Autor: Meio Ambiente e Educação Ambiental | Publicado: 2012-03-16T19:03:00-07:00





We often discuss how effective plants can
be at supporting and gently bringing human beings back to a state of
"wellness" (meaning that resiliency, vibrancy, passion are
maximized). I've spent a lot of time exploring how this happens, reading through
the historical record and perusing modern research, and on balance it seems
pretty clear that medicinal herbs, trees, mushrooms and more are good at
helping folks in need. But that's not what I want to discuss today.

Rather, I'd like to posit the idea that
working intimately with the botanical world alters our lives in ways that
transcend individual health. Of course, this is not a surprising idea: reality
mirrors itself, and the skin is barely more than an illusory boundary.
Nevertheless, as a person whose life was redirected, and perhaps saved, by
trees and herbs, I want to share three ways in which these allies can have
powerful effects beyond the individual.



First, the people. Herbalists, gardeners,
and other plant folk are consistently the most cooperative and compassionate
people with whom I've had the pleasure of working. They share knowledge freely,
contributing to a vibrant living oral (and now digital) tradition. They are
often excellent communicators, speaking easily in language of metaphor and
myth, forest and field. Even the most "beginning" herbalists have
taught me amazing lessons and come up with amazing insights - which is why I
avoid ranking plant people based on experience, training, or whatever else. Nature's
gifts aren't reserved for the well-learned - and those of us who have spent a
lot of time studying may find that, in the end, we return to the simple source
of life for lasting truth, and books fall away in the light of the green world.
This engenders gratitude, and may be the reason plant people are generally
gentle, compassionate, and giving. They are often amazingly creative, too -
coming up with new pictures, herbal formulae, and solutions where science falls
short. I don't mean to disparage any way of "knowing", as all ways
are necessary. I simply feel that knowing through plants is so very beautiful,
and makes its people beautiful, too.



Next, herbal medicine has a way of
reconnecting our species to nature. Clearly a no-brainer: we get outside more,
we tend to eat differently, we appreciate a woodland walk differently when we
have an intimate knowledge of the green folk living all around us. This gets
into our heads slowly, insidiously, and deliciously. Before we know it, we may
find ourselves kneeling on a city sidewalk looking at plantain (the horror)!
But I feel like the gift of reconnecting to nature that herbal medicine offers
us is most clearly evident in what happens when nature and wild plants are
removed from human life: this is what, in Western culture, we've been working
on for a few hundred years. The results are dramatic: epidemics of chronic
disease affect the population, not because of the rise technological medicine,
but because of a removal of traditional medicine! Additionally, to support
homogenized, un-wild, unchallenging food systems we are also creating epidemics
of chronic disease in the environment: new chemical signals that affect
fertility, waste material that alters climate and ecosystem balance,
disorganized living arrangements that sprawl over the landscape. I may be
overly optimistic, but I believe that we don't need to remove technology to fix
these issues: we simply need to bring plants back in to daily life. Once we
develop the botanical habit, herbs begin to mess with our heads (where we all
too often live). As we lose our heads, we save our spirit - and spirit being
all-encompassing and transcending the human species, we participate in a more
sustainable dance with the rest of nature.



Which leads me to my final point of
appreciation for herbal medicine: mystery. Anyone who has seen a plant effect a
cure knows that there is something magical about this process, as it may never
be able to be replicated again. The herbalist, plant, and client have somehow
managed to work together, in that one timeless moment, and the feeling all
(plant included!) are left with is similar to what you feel when you run in to
a random friend in a random place at just the right moment. It is synchronicity
beyond coincidence, and we glimpse for an instant what it is like to be the
immortal Universe. A healing modality that respects and welcomes mystery is my
kind of medicine: because in the end, no matter how much we dress it up or
understand its details, a human physiology brought back in to balance always
reveals an awe-inspiring mystery. All good scientists know this. Einsten, for
instance, tells us:

The most beautiful experience we can have
is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of
true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder,
no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.

I have great faith in the power of herbal
medicine to heal not only people, but also culture, species, and ecology. It's
really pretty simple: we really need plants in our lives. Even only a little
bit. And once their green tendrils begin to grow in our hearts, like the first
pea vines of spring, there is no turning back. Thank goodness - thank
greenness.

In gratitude, I leave you with the words of
Peter Conway, English herbalist, philosopher, and erstwhile humorist.

The future of herbal medicine is the past
of herbal medicine - self care &amp; psychedelics - serious...



Posted by Guido Masé at 8:39 AM&nbsp;



source:&nbsp;http://aradicle.blogspot.com.br/2011/11/plant-medicine-heals-more-than-just.html?spref=fb



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