Medicine Stories

Latest Episodes:

Reclaiming Kitchen Wisdom & Ancestral Healing - Darla Antoine Jun 23, 2018

Show notes

Calling in the grandmothers! The more dependent we are on the industrialized food system- and the more entranced we are by diet culture- the further removed we are from our ancestors. Food is a bridge between the land, our bodies, and those whose bodies we come from.

Darla Antoine is a mixed race Okanagan tribal member, ancestral activist and healer, mother and accidental homesteader in the high mountains of Costa Rica. Darla helps mixed-race and mixed-culture seekers become rooted into place and lineage by combining her master's degree in food and culture, ancestral healing and her own experiences as a mixed race woman and expat.

In the Intro:

My unexpected, super transformative podcast hiatus: shingles and a family emergency
Fat is love (and an absolutely necessary nutrient for the brain & every single cell in the body)
Giveaway!

In the Interview:

Ancestry that's deeply embedded in the land
The Grandmother Hypothesis
How diet culture keeps us separated from our ancestors
Disordered eating & how the fear of fat is pushing us away from what it means to be human
To learn about your ancestor's lives, look below the level of empire (& what that means)
Reclaiming kitchen wisdom as an act of resistance against the dominant, patriarchal, industrial food system
The medicine that people of mixed race are bringing to the world right now
Dreams as guideposts
A mythic matriarchal dreamscape
Charting serendipity: When you're in the right story, nothing doesn't fit

Links:

Darla's website
The Medicine Stories Patreon page
The Medicine Stories Facebook group
The Mythic Medicine website
Take our fun quiz Which Healing Herb Matches Your Energy?
Zach Bush's website
How to Feed a Brain by Cavin Balaster
Head Strong by Dave Asprey
Fat for Fuel by Dr. Joseph Mercola
Music by Mariee Siou (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)

Land Based Living, Mothering, & Eating - Suuzi Hazen May 29, 2018

Show notes

Our denatured modern culture doesn't work for our Paleolithic human bodies, as the epidemics of autoimmune issues, degenerative disease, and so many other modern health problems show us. Relearning what our ancestors knew about plants, animals, the land, and the human body in order to integrate that knowledge into today's world is a vital step toward health and wholeness.

This is an in-person conversation between two close friends, two mothers (Suuzi once nursed my baby for me y'all), two women trained in different forms of holistic healing who share an interest in ancestral wisdom and a commitment to honest vulnerability.

Suuzi Hazen runs a small mixed farm in Northern California, where she lives with her husband and sons. She has a Master's Degree in Oriental Medicine and a BA in English Literature and Women's Studies. Growing up in rural Canada, she spent her childhood outdoors exploring nature and enthralled by stories of her farming ancestors. She's fascinated by and very knowledgeable about traditional and aboriginal lifeways, especially regarding families, child rearing, hunting and foraging, nutrition, and sexuality.

Best NOT to listen with kids in the room.

In the Intro:

Giveaway!

In the Interview:

How we met & accepting help as an exchange of energy
Sex & bodies & desire after having a baby and other realities of modern motherhood
How we've lost basic wisdom about health
The microbiome & the deep self (Dr. Zach Bush is everything)
Mitochondria & degenerative disease
Autoimmune issues are the new infectious disease
Everything that happens in your body has meaning & everything you do has an effect (damnit)
Modern Western medicine is LTRLY based on cadaver studies- dead bodies are considered baseline
Our food journeys- from processed food and industrialized agriculture to vegetarianism and veganism to traditional foods
Ancestral food resonances
My past with anxiety, depression, self harm, weight gain & loss, and the aftermath of my vegan pregnancy
Nursing babies literally deplete the minerals from your bones- deep nourishment is needed
The illusion of human supremacy: there's not such a big difference between plant and animal consciousness
Nature is an ongoing life/death/life cycle and we all consume the bodies of other entities; as Susun Weed says, "Now I eat you, now you eat me"- we are not separate from nature
Animism as the oldest form of human spirituality
Distorted notions of clean v dirty food
Why our ancestors and modern hunter gatherers prefer organ meat over muscle meat
A deep dive into the liver- human livers, animal livers, the functions and energetics of this vital organ
Food choices, food prices, food privilege
Love languages and more on sex & motherhood (in which Suuzi introduces me to the word "choreplay")

Links:

Suuzi's website Mother's Best Liver Pills
MythicMedicine.love
Medicine Stories Patreon
Medicine Stories Facebook group
Take our fun quiz Which Healing Herb Matches Your Energy?
Dr. Zach Bush- such important info!!
The Weston A. Price Foundation: Wise Traditions in Food, Farming, and the Healing Arts
Real Food: What to Eat & Why by Nina Planck
Head Strong by Dave Asprey
U.S. Wellness Meats
The Five Love Languages

True Holistic Healing: Bridging Plant & Human Consciousness - Sajah Popham May 08, 2018

Show notes

The vital intelligence of nature is the force behind all growth, healing, and renewal, and our work as plant healers deepens greatly when we can match whole plants with whole people living inside the dynamic multiverse of the whole cosmos.

One of the most common stumbling block upon the path of the budding herbalist is the this-herb-for-that-ailment approach to plant medicine. If you ever catch yourself asking "What's this plant good for?" then this mind blowing episode, and my guest Sajah's FREE online video course (which changed my life forever last year by deepening my understanding of what true healing is), is for you:

Vitalist Herbalism Mini Course

Sajah Popham, founder of Organic Unity and The School of Evolutionary Herbalism, is a student of the universal truths found within both ancient and modern herbal traditions from around the world. The focus of his work is on integrating ancient teachings for a new paradigm of plant medicine, one that is truly holistic in its honoring of the spirit, energetics, and body of both people and plants. His unique synthesis bridges herbalism not only east and west, but north and south, above and below, into a universal philosophy that encompasses Ayurveda, western alchemy and spagyrics, astrology, clinical herbalism, and modern pharmacology.

Sajah's vitalist approach utilizes plants not only for physiological healing and rejuvenation, but for the evolution of consciousness, for a truly holistic practice of plant medicine. Sajah's teachings embody a heartfelt respect, honor and reverence for the vast intelligence of plants in a way that empowers us to look deeper into the nature of our medicines and ourselves. He lives in southern Oregon with his wife Whitney where he teaches at his school, makes spagyric medicines, and practices his art.

In the Intro:

The way in which most of us (including me) are called to the plant path
It's time to remember who we are
The multidimensional medicine of Calendula
What I do when I want to remember new information forever
How understanding the ancient idea of vitalism changed my approach to plant healing

In the Interview:

The real definition of holistic medicine (it's probably not what you think it is)
Approaching plant relationships the way we approach human relationships
Why a balanced approach to herbal learning includes intellect, intuition, science, tradition, personal experience, and the experiences of others
The best way to get to know a plant
The two words that Sajah saw in a newspaper while clearing tables at a coffee shop job and how they changed his life forever
The role synchronicity played in introducing Sajah to one of his most beloved plant allies
Alchemy- the wholeness of the plant and the wholeness of the person integrated into the wholeness of the cosmos, and the importance using plants for the psyche and spirit as well as for the physical
Mythic astrology, the archetypes of the zodiac, and plants as bridges connecting our internal microcosm to the celestial macrocosm
Lung herbs and grief
Ancient ancestral resonances and the memory we carry in our DNA
The vitalist approach to herbalism- "something that is created by the whole is going to be more intelligent than something created by the part"
Plants mentioned include oregon grape root, devils club, wood betony, ceanothus, osha, and mullein

Show Notes:

Vitalist Herbalism Mini Course
Evolutionary Herbalism website
The Plant Path Podcast
The Medicine Stories Patreon page
The Medicine Stories Facebook group
Take our fun quiz Which Healing Herb Matches Your Energy?
Music by Mariee Siou (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)

Intuitive Whispers: Deep Memory & Woven Fate Apr 17, 2018

Show notes

What fate is your intuition calling you toward? Who do you walk with outside of time? With what and with whom are you most deeply interwoven?

This is the story of a flower I fell in love with and what happened when I made an essence with it. It's about intuitive connection with the earth, the ancestors, and the deep self.

Show Notes:

Asia Suler's Intuitive Plant Medicine online course (registration closes 4/28!)

My blog post Flower Essences are Story Medicine

Reclaiming Yourself Through Nature & the Ancestors - Vicky Salcido-Cobbe Apr 09, 2018

Show notes

Our human roots go deep, both into the earth and into the past, and we cannot know ourselves if we don't know our roots. Yet most of us in the modern West feel adrift, cut off from those things which fundamentally belong to us and which have always sustained humanity. This sense of isolation and the loss of meaning causes us to feel lost, bereft, without purpose.

A lived, daily relationship with the natural world and an embodied connection with our ancestors are the birthright of every one of us, and more and more of us are reclaiming ourselves by reclaiming these simple, sacred things.

Vicky Salcido-Cobbe is an herbalist, gardener, teacher, writer, and the proud daughter of Mexican immigrants. After years of feeling lost to herself and engaging in self-destructive habits, her life changed in an instant when a clinician offered her a bottle of herbal extract as medicine. She and her husband Russ now work with the land to create small-scale remedies for their herbal apothecary La Tierra Buena Collective (formerly Grandmother's Medicine.)

In the Intro:

The usual, plus my crying toddler
Herbal Medicine Giveaway from Vicky!
Sorry not sorry

In the Interview:

Names as seeds planted by our parents
The years Vicky was lost to herself (with some drugs and tall cans), and how she found herself again (with the moon and tall trees)
How having big, mystical experiences without proper integration can cause more confusion and pain
How nature and the ancestors have always sustained humanity, why we feel so bereft when we lose connection with them, and how we find ourselves when we rekindle those relationships
How this suburban SoCal girl stumbled upon the plant path- "herbalism was the way I reclaimed myself"
The realities of running an herbal products business
(Random segue into One Weird Use for Breastmilk)
Dreaming about Wal-Mart (& what it means when you have mostly mundane dreams)
Vicky gets really really real about the evolution of her sexuality- masturbation, porn, the shameful stuff we don't like to talk about in our culture- and being extremely candid with her husband now that she's figuring herself out
70s v 90s porn
Why the dominant image and dynamic of women needing to please men and get their approval in order to gain entrance into a sexual relationship is the opposite of reality, the opposite of biology in most animal species, including humans, and is a dangerous paradigm that upends nature and hurts girls, women, boys, men, and everyone else
Vicky's recent transition from embodying the maiden to mother archetype (without having physically birthed children)

Show Notes:

La Tierra Buena Collective
Grandmother's Medicine
The Medicine Stories Patreon page
The Medicine Stories Facebook group
MythicMedicine.love
Take our fun quiz Which Healing Herb Matches Your Energy?
Music by Mariee Siou (from the song Wild Eyes)

Psychedelic Healing: From Microdosing to Transcendence - James Fadiman Mar 27, 2018

Show notes

Safe, therapeutic, and sacred psychedelic journeys have the potential to enact profound transformation and healing on both a personal and a societal level. Many mistake these substances for party drugs, but their true medicine lies in the properly prepared and undertaken journey inward.

Scientists were just starting to understand the therapeutic benefits of LSD, psilocybin, and more in the 1960's when the many studies being done were suddenly shut down. Research is thriving again today, and we are beginning to understand their role in healing addiction, PTSD, anxiety and depression, and so much more.

James Fadiman has been at the forefront of this research for over 50 years. He is a writer and researcher with a PhD in Psychology and is the author of many books, including The Psychedelic Explorers Guide, which details how both journeyers and guides can create optimal conditions to have the best possible experience. Jim has also popularized the phenomenon of microdosing (taking tiny, sub-perceptual microdoses of psychedelic substances to enhance performance and treat ailments).

In the Intro:

How Jim and I met
The amazing free resource Jim is making available to listeners

In the Interview:

That feeling when the future Ram Dass gives you LSD in Paris and changes your life forever
Ken Kesey, Albert Hoffman, Huston Smith and other heroes of mine who Jim knew
Why psychedelic research got shut down in the 60's and what was being researched then
How psychedelics work
How to have safe, therapeutic, and sacred journeys
Microdosing for: depression, colds, menstrual problems, asthma, allergies, stroke, and SO MUCH MORE
Dying is absolutely safe

Links:

Jim's Website
Free Journey Guide PDF at the Medicine Stories Patreon page
Microdosing Psychedelics website
Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS)
MythicMedicine.love (my website)
Take our fun quiz Which Healing Herb Matches Your Energy?
The Medicine Stories Facebook group
Music by Mariee Siou (from the song Wild Eyes)

Folk Herbalism & the Wild Self - Jesse Wolf Hardin Mar 15, 2018

Show notes

Herbalism has always been the medicine of the people, but most of us in the West have been cut off from our earthbound roots and encouraged to forget our innate, ancestral ability to work and heal with plant medicines. Both despite and because of this, an herbal resurgence is slowly uprooting the dominant paradigm as ever more people heed the calling in their hearts to return to the old ways. No one has done more to share knowledge, encourage people of all skill levels, and bring folks together than Jesse Wolf Hardin (and his partner Kiva Rose).

Wolf is an acclaimed ecosopher, author, ecological and social activist, artist, musician, and historian– a champion of both human and bio diversity, as well as of nature's medicine. He has been a leading voice of and for the natural world for over four decades, coining the term "ReWilding" in the 1970's. He has been a featured presenter at hundreds of conferences and universities, and is the author of over 600 published articles in over 200 different publications and over 20 books, his work earning the praises of luminaries such as Gary Snyder, Terry Tempest Williams, Joanna Macy, Ralph Metzner, and Starhawk.

IN THE INTRO:

-How I met Wolf & Kiva

-Story medicine, psychedelic healing, witches & wise ones

IN THE INTERVIEW:

-The Plant Healer vision and how it's evolved

-A child's life changing epiphany in an avocado tree at military school

-What re-wilding means, from the man who coined the now-ubiquitous word

-Folk herbalism and the infinite ways to walk the plant path

-The three books Wolf had with him when he came into the land he would go on to steward for the next four decades in New Mexico

-The recent planned unassisted home birth of Wolf and Kiva's son of Ælfyn Wolfson Thorn Hardin

-The fabulous Good Medicine Confluence- "Any pretense of pretending it's a conference is over"

-Helping plant people reclaim their own traditions

-Regulation and the assault on herbalism (and women) from the 1700's to now

-Standing up for who we are as wild-hearted healers in a sterile society

-How Wolf & Kiva met and why their partnership works and is so creatively productive

-The sense of enchantment that feeds those who follow their calling

-Balancing a rational and magical approach to herbalism

LINKS:

-Find Plant Healer Magazine, Herbaria newsletter, the Good Medicine Confluence, Wolf's books, and more at PlantHealer.org

-The Mythic Medicinals shop

-Medicine Stories Patreon

-Medicine Stories Facebook Group

-Take our fun quiz Which Healing Herb Matches Your Energy?

-Music by Mariee Siou (from the song Wild Eyes)

Without a Village: Isolation, Honesty, and the Paradoxes of Modern Motherhood Mar 09, 2018

Show notes

We evolved raising children in clans of 50 or more other humans; today we live in homes with just a few other people. It goes against our very biology to raise children in isolation. It's really hard and really lonely, and it's not your fault.

In this episode I ramble into the microphone about my parenting journey. I am brutally honest and don't paint a rainbow over everything at the end. If you're already a parent, this episode will comfort you. If you're not and want to be, it'll give you a glimpse of your possible future and also maybe terrify you. If you're not and plan to keep it that way, you'll learn how to better understand and support the parents in your life.

I talk about:

-How our fractured, nuclear family living hurts families and relationships

-Emotional labor, women's invisible work, and the endless To Do list

-The very different experiences I had with my daughters, born ten years apart

-Sleep: I've both co-slept and sleep trained (also- SIDS and entrainment)

-Realistic self care- does it exist? Kinda. Here's what I do

-Building community

-Herbs for mamas & kiddos

-When does postpartum end?

-Anxiety & motherhood

-Choosing not to have kids

-How the Maiden to Mother transition is different for everyone

-The bone deep depletion of mothering

-Being envious of non parents

-Failing every day

-Come gather around this fire with me

Links:

Medicine Stories Patreon & my favorite parenting resources
Medicine Stories Facebook Group
Music by Mariee Siou (from the song Wild Eyes)
Take our fun quiz Which Healing Herb Matches Your Energy?

Living in Your Ancestral Human Body - Katy Bowman Feb 26, 2018

Show notes

Birth and death are the bookends that mark every human life, and in them and in between them there is movement. Our ancestors moved in a variety of ways throughout their days- foraging, hunting, seeking new landscapes, building shelter, birthing and carrying children, breastfeeding, processing food, finding water, etc. Physiologically, we are the exact same species; our bodies are identical to those of our prehistoric forebears.

Our biology hasn't changed, but our culture and physical environments have. Today, even the most active among us are mostly sedentary, and exercisers have just as many health problems and experience just as much injury as non-exercisers. We don't need more exercise (yay!), we need more MOVEMENT.

A biomechanist by training and a problem-solver at heart, Katy Bowman is radically changing our assumptions about what it means to live in an ancient human body in a modern and ever-changing world. She makes movement fun and shows people how to integrate it into every aspect of their lives. Her award-winning blog and podcast, Move Your DNA, reach hundreds of thousands of people every month, and thousands have taken her live classes. Her funny, wise, life-changing books have been critically acclaimed and translated worldwide.

In the Intro:

How Katy's work changed my concept of myself & what I'm capable of
Giveaway, Upcoming Event, etc.
Herb Learnin'- herbs are not "pseudo pharmaceuticals"

In the Interview:

Ancestral movement: stepping outside ourselves and looking at the wide scope of human time
Exercise as monoculture and movement as permaculture
Stacking your life- integrating movement into everything else
Finding your own roots (not someone else's), and why 2018 is the year Katie finds her ancestors
Katy's connection to the great-grandmother she was named after
Self reliance and how we're shaped by the times we live in
The recent unassisted home death of Katy's father, and the parallels Katy saw between that and birth
The many other deaths in Katy's life within a 12 month period and how her movement practice kept her in a state of grace throughout the process
Movement as a metabolizer of stress and emotions
Bringing movement into grief- wailing, keening, caring for the body, (pallbearing!)
Keep moving because "there's always another wave coming"
Katy's recurring whale dream and the moment she lived it in real life
Reverence for the capacity and consciousness of cetaceans
Katy helps me break through my limited thinking around some of the things I spend most of my time doing (while sitting still)
The conscious practice of paying attention to what captures your imagination

Links:

Katy's website Nutritious Movement
Medicine Stories Patreon & my journey w/ pain & (non)movement
My interview on the Self Care Club podcast
The Good Medicine Confluence
Our Extra Potent Elderberry Elixir
Medicine Stories Facebook Group
Music by Mariee Siou (from the song Wild Eyes)
Take our fun quiz Which Healing Herb Matches Your Energy?

Know Thyself: Weaving Myth & Magic Into Everyday Life - Ariella Daly Feb 13, 2018

Show notes

Here's the secret about magic: it's not elusive, it's not hard to find, and it's everywhere. Magic happens when we follow the mythic threads that call to our soul and travel ever deeper into ourselves. We court magic when we take our inner yearnings seriously- by paying attention to dreams, symbols, old stories, ancestry, etc.- and more & more meaning and synchronicity become woven into the fabric of our daily lives.

Ariella is a beekeeper, musician, and storyteller. A student of the Path of Pollen, she has studied honey bee shamanism and the way of the Melissae for the past 8 years in the United Kingdom. She developed an interested in earth wisdom at an early age, creating her first herb garden and herbal remedies at the age of 15. Plant lore and an affinity for traditional folk music led her to study the myth and folk wisdom of her Celtic ancestry. As a result, she has over 25 years experience designing, leading, and participating in Celtic and earth-based practices and ceremony. She believes in the power of body as guide and nature as ally, and is committed to fostering relationships between the human and non-human world. She employs her skills with group facilitation in a number of workshops and classes focused on beekeeping, dreamwork, and women's embodied wisdom.

In the Intro:

Dreamwork
Me, my birthday, my dead mom, & something meaningful that happened
Herb Learnin'- the myth of precise dosage
Finding plant resonances

In the Interview:

The beautiful stories behind the meaning of Ariella's name
How the tales her father told her as a child planted a seed that started Ari following the mythic threads of her Celtic ancestry a decade later and inspired many pilgrimages to her ancestral countries
Reclaiming the lost indigenous and women's wisdom from your line
The grief of displacement and how our animal bodies recognize our ancestral homelands
Ariella's devastating miscarriage and the lessons and healing that followed (including how her lost daughter brought the bees into her life) and how our biggest traumas are what we weave our gold out of
Ari's initiation into ancestral, shamanic beekeeping
Folklore & magic of place: that feeling when the fae folk/spirits of the land appear and offer you entrance to the Otherworld as you're standing at midnight on a sacred hill at Glastonbury that centuries of lore say is a powerful portal (a true story)
Raven meaning & medicine
Spontaneous, heart-opening healing: "the piece of me that left came back in"
"My whole life has been led by listening to the animals and plants"
Embodying your ancestry through story, music, the land
How to study and work with Ari

Links:

Ariella's website Honey Bee Wild
Ari's music
Take our fun quiz Which Healing Herb Matches Your Energy?
Mythic Medicinals Sleep & Dream Elixir
Medicine Stories Patreon & our dreamwork conversation
Medicine Stories Facebook Group
Music by Mariee Siou (from the song Wild Eyes)

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