How to journey shamanically to meet nature and receive guidance (transcript)

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Episode Transcript:

Lian (00:00)

Journeying shamanically to meet the plants in our local land, including in our own garden, isn't something that might necessarily occur to us to do, even those of us on a nature -based or shamanic path. And yet, as you'll hear in this episode with author Maria Rodale, there are incredible gifts when we do so. And it is surprisingly practical and simple.

And so if you have this sense, there is a deeper connection with the natural world and your local land that you're being called to create. This is the episode for you. Let's dive in

Lian (00:40)

Hello Maria, a huge welcome to the show.

maria rodale (00:43)

Thank you. Hello, it's great to be here.

Lian (00:45)

this really is my pleasure. Yes, as soon as I came across you and your work, I was like, this is a conversation that absolutely belongs on the show. So I'm so happy that we're here having this conversation. So I would love to start with just a sense of your own journey.

into the work that you do now, what brought you to writing a book about it, what brought you here?

maria rodale (01:19)

Well, I mean, I've always been interested in religion and spirituality, but my job was as a writer and publisher and CEO of a publishing company. And I specialised in writing about the organic movement. So I was invited to speak at a conference in California about organic farming and I live on the East coast. So to go to California is a big flight. And I thought, while I'm there,

I really want to check out this place called Esalon in Big Sur, which I've always heard about and thought, you know, be really interesting to experience it. And the only course that was happening the weekend I had available to go was a course on shamanism. So I signed up and learned how to journey and just was blown away by how powerful the experience was and how...

easy and accessible, it seemed. So that got me started. That was about 10 years ago. And I, I started journeying on my own at home for personal reasons, like trying to understand where the business was going, you know, relationships, things like that. And about five years ago, we ended up selling the business and then the pandemic came and it was while,

during the pandemic when I was home and I was like, I'm a crazy gardener. And I was like, I am going to have the most perfect, beautiful garden you've ever seen. It's just going to be perfect. And I have this plant in my garden that's considered invasive called mugwort. And so I was struggling and fighting with mugwort to get it to,

Lian (02:56)

Hehehehehe

maria rodale (03:14)

leave my garden. And I knew nothing about it other than that it was an invasive plant. And during that time, I had also worked with a local shaman. And during the pandemic, she was doing these Zoom journey sessions once a week, where a couple of us just got together and journeyed and talked about our journey. So at that point, I was like, I'm going to try and talk to this mugwort and see what it's trying to tell me.

And that just opened up a whole floodgate of...

different perspectives about nature and realising that I had the ability to speak with these plants and animals. And so at that point I decided I'm going to talk to everything that annoys me in my yard and understand why they annoy me.

Lian (04:05)

Hehehehehe He

maria rodale (04:10)

And that led to me writing the book Love Nature Magic, which came out last February. And it was a whole magical experience in itself.

Lian (04:22)

I bet. I really love the way that that story seemed so, you know, the fact that you kind of just happened to be that course in Shamanism. It could have been something completely different. But of course it wasn't because it was meant to be that. I love that. And as you probably know, at least in this country,

maria rodale (04:36)

Mm -hmm.

Lian (04:44)

Mugwort is seen as, I guess you could say like a shamanic herb, like it's used for all sorts of herbal cleansing reasons. So that feels a really interesting synchronicity too. So what did, I have to know, what did the, what did it tell you when you journeyed to meet with it? What did it tell you?

maria rodale (05:04)

Well, it was very, it was a very...

sort of door opening, quick and door opening journey where Mugwort was like, you know, why are you trying to kill me? You know, it's like, don't you realise that plants rule the world and you're never gonna win this battle? And so that seemed like a really simple message. But it opened the door.

And mugwort just kept coming into my life over and over again and actually still is teaching me. So for example, in the book, I write about how, you know, mugwort's a plant that's good for sleep. I don't have any sleep problems. Well, after I published the book, I ended up having a stroke. And in the, I know, and in the...

Lian (06:00)

Gosh.

maria rodale (06:05)

sort of aftermath of test testing all the reasons why I might've had a stroke, turns out I have sleep apnea. So I feel like Mugwort is constantly still guiding me and teaching me and trying to help me, even though sometimes I resist being helped. Yeah.

Lian (06:22)

Yeah, my goodness. Yeah, you touch on something there that I want to come back to, but I don't want to go there because I'm making a mental note to come back to something in what you just said there. What I love about that story and what you're talking about in your book is there is something so practical about what you're talking about here, which for me is...

But in some ways, like the very heart of shamanism, we can see it as being this kind of, you know, very, almost like out there, you know, intensely magical, kind of only for certain people kind of practice, where of course, you know, it went by all sorts of names and had all sorts of traditions. But really, like at its heart, the reason that we, you know, shamanism has has gone back for, you know,

eons and is still around today is because it is inherently practical, is used so that we can survive, that we can work with the world around us. And I think what you're describing here is such a kind of like a modern day step back into that understanding of like, this is something that is actually useful we can use in our everyday lives to navigate in our lives, our homes, our gardens.

which I think is a really important thing for all of us to know.

maria rodale (07:54)

Absolutely.

Yeah, I am constantly journeying with questions that I need help answering. And whether they're health questions or questions like, why am I constantly seeing this bird or animal? What is it trying to tell me? And it has completely shifted my perspective on...

my life, on nature, on what's important and what's not important. And it's useful. It's very useful. And I like the whole definition that I don't even know if I talk about this in the book, but the idea that it's just a direct revelation. It's a direct relationship with the universe, your spirit guides, whatever you want to call it. And so you've got this whole.

Lian (08:31)

Mmm.

maria rodale (08:55)

resource available to you, to help you. And what journeying does is just, it opens the door and provides the answers.

Lian (09:05)

Mm, yeah, so beautifully said. There's so much in just that initial conversation you had with Magwa where I think we have such a human -centric sense of our place in the world of things, where it's kind of like humans at the top of the hierarchy or the middle, and then it's kind of everything else is of lesser importance. And that first message.

you got about is kind of like well plants rule the world like even if you wanted to kill us off you couldn't what I've seen in all of the many conversations relationships I've had with all kinds of beans with particularly plants are things of that there's something really like humbling

and sort of bringing us back to our real place in the web, in the ecology of things that I think is a really helpful starting point where it stops us thinking, how do I get even better at dominating and starts to kind of shift us back into a more, as far as I can see, more natural way of relating to everything.

maria rodale (10:11)

Right.

Right, so as a gardener, you know, I often look to, you know, the British gardening kind of traditions as my inspiration and what.

shifted for me and actually, you know, in England, this is happening too, you know, with the whole rewilding movement. What shifted was this idea that like my job as a gardener is to create a habitat for the wildness, including me, you know, nature wants me to be more wild. So I now grow a lot of mugwort.

Lian (10:38)

Mmm.

Mmm.

Intentionally now.

maria rodale (11:03)

But what I...

Well, I've given up, but what's happening again, this is since I published Love Nature Magic.

I had a full year of not weeding. I mean, definitely not aggressively weeding. I mean, I'd pull out poison ivy here or there or, you know, something that was in the way. But what I have seen transform in my garden is just incredible, where roses that have been there happily for 20 years have doubled in size. Trees that were, you know, struggling.

Lian (11:41)

Mmm.

maria rodale (11:46)

you know, and I thought the wrong space, again, doubled in size. And what I'm realising is that, you know, weeds, we look at weeds as like competition and the enemy and, but it's real, they're really helpers. They're assisting in the microbiome under the...

you know, the roots and the plants and they're all working together and if we just look at that as there's nothing out there that's an enemy. Everybody's, everything is collaborating and it's our job just to kind of collaborate with it. Then, I mean, even my vegetable garden has just like exploded in growth. So, there's something here that I think we should all be exploring.

Lian (12:36)

I love that word collaborators. That's such a, such a beautiful and as far as I'm concerned, true perspective on our true role as you know, those of us consider ourselves gardeners. I'm a very keen gardener too. And more and more that's, that's where I see my role is. And it really is, there's a...

Allowing ourselves to be taught, isn't there, is a kind of like we are, we need to learn how to be good collaborators, which requires the kinds of things you're talking about, including ways to have those conversations, whether that's journeying shamanically or other ways, but there is, there is a kind of listening needed to even know how to be a good collaborator because, hey, we've been.

maria rodale (13:13)

Right.

Lian (13:28)

you know, conditioned out of that for generations and generations. And yet I think it's absolutely something we can relearn, reclaim. The thing that I was wondering earlier and the example you gave with the the mugwort and the sleep and the sleep apnea, I think is potentially an example of this.

Over time, as you've learned to relate to your garden and the plants, the beings within it, have you noticed the ways that it's also revealing aspects of your own self, your own psyche, things that are happening kind of in your inner world are in some way either being reflected or being shown to you by those beings that you're now in collaboration with in your garden.

maria rodale (14:26)

It's definitely an ongoing conversation. And one of the chapters I did was on ticks. And I don't know if you have ticks in England, but we have. Yeah, and Lyme disease. And I just went through a second bout of Lyme disease. And.

Lian (14:36)

You would do.

goodness.

maria rodale (14:54)

So fortunately I catch it early and took the medicine and everything. But even though I wrote the chapter on ticks and I felt compassion for them and understood their perspective, I was like, dang nab it, why are you?

Lian (15:12)

Heheheheh

maria rodale (15:16)

You know, making me like afraid to go out in nature and you know, why are you attacking me? And so actually just before this call, I opened up the chapter. I was like, what did Tick tell me? And you know, the message was to relax. And I was like, God, I really need to hear that. Cause you know, I have not been relaxed lately.

Lian (15:34)

I'm sorry.

maria rodale (15:43)

So, you know, even it's a constant relearning and reminding and shifting also because every relationship is evolving.

Lian (15:51)

Mmm.

Yes, I really

love that so much and that that word relationship I think is such an important one. It's there's something that I continually talk about in terms of the way that ultimately this is all about relationship. Whatever the thing is, whatever we're talking about ultimately is finding our way back to recognising it's a relationship and.

One of the things that I think we really could do with understanding as a modern culture, as we're kind of like in this perhaps sort of second psychedelic renaissance where people are embracing again, working with teacher plants, whilst I think there is something really healing and beautiful about that, what I also see is we are...

I guess somewhat immature as a culture in terms of not recognising that it's still a relationship with another being. And until we've got good at relationship, perhaps, you know, that would be the right thing to do before approaching these very, you know, large, powerful spirits. And...

The work that we're often in with our students is really encouraging those kinds of relationships with the beings, like on the land around them, just like you're talking about here. So instead of, for example, flying straight to Peru to sit with Ayahuasca, perhaps start with sitting with the rose in your garden.

start there because firstly you may find you don't even need to go to Peru and see what the Ayahuasca actually after all but even if you that is for whatever reason aligned there is so much we can learn directly from the rose the nettle the whatever it is that we're surrounded by but it also kind of teaches us to be able to be in relationship in in a in a real way an honest way so I'd love to hear your thoughts on that because i i i

maria rodale (17:42)

Hehehehe

Lian (18:09)

What we're talking about here is like, if I could just give people kind of like one first step on the journey of like, you know, again, working with, I won't say like shamanically working with teacher plants, it's like, start here, start with what you're surrounded by. Because we're like, every garden is teeming with potential friends and allies and guides and teachers.

maria rodale (18:27)

Yeah.

I have a lot of thoughts on this. The first thing to know is that I do not use psychedelics or, you know, I haven't done ayahuasca. So when I journey, I'm only using the sound of a drum. But I did a lot of drugs when I was younger, so I know what the experience is, you know.

I'm not opposed to people doing it, but what I see happening is so many people like relying on the actual drug, you know, to give them some enlightenment. And that is just such a simplistic, artificial.

process. It's like, you know, You to do the work and the work is not just kind of escaping through a psychedelic experience, but it's actually like looking within and developing a relationship that's truly personal. And you can develop a relationship with the ayahuasca plants without actually imbibing them You know, if that's what you're passionate about or, you know, with mushrooms. you know, you can.

You can have these conversations and learn these insights, but the real thing that I think these plants want us to do and are trying to teach us is to rethink and change our behaviour to be more in alignment and in balance with nature. And if you're not doing that, you know, no matter how many, you know.

psychedelic experiences you have, then you're not learning the lesson that you need to learn and integrating it into your life. But you know, a lot of the messages I am getting right now in my journeys is just to stay focused on looking within and not look to some outside experience or teacher or book or anything to give me the answers. The answers are right here. They're inside me.

Lian (20:27)

Hmm.

Hmm.

maria rodale (20:54)

They're in my relationship with my garden and with the people and the plants around me. And I think the overuse of plant medicine is a form of kind of spiritual bypassing that.

Lian (21:13)

Hmm. Yes. There's something in the way that you just described what you're talking about there that really hit me where I agree entirely. We don't need to ingest anything in order to build a relationship with it, learn from it, you know, whether it's mushrooms or grass or anything. And there was something.

maria rodale (21:14)

isn't healthy for anybody.

Lian (21:42)

I think really important in what you were saying there, even though you didn't say it directly, I could feel this. When we are opening to create a relationship with the plants in our gardens, of course what that allows us to do is have like an embodied relationship, as in it's physically there, it has a place, it has needs, it has certain patterns that we get to be in this embodied relationship with.

which I think there is something very important in that, firstly, if we are used to being in embodied relationship more than anything else, with obviously the, whether it be our parents, our friends, our spouses, children, animals. And so I think there is something that is just more accessible when we have that opportunity to have an embodied relationship. And there's, hmm.

how can I put this.

It's around that word integration. And I think, you know, a real sign for me of integration is, is it showing up? Like if someone watched us, would it be changed? Would our actual life be changing materially? Would we be acting different? Would we be moving our body differently? Would we be performing different?

tasks, you know, doing different things in the day. And again, that's the wonderful thing. The more we working in an embodied way with these plants around us, the more it kind of naturally leads to an integration. I'd love to hear your thoughts on all of that.

maria rodale (23:18)

Alright.

Well, I'll go back to mugwort because there's a part of me, I come from...

you know, in the publishing background where, you know, there's a lot, I know a lot of herbalists and, you know, people who are making plant, you know, teas and tinctures. And I've always felt like, ugh.

I don't really do that and I don't really want to do that. And like with mugwort, it's like, I've eaten it once or twice and I've made some smudge sticks once or twice, but like, I don't feel that it wants me to consume it. It wants to be a partner and respected. And,

So there's a little bit of like this.

you know, anti -colonisation thing going on where, you know, no, you don't need to like harvest me and sell me, you know, you just need to listen and pay attention. And so that relationship is an ongoing one of sharing information and sharing insights. And...

Lian (24:24)

Hmm.

maria rodale (24:45)

To me, the biggest sign of success is so, you know, I have a nice house in the country and I, like I, you know, I hire electricians and plumbers and things and, you know, to a person, everybody who comes to my house, no matter where they are in the spectrum of, you know.

life stage is like, whoa, this garden is magic. This is incredible. This is the most beautiful garden I've ever seen. And so that's the medicine right there. It's not the tea I make.

Lian (25:12)

Mmm.

Mmm.

maria rodale (25:28)

And I think, again, as people, we're taught to look at, okay, I need to take this pill or do this thing and that's gonna save me or heal me. And it's really, I think, just about having right relationship with things.

Lian (25:41)

Yes, that's, I love that you brought in the way that anyone visiting can kind of feel something there. Of course, you could say, well, anywhere we go, there is, you know, live beings that are kind of an invitation into that experience. But there's certainly...

My own experience has shown that land that has been related to in that way, beings that have been related to in that way, and whether we do that in terms of, I don't know, making offerings or whether it be being in that conversation you're talking about, there is something that we can, we can feel when we enter a space that's been related to in that way. And I love the way that you're saying, you know, even people who you may think aren't necessarily sort of open and sensitive to that can still feel that.

I think as much visually I'm sure your garden is beautiful I suspect what you're talking about is beyond that too it's like it there's a feeling in it hmm yeah

maria rodale (26:39)

Right.

Right. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I had an electrician tell me just last week, this is the most beautiful garden, the most beautiful yard I've ever been in in my life. And it was a good time of year.

Lian (27:02)

Hehehehehe

maria rodale (27:08)

All the roses were in bloom, but...

Lian (27:09)

But there is something again just so it feels as though there is something that's almost like a human birthright to be able to experience experience that whatever that is that he experienced it feels like there's something you know so so special so healing i want to go back sorry please

maria rodale (27:37)

And well, I will just stress that that is with the weeds still there. Like the weeds were right there along with the other plants. So it wasn't like, this is the most perfectly manicured, beautiful garden. So it was.

Lian (27:42)

Mmm.

Yes, well, we were clearly in sync because I was about to say I'd like to go back to the conversation around rewilding. So great minds. So one of the things that has been really clear from when we moved in this house 11 years ago, well, and this was really before that whole kind of.

maria rodale (28:04)

huh.

Lian (28:19)

rewilding thing really kind of like was, I don't think I was necessarily fully conscious of that at the time, but just sort of intuitively, organically, it made sense to me not to use weed killers, not to use insecticides, to just see how we could work with the garden in a way that just made sense to me. And over the years that...

that has become more and more a conscious thing where, you know, there's certain areas which are like fully left to go wild, to kind of in the lawn, there's a kind of like growing meadow area. And it's been really interesting noticing my relationship to that, but also as people visit how, again, we've got such a view of a garden ought to be manicured and, you know, very like, you know, no weeds, no this, no that.

But I think we are, it feels to me, and again, this is like based on a sort of study of one, noticing people's reactions over the years, it feels as though we are starting to shift culturally where we start, we can see that doesn't necessarily equal a beautiful garden, that everything has been chosen. There is this like just natural ecology.

maria rodale (29:37)

All right.

Lian (29:40)

that it seems to me, I've noticed this year, I've had more people comment on that meadow area than ever before. And again, it just, it may not mean anything, but it feels to me there is something in that where we're starting to realise like, that's, there's something right about that.

maria rodale (30:01)

Yeah, yeah. So one of, again, since the book was published, I went to hear a speaker who's an entomologist. His name is Doug Talamy. And he explained that a lot of the plants we considered weeds are actually important host plants for the caterpillars and insects that birds like to eat. So, and like two of them.

were weeds that I have a lot of. So, evening Primrose and, Virginia creeper.

So that was like a trigger for me to say, you know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna pick these weeds. I'm gonna let them grow and see what happens. And, you know, the evening primrose gets to be like six feet tall and has these yellow flowers. And I ended up seeing more hummingbirds that I had ever seen before, you know, just, you know, feeding on the flowers of the evening primrose, let alone what the birds might've been, you know, the other birds might've been eating.

And, you know, Virginia creeper has a beautiful fall color. It gets bright red. And so that shifting of perspective that the garden shouldn't be just, you know, visual.

candy for us. It has to serve a greater purpose, the wider community. And we may not understand what that community needs until we just relax a little bit and see what happens.

Lian (31:31)

Mmm.

Mmm.

Yes, I love that so much. So perhaps if we talk a little bit more about now, of course, there's again so many ways that we can learn to be good collaborators, learn to be in relationship. But I'd like to come back to where we began with this looking through the lens of journeying shamanically to do so, which again is something that.

very much is not the only way, again, I've created relationships with plants, but it certainly has been a powerful way. And I think there is something, again, very, like natural to humans to work in that way, to kind of enter a place where we're open and available to have those kinds of conversations with other beings. So.

If for someone who that is at the moment something new to them, they've maybe perhaps heard of the idea of shamanic journeys, but not entered one themselves, what would you suggest?

maria rodale (33:04)

So I'm a big believer in follow the clues in your own life. I call it the trail of books in my book where everybody has different gifts and different talents. If you're interested in journeying, there's probably... Put that intention out there and the resources...

will come to you. In my book, Love Nature Magic, I write, you know, the first, you know, part of the book is really the history of journeying, how it works, the science behind it. And then in the back of the book, I have a list of resources that, you know, there's the Society for Shamanic, you know, whatever, you know, I can't remember the name of it. There's a lot of resources out there, but it's also something that you can do.

if you follow the basic important rules such as opening sacred space and using a drum, and I use an app on my phone for the drum. So it's something that you don't need to find an external source for, but if you want to...

Lian (34:22)

Mmm.

maria rodale (34:30)

they're out there. And I mean, my book is a good place to start just to get a basic grounding in how it works. And I'm sure you guys have resources too.

Lian (34:34)

Hmm.

Yes, and I think that I love what you said there, though. The firstly, there is no right way there is it's so accessible and there's so many different sources. And I completely agree. I mean, your own story is a great example of that. Just, you know, following those breadcrumbs of, you know, what's meant for you, what's meant for your soul. So even just to set their intention, likely there will be a way that if someone feels the call to work in a, you know, shamanic journeying sense.

maria rodale (34:54)

Mm -hmm.

Right.

Lian (35:07)

That will be met. That will absolutely be met.

maria rodale (35:11)

Hehehehe

Lian (35:13)

I wonder as we're coming towards the end of this conversation, is there anything that we've not touched on yet that feels an important, important to add to this conversation as we're talking about this? Again, in a weird way, it feels slightly, almost an unusual conversation. Again, we're so used to hearing so many people talk about, you know, again, these like,

big teacher plants about, you know, shamanism. But there's something I love about this, just like very everyday -ness of like, start with the relationship with the plants in your garden. There is something about that that I find so refreshing, so like, yes, if everyone did that, the world would change. But I'd love to know, is there anything you think that's really important for us to speak about before we close on this conversation?

maria rodale (35:54)

Well, one of the things that I learned through this process is that shamanism is a practice that comes from every culture in the world. So I think we're living in a time where, you know, there's all kinds of tension and division and, you know, you know, don't culturally appropriate this or that. But, you know, every single culture has some shamanic traditions. And, we all can participate in it with peaceful knowing that it belongs to all of us and we're all indigenous to this whole planet. So I think what the message I got is nature just wants us to learn how to live in balance with each other, with the plants, the animals, and even the things that annoy us. And we'll still be annoyed by things, but we have to live in balance with them.

Lian (37:22)

Just like any family, really. It reminds me of, I think it's that rammed -ass quote, there's something like, if you think you're enlightened, go spend a week with your family. Yeah, there's always plenty of lessons right where we are.

maria rodale (37:28)

That's right, that's right! Exactly. Start where you are.

Exactly.

Lian (37:51)

this is a, it's been such a wonderful conversation. Where can listeners find out more about you and your work? You mentioned your book, but yeah, feel free to say more about that, but also other ways that people can find out about what you do.

maria rodale (37:58)

I'm gonna go.

Well, I have a website called mariarodale .com, which has links to all the things that I'm doing. But the way to stay in touch with me on a regular basis is I have a sub -stack newsletter called Life Unfiltered. And you can actually find it through my website mariarodale .com. But no, I have my book Love Nature Magic, which is published in the UK. And the other thing that I...

do, which is fun, that actually came from a shamanic journey was I write children's books under the name Mrs. P. Knuckle. And the illustrator is actually a British woman, Jessie Ford. And they're alphabet books that teach kids and grownups about different parts of nature. So books, Substack, my website.

Instagram it's all I'm all I'm there

Lian (39:10)

I love the way those books came from this very thing that we're talking about. Such a beautiful example. Yeah, the gifts just keep coming, they really do. Thank you so much, Maria. This is a truly delightful conversation. I really, really love everything you're doing. And again, just...

Lian (39:33)

that simple invitation like start with whatever you know in fact I think your example of like start with what annoys you in your garden perhaps that is the perfect place to start.

maria rodale (39:44)

Yeah.

That's right. If it annoys you, it's trying to tell you something.

Lian (39:48)

Yeah. thank you.

maria rodale (39:54)

Thank you. This has been such a pleasure.

Lian (39.57)

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Lots of love for now.

See you again next week.

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