Listening to Plant Spirits
An Invitation to Somatic Reconnection with the Living World
In my late twenties, I came to the realization that the career path I had chosen when I went to college wasn’t right for me in the long term. I have always felt a pull toward meaningful work, toward giving something back in return for this precious life I have been given. I quit my professional job and got a job in a health food store and began to explore my interest in food and herbal medicine as a foundation for good health.
Life unfolded in the way it does. I got married. I had children. And within the rhythms of raising a young family, I began to follow that thread of curiosity in whatever ways were available to me. I took small courses in herbal medicine and energy healing that I could manage with young children at home.
When my children were around five years old, I enrolled in an 18-month program called “Plant Spirit Medicine.” This work was brought forward by Eliot Cowan, who had studied with the elders of the Huichol people in Mexico and completed their traditional shamanic apprenticeship. Plant Spirit Medicine was a modality that utilized what he called household shamanism, which is the basic understanding that the world around us is sentient and we can consciously be in relationship with the other than human beings. For most of human history, this relationship with the unseen world was simply part of daily life.
Plant Spirit Medicine, as he taught it, wove together simple shamanic journeying with the structure and diagnostics of Chinese Five Element theory. Through journeying, we learned to be in direct relationship with the plant spirits. We learned how to approach with respect, how to listen, and to receive guidance that could then be brought back and offered in service to others. It opened a felt, embodied, somatic experience of connection with the unseen worlds.
This was the beginning of my work as a healer. Before going to acupuncture school, I was working in this hands-on, energetic way, learning how to perceive and respond to subtle energies.
If you have ever seen my garden, it is probably obvious that my relationship with plants continues. It has been there for as long as I can remember. Even as a child, I was drawn to plants. They caught my attention. They felt alive in a way that went beyond their physical form. When I walk into someone else’s space, their plants often call to me. Sometimes there is a sense of what they need. Sometimes there is simply a presence that appreciates being admired.
Over time, I continued to study. I went to acupuncture school and developed a clinical practice that still includes hands-on energy work. Those skills, the listening, the perceiving of subtle energies, continue to inform how I work today. It works alongside the needles quite beautifully.
Last Winter, at the Solstice, I found myself taking a deeper dive. There is a growing awareness in me, and I think in many of us, that we have crossed a threshold. Culturally, spiritually, environmentally, politically, socially, so much has shifted. We are in a very different place than we were a year ago.
I wanted to be very careful to stay out of the way of what was wanting to gestate through the Winter and sprout in Spring. I wanted to be careful to keep my mind from running away with me and let my soul receive guidance from Spirit to guide what was wanting to be brought to life in this next cycle.
Recently, I came across the term “somatic reconnection.” I laughed out loud when I heard it. It succinctly articulated the main theme behind my writing, retreats, and women’s circles. Helping people to awaken an embodied relationship with Life and come to understand themselves as a unique expression of Earth and Spirit.
I have written a lot about the reality that over the last couple thousand years, humanity has become disconnected from the cycles that sustain us. We no longer feel ourselves as part of the living world. And this, to me, is the underlying illness of our time. A spiritual illness leading to the disconnection that has shaped the world we now find ourselves in.
The seasonal thresholds are one of many cycles of nature that offer a way to re-enter the relationship. They are powerful because they have been celebrated as moments of seasonal realignment by our pre-Christian ancestors for millennia. When we are called, a return to this relationship feels like coming home because it is encoded in our bones.
When I say we are Earth in human form, this is what I mean. Not as a concept, but as something we can actually feel. Something we can remember in our bodies, our bones.
As I sat with all of this through the Winter, I resisted the desire to see it in final form. I did not want my mind to get ahead of what was unfolding. I wanted to trust what would emerge on its own, in response to the times we are living in.
What came forward was this series. And the name that arrived with it was “Emergence.”
We are at the very beginning of something. Like the first green shoots of Spring, just breaking through the surface after a long Winter. It will take years before we can fully recognize what is beginning to emerge and how it is shaping the world we live in.
One of the things I am most excited about for this series is that we will be gathering at Avena Botanicals. This is a biodynamic herb farm and pollinator garden where incredibly potent herbal medicine is grown, imbued with plant spirits that are tended with great care. It is a place where the human relationship with and respect for the living world is obvious. The plant and Nature spirits are very present, accessible to those who approach with respect and care.
As we gather there at Beltane, the threshold of the Summer Fire phase, we will have the opportunity to enter into direct relationship with a plant that calls to us. Through a guided meditation journey to the spirit of a plant, we will listen and ask for guidance to support each of us through the months ahead, carrying that connection forward to our next gathering at the threshold of Autumn. Each person will meet a plant spirit, and as we share, a circle of plant spirits will form around us, offering guidance and holding the work through the Summer.
Each person will receive something that is personal and specific to them. And as we share within the circle, a larger field of guidance will begin to take shape. Something that belongs not just to the individual, but to the group as a whole.
This feels like an important piece of the work. Learning again how to listen, remembering how to be in relationship with the living world around us. Allowing that relationship to guide how we move through our daily lives and this pivotal point in human history.
The “Emergence Retreat Series” will follow the arc of the year, gathering at each seasonal threshold: May 2, August 1, November 7, and February 6.
I am calling in a group of people who feel drawn to walk that full cycle together. A small circle feeling called to stay in relationship with the process and eachother as it unfolds across the seasons. Life will do what it does, and sometimes plans change, but the intention is to move through the year together as a shared journey.
If something in you feels called to remember, called to listen with the Heart, and to walk this year with a circle of companions, I invite you to reach out and join us in this time of emergence. Here are the details.
