans, and I was wondering why he unquestioningly followed his father’s recommendation on whom to marry, how to trade cattle, and what priorities to focus on, I came to realize that Mangoye feels deeply that, in order to be happy and successful, he must follow the cultural and familial practices that his community has followed for generations. “We will fragment and die”, he told me, “if the wedding ceremonies are not followed, if the architecture of the engang is changed, if the morani stop hunting the lion.” And while arranged weddings, the health hazards of living in a cramped, smoky mud hut, and the death of warriors during a lion hunt may be difficult for us to accept, they form the underpinning of a collective mythology that has allowed the Maasai to thrive in a hostile environment that might otherwise swallow them whole. But this mythology, this context, Woodman’s “mater”, does more than just cohere the community: it acts as a source of stories and creativity, and both generates and constrains the forward-moving impetus of the culture. All native traditions seem to have something like this.
Maybe, proceeding from the idea that life is self-similar at multiple different levels (from bacteria to biospheres), we can learn not only from traditional cultures, but from the behavior of nature itself. Being an herbalist, I look to plants. And some fascinating research over the last decade is pointing to the idea that plants don’t see a conflict between individual health and the health of their communities, either. First off, Richard Karban and others at the University of California, Davis have documented in detail how plants are able to communicate with each other by secreting volatile compounds into the air. These compounds are monoterpenes and sesquiterpenes, along with some phenolics, usually found on trichomes studding the exposed surfaces of leaves and stems. The minty quality of mint, the pungency of rosemary, the brightness of eucalyptus and the tea tree, the dry camphorous quality of sagebrush – all are examples of these volatiles, usually released when we rub a leaf and damage it, and often referred to as the “essential oil” of a plant. Karban and his team have found that, in response to the presence of these molecules in the air, neighboring plants will initiate defensive processes, including the up-regulation of immune-like molecules known as phytoalexins, to prepare for damage or invasion. One plant raises the alarm, and its neighbors hunker down. As a result, the plant community stands a better chance at surviving and reproducing: but, part and parcel, the individual may be damaged or destroyed. Interestingly, Karban has gone further to show that plants can behave selfishly, too, at least to some extent: for while I may not be willing to get injured or killed to save a community of strangers, I’m willing to endure a lot to safeguard my close friends and family. And wouldn’t you know that the sagebrush plants Karban monitored do the same thing: they are able to recognize volatile signals from genetically-similar individuals (aka their “family”), responding with greater urgency and almost ignoring the signals that come from unrelated Artemisias transplanted from far away. Have you noticed how mugwort and sagebrush plants can often smell incredibly different, even within the same garden or field? These cocktails of volatile molecules are not only signals for danger, but ways to recognize kin. Protect and cohere. Channel collective behavior.
Ted Farmer and his team from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland traced exactly what happens in a plant when the first whiff of volatile chemistry is detected. Plants are able to relay this information to distant tissues using a series of ion gates, which open in response to the presence of volatiles and then cause an electrical shift to occur across the plasma membrane of the plant’s cell. Like a series of dominos, these ion gates then open, one by one, carrying an electrical wave along with them and thereby transmitting the initial signal down the leaf, through the petiole, and into the stem. This is a remarkable finding: human neurons work in almost the same way, albeit with more complex and diverse ion gates. And the initial stimuli for our nerves, the neurotransmitters, often show striking structural similarities with the volatile molecules found in plants. Plants’ essential oils are neurotransmitter cocktails – quite literally, for the botanical world, but maybe also for us, which may be part of the reason why they can have such powerful effects on our minds and spirits. The mechanisms plants use to hold their families and communities together, to communicate danger and plan their responses, are the same mechanisms we use to think, to move, and to unite our internal ecologies. Once again we see the idea of individual health – in this case, individual plants or individual human neurons – as being important both for its own sake, but also as a part of a greater whole. Human neurons are often trimmed, or even eliminated, in order to help cement useful patterns of thought and behavior. Should we mourn this? Or celebrate it? Or, perhaps, both?

What about mechanisms of communication between humans and their environments? If this pattern of caring for individual health by simultaneously advancing community and ecological health is visible at all levels of life, then we should be able to find some evidence of it in the dance between humans and fields, people and forests. I’d argue that the act of smelling the camphor, thujone and pine in a sagebrush desert is already evidence enough – we’ve got structures cued to detecting these smells, after all – but is there anything more? Stafford Lightman, professor of medicine at the University of Bristol, UK has spent years studying the effects of stress on the human system, and recently discovered that a common species of bacteria, found in most living soils, is able to modulate the serotonin system in our brain. Bacteria that live inside our guts seem to have this ability, too – but Mycobacterium vaccae, the species studied by Lightman and his team, lives outside of our bodies. When we get bare hands into garden soil (which, crucially, must be living soil teeming with organic material to support healthy bacterial colonies), M. vaccae speaks to us using our own signal molecules, and impacts our mood. We’ve known about the benefits of gardening on mental health for a long time now: recently, Masashi Soga from the University of Tokyo and Kevin Gaston from the University of Exeter conducted a comprehensive review of over 30 years of research and found substantial benefits from even short stints of gardening, including “reductions in depression, anxiety, and body mass index, as well as increases in life satisfaction, quality of life, and sense of community.” As our mood lifts and we become healthier, our sense of community increases, too. Could bacterial (and perhaps fungal) signals be a part of this? Channeling behavior, but also building resilience and nurturing creativity. Soil – and its thriving ecology – is the yin-like matrix, perhaps the most literal embodiment of Woodman’s “mater”.
Maya Shetreat-Klein, a pediatrician living in New York and author of The Dirt Cure, has researched this effect and applied it in her private practice. Her focus is on childhood development, and particularly on the attention and mood challenges some kids experience in today’s world. Now, it should come as no surprise that our kids are living in a different world than they might have even fifty years ago: as Richard Louv documents in his work, you can’t help but see “nature deficit disorder” when you hear a third grader questioning the value of playing outside because “there are no outlets there!”  But what Dr. Shetreat-Klein discovered is that, when you move away from the obsession with antibacterial soaps, “microban” plastics, and “helicopter”-style parental handwashing and bathing of children, you start to see a change in mood and attention even if the child spends a lot of time in an urban environment. Exposure to soil, and the microbes found everywhere, might be a crucial part of growing up well-adjusted. Again, we might not feel comfortable with baths just once a week, or with eating snacks with grubby hands. But isolating the individual from the surrounding microbial riot may, in the long run, do more harm than good. The microbes shape our moods, they set the stage for our spirits to run free, to course creative through clear channels. Without them we become untethered. Paradoxically, exposing our kids to more potential for illness and contamination makes them healthier and happier. Maybe, as we’re starting to see, this isn’t a paradox at all.
And it’s not confined just to soil and dirt: Andrea Taylor, a professor of natural resources and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, has been researching the connection between time spent in unstructured outdoor environments (even city parks) and the frequency and severity of attention-deficit-like symptoms. In one dramatic study, she found that a one-hour walk in a park was as effective as a single dose of Ritalin in managing symptoms. And while this is a great result, it also highlights the conflict between individual health and community health: sure, if we all embraced the idea that walks in parks were good for everyone and an important part of our shared cultural mythology, and we looked with concern on folks who hadn’t been for a walk outdoors for a day or two, we might see a whole lot less Ritalin prescribed. But who has the time for this? Who has the political will to set aside green islands across our urban environments? Isn’t it easier, more targeted, more “individual” to just administer a treatment on an as-needed basis? We might have to pay taxes for parks, take time out of our mornings, put down our phones and let our kids guide us through mucky cattails and get distracted from our task list. And while I say this tongue-in-cheek, it nevertheless requires personal sacrifice: subsuming the individual for the health of the family, the health of the community.
But in the long run, what might seem like a personal sacrifice could actually become a gain in happiness, productivity, and health. Traditional cultures have always known this, though to be fair it has historically been difficult to evade time outdoors (until now). We’ve been hearing a lot about the traditional Japanese practice of “forest bathing” (shinrin-yoku) lately, and how being in a forest environment, rich in sounds, sights, smells and chemical traces, can affect us in many positive ways. It seems that, particularly when it comes to stress (as Lightman found), forest-bathing can help reduce the symptoms of being alive in the twenty-first century: lowered blood pressure, lowered cortisol levels, and lowered neurological stress indicators all follow. Bum-Jin Park, from Chiba University in Japan, recently reviewed trials from over 20 different forests in Japan and confirmed a substantial, repeatable effect from this practice. Maybe with enough evidence we can begin to say that setting aside unstructured forest time, though it seems to not immediately advance our careers and contribute to individual success, might be a crucial medicine for modern life. What’s most important to me is that the creative impetus, that feeling of inspiration and flow that we are attempting to find with all our “matter”, springs effortlessly from the “mater”, the mother, who lives in the woods (and other more wild places in your neighborhood, even if it’s just a park).

We have wildness, or the potential for wildness, within us as well: for if the ecology around us is alive, we also contain multitudes of life – fungal, bacterial, even vegetal – all over and inside us. We’ve lived in symbiosis with our internal fauna and flora since well before we were humans, and there are innumerable lock-and-key systems that have evolved over our history that are reliant on a teeming internal microbiome. For example, there is an argument that our bitter taste receptors, which are found not only in our guts but also throughout the upper and lower airway, are looking for molecules (known as “quorum-sensing” molecules) secreted by potentially hostile bacteria when they start to get an upper hand. Our immune system kicks into gear, secreting stored defensins and immediately getting a handle on the population shifts. But what is most fascinating is that the quorum-sensing molecules that pathogens produce, known as acyl homoserine lactones, are virtually analogous in structure to lactones produced by plants like the common dandelion. If we consume these plants, we get a similar immune-enhancing reaction – and stay healthier. Could it be that plants are conspiring to keep us happy and well? Do they see us as their kin, as part of the web of life that sustains them, too?
Eva Selhub, from Harvard Medical School, has documented extensively how the state of our internal ecology affects our mood – a counterpoint to Stafford Lightman and Andrea Taylor’s work on the connections between external ecology and human moods. In an excellent two-part review, she documents how, at the turn of the twentieth century, the idea of “autotoxicity” (articulated by Nobel-winning microbiologist Elie Metchnikoff) was held forth as one of the major drivers of mental illness: essentially, an overgrowth of harmful intestinal bacteria was, at that time, seen as the root cause of the problem. Over the course of the twentieth century, that hypothesis was rejected in favor of a top-down approach that put the origin in the brain and neural tissue. Now we are realizing both ideas are part of the picture, but it is interesting to note that, with its reliance on the myth of the “self-made man” and the cult of unfettered, individual free will, the twentieth century chose to say that the brain itself is the source of all mental illness. Again, it’s hard to admit that our thoughts and feelings might not be under “our” control, and therefore we might want to reject the idea that bacteria are “controlling” us – but this is because we have such a limited definition of what “our” means, of who we are. If we look at things through a more traditional lens, we might find that our edges are not clearly defined, that we overlap chemically and physically with a range of internal and external ecologies, and that nurturing all of them, while it might not seem to be self-care, is a big part of our long-term wellbeing. Internal flora, though genetically distinct, might be part of “us”. Flora and fauna in our immediate environment might, at least in part, be “us” too (beyond the fact that we’re all made up of the same recycled stardust). By the same token our neurons, with their ability to recognize plant volatiles as neurotransmitters due to a conserved mechanism of action between the plant and animal kingdoms, might not be fully “us”. Recently, scientists are exploring the benefits of bathing less (or sometimes not all) on productivity, mood, sleep, and more. As you can imagine, this is yet another case of personal sacrifices and culture-shifting leading to improved health outcomes – all through growing gardens on our skin, in our hair, in our armpits.

Exploring our edges can have interesting consequences, but I believe it is essential we do so. First of all, it helps better explain what some have called the “bond” human beings have with nature: if we are willing to accept that the boundary lines of “self” and “non-self” are more like a great wetland at the estuary of a broad river, where fresh water and salt water mix and blend and create unique ecological niches, instead of stark dividing lines, then the “bond” becomes more of an “overlap”, and the mutual interdependence becomes more intuitive. Michael McCarthy, who writes articles on ecology, the environment, and nature for The Times of London and The Independent, attempts to convince us that this bond is an essential part of being human, and that we recognize its importance when we experience the sheer joy of being in nature. This joy, as he articulates it, is a combination of peace, happiness, transcendence, and creative inspiration: in short, it is that place traditional cultures attempt to engender through ritual, ceremony, and spiritual practice, for it is the source of our fullest life, it is the “mater”. But, upon reflection, I do not think that wild, human-free spaces are the only way to build this feeling. I have felt it many times from music, art, writing, even buildings – all quintessentially human constructs. Which leads me to the second consideration brought up in the exploration of our edges: is there something in nature, in the whole of nature of which we and all our creations are an inextricable part, that can help build and nurture this feeling of transcendent, inspired joy?

We will come back to this point in a moment. But first, consider this when exploring were “we”, as individuals, have edges: philosophers searching for the nature of our consciousness have been turning over this idea forever in a search to pinpoint consciousness, self-awareness, and what exactly thoughts are made of. One camp posits that, in a sufficiently complex system, “emergent” properties such as consciousness (or even life itself) come to be as part of the synergy of the system’s components. The whole, in this sense, becomes way more than the sum of its parts: it becomes self-aware. From this perspective, our thoughts and feelings (and everything else we associate with being conscious) is a by-product of our complex physiologies, and particularly the neural networks in the central nervous system. Another camp (whose position is well-articulated by philosopher Alva Nöe) subscribes to the idea of non-local consciousness: meaning that what we consider self-awareness isn’t limited to what’s in our heads, it overlaps with many other pieces of the world around us. Note that, though it may not appear so at first blush, these two ways of looking at consciousness aren’t necessarily incompatible – though I do think it is important to think of consciousness as non-local, not contained simply in our skulls.

There are a few reasons why this seems like a plausible viewpoint to me. First, we’ve already seen how our thoughts and feelings are affected by a range of factors from the world around us and also from the world inside us. Additionally, we’ve known for some time that somatic processes (like cold hands and feet, or gassiness from a difficult meal) send feedback to the brain that affects perception of stress and tolerance to it. But second, the idea of non-local consciousness helps explain how, every so often, we seem to share thoughts with those who are close to us: blurting out the same thing at the same time, thinking about a new topic right before a friend starts talking about it, sensing that a loved one is in trouble even on the opposite side of the world. I don’t pretend to know what the mechanism of consciousness is (the so-called “hard problem” of translating structures made of matter, like the brain, into the processes of consciousness), but it does seem that we can have definite overlaps with other consciousnesses in our life.

But is it truly just an overlap? I would posit that what we may be experiencing is a larger consciousness, one in which our own is “embedded”, or nested, sort of like our microbiome’s bacterial organisms are nested inside of us. And just as our microbiome can affect our mood and thoughts, perhaps we can affect the mood and thoughts of this larger consciousness: so the “telepathic” experience with a friend isn’t actually mind-reading, it’s just the you-and-your-friend relationship (the larger consciousness) having a thought that each of its nested consciousnesses is experiencing simultaneously. If you look at things this way, a family becomes a living, breathing being. Your garden, a neighborhood, a city, the local bioregion – all are alive and conscious, all teem with nested consciousnesses that have their own lives, thoughts, hopes and feelings. This of course proceeds both inward and outward, through the microbiome and the solar system, in a recursive, self-similar fashion: as above, so below. But it’s always important to remember that, at each level, no fate is completely fixed, and no will completely free: we belong to the bioregion, transients though we may be, the same way our microbiomes belong to us. And a final, interesting corollary is that, at a galactic or universal level, there must exist a consciousness too, of which we are all a part: perhaps this is what so many have known as “god”. But just as we are, sometimes, at the mercy of bacteria that live in our GI tract, so also any “god” is tied inextricably to all its nested consciousnesses. We affect each other. We think through each other.

With all this context, it becomes clear to me that our inextricable bond with everything around us, the experiences and emotions that flow through us when we perceive, with our limited minds, what the super-organisms we’re nested in are thinking, are the source and sink, the beginning and end, of life for us. They truly are Woodman’s “mater”. But when delving into the quality of these experiences and thoughts, the “language” that life uses as it expresses itself, we do start to notice some consistency. This might serve us well in our quest to become more mindful and aware of all the different threads of consciousness moving through us at any given time: after all, as all students of divination know, the trick isn’t having prescience: it’s recognizing when you’re having it! So is there something universal, expressed in nature, that we can hold as an anchor and touchstone? Does it have to be non-human, or do humans possess it too? Why do we feel it more when we’re out in the forest, or on the open savanna, than when we’re in an enclosed classroom?

It turns out that there very well might be. When we look at an acacia tree on a vast plain, for example, and feel a sense of joy, transcendence, and creative inspiration, we’re recognizing a pattern that has deep resonance for us. The resonance may be in part for survival reasons: recognizing natural patterns successfully helps us survive. But it also feels very much like coming home: there’s something familiar to it, and even in wild spaces that might seem daunting and scary, we feel held, embedded, connected. Look at mountains, river deltas, the rippling of waves on a lake or ocean, tree branching, veins branching, spirals in seeds, in clouds, in galaxies: the examples are endless, and they all feel familiar somehow. The examples extend into the human realm, too: we see it mostly in art, where buildings, paintings, sculptures – even if abstract – evoke peace, comfort, belonging, and inspiration when we perceive them. Perhaps the most stark example of this – because it’s clearly not attempting to mimic nature, which might be one argument as to why art feels good to us – is the work of Jackson Pollock, the abstract American painter who worked during the 1940s and 1950s. When we look at his paintings, which appear to be random streaks and splatters on huge canvases, we feel something similar to what we feel when we look out onto a wild landscape, or into the eyes of the person we love. What’s going on?

Richard Taylor, from the University of Oregon, presents a compelling hypothesis. To grasp its full import, we will have to take a short digression into mathematics and art: the first will give us a semi-objective context to understand the hypothesis, and the second a compelling example of how human creation, when driven by a connection to Woodman’s “mater”, can produce paintings like Pollock’s that evoke the same rich, vivid, transcendent experience we get from being in wild nature.

We remember dimensionality from geometry class: a point has dimension zero, a line dimension 1 (length), a square or plane dimension 2 (length and breadth), and a cube or space has dimension 3 (length, breadth and height). But take for a moment a line with a kink in it: this figure is more than just a straight line, it expands somewhat into two dimensions, but not enough to actually span a surface, to have two full dimensions. It is arbitrary and abstract to do this, but one might assign a “dimension” to that kinked line of 1.05 – somewhat more than just 1, which is a straight line. Now, if you make a more and more kinked line, one with kinks within kinks, you begin to get closer and closer to two dimensions the more complex and intricate the line becomes. Because of the amount of twists within twists, the line starts to define a surface – though it never quite reaches dimension 2. Mathematicians call this state a “fractal dimension”, somewhere between 1 and 2, and this is of course the origin of the term “fractal”, that mathematical construction that is self-similar at any level, exhibits repeating motifs, and straddles the line between perfect, rigid order and total, wild unpredictability.

Richard Taylor set out to mathematically analyze Jackson Pollock’s work by looking for patterns of self-similarity hidden in the apparent random paint splashes: was it indeed self-similar? Did a big splash over here have a smaller echo over there, and yet another one about half again as far away? Did all the different colors of splashes follow similar patterns and, if so, did they exhibit any kind of fractal dimensionality? The results are fascinating: during the early years, Pollock’s paintings had a little self-similarity, with fractal dimensionality close to 1.1. But as his work matured, the fractal dimension increased, and the paintings showed more and more recursive self-similarity, until reaching 1.4, when all of a sudden art critics began to really like his work. Taylor’s hypothesis is that Pollock hit upon a universal fractal dimensionality, one that you see as the dominant resonant fractal dimensionality in nature. That’s why the critics came to love the later paintings.

It turns out that if you map out the branching patterns of a river delta, or of that acacia tree on the savanna, they have a fractal dimension very close to 1.4 – just like Pollock’s work. In fact, almost any system found in nature has this same quality.  What’s more, you see fractal dimensionality close to 1.4 in some of our most beloved pieces of classical music – in Bach, for example – that encode the right level of complexity, just as natural systems do. Many pieces of literature do this as well. What’s going on here? Were Bach and Pollock doing complex math before sitting down to be creative? Or were they somehow tapping into a very basic, underlying process?

Taylor and others decided to investigate. They conducted an experiment that mapped the rapid, subtle eye motions (known as “microsaccades”) that we unconsciously make when looking at anything. We don’t actually just “look” at stuff – our eyes scan the visual field, taking in details that our brain then uses to assemble a composite image. What Taylor found was that the pattern we use to scan is a fractal pattern: a big swipe first, then a series of successively smaller swipes across smaller and smaller pieces of the visual field, in recursively self-similar fashion. The fractal dimensionality of this scanning pattern is close to 1.4. So perhaps part of the reason we find Pollock’s later work appealing is that it is “in sync” with the way our eyes look at the world: we find splashes where we expect to find splashes. Unconsciously, we recognize it. It makes sense.

Researchers have found similar patterns in the neural network firing of our brain and in the heart rate variability patterns of our pulse – two of our most basic physiological processes. Ary Goldberger from Harvard Medical School, who documented much of this, describes this fractal organization with dimensionality 1.4 as a happy medium between rigid order and complete chaos – a system wild enough to adapt, grow, and create but not so wild as to become unstable. Taylor and Goldberger both speculate that our conscious process, just like the act of looking, has this same quality. And interestingly, Taylor goes further: when we connect with a painting, or a natural scene, that exhibits fractal dimensionality of 1.4, he found that our levels of stress decrease by up to 60%. We feel in synch. Friction drops off. We resonate.

Perhaps this is what we’re recognizing when we feel an overarching consciousness thinking through us – perhaps this is why we feel alive, unburdened, joyful and inspired. Our internal processes are synching up with the basic fractal dimensionality of the world all around us. Like allowing ourselves to get lost in an incredible piece of music, we can transcend the limits of our own individual consciousness, leave behind the rigidity of individual self, and resonate with a larger community: be it a relationship, a neighborhood, a planet, or the whole field of stars. We add our own note to the symphony – and the whole symphony is richer for it.

What does this mean in practice for us, as we live and move through our daily lives? Though I can’t pretend to have a universal answer, I do think we can draw a number of lessons from the balance of the evidence before us, and the consequences of putting these lessons into practice might have profound implications for our individual well-being and beyond. First, we have to remember than any answer will include a daily practice: this is Marion Woodman’s “mater”. We can’t focus on the microbe, the plant, the thing, Gaia: this is just “matter”. The answer probably isn’t in a particular herbal formula, or probiotic cocktail. It’s more about the daily renewal and the processes we use to identify and connect with the nested consciousnesses in which we are embedded. Similarly, sticking to rituals for their own sake (“taking the finger for the moon”, as the Zen priests might say) won’t work either: life is ever-changing, and our driving goal should be to enhance connection within and without, so that the super-organism can be nurtured and nurture us in turn. We may have to become comfortable subsuming our individual free will in this case – but all evidence seems to point to the fact that this is worth it in the end, and make us happier and healthier.

Specifically, pieces of this practice might include connecting to soil, dirt, and microbes wherever we go (mindful, naturally, of the obviously risky bugs). Every day, touch some wild water. Touch dirt and tree bark. When you travel, get dirty. Put things in your mouth. Allow your internal and external ecologies to connect by simply bringing them into contact. The evidence from Elie Metchnikoff, through Stafford Lightman, Andrea Taylor, and Maya Shetreat-Klein all points in this direction.
Consider fermentation as a source of interesting internal denizens, but also consider adding to your ferment mothers from other people, places, and starter cultures. Think about wild yeast in your brewing – maybe even collect strains from places you’ve lived.
Engage in the practice of tonic herbalism: the daily use of plants and mushrooms, ideally from really close by though also from far-flung places with which you’ve had the pleasure of overlapping consciousness, renews both the internal and external ecologies (after all, you’re going to have to find those herbs outside somewhere). This seems to me a more important, foundational discipline than using plants as remedies for disease and complaints. It speaks to forging and maintaining important friendships, to building alignments with other consciousnesses.
And speaking of building alignments, consider rituals and ceremonies that use those special plants and mushrooms we know as entheogens, the ones that change our brain wave patterns in ways similar to those Ary Goldberger saw when we resonate with the fractional dimensionality of the universe. But do it mindfully, intentionally: when building an alignment with a spirit of place, plant, animal, or whatever broader consciousness you choose to align yourself with, we’re making a long-term, sacred commitment that feeds us deeply but also demands to be fed (don’t make this commitment lightly).
As we build cities, let’s look to the patterns and systems nature exhibits and move away from rigid, dimension-1 construction style. As we teach and learn, let’s allow for elements of chaos to inject creative diversity into the curriculum. As we relate to each other, let’s avoid either/or, male/female, us/them ideas and try to embrace the creative fullness of the “imperfect” in-between. It really comes down to paying attention and being willing to flex!

In the end, this becomes true tonification: like a tonic note that is echoed fractally through a musical piece, our living becomes a self-similar pattern that echoes the same self-similarity found across all of reality. The process will feed the individual soul, to be sure, but only because it feeds the collective soul, too. It is the road to healing spirit sickness, rediscovering our shared mythology, and remodeling our culture so that it, as a super-organism, can move forward in resonance with its own internal and external ecologies. But there is a note of warning here, too: as humans, we have spent our collective childhood playing with our special abilities, our drive for progress, for innovation, for boundary-breaking. We’ve achieved remarkable things, but have remained firmly planted in our species’ own individual self-interest. Now, at this moment in time, we know better. It is time for us to grow up, to join our ancestors, to move forward as a species through a ritual of initiation that will align us with what the microbes, mushrooms and plants already know. It will be transformative, and not without struggle – but how much more incredible will be the application of our human gifts if we just allow ourselves to listen with respect. We will take the power of life and amplify it to the stars.

               May you look into the vessel, into dream, into wind
               And may you not find them empty.
               May you see the light of the dark sun
               The tangents, the off-tracks, the fantasy
               The gravid emptiness of liminal space

               Interstice of inspiration.

8.08.2017

A flora of western Norway

"So quickly, without a moment's warning, does the miraculous swerve and point to us, demanding that we be its willing servant."             - Mary Oliver

Top of the waterfall at Kjeasen, end of the Eidfjord

After a combination of driving and hiking, we made it to an improbable cluster of stone dwellings set on a ledge 1,800 feet above sea level. Still a working farm, we found vegetables, grains, animals - and a range of plants common to the places that have long known humans. In the surrounding forests, where glacial runoff feeds an endless stream of water during the warmer months, we also found bogs with more rare, wonderful plants.

Lupinus perennis, common lupine
Impatiens noli-tangere, touch-me-not

In late July, the waters of the fjord - far below us, a dizzying drop - are fully opaque, a light turquoise color. We had been out on the water in small boats before climbing to our vantage point, and had run our hands through it. It was so cold! I cupped some of it and brought it to my lips, expecting the familiar saltiness of the sea (the fjords are, after all, fingers of the Atlantic ocean reaching over 100 miles inland), but the water tasted soft, and sweet.




Rosa rugosa


Artemisia vulgaris, mugwort


Alchemilla vulgaris, lady's mantle


Valeriana officinalis, valerian

A mess of nettle and cleavers (Urtica dioica and Galium aparine)



The milky turquoise whiteness comes from the glaciers. The fresh water runoff - more than six feet of it in the summer - floats, frigid, over the warm, dense salty sea below. The white comes from anorthosite, a bright mineral deposit that's mostly feldspar, found only here in Scandinavia and in parts of Newfoundland (once the same land mass). The glacier, grinding boulders beneath its huge weight, powders it into a fine flowing dust, and the melt waters wash it away.

Geranium robertianum, herb Robert

Rhodiola rosea, rose-root
Corydalis lutea, fumewort

Alchemilla alpina

But the anorthosite deposits may have a deeper, fantastic origin: long ago, when the Earth was very young, a gigantic rock covered almost entirely in this mineral slammed into her, and the moon (who still glows white with anorthosite) was born. Perhaps the rocks that are here are part of a smudge, a scar left over from that early, seminal encounter.


Pinguicula vulgaris, butterwort (purple flower on the left)

Eriophorum angustifolium, swamp cotton-grass

Melampyrum sylvaticum, cow-wheat

Dactylorhiza maculata, bog orchid




But it's not a scar: it's turquoise water and it's sweet and now I'm standing almost two thousand feet above it, at the edge of this waterfall that's pushing moondust past my feet. And it's then I become fully aware of the plants around me. They are suffused with an inner light, like a glow that makes them seem to stand much taller than the eye reports.

Achillea millefolium, yarrow

Hypericum perforatum, St. John's Wort

Angelica archangelica

Galium boreale, bedstraw
And there is yarrow, and angelica, St. John's, clover, bedstraw, daisies and dead-nettle, thistles and the lanky speedwells, rising tall and bright, aware of me as much as I am of them. A quick nod, the gratitude for the time we took to get to know each other, then they return to bending in the wind, and I begin the climb back down.


2.27.2017

Herbalists as cultural stewards

Below is the transcript of my remarks at the 2017 Florida Herbal Conference. The whole event was an amazing experience - from the warm, humid air, to the live oaks, to the old friends and new, each one a shining star. We talked about connection, passion, and our shared experience as plant people.

On this late winter morning, I find myself in Florida. I set out for my morning run just as the sky begins to lighten, the warm air humid and fragrant, birdsong and the last few stars overhead. As I run, I watch tendrils of mist rise up from the lagoons and circle around the treetops. When I return to camp, I am greeted by live oaks hanging thick with moss, music and song, sacred smoke, and cedar on the prayer mound. I am grateful for this gathering of plant people, doing what we do together, the way it's always been done. I am thankful that the trees give us space to be here - but I also like to think they rejoice to see our joy at being together.



Herbal medicine is different from most of what goes on today. Of course we know this intuitively - but I've been so curious as to what this actually means, how to articulate this difference, because I believe this difference holds a secret that can change lives, change communities, and change culture. I know it because, at least in small part, we herbalists all live it. Fundamentally, it's about awareness of interconnection and the will to act on that awareness. But how to convey this message to others?
One of the first and clearest pieces of evidence for me came from my studies of bioflavonoids, a class of botanical polyphenols found in abundance in berries, but present in almost all medicinal plants. While we've talked for a long time about their potential as antioxidants, recent research is finding that this isn't really what they're up to in our physiology. When we consume blueberries, or hawthorn, we aren't engaging in a war with free radicals. On the contrary: we are tapping in to some of our most basic physiologic processes, we are interfacing with the expression of our genes. A complex and beautiful dance, one that rivals misty sunrises, egrets and fish, live oaks and palm trees, is taking place in our every cell as DNA is methodically turned into proteins that become our physical shape on a moment-to-moment basis. By inserting themselves into this dance, bioflavonoids regulate inflammation, increase cellular resilience, and prevent cancer. They ensure that our genes express a smooth, efficient incarnation. They take care of us (or, rather, without them we get lonely and our physical expression becomes sad and less resilient). When I first put this together, I couldn't help thinking that this was real, tangible evidence that plants love us. Which of course they do.
Another example is how bitter-tasting plants work to ensure normal activity in our processes of self-nourishment. It turns out that without bitter plants, we lose the ability to control our consumption of food. Our guts stop being able to digest well. Our livers become more sluggish, less resilient in the face of challenging chemicals. But after a few weeks of bitters, this all gets better. It's amazing!

We have to recognize that this is a fundamentally different way to approach chronic inflammation, obesity, and digestive complaints. First of all, what we're observing here is a living system at work: plants and humans locked in a co-evolutionary dance that is very difficult to disentangle and understand by looking at its isolated components. We have to watch the living system at work to really get what's going on. Secondly, bioflavonoids don't lower your blood pressure (well, they do - but bear with me). Bioflavonoids set the stage in the heart, and in the endothelial lining of our blood vessels, for a physiologic expression that includes no high blood pressure. But there are many other consequences beyond that: our emotional hearts open and we become more flexible, and fall into love more easily. Our circulation opens too, and we feel more warm and comfortable, less cold and withdrawn. Our cells begin to think that cancer isn't necessary, and they settle in to a more loving rhythm of their own. This resonates across our entire being. Modern science is just beginning to discover this level of medicine - and as of today, there are no approved drugs that work this way. Modern science also just discovered, in the last decade, that we have bitter taste receptors on our heart that help coordinate the smooth shifting of blood flow necessary after a meal. Imagine that! Another mechanism for addressing blood pressure hiding in plain sight.





Of course, as herbalists we also understand that as within, so without: shifts in our internal physiology are coupled with shifts in our external perception, in our homes, gardens, and ecologies. We know this is true because we've learned that we are a living system that is interlocked and nested within larger living systems, and when we affect a part, we affect the whole. Gardening changes our life. Drinking tea changes the way we garden. I am sure everyone here has had an experience like this: when you're brewing tea for someone you love; when you're blending a new tincture formula and a perfect, new flavor synergy emerges; when, deep in winter, you marvel at the bright notes of last summer's lemon balm; when you walk through a grove so familiar it is suffused with a sacred vitality that nourishes and calls you; when you learn the name of a new plant, and a flood of memory and recognition fills your heart. I remember once, on a wild-harvesting walk, I had trapsed over hills, across a bog, and was following the small stream that drained the wetland down into the valley floor. A hemlock tree had fallen across the stream, and I stepped over it to find a bank of reishi mushroom growing out of the opposite side. The mushrooms looked beautiful, I was so happy! I started to pull out my knife, but you know, as herbalists we're trained to take a moment and speak to plant and mycelium, to connect before we harvest. So I stopped, crouched down to get at eye level with the glossy red shelf mushrooms, and just said hello. It felt good. Just a gentle smile, like when someone you love comes home from a weekend trip and you're reconnecting. You feel it in your heart. At that moment, as I felt this flutter in my chest, I had a thought - "turn around!". It was puzzling: was I supposed to go home without these mushrooms? Had I done something wrong? It didn't feel that way, it felt good, like when you're about to give someone a present. I had the thought again - "just turn around!". So, without really thinking about it rationally, I slowly got up and just turned around to face downstream. There, not more than twenty feet away, was a young white-tailed doe that had slowly snuck up on me while I was crouched talking to the reishi. She looked at me for a period of time - I'm not sure how long - and just walked away. Now my heart was really full! Even as I write this, it's filling again. I turned back to the reishi, harvested five beautiful fans, and made my wy back home. Now, every time I suggest reishi to a client in clinic, that moment in the forest comes right back. It's part of the medicine for me. I'm grateful I listened and tapped into that life-moment.

What is it that we're tapping into during these experiences? It's something that all humans instinctively know is possible (I believe we all long for it), and hopefully have experienced at least once. One story that sticks with me was told by Daniel Sarewitz, who is a scientist and researcher focused on public policy, particularly around climate change. He's a professed atheist, straight-ahead science guy, but at the same time is struggling with how to connect with people who, possibly driven by religious belief, reject the scientific interpretation of current events. I so appreciate his compassion in this regard. So he published this beautiful opinion piece in the journal Nature, back in 2012, after he had returned from a visit to the Angkor Wat temples in the jungle of Cambodia. These temples, hidden for centuries under vegetation, reveal an architecture that reflects mathematical patterns resonant across all levels of reality. The buildings are designed to elicit transcendent experiences in those who visit, experiences of fullness and connection, where the boundaries of self and non-self begin to disappear (much like what happened to me with the reishi and the doe). When he visited, that's exactly what happened. It may have been the first time for him, but even if not, it was powerful enough that it led him to write this beautiful article about the temples, the jungle, and the value of art as a way to convey transcendent mystical, emotional experiences in a way science cannot. Perhaps we need both in our culture, he thought. Perhaps these transcendent experiences are an important part of what it means to be human, how we find meaning and truth in our lives, how we are nourished - and if scientists could find a way to speak to this part of our shared humanity, they might be able to connect with those who retreat into religion when science seems inaccessible, who deny humanity's role in climate change, who harden their hearts to the beautiful work he and his colleagues are doing. "Angkor," he concluded, "demonstrates how to achieve an authentic, personal encounter with the unknown." I know we could all use a little more of that! Whatever it is, it holds some serious meaning and power.



But as I came to the end of his article, I saw the comments section. The general tone there was one of anger, with some going as far as to say his article was dangerous and misguided. Others told him he should resign his position as he clearly wasn't a scientist. There were few, if any, comments of support - and these were quickly torn into by the collective, and any chance of conversation immediately squelched. The administrators have since taken down the comments section for that article, and I don't blame them, because is was mean, divisive, and frankly quite rude. What a roller-coaster ride from Dr. Sarewitz's thoughtful, inclusive piece to the reactive, divisive responses.
You probably have seen similar examples of this pattern at work in our culture. We use adjectives like "divided", "polarized", "factional" when talking about our society. We attempt to isolate and separate entire areas of the world because of ideological differences, ethnic differences, language differences. Even our conversations on medicine and healing are filled with words like "inhuman", "quack", and other even less savory monikers. It truly is a pervasive cultural pattern, and it isn't too difficult to see that it is based in large part on fear: fear of the unknown, fear that others will steal from us, hurt us, tear us down, fear that a hidden longing for mystery will never be fulfilled. Our culture wears this fear like a dark cloak, wrapping it tight around us during these modern times when strong winds blow all around us, trying to insulate ourselves from that which would harm us or those we love. This may give us the illusion of security, but as any herbalist (or student of biology) knows, a living system that isolates itself from its surroundings accelerates its path to death. The tighter you squeeze your fist, the more life slips through your fingers. This dark cloak our culture is wearing - it's something herbalists are trained to recognize. Sometimes I think it's my job to dance with darkenss, to find the cloak when it's just coming off the rack and help a person understand that they should put it away, or if it's already been put on, try to loosen it and see if it might fall off.

Disease is a dark cloak - it's often a learned pattern, or a pattern the physiology has been forced into, and part of my job is to know the pattern of that darkness, learn to recognize it, and find a way to untangle it so that a new pattern can take its place. This doesn't mean a return to the same pattern that existed before - rather, it just means trying to establish a new, life-affirming pattern. To do this, you have to seek darkness out and spend a little time with it so you can recognize what it looks like, especially when it's still just getting started, so that you can learn to talk to it in a way it can understand. Of course knowing the light is important too - but this is usually easier and almost always more fun. There are so many examples: unexpressed resentments. Insulin resistance. Depression. Kidney failure. One case I will always remember was of a woman who, in her early 60s, had received a diagnosis of ovarian cancer. The malignancy had spread to her pelvic bones and liver, and while she did a few rounds of chemotherapy, no one expected this to resolve the cancer. This darkness was well-established, and cancer is an awful beast that often comes for no reason at all, invading life and stealing its essence in a way that can be impossible to resist. But in this case, I was more concerned with another pattern I saw emerging in my client: the combination of pelvic pain and despair at her prognosis had made her reach for another cloak to wear, and she was starting to wrap it tight around herself. She had retreated from her husband, closing off communication with him. She had begun to eat less - and when she did, it was often just the same combination of rice and chicken. Normally engaged with friends and active in the community, she stopped going out to events and would just stay home. She took narcotics even though they made it impossible for her to converse effectively. It was at this point we started working together.
It is not hard to understand why, afraid of what her life journey held, she chose to retreat behind the warmth of this new, dark cloak. Some might call it depression. Call it what you want - but it is not a life-affirming pattern. So we worked together using a lot of plants and mushrooms. We were able to reduce and then eliminate her use of narcotics using Cannabis and Corydalis. We established a nervine tea ritual, where linden, green tea, and licorice became welcome companions. She tried small doses of digestive bitters. Slowly at first, she began to walk outside again and after a few months, despite the fact that her cancer hadn't slowed down at all, her eyes began to brighten again and her appetite led her back to a diversity of tasty foods. One afternoon, as we were sharing tea in her sunroom, she asked me what I thought the afterlife held. I said I wasn't sure, but that maybe right before we die, time dilates like it does when we dream, or when we lose consciousness. Maybe, I said, what seems like a second to observers is experienced as many lifetimes. All I can hope, I concluded, is that I enter that final moment feeling happy and loved. She smiled.
Over the course of the next few weeks, she invited her family and close friends into her sunroom to share tea. To each she asked the same question: what did they think the afterlife held? I watched her, over her last few weeks of life, become clear, calm, and loving. To each of her visitors, some of whom were in obvious distress, she extended a warm hand and words of comfort. It was one of the most incredible lessons I've learned from any of my clients (always my best teachers), and when her time came to pass away, I am sure she moved on feeling happy and loved. I am still so grateful she shed that dark cloak when she did.

So how do we do this? How can we help re-frame destructive patterns in ourselves, our families, our communities, and our culture? Well, by following the lessons that we learn as herbalists. I think the basic principles at work are relatively simple: first, we have to start from a place that respects the living system. Without this foundation, without the belief that life itself has the capacity to affirm and renew itself all on its own, nothing can follow. Second, most living systems thrive when you increase the diversity of inputs: if you provide more options, increase the amount of connections, the system usually becomes more resilient (and, of course, the opposite is true). We can try to open the cloak, just a little bit. Finally, when attempting to intervene to adjust a dark pattern, we can choose to focus on supporting, rather than controlling, the living system. This of course follows naturally if we start from a place of respect. Those are three principles I try to apply when working with clients: start from a place of respect and trust. Increase biodiversity: expose them to a wide range of botanical chemistry. And rather than picking strong, pushy remedies, try to emphasize the ones that support our vital processes: herbs that nourish digestion, soothe and rebuild the nerves, balance the expression of our genes and immune systems. This is tonic herbalism, and it's unique to our art. It is also, in most cases, incredibly safe. Anyone can start. And if you do, you're building resilience and vitality person by person, family by family, community by community.



One of my favorite stories that illustrates these principles (in a sort of magical way) is the story of Airmid, the Irish fairy-goddess who brought the use of plant medicine to the world. Way back when the fairy folk, the Tuatha de Daanan, landed on the shores of Ireland, they encountered a fierce warrior race known as the Fir Bolg who wanted nothing to do with the new arrivals. The Tuatha de Daanan, led by Brighid the fairy queen, decided to engage in battle. Nuada, Brighid's consort and king, led the fray. Dian Cecht was chief healer, and he set up a magical well that would heal any wound, with the one exception that, should a body part be severed, the well could not reattach it. This meant that one of the only ways to kill the Tuatha de Daanan was to sever their heads completely.
One day, Nuada met the leader of the Fir Bolg on the field of battle. Back and forth they went, until Nuada made a misstep and the Fir Bolg leader was able to cut his hand clean off. Nuada ran back to Brighid, who told him that he could no longer be king because he was not whole - a piece of him was missing, and he could not lead the people. Desperate, the former king ran to Dian Cecht who told him that, while he couldn't restore his severed hand, he could craft him a new one out of silver that would work just as well. Nuada's new hand was strong and he was able to weild his sword again - but this was not good enough for Brighid, who reminded him that he was still not whole.
Dian Cecht's son Miach and daughter Airmid had been observing all this from the sidelines. Cautiously, Miach approached Nuada and asked if he could try to restore his hand. Granted permission, he and his sister returned to the battlefield, found Nuada's hand, and together, using deep, now-forgotten magic, they restored Nuada's true hand. This satisfied Brighid, and the fairy folk returned to battle.
Dian Cecht, however, was not pleased. Upstaged by his son, he challenged him to show his true healing skill. Three times he swung his sword at Miach's head, and the first two times, though the cuts were deep, they didn't go clean through and Miach was able to heal himself. But the third time, driven by anger, Dian Cecht completely severed his son's head. It was too late when he realized what he'd done, and he ran off in grief. But Airmid remained, and sat with her brother's body as light rains washed over it. After a few days, plants began to emerge from around Miach's body. Airmid sang to them, and they sang back, telling her their secret healing powers. And even though Dian Cecht returned and scattered all of Airmid's healing herbs, she remembered them and has shared the knowledge with us through a lineage of Irish wise women that continues to this day.

Airmid's deep magic isn't actually lost. While we can't reattach hands, we can provide medicine that restores people, communities and culture back to their whole state - connected to all the parts of life and nature that actually make us human. Of course our culture needs this right now! The reason we treat each other with such anger, and attempt to isolate and divide, is because we feel afraid, alone, disconnected. But look at what happens when herbalists gather to sing, speak to plants, and dance around the fire together! We learn to be inclusive, to stand strong but accept different perspectives, to provide a safe place where everyone can grow, together. This is our culture because the plants shape our culture. It is the plants' culture, too.
Airmid's story goes futher, however. It helps clarify what made my experience with reishi so powerful, what illuminated the last weeks of life for my client. And it puts a point on how we can discriminate, in our daily activity, between what is life-affirming and what is maybe less so. For you see, there is a difference between a mechanical silver hand and one of flesh and blood. Brighid, the mother of life, could tell the difference. But we all have the same gift.
Vandana Shiva, the pre-eminent physicist, activist, and ecological steward, describes this as the difference between the mechanistic mind and the biological mind. The mechanistic mind legislates from above: an intellectual understanding creates a framework into which it attempts to fit reality. The biological mind builds up from the grass roots: evolution, trial and error, and interconnection create a resilient system that emerges from its components, valuing and nourishing each one. The mechanistic mind creates blueprints, while the biological mind self-assembles. If something doesn't fit in to the mechanistic models, it is ignored or pushed aside. In a biological model, nothing can be ignored because it was integral to the development of the model itself. The mechanistic mind sees natural resources as commodities. The biological mind sees natural resources as the beginning and end of all life, the source to which we all return. The mechanistic mind, in pursuit of commodity, is able to spill millions of gallons of oil into the gulf of Mexico and brush the problem aside as a temporary setback, the cost of doing business. And crucially, the mechanistic mind tells us all that we are only as good as our productivity. No wonder we don't feel whole anymore, no wonder we feel afraid. But our response shouldn't be to cloak ourselves with that fear - that only serves to isolate us further, deepening our alienation. It is a dark pattern.

I am in no way saying that systems created by the mechanistic mind are somehow inherently bad - they are not. Look at the information systems we've created, for example. There is incredible potential in these tools. All I am saying is that, especially when we're trying to understand how to heal disease, or heal the rifts in our culture so we can support all beings who live on this planet, it is going to be useful to adopt the biological mind. And it's really an easy exercise: when you're working in clinic, or when you're gardening, or talking to a member of your community, or planning an event, ask yourself: are you using a mechanistic mind or a biological mind? It's not difficult to tell the difference: when we interface with a biological system, we feel it immediately in our hearts. It is full, it is vibrant, it is undeniable. When we interface with a mechanistic system, all the thoughts and emotions associated with that interface just seem a little dull in comparison. I've had plenty of thoughts when out wild-harvesting, or when working in the garden. Sometimes it goes a little bit like this: "well, I know there's not a lot of scullcap here, but I need it for tincture, and it will be ok to harvest it". Or, "well, I'm not sure what's around that bend, but I need to get back to my car if I'm going to be home in time for this appointment". This is our mechanistic mind at work, and it's great, it's practical - but these thoughts originate inside us, and their flavor, their color, is much less vibrant. Compare that to the simple "turn around" I experienced. This was the biological mind speaking, it was me and the reishi and the doe and our shared consciousness resonating at that moment in time. It was a full, vibrant, delicious thought that I felt in my heart as much as in my head. And it rippled into my harvest, my medicine-making, my dispensing. Ground-up, not top-down. When the heart perceives it, it is the living system speaking, it is the biological mind. Love is perhaps the best example.

If we seek the input of the biological mind in clinic, we will gravitate more towards nurturing and supporting rather than to strong, powerful herbs. This is not to say we shouldn't use heroic herbs in an appropriate context - it's just to say the input of the biological mind needs to be brought to bear. The same applies to our families and our communities. But we herbalists, we who understand these things, also have a responsibility to bring the biological mind to the halls of power locally, nationally, internationally - because Western culture is showing the signs of disease similar to those you would see in wounded animals, in cancer patients, in depression. As herbalists, our joy and our bright, shining light grows from the heart experiences that come from engaging with living, biological systems - our kitchens, our gardens, our forests and our fields. It is precisely the support that Western culture needs today.
I am here to say that it's not enough to just rejoice in this. We need to shine this light into the larger community. It will take effort, but it is certainly not impossible! Just as the old alchemists wrapped their remedies in layers of extraction, digestion, maceration and language that invoked concepts from the Christian trinity, we today need to wrap our joy and light in layers that reflect society's preference for the mechanistic mind. We need to make an effort to speak the language of science and to understand the laws that govern our land, not to become compliant and appease, but to inject ourselves, virally, like green tendrils, into the concrete wall built up by five centuries of unfettered mechanistic dominance. We can enter the cities, the courtrooms, the government and show a clear and different way of doing business, one that values and respects life, increases biodiversity wherever and whenever possible, and relentlessly strives to support rather than to control. It is the next turn of human evolution, and we need the plants beside us as we move forward. Herbalists are the perfect agents of cultural renewal, because we deeply understand these principles, and we are united in our common love for plants and the resonant experiences of renewal they provide.



When I travel to East Africa, I always make it a point to connect with my friend Sangau. He is a local traditional Maasai healer and herbalist, and taught me a lot of what I know about the plants there. We speak (sort of) through an interpreter, share tea, talk about the hospital where I work. He listens because I speak the language of plants, and I am an American. Many people say Sangau is a witch doctor. The Christian community says that he speaks with Satan. But when I ask him about this, he tells me that he sits under trees in the forest and speaks to their spirits. This misunderstanding is the root of the schism between the mechanistic mind and the biological mind, and it won't be easy to heal. But where I work in East Africa, we've trained hospital staff to use usnea and honey for wound care, and simple ginger compresses for swelling and pain. They listen to us, because we speak the language of science and come from America - we speak the language of the mechanistic mind. Hospital staff start asking more questions about other plants, and what they might be used for. So we create a decent guide to over 40 local medicinal species, along with all their names (in 3 languages) and uses. Slowly, folks start to say that maybe what Sangau is recommending is not so bad. And in the end, it's all to the patients' benefit.

I will leave you with one last story, it is a very old fable, probably one you've heard before, but it's a good one. The sun and the wind, always having to share the sky, would get into a lot of arguments about who was the strongest. The sun would say, I light up the whole sky. The wind would reply, I wear down mountains and reshape the land. The sun would reply, I raise water up into the air and create clouds. The wind would retort, I whip the waters and clouds into powerful storms - no one can stand in my path. One day, tired of arguing, the sun and the wind decided to test their skills. "Do you see that traveler on the road down there?" the wind asked the sun. "Yes, I see him," the sun replied. It was a cool day, and the traveler was wearing a heavy, dark cloak. "Will you agree," the wind asked, self-assuredly, "that whoever can remove his cloak is the strongest?" The sun agreed. The wind went first, blowing gently, then harder and harder until the traveler was barely able to walk forward, the gale was so strong. But every time the wind blew harder, the traveler just pulled his coat tighter and tighter around his body. Finally, exhausted, the wind turned to the sun. "Your turn," he gasped. Then the sun shone his light, beaming down on the traveler, filling the air with warmth. After a few minutes, the traveler, amazed at the beautiful weather, took off his cloak.