I was one of those kids that would watch bugs for what seemed like hours. My eyes following each tiny stick-like leg until all 6 had sequentially moved and that beetle was a little further along its road, just for that unfamiliar movement to repeat again and again and again. I was lucky enough to have a pond in our garden that would be teeming with tadpoles each spring and with plenty of frogs still floating about in the bright sunlight of the summer holidays. Whenever my mum could peel us away from the Nintendo me and my best friend Dan would go frog catching and be so content in intently staring at each one, just taking it all in up close – those shiny gold rimmed eyes, the smooth skin and webbed feet. We would name them all and then try to find them again each day.
We grow a little older and our attention moves on to other things. In amongst the typical teenage angst I remember always feeling so calm when I was jogging. There were only the trees in the park and the rhythm of my breath. I got into bird watching in my twenties, though I have always found I feel the most joy from ‘bird listening’, hearing where these beautiful creatures, so symbolic of hope, are in the landscape, whether it’s the familiar sound of sparrows perched on street fences or the other-worldly sound of snipes as they spiral the sky in the highlands at midsummer.
When I reflect on these through-lines I realise they all share a quality of being present, fully present, amongst the twists and turns of our busy lives, the daily stressors, the endless to-do list…The capitalist machine rolls on. Austerity continues, the powers that be continue to treat climate change as if it is a potential future threat rather than in the here and now, because it is overwhelmingly affecting majority people of colour communities, and facism is on the rise in many countries. We may even have a Trump round two to contend with come November.
How can we find the strength to continue to fight for what we believe in? To stand up for all marginalised communities and to feel deeply together that ‘None of us are free until all of us are free’¹.
Today we have so much information at our fingertips, which we can, with discernment about the source, learn so much from, but there is a power in connecting back with ourselves, in the face of the capitalist machine that likes us to stay disconnected from others (the people, united, will never be defeated) and even ourselves. It is a decolonial way of thinking, it is the way our ancestors gathered information about their surroundings in an embodied way. It is the difference between observing a diagram in an ecology textbook about the dynamic relationships between all beings from which you are not part of, and sitting with a tree in the park and feeling your connection. It is tuning into a place of love and respect and awe and acting from that feeling. It is knowing that none of us are free until we are all free because we are all connected, despite some of the ruling elite telling us we are too different to get along. We have so much to learn from indigenous cultures worldwide, and thankfully, even though it is very slow, more diverse voices are being given a platform these days.
When I was first introduced to the idea of tasting a herbal tea and sensing its effect in the mind/body/soul I found it, well, pretty hard. How did I know I wasn’t just ‘making it up’? This was not the kind of book learning I had been used to through the western education system. The journey from then until now has been a little like peeling back the layers of an onion, and there are still a fair few layers left for sure. An ‘in’ for me was (re?)learning the link between different tastes and how those tastes affect the tissues of the body. I found this interesting as it linked to how my Iranian aunties would talk about food as medicine in the body which I always found fascinating and left me hungry for more. More recently Grass Roots Remedies have had the opportunity to be part of Nature Resonance online sessions with The Plant Medicine School where course creator Nikki Darrell and Alex Duffy lead students through various practices to connect to themselves and are then invited to sit with a plant being, to see what conversation emerges.
Of course I am not trying to say that a sensory herb tasting or sitting with a plant is the answer to our worldly woes, and I am sure I will continue to have difficulty validating my own experience with this kind of learning, but I am rooting for an embodied and connected practice to be one of many tools in which we can find and build resilience. Directly connecting with the weeds growing around us is a practice that needs to be honed like any other, and can lead to all sorts of positive change, like entering into that very present headspace we could perhaps enter into more easily as kids, and to maybe feel some awe in the beauty around us. Connecting with our community of all beings might even give us a little bit of strength to continue working towards what we believe in.
“I’m no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I’m changing the things I cannot accept”.
References
¹Quote from Emma Lazarus, a 19th Century Jewish American poet
²Quote from Angela Davis, African American political activist, philosopher, academic and author
Further Reading/Watching:
4 part recorded discussion from the Global Environment Network: In Conversation – Conservation’s Leading Edges: Transforming conservation practice through indigenous-led M&E
Speaking of Nature: finding language that affirms our kinship with the natural world by Robin Wall Kimmerer and her wonderful book Braiding Sweetgrass
The Land in our Bones: Plantcestral herbalism and healing cultures from Syria to the Sinai – Earth-based pathways to ancestral stewardship and belonging in diaspora by Layla K. Feghali
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