Community Herbalism

I like to imagine a world where our "medicines" are from the living world around us. These medicine are in balance with nature because they are nature and they teach (remind) our bodies to be that way too. They are imbued with wisdom and connected to the deeper secrets that tell us truths about life on Earth.As you allow these seeds to germinate in your mind, let me ask a question... is it the past or the future you see?For many people in the western world, this points only to the past - to a time when human life was dominated by "myths and superstitions," before modern medicine, before penicillin and the antibiotic revolution.But for me, this points to both the present and the future. Plant medicines are how I keep my family healthy and full of vitality. And yes, we have used pharmaceuticals, even antibiotics. This is not an article about dogma.This article is an invitation to envision a world where our health care practices align with our personal, social and environmental values. It's an invitation to dream with me about Community Herbalism.Imagine for a moment that you fall off your bike and scrape your legs and arms with road rash. Maybe you get a few bruises and jam your wrist or knee as you fall. Your neck and shoulders hurt with tension and your muscles ache all over.Imagine that your child is sick. It's just a flu, but their temperature hits that point that starts to scare most parents. I've certainly been there. Or maybe they're constipated or they have a red, swollen rash.Now imagine that you're able to go in your garden, your yard, a nearby green space or the woods and gather the medicines you need to treat these ailments. No pharmaceuticals. No steroid creams. Just gentle remedies that support your body's innate ability to heal and integrate the experience.Where would this knowledge come from? How could you find out which plants help with which types of healing?Well, what if you could call your local herbalist - who's already gathered and prepared the remedies - to drop them by, to talk to you and support you in making sense of the experience? And what if this sort of care didn't need to come with a huge price tag because the herbalist's work was supported by a whole community of people? What if people not only saw, but acted upon the awareness that we are connected to each other? Our personal health is actually connected to the health of all those in our communities.This is just a small piece of what I see when I dream about Community Herbalism, when I dream about how our communities could be practicing health care.But (and there's so often a "but" with these sorts of dreams) this isn't super easy. It requires that herbalist look at things differently. It requires the whole community looking at things differently. Things like our interconnectedness, like our understanding and even our approach to healing, like our connection to the lands where we live.And it requires us creating business models that are unique, that are more community-based and collective. It requires a community taking responsibility for its own health and breaking free from reliance on the mainstream medical establishment. It means that along with freeing ourselves from oil-dependance and industrial agriculture, we need to free ourselves from pharmaceutical-dependance. Along with urban gardening, better public transit, more cycling and local foods, we must include herbal medicines.[It also means breaking free from the ideas that healing is "fixing," or worse, suppressing symptoms. This stems from the same ideas we see in industrial agriculture: using petroleum to make it seem like the soil is rich and healthy. But this, I'll save for a future article.]It requires that a (w)holistic approach starts with how the herbal business is run along with how healing is restored.This vision that we've been sharing is more than just my vision, it's my life's work. If you've been following this blog, you've heard some bit and pieces of this before. I believe it's time (and I hope it's supportive) to connect these pieces and articulate how this fits in with the greater movement toward Right Relationship with the Earth and all Its beings.As a practical expression of this, the UHS has started a couple of Scholarships. This is a way for the community to offer financial support both to interested students and to the UHS.Please support the Raffle campaign and help us take Community Herbalism to the next step. I've put together $1500 worth of prizes as a way to intice and show my support for the community with herbal medicine.For a $10 donation, you get 5 chances to win these great prizes.  For a $40 donation, you get 25 chances.