NEWS

Today is October 26th.  I am heading up to Torun, Poland to teach a weekend workshop in medicine-making, and Kasia Bogdan will be translating the class.  This will be the third in a series of four workshops which I have scheduled to teach before the end of the year.  It is a real honor to teach these classes, and I am always amazed at the participants' wonderful responses to the herbs and the information about them.  Each time, I see beaming faces.... full of real joy at being able to play with the herbs.. and dance the medicine dance with them and me.    I have started a tradition which I would hope all the circles could perpetuate as they grow and expand throughout Europe.  The tradition is that when one group or person goes to teach a class, they bring something either they have made, or the previous circle of people has made... as a way of energetically connecting all the groups.... in a larger circle of herbs... like pearls on  a necklace...
     This is more than a simile or tall tale.  This is the way we can make real connection with others as we go through life.... and through these processes.   Every time we make medicines, it is important to clear our emotional body... before we begin... so that different emotions, and the energy they carry, are not trapped in the medicine.   The only feelings we want to energetically infuse our medicines, are LOVE and GRATITUDE.  Both of these feelings are sent to the plants which provide their bodies for us to use as our medicines, and to the people who will ingest these medicines, and gain some sort of healing from them.
       As I begin today's journey on the train (my first train ride in Europe).... I am filled with so many emotions.    I have hope that this way of using plants as our medicines becomes the main way we heal ourselves and keep ourselves healthy.     These are truly the healing gifts of this Earth, and we have used them as our healers since before recorded history.   It is only in the last few hundred years, that economics and business (making a business out of a healing profession) have come to interfere with herbal medicine, (in a more local or tribal sense)... to a degree, that it is now threatened with extinction.... not just in Europe, but in all areas of the world where indigenous peoples used herbs as their healing agents.  
      I've been a clinical herbalist for almost a quarter of a century now, and I have experienced on myself, and with others in my practice, in the State of New Mexico... in the U.S., the true power of healing which herbs possess.  They are beautiful, and ask only that they be respected, protected, and utilized in a good way.   All of us  (the plants and the humans) only want to continue to dance this good dance of existence.  It seems like supporting each other is the very best way to do this.

                                                 ETHICAL WILDCRAFING (HARVESTING)
         How do we support plants?  We can  do this in a number of ways.  We can protect their habitat so that they have a place to grow.... (always).   We can also get to know each plant... to get to understand it's life cycle and the conditions it likes best ... (soil, water, sun exposure), and try to provide those things for them...    We can take the seeds or split the roots and propagate new plant individuals, and plant these parts in the ground, in areas which match the areas where we found the plants growing vigorously. In this way, we can bring herbs from hundreds of kilometers away... and get them to grow closer to us.
        When we have a nice forest nearby us, and from which we collect herbs, we need to take care of that resource.  We need to never pick more than 25% of the plant population at any one time... and leave the rest to go to seed and to regenerate what has been taken.
         Always make your medicines from the highest quality herbal material available.   Don't collect next to the roadways, where fluids from vehicles, and lots of pollution occur, or from farm areas which use artificial fertilizers and pesticides.   These substances can become concentrated in the plant's body, and it can become potentially toxic.    The best medicines are collected  from areas as far away from any human influence as possible.  Scout out your local areas carefully, to make sure there are no hidden trash dumps or other things which  could lessen the  quality of the plant materials you are collecting.
         I have been thinking about compiling a list of ethical wildcrafting guidelines to be posted here and distributed in classes I teach.  This would help people who are really unfamiliar with hiking in the forests... more of an idea about how to approach plants in their natural environment... and how to evaluate the health of the area they are wanting to collect from.
      So these are a few of my thoughts as I head to the class in Torun....  that if we are truly going to make this huge shift towards herbs as our healing agents, ... we need to take better care of the environment where the plants grow.... and we also need to do what we can to observe the life cycles of each plant we use... and try to design a methodology of collection which ends up INCREASING the plants numbers, instead of decreasing them, and eventually driving them to extinction.    I hope this will be an ongoing discussion, and I hope you will all bring me your questions, and give me your input and thoughts about these issues.

Aho!