The Art Practice Of Spiritual Herbalism Transform, Heal, And Remember With The Power Of Plants And Ancestral Medicine ( Karen M. Rose) 2022

2022·8.5 MB·English

by  Karen M. Rose

The Art & Practice of
SPIRITUAL HERBALISM
TRANSFORM, HEAL, &
REMEMBER with the POWER of PLANTS
and ANCESTRAL MEDICINE
KAREN M. ROSE
Creator of Sacred Vibes Apothecary

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION:
SPIRITUAL HERBALISM
CHAPTER 1 Building a Courageous Heart
CIRCULATORY HEALTH
CHAPTER 2 Being Present to Grief
RESPIRATORY HEALTH
CHAPTER 3 Following Your Gut
DIGESTIVE HEALTH
CHAPTER 4 Nourishing Anger
LIVER HEALTH
CHAPTER 5 Standing in Your Power
SEXUAL HEALTH
CHAPTER 6 Healing Our Relations
SKIN HEALTH
CHAPTER 7 Listening to Spirits
NERVOUS SYSTEMS
CHAPTER 8 Protection!
IMMUNE HEALTH
GLOSSARY
RESOURCES
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INDEX
INTRODUCTION: SPIRITUAL HERBALISM
I
am a first-generation immigrant whose healing practice
reflects my grandmother’s teachings in Guyana. She was a
medicine holder and plant healer. Today I continue my
grandmother’s legacy as a healer and herbalist.
As a Black, indigenous, young herbalist in the West, it was
challenging to see where I fit in. How do you value and
measure knowledge held in the body, innate ancestral
knowing? For many years I felt my ancestral knowledge was
devalued by my herbal community. Western herbalism
practitioners lack reverence for, and have colonized many
indigenous ancestral traditions. While they exploit resources
and modalities, they are often unwilling to uplift indigenous
practitioners and healers.
Growing up in Essequibo, Guyana, a small village along the
Atlantic Ocean’s coast, we relied on our community to
support our physical and spiritual healing. Everyone in the
small village where I grew up knew which plants help with
which ailments. When something was beyond what we could
do, we visited the community’s healers. I grew up visiting
local healers each time I was sick, because we would have
to travel to the city to see a doctor. We achieved wellness as
varied as the healers themselves through plants, chants,
prayers, laying of hands, and physical manipulation.
My family lost its connection to plants when we emigrated
to the United States, as we tried to assimilate to this land’s
culture. We went to doctors instead of healers. My conscious
return to plants began more than two decades ago with the
birth of my daughter, Lauren. I used plants to heal her, and I
teach her this knowledge, as my grandmother taught me.
My ancestors are from Ghana, the Congo, China, and India. I
bring their indigenous practices forward in my work today. In
my spiritual herbalism program, I teach what I’ve learned in
my studies and observed as a youth. My healing work
encompasses plants, ancestral practices, and community.
This practice brings the Spirits back to herbalism, as it was
when our indigenous ancestors walked this world.
The framework for spiritual herbalism is built on a relational
vision of health, with the understanding that we cannot heal
alone in a vacuum. A healthy relationship with our families,
communities, environment, Earth, and Spirit is necessary to
heal. We utilize plants consciously and sustainably to heal
our spirit and bodies and connect back to the land, our
communities, and our ancestors. We uplift our ancestors’
teachings, honor and revere their work, and align ourselves
with their traditional practices to heal our generations
forward and backward.
Plants teach us how to access our resilience, and they are
resilient even through the devastation of their environment.
For example, ginkgo and birch trees were the first to appear
after the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima. So too our
ancestral healing knowledge and wisdom survived even the
harshest conditions of enslavement and colonization to
reach our ears and hearts today. Targeted for extinction and
eradication, it springs up with a lushness we could not
fathom.
As a descendant of enslaved people and indentured
servants, I feel their resilience and traumas coexist in my
body. To practice medicine and healing without
acknowledgment of these truths is, in effect, malpractice.
Our families’ history reflects in our bodies and manifests as
illnesses, such as heart disease, diabetes, or digestive
issues. It can also be the source of extraordinary gifts, such
as spiritual sight or clairvoyance, which require physical and
spiritual balance.
Plants help us navigate finding harmony by supporting
knowledge of the Self, which creates agency and power.
Plant medicine turns us inward to witness the Self, reclaim
our ancestors’ resilience, and fortify our spirits so we can do
the work of healing. What we consider hereditary is, in fact,
an inherited ancestral spiritual contract, and until we begin
the work of ancestral healing, the agreement continues to
exist inside our bodies. A spiritual inheritance or hereditary
physical response offers us an opportunity to heal beyond
ourselves, healing lineages.
The body yearns to return to ancestral wisdom and
connection. And the body becomes a great wake-up call
when disharmony enters to change our pattern of thinking
and living. These issues come up so they can guide us to
wholeness and integration. If you are here, the ancestors
chose you to begin this vital work. This book will guide you
through this process of self-healing and ultimately healing
past and future generations. Know that you are enough and
step forward.