Are You Called to Heal with Plant Medicine?
The Spirits of Plant Medicine are here for your learning, healing, and to liberate the destruction of a world on fire
Ernesto is a world-renowned Peruvian Mestizo Tobaquero from a long lineage of Curanderos along the Tigre River in Peru. Ernesto's dedication to healing by facilitating connection to the spirit of Mother Earth and plants through plant dietas with tobacco as the foundation for learning has deeply informed and inspired my own. Ernesto has officially sanctified me with the honor to join his lineage as ‘Curandera.’ Over years of preparation, he has given me the protection necessary to bring plant medicine to others. It sent chills down my spine when he said, “Many people will come to you. You are very ready.”
I hold this blessing with earnest responsibility and reciprocity. I will write about ‘plant dietas’ specifically the truth about how Tobacco used properly heals, unlike commercial tobacco that has been harmfully appropriated by Western culture.
We as Peruvians ancestrally and traditionally have many natural medicines. They have been used only by people who know the plants as well as their preparation and dosages. These are our roots. As curanderos, my students carry this medicine as an energetic healing force for many people and the earth.
The call to a plant medicine practice is a call only you can respond to. First, do your research: learn about the benefits and precautions. Next, find a bonified medicine man or woman who can responsibility guide your training and healing practice. Feel free to send me a private message or comment on this post.
What is your experience or knowledge of indigenous plant medicine?
What I Have Learned to Support Your Journey
Practice is a process of learning what feels good and nourishing to you as an individual with a soul calling—an impulse to find meaning in the messy corners of life and emerge with enlivened purpose. Practice is not static, it changes over time depending on your unique experiences, prior wounds, resources for healing, capacity to trust your inner knowing, and how eager you are to learn and heal — to know and be yourself.
Practice is not a linear process with a timeline or a final destination. Every step along the way deepens how we own and belong to ourselves without apology or self-abandonment. To be radically open to the unknown darkness that beckons us to be in relationship with our bodies, our feelings, and all of Earth.
Growth is cyclical, messy, and always involves the function of safety and feeling. The structure of practice includes conscious healthy masculinity. The feeling function of practice is the development of conscious femininity. They go hand in hand, informing and weaving a way of being that supports us to embody balance and wholeness.
Your practice will shift and change as you welcome feelings that were suppressed. You are in for a wild ride but full permission to feel all of it will allow you to inhabit more of who you are. Your body carries a lifetime of experiences, some conscious, others unconscious, waiting to be digested. As you assimilate more of your life experiences, you will outgrow old patterns of relating and enjoy renewed sources of enrichment.
Your source connection to Mother Nature complements plant medicine practice.
Activities like hiking in the forest, visiting the jungle, listening to birds, cultivating a garden of herbs, planting trees, resting among flowers, meeting with like-minded friends, and inspiring mentors, paying attention to your nervous system as you unfold into a deeper relationship with nature.
Dreamwork complements Plant Medicine Practice
Dreams awaken self-discovery when we work with plants. Our third eye opens to develop skills to bring what is unconsciousness to consciousness, and to understand the language of plants for your soul — the mysterious spiritual world not shown to us by ordinary objective awareness. When the rational objective biological mind joins with the symbolic mythical mind — we discover the inherent wisdom of the collective unconscious in our bodies.
Dreams form a bridge from unconscious material that may hold us in captivity to an earlier developmental phase. Dreamwork supports you to live a deep soulful conscious life without bypassing or abandoning any part of who you are.
The Only Approval You Need is Your Own — There is No Failing
A transformational practice invites us to be without measurements, without a timeline, and with full permission to experience our messy darkest moments.
1. Give yourself full permission to feel what you are feeling.
What is the feeling/sensation in your body? Name it, claim it, celebrate it, and take responsibility for what is yours. Allow sensations from skin to the bone: cold, hot, tight, achy, heavy, sweaty, light, tired, dizzy, sad, angry, overwhelmed…
This way we do not project onto others. A path of perfection is utterly exhausting. Set it down.
2. Feel without an opinion, narration, or explanation of why or what you may have been conditioned to believe as right or wrong.
Kindness and Honesty are medicine, gifts that develop inner trust.
Your soul is aching to get through — to be heard by you — to show you your unique way.
3. When you feel pushed by ‘mine-to-do-ness:’
Invite yourself to slow down, put your feet up, take a warm bath, play your favorite music, cook a delicious dish, gaze into the night sky, call a friend, or write in your journal. Simplify your ambitions professionally, personally, and spiritually. Slowing down is essential.
Ask yourself: Is anything missing now?
Give your nervous system space to receive new information, regulate, digest, and integrate the many steps already taken — to savor the mixed cocktail of life.
4. Attune to the depth of your calling — contraction and expansion that fortifies life with meaning.
Listen inside before outer appearances and beneath your physical ears. Rest opens our inner life — we enter REM.
Our soul speaks through our dreams.
5. Plant medicine practice requires stillness, rest, and dreaming.
As we listen and receive — we never go it alone.
Plants empower us to ask questions and receive the help that keeps us on track — with boots on the ground, rested and ready — to be the best version of ourselves — whole and holy fulfilled.
The language of the plants like the language of the soul is difficult to articulate with words. I am convinced that the healing properties of plant medicine far exceed traditional Western healthcare systems. I will share healing stories in upcoming posts.
You can read more about my work with plant medicine on my website and consider engaging in a retreat. Read the reports from participants.
Have you worked with plant medicine or dreams, what is your experience?
I look forward to your comments.
Thank you for reading and receiving your dose of The Salty Crone.
with love,
Prajna O’Hara
This article is great food for thought, thank you for sharing!