Understanding Plant Energetics
You can access an audio recording of the post here
While many herbs are considered safe for common use, there are ways that we can fine tune our understanding of them, in order to better know their application and best use. Once we start to understand the subtle nuance of a plant’s energetics, we can then better choose the plants indicated for specific situations.
From a Western medical perspective, we tend to think of plants in a this-for-that kind of application. For example, Echinacea for immunity, St. John’s wort for depression, Gingko for memory. And we might believe that the effect of the plant is due to a single isolated substance within it. And while these uses of plants and their isolated components can be helpful to know, the true gift of the plants actually comes to us through their energetics.
I like to think of the energetics as a sort of “blueprint” of the plant. The way the plant affects the entire system, the affinities it has for certain organs and the emotion or spiritual gift carried within it. It is through their energetics that we can understand the true essence of a plant. When we understand the true essence of a plant, we can use them in ways that can help transform long held, stuck patterns in the body and help affect deep healing and lasting change.
Historically, plants throughout cultures have been understood in this manner. This includes the origins of our own Western medical system which was founded largely on the work of Galen, a historic Greek Physician considered the father of our Western medical perspective more than two thousand years ago. To learn more see this post An Introduction to Energetics.
We can understand more about the healing gifts of a plant by spending time with it. Observing it, watching it carefully, listening to it and experiencing it fully. Where does it grow, how does it change through the seasons? How does it taste? How do I feel when I take it? Much of our understanding of plant energetics comes from the flavour or taste of the plant. These flavours and tastes in turn, affect our tissue states.
Sour cools excess heat and excitation
Pungent, spicy and aromatic flavours warm cold and depressed tissue states
Bitter flavours clear stagnant tissue states
Astringent tastes tonify overly relaxed or prolapsed tissues
Acrid flavours relax tension and contraction
Throughout time we have been connected to the plants and the natural world. We have had deep relationship with these plants and have understood the gifts that they bear. Over the last number of centuries, we have for the most part lost touch with this understanding. The mainstream medical perspective, being fueled largely by a reductionist, “scientific” model sees things mechanistically and in an isolated manner. When we fail to see the big picture, or the gestalt - not only of the body, but also of plants and of the natural world, we fall out of touch with our origins and the Source of life itself. When we are out of touch with our origins, our paradigm limits us from understanding where true healing lies.
True healing will not come to us from an extracted or isolated chemical substance - whether that be from a plant or human-made. True healing comes to us from aligning our bodies and our lives within the framework of Natural Law and the Source of Life itself. It is from this place that we can access the Healing Power of Nature that is inherent in our bodies to bring deep healing and lasting change.
How can we align our bodies and our mind, our lives and our actions with Source in order to create not only health and wellbeing for ourselves, but also for our families, communities and the living world of which we are a part.