Animá Lifeways & Herbal School

Of the Earth: Original Speech and the Senses

by Kiva Rose Hardin

http://animacenter.org

“Our senses are meant to perceive the world. They developed with and from the world, not in isolation. Using them is the act that opens the door that is in Nature.”
-Stephen Buhner

“All we have to believe with is our senses, the tools we use to perceive the world: our sight, our touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted. And even if we do not believe, then still we cannot travel in any other way than the road our senses show us; and we must walk that road to the end.”
-Neil Gaiman

Original speech was never words. The language of primal being and the living earth speaks in a soft brush of fur against our bare skin, flows on wild melodies for our ears to hear, blossoms into a rich sweetness on our tongues, fades into a thousand shades of green in the forest canopy, envelopes us in the heady musk of an orchid. Words are shorthand, symbols for the real world. – Don’t mistake me, words have beauty and power, but only so far as they evoke the sensory web in which we live. Abstractions, concepts without root in the flesh and blood of earthly existence are but stillborn shadows of the inspirited organism that is our planet. The healer cannot afford to play pretend with big words and heady ideas, our work is in the achingly physical planes of skin, root, bone, leaf, heart, petiole, uterus, stamen, belly. This is our territory, our haven, our speech and most of all, our home.

As humans, we are intended to reside in our bodies and in our connections to the land, each other, the all. Our senses are not meant to be just half of the equation, with the other half cerebral hyperbole and mental loops. Our senses and our honed awareness of them are the entirety of being. Indeed, if we do not live wholly in our bodies, we do not wholly live. Our minds exist, not outside of the senses, but as a processing center for sensation, so that we might further refine and hone our awareness, our capacity to feel and our ability to respond to those feelings.

Our ancestors, as indigenous peoples of planet earth and full participants in the natural world, knew well how to listen to the land. They heard and understood the language of river, otter, rock, dragonfly and flower. In the age of industrial civilization we speak of these people and those days as if they were long gone. As if, in fact, it all might have been a myth, a fanciful fairy story to begin with. After all, old women do love to embellish stories by the fire, and men are well known for their exaggerated tales, so perhaps life has always been this burdensome and boring and we humans have always been this cut off from the magic and mystery. Perhaps we never did speak to plants, and we really are as crazy as our neighbors (who catch us whispering compliments to Dandelions) suppose we are. This insistent and insidious whisper of doubt stems from our fear and our imagined separation from the natural world, including ourselves. And despite the many stories to the contrary, it is not magic and the realm of Faery that have faded from our world, but we humans who have closed ourselves into the vast corridors of our minds and turned our backs on the innate enchantment to which we are each born.

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3 Steps to ReLearning Original Language

1. Surrender to the Senses
The first step is to forget words, and the best and most natural way to do this is to give ourselves over to our senses. Step away from your computer, wander out of the house into the forest or garden or into your lover’s arms. Immerse yourself in the experience as if it was the first time you’d ever smelled dew-wet grass at dawn, or kissed the inside of your husband’s wrist, where the pulse pounds beneath your lips. Give yourself up to it as if it were the final time. As if this whisper of indian summer wind lilting through the elms that line your road is the last sound you’ll ever hear.

Now, start with five minutes each day, spend that entire time without words in your head. But don’t space out or float away from your body, stay firmly rooted in the here and now, ground yourself in your senses. If you can’t manage it any other way, choose five minutes of eating. Eat very slowly, don’t analyze the food. Notice it, savor it, and if it’s not worth savoring, get something else to eat. Give yourself over to instinctual experience of touch, taste, scent, sound and sight.

Integrate this into your daily life, even when it’s painful or unpleasant. If you burn your finger on the stove or your toes are cramped by your too small shoes, pay attention and respond rather than blocking or numbing it. Feel it, explore it, live inside it until you recognize the feeling’s fingerprint upon your senses.

If this is hard, persist. If it’s easy, delight in it. Don’t trivialize or rush the process. Don’t imagine for a moment you already know how to do this, no matter your age, your experience, your education. This is important, this is the primary way in which the natural world speaks to us, and it is the only way in which to learn the most vital aspects of a healer’s practice.

Don’t worry about translating every sensation into meaning, that comes later, and will only inhibit the process at this point. For now, simply cultivate a mammalian awareness and child-like presence. Notice. Embrace. Savor.

2. Inhabit your body.

One might think that surrendering to sensation would be identical to inhabiting the body, but I have seen and experienced the phenomenon of entering the body or immersing the self in sensation just long enough to experience incredible pleasure or crushing pain, but otherwise habitually abandoning the body to its automatic processes with little notice on our part.

To inhabit the body is to consciously and completely attend to breath, play, pain, dream, bliss. It is to stretch and wriggle into every crevice and corridor, filling our skin with our selves. It is to finally realize that our skin IS our selves. We are not merely souls trapped in flesh, but rather animated, inspirited matter in the form dancing, crying, loving humans.

Many of us may wish our bodies were younger, more toned, smaller, lithe or less scarred – and yet, our bodies are both home and, hopefully, an expression of our own character, a lined map of the lives we have lived. The more fully we inhabit our bodies, the more our bodies will reflect our authentic selves, from the sparkle of the eye to the gesture of eager hands to the balance and confidence with which we move. There is no other body for our beings, just as there is no other planet for our people. We are here and nowhere else. The journey to loving and valuing our body, perceived flaws and all, may be long and arduous indeed, but we begin with accepting that it is who we are and by inhabiting it as completely as is possible.

Consciousness resides in the entirety of the body. Practice centering your awareness somewhere besides you head. Let your index finger or left calf or your belly become the primary conduit for consciousness for a little while. Every day, send you awareness to different parts of your body and allow them to wake up, to feel and sense fully. When you’ve learned to expand yourself into all parts of your body, try holding your consciousness within the whole body at the same time. Understand that the idea that your awareness is only in your head is culturally indoctrinated lie, because in fact, we humans and all animals, lived inside the entirety of our bodies not just one extremity.

3. Engage the Present

Once we’re finally at home in our bodies, we often find ourselves living more intensely from moment to moment, deeply aware of the soft sweep of our clothing against our skin, of the morning light on our faces, of the bitter yet rich bite of the day’s first cup of coffee, of the pulse of breath as it flows from and to us. This brings us into the present, into each second of the day. There’s no more numbed out hours where we forget we’re anything but lumps of tissue in front of the TV or thumbs pounding away at video game controllers or clever brains solving complex networking problems from a cubicle.

In the vital, precious present moment, we immerse ourselves into our original wild nature, and feel the pull of the forest from outside our doors. We remember how to hear the plants speaking to us, the earth calling our names, all through the connecting threads of our senses and the presence that allows us to hear and understand.

Utilizing your heightened sensory awareness, notice whenever you start to pull yourself from the present. Even (or especially) when the stress of marital strife, sick kids or a bad job triggers the desire to escape into fantasy or convenient distraction, bring yourself back. For many, the simplest way to to maintain presence is to engage in a sensorily rich and informative practice, such as gardening, dancing or gathering medicinal plants or cooking. Such activities require the respect of remaining in the moment and noticing each nuance.

Whenever your mind threatens to overflow with an endless train of words or barrage of useless images, bring yourself back to the now. Go outside and below the nearest tree or with whatever bit of wildness you can find. Don’t banish the words, just let them fade away in the face of the immediacy of tactile experience. Press your fingers to rough bark, or lay your face against smooth green leaves, or immerse your body in moving water. Give yourself back to the embrace of the moment, to the original speech that flows between us and the earth.

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To remember, to open the senses fully, to bring ourselves back into fellowship with place  can take time, practice and great intent. For most of us, it means emerging from many years and generations of isolation and sensory deprivation. As difficult and confusing as this process of re-awakening can be, it’s also incredibly rewarding and pleasurable as we re-learn the almost lost language of our ancestors, of our more than human kin and the earth itself. For we who are healers and shamans, as the medicine people of an increasingly industrial age, this is the work of a lifetime. The more we can give ourselves back to sensory immersion in the natural world, the easier it will be to hear the plants and animals, the land itself, speaking to us. Likewise, we will better know what herbs are best in specific situations, what each person most needs to be whole and healed, and where our individual place in the great mystery lies. When we return to our senses, we awaken to the knowledge that the whole world is singing, that there is meaning and magic in every moment and thread of life, and that we are a part of it all. We remember that all of life speaks the same intense, sensory language, and then we too, begin listening and speaking within the wild dialogue of taste and touch, song, scent and sight.

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All Pics (c)2009 Kiva Rose Hardin except Loba by Woodstove (c) 2009 Jesse Wolf Hardin

Talking With Plants
   
by Kiva Rose

Part 2 (of 2): Plant Revelations & Miscommunications

That we take plant words in through our nose or our skin or our eyes or our tongue instead of our ears does not make their language less subtle. or sophisticated, or less filled with meaning.
-Stephen Buhner

The truth is that 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. All of nature communicates on this level, eternally engaged and intensely aware. We humans have pursued the allure of the linear mind and categorizable information and in the process, often abandoned the instinctual (and primary) intelligence of the body. Certainly both forms of learning are useful, but to underestimate the value of physical, tactile understanding is to undermine our relationship to the greater whole. The mind works best when integrated as a co-operative part of the body rather than designated the dictator of an artificial hierarchy of organs. Remembering and awakening the often submerged senses of the body requires patience and dedication for many of us, but the rewards are great. Knowing ourselves as living, vital parts of the natural world provides a visceral, bone-deep sense of self-knowledge and belonging in a larger family.

For those of us whose work is to facilitate healing with the help of the plants, speaking with them takes on a whole new level of significance and challenge. In the wordless language of the plants is also encoded the particular medicine that herb holds for human being. To discover and understand that language in a practical and thorough way is the work of a lifetime. Still, the common sense basics can be learned by any child. Most of know that bitter greens stimulate the release of gastric juices and encourage efficient action by the liver. In the same manner, many people are familiar with the use of common kitchen spices in food to increase circulation and digestion, or that just the scent of a flowering rose is enough to lift the spirits and invoke a sense of sensuality and relaxation. While these are simplistic examples, they are very much in keeping with the basis of how healers from many cultures speak with the plants every day.

The properties and personality of each herb is discernible through its taste, scent, appearance, fragrance, and even its habitat and relationship with surrounding flora and fauna. Dreams and intuition often play an important part the plant-healer relationship, but the foundation is built on a profoundly physical awareness of self and medicine. Learning when to use what herb for what person and when isn’t simply a process of memorizing information or hit and miss experimentation, but rather a complex and lyrical language revealed to those who cultivate a lifelong intimacy with the green world.

Besides what they may seem to impart about us or itself personally, on another level all plants – and indeed all elements of the natural world – are to one degree or another active transmitters of and conduits to the Anima… to the memories and intentions, knowings and implorings of the inspirited living earth.
-Jesse Wolf Hardin

Plants also speak to us through our intuitive and emotional senses. While we may be expecting or waiting for instruction in English, the plants impart to us through impressions and feelings. Depending on the species, its native ecology and our receptivity, the intensity and complexity of the communications may vary a great deal. Most often, they are subtle in nature and require our focus and attentiveness to be discernible. Understanding the real meaning of these impressions requires practice and discernment as well as an understanding of the contextual whole. We may think that we hear that a plant is good to eat and then find out different from a field guide or another person more familiar with the local flora. It’s imperative then, that we use all our senses and understandings to perceive what we’re really being told rather than risking the possibility of misinterpreting through narrow vision. The stronger our affinity and the more intensely we cultivate intimacy with the plant world, the more clearly we will recognize and make use of their gifts.

Plants tend to relate to each other and the world as tribes of species, and through the plant world as a whole rather than on the highly individuated basis humans are more familiar (and comfortable) with. The great benefit of this is that all plants are integrally connected to the ancient wisdom of their type, and of all flora and of the earth as a whole in an immediate and accessible way. When we’re able to reinstate our own natural connection to them, we also have greater access to the collective consciousness, with its vast store of information and ways of knowing.

Cherokee herbalist David Winston aptly illustrates both the dangers and benefits of listening to the plants on this intuitive level through the teaching stories he uses in his Talking Leaves class. In one case, a man who had just attended a workshop on communicating with plants was convinced that the plant he was sitting with was telling him that it was safe to eat as much of it as he wanted, and he was in the process of eating several leaves when David happened by. He recognized the plant as a strong neurotoxin and attempted to warn the enthusiastic forager, but the man insisted the plant had told him to go ahead, and paramedics had to be called later that night to save the man’s life from severe poisoning. In a contrasting case, David was working with a woman suffering from immanent kidney failure, he had tried many remedies with limited success and the woman continued to decline. One day he felt distinctly called to treat her with Stinging Nettle, not the leaves as he had tried before but a tincture made from the seeds. Remarkably, it appeared to have restored full kidney function to the woman as well as many other similar cases that followed. It is now a primary remedy for renal failure by a growing percentage of herbalists and has also been affirmed by certain scientific studies. What made the difference from one instance to the other was the level of discernment, and it can sometimes require years of practice and measuring the results before we trust our intuition as the primary or sole means of evaluation. What I recommend is listening with all of the senses from touch to instinct and intuition while also weighing in research and the advice of those most experienced with a particular plant.

And whether we are confident about this less tangible level of communication or not, it is important to remember that the plants speak to us from every direction, through the air we breathe, in the taste of the food we eat, on the scent of a spring breeze, through the feel of cotton or linen cloth and from all around us. From forest and desert, garden and field, meadow and river, the flowers and trees sing the song they have known since long before the first human stepped upon the earth and will likely continue long after we have been taken back into the dirt we sprang from. In their wild melody is the wisdom and healing of every age and place. In the soft mutter of seeds and the deep hum of trees is the language we were each born to understand. Run your fingers across the furrows of bark and root, and begin to listen.

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This essay by Kiva Rose will be appearing along with an Interview with herbalist Susun Weed, in the upcoming issue of Susan Meeker Lowry’s wonderful home-published magazine Gaian Voices.  As a gift to our blog readers, she has offered to send a free copy to anyone requesting.  Please include $2.00 to cover postage.  If you know of a group or church where they could be distributed or sold, please contact Susan for quantities:
Susan Meeker-Lowry
132 Fish Street
Fryeburg, Maine 04037
or e-mail: info@gaianvoices.com