Herbal Medicine Road and meditatating on the Hippocratic Oath

Further meditations on the talking point, Hippocratic oath and the plant medicine road:

An oath is a promise that we make privately & publicly and in this case with the plant medicines on the plant medicine Road. Hippocrates is the talking point because his concept of ethics has been part of a 2500 year old talk. It is worth revisiting this conversation. Hippocrates speaking to the people of his time 400 BC Greek, related there must be an openness to sharing the teachings, an openness to follow through with that openness. Hippocrates  was himself bound by his cultural envelope and in his Oath spoke of passing on the teaching to males and male heirs, this i do not condone or in anyway seek to emulate. The plant medicine Road is not a female only clique. It is not a Male only club. It relates to our greater participation in the environment beyond our own personal birth and death. The plant medicine Road is a trans personal endeavor. It crosses culture, political boundaries, and social stigma. For in what we have gathered, within that is a commitment to share. It is also within the realm of that sharing, that there is a quality of danger. What we share can be misused, misinterpreted, and in addition to a perfect transmission laden with danger, there is also the imperfect transmission, whether originating in the student or the teacher. There is danger of a person approaching the plants directly. Plants are powerful living creatures. They are often tricksters and they exist in a world outside of our own making. Plants themselves have a myriad manifestation within their ecological niche. One plant that comes to mind is Estafiate, Artemesia ludoviciana. Although in no way a dangerous plant, it is a plant that morphs with regards to it's environment. Estafiate can grow along a water course, it can grow in a Alpine mountainous environment, the low desert, in a multitude of environments. Within each of those environments Estafiate is somewhat of a different plant. Presenting  itself in different ways. It presents itself differently both physically in its appearance and also medicinally in regard to its constituents. Plants present themselves in the pollen highway and there is often hybridization of the plant, plants combine with other plants of the same species often times revealing different ways of expressing themselves. In addition to this hybridization which occurs within nature as part of the multifactorial interchange of genetic information on the pollen highway there is also plants that are look-alike plants. Some of these look-alike plants although in the same genera may possess completely different characteristics, poisonous qualities. It is much different when buying a plant from a reputed source compared to going out into the plant gardens and interfacing yourself with them. The Safetynet of trust on the plant medicine road is contained in your own willingness to go deeper, to dive deep into the plant medicine garden visiting it time and time again throughout the seasons, throughout conditions and knowing who is who, what is what, and where is where. The danger factor can only be mitigated by a careful study throughout time, a discipline to commit to the plant Medicine Road. Luckily for us on the plant medicine road the power of the plant is contained in The stored vitality, stored in root. The leaves are very much part of an exoteric, open tradition where as the roots are part of a more esoteric tradition, and inner tradition passed on face to face directly from person to person. The plants themselves have been identified and re-identified by noted plant persons in different ways at different times. One such plant is Baneberry, red cohosh, Actea rubra.

The noted herbalist Michael Moore, if you follow the pathway of his books, in one of his initial books he identified Actaea rubra as a poison through and through from top to bottom, with no appropriate medical use. Even a warning not to use or engage with this plant. In his later books he took back this warning and re-described Actea rubra as a legitimate medical plant which could be used, gathered, and harvested safely. With Actea rubra it is a legitimate question to ask, did the plant itself change? It takes great courage to revise an understanding and to say, I was wrong about this plant, I didn't understand it fully, and my understanding now has changed. It is important that we continually engage with the plants and revise our understanding according to what the plants have given us. This can be what part of the plant is used, there is a growing movement in the body of herbal knowledge to go away from the distilled powerful root of the plant and go more towards the aerial above ground portions of the plant for medicinal use. This can also be how the plant is used, methods of preparation and what the plant is used for as a remedy. Disease states and disease processes change and morph within our human community and whether the plants themselves have changed in their medicinal quality or not is a legitimate question, yet it is obvious that the way that we use plants will change. While it is clear that books, online courses, and new methods of communication will arise, there is no substitute for the actual face-to-face transmission along the face of the plant medicine Road. Both the sharing of information and the growth that occurs within community, and direct relationship with others along the plant medicine Road cannot be underestimated.

     It's within the nature of the face-to-face transmission between plant, place and person that we need to continue that face-to-face transmission outside of ourselves, outside of our personal comfortable container. Part of the oath of the plant medicine road is to engage with others in the community with the sharing of information regarding plant person and place. In the nature of plant person and place there is a human dimension. When ever we step out of our personal container and engage in community we meet with the other. The other is by its nature different from ourselves. On this level we relate to other people with different values, different backgrounds, different political and social perspectives. There is a tendency with human beings to create a litmus test of, are you with us? How do you stand on this issue? For this we must maintain a neutrality with regard to who is with us, and look at the existential value of a persons intention to engage on the medicine road as the sole litmus test of sharing. Hippocrates spoke of the need for a sexual morality in relationship to the transmission of knowledge. The sharing of knowledge from expert to novice implies vulnerability and often youth. Vulnerability, youth, and innocence, have their own benefits and power. It is the responsibility of the teacher on the plant medicine road to be aware of youth, vulnerability, and innocence, and not use these for personal gain. It is important that within the transmission of this direct face-to-face knowledge that there is a respect for the vulnerability of the novice on the part of the teacher. It is perfectly reasonable to expect that people will gather together based on their common interests sharing the gifts that they bring from their unique place. That relationships will form along the plant medicine Road is an obvious fact of our human existence. What is required is that both the novice and the more experienced on the plant medicine Road acknowledge the sacredness of the journey and do not take advantage of that vulnerability and innocence for personal gain. 

    From what I have understood of the plant medicine Road there is no place for race, ethnicity, color, or tribe. While some have tried to encapsulate plant knowledge with regard to race, to place plant knowledge within the boundaries of a safe container as a ethnic group,  or inner circle, i think there is a strong judgment upon this. It's not a judgment within the human realm of judging it has to do with the exchange loop. The exchange has to do with an open movement, within the promise and oath that we make is a promise to be involved with the openness of this exchange. Within our promise is a commitment to the dynamic quality of this exchange outside of our own specific birth and death. We are making a promise to participate within this exchange that is an ongoing process with the plant place and persons. The exchange process that we are committing to is no other than the process of life and death. Both our own life and death and the knowledge body of plant materia medica that is passed on along the plant medicine road. Time is shown to be harsh with those who try to bind herbal knowledge within the confines of ethnicity, of a certain racial group and present a barrier to this knowledge in the sense of not sharing freely openly in the sense of an open container, it seems that  people who trapped by this belief system or exclusivity, will with time gradually lose, and diminish the herbal knowledge they seek to protect. They have chosen to withdraw themselves from the exchange process, the continuum of exchange between plants, person and place which is the basis of our medicine road. This is not to say that there is not an aspect of protection in the sense of ethics with regard to the plant's themselves medicine road. There must be a careful stewardship of those medicine gardens that exist especially in the open West and what remains of the great American wilderness. The fundamental quality to this protection has to do with love, love of the plant medicines, love of the place, and love of the people who will benefit from this plant medicine Road. The fundamental quality of this protection has to do with the oath to the plant medicine road, the promise that is made, to share freely without regard to sex, age, without regard to particular creed or political affiliation, and without regard to ethnic background. The fundamental quality of the plant medicine road has to do with dynamism with the extreme life force that is present in the plants that demands an equally dynamic approach to sharing. The plants themselves are seeking to relate within the realm of plant person and place. There cannot be a native American herbalism. There cannot be a Latino herbalism. There cannot be a White Caucasian herbalism. There cannot be a feminist or gay, queer or transgendered herbalism. There cannot be a male or a female herbalism.  There can only be the herbalism of herbalism.  It is a fundamental quality of openness. With regard to the plants themselves there is an obviousness of the willingness to share their medicinal songs without regard to tradition, person or background. The plants themselves have a rather harsh judgment on those who over harvest or share information in such a way as to be grandiose and point to the person sharing the information rather than the plants themselves in their environment. To those who are seeking there must be a corresponding movement towards sharing. Sharing outside of personal gain and sharing based on the promise and oath of resiliency within the plant medicine Road. 

      Sharing medicine and sharing knowledge can relate to selling only if the primary basis of that selling is based on sharing with out regard to the ability to pay in terms of finance. Finance and money have a symbolic aspect within our human interaction yet finance is limited to our human interaction, when we relate directly to the plants we must move outside of the realm of money and finance into the heart. There is payment to be made. There is payment to be done. That payment is rooted within the plant person and place and relates to the quality of commitment and intention on the part of the student. The teacher is a conduit, a voice for the plants and is a spokesperson and translator of the subtle nuanced message of the plants on the plant medicine road. The plants themselves are the teacher and it is a mistake to idolize or in someway focus on the particular conduit for that knowledge on the plant medicine Road. It goes without saying that the person who is seeking medicine or teaching within the medicine road has a whole hearted desire, and centered purpose. It is only within the fullness of time that this tenacity to learning can be judged or evaluated. The exchange is based upon the purity of intention, not upon the ability to pay or repay, The exchange is based upon a greater whole within the plant person and place. For this reason Hippocrates made it clear within the oath that payment for teaching was not to be the basis upon which teaching is done. It is not that the student does not pay, or the teacher does not accept payment, but that the primary fundamental objective is the loyalty within the medicine road and the transmission of this knowledge from generation to generation. We are here for a short time, the plants in the plant medicine road will be here after we are gone, along with the needs of people to make use of this medicine way. The oral tradition and the direct transmission of the plant medicine road with the presence of the plant person and place in a face-to-face encounter is the best method of relating to teaching in the transmission for future generations of the plant medicine Road. There is no substitute for the subtle nuances of learning other than the face to face direct transmission within  plant person and place. That this face-to-face transmission is problematic, has no doubts. Yet the face to face transmission is the journey we must make and prepare. 

Bear House, Rio del Oso, the Bear river

     Today I spent the day along bear river, Rio del Oso, Bear House. At the Bear House we have different medicines than say at the Deer House, or the Elk house. Each of the different houses will offer different medicines. I'd like to share with you some of my insights from this house. This little known river begins and ends in the same place which is very unusual with rivers. Because it begins and ends in the same place, it isn't well know. Yet it is famous, the plants like Aralia racemosa sing loudly here. In the spring Lycopus americanus makes it clear this is Bear House. Of course the plants along the Rio del Oso are tended and planted by the Bears. I've noticed there can be big differences with medicine plants planted by the bear versus those plant by the Deer at Deer House. The Poleo here is more sweet because the bears enjoy it this way. The deer, their poleo is more like a Salvia, slightly bitter, resembling acorns from Gambel oaks.

     Most rivers begin in the mountains and then go into the valley. Often times rivers begin as small streams in the high high country, meet other streams in a downward flow. This is called a downward moving river.  This river is different because it remains in the mountains and really doesn't go anywhere. In fact if you try to follow this river you'll find yourself going in circles because this river begins and ends at the same place. The reason this river remains in the mountains is to preserve the essential teaching of Bear House. 

      Rio del Oso, unlike many rivers that referred to something that is no longer there, this river actually has bears and today I could see, they're wandering along the river. The bear was walking through the poleo, the Mentha arvensis, our beloved native mint,

     The bear was close enough that I could smell his footsteps sweet, musky, tangy fragrance and warmth. The smell was slightly sour like an apple after you've eaten it, and several hours later  you press your lips on another's and you can still taste the Apple faintly as your tongue touches hers. I could see the bear was walking deliberately with somewhere to go slowly but each step was measured and was carefully placed through the poleo, unlike the river which goes in circles and begins and ends in the same place and really goes nowhere. It would be wrong to say the river goes nowhere, the river is moving in it's own way and seems satisfied to to be a meandering river. 

     Also along the Rio del Oso is oregano del campo, monarda. When the bears establish medicine gardens along this river they often place monarda as an indicator species. The bears prefer to work with monarda to balance their tendency towards stagnation. Monarda is a mover, it moves and uplifts and energizes, especially the lungs. Moisture is always an issue in wet moist damp places and monarda mobilizes and fortifies the lungs. Bears have a tendency to sleep a lot so you'll often find these warm, quickening herbs along the Rio del Oso.

and oregano de la sierra, another monarda. You'll find the bears work with these two types of monarda all along the Rio del Oso. The bears do their teachings with plants they grow along the river. It's best to spend time with this plant and look at differences between these two monardas. 

    It would be right to say that both of these are mints. They are said to be in the Mint family,  Lamiaceae or Labiate, in general warming, aromatic plants. It would also be right to say that they are not mints. These plants are like trees and if you look at them closely you can see them waving in the wind just as you would see a white fir waving in the wind, it matters little to the wind whether the oregano de la Sierra 

or oregano de campo move, or don't move in the wind.  Wind is a bit much like the Rio del Oso,  neither moving or coming or going, like the river the wind begins and ends in the same place. The only way to know if the wind is blowing is to look at oregano del campo and oregano de la sierra and see if it is moving. There is a difference between something moving and something going some where. Oregano del campo and oregano de la sierra are rooted in the ground, they move though they arrive and depart from the same place. Even so they create movement in the body, in the digestive system and in the lungs, they produce warmth and perspiration on the skin.

They are moving yet they rarely travel. The Rio del oso likewise moves yet the river remains within it's banks. 

   

     Poleo and monads of all kinds, appear along the river. You may wonder who it is that plants these wonderful flowers and medicines that grow on the river, that grow along the river that begins and ends in the same place? Well it's clear that these flowers don't grow on their own and I can tell you because I've watched the Bears planting these flowers along the river as they walk through the Poleo, oregano del campo, and oregano de la sierra, ox-eye daisy, yerbal del lobo.

The Bears carry bags of seeds in a little pouch around their neck. You can see the Bears gently tapping the seeds with their back paws and putting a little bit of dirt on top of them so that they can grow.
    I noticed the same thing with small medicine deer at Deer House. There the deer are in charge. There the deer plant the seeds and order the seasons. At the Deer House the deer are the keepers. Here at Rio del Oso, the bear do the planting. This is a bear's garden, the other a deer garden. It's important to know whether you are in Deer House or Rio del Oso.

      It is extremely common during the summer rainy season, when the bears are walking through their patches of polio, to meet plant teachers who inhabit these places. Some of the plant teachers are plants, others are places, still others are persons. These are the plant teachers that hold the world together with the depth of their understanding. Sometimes the plant teachers are rocky black lava rock cliffs, in those places you approach those teachers. You study and listen to rocky skree slopes. You may stay there learning from the rocks. This is called studying rocks. At other times and other places you may meet teachers that are trees. So in that situation you would greet the tree. You study and listen to tree lectures, songs and do tree learning. This is called studying trees.
    All the plant teachers  come to this Bear river precisely to gather insight into the nature of poleo. Poleo and the oreganos, campo and sierra, are known as Harmony inducing plants. These plants when they are seen almost immediately produce a sense of harmony. These then are balancing plants and they balance the lives of the world around them whether those lives are rocks, trees, birds, the elk, the bear, the deer, or the plant medicine teachers who gather together on the banks of this and other rivers.
      Gathering together is the real work of making medicine. Gathering with rocks is rock gathering. Gathering with trees is tree gathering. We are always gathering together and finding ways to do this medicine work. 

     Often when you find a plant teacher walking along the bear River you also will find an apprentice. Sometimes a rock teacher may have a plant apprentice. Often lava rocks are teaching Aralia, they seek each other out for learning, sometimes just companionship. Sometimes a tree, an aspen for instance may have a plant apprentice. The Aspen may be teaching Alta misa or giving insight to bane berry, Actea rubra. Sometimes a bear may be instructing a turkey. A stellar jay may be working with a Ponderosa pine. These different relationships of student and apprentice are important on the plant medicine road.

     These apprentice students are often teachers in their own right and sometimes it's not clear who is the teacher and who is the student. These days the herbal apprentices are mainly making flower essences. In the past they primarily made teas with water. Regardless of who is the teacher and who is the apprentice there's no question that deep study and learning is going on along this bear River.

     As we walk along the Rio del Oso, the Bear River within the Bear house, the medicine gathered there is distinctly bear medicine. The relationships between the plants there are organized by the bear gardeners, who also send out their animal friends. This experimental, experiential relationship of student and apprentice at the Bear House quickens herbal learning. Often times questions arise on how to enter into a deeper understanding of herbalism. The plant schools set up along the Rio del Oso are recommended for this study. Multiple schools of long standing are available for students wishing to deepen their understanding of herbal medicine.

     

     

Herb for Depression: Faith, Hope and Charity

Herbs for Depression 

Recently I had a chance to hang out with a very sweet informed and high being his name is Thomas Easley and he's noted herbalist and he was at the Western Traditions In Herbalism Conference in Cloudcroft, New Mexico, put on by Kiva Rose and Jesse 'Wolf' Hardin. This is a great gathering of herbal teachers held annually. Next years conference will be in June 2017 in southern Colorado.
     Thomas was a well received and respected presenter there. I on the other hands was on the periphery at this conference, I was more or less a peddler with a table hawking, selling some of the herbs and plants and tinctures that I had gathered from around my home, my place, my bioregion of The Southwest desert mountains and sky islands of the Arizona New Mexico border.

      There was a break one morning and while most of the attendees of the conference were busy learning attending classes from some of the top amazing plant teachers at the conference, the rest of us were down there in the basement talking plant story.

     Thomas Easley in his very easy-going relaxed way of being sat down directly on the floor and we proceeded to talk about things like liver stress, acetaminophen, birth control pills, pain relief, sleep, stress and addressing those topics within the framework of our understanding of herbal medicine. I had some plants there that I had wild harvested things like silktassel, oshá, Aralia , monarda and also things and bottles. The topic shifted to good herbs for sleep for producing restful sleep and hops came up, Humulus lupulus. We all came to a loose agreement, a gathering of the minds, sort of consensus that, "yes, some of these herbs would be helpful for a person with insomnia." Then Thomas dropped a bombshell as he does with his matter-of-fact, slight drawl, Alabama born and raised,  sweet soft barely detectable southern accent and said, "Hops can help promote sleep, yet in my clinical practice I've never met a person with a hops deficiency." 

      And it's of course, no one has a hops deficiency. In the sense of someone may have a B12, reduced hemoglobin or protein deficiency, there's no such thing as a hops deficiency. Hops can help a person get to sleep yet there is no such thing as a hops deficiency. So in a sense the purpose of an herbalist is to get some one to a point where they no longer need The herbs that the herbalist provides.

      I started out wanting to talk about depression  specifically what herbs or herbal treatments may be helpful for a person with depression. A legitimate question would be, "what do you know about depression?", "about treating depression?", "what do you know about herbs?", "what do you know about herbs for depression?"

"Paul, what do you know about anything really?"

   For 12 years, 5 days a week 8-16 hours a day, I had an opportunity to meet and greet people in crisis, working in an acute psych facility in America's fifth biggest city. They had decided to jump off a bridge.


They had decided to swallow bottles of pills.They had decided to fire a loaded handgun into parts of their body. They had decided they were going to stop eating, and now were experiencing kidney failure due to their inability to supply their body with the nutrients necessary to support the vital organs. They had decided to lay down on the railroad tracks and sever the limbs of the body, and in a sense they were successful in that now they had one arm rather than two. Most were at the end of their rope both literally and figuratively in that they were helpless hopeless and not wanting to live anymore. The basics like eating drinking water, bathing your body, talking to other people, working, engaging in any type of activity that might produce joy happiness peace, they were no longer interested. All sorts of stories presented themselves to me during these encounters.

   

And if depression,  self harm, lack of interest, lack of feeling, lack of action are the north side, shady, yin side of this dilemma, I was also presented with the Yang. The people who slept 18 hours a day and the people who didn't sleep at all. The people who wanted to kill themselves and the people who wanted to kill other people. The people who would say nothing for weeks on end and the people who wouldn't stop talking. Who would eat standing up, constantly pacing. The person who wouldn't get out of bed in the morning and the person who might walk up to you and sucker punch you in the jaw and then walk away laughing. The constant stories of speculation and conspiracy, the government out to get you, implanted devices in our bodies controlling us, incredible fear of the world. Fear of microwaves and computers, fear of water, fear of listening, fear of trust, waves of fear, anger, hate, self loathing. 

     Besides the various issues that people presented in this environment there was also the drama of the caregivers. Their own wounded egos presenting themselves. In short it was a powerful place for learning growth, Learning how to grow. And it led me myself to seek out ways of healing myself in a sense of maintaining a neutrality where I could respond to the needs of others yet not be overwhelmed in the process. I had in front of me in the DSM5, a way to see into the minds of people in the sense of an allopathic medicine construct. Yet I also had the learning model and system of the plant person and place- herbs and herbal medicine. 

     My introduction to herbal medicine occurred in my late teenage years when while still in high school I decided to walk across the state, a northeast deciduous mountain rolling hill state. This backpacking trip was crucial to my development now and then. One of the most important parts of this trip in terms of learning, as a young teenager was that the world that I lived in, the world of schools and friends and family was very much an urban experience. Yet the world just outside my door was in a sense wild and untamed and I made a vow then and there on Sugarloaf Mountain, during a lightning storm that no matter how long it took, no matter what it took,  I would learn about the place. I would learn about the plants. And I would learn how to use them. 

     

    Economic circumstances of the times let me away from that deciduous mountain cherry maple forest kingdom to come to the western United States, where I have lived since the 1980s continuing my study on the plants. I was able to work on a mobile drilling rig up and down the continental divide from Libby, Montana down to Silver city, New Mexico. I worked as a sheepherder in the middle of Wyoming. I worked for the park service,and forest service and state parks, often in very pristine beautiful places and during this time I always had my plant books always learning about new plants. I also lived for 14 years on the edge of a wilderness, 30 miles from the nearest gas station, or city of any size, this area which later became a national park on the Arizona Utah border. Again during this 14 years I always had my plant books my wife and family would be wandering around always with the plants. Michael's Moore's books always accompanied me on my journeys and eventually I came to the point where I needed to study and meet with others.
     That led me to John Slattery and Michael Cottingham both advanced in herbal ways and willing to take students. I continue on that path even in the present moment informed by their gracious teaching.

Five days wandering, the medicine road
he was traveling further

each day new morning, along blue rivers and walking mountains
beaver damn broken

with last monarda flowers singing in a meadow, taste of spring in October

you were there now you remember

stellar jays to their death on a crown of yucca thorns

offering feathers for songs

Merciful Jesus and Mary dance

this the reason to birth
aspen to yellow,
to see the leaves move,
know the wind blows.
apart from this all windows open

the deer were eating buck brush,

 ceanothus berries and hedioma

clouds were only there to remind

the blue sky always open

each day a story looking for a song,

Ceanothus fendleri

wind blowing dreams of clouds

i had to tell you something

30 years listening for a song

you too foolish to remember

now is the time you were waiting for