Animá Lifeways & Herbal School

DESERVING:
Credit, Entitlement, Earning & Reward

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

deserve |dəˈzərv|
verb [with obj.]: to do something or have or show qualities worthy of reward or punishment.

The topic of deserving doesn’t come up much in my (herbalist, activist, nature lover, outdoorsman) circles, though it is an important issue in a number of ways.  We may sense that what we do deserves more respect that it gets in the larger society.  Someone may feel that they deserve to make a decent income from their able work… or more often, feel undeserving of the title of “herbalist” or “activist” or “mother” even though they’ve experience much, learned a lot and served many.

We are – it must be said – undeniably deserving… every one of us, no matter what our faults might be.  We deserve a pat on our back for our good intentions as well as how much effort we put into fulfilling them, and we deserve any benefits or rewards that come of it.  We deserve both the rewards and the consequences that arise from all that we manage to do, and from whatever we either fail to do, or choose not to.  We deserve credit for all that we are proud of, and for for what we are less proud of as well.  Credit is not about boos or applause, so much as an assignment of personal responsibility and public accountability.

credit |ˈkredit|
noun: public acknowledgment or praise, typically that given or received when a person’s responsibility for an action or idea becomes or is made apparent.

It is a natural human need to be credited and acknowledged, and a healthy society hinges in part on an accurate crediting of its members.  Credit is an attribution of responsibility, recognizing that someone is responsible for an omission or deed, including misdeeds as well as to successes and accomplishments.  It is important that we be credited, meaning that we be given both the personal affirmation and difficult reality checks that we all need.  It is also important and healthy that we give credit to others, not only praising each other for truly praiseworthy characteristics or acts, but also holding each other accountable.  After all, for it to really matter, both the credit given and the accredited person much be credible.

The words “credit” and “credible” both originate with Latin credere, meaning “to believe, to trust.”  We need to be able to trust the value of what we credit, and not undermine it with exaggeration, flattery or pretense.  And those we give credit to, need to be able to trust the sincerity and accuracy of the credit given.

“Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.” –Aristotle

entitlement |enˈtītlmənt|
noun: the fact of having a right to something.

Herbalists, activists, artists, teachers and parents (to name only a few!) generally deserve more credit and appreciation than they receive from a public that’s increasingly learned to take things for granted, and that often seems to feel entitled to services.  It is common for people to expect on the spot herbal consultations as soon as they hear someone is an herbalist, or think they can automatically expect help with their broken car if they find out an acquaintance is a mechanic, stopping them in store aisles or the middle of a sidewalk, and often being offended if told they need to email a request or schedule an appointment.

Entitlement means having title, and hence a right.  No one has title to us, our time or our knowledge, nor do they have a right to our services.  We can make a choice to provide assistance, advice or care at any time, whether for money, barter, or free… but we do not owe it to anyone, and they are most deserving our our help when they see its value, and credit and honor the source.  This is at least in part a class issue, since it shows up most often among the middle and upper classes, and is so seldom found in the attitudes of those living in rural areas close to the land, or in conditions of poverty.

Our community contains a lot of middle class folks, and we too need to be on guard for any creeping entitlement in our own attitudes and the ways that we interact with people.  Nobody owes us praise, as much we may desire it, and only in the “good manners” of kingly courts is it required that we feign praise for what we have no love or respect for.  We’re not owed help, it’s a gifting, nor are we obligated to help or heal anyone else… instead, we choose to!  We’re not entitled to have a teacher, though a teacher may accept us based on our interest and commitment.  No one is entitled to a teaching slot or book contract or job unless it’s actually been promised to us.  We have no inherent right to make a living income from herbalism or anything else that we might love to do, what we have is a splendid opportunity to do so… replete with difficulty and impediments, years of learning and financial risk, blessings and satisfaction.  And we are not automatically entitled to our titles… only by virtue of our growing wisdom and worthy work.

“It takes long practice, yes. You have to work. Did you think you could snap your fingers, and have it as a gift? What is worth having is worth working for.”
-Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials

earn |ərn|
verb: gain or incur deservedly in return for one’s behavior or achievements.

The key to earning, is effort and achievement that we deserve to gain from.  It derives from the Old English earnian, “laborer,” and refers to the benefits received for our labors.  Anyone can be the recipient of an hourly wage or false praise, but it is our character and actions – and how honorably, thoughtfully, effectively, powerfully, artfully we act – that earns us the most credible of credit, the esteem we can trust… our own self respect and self love.

The root of the word “deserve” is the Latin deservire, meaning “to serve well.”  We’re deserving, deserving of the rewards and satisfactions, whenever we’re well serving this world.  And it is through all kinds of service to our families, to our communities, to the wild earth and our most precious priorities and ideals, that we can trust our life, titles and gifts are deserved.

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A wild but soft little wolf.

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CONFESSIONS OF A SOFTIE
The Value of Hardness, & The Softness of Caring

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

www.AnimaCenter.org

I’d  frankly prefer that you called me a “healthy balance of extremes” than a “bizarre bundle of contradictions.”

OK, this isn't me. I've still got my hair, and no 6-pack abs... but you get the picture.

Call it instinct or attitude, but I do like feeling still capable of responding effectively to emergencies that come up at home, of physically repelling attackers if the situation arose, moving heavy objects that need to be moved, even being able to sprint into a burning building and carry someone safely out.  I’ve surprised myself with how much strength I’ve maintained in spite of a liver-compromising virus, numerous sleepless nights, and the handicap of most of my waking hours being spent sitting in front of a laptop’s glowing screen trying to reach out to the world.  That said, I’ve decided at 60 years of age to join Kiva working out on the weight bench.  The way I figure it, one is never too young or too old to harden up a bit…

…especially, if you’re a convicted softie.

Never too late to make sure you're in shape.

I suppose my virility has never really been in question, given the number of children I sadly helped create without getting to help raise, and yet one has to question how much testosterone is involved in my fussy attention to way each page looks in Plant Healer Magazine.  My favorite rifle is an antique Winchester with flowers carved into its walnut burl stock.  And I’m on 24 hour call as the family hair designer… kindly spare me the more stereotypical jokes.

Nope, that's not me either... what self respecting hairdresser would neglect to have a beard?

Don’t get me wrong, I have always been quick to defend principles, rights, my land and loved ones, to stick up to bullies and protect the small, even on those rare occasions when physical violence was required, and with inordinate success.  The contradiction, is that as much as I would hate to lose in a confrontation that mattered, I don’t much enjoy winning either.  I’ve apologized to those belligerent drunks I once had to render immobile, felt oddly out of sorts even after my onetime brief battle with a child abuser, and have actually paid tribute to the few honorable opponents.  We enjoy watching the fierce determination and martial skills demonstrated in Mixed Martial Arts videos, but I’m always relieved when a rare decent referee steps in to end a fight that has become one-sided, and get choked up when a favorite and kindly Brazilian combatant is hurt.

Get up, Nog!: Antonio Nogueira, a fierce MMA fighter... who always hugs his opponents!

Likewise, although I know myself as an unapologetic part of the natural food chain, I have gotten a tear in my eye or an quietly aching heart anytime I have killed some, feeling love and connection, both the gift and the loss.  The only real joy I’ve ever found in shooting something, is dramatically putting holes through ugly, environmentally unsound, plastic sheathed machines that have not just insulted my aesthetics but failed me in their designed purpose, such as confounding computers, irreparable remotes, and especially my friends tasteless TVs (with their permission, mind you).  Kiva has also pointed out the fact that I seldom go out to target practice without first spraying myself with some of Rosalee de la Foret’s scrumptious lavender spritzer.

Lookout, dastardly Television... you'll never deaden another child's mind!

Just as ridiculous, I suppose, is how much pleasure I get from shopping for Rhiannon, Loba and Kiva, and my having 14 different women’s clothing searches saved in my Ebay preferences.  Or my penchant for designing clothes (the just don’t make ‘em the way I see ‘em!).

I can't find the kinds of long vests I want for myself, but I've at least gotten as far as drawing the design.

I’m constantly cleaning and decorating our tiny studio cabin, and regularly redecorate it.  How hard is that?  And let’s just get it out of the way… I kissed Kiva’s plush-toy ringtail after she left for town today, and love tender snuggling above most activities.

Kiva's ringtail, Sweetie, before her nose turned grey from all the nuzzling.

I can pretty well harden myself to most levels of physical pain, yet I have a history of crying when watching movies, and I can barely deal when our daughter suffers in any way.If you want to catch me making silly little cooing kid noises, just show me a picture of a kid… like the one below of Nick and Sloane’s clever little Django.

Nicko & Django, extended Anima & Herbal Resurgence family!

There is an inarguable value to a certain hardness.  There’s be few successful efforts in this world without trying hard.  Being too soft can border on amorphous, undefined and ineffective, and can lead to being spineless or inactive, a victim or spectator rather than an active participant with purpose, will and determination.  This world needs more hard commitments on our parts, to try to make changes, right wrongs, defend the innocent and helpless, recreate culture… to love, and to help heal.

Getting strong by dealing with heavy sh*!

Juniper allergies or not, I plan to do some bench presses and curls sometime today, tempering those mammalian muscles.  I will try not to be quite so sensitive and get my feelings hurt when we have inadvertently disappointed or pissed off somebody.  I will continue to make ever harder commitments to the places, people, creatures, plants and values that matter most.  But as much hardening I ever do, I confess I’ll always be a bit of a softie.

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Blessing to you... may your touch be soft, and your commitments firm. (Jesse Wolf Hardin)

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DIVERGENT STEAMS OF HERBALISM
Alternative Healing & The Mainstream

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

Excerpted from Wolf’s upcoming book “Plant Healers and Wisdom Keepers”, and will also appear an  in the Summer 2013 Issue of “the Magazine Different”:

www.PlantHealerMagazine.com

Intro:  One of the most difficult things facing anyone, is the tension between the pressure to fit in and the desire to be our unique selves.  It doesn’t help that the credibility of our chosen field of herbalism is often discounted or discredited, even by our parents and peers, making herbalists question their worth and seek some kind of accreditation that might earn acceptance.  And yet, we find that there is both some pleasure and advantages to be found in not having been accepted as “mainstream” in the past 500 years.

“Better to be who and how we are, than to try to fit in!” –Rosemary Gladstar

A grieving herbalist friend of ours posted on a private group about how family members were threatening to disown them both over their attendance at an herbal conference.  Other people posted about similar situations of being ostracized, pressured or manipulated by parents, siblings and friends for practicing herbalism “instead of getting a real job.”

In the latter cases, the insinuation is that being an herbalist is neither “real” nor respectable work, even if the herbalist is in fact making a decent income for their selves and their loved ones, with some of us treated as if we are irresponsible hippies or aimless daydreamers by the very people who most loudly assert their love for us.  In the former situation, it would seem that the woman’s family equate herbalism with something far more threatening than simple NewAge indulgence or unregulated plant constituents, with a darker, more nefarious, subversive, or even unholy purpose implied.

It’s alarming when we recognize the degree to which herbalists continue to be looked down upon, trivialized, dismissed, defamed, vilified, and directly or indirectly pressured to move on to a more practical vocation.  It’s also mighty odd, given that scientists consider over two-thirds of the world’s known plant species to have some medicinal use, that more than 7,000 of the medical compounds found in the modern Pharmacopoeia derive from plants, and that even the most generic grocery stores sell a plethora of commercially profitable herbal preparations these days.  Yet, for all its commercial successes, the actual practice of studying and recommending medicinal plants for the treatment of illnesses and imbalances remains largely unacceptable, beyond the norm, outside the fold.

This is arguably a problem we need to recognize and be ready to deal with if and when it comes up.  At the same time, as far as problems go, “going our own way” can feel mighty darn good!

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Acceptance & Belonging

The desire to belong is strong, whether to a family, clan, club, church, professional association, ethnicity, culture, or nation.  This is true not only for herbalists but for most of humanity, and also for a majority of our fellow animal species.  Membership in a group provides pleasing company and increased physical security, help with hunting or extra sets of eyes to watch out for approaching danger.  More significantly in the case of we humans, is the opportunity to identify with others sharing a common purpose, with similar interests, opinions, desires, priorities, and codes of behavior.  Membership can translate into emotional security, offering comforting friendships, alliances, and pacts. We may enjoy our efforts more, and accomplish more in alliance.  Plus, to be accepted by those we identify with or look up to, is to have met their criteria and qualifications, bolstering our sense of worthiness and competence, while providing both a place and a way to belong.

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Just being a plant lover, herbalist, or folk healer makes us a member of not only a community, but a lineage of purpose.  This may not always feel like enough, however, and we may have a natural psychological hungering to feel an accepted part of the larger culture, the mainstream, the norm.   We may even feel guilty about not identifying more with it, earning more of its praise and rewards, or being happier when we are in the midst of it.

There’s no question about it.  There are obvious indisputable advantages to our embracing professionalism, legitimacy, organization, or guild registration, or otherwise earning credibility with the authorities and at least some portion of the mainstream consumer public.  Official and public acceptance remains rare, fickle, conditional, and uncertain, however, and only ever comes at a high cost in terms of the years given to formal education and many thousands of dollars in tuition fees, as well as in our efforts to prove ourselves.  And at no point is it likely that a “certified herbalist” will be viewed by either the professional community, or the average consumer as equal to an industry scientist or licensed medical specialist.

What we find, are:

•Some unregistered herbalists feeling inferior to, or else excluded by the approved members of professional herbal associations.
•Community herbalists imagining that they are insignificant, just because they mainly treat their families, neighbors, and friends.
•Caregivers working nights to pay for nursing school, in hopes of more certain employment aiding the ill.
•Nurses feeling inadequate or under-recognized and underpaid, in comparison to medical doctors working in the same facilities.

And even if we earn a half dozen letters of credit and affiliation at the end of our names, get a well -paying position doing herbal research or a teaching job at the university, we will still be seen by many outside of our community as fringe, as pseudoscience, as a counter-current or side channel.

Once we come to terms with this fact, we have the choice of either:

1. Consciously and willfully rejecting the process of accreditation, legitimization and public relations, sacrificing any benefits…
(or else)
2. Willingly focusing our energies and resources on winning as much acceptance as possible regardless of the extent of inequity or disregard, and without fooling ourselves that herbalism is or will soon be truly “mainstream” again.

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Stream Morphology

“…mainstream culture – there was no fitting into it back then, there’s no fitting into it now.”
–Bob Dylan

From the very beginnings of what it means to be human, the shape of herbalism and the shape of the mainstream of human society and culture were the same, and where people migrated or ideas evolved, the principles of natural healing and cabinet of plant medicine knowledge would go too.  When a culture swerved towards one direction or the other, its medicines swerved and undulated in unison, for it was not only the preferred way of healing, it was often the only effective means.

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This began to drastically change in the early Middle Ages, especially as “familiarity with healing herbs” became an indicium, an official indication of witchcraft according to the Catholic Inquisition of the so-called “civilized nations.”  In Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and England especially, terrible tortures were used to extract confessions for a horrific number of accused witches, many of whom were accused for no more reason than a profane oath, a tendency towards disobedience, or “the gathering of fruits and plants for medicine.”  Many were apparently turned in by jealous or weary spouses anxious to be free of them, and many more were easily implicated by their role as midwives, herbalists and healers.

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Most herbal practice at the time included a bit of conjuring, invoking, entreating or praying, making it easier to understand how the Inquisitors following Father Bernard Gui’s 1315 manual Practica oficii Inquistiones, were able to convict so many people on evidence of “collecting herbs on bended knee while facing the East and praying the Lord’s Prayer.” (Inquisitor Gui also cited “discovering hidden facts or manifesting secret things” as reason for conviction, something I would be found particularly in violation of).  In Peter Binsfield’s 1622 manual Commentarius en Titulum Codices lib. IX de Maleficis Mathematicis Et Cetera, his indicium included something as simple and seemingly innocuous as “seeing a woman gathering flowers from various trees and putting them into a pot.”  This, in spite of the fact that herbs had long been used ritually by the church itself, and that a rival inquisitorial tract, Girolamo Menghi’s 1626 Fustis Daemonum, suggests that “A good preventative of demon possession” is to combine not only gold and other ingredients, but also Frankincense and Myrrh.

By the 1700s, the mainstream of society was veering even farther from the course and cause of herbs, becoming ever more estranged from the natural world.  Professional organizations in Europe, and then in America, began to insist that only their vetted members were competent enough to be paid a wage for their consultations and house calls, and by the 1920s and 30s were able to frighten lawmakers and voters into passing laws against unlicensed practice.  While England made it possible for practitioners to earn accreditation and a license, in other countries including the United States it became possible to continue practicing only if one denied that they were diagnosing or treating illness.  While herbal product sales increased dramatically in the 1970s and 80s, herbalism itself became indelibly linked to – and tainted by – an association with commonly dismissed New Age thinking and practice.  Plant Medicine has largely remained a semi-legal, semi-outlaw, alternative field ever since… and we probably need to get used to it: a different healing stream, committed to following its own evolving direction, aptly finding its own channel of ingress and expression, proudly assuming its own characteristic shape.

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The Mainstream

I have to tell you… normal is highly overrated.
–Charles “Doc” Garcia

mainstream |ˈmānˌstrēm| noun
1. ideas, attitudes, or activities that are regarded as normal or conventional
2. the dominant trend in opinion, fashion or the arts

Let’s be clear: Increasing public acceptance of and support for herbalism is a worthy and perhaps even necessary goal for us, irrespective of its degree of attainability.  I say this, because the more people whose trust we can win over, the more we can help… and the more support that herbalism will have, as increasing numbers of regulations are decided or voted on.  No matter how polar their politics or what ethnicity they might be, the majority of U.S. and European citizens think of themselves as being in the “mainstream.” For this reason alone, if we want herbal healing to be embraced by the larger society, it is to them we must appeal, to them we must hope to educate and stretch, entice and inspire.

That said, before we go too far in our attempts to be accepted by and integrated into the mainstream, it could be helpful for us to first take a good look at its character and direction.  Whether we are talking mainstream medicine, fashion or entertainment, you’ll note that it tends to be marked by:

•A general absence of critical thinking.
•Acting out of fear, such as a fear of unconventionality, the fear of medical self-care, a fear of trusting the aid or advice of anyone unofficial.
•Default acceptance of the opinions, research, beliefs, prejudices and proclamations of people and institutions in power, popular celebrities and official “experts.”
•Dependence on and subservience to the edicts and strictures of officials, agencies and authority figures.
•Endemic superficiality, responsive to sound bites rather than making deep investigations.
•Allegiance to conformity, or even uniformity, as exemplified by fads, adherence to fashion trends, uniforms, dogmatism, regulated behavior and self-restraint.
•Greater individual worry about appearing “weird” or different, than concern about doing the best thing.
•Mistrust of and resistance to the unfamiliar, unusual, untypical, uncommon, unconventional, unorthodox, out of the ordinary, irregular, abnormal, aberrant, “strange,” exceptional or unique, eclectic or eccentric, adaptive or creative.
•Disregard for options and alternatives, more resistant to considering new ideas, methods, means, products, practices, and possibilities.

Those outside of the mainstream are more likely to:

•Act out of vision or instinct, hunch or hope.
•Listen to the pronouncements of authority figures, agencies and official “experts” with a critical ear.
•Personally experiment, and independently evaluate.
•Investigate deeper, and weigh supposed facts against personal intuition and observation.
•Challenge entrenched beliefs, systems, prejudices, and protocols.
•Sometimes question their own habits and assumptions.
•Place more importance on authentically being themselves, than on conforming in order to fit in.
•Value and appreciate the unfamiliar, unusual, untypical, uncommon, unconventional, unorthodox, out of the ordinary, irregular, abnormal, aberrant, “strange,” exceptional or unique, eclectic or eccentric, adaptive or creative.
•Be more afraid of being a meaningless, conformist “cog in the wheels,” than of being thought of as different or weird.
•Be open to options and alternatives, considering new ideas, methods, means, products, practices and possibilities.

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My dictionary definition of “mainstream” includes “conventional,” which that same edition describes as actions “based on or in accordance with what is most generally done or believed.”  For this simple reason, we cannot be truly and completely conventional if we are an herbalist who acts on or in accordance with our own observations and beliefs, convictions and aims.

We may think we could be happier fitting fully into the mainstream, or that it’s the most practical and safest choice, but if so, it would be best to first decide if it embodies the values and characteristics, the goals and means for getting there, that we personally aspire to.

And if it is students, clients or customers that we seek, we would do well to be realistic about the propensities of the mainstream, how many we can serve and how deeply we can engage and benefit them… and grateful for the creative, sensitive, receptive alternative.

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Alternative

alternative |ôlˈtərnətiv| adjective
1. one or more things available as additional possibilities
2. of or relating to behavior that is considered unconventional and is often seen as a challenge to traditional norms

Nearly everything alternative is painted in the mainstream as being either extreme, subversive, heretical, unseemly, fatuous, or foolish.  Alternative schools are often dismissed as undisciplined daycare for the children of liberals, and alternative novels criticized as being for the effete.  Members of the mainstream often seem to enjoy being disgusted and mortified by what they call “alternative lifestyles,” from communal living to gay marriage.  And anything other than conventional medicine is considered quackery, whether via deliberate fraud or self-delusion.

A number of mainstream scientists speak as if alternative medicine (including herbalism) meant “ineffective or unproven” or “without any scientific basis or verifiable results.” Alternative practices “do have scientific value,” quipped one of the commentators on Randi.org, but only “to psychologists studying delusional behavior!”  A standing joke among MDs, is that “alternative medicine” means an “alternative to medicine.”  This includes plant medicine in the eyes of the great majority of them, considered of little more use than colloidal silver and magnet therapy.  One online rant goes as follows: “Herbal Medicine?  Give me a break!  If herbs pass the test, they’re just medicine.  And if they don’t, they’re just soup and potpourri.”  This prevailing attitude on doctor’s forums and in many scientific circles helps explain why up to a third of all herbalists go to such incredible lengths to establish academic, professional and scientific credentials.  They don’t spend so much money on formal education and memberships just to get a better job in the field, or to be better informed and positioned for influencing the academic community… they’re hoping at the least, to avoid being completely ignored, disregarded, denigrated, and dissed.

The writer Richard Dawkins calls alternative medicine – herbalism included – “a set of practices which cannot be tested, refuse to be tested, or consistently fail tests”… and without mentioning that most research is conducted by an industry with a vested interest in profitable synthetics, is usually done on isolated compounds rather than whole plants, and fails to take into account individual constitutional factors.  Thank you, Dick!  His is one example of how the mainstream discredits any but conventional, institutional practice… by totally missing the point!

As I have learned from Kiva, herbal effects are indeed testable – in some convincing way or another – if:

•Using whole plants, not constituents.
•Paying close attention to dosage, when to use dry or fresh plant material, and means of preparation
•Looking for more than an isolated action or effect.
•Taking into account the constitutions and health histories of those in the study.
•Measuring health as more than the alleviation of symptoms.

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Herbalism and other nature, folk, tradition, and experience-based healing practices are not merely complimentary adjuncts to “modern medicine.”  They’re vital alternatives to the conventional, blind-sided, narrow minded, profit motivated, corporate financed, pharmaceutical drug pushing, in many cases life endangering medical paradigm.

Nor is alternative medicine an insubstantial alternative to “real medicine,” it is an alternative way of perceiving the body, illness, treatment, and the very notion of what it means to be healthy.

“It is often thought that medicine is the curative process. It is no such thing… nature alone cures. And what [true] nursing has to do… is to put the patient in the best condition for nature to act upon him.” –Florence Nightingale (from Notes on Nursing)

You might think of alternative medicine the way you think of alternative energy.  Wind and solar power are alternatives to mountain-leveling coal mines and air polluting power plants.  Or the way you think of healthy whole foods from the woods or garden, an alternative to the mainstream American diet of processed carbs, sugar and salt, hormone laden meat, genetically modified vegetables, canned food, and snacks.  Or like what is undoubtedly the best music these days, not the formulaic (certified, licensed) mainstream music being pushed, but the often unsigned (uncertified), independent musicians creating new Alt-Country/Americana, Alternative Rock, World Fusion, Alt-Latino and more.  Think about how much the mainstream media sucks, and how necessary are any alternative sources of much needed news.

In a similar way, we are the alternative – to a fearful, highly distracted and controlled humankind, increasingly divorced from its nature and from the natural world, out of touch with its native intuition, instincts, emotions and their triggers, dreams and service, purpose and calling.  And herbalism is an alternative – to institutional/industrial health care, to viewing the body as a mechanism or chemical factory, to treating symptoms instead of causes and imbalances, to the restricting of health care access and total dependence on technology and drugs.

Some of you may be attached to identifying with or being thought of by others as mainstream, but let’s get serious!  How mainstream is it today, to practice plant medicine apart from its twisted pharmaceutical successors, to make one’s own preparations, to think of health as wholeness instead of an absence of symptoms, to provide advice to nearly anyone who asks, to put ethics and quality ahead of income, or to be concerned about the health of plant populations as well as of the people served?

I frankly don’t know hardly any mainstream-type people in the field of herbalism. Nobody has done more to broaden the appeal of herbalism than the herbalist Rosemary Gladstar, for example.  Yet on closer examination, we see that she, like I, has a soft spot – and acts as a magnet for – radicals and activists, wild women, frisky fellow and self-proclaimed freaks, outlandish outliers and edge-dwellers.

“These people are my tribe. I’m one of them! I identify with them because I’m a bit freakish and outlandish myself! I just have a sweeter cover, perhaps, than many of my fellow radicals, is all!” –Rosemary Gladstar

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If your reputation is based on clinically informed medical herbalism, you’re clearly still not mainstream if you teach aromatherapy, promote critical thinking, or sing “I’m An Herbal Rebel” at events full of other alternative-type folks.  You may be an officer of the American Herbalist Guild making inroads in the scientific or legislative community, but you are unavoidably alternative if you’re also an activist, eco-tourist, or conservationist, teach energetics, or had an herbal epiphany at a Grateful Dead concert.  Academic degrees are impressive, as are any years of study you may have put into your botany or chemistry, but these things are not enough to earn you full mainstream membership, if you are known to administer to the homeless, volunteer in Nicaragua, fight to protect endangered Sandalwood trees, foster free clinics, run a first aid station at a Rainbow Gathering, sleep in the back of your herbal business to save money, prefer nature documentaries over action-movie superheroes, or discuss in public what plants seem to be communicating to you.

Sorry, but at most – if you are quiet and guarded about much of who you are and what you believe, and are careful with your appearance and language – you may be partially accepted by a mainstream that you can only partially relate to.

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Confluence & Divergence

“Just because I have success, doesn’t mean I’m part of the mainstream.”
–Matt Drudge

So what might be a healthy relationship, a healthful confluence with the predominantly unhealthy mainstream?  How can we interact with it that serves both our well- being and our purpose, draw from it what we need or desire, trade with and help its members, influence and help heal its culture?  Consider the following model/parallel.

In many parts of the world, for hundreds and in some cases thousands of years, the majority of the population lived outside of the few urban areas, gathering or producing food, living in rural villages with cultures that helped keep them aligned with the spirit and needs of the land.  Cities, with their closely packed buildings, constant commotion and mind numbing noise, were seen as rather unpleasant places one traveled to in order to trade their rural produce or crafts for things that couldn’t be obtained elsewhere, meet and hopefully mate with someone from a different town or tribe, and party hearty!  With any luck, one would wake up suffering no worse than a hangover, recover their wagon and newly scored goods, and then get the hell out of Dodge as quickly as their feet, horse, or jalopy would carry them.

Imagine now, if you will, mainstream society as an old-school urban center, with the herbalist as the ecocentric outlier, a feed-stream periodically entering the mainstream in order to exert a positive effect, teach or be taught, exchange products or services for what’s needed or enjoyed, dance with the most attractive elements until late at night… but always returning to the alternative of our true community, to the source and heart of herbal wisdom, identity and mission.

If we are to give our lives to this work, we perhaps need to become more comfortable with, and find more satisfaction in being different… and to be more fulfilled and satisfied, serving not the masses so much or so deeply as the exceptions – those exceptional folks courageously looking beyond current convention for the most natural, healthful alternatives.

I was once asked if I had ever treated “mono.”  Even if I were a clinical herbalist, I likely still would have had to say “Yes… monotony, monopolies, monotheism, monoculture, and monosyllabic cliches.”  And a good treatment for that is a protocol of divergence, diversity, multiculturalism, and intelligent investigation and communication.

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Let us return our watercourse analogy again, in closing.

While the mainstream features the greatest volume, it is also in some ways the narrowest and straightest channel, herding, compacting, densifying and considerably accelerating everyone caught up in its flow.  As anyone who has ever been caught up the central current of a fast river knows, it can be exceedingly hard to paddle out of its hold and into a preferred path.  Even within the river itself, there are deep currents that do not run nearly so fast, and to either side can often be found shallower waters slowed by their more intimate contact with shoreline terrain, affording one time to consider both where one is? heading and what we are passing by.  There are even eddies, areas where the water catches and swirls, sometimes sending floating objects temporarily back in the direction of the headwaters, the source.  Each of these is an available alternative to mainstream:  The depths, where meaning is paramount but few reside.  The gladly uneven, explorative, meandering edges.  And the pivotal moments of eddy spin, when we’re helped to find our way back in the direction of the dream and connection, to where our herbal journey began.

Indeed, what we have been calling “alternative” is never a single option, but a multiplicity of directions, possibilities, methods, means, and personal styles.

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Rather than seeking a single unified body of herbalism, let us celebrate the many divergent streams.  And rather than obsessing about herbalism’s acceptance into the mainstream, let us celebrate our divergence.  Let us be happy with the healing effects we are able to have on any members of the dominant culture… and thrilled with those atypical and alternative thinking folks who will continue to comprise our main clients and favorite suppliers, our students and teachers, our allies and tribe.

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Excerpted from Wolf Hardin’s upcoming book “Plant Healers and Wisdom Keepers”, and it will also appear an  in the Summer 2013 Issue of “the Magazine Different”:

www.PlantHealerMagazine.com

And help yourself to the Free 154 Page Long Plant Healer Sample Download:

Plant Healer Sample Issue

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Apportioning Our Time:
Buried in Work, or Busily Alive?

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

www.AnimaCenter.org -  www.PlantHealerMagazine.com

Looking up from my writing and out our cabin window, I see a wild river canyon that’s forever prodding me to play “hooky” from my schedules and responsibilities, calling for me to come outdoors and play.  I easily imagine myself quietly removing the window screen, sliding out and making a dash for the trees the way I more than once escaped the uneventful, uninspiring and often suffocating classrooms of my youth.  The difference, is that there is nothing uninspiring about the work I am pledged and given to, it breathes life into me and allows me to help breathe new life into the larger culture of my human kind, and can be too eventful if anything.  The significance, importance, value and even urgency of this work of culture co-creation makes it always fulfilling, and much of it feels like play even if sometimes it can all feel like too much… too much for a couple of people, too much to get done in a single day, on schedule, or by a certain deadline.  Even our much needed breaks are in one sense something else on the endless to-do list, another commitment to keep.  There are always a zillion things we desire to do for pleasure, on top of all that we want to accomplish for other people or for some special purpose… and there definitely never seems like enough hours in the day to do it all.

Indeed, I write this on a morning when I have a Plant Healer Magazine issue to start laying out, art posters and article illustrations to create, new book of interviews to prepare for publication and announcement, articles to finish writing on topics meant to aid and inspire our community and the rest of our kind.  My partner, Kiva, sits a few feet away finishing her latest blog post while simultaneously researching printing companies, looking for art and photos for the magazine, dealing with our accountant and head-numbing finances, providing free tech help for subscribers, and trying to catch up on 70 recent emails from folks who not only would like but deserve detailed replies.

In this day and age, it’s easy for an herbalist or anyone else to feel overwhelmed by all the tasks we’re expected to handle, from minding homes to tending careers and causes.  As plant healers, we’re expected to “wear many hats.”  We may need to plan and take wildcrafting trips, seed and water a garden or spend time ordering fresh quantities of the herbs we use, do the thoughtful work of making medicines or seeing clients, read or even write new herbal books, attend classes to increase our knowledge of the craft or else prepare to teach herbal courses that help inform others, create new ads for our products or add material to our websites… all while still trying to give quality time to our friends, our families, and our sometimes neglected or undernourished selves.

We're expected to wear many different hats.

This is not only a quandary of the fast paced modern world, however.  The historic homesteader had to get up before dawn to take care of the domestic animals before breakfast, cram the homeschooling of the kids in between household chores, taking care of a large enough garden to feed an entire family and still trade off a surplus, and cutting enough firewood with a laborious crosscut hand saw to keep the house warm at night.  Hunter/Gatherer groups are believed to have had a larger proportion of unscheduled time than in any society since, and yet it seems that rather than choosing inactivity, they opted to fill their hours exploring new regions and new ideas, by indulging in new forms of art and reveling in new songs, actively developing a culture of mythos and beauty and not just necessity.

It can be tempting to wish we had enough income to pay for more help with our projects, enough to cover expenses without having to pay so much attention to business.  We can see, however, that the most satisfied and fulfilled of people are usually those who truly enjoy doing what they are doing, who would do the same things even if there was no money in it and no one made them, who are motivated to do things for more than their own personal self.  And we can see that while the wealthy have the greatest amount of “free” time, they are often the most dissatisfied, more bored than aimless suburban teenagers between school terms.

Better An Overwhelmed Herbalist

Besides, time is never really “free.”  We are born with an undetermined yet finite number of hours in our mortal account, and since we don’t get to add the bank, it’s up to us how, where and why we spend the capital of our lives.  We can tell we are taking on too much when our focus becomes diffuse, our tasks scattered and disconnected, with more projects in motion than unfinished… when we are losing our inspiration, or exhausting our essential selves.  Otherwise, if we remain inspired about our work, excited about the possibilities, satisfied with the feel of our efforts, fulfilling our purpose or role and moving in the direction of our dreams, we may be crazy busy but we will not be depleted.

We don’t necessarily need to do less, only to consciously and responsibly choose what we do, whether we are intently laboring, consciously relaxing and nourishing ourselves, or giddily at play.  The real issue is neither how much we do nor how fast our pace, but what we do: how meaningful, valuable, intentional, purposeful, pleasurable and satisfying our acts.

On several occasions, I’ve heard folks say that they “hate waking up to so much work,” but the only real alternative would be to never wake up.  When we’re dead, we won’t be making any more cynical jokes on social media about imposing deadlines.  When we’re buried in the ground, we’ll no longer have any reason to complain about being “buried in work.”  In the meanwhile, let’s gladly get on with the work of being wholly, purposefully, intensely and – yes! – often quite busily alive.

Nothing never satisfies... so do something!

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We just got our first storm in many long droughtful months, but what a doozy of a storm it was!  I thought the roof was going to fly off from the intensity of the wind.  Still, the middle ground of life is seldom where the action is.  “All things in moderation”?  Not to hear my partner Wolf tell it.  Consider this our Holiday Greetings, our wishes for all to live meaningfully… and fully! –Kiva

Extremely Alive:
The Case For Immoderation

by Jesse Wolf Hardin
www.AnimaCenter.org

extreme |ikˈstrēm| adj.
1. reaching a high or the highest degree; very great
• not usual; exceptional
• very severe or serious
• far from moderate
• performed at risk
2. furthest from the middle

"Take it to the limit..." –The Eagles

“Extreme” has gotten a bad rap of late.  In media news reports and shopping mall conversations, it’s become a stand-in for “unreasonable.”  Extreme sports, that could get a normal personal killed.  Extreme weather events, that people love to fear.  “Environmental extremists” are lambasted as the ones who would protect nature at the cost of fewer resources extracted, fewer logging and mining jobs or lower incomes.  Rather than calling Jihadi bombers “revolutionaries”, we hear them described as “Islamic extremists.”  “Terrorist” and “extremist” are used interchangeably by right-wing pundits, as if they meant the same thing, but just as lamentable are the liberal correspondents directing their disapproval at what they call the “extreme views” of the opposition.  “Extreme” is a Middle English word, drawn from the Latin extremus meaning “outermost, utmost,” and it’s as if we’re being told that only the middle ground is reasonable, laudable, normal.

On the other hand, the antonyms for “extreme” tell us much.  Would we really rather our lives, our work, our expressions of self be considered “slight”, “mild”, “moderate” or “tame”?  Few people would want to be mildly desired by their mates, and moderate interest can be a sure turn-off.  A moderate effort in sports, or in our work, results in low scores and scant accomplishment.  Middle is often average or even mediocre, without the memorable lessons and inspiring drama of failure, or the results and satisfaction of success.  Everyone is better than average at certain tasks or practices, depending on their inborn gifts and developed skills, and most of us are extremely effective at least one thing.  That thing, is our personal way to shine.

Kiva, proponent of extreme herbalism

Just as as it is said someone is “generous in the extreme,” so too can we be herbalists in the extreme – if plant medicine is our calling – turning our extreme interest into extreme study, connection, foraging, growing, evaluation of conditions… extremely caring and effective healing.  We can all be students in the extreme, learning from everything around us, and never stopping learning.  Lovers in the extreme, giving the most meaningful and sweetest of attentions to the people, places and activities that we love.  Creators in the extreme, creating lives, art, writings and practices that are utmost expressions of who really are, maximal, far reaching, momentous, consequential, radical, impactful.

I’m all for extreme beauty that opens our eyes, awakens our senses, stirs our hearts, or takes our very breath away.  Extremely flavorful food like oranges and pomegranates that demand attention and awaken the palate.  Extremes of loyalty and devotion, affection and love.  Extremely adventurous vacations, extremely deep friendships.  Extremely restful downtime, and extremely productive projects.  The extreme pleasure of loud roots-rock or conjunto or Russian folk music, of resonant drum heads and intricately plucked mandolin or balalaika.  And the often extreme quiet of nature, in which to either think and ponder, or simply to exist for precious extended moments in a rapt state of ultra-presence and wordless fascination.

There are even advantages to extreme negatives.  Being extremely alone, totally without company, can feed the spirit and our exploration of self, while feeling neglected amidst a crowd or lonely in a less than satisfying relationship only feeds our alienation and dissatisfaction.  While we’re likely to leave an extremely unhealthy marriage, we may stick it out it’s only half bad, slowly draining us of hope and joy.  If I’m to be made uncomfortable by something or someone, I prefer it in extreme, because it moves me to respond and initiate changes in ways and to a degree that moderate discomfort never could.  Extreme government oppression makes it clear the ways we are being controlled and harmed, provoking a search for alternatives, rebellion and resistance to injustice, while we suffer even more in the long run from a constant if incremental increase in oppression and the loss of our liberties, under supposedly democratic systems and liberal administrations.

The first storm in many months just came through here, with winds blowing so hard that our cabin shook and snow somehow was blown clean through tiny cracks in the wallboard.  We are moved, literally, to probe for the points of ingress with a caulk gun in hand, and to make sure our structures are still firmly rooted to the ground. The weather has always seemed extreme here in the mountains of New Mexico, contributing the our sensation of extreme vital existence.  Utmost existence.  Utmost purpose.  Utmost focus and results.

No feeling repressed, no hunger ignored, no details or elements unnoticed, no opportunities ignored, no choices denied… just ever more extremely alive, alive, alive.

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Whether To Be a Professional or Not
CHOOSING OUR PATH – Part II

Informed Amateurism, Able Adepts, & Standards We Can Share In Common

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

www.AnimaCenter.org

Reclaiming Amateurism

am•a•teur: noun: 1. a person who engages in a pursuit (esp. a sport) on an unpaid basis; 2. a person considered contemptibly inept at a particular activity. adjective: inept or unskillful.

Hey dictionary, thanks for nothin’!  I personally happen to like thinking of myself as an overqualified amateur, from whom nothing can be expected but anything is possible… though I concede the word is considered nothing but a put down by most people these days.  “Amateurish” is used to mean “unskilled”, though I have never heard the efforts of amateur Olympic athletes – many of who can outperform their professional counterparts – derided as amateurish.  Even the dictionary definitions suck, since 1. many nonprofessionals are well paid for their efforts, and 2. there are many skillful amateurs or nonprofessionals, and plenty of examples of inept professionals in every field I know of.

While I often choose the ambiguous sounding term “non-professional” to avoid misunderstanding or lengthy explanation, I am also happy here to reclaim the label of Amateur, and confidently run alongside or ahead of the pros in my own satisfyingly nonconforming style.

Amateurs arise and be counted!  It’s high time to put an end to anti-amateur legislation and amateur bashing,  time for Amateur Pride hoodies.  An Amateur/Professional Alliance.  A major coming out!

Adepts

a•dept: noun: 1. a person who is highly proficient and accomplished at something.  (period)

While I am fine with the word “amateur,” by my redefinition it still covers the entire range of nonprofessionals from the very least competent to the most able.  A better term for nonprofessionals who are focused and devoted, wise, experienced and consistently excel at what they do, is “Adept.”

As with the adjective, the noun originates from the 17th century Latin “adeptus”: to achieve.  Adepts are achievers, and that achievement is attributable to their knowledge and abilities as much as to their natures and drive.

Just as there are adepts in spiritual traditions who have given decades to the study and practice, so are there martial arts adepts who are the best in their field.  Calling someone a “Master” anything seems absurd, since nobody ever completely masters (controls, knows everything about) any darn thing!  Calling someone (or ourselves) an adept, however, says only that they are profoundly wise and extraordinarily proficient and effective, while allowing that there is always room for further learning and improving.

There can be, of course, no set criteria for when someone is to be considered an adept.  If anything, it is determined by their continuous performance, accomplishment and results, and is spread beyond immediate witnesses and beneficiaries via story and reputation.  An adept may very well be a professional, but not all adepts are professionals by any stretch.

Potential Advantages of Being a Non-Professional, Amateur, Adept

Nonprofessionals are often better as shape-shifters that can transform rather than conform, self-approve rather than wait and apply for approval, and choose to practice regardless of any regulations or laws that may ever be passed against it.  Advantages include:

•Knowledge is attained from wider sources (an infinite reading assignment list, openness to the approaches of other traditions and cultures) and through alternative and often more intimate means (personal experience, family tradition, apprenticeship).

•Nonprofessionals make evaluations based on someone’s inherent nature, wisdom and day to day acts, rather than on their position or accreditation.

•One can act on a need, desire or calling immediately without waiting first for any degree, certificate, invite from an agency, or other formal process that would slow you down or derail you.

•The nonprofessional acts out of her or his own personal code of ethics, rather than needing to agree completely with and act according to an organization’s or agency’s ethical guidelines.

•Freedom (given, imagined, or seized and insisted on).

•Personal empowerment.  No permission is sought, and none required, to do what feels best.

•Succeeding or failing at one’s aims is the only qualifying exam.

•Status is determined by performance (evidenced skill, ethics, results) rather than conferred by title.

•There are infinite natural hierarchical levels for one to fit into, organic, overlapping, shifting and transforming, based on wisdom displayed, skills utilized, and the perceptions and needs of those around us.

•Nonprofessionalism comes with fewer pressures to conform, along with more opportunities to distinguish oneself.

•Informality, beloved informality, making it easier to relate to, communicate with and influence the other nonprofessionals of the world, everyday folks who have grown to distrust the pronouncements of so called “experts”, the intentions of corporate managers and regulations of agencies and authorities.  A nonprofessional speaks the language of the people being served, and is as good at being heard by plain folk as the pros are at getting the ears of business, school and government administrators.

•If regulation or prohibition of our chosen field increases, being a professional may no longer provide any immunity, and a nonprofessional, nonclinical model may be the only choice left for continued practice.

Potential Drawbacks to Being a Non-Professional, Amateur, Adept

•There is usually only one set of tests that someone has to pass before being ever after considered a professional, but the nonprofessional and outlier is daily tested.

•Less credibility with professionals and bureaucrats means less direct influence on groups, business and agencies.

•Unlike being thought of as a professional, being called an adept is no advantage when it comes to access to the institutions and powers-that-be, and in fact causes a lot of red lights to go off in the minds of bureaucrats and administrators.

•Because nonprofessionals have less credibility and access, they have to work even harder to change the system from the outside.

•Without management oversight and professional pressures, it can be dangerously easy to start putting less effort into projects, or to get unfocused, distracted or diffuse.

•The pay for nonprofessional work can be pretty shitty.

•Hypocrisy & The Religion of NonProfessionalism: Noncomformist, anarchic, alternative and low income folks can be hypocritical in unfairly writing-off the professionals in their field.  And it is more of a challenge or more heroic to be nonprofessional or poorly paid, thank it is to deal with university b.s., put on a dress skirt or suit and try to make a difference in the often hectic and unpleasant environs of a county clinic, a public school, a too brightly lit research lab or State Senate building.  Our allies are all those who share our earth-hearted values and healing intent, no matter what the title, label, costume, or means for making a difference.

Non-Professionalism At Its Best

There are ways to make up for any inherent drawbacks in nonprofessional practice.  Inability to access institutions can result in you finding creative new ways of affecting your community and culture.  While a high paying professional career can be difficult and painful to move on from, failure to be hired by a company can prod you to start your own herb related or other business that you have always wanted to.  Not worrying about professional status, can make changing school majors or job focus easier, and not being bound to the accepted norms of professional dress and demeanor means you can more openly voice your real opinions, and more wildly, loudly and colorfully express your true self.

You can set your standards and goals for studying and practicing as high as the most rigorous professional group, or even higher if that is your need or desire… but the inspiration, direction and drive is daily up to you.

Being an effective nonprofessional or adept may require that we:

•Seek continuous education throughout our lives, from unconventional sources, with the intention of being ever more effective at whatever we believe matters most.

•Ensure that we are tested and improved through hands-on effort, experience and experiment.

•Give equal attention and value to both means and results.

•Use our reasoning minds as well as our hearts to evaluate and make choices.

•Study science and consider evolving research, and weigh it against our intuition and experience… even if we have found reason to distrust corporate controlled science or detest its bias against alternative thinking.

•Stop resenting the existence of money and feeling guilty about making any.

•Develop a personal code of honor/ethics, and live by it.

•If we don’t accept direction and discipline from “superiors,” then it is all the more important we be self-directed, and disciplined in the pursuit of our aims.

•Working without imposed form or protocol, means we must ourselves create form for purpose, and avoid the dreadful, nebulous, amorphous “it’s all good” mush.

•Take great care as to what we commit to, and then keep our commitments (“in a professional manner”!)

•Categorize priorities and schedule hours.

•Insist on either not-so-highly paid work that feeds our souls and serves our purpose, or else better paid work that bankrolls our real work, our off hours production or book writing.

•Function in a professional environment sometimes, whether we like it or not.

Standards for Both Professionals & Non

Whether we seek to be professional or not, there are many characteristics and values that all can strive to embody and proliferate.  Only a few examples follow:

•Form, Function & Result
While professions and their members can become rigid and un-adaptive,  nonprofessionals can be transitional and amorphous to a fault.  Function and results are sometimes downplayed as less important than art and expression by the non, while pros may error in stressing functionality but not meaning or beauty.  And while results should never be the only criteria or measure, they certainly do matter.

•Reason & Feeling
Crucial is a balancing of left and right brain, intellect and heart, reason and feeling.  Lean too far in either direction and we err, failing ourselves and those we might wish to help.

•Respect
Essential for all, is basic respect.  Respect for each other, free of the smug superiority and righteous disdain that professionals and non can sometimes display for one another.  Respect for everyone’s personal connection to their field and passion, for new ideas and approaches as well as for established schools of thoughts and traditions.

•Politeness
Since childhood, I have abhorred how phony and fatuous politeness can be, shallow conversations characterized by a rote and impersonal civility rather than the expression or real feelings and honest opinions.  Even the most discomforting of remarks can seem preferable to the practiced superficiality and disingenuousness of the polite corporate spokesman engaged in public relations whitewashing, or the polite sounding politicians working to regulate or even eliminate your practice by the people of this country.
On the other hand, there’s much to be said for the art of courteous discourse.  Exchanges in person or in emails can address issues without projecting our personal issues, and minus unhelpful drama.

•Punctuality & Follow Through
There are few qualities of professionalism more useful than following through on commitments in a timely and punctual way, qualities that are sadly all too rare amongst us proud non-professionals.

•Accountability & Responsibility
Professionals are accountable to their peers, organizations and employers, but accountability is no less important for all of us needing an honest public measure of our accomplishments and mistakes, effects and results.  When not mandated by rule or protocol, it becomes necessary that we volunteer our work for inspection, and take responsibility for both what we do and fail to do.  Professionals or not, we need to learn to accept, assume and deepen responsibility for our choices, actions, and failures to act… defined in the Anima tradition as the practiced “ability to respond.”

•Proficiency
People sometimes use professionalism as a synonym for proficiency, though all can and likely should strive to be as proficient as possible at whatever we do, for the sake of excellency and effect regardless of the level or lack of expectations.

In The End

Knowing whether or not we want to go the professional route can make a big difference in the realization of our most meaningful purpose and ideal role.  And yet, devoted professionals and nonconforming non-professionals alike may be attributing too much import and baggage to what is but a derivative term.

If we look up the roots of the word “profession,” we see that it derives from the Latin “profiteri,” meaning only to “declare publicly,” from the notion of being “an occupation that one professes to be skilled at.”  (Indeed, the expression “the oldest profession” didn’t arise because historic prostitutes formed professional associations that qualified and certified its members, but rather, because the not always unhappy practitioners professed to be sex workers… often loudly, in public spaces, and sometimes in the form of a most lovely song.)

And no matter how many degrees or certificates we might earn, no matter how many accomplishments or awards or how professional our actions or demeanor, most of us will always sense ourselves as something more than simply professionals.  Plants, the natural world and what they teach and give, are seldom experienced as just a profession by any of us.  They are our interest and infatuation, our passion and obsession, our calling and service, our pleasure and delight.

I’d go so far as to say most professionals would be more chill about being referred to as amateurs, if they’d take a look at the roots of this word as well: Amateur, from the late 18th Century Italian amatore, from the Latin amator, from amare… yes, “to love”, it means the most extreme expression of our caring!  Being paid or not isn’t really what distinguishes amateurs or adepts, it’s that they love what they do so much they’d do it regardless of income or lack of income, and whether or not they get permission, approval or acclaim.

Hell, it’s actually true of the best folks in any field, that they do – what we do – is rightly done out of love.

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Intro: By all appearance, we have a magazine and publishing business, and we certainly strive to be as professional in our work as possible without sacrificing our aims or attitudes.  Still, we are poor business people considering we manage to re-invest or spread any profit around to others, and we are owed a lot of money by a person or two that we care so much about we are uncomfortable even pressing for its repayment.  And we will never submit to being vetted, certified, approved or registered by any group or agency, and our professionalism has more to do with quality and ethics than being accepted by the system.  Wolf wrote the following piece for the Winter issue of Plant Healer Magazine, and then reworked it so as to address all work and roles and not just herbalism, but teaching, counseling, and so many other fields.  We all have a choice to sign up for approval and legitimacy, or go our own way.  We present this piece to you in multiple parts, and hope it proves of benefit. -Kiva

Whether To Become a Professional or Not
Choosing Our Path – Part I

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

excerpted from a longer article in the upcoming Winter issue of Plant Healer Magazine
www.PlantHealerMagazine.com

We each have an ultimate personal role to fulfill, one that by its very nature maximizes our abilities and imparts maximum meaning to our daily acts.  While it may look something like the roles we see others assuming, it will in certain ways be significantly different from what everyone else does, a position, purpose and way for which we alone are ideally suited.  We’ll need to choose again and again between options and paths as we progress in that fulfillment, basing each choice on our sense of what that evolving role might look like.

One’s personal path  forks early on, providing an initial and fundamental choice between two distinct – and distinctly valuable – courses we could take.  There will be many other forks and branches as we go along, but one of the very first choices we need to make is between doing what it takes to be a professional, be it practitioner, researcher, professor, or product developer… or going our own way, independently and informally studying and practicing.

pro•fes•sion: 1. a paid occupation, esp. one that involves formal training and qualification.

Anyone considering their role, purpose, means or place  today, would do well to begin by asking:

To Be, Or Not To Be?

That is the question.  Or at least, it’s one of the first of many important questions.

If you choose the costs and benefits of becoming a professional, then you need to promptly commit your time and funds to the required formal education, and then apply for and submit to the judgements of both accrediting associations and regulating agencies… preferably without first giving too many years to being uncertain, unfocused, uninvested or directionless.  Likewise, if you end up choosing to forego the costs and benefits of going pro, there is no need to run up a huge bill for a university education.  You can look instead to unaccredited  schools, to apprenticeships and even self-education… and when and how you practice will be determined by you.

Before we continue, let me offer this disclosure: I am not, by any account, a professional.

While I impose upon myself some mighty high standards, I generally put style and results ahead of both professionalism and income.  I am but a an increasingly wise nonprofessional with satisfyingly no need or desire to be vetted, endorsed, approved or certified by any board, group or agency.  I do not consider my work on this planet to be my profession, even in those rare situations where it makes me money, no matter how many years I have dedicated to it or how much gratitude or acclaim it may have earned me.  My work – of teaching, writing, painting, organizing, activism, wilderness restoration, plant conservation and healing in all its forms – is far more my passion and art, my calling and purpose, my mission and thus my source of greatest satisfaction.

That said, I can step back and see not only problems and drawbacks to professionalism, but also a number of incontestable pluses making a profession of one’s work, investing the long years earning necessary degrees and then qualifying for the recognition and acceptance of honored peers.

Potential Benefits to Being a Professional

•Qualification
Being a professional means to be qualified, which means to have one’s recountable knowledge, skills and abilities tested by those vested with the authority to make such determinations.  Whether it is the government, a university or an established guild doing the testing or approving, the resulting accreditation, title or stamp of approval can result in greater public trust in the value (and safety) of what you have to teach, sell or otherwise offer to the world.
There may be roles you’re interested in that are easier to get with a professional degree from an upper tier college, including teaching at the university level.  Both college degrees and certification by peer groups and guilds can contribute to getting hired by professional clinics, certain schools, and businesses involved with the research and development of  products.
A standard of competency is a worthy aim, in this form or others.  One of the best measures of our knowledge and abilities comes from holding them up to a recognized standard.  Another is to be fairly challenged and tested, whether by circumstance or in the course of vetting and protocol.

•Legitimacy
Becoming professional is a process of legitimization in the eyes of our qualified peers, the vested authorities, and our students and clients.  It requires, assumes and advertises adherence to professional codes and obedience of regulations and laws.

•Authority
An accredited professional is also considered to be an authority and have a “legitimate opinion” that’s more deserving of being listened to.  Like it or not, professional status is what it usually takes to qualify as an authority figure in the larger society… hence we see that the officers giving the orders in the military are professional soldiers, that people spend billions of dollars seeking health care from what they trust are professional if sometimes unbelievably unhelpful doctors, and the public tends to grant even the most thuggish policeman the status of law enforcement professional.
If we want to be able to direct the activities of others, or if we simply want to be listened to and given credibility by the greatest number of or most influential of people, we should at least consider going the professional route.

•Connection                                                                                                                                                                              Being recognized as a professional, results in connections to “powers that be”, but also in being able to link up people, information and services in what can be effective ways.  As Bevin Clare (Vice President of the American Herbalist Guild) defines it, “the goal of professionalism is to be able to connect with people.”  And she uses her own experience as an example: “When I began practicing and reaching out to a more financially affluent community in Boston I realized quickly that some parts of my appearance were making my clients feel uncomfortable since they were considered, by them, to be unprofessional. My initial reaction was that I wasn’t going to change who I was to make them comfortable, but when I sat with it I realized these things weren’t my values, and my values dictated that I bring plants and their medicine to as many people as I could.”

•Income
Even the most non-materialist person has a need for a certain amount of financial income, not only to survive in this day and age, but also to fund those passions or causes that mean the most to us.  The sometimes greater incomes of professionals in any field, can fuel research, fund services for the under-served, or pay for the organizing and activism that may prove essential to the future of this craft.

•Published Codes of Ethics
Every profession is expected to have a code of ethics that its members subscribe to, a standard of behavior that reflects membership morality.  The most laudable of the old time Western outlaws heeded a code that prohibited cowardice, the striking of a woman, and ratting on one’s partner if captured… and the most heinous of villains are those politicos and corporados who, regardless of what they might say, truly have no ethics to anchor, temper or guide them.
A mission statement of general intent is not hardly enough.  Our particular codes of ethics should be spelled out, to ourselves and all others.  Studied and deeply considered.  Tested, and then either resisted if found faulty, or honored and adhered to at all costs if proved worthy.

•Crediting
Professionalism involves not only garnering credit, but also giving credit, beginning with the citing of sources, referencing of research, and the attribution of quotes.

•Infiltration & Integration
Recognized professionals may have additional credibility to help introduce alternative ideas to the system.
One way I enjoy thinking of it, is as infiltration – infiltrating a government approved and subsidized, corporate influenced, often unhealthful paradigm with the seeds of change… via those who are willing to make the sacrifices, jump through the hoops, speak the language, and conform to a degree necessary to initiate change and ensure improvement.

What we must weigh these benefits against, are the potential problems with professionalism as we often see today.  Only upon consideration of both its advantages and drawbacks, can we determine which of the two main paths to take to our personal goal.

Potential Drawbacks to Professionalism

The following are indicative of contemporary professionalism in general.  It remains for those so choosing, to avoid any dangerous pitfalls.

•Problems with Qualification & Inorganic Hierarchy
Hierarchy in itself is not only unavoidable but totally natural, one of the ways that species and individuals within each species sort themselves out according to purpose, role, ability and skill, penchant and character, energetic and action.  It is not always hierarchy involving dominance, as is the case in wolf packs for example, but always a planetary self-evaluation that arranges and assigns according to manifest – both shared and individual – gifts, weaknesses, uses and needs.
The problem with human created hierarchy is that it is often constructed of a very limited number of social classes (roles, and ways to belong), and that those classes are clearly disproportionate in both importance and reward.  In an organic hierarchy there are innumerable subtle variations and there is much overlapping, with a large and adaptive range of roles arrayed not only in order of importance or authority but in patterns of alliance and purpose, ecotones and transition zones.  Professional models usually split all aspirants into a few inflexible castes, beginning with those accepted, and those rejected.  A further breakdown may be between guest members and professional members, or between professional members and executive members.  But usually lacking, is a form that grants a degree of acceptance and support to all well intended and effort making people, with a role (a means to be focused, effective and free valued) that is in at least some ways unique to them, with acknowledgement that truly sees what they offer and do rather than merely grading them as qualified or unqualified, “pass” or “fail.”  An inorganic two or three tier system can result in folks viewing it as an exclusive club, an elite caste to which the common folk need not aspire, or as the only approved means to do the work we’re called to do.

•The Unmeasured
While length of study or practice can be measured, and stored knowledge tested, many valuable skills for both professional and non-professional can’t be or usually aren’t, including: real wisdom, dedication, genuine intuition, empathy, communication skills, connection making, and the ability to synthesize new ideas and methods out of existing information and models, determining new approaches or uses.

•Requirement for Permission
Being (or remaining!) professional requires acceptance and approval from one’s “superiors,” along with their direct or codified permission to do things.  This is true for employed nonprofessionals as well, though not with as much on the line to lose.

•Potential for Disempowerment
It can feel powerful to come together in a group with a common cause, reassuring to win admittance and approval, but it can also be disempowering when it leads us to imagine we were ineffective before being admitted, that we are only competent if others agree that we are, only somebody special if a panel of directors confirms, only “real” if we have our diplomas or certificates, only free to practice and help this world if and when the latest government regulators allow.  The more we are paid a professional wage, the more we likely need to be concerned about pleasing the market or not contradicting the politics or ethics of our employers.  The more we function as professionals, the more restraint is often expected of us, and the more subject we’re likely to be to external controls.

•Conformity
A need to meet qualifying standards or regulations can in itself contribute to conformity unless guarded against, and is the more problematic when qualification depends on the approval of either feared or admired individuals in power.  When we know not only what the directors, council members or agency directors want, but also what they seem to personally like, prefer or favor – what their politics are or what kinds of people and things they least admire – we tend to reign in those aspects, appearances or attitudes that we worry may be unappealing or offensive, as well as to exaggerate those traits, opinions or styles we consciously or subconsciously feel could win us acceptance.

•Feeding Into Self-Worth Issues
The drive to be admitted, accredited, certified or made legal, can be more of a desire for acceptance and approval than a strategic choice to be a professional.  The fact that a field is generally sidelined in this society, largely cast as fringe and outside the norm, increases hunger for acceptance… and acceptance is rooted in the very natural need to belong.
The problem is when self-worth becomes dependent on admittance and membership, or for that matter, on the approval of any person, entity or group outside of our selves.  No one knows our aims, weaknesses, strengths, compromises, failures or accomplishments better than us… when we are honest and paying attention.

•False Advertising
Being an accredited professional is formal assurance of knowledgeable, qualified, quality, competent, effective consultations, production, research and conclusions, writings and teachings.  Students, clients and readers expect a level or degree of product or service that is both immeasurable and uncertain.
Professional standards can be misleading, just as the grades a kid gets in school can sometimes lead to the wrong conclusions about his strengths, problems or potential.  A practitioner or teacher’s reputation is the best indication of their likely effectiveness, though even this is no guarantee.  And how good you actually are at your work, is in no way dependent on either professional status or official recognition.

•Commercialization
Professionalizing one’s work tends to mean commercializing.  At its most basic, this is simply assigning financial worth to our services, products and time, so that we can actually make a living from doing what’s needed and loved.  Plus we aren’t helping or affecting people if they don’t buy (aren’t exposed to) our products or services, just as my writings aren’t aiding or inspiring new people unless they’re exposed to (purchase) my books or Plant Healer magazine.
The problem is that once we begin to measure our work and apportion our finite hours according to the number of units sold or dollars made, we run the risk of increasingly providing a more profitable but less meaningful, deep, challenging, controversial or life changing product or service. Linking self-evaluation and self-worth to the amount of income produced, gives short shrift to the various cultural, political and aesthetic considerations.  A corporation is forced by design to make decisions based on the projection of maximum profits, even when those decisions might run counter to its own founding mission or other company aims.  Somewhat similarly, professionals are bound to protocols and priorities that make it hard to put beauty and purpose, effects on the community and planet, ahead of success and profit.
People need an income they can live on.  But what we provide can be invaluable, even (or especially!) when we do it for very little money.

•Formalism
Professionalism is rife with formalism: excessive adherence to prescribed approaches, forms and methods.  This includes the emphasizing of “formal training” and university degrees while de-emphasizing informal training, apprenticing, and the value of individual experience.  At its worst, formalism obstructs change, dampens spontaneity and makes adventure and debate less likely, constricting natural interaction and relationship similar to the way a professional’s business suit constricts movement, stereotypes them as stuffy and unexpressive, and makes fun food fights less likely.

•Hypocrisy
While most professions and professional organizations have codes of ethics, the pressure to appear to fit in, meet standards and retain support, approval or legitimacy can lead to much fudging and pretense.  One needs only to think of the hypocrisy of physicians sworn to the Hippocratic Oath.  Bringing “no harm” is an impossible goal in the natural world, especially when asked of those risking dangerous measures to potentially save a life… but claims of ethical intentions and standards by the wholesale purveyors of so often harmful pharmaceuticals is disingenuous at best, and often criminal in truth.

•The Religion of Professionalism
All too often professional groups give off the vibe of being exclusive, privileged, superior, elevated, its members ensconced behind a wall of certification like wealthy families sheltering inside the walls of a gated community, cleanly removed from the uncomprehending or even resentful residents of the surrounding ghetto or barrio.

•The Relegation of Professionalism/Amateurism
It is extremely difficult to have a vetted, officially qualified, professional class/caste without the implication that Nonprofessionals/Amateurs are by means of process inferior: less knowledgeable, effective, safe and trustworthy.  This remains an inherent problem of perception, even though many professionals may personally hold certain amateurs, adepts, self-taught practitioners and teachers in high regard.

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In Part II, we will look at reclaiming positive “Amateurism,” and the advantages and disadvantages of being a non-professional “Adept.”  To read the entire article, subscribe at www.PlantHealerMagazine.com

To read more of Jesse Wolf Hardin’s articles go to: www.AnimaCenter.org

(Repost and Share freely, credited and linked please)

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The following is excerpted from a much longer piece featured in the current issue of Plant Healer Magazine, and that will be included in Wolf’s next book, “Finding Our Medicine”.  As far as I know it is the most extensive and inspirational work ever done on the seldom explored subject of personal, practical plant totems.  Thank you for reposting and sharing this! -Kiva Rose

PLANT TOTEMS
Identifying & Learning From Our Most Personal Plant Ally

By Jesse Wolf Hardin

The Ojibway word “totem” originally refers to a plant or animal symbol for a specific family or clan, not unlike the creature emblems on ancient European Coat of Arms.  Thus we talk about “totem poles” when referring to trees carved into vertically stacked animals, each signifying a different clan of the Haida and other coastal Alaskan natives.

In the last century, however, “totem” has increasingly come to refer to an individual’s particular spirit helpers or signifiers.  This is more in keeping with the ancient shamanic sense of plant and animal spirits, teachers and guides, though the word itself wasn’t previously used in this context.  Most often, and in many different languages, the word used was “helper”… and help is something a personal totem can amply provide, thanks to its individual resonance, familiarity and similarity.

A totem is not “other-worldly,” no mater how mysterious or magical it might appear.  It is of, native to, and a component of this earth.

It is not just for Indians, for shamans, or for hippies.

Your totem is not your savior.  Not an authority that will tell you what to do.

It is not an English-speaker, and you will need to learn from it with more than your ears.

Your true totem is also not likely to be (as the website for one plant medium asserts) the “first plant that comes into your mind when you close your eyes and meditate.”

Your totem is not a visitation, nor a product of your imagination.  Not a foolishness or indulgence.  It’s probably not a broadly popular, charismatic or cliché species.  And it is not necessarily even your favorite!

It is real and measurable, and simply your single most revealing, single most helpful botanical ally and aide.

“…if we’re only listening for words – for language in human terms – then we’re barely listening at all!  The world speaks to us in the ancient tongue of touch and color, texture and fragrance, through taste and breath and every part of our senses.  Listening through our whole body teaches to be open to the world and each other in a whole new way and with a depth and subtlety that even the best words cannot begin to approach.”
–Kiva Rose

All of life speaks to us, though certainly not in a language most are used to hearing.  And no creatures or persons communicate more personally, bodily, relevantly or poignantly than one’s totems.

When practiced with intense awareness and uncompromised honesty, the plant totem quest and realization can be a functional method and means for increased self knowledge and self actualization, interspecies alliance, enablement and growth, a system or partnership which can result in a more effective herbal practice, improved learning and teaching, and a new or heightened commitment to a purpose beyond the narrow, predictable, conformist, mundane and unsatisfying.

We use a comparison chart of botanical designs and attributes to positively identify a new plant we discover.  A totem is a way to “key-out” our authentic personalities and personas, to help distinguish the pretend from the genuine, projection and spin from understanding and wisdom.  It can provide us with another way to see ourselves, and to honor our selves as we would honor the most powerful and significant of all the plant species to ever come into our lives.

Every plant, every creature, lives to serve itself and contribute to its ecosystem, with an intrinsic value and evolved roles irrespective of any service it ever provides to you or your kind, your culture or the herbal practice and field.  That said, a totem can serve to personify, inform, mirror, model, connect, inspire and initiate.

Seeking out one’s totem is a deliberate and sometimes lengthy process, not like giving job interviews to strangers, but more like rediscovering something that had all along been integral to their selves and lives.   I’ve heard people say they didn’t feel like they had vetted and selected their beloved spouse so much as fortuitously or even magically “reunited” with their “soul mate,” that after years of searching for a partner they’d finally “gotten out of the way” of whatever destiny or process that then brought them together.  They may feel they have found or been given the one person who could be their ideal partner in struggle and growth, bliss and purpose.  Similarly, we can methodically search from among our encyclopedia of plants, in yard and wilderness for years without luck, or – through a combination of our heightened awareness and kind synchronicity – feel we’ve been led to or visited by the one species that best serves as our totem.

For this quest to be successful, we first need to get past all assumptions, preconceptions, clichés, anthropomorphic diversions and narrow categorizations to gain a sense of the various possible totem plants’ core nature, attained through direct physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual interaction.  This is easiest done through a series of specific steps that Kiva Rose lists as “observation, sensory experience, emotional response, cognition, integration and application.”

We can then appraise and test any candidate species we feel profoundly connected to, whether seemingly revealed through method or magic, with a series of questions such as:
•Does it feel especially familiar, allied, relevant, related?
•Or significant, communicative, essential, momentous?
•Is there anything about its form, shape, color etc. that reminds you of yourself?
•Do you act on the world – or contribute to it – in any ways similar to how the observed plant does?
•Or do you respond similarly to stimuli, threat, reward, isolation, exposure, stress, nourishment or care?
•Has it been in your life for a long time, appearing again and again like someone seeking your attention?
•Or has it only fairly recently become significant in your life, but in a very dramatic, vital, extreme or timely way?
•Has it proven to be particularly potent medicine for a chronic ailment or imbalance of yours?
•Or has it been medicine for your emotional balance, helping you deal with especially difficult traumas or situations, to calm you enough to function or arouse you sufficiently to accomplish what needs to be accomplished?
•Do you find yourself thinking about it for no obvious or urgent reason?
•Or did it come to you in a vision, or appear to you in dreams?
•Does it feel like you have somehow dishonored or trivialized it, when you speak of it loosely, to those who may not care?
•When you have avoided it or ignored the thought of it for awhile, do you feel out of sorts, neglectful, unassisted or unmoored?
•Do you feel unreasonably relieved when reunited after a physical absence, or after a long period of not giving it any mind?

•Does it seem to ask anything of you, require response, point to a mission or calling, excite significant acts?

Please note that your totem is not always the plant you’d most like to resemble or emulate.  A giant redwood sounds like a strong and noble totem, many would like to think of themselves as being sweet as Honeysuckle, and I can’t tell you how many people I know that for good reason call themselves Rose!  It may even be a plant that’s not very popular with people, yet it may still be your totem, instructor, and significator… if a number of the following conditions are met.

Regional:
One’s totem plant will often be associated with a particular bioregion, so that when you say its name – Ginseng for example – people immediately think “Southern Appalachians.”  It is usually one that grows locally, native to or often associated with the region where you live.  But if not, it will likely inhabit the area you grew up in, or else where you entire being feels most at home.  Even if your totem proves to be a known world traveler, green gypsy, botanical opportunist or incessant vagabond – such as Russian Thistle (Sola tragus) – it will still be strongly associated with the place where you either are, used to be, or are drawn to and will probably end up one day.  It will thus be place-based, and inevitably recognizable, au fait, au courant.

Significant:
Your totem will seem imbued with significance, with the plant bearing, imparting or signifying meaning well beyond what any casual observer might glean.  For whatever personal reasons, you will experience it as personally and particularly notable, noteworthy, weighty and important.  You will find your plant to be signal, apparently calling for you attention, and expressive of a presence, quality, characteristic, form or way of being or doing that has uncommon relevance for you.

Familiar:
It will be a species that you feel highly familiar with, conversant with, specially informed by or about, no stranger to, at home with.  It could be a pervasive weed, a rare herb that you find special, or else a threatened or disappearing plant… but in any case, it will be one that when you see it, feels like “Aww, there you are!” as though an appearance by an old friend you can never predict the arrival of but who could always be counted on to drop by unexpectedly, at the most mysterious or fortuitous times.  No matter how rare the species might be, or how uncommon or bizarre its form or function, it can never be called exotic because it is too well known by you… and too close.

Intimate:
You will feel a very close connection, even when physically apart.  You will know details about it gleaned through personal interaction, facts and nuances that other people would not necessarily find interesting.  You may feel that the plant somehow recognizes you, resonates with you, knows you, that there is nothing you either can or need to hide from it.  If words passed between you, it would be as with folks who have been married for twenty years, with each of you finishing the sentences that the other starts.  It will also be like the newly in love, “in their own world” with an impassioned oneness that no few can see and none participate in, in the exact same way.

Discrete:
Being in its presence will seem in some ways like a shared secret.  You may automatically feel a need for discretion, to conceal or guard from the public that which your totem plant communicates or reveals, protecting it from misappropriation, trivialization and ridicule.  Even when there will seem to be no harm in telling people about the depth of your relationship, you will probably feel that it somehow dilutes, distracts or disrespects, to expose that relationship to the uninvited or unconcerned, uninitiated and uninvolved.  When you do share its story, you will wish it to be to people most attuned to hearing you.  And at those rare times when you lead others to your totem’s refuge – and into its presence – it will be those you most trust, who are most sensitive, respectful, and likely to learn from, benefit from such confidence.

Correspondent:
You and your totem plant will feature close, recognizable similarities in character (personality, style, energy, impression), form (aspects of actual appearance, shape, color, growth patterns) or function (you and your plant’s roles within the respective human and biological communities).  A redhead is more likely to have a red blossomed plant, an Oak woman likely to be broad shouldered and strong and a Willow man thin and flexible, a slow starting but perseverant and evocative person associated with Mandrake, an herbalist with a potent medicinal plant… though not necessarily so.  These may be analogous (performing a similar function but having a different evolutionary origin) characteristics, attributes, features, properties, essential qualities or peculiarities, and herbs actions and your own affects on people.  You might find patience exemplified by the ephemeral Desert Anemone (Anemone tuberosa) which can wait years for the right conditions to sprout from hidden tubers.  You may share insistence and movement with something like Wisteria or Bamboo, and share a preoccupation with the cracks between the worlds with the sacred night-flowering Datura.

Magical:
Your relationship with your totem plant could very well feel extrasensory, requiring and inspiring connection and communication at a level beyond the physical senses, unencumbered by conjecture and prejudice.  Your encounters with it may appear preternatural or ultra-natural, extraordinary or inexplicable, unaccountable, fantastic or even phenomenal, and the timing of its appearances or instrumental usage appearing incredibly significant and synchronistic.  If you come upon it with other people, it may seem an ordinary discovery to them and a momentous one to you.  You may have first become familiar with it at a time of bodily illness or emotional challenge and transition, or you may notice that it always seems to show up just when you need unburdening and cheering.  It may follow you from the field or garden into the house, as a picture or thought that won’t let us leave it behind, as the predominant inspiration for your art or recurrent feature of your poetry or story, or in dreams the come to you again and again.  It can serve as the flower that illuminates your quests or fuels your migrations, or as the heartful medicine leading you in the broadest and deepest sense to health and home.

Allied:
Perhaps not consciously, but certainly by its very nature, a totem is a plant in alliance with you and your greater intentions, mission or purpose.  It is your ally, confidante, guide, supportive reminder, co-traveler, and somehow even partner in your complimentary and overlapping roles.  More than reflecting or clarifying who you really are,  “resonating” with you or providing example and consort, it will seem to empower and motivate, instigate and percolate, to enable a connection, ability, vision, or your proactive efforts on behalf of some valued goal.  It can help you to not only treat ailments, but to also understand a condition or situation, find the resources you need, or recall your native talents and reservoir of strength and determination.  Your totem will serve, fuel and support not only your process of becoming ever more self aware, but also your most insistent calling and purposeful acts.

Initiatory:
A totem plant will never imply or tell you what to do, or what you should do.  “Should” is not even in the language of the natural and inspirited world.  What it will do is to help point you to or remind you of your own desires, needs, gifts and missions… and to help initiate your acting on them.  It can inspire you to realize your calling and actualize your dreams, to play your individual part in the conscious co-creation of a personal reality and larger world.  If your totem were a childhood friend instead of a plant, it would be the kid your parents don’t want you to play with because it has such a profound influence on you… worried in their motherly and fatherly way that it could be leading you to walk a wilder, unconventional path, inciting/exciting you to follow your heart rather than follow the rules.  Your totem brings to you not a sealed assignment or set of exacting instructions, but a mischievous dare to rally and risk, to move and progress.  If and when you identify your totem, look ever so closely.  Along with whatever other hints or gifts it may convey to you, is a most personal imperative.

“We need to treat plants, their spirits, our totems with more regard and reverence than we have. We need to stop only approaching them with the mindset of usefulness and consumption, and confront our biases and human chauvinism. We need fewer herbal[ist]s that treat plants and fungi as our personal medicine cabinet, and more thought toward dried herbs as sacred remains.”
–Lupa, Therioshamanism Website

You’ve noticed that when folks identify with an animal totem, they often create an altar-like space to honor it, gather historic and mythopoetic images of it, purchase an old ceremonial mask with its countenance, get a picture of it tattooed somewhere on their body, and carry or wear actual pieces of the animal such as a tooth necklace, bits of fur and bone in a medicine bag, or a fur vest rescued from a dusty secondhand store bin.  This is not macabre aesthetics, but a ritual honoring.  When they interface with any actual animal parts, they often treat them as not just representative of the animal but as spirited artifacts, venerable extensions of the once living creature that link us to them and the inspirited, informative natural world in powerful ways.  Yet when they collect dried plant parts, travel with an herbal sachet, or sleep with dream-stimulating Artemesia beneath their pillow, they may be thinking more often about what these plants can do to or for us, rather than feeling how they connect us back to the living plants themselves, to their species, communities and ecosystems.

With a real and awakened sense of what it means to find and ally with a plant totem, we become inspired to treat every bag of dried herbs as special and sacred, to arrange and appreciate old branches as much as fresh cut flowers, to heed the hints and proddings, to savor every blessing and utilize every lesson that totems or any other plant ever teach us… switching from asking what a plant can do for us, to what we can do together in partnership.

Our plant totems first contribute to our being and self knowing, and then – necessarily, essentially, wondrously – to our purpose and practice, to ever more effective ways of sharing our knowledge, contributing to the great healing, manifesting our love.

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(You can read more of Wolf’s writings in Plant Healer Magazine, in the archives of this Anima blog, and in the free Writings section of the Anima website.  Share freely)

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The following is a brief interview conducted with Wolf prior to this year’s conference, used as background info for an article Sarah did on us for the Arizona paper The Noise.  It includes insights on not only the event but also the Medicine Bear novel I love, and on the spirit and future of herbalism.  Soon I will be working on my book and course, while Wolf will be writing interview questions for 10 herbalists and finally getting to read the applications from those of you who applied to help as staff!  We’ve been so swamped since getting back from the event, that I only today got something new posted on the Medicine Woman Roots blog, and we’re only now getting this interview up. I hope you will enjoy reading it, and sharing.  -Kiva

Noise Magazine Interview With

JESSE WOLF HARDIN

Author, CoFounder of Plant Healer Magazine and Herbal Resurgence Rendezvous

Conducted by Sarah Supernova, Noise Magazine, AZ, Aug. 2012

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1) Speak about the intimacy of your relationship with plants.

Jesse Wolf Hardin:  I grew up in the suburbs, nothing like the river canyon I now know as home. That said, from earliest memory I was drawn to the natural world, its authenticity as compared to many people’s lives, its diversity and oddness, enchantedness and eloquence. This led me to wildlife that was pervasive enough, or small and slow enough, for my inspection… and to plants, easier to find, or fun to climb. Like our partner Kiva, I spent much of my childhood exploring and finding refuge high in the branches of trees, as people walked busily below without noticing. There may have been no coyotes in the neighborhood, but there were exotic green beings from around the word used to landscape the nearby yards, and weeds, lovely willful dandelions that I respected for their brilliance and tenacity long before I was aware of their medicinal value. Even my mother’s house plants served as conduits to the natural world, agents of the wild preaching their radical vision of beauty and liberty and subverting the barefoot boy who entrained with their movements, and tended their needs.

Today, we publish Plant Healer Magazine (www.PlantHealerMagazine.com) and put on the Herbal Resurgence Rendezvous (www.HerbalResurgence.org), in order to share with people the empowering knowledge of plant medicine… while at the same time, we champion the cause of the often endangered plants themselves, and write about the intrinsic value of these wondrous green beings apart from their nutritional, oxygen producing, scenic and even healing benefits. And we teach that it is personal familiarity and deep intimacy with the herbs that can make us more intuitive and effective herbal consumers and practitioners.

2) Speak of the different levels of medicine. How herbs work not just on physical level, but emotional and spiritual as well. (or do they?)

JWH:  At their most evident, plants are organic chemical producers, manufacturing chemicals that serve them in various ways, and coincidentally also prove useful in treating a lot of human conditions and ailments. In addition, it’s now scientifically proven that we are affected energetically by plants, our moods and ways we perceive triggered or influenced by nothing more than the smell of a calming lavender sprig, for example. And plants have been given credit for contributing to a spiritual sense of interconnectedness or “oneness,” the sense of accessing a transglobal body of collected terrestrial wisdom, and a feeling of being a part of something as eternal as it is ever changing. From the psychotropic visions induced by Peyote cactus to the more pedestrian sense of well being that comes from tending the roses in the yard, plants provide a healing experiences far beyond their uses in tinctures and salves.

Herbs are an affordable way to sensibly manage our own health, in the majority of situations, and they can also lead to realizations that are deeply personal, emotional, even spiritual, and inspire us to make lifestyle changes that result in us becoming more self sufficient as well as healthy.

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www.HerbalResurgence.org

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3) Speak about the demographics and kind of people seeking herbal knowledge these days, and who show up at your Herbal Resurgence Rendezvous (TWHC) each year.

JWH:  Herbal medicines, self care and natural healing no longer appeal only to traditional rural folks, homesteaders and New Agers, but to broad spectrum of the mainstream as well. The majority limit their interest to the purchase of herbal supplements, but a growing number are also seeking out herbal books, schools and conferences to further their understanding. Published stories on the dangers of pharmaceuticals, difficult economic times, ecological destruction and increasing government regulation have all resulted in increased interest in herbalism in recent years, after what had been a decade of decline.

Herbal Resurgence attracts a special audience that is anything but typical, with many attendees to our international event avoiding normal conferences. What we host each year is an intense tribe of plant and herb enthusiasts from all over the world, grateful for the opportunity to gather together, strengthen bonds, and plan alliances and projects. They range from esteemed clinical PHDs to excited beginners just learning about herbs, from elders to wild eyed children and teens, and including “kitchen” herbalists, misfit nurses, street medics, free clinic organizers, herbal activists, visionaries and alternative folks, outliers and oddballs, the happy loners and sadly alienated now finding their “people” and “home”.

4) What goes on at an Herbal Resurgence Rendezvous?

JWH:  Resurgence is a combination gathering/celebration and unique educational event, featuring unusual and inspiring classes taught by some of the biggest names in herbalism, like Matthew Wood, Paul Bergner and Rosemary Gladstar, along with the most intriguing and promising of new talents in the herbal field. Classes include both lectures and medicine making and other topics that invite audience hands-on participation in the processes being taught. Participants also join in a number of plant identification walks along the beautiful trails surrounding Mormon Lake, and party hearty during the two nights of live music and entertainment.

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5) Speak about how you and Kiva decided to put on these conferences.

JWH:  The informed practice of herbalism had been in a tailspin since the mid 1990s, with schools losing students, and many conferences closing or contracting even as billions of dollars was starting to be made by the big corporations selling herbal supplements. We’d witnessed political infighting and been saddened by what was often an air of quiet desperation in what should by all rights have been a practice and community that brings great joy. We launched Herbal Resurgence Rendezvous (first called Traditions In Western Herbalism Conference) to assist the reinvigoration of the “people’s medicine,” a resurgence of inquiry, study, history, community, and new ideas. And to instill a sense of personal responsibility and herbal knowledge that’s resistant to what will be increasing regulation and proscription by the corporate funded U.S. government.

We measure the success of this event not just on the quality and originality of the presentations, but on the residual effects it has on all how attend, the new friendships and alliances, new realizations and valuable lessons learned, the joy felt and callings affirmed.

6) Speak about your personal journey as an herbalist, how you came to this path.

JWH:  Kiva is the accomplished herbalist, whose intrinsic affinity for plants combined with efforts to heal her own condition and imbalances, resulting in a lengthy study and then practice. I serve as an herb interlocutor and agent of the plants, helping grow and deepen the herbalist community while promoting herbalism’s values, aims and aesthetics. My work in this field naturally follows my years as a naturalist and ecological activist, in which I used music and story to inspire an inseparable healing of the land, our community, and our emotional and physical bodies.

7) When you encounter an unfamiliar plant, what is your process for gaining knowledge of it and building your relationship with it?

JWH:  We’ve written thousands of words on this topic so far in Plant Healer Magazine! Familiarity and relationship with a plant requires that we first positively identify it (“key it out”) and do all the research and reading we can do on it. But it also requires that we set aside our formed preconceptions and all we think we know about the plant, long enough to perceive it fresh. That we resist humanizing the plant (anthropomorphizing it) and projecting our preferences or imaginings on it. That we take our time, sense it with our physical senses, and get a feel for its energetic actions. That we recognize its needs as well as its gifts, honor its integrity. If and when we harvest it or snip from its limbs, we do not ask permission to cause it pain or take its life, but rather, acknowledge that it feels pain and has a desire like our to live and thrive… and then give thanks. And we need to relax into a wordless communication, that is more about mutual recognition than special instruction. Only then can we expect a clue as to all the ways that ingesting it will effect us and maybe help us, and feel close enough to the plant to be full deserving of its gift of healing and life.

About your new novel, The Medicine Bear (www.TheMedicineBear.com), how did you conceive of the story and the characters? Did it come all at once (as visions so often do!), or was it something that came slowly and was put together piece by piece?

JWH:  The Medicine Bear is the first work of fiction of my several books, envisioned to be an accurate and thought-provoking history of this region in the closing days of the “Old West,” with these mountains and deserts, forests and rivers being not just the settings for the story, but complex and evocative characters in their own right.

Nearly all of the tale came to me at once, the juxtaposition of real historical characters such as Pancho Villa with my fictional protagonists, the writer and adventurer Eland and Omen, the gifted but haunted, mixed-blood, herbalist Medicine Woman. And the flow of events, from Eland’s birth in 1892 to the closing scenes in 1964, spanning Omen’s apprenticeship to the Tucson cuarandera Doña Rosa and the central event of 1916, with Villa’s retaliatory raid on Columbus, New Mexico and the scene of revolutionaries with bows and arrows facing the machine guns that would so loudly announce the modern age.

The Medicine Bear’s inspiration were its themes of undying love, personal and cultural transformation, recognizing and living our dreams, and healing… the healing of emotional wounds caused by alienation or abuse as well as the art of helping to heal the ailments of others with the artful use of medicinal plants.

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9) Your book sounds deeply researched and richly written. Can you speak about the process of writing it and your relationship to the characters?

JWH:  I, like the Medicine Bear, am a product of the fertile milieu of the Southwest’s inspirited places and Indian, Hispanic and Anglo cultures, of un-corruptible elemental values and resilient outlaw attitude, its deep passions and particular aesthetic. As a denizen of this place, the book’s accurate history of this area is my history, and its characters are amalgams of and representatives of my neighbors and loved ones, from native traditionalists and cowboys to those folksy, big-hearted purveyors of herbs… the people’s medicine.

I’ve lived at the Anima Sanctuary (www.AnimaCenter.org) for over 3 decades now, a restored riparian wilderness, a botanical and wildlife sanctuary seven river crossings and several bends of the canyon from the nearest pavement. It was therefore not hard for me to suspend for a year my preoccupation with the modern age that I’m trying to affect with my writing, our magazine and conference, and instead to fully inhabit – moment-to-moment – the world that existed a hundred years ago… one that still exists here in the Southwest’s more remote mountains and canyons. I lived and interacted with the Medicine Bear’s characters for all those months, shared feelings, fears and hopes as I scrambled to keep up, to type as fast as the scenes became clear to me. The Doña gave voice to what I teach regarding place, true magic, glad service and devotion to a calling. Eland embodies the quandary I’ve always faced, the tension and hopeful balance between adventuring and settling, between creating for others and simply deeply experiencing, between the endless train of words and a profoundly experienced, wordless reality. And in Omen, blooms the sweet sadness and resolute will that complicates as well as helps to shape my own winding life trail, portrayed in a woman a heckuva lot like my Kiva Rose.

The process of writing The Medicine Bear was emotionally challenging more than technically difficult, with my investment of time and caring rewarded by every reader who tells me they were touched or opened by its sentiments and passages, stirred to action or deeply inspired.

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10) Anything else you’d like to add?

JWH:  The need and calling for self-care and community care skills like herbalism has never been greater. As the price of pharmaceuticals continually goes up and their dangers become ever more evident, and whenever the general economy is shaky, herbal knowledge is becoming once again as essential and accepted as it was in the days before the advent of “modern” medicine. There is a new and rising wave of herbalists of all ages, insistent on learning the old ways and the new twists, treating their families or serving their communities. It’s that which has us giving nearly all of our time to these projects, the necessity for a “Medicine of The People, By The People, For The People”… and the satisfaction that comes with helping to feed and further this aroused herbal resurgence.

Folk Herbalism is only one piece – although a key piece – in what is a larger interweaving of social action, earth stewardship and crucial cultural change. With increased attention to the self-empowering field of herbal healing, we will again and again be making the connection to the necessary, active healing of our wounded hearts and psyches, healing the schism between us and the rest of nature, healing our communities and the damaged earth.

Nothing is needed more. And nothing could be more exciting or satisfying.

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(please RePost and share)

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Jesse Wolf Hardin is an acclaimed teacher, presenter, artist, activist, and author of 7 books including his new novel The Medicine Bear (www.TheMedicineBear.com). His over 400 published articles have been featured in numerous other books including The Encyclopedia Of Nature & Religion (Continuum, 2005), The Soul Unearthed (Tarcher/Putnam, ‘96), and How Shall I Live My Life? (Derrick Jensen, PM Press 2008). His work has been praised by a wide range of luminaries from the poet Gary Snyder and herbalist Rosemary Gladstar, to the editor of True West Magazine, Bob Boze Bell.  Hardin writes and teaches at his remote botanical sanctuary in a river canyon in SW New Mexico (www.AnimaCenter.org), and is the cofounder of both Plant Healer Magazine (www.PlantHealerMagazine.com) and Herbal Resurgence Rendezvous (the third week of each September – www.HerbalResurgence.org).

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Offensive and Obscene:

A Healthy Investigation

by Jesse Wolf Hardin
www.PlantHealerMagazine.com

“Profanity, like herbs, has its place in healing.” –Charles “Doc” Garcia, Cuarandero

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We recently posted a Medicine Woman Roots blog excerpting from an interview I conducted with the much respected but bawdy curandero and street herbalist, Charles “Doc” Garcia.  We printed his earthy vernacular verbatim so as to capture rather than conceal his characteristically colorful and eloquently irreverent style.  If you ever walk the avenidas of a barrio, administer herbs to the homeless living on the streets of cities like Oakland, put time in the military, or even find yourself for whatever reason occupying a chair in a police department day room – as the Doc has – you will have heard enough cuss words not to take it personally.  The entire, lengthy, uncensored interview will appear in the pages of Plant Healer Magazine in 2013, in what Kiva and I consider to be a good demonstration of both the diversity in herbalism and the power of passion, a balance to the more temperate language and remarks of our other learned interviewees.  It may be, however, that not everyone will be happy about it.

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www.NoCussingHerbalists.org

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One reader wrote that she would no longer recommend the Medicine Roots Blog if Kiva didn’t remove all profanity and negativity.  Another, called Doc’s responses “offensive” and said that he couldn’t be a real curandero if he talked like that.  I cannot suppress the resulting inspiration, as you might guess, to address this issue of acceptable and unacceptable wordage.

When I brought it up with Doc, he explained himself this way:  “I spent ten years as a cop and ten more years as a teacher of the deaf.  Believe me, both groups swear like… well, they cuss alot!  I keep my language clean at dinner, holiday dinners, sometimes funerals, with old people with the exception of ex Marines and sailors, and I keep my mouth shut when I’m in the mountains looking at a stream of water I hope is clean.  Otherwise I call a spade a spade…not a digging tool.  Legally, I can’t say someone is a fraud or an idiot… but I can say ‘Bullshit!’  And ‘fuck’ in all its variations, even in the written form, makes any point crystal clear, as in:  ‘Hey Doc, I heard the Governor wants to make herbal tinctures illegal without a Rx.’   Fuuuuuck!    Everybody would understand such a comment.  Profanity, like herbs, has its place in healing.”

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A once clean shaven Doc first learns to express himself.

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The word “offensive” derives from the Latin “offens”, meaning “struck against.”  To be offensive means to take the initiative to attack, whether verbally or physically, and the word only later came to be used to describe any word or gesture that caused someone to feel angry or hurt.  Just because we are discomforted by a word doesn’t make if offensive, only objectionable.  Someone cussing as they walk by us may be indelicate, insensitive and unpleasant but there is no offense.  Truly offensive language is that which is directed towards someone.  Whereas a racist calling someone a “filthy nigger” is clearly offensive, street kids saying “What’s up, nigger?” to each other is not.
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It would have possibly been more accurate – if indeed more subjective – to have assailed Doc’s use of words for their “indecency”,  which the dictionary defines as “failing to conform with generally accepted standards of behavior, language and propriety.”  Both I, Kiva, and Plant Healer Magazine actually strive to avoid the limiting conformism of today’s contemporary standards, and challenge propriety whenever it takes precedence over authenticity, liberty, purpose, passion or personality.

In Plant Healer Magazine, we don’t want to offend anybody, any group, nor even any opinion or position.  We do not find any joy in upsetting those with a stronger allegiance to propriety than ourselves.  We will never, however, censor ours or an interviewee’s opinions or language out of fear of arousing someone’s moral indignation.

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BP Oil: Green Sponsor of The Olympics

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True obscenity is not the F-Word, but rather, the way that abusive husbands screw over their wives, the way both Democratic and Republican administrations align with corporations and screw us big time, how the handicapped, the poor and colored and hippie and punk and alternative and very old and very young have always been screwed up, screwed over, and screwed to the ground.  Obscene, if I may be allowed to say, is clear-cut forests with logging companies funding the elections of Senators, and oil-spilling BP being chosen as a “Green Sponsor” of the International Olympics.

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Not only obscene but offensive, are children going homeless on the streets of America and beyond, and the child who is starving in Sudan.  Offensive is feeding kids crappy plastic food, dosing them with insecurity, filling them with fear and teaching them to diss’ someone over the way they dress or talk.  “Offensive” is once-open minded, unprejudiced, and probably occasionally cussing kids growing up to judge, stereotype, reject, hate and condemn themselves and others.

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In the interest of reason as well as compassion, we might all do well to focus more on meaning than words, on folks’ good intent more than their unconventional style, on people’s loving hearts more than their sometimes bawdy mouths… on seeing and facing what we don’t like, without flinching, while focusing on what’s needed and what’s meant, what’s good and what’s right.

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(Feel Free To RePost… and to always speak your mind)

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