Local Wild Living Soil 2020 at Turtle Lake Refuge

During this course, I gained further insight into the connection of mind, body and soul. There are so many alternative healing therapies out there, and as a 23-year-old who’s had about 6 years experience working with nutritionists and other health-minded professionals and herbalists, I have so many questions. We live in a world where where information is constantly being thrown at us. It’s our job to be able to differentiate from what we are told and developing what we believe. In Holistic Health, things can seem pretty static: the homeopath believes in homeopathy, the Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner believes in TCM and the herbalist believes in herbalism. As I continue to go on to practice Clinical Herbalism and become a healer, I never want to be static in my practice; I want to be constantly learning, evolving, open to new theories and ideas and a community that can support me doing so.

I believe the key to be able to “pull from” different alternative healing therapies when they are most appropriate is through knowledge. The biggest takeaway from this course is the exposure I had to different ways of thinking and alternative healing therapies. Over the duration of two months, we discussed: wild foods: how to ID & nutritional content, the benefits of green juice, Eastern Energetics, Mushrooms and Mycoremediation, Sprouting Basics, Variations of Fermented Foods, digestion, detoxing the body, Body Care with Wild Plants, Permaculture applications to the land and oneself, natural plant dyes, herbal materia medica based on personal experience from the teachers, medicine making, homeopathy, the history of medicine in the united states, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Korean Natural Farming, medicine making and a variety of movement from yoga, cranial sacral massage, Qigong and more. In this class, I learned how to listen to my body. At the start of this course I set out to answer these things:

1. The best way to consume herbal remedies, tea/decoration or tincture?
2. A deeper understanding of different approaches to medicine.
3. A better understanding of permaculture
4. Alternative approaches to weed removal & garden maintenance that don’t include pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers.
5. A deeper connection to wild foods and incorporating them into the diet
6. Plant ID 

Fortunately, I was able to accomplish all of these very but was able to gain something even more important during this course – a deeper understanding of myself.

My biggest takeaway from the course was from Don Lewis in his class on Natural Therapeutics. In this class I learned that textbooks students in medical school read are funded by big pharmaceutical companies. I also learned that medical schools don’t offer a course on history of medicine, as do most other disciplines and fields of study. For a long time I’d been thinking attending medical school to become a naturopathic doctor, and this class showed me that I absolutely don’t want do that. I know that I would not be able to do something that was funded by something I fundamentally disagree with – big pharma. I found it fascinating that pre 1900s medicine was focused on stimulating the intelligence the body already posses and was not focused on labeling disease. This was the beginning of what we know as a Vitalist practice. 

Before the American Medical Association was founded in the United States, homeopathy was practiced throughout the country. Founded my Samuel Hahnemann, the prative believes only in treating diseases and refrains from using labels. For years, I’ve lived with the labels PMDD, anxiety and depression and have let them define me. Recently, I’ve lived my life as if I didn’t have any of these things and when I feel sad, hormonal or anxious, I seek herbs and movement that will help me to overcome these feelings and am working toward no longer using my labels as an excuse to dwell in my sorrows. While these labels are helpful, I’ve found that most of my life I’ve used them as a reason to not take care of myself. 

Don Talked about the vital force, a term that has been removed from current medical texts. The vital force deals with the bodies ability to heal itself. Oftentimes, people get sick when they go on vacation; this is because the body is finally able to rest. It’s like the body signs with relief saying, “I finally have a chance to breathe, now I’m going to focus on healing.” Getting sick is just that: our bodies way of healing when it has built up comorbidities. When I was younger, I would get flu-like symptoms and a sinus infection every year and every year I would go to the doctor and get an antibiotic to “feel better,” or so I thought. This happened all throughout my childhood until finally I got pneumonia when I was 16 or 17 years old. 

Each year, the sickness wasn’t able to run its natural course allowing my body to fully heal which ultimately resulted in me getting pneumonia. This is a pretty typical pattern in people and represents a buildup of comorbidities in my body. Don defined morbidities as a accumulation of undigested residues. This was an example of subacute symptoms, or my body suppressing the sickness. The next step of disease is chronic: this is where people get labeled with diseases. In my situation, this is my anxiety, depression and PMDD. This step is defined by residues from pharmaceuticals and a tolerance to antibiotics after years of taking them. The last step of disease is degenerative when the vital force begins to get overwhelmed by germs and you get really sick. After years of antibiotics as a kid, I think I fall in the chronic range and am working towards back-tracking into the subacute range as I disassociate myself with the chronic diseases I”ve been labeled with. This breakdown of health and disease was really crucial to me understanding and confirming all my body has been through from a childhood filled with pharmaceutical to help my asthma and chronic sickness. 

Another big takeaway from the course was the thermal nature of plants. Taught by Deb Buck, she was able to tie in the Thermal Nature of Plants with her talk on lung-soothing herbs. The first herb we talked about is Yarrow, which according to the Thermal Nature of Plants, is cooling. This means that if you’re a cold person, stay away from yarrow as it could make you more sick. I had only known yarrow as an herbal first aid tool to stop blood flow in the case of a cut or wound and learned that yarrow is beautiful in its ability to both stop and stimulate blood flow. 

Deb has experience making a yarrow bath to stimulate sweating and increased fever to purify the body and block things from coming in. The plant is a duertietic and will cleanse your body by stimulating urine flow, which is helpful for UTIs when there is bleeding. Dandelion leaves can be used in the case of a UTI that burns when you pee. Yarrow is used to clear heat from the lungs and is best used when you’re experiencing heat in the form of yellow or green mucus. An important takeaway from this class is the importance of healing bruises which are a form of blood stasis. When this happens, blood is congealed and yarrow can be used to help bruise heal. If you let bruises go without healing them, disease can be attracted to the bruise area. To use it in this way, use a salve or oil paired with arnica. Another form of blood stasis is menstrual pain; in this case, drink yarrow tea. Deb reminded us that yarrow his drying, so when consuming, be sure to pair with something moistening plants such as mallow. 

Deb also taught us about hawthorn berries. The bioflavonoids in hawthorn berries work to heal cardiovascular tissue in the body. I had a whole class on their healing powers recently as a part of the Local Wild Living Soil course I’m taking here in Durango. My teacher, Deb Buck, has used these red berries to help ease the stress on her heart because she has heart arrhythmias. Hawthorne berries are to support circulation through the body. To make medicine from these love-inducing berries, she recommends doing a cold infusion first. This would mean letting the dried berries soak in a pan on the stove overnight, then in the morning, letting the berries simmer at a low heat for several hours and drinking the tea. For a powder to make on the go: simply toss the dried berries in a coffee grinder until then turn into a fine powder. Put a couple teaspoons into your smoothie or tea and you have a tasty, medicinal drink. Hawthorn not only helps with the physical heart, but the emotional heart too.

While many of the takeaways I’ve listed above are tangible, my biggest take away was something spiritual and of the heart. I gained a deep intuition of how to understand the connection between plants and humans.

For most of my life I’ve looked for a place where I could fit it and I found it being a part of the Turtle Lake community. I lived on the community farm for the month of September in my tent. I went to sleep each night with the stars and woke up to the sun and the sound of the chickens. I got to be surrounded by other people who love plants as much as I do and saw me for more than the clothes that I wore or the way that I spoke. I learned how to live in a community setting. I worked long farm days, and gained an understanding of how to be an active member of a community. During the local wild living soil course I didn’t drink any alcohol and totally absorbed absorbed myself in what I learned. Turtle Lake feels like a second home to me, and I go back to visit whenever I’m in Southwest Colorado. I was able to let go of many of my material possessions and focus on what really matters, the plants and my connection to the natural world. The lessons I learned out of this course I will take with me for the rest of my life.