Wounded Healers 1/27/2016

Some of the first tales of shamanism that drew me in, spoke to me, were those of an initiatory health crisis transformed. That transformation mayhaps being an awakening, to practices and approachs, that also shift symptoms, or our relationship with them...

A healer like the centaur Chiron, is an example of this in a very humane way. He, an immortal, was pierced by a poison arrow, leaving a hurt which never healed. Yet he was both a medicine man and teacher, also musician and wise one. To this day in modern astrology charts, the presence of the centaur planet shows where in each of our birthcharts, lies the wound which, if transformed in life, may become a blessing, or calling. Yep, we all gotta touch o' da Chironic.

Health, seems to me, rather than a static endpoint we reach and go 'woo hoo!! I is there', a process. Dis-ease can make sense, in direct relationship to circumstances, or come from beyond order / comprehension. Also, someone with a so called chronic health challenge, or dif-ability, may experience wholeness of being, within and through, living with this. That, often after struggle, our personal wounds, and how we learn (or unlearn) to manage them, can later allow us to see into places previously hidden, or guide us. If we can translate this, the experience can be a fine, though at times humbling, or straight up difficult, mentor.

 

The wounding may be not of the self, but someone loved, or yet little known to us. When we are caring for those dear to us, including those who are dying, or indeed dead, portals open (perhaps more obviously in the latter case). We carry ourselves furthur, and more deeply than if it were for self alone. Even when alongside moments of comfort given, intimacy shared, humour, such intentions in the same breath threaten to swallow, are messy, or lead to confronting challenges. Still, the grace of the calling to offer healing may resound, in myriad forms and diverse manifestations. Conciously, or otherwise, simply drawn out from ones innards. I would offer up that plant, animal and spirit allys respond in these ways aswell, as do our creative and soul lives.

Such processes happen to their own rhythms. Who's to say how long a healing journey should take? Its both rare, and consumerist, to expect for it to happen in any one session, regardless of what any advertising, or promise, may say. Infact, especially if they say so. The journey may indeed be re/inspired by a single connection, event or being, but generally a series of adjustments will follow. An integrating, or filtering through, at ones own pace. Wrought over a brief period of time, part of a lifelong voyage or yonder human folk time. A re/gathering. To decipher the message/s ones bringing back from the experiences.

When we are working with plants (or indeed other personal practices) to assist this reweaving, the path is unlikely to be straight and narrow. More likely meandering, seeking, like water, or a root system searching for it. Flowing back a lil, forth a few steps, into that crevice, round that rock to take a peek, stretching out to full extension, withdrawing or retreating, pausing for a still moment. What was that I saw, heard, felt, sensed?

Echoing the many unusual forms green folk themselves may take, plantological learnings vary. Growing seasons and harvests change. Gardens and soils shift. Wild plants appear one year, are absent the next. One form of medicine or modality comes to the fore. A preparation is honed or goes mouldy / ferments. Becomes more itself like that, or otherwise becomes optimised, and beloved by those we share it with. Good reasons to journal our voyages!

Yet, some days, simply hanging with plants is the magic...

No products made, no procuring of anything more, or less, than being, offering, presence...

Plants not only gift us breath, healing, a place where magic touchs, but connect us to, and speak as reminders of the call for stewardship of the places where we are. Voices for Earth who herself is undergoing transformation, a wounded healer...