Medicine Stories

Suuzi has been one of my best friends for 15 years, and our lives have taken parallel tracks recently- deeply interested in health & natural living for decades, we have nevertheless both found ourselves in total burnout at the edge of collapse in our early 40s. We share what got us here (and the irony that so much of it is doing things we truly believed were making us healthy), the current state o...

We can't talk about fascia, the connective tissue that touches every single cell in the body, without talking about water, memory, and the quantum information that travels along this network at speeds 1000x faster than biochemical/neuronal signaling. When we bring tactile witnessing to our fascia through presence and touch, mountains move. Get ready to have your mind blown and, if you're anything...

Our modern disconnection from land and lineage mirrors the culturally normal- but biologically abnormal- separation between mother and baby, parents and children. The consequences of these intertwined attachment wounds are vast. But many of us are dreaming into a different way forward. Let us speak truthfully about what isn't working, divest from the systems that break our sacred bonds to the Eart...

Kids today face more challenges- and are showing more signs of distress- than ever before. Parents must learn to effectively co-regulate, repair when things go awry, and create the right environments for our children (be they dandelions, orchids, or somewhere in between). When trending cultural ideologies come to replace ancient biological reality, we must refuse to check our brains at the door an...

The plants have so much more to teach us than what has been written down by others; there is another level of wisdom that can only be accessed by direct communication with the living Earth. When we cultivate an embodied knowing of the natural world we realize that we don't need any special gifts or gurus or long lists of memorized plant constituents to mediate our relationship with our more-than-h...

Earth-centered cultures have always held that each person is born into this world with their own unique gifts and strengths, but this knowing has been put aside by our modern, disconnected overculture. The consequences of this mass self forgetting are profound. But nature is always there to remind us of who we are, where we come from, and why we're here. Let us come back into relationship with the...

We were made from our mothers, who were made from the earth, which is made of stardust, which is made of minerals. A well mineralized body heals itself by providing our cellular metabolism what it needs to create energy and clear exhaust. Our ancestors didn't give their mineral status a second thought, but modern humans are almost all imbalanced (with the ill health to prove it), and minerals are...

The women's embodiment movement tends to stop at the womb, but cervix lies even deeper and contains an abundance of information about where we've been and what is needed now. From healing abnormalities and infections to connecting with the deep self for guidance and healing, let us peel back the layers and remember our innermost knowing. TOPICS: How Denell healed her cervical dysplasia and complet...

Sacred to the goddesses of old, known to all ancestors who occupied the Northern Hemisphere, and beloved by wise folk and herbal healers from the Ice Age until today, mugwort is one of the most magical and practical medicinal plants in the world. May we come into relationship with this potent ally in order to widen sensory gating channels, ground into our center, and remember who we are. With spec...

The cell is the foundation of life, and biological science is clear on what our cells need to most efficiently generate the energy that runs our bodies. Gut, autoimmune, and hormonal issues all have underlying metabolic causes. Let us cut through the noise and remember how to eat to enjoy, nourish, and repair, and not for ideology. Check out the two info-packed bonuses that accompany this episode...

Psychedelics are the most potent medicine we have for remembering what it is to be human upon the earth. Many ancestral communities integrated plant and fungal healing ceremony into every age and stage of embodiment (and disembodiment). At this turning point in history, let us call upon our entheogenic allies to unlock our truest, most deeply human, individual and collective genetic expression. An...

Please listen to Our Complex Humanity Cannot Be Cancelled first. Our ancestors were in constant biochemical conversation with the world, and so are we. Plants are a gateway into the depths of our consciousness, emotions, and physical experience of being alive. Let us come back into relationship with the information available in each interaction with the natural world. TOPICS: The archetype of the...

Let us step out of the mass psychosis of cancel culture and remember compassion, tolerance for differing viewpoints, and recognition of the deeply complex nature of human behavior. TOPICS: Losing compassion in the name of compassion Cancel culture does nothing to create justice or healing It's an ouroboros- the more a person participates in cancel culture, the more likely they are to be cancelled...

When Amanita muscaria says "Hey bitch, what's up?", you listen. Also known as the fly agaric, this most culturally significant fungi of all time has been maligned and misunderstood by modern people. May we reweave the ancient relationship between Amanita and humans and hear what these sentient, wise beings are saying to us. IN THE INTERVIEW: How a chance encounter with Amanita muscaria saved AD's...

In this meandering medicine story, I share about my mama's unexpected death in 2015, the unbelievable coincidence of losing my father-in-law the same way 5 years later, the amazing thing my stepdad did at her memorial service, the worst and best things to say to someone who's lost a loved one, the final gift she gave me after her death, and always remembering that our grief is equal to our love. I...

It is through land that we find ourselves. It is through lineage that we return to ourselves. It is through community that we expand ourselves. In this age of disorienting change and fracture, let us wander within our daydreams of another way of being. TOPICS: A Western suburban childhood- television, processed food, malls, and fear of nature's dangers Evolutionary Mismatch Theory: our human bodie...

Herbalism is an outlet for creative expression, a tool for community care, and a pathway to our own inner knowing. Let us revel in the freedom we have to make our own healing medicine with guidance from the land, the ancestors, and the mythic realm. TOPICS: Being an abuela in training When an ancestral name is tied in to a landscape Kitchen herbalism in Mexico Gardening with whatever is on hand Fo...

St. John's Wort has evolved over millennia to capture the ultimate expression of sunlight on our planet and turn it into the molecule hypericin, which has numerous profound effects on our human bodies. Find our St. John's Wort Oil & check out my teacher Kami McBride's course Handcrafted Healing Herbal Oils . From deep nerve healing, relaxation, and pain relief when applied externally to its antide...

In these times, we all need all the healing help we can get. How lucky then that an infinite source of renewal and vitality lies just beneath our feet. Connection with the earth and plants never fails to shift our animal bodies into a place of calm receptivity and deep entrainment with the rhythms of nature. This is our ancestral birthright as human beings. Let us remember it. TOPICS: Name meaning...

For most of human history, herbalism hasn't had a name. It was just a way of life, part of being human upon the earth. The folk traditions of our ancestors have deep nourishment to offer us, and are an antidote to the depleting and disheartening realities of modern life. Let us reclaim an embodied relationship to plants, come into alignment with the regenerative currents of nature and ourselves, a...

How do we support thriving life on earth through the pathway of maternal health? Our physiologic design is the inarguable truth, but in today's confusing online culture well meaning morality politics often obscure what eons of evolution make clear. If we want to best support babies and their families, do the deep repair work of these times, and become the fully realized adults we were born to be,...

If the phrase "school wounds" stirs something inside of you, or the words "crisis schooling" describe your current reality as a parent or caregiver, or you've just always intuited that there's something not quite right about modern compulsory schooling, this episode is for you. TOPICS: The reimagining of schooling as we've known it Akilah's story of schooling and unschooling Unschooling is not jus...

Your ancestors are with you every time the portal of the womb opens; our blood connects us to our lineage, to the mythic archetypes that hold meaning for us, and to our deepest inner selves. Whatever sort of womb release you experience, it lies on a continuum of commonality with all releases. Let us explore these interconnections so that we can be deeply rooted in our own bodies. TOPICS: How Saman...

From time immemorial, women and wise folk have carried the knowledge of how to manage fertility. From menstruation to contraception to birth to miscarriage to abortion, these processes and this knowing has always belonged to the people. Ending pregnancy outside the modern medical paradigm and the cold, impersonal clinic is not only possible, but there are numerous safe and effective options. Let u...

"Water is life's matter and matrix, mother and medium." -Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Nobel prize winner We return to the endlessly fascinating and enormously important subject of water, exploring the fractal edges of H20 and beyond. From its ability to generate free energy to how to structure your own drinking water into a liquid crystalline state to the interplay between water, climate change, and econ...