Are you ready to become a Plant Spirit Medicine Healer?

Might you be ready for a career as a PSM Healer? Do you have a warm connection with plants? Do you know plants that have been "speaking to you" (so to speak) since you were a kid-maybe a special tree you sat in? Or maybe a dandelion puff that you enjoyed blowing into the wind? Do you enjoy the surprise of coming across a plant just emerging in the Spring that you didn't remember was there? Have plants helped you over the years, in any way? 

Plants are all around us and provide us with food, beauty and medicine. But they can also reach us at the level of Spirit. For 20+ years, I've been practicing Plant Spirit Medicine, an elegant, gentle and yet powerful healing tradition based on Chinese 5 Element theory and Shamanic wisdom traditions. 

These traditions teach us that plants hold medicine and that this medicine to/for the Spirit is the strongest medicine. Having started my work with plants as a farmer/grower, and continuing on to medical herbalism, coming to work with the Spirit of plants was a bit 'far out' for me. But when I was offered the help from a friend who had recently become a PSM Healer back in 1999 when I was quite ill, I took her up on it. It was life changing.  Slowly, but surely, I got better. I was so moved by the power of the plants and the treatment that I decided that this work was for me. I already loved plants, and this was yet another 'deepening' of the journey with them. 

What I want to say about my own treatments (I'm still going by the way, at least monthly-these many years) is that they bring me right in myself. They are gentle, yet powerful and they have helped or healed so many of my physical and emotional aches. Admit it, . . .we ALL have aches-of the body/mind or spirit. And wouldn't it be good if there was something to relieve them? 

Let me tell you about a long standing client of mine. She has suffered tremendous loss in her life. And she is strong and capable, and amazingly kind and thoughtful. But being strong and holding herself in difficult circumstances has cost her health some. When she first came to me, she couldn't sleep and she had problems with her legs. She was holding deep grief, her marriage was somewhat in disarray, yet she was doing valuable work in the world and she wanted to move through/work with the grief and enjoy her life. She had lots to look forward to. 

Over time, the hope that was underneath her suffering came shining through. It is her nature. And that's what the plants have to offer-bringing you back to your true nature. Working with Plant Spirit Medicine brought her physical health back to where it could be. The grief she was holding (totally appropriate for her circumstance)-eased, and she created a beautiful ritual around it and moved through it. She became an even stronger presence in her community-she certainly has the skills and heart for that, but was being held back by some of her challenges. 

Here is a statement from her about the medicine: "I feel more resilient than I used to. I was more held hostage to my feelings than I am today. I am more accepting of the feelings and have more desire and skill to move on. . . .I have told others that PSM has a way to bring me back to myself. It happens gently but I have a strong sense of it. I also tell them that I am not sure how that works, and I like that I don’t understand it in my mind, but know it in my body. I tend to intellectualize what I experience so not knowing how it works is actually therapeutic for me! " 

Might you feel a calling to practice Plant Spirit Medicine? Is this your time? 

My colleague Jean Bergstrom and I will be offering a Plant Spirit Medicine Healer Training Course starting in May in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. 

It is a 2-year course. The first year can be a stand-alone year. We believe that learning the theory can be life changing in itself. It can bring you into a deeper understanding of your true nature, so we have designed this course to allow people to take only the first year, or continue on to the second year to become a practitioner.