Community Herbalism

This is a new idea for 2012. It’s just an idea so far, so keep in touch if you are interested….

Community Wildcrafting Days

We will meet at a central location in Portland, probably once a month. Probably a Sunday or a Monday. Everyone who signs up will plan on spending the day out in the field and we will carpool caravan to a site where we can do some wild harvesting together. Sounds nifty, yes?

More will be posted and some flyers made up. The first one will probably be in April, maybe as early as March. Leave your feedback on this site if you have ideas or if you want to suggest days and times.

I know, weird, right. But it’s just a way to know that we’ve posted something new….

I’ve created a set of criteria for the ideal plant medicines that can become incorporated into community healing work.

1) Safe. 
The best herbs for getting everyone to work with together are ones that everyone can take safely. There are so many of these, it  doesn’t bear listing. But it excludes herbs that are only safe in a narrow dosage range or that are only safe for some people. Think of it this way: Can kids consume it? Can a woman who doesn’t’ yet know she’s pregnant take it safely?

2) Easy to Identify
Again, since we want to bring people into the picture of community herbalism who may not have a strong education, or haven’t done a lot of work with plants before, and since we want children to be included as well, it ought to be a plant that can be easily identified 100% of the time by most everybody.

3) Easy to Harvest
Some plants are far away or difficult to find. Some are armed with lots of spines. Some are roots that require massive digging efforts. For community herbalism we are looking for the plants that are easy! Use just a few tools if any and put them in your baskets. Flowers and leaves and twigs… Or small roots like dandelion. Or buds that fall to the ground in windstorms like Cottonwood. Or any number of berries. Easy!

4) Locally abundant
Now, realize that this criteria doesn’t require the plant to be “native.” There are a lot of plants that are abundant, weedy, naturalized or even invasive. Should we ignore them? No. In my part of the Willamette valley, Lemon Balm is a weed in everyone’s garden. So is Common Mallow. Rosemary grows to 5 foot tall shrubs, and Calendula re-sseeds itself easily with no effort. These are all locally abundant. Dandelion doesn’t even need to be mentioned. We cannot harm the stands of these plants. They are with us. They are so abundant that they are free. This is what we are looking for. Something that is immune to commercialization. Herbs that are so prevalent that everyone can have access to them all the time. Douglas Fir is the most common tree in Oregon, and it’s needles make a tasty tea, it’s bark is a fairly strong medicinal, and in the Spring, the young needles have lots of vitamin C. Of course you will never see it on a store shelf… Because you can’t look anywhere in Western Oregon and not see it!

So those are the criteria for selecting herbs to incorporate into community plant medicine work. Leave a comment to mention the herbs in your area you think meet these criteria, and say what part of the world you are in.

Sometimes we wonder how communities can be involved in healing for individuals. In the context of herbal medicine, most of the time we recommend or give herbs to someone and then tell them to go home and take them.

Recently I have been present at events where a person seeking herbs is interviewed by a whole group of people and what emerged was utterly magical. The energy that happens when a person discloses  their health issues to a whole group of people in a safe and supportive space opens up a shared experience that magnifies the sacred heart field of everyone involved. The insights come faster, recognition of shared human experience and respect come faster, possible avenues for healing bounce around the room and remedies are discussed openly. The collective wisdom of the group comes fully to bear on the needs of one person.

We recommended herbs for the individuals who came seeking them. But the step we did not take was to actually take the herbs together. It would have added another aspect to the whole experience if we had said “These are the plant medicines that could help you. Now let’s all take them together once.” Taking the remedies together once allows for the full recognition of the fact that what is medicine for one person might be preventative for another, or a teacher, or a remembrance of a feeling. Then the person can go home with their herbs and with a starting point of feeling part of a collective plant medicine experience.

Just an idea so far….

What are your thoughts on collective healing experiences?

There will be a Community Herbalism workshop at the Portland Plant Medicine Gathering, December 2nd – 4th.

When people experience sadness or sorrow in the times of the year with less sunlight, is that a “disorder”?

In fact, feeling some sadness in the darker months of the year is part of being ordered with the natural world. It is natural to feel the processes of the world around us. And our perception of the world around us is that the bright, exuberant, flowering energy of summer has descended, fallen with the leaves and the fruits, heading back toward the Earth. All of the plants and life around us are dropping their energy downward, into storage roots, into seeds that will lay dormant for winter, or into the decay that is nourishing compost for giving life back to the soil.

With all these signs around us, it is natural to feel dark. To feel introspective, cloudy, and to perceive loss. In Chinese medicine, Fall is associated with the Lungs and with expressing the emotion of grief.

Of course we don’t want to feel miserable. But we also don’t want to try to live every day of the year as if it is the summer solstice. Connecting ourselves to natural rhythms means figuring out how to do loss, grief, fall and decay the way nature does it, and allowing them to be a part of our healthy integration as whole beings connected to the land and Earth around us. What goes up must come down, and energies that are responsible for summer, for brilliance, rampant displays, long hot days and short nights… these energies must be replenished and restored during the Yin times, the dark times of Fall and Winter.

So let’s try out a new way of dealing with seasonal sorrow. Let’s acknowledge that it happens, but not consider it a disorder. Let’s talk about Seasonal Connectivity.

Then, when we try to address it with healing, our approach changes. We focus on allowing a healthy amount of expression of grief, blues, descending energy, while at the same time we want to address it with herbs and practices that balance it. In this time of year, we focus on making sure the Lungs, skin, and spirits are uplifted with hot, bright, spicy flavored herbs. Have you noticed that people naturally don’t make a lot of cinnamon flavored baked goods in the middle of summer? All of a sudden, grandmothers and other bakers start making batches of hot sweet spicy things. Cinnamon is an emblematic herb for this kind of behavior that is ubiquitous in international culture. But what about local herbs that are hot and spicy? In the Pacific Northwest, we have Cottonwood buds, Balsamroot, Devils Club, Wild Ginger, California Bay Laurel and Bayberry to name a few.

What are the plants in your area that have a warm spicy flavor?

The NW Permaculture Convergence is soon (Oct 14 – 16), and it looks to be a wonderful event. There will be workshops on a fantastic array of permaculture topics, and we will be presenting a Community Herbalism workshop within the “Communing With Nature” track.

We will be addressing the ways in which doing herbal medicine work as a community can help enhance the connection between people and land. We will be doing a plant tasting together, allowing our collective senses to open our awareness of plant medicines that are already members of our living community.

Come join the fun!