77. Herbalism is Homecoming & Our Senses Are Portals of Connection - Marysia Miernowska

For most of human history, herbalism hasn’t had a name. It was just a way of life, part of being human upon the earth. The folk traditions of our ancestors have deep nourishment to offer us, and are an antidote to the depleting and disheartening realities of modern life. Let us reclaim an embodied relationship to plants, come into alignment with the regenerative currents of nature and ourselves, and get back to the root of the root of the root.

TOPICS:

• Remembering parts of ourselves through plants and storytelling
• Learning simple herbalism at her great-grandmother’s feet in Poland
• The many uses for nettle, including urtification or the application of the sting on the body
• Herbalism as homecoming
• Cultivating embodied presence in relationship with the plant realm
• Earth’s electromagnetic frequency brings us into the brainwave states where healing can happen
• Body portals (chakras) in relationship to plant healing
• Noticing where in your body a plant lands 
• Flooding the body with nourishment: drinking herbal teas & infusions every day (sometimes)
• Blending fresh spring greens to create herbal “juices”
• The most ancient herbal healing tradition on earth (v the way herbalism is often practiced today)
• Seasons and cycles: harmonizing ourselves to the regenerative currents of nature
• Midwifing death & dismantling structures in our own lives and society at large
• The dark womb of the universal mother: a personal, powerful medicine story in which names, archetypes, ancestral threads, and healing are interwoven
• The plants and the magic of Beltane

LINKS:

• School of the Sacred Wild website
• The Witch’s Herbal Apothecary book
• Marysia on Instagram
• The book’s illustrator Maggie Eileen Lochtenberg
• Sharon Blackie’s book If Women Rose Rooted
• My interview with Sharon on Episode 54: Lineage, Calling, and the Mythic Imagination
• Judith Berger’s book Herbal Rituals 
• My interview with Judith on Episode 59: Herbal Rituals, Rhythms, and Remembrance
• Article: Urtification or Stinging Nettles on the Skin
• Marysia’s article on The Pagan Roots of Easter
• Sage Mauer and The Gaia School of Healing and Earth Education
• Medicine Stories Patreon (podcast bonuses!)
• My website MythicMedicine.love 
• Take our fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? Quiz
• Medicine Stories Facebook group
• Mythic Medicine on Instagra
• Music by Mariee Sioux (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)