Working with teacher plants (aka ‘plant medicine’)
by Lian Brook-Tyler
I first began working with plant spirits many years ago, long before I had been trained to do so shamanically (in fact, perhaps before I even knew there was such a thing as doing so shamanically)!
I began with the Rose… As well as teaching me about myself, wounds, life, women, the Feminine, and therefore the Masculine, and ultimately union, she also taught me how to learn from her, and therefore how to learn from other spirits (albeit, each requires something different of us), and then, after many years, when I was finally ready, how to work with her in a way that could also benefit others… Since then I’ve shared some of her wisdom with many other women, some of whom also now share it with others.
One of the most important things she’s taught me is this… She is a teacher.
I am endlessly grateful for that teaching because once I met other spirits, especially ones that people call ‘plant medicine’, I was able to see that they are teachers too.
Yes, these spirits absolutely can provide healing, and yet, to think and talk of them only as medicine can lead to objectifying and limiting them, making them into a resource, reducing them to the rational box of our modern mundane worldview, and actually, is missing the role they choose to play in lives of those of us truly called to them - that of our teachers.
(Even ‘teacher’ doesn’t quite capture the full depth and enormity of their power and wisdom but it comes closer to representing the elders, guides, ancestors, and allies that these spirits are.)
It can be confronting to see ourselves as a student of a plant, in this imaginary human-centric world in which we place ourselves at the top of a hierarchy based on our ability to subjugate and dominate other beings, it’s far more palatable to think of that plant as medicine - as something we understand and can use for our own ends, whilst feeling conscious and spiritual.
And yet, as we open our awareness to how things really are, we’re not only naturally drawn to be in right relationship with the beings who we are so blessed to share this earth with, we can receive the teachings that some of them are so generously waiting to share with us.
I’ve begun this post speaking of the Rose because the long years of gradually opening to learn from her showed me that we modern humans are in so much pain from our chronic disconnection that we gulp down Aya or Peyote in a hurry to have them blast them open and heal us before we’ve taken the time to understand who they really are, let alone have learned how to learn from them.
And still, those powerful, loving, and wise teachers will take us into their ancient embrace and offer us something medicinal, even when we’re blind drunk on desperation, certainty and pride, with no room to receive anything else.
My intention is not to make wrong anyone who is calling these plants ‘medicine’ - firstly, with humbling irony, I said it myself only recently when referring to the Mushroom in a form that I was struggling to describe in an honouring way and so saying “medicine” felt like the best compromise (and I was shown soon afterwards that it wasn’t right for me to do so - which is no doubt part of why I’m writing this now), and I probably have many times in the past too.
I have also been blessed to have learned from indigenous shamans, and whilst I know some might call these plants ‘medicine’, it is actually much rarer than westerners might believe (that’s a longer conversation, maybe for another time), for now it’s worth noting that in the Peruvian Amazon these plants are known by people in different regions as plantas maestras (master plants), plantas con madre (plants with a mother), or plantas que ensenan (plants that teach), even though many are used medicinally.
So yes, an important part of what many of these plants teach us is how to heal, including sometimes how to consume them for healing… I know wonderful people doing incredible healing work with plant spirits who describe them as ‘medicine’ for this reason. Frankly, the term ‘medicine ceremony’ is accurate when their intention is medicinal, particularly given they often are more healing than much of what we describe as medicine in this crazy modern world.
So this is all nuanced, paradoxical, trickstery, and it’s ‘both’ and ‘yes, and’, which doesn’t easily make sense to our conditioned modern minds, and so my intention isn’t to say there’s only one right way to view any of this (that’s rarely my intention with anything), it’s simply to honour what I’m being taught by my own teachers and have been asked to pass on so that others might hear something that speak to their souls when it comes to being in relationship with these great beings.
Because whether it’s the Rose, the Bee, the Oak, the Fox, the Mushroom, Aya, or San Pedro… They can be medicinal, yes, but more than that, they can teach us the wisdom that we need now more than ever, and maybe even more than that, they can show us how to be in relationship with ourselves and others to co-create a world in which all of us are honoured and welcome.
All my love,
Lian
P.S. Learning to work with spirits, including teacher plants, is one of the focuses of UNIO - including this month’s Mythical Quest, and next month’s 8-week shamanic alchemical crucible Liberty Quest (this one is full, let me know if you want to register your interest for the next one in September)… You can join UNIO for a life-changing journey of coming home to yourself.
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