Missing Witches - Flower Moon 2020： Nurses Were Witches Once with Ravi

00:00:00.000 You aren't being a proper woman, therefore you must be a witch. 1.00

00:00:03.260 Be a witch! Be a witch! Be a witch! Be a witch! Be a witch! Be a witch! You must be a witch. 1.00

00:00:09.160 Hello to the Missing Witches, Coven, and happy flower moon. 0.83

00:00:15.240 It's your Auntie Amy, and today we'll be chatting with a nurse, witch, and self-described anarcho-herbalist, Ravi.

00:00:25.880 After we spoke, Ravi sent me a ton of links and information, so please check out the show notes

00:00:31.640 for this episode. They are jam-packed. But one of the things that Ravi sent me was a little bit of a

00:00:38.120 distillation on their feelings on the general subject, so I'm going to read that to you now

00:00:43.400 by way of introduction. Ravi wrote,

00:00:46.820 As nurses were one-time witches, I personally feel that holistic nursing is the closest I have

00:00:53.440 come to actually practicing witchcraft and the art of healing. Holistic nursing does not banish

00:00:59.560 CAM, and sorry, I'll just interrupt there for a second for those of you who don't know what CAM

00:01:04.020 is. It's a healthcare acronym for complementary and alternative medicine. Okay, back to Ravi.

00:01:13.100 Holistic nursing does not banish CAM from its purview, but rather embraces it as a part of

00:01:18.200 nursing heritage and continuously massages the entrenched Western healthcare delivery

00:01:23.700 systems into accepting and integrating those often forgotten aspects of healing.

00:01:29.700 For example, I get peer-reviewed publications each month from the AHNA describing how practices

00:01:35.520 like Reiki, prayer, energy fieldwork, and yoga are all within the scope of nursing practice.

00:01:41.420 In my current workplace, we have aromatherapy oils that we offer to patients with anxiety,

00:01:46.160 nausea, or other complaints. We have a smudge room in the hospital for indigenous families 1.00

00:01:50.700 to burn sage together. There are mounds of research about how nurses can use herbalism

00:01:55.580 in their practice both in and out of settings like hospitals. In a world that keeps trying

00:02:00.980 to shut the door on these spiritually charged modes of healing that connect us to earth

00:02:06.520 and to each other, the field of nursing, and specifically holistic nursing, is compassionately

00:02:11.720 holding that link to our ancestors strong. Nursing appreciates and honors traditional

00:02:18.040 modes of healing that patients bring with them to their meetings, and works with the

00:02:22.360 client-patient to integrate these very important and culturally-based perspectives into their

00:02:27.480 healing journey. Nurses also know that the best healer is the client-patient themselves,

00:02:33.080 and educate to empower that individual to make choices that are the best for them.

00:02:37.560 All these things, believe it or not, are also witchcraft.

00:02:43.880 So if Ravi's introduction sparks some interest for you, please sit back and enjoy our conversation. 0.76

00:02:50.100 Happy full moon, babes.

00:02:51.200 Happy full moon!

00:02:53.740 Happy full moon to you.

00:02:55.520 It's the flower moon, so I thought you would be a perfect guest for this.

00:03:00.560 I'll let you introduce yourself to our listeners.

00:03:02.700 Ravi, go ahead.

00:03:04.080 Oh, sure.

00:03:04.640 my um my Sanskrit name is Ravi Dev Priyakar and uh yeah flower moon is one of my very favorite

00:03:11.500 of the full moons although I have to have to confess it's that I do love all of them

00:03:16.660 you gotta love a full moon so who are you who are you what are you doing oh man what am I doing

00:03:24.560 that's a really good question what am I doing with my life um so I guess that I'm a collection

00:03:32.580 of a lot of different things that I found that I like. I'm a nurse. I'm a witch. I am a yoga

00:03:39.940 teacher. I also just recently got a certification to teach something called ULA1, which is a really

00:03:47.300 cool yoga-inspired dance kind of class. I'm an activist and a gardener, and I guess explorer

00:03:57.780 is a good word. Um, yeah, I just kind of keep collecting little identities as I go. I'm an

00:04:03.640 amalgamation of the different things I found in my life that I enjoy. And one of the larger focuses

00:04:09.600 that I've seen from you is herbalism. Yes. So I, I know that you're into plant medicine, but like

00:04:16.780 in your, in your childhood attractions, which came first, like healing or plants? Definitely plants.

00:04:24.640 um my so yeah i do identify as a herbalist and i'm mostly self-studied um it kind of came along

00:04:31.820 with the the medical route that i took which was circuitously brought me around towards nursing

00:04:38.480 um but whenever i was a kid we were always outside um constantly and we would take these

00:04:46.440 long family backpacking trips throughout palatia and we were always um looking up the names of the

00:04:54.180 plants and taking pictures of flowers. And my parents even would make us close our eyes and

00:04:59.540 touch the bark of a tree and have them have us tell them what kind of tree it was just based on

00:05:04.380 the way it felt. So I've had a very immersive introduction to not only plants, but also earth

00:05:14.080 and how, you know, living with the earth and what works and what doesn't work. And

00:05:19.420 um and that goes into other things too like responsible hunting and just a whole a whole

00:05:25.120 plethora of ecological sort of um learning the whole time I grew up and I have always loved

00:05:33.300 plants always loved them and I remember even like up to my adulthood like whenever we had to

00:05:41.060 pull up the weeds like I was like why does that why does that one have to be called a weed why

00:05:47.000 what's wrong with it why doesn't it get to stay and um you know if uh if my mom had to

00:05:53.580 had to thin out some some plants like i would cry because those plants didn't get to make it

00:06:00.440 to their adulthood and realize their potential like yeah i remember asking my mother too uh who

00:06:06.760 decided which ones were weeds yeah my daughter actually got me a t-shirt that says dandelions

00:06:12.900 are flowers too because it's my that's my big uh my big activist here in montana um people hate

00:06:22.780 dandelions with such a ferocity that really baffles me and i'm always like but why and

00:06:29.080 they're like because they get in the way of my green lawn and mars the landscape and i'm just

00:06:33.740 like dude my utterly useless green grass lawn like what do you do you look at it

00:06:40.020 yeah it's a very like a settler mentality of like everything has to be uniform and precise and and

00:06:48.880 under control and how they want it to be oh my god i have always just instinctively rebelled

00:06:55.300 against that and so i find a great ally in dandelions um for that reason is they will not

00:07:01.800 give up but also just in general like they're the coolest plant they're the one of the first ones

00:07:07.100 that comes up in the spring, their, their, their whole body is medicine, like all throughout the

00:07:13.700 season, every part of them, all they want to do is make you happy. Can you break that down for our

00:07:18.980 listeners? Every part of them is medicine. Yeah. So with plant medicine, there are different ways

00:07:28.760 to allow yourself with the plant and to utilize what the plant has to offer. And sometimes it's

00:07:34.920 the root sometimes it's the leaf sometimes it's the flower or the seed the root part is the part

00:07:42.220 below ground and then the aerial part is the part above the ground and with dandelions for instance

00:07:48.620 the root is something that you could harvest in the before the before the leaves come out in this

00:07:55.660 very early spring or in the late fall after it's gone to seed and the medicine has all gone down

00:08:01.260 into the roots because that's where all the energy and the sugar of the plant has gone down

00:08:05.480 to sleep. And then in the spring, when the first leaves come up, they are using all of that stored

00:08:11.360 energy and they are the part of the plant that has the most potency. Whenever the first flower

00:08:18.900 comes up, then that flower is where all the life is as well. So as the plant goes through its season

00:08:27.600 and as the world sort of turns around it, there's different ways to utilize the different parts of

00:08:35.480 a plant. The root is a particular kind of medicine. It's very good for flushing your

00:08:40.900 lymph system and it's very cleansing and supportive. The leaves have an amazing amount

00:08:47.840 of vitamins and minerals and also detoxifying things. So after a whole winter of having to

00:08:53.460 live off of whatever you store it as potatoes or beans or these, these very, you know, stagnating

00:09:01.640 type of habits that we have, then it helps to like brighten everything up and it flushes your system

00:09:07.380 and gives you a bunch of vitamin C just in time to make sure that you don't get sick. And then

00:09:12.700 the flowers similarly have, have their own set of things to offer. And it's just all, it kind of

00:09:18.880 reminds me of something that i started to notice especially in montana it's a very interesting

00:09:23.860 ecosystem and um if there is something that the environment might cause to happen then there's a

00:09:34.040 plant that can heal it so we get these horribly long winters i say horribly and i i should i

00:09:41.460 should uh acknowledge that i actually i do love the winter they just they're very long here um so

00:09:48.120 i live in northern quebec so yes i can relate to the horribly long winter it's like seven months

00:09:54.760 sometimes so it's really long oh my god last year i don't know how y'all's winter was but i

00:10:00.400 it snowed into june here and yes um oh my god i had such a hard time getting anything to grow

00:10:09.200 um it snowed all the way into june and then we had snow in october so i had a grand total of

00:10:15.160 three months where the ground wasn't tragic frozen it was really sad but uh it's a beautiful sunny

00:10:23.200 day here and so i'm trying my best to uh get the get the grasses out of the out of the garden plot

00:10:30.560 and try to plant some potatoes before it snows again i know i know you're also uh in addition

00:10:36.800 to gardening you're also into foraging so i have sort of a specific question for myself and hopefully

00:10:43.240 our listeners can get something out of this answer too because i live in the woods but i have

00:10:48.740 what i call fear of foraging i'm terrible because it's like i so many things i read are like

00:10:56.300 this plant looks very similar to this plant this one is delicious and full of antioxidants and

00:11:01.920 this one is absolute deadly poison so i've done the things they're obvious ones like you know

00:11:08.800 wild raspberry bushes and dandelions like you mentioned but how do i conquer the the fear of

00:11:16.020 foraging without like just devoting my entire life to the study yeah yeah good question so

00:11:23.240 number one um that never goes away and number two yeah number two i don't think that we need

00:11:34.780 it to go away i think that having a certain level of um awareness that the plants are can be

00:11:44.240 dangerous is really healthy for us because you know there's a certain level of respect that you

00:11:50.500 need to have going out into the woods and you need to remember that you know plants are conscious

00:11:55.720 and and they need you to ask their permission and sometimes if you're not paying very close

00:12:02.120 attention to them, they can trick you. And so, yeah, it's something to keep in mind that

00:12:08.880 it can be very useful, this kind of shadow side of foraging. Remembering that you can't just go

00:12:19.460 out and take everything that you want is very important. So remembering that the plant requires

00:12:26.300 you to get to know them and learn their little idiosyncrasies and be able to tell them apart

00:12:33.260 from other people. It's kind of like, you know, if you remember being a kid and you didn't like

00:12:37.640 it when your mom forgot your name and said every other name in the house before they got to your

00:12:41.100 name, it happens all the time. And of course they know you, but you know, it, there's something

00:12:48.240 about about this this this knowledge seeking that is very sacred and so if if you're interested in

00:12:58.380 foraging my usual recommendation is to start real real small start slow start with things that you

00:13:07.280 know don't have a poisonous look alike so like like roses a rose is a rose is a rose and rose

00:13:14.740 tips are abundant um other things that i've you know as i was learning i was like okay how do i

00:13:21.860 find like an onion and the things i was reading is like well if it smells like an onion it's an

00:13:26.700 onion so you're good um so finding out for yourself reading a lot using reputable resources

00:13:36.160 and that's where um a lot of my my particular passion comes through is you know autonomously

00:13:42.960 and responsibly figuring out stuff for yourself is is a is a really powerful thing and so

00:13:51.040 making learning yourself in a responsible way so that you can become uh knowledgeable in this way

00:13:58.960 is your best bet whenever you're going to go foraging um and so then getting to know your

00:14:05.020 landscape too so just going out in the woods and sitting still and looking around you and like what

00:14:12.120 does that plant look like what is this doing what are the patterns that I'm seeing over the years

00:14:16.480 that I'm living here that kind of thing and just kind of getting to know it a little bit

00:14:21.180 all that can can increase your comfort level and also let you get to know things and then as you

00:14:27.700 delve into it more academically speaking and studying it and getting yourself a really good

00:14:32.300 guidebook checking yourself against other people I remember I found a mushroom and I was so excited

00:14:40.460 because I thought it was, it was a reishi and I wasn't entirely sure. And I was looking it up

00:14:45.720 online and I was like, okay, it could be this, but oh my gosh, it looks so very similar to that.

00:14:50.180 And did I, did I not see it properly? And you know, what if the one next to it looks more like

00:14:54.740 this one? And you know, all these different things. So I put it out on the Instagram and was

00:14:58.900 like, okay, people, I think I found this thing. What do you think? And I got a couple people

00:15:04.160 responding and they were like, okay, no, what you found is this. And then I could look that up and

00:15:09.640 like compare it and so having trusted friends who can help you out with it too is is also really

00:15:16.900 important do you have any uh sources books or online otherwise you don't have to list them now

00:15:24.260 but if you have something in mind for our listeners we'll put it in the show notes

00:15:27.720 yeah i would have to think about that and uh write them down i think because let's see what do i do

00:15:35.120 um my my books that i have i i need to look at them there's a there's a person who wrote like

00:15:43.440 the book on montana foraging and she's on instagram as well and um and she is has been

00:15:49.900 a great guide for me and i'm gonna have to look it up and find her actual name but she she wrote

00:15:54.700 a great book but i think that that's an important point is that it's really important to find people

00:15:59.720 who are kind of local to your area to teach you if someone someone teaching me about cactus

00:16:05.260 a cactus is not going to help me in the in the woods probably not no um so yeah the other ones

00:16:13.780 i've always had like the peterson guides um those are really useful for identification

00:16:18.760 medicinal and and herbal foraging um mosby actually came out with um a nursing guidebook

00:16:27.140 for herbs and supplements mosby is like the drug book out on the market and they have one to guide

00:16:33.520 you for those because the because because cam is getting bigger and bigger and holistic nursing is

00:16:39.080 is my specialty so um that's really cool it's um there's all it's always fun to find like people

00:16:48.920 that you didn't know knew things too so like this this book that that i have and she's very local

00:16:55.480 to montana but i i had never heard of her before and she knows everything about the plants

00:16:59.960 for a life of me i can't remember their name um yes i will have to to look back through kind of

00:17:07.680 what i what i'm looking at and let you know better sure and we'll put it all in the show notes

00:17:13.640 yeah so let's just no let's jump to something that i read on your page and and i'll let you

00:17:20.680 respond to it. Witches were nurses once and continue to carry the torch for integrating

00:17:37.140 the art and the science of healing. What does that mean? 0.63

00:17:41.500 ah that's that's a big the big topic area i will try to to bring it down to a couple sentences um

00:17:52.740 so the the first thing i usually recommend um for reading or for this first part the first

00:18:02.500 part of the sentence was witches were nurses once barbara ehrenreich and uh yeah you're not

00:18:07.340 English wrote this amazing book, which is Nurses and Midwives.

00:18:13.340 And for our listeners, you've heard me talk about this book, I think, in many several episodes.

00:18:18.920 I'm going to, again, as I always do, there's a free PDF.

00:18:22.340 Please buy the book.

00:18:23.820 But if you can't afford it, then just click on the PDF that I'm going to put in the show notes.

00:18:28.880 Go ahead, Ravi.

00:18:30.160 Yeah. 0.99

00:18:30.440 So, Witches Were Nurses Once. 0.97

00:18:32.360 um we we know from history that there were medicinal women and wise women who would fit 1.00

00:18:44.360 into what we call a nurse who were the ones that knew about how to take care of yourself how to 1.00

00:18:52.440 take care of other people and how to integrate your world into your healing so with plants but

00:19:00.360 also you know spirituality and a lot of different things currently in our contemporary sort of

00:19:08.840 iteration of this wise woman we find it mostly in the field of nursing it's very very evident in

00:19:16.980 this field and that that's because the the praxis of nursing really rests on the idea that the

00:19:27.840 individual is their best healer and it takes an integration of just like in ancient times and

00:19:36.860 ancient ways of doing things just like we always used to understand an integration of the spiritual

00:19:42.700 and the physical and the mental all together there's no separation of these things and all

00:19:50.460 of these things together create what we know of as well actually what we don't know of as health

00:19:55.040 because we often think of health as just this absence of disease symptoms and we don't really

00:20:02.000 have a good definition for what what health means and in nursing because the field is patient

00:20:10.760 centered patient focused collaborative with the patient and understands that healing cannot occur

00:20:16.720 without the individual itself being part of the process it really reckons back to a lot of the

00:20:22.840 ways that medicine used to be before its colonization and appropriation and made into

00:20:30.080 a capitalist venture. And again, listeners, if you want to hear more about this, please read

00:20:36.580 Witches, Midwives, and Nurses. And it's a quick read, everybody, please. It's like so short and

00:20:43.480 it's so amazing. And it's like, the first time I read it, my mother was a registered nurse.

00:20:48.340 the first i finished it and i immediately just sent her a copy yeah you know i sent one to my

00:20:56.020 sister like every woman i know yeah it's amazing they pack so much cool stuff into a short period

00:21:02.620 and honestly i'd recommend reading literally anything that the two of them have written

00:21:06.480 together um i know that i i referred to them extensively in my last paper also sylvia federici

00:21:14.740 um i can't start a conversation about about medical history without talking about her

00:21:20.640 um she writes similar things of and you know it's that's one of the reasons why the topic

00:21:27.280 becomes so big so quickly is because it has a it has more to do with just what's best for a person

00:21:33.580 and what you want to be doing for your own personal health it has to do with the business

00:21:38.440 of healthcare and the capitalist side of it all and the fact that there are a lot of things that

00:21:45.240 they don't want you to do because they can't make money off of it if you do it that way

00:21:50.660 and you know a lot of people might have an initial reaction to that statement of 1.00

00:21:55.860 what a conspiracy theorist or oh my god what a feminist joy kill 0.97

00:21:58.940 um it's based in a lot of research and a lot of uh evidence that we we know that this is the case

00:22:11.180 and we know that this is kind of what we're up against right now is that healing and health and

00:22:18.300 being healthy in our current society is is very very difficult to obtain um and

00:22:27.420 so it what what i've written about is this idea that it's something saleable um there's an idea

00:22:36.560 of health someone wants to sell you but because of this capitalist culture that we live in you're

00:22:42.200 never going to actually obtain it because it's then they would lose their entire consumer base

00:22:47.860 so this picture of health which by the way is a white male with money um picture of health that

00:22:54.940 all of our research is based off of um i remember i reached out to you after white feather hunter's

00:23:00.700 interview because this is what she was talking about and we made all hail the great white feather

00:23:05.500 yes we made contact and we just i was just like gushing i was like oh you're amazing um yeah

00:23:13.380 white feather is amazing be it resolved yes so you know these are the things that we were talking

00:23:19.080 about where her what she's saying from what she's written about is you know this picture of health

00:23:23.900 is this it's always based on the male model down to the genes that we're studying we always use

00:23:30.900 the male as the template and so in health care as a business as a woman for instance or as a woman

00:23:42.480 of color or as a woman who is just not doing things in the same way that everybody else wants 0.83

00:23:48.700 you to do them, you're, you're very much considered unhealthy. Um, there's, you know, the, um, 0.96

00:23:56.300 Adrienne Marie Brown and who wrote, you know, the body is not an apology. Uh, she's, she's doing

00:24:02.160 some of this work with, you know, pleasure activism and stuff. And, and this whole, um,

00:24:07.000 like add a positivity movement is a great example of health comes in every form and every size,

00:24:13.520 and it doesn't have to necessarily be this like thin really athletic person you know so it's one

00:24:21.020 of the really encouraging things about what's what's going on right now is that there's a lot

00:24:25.500 of discussion about the different types of health and different pictures of health and ways that we

00:24:29.560 can be healthy and not necessarily have to strive towards this impossible ideal that doesn't really

00:24:37.100 exist and um stop pouring your money into it basically this um this is making me think of

00:24:45.840 a couple of the hashtags that i've seen you use that made me really super excited so let me throw

00:24:52.300 a couple out and you can uh dissect them for me okay okay okay hashtag resistance medicine

00:24:58.960 yes resistance medicine um that's something i picked up from seeing it elsewhere and i was

00:25:06.320 like, Oh, this is perfect. This is encapsulates exactly what I want to be saying medicine. And so

00:25:13.240 let's first of all, define what medicine is. So the official definition of medicine that we legally

00:25:19.400 must attend to in order to not get in trouble is, is the purview of doctors, medical doctors,

00:25:26.640 and people that are licensed in that field. So to, we need to make sure that we're, I'm not

00:25:34.840 talking about that. I'm talking about medicine in the kind of more global sense of something that

00:25:39.820 you would do that's good for you, not necessarily a pill that you take. So to put those two words

00:25:47.480 together, resistance medicine is what you need to feel good and to be healthy in a way that you

00:25:55.060 have determined you would like to be. Not necessarily what somebody else has told you

00:26:02.200 you have to be. So to do the sort of healing work in yourself and, and finding the medicines

00:26:10.600 and kind of the larger sense of the word that work for you is a form of resistance against

00:26:16.720 the colonizing tactics of, of a predatory consumerist kind of healthcare system.

00:26:24.340 So resistance medicine, yeah, it's, what do you need to feel good? What do you need to be healthy?

00:26:30.200 How do you want to do this? How do you want to move through the world as an individual? Do that.

00:26:37.440 Perfect. And what about anarcho-herbalism? I had never seen this word before and I was like,

00:26:45.320 oh my God, that makes me feel really excited. What's anarcho-herbalism?

00:26:52.560 That word got me kicked off of Facebook, like banned from Facebook.

00:26:56.560 Is it the anarcho part?

00:26:57.980 Yeah, they don't like that word. So there's some very interesting movements, very interesting sort of fields of thought around anarchy and around what it really means and around how we could do medicine and healing better.

00:27:19.040 anarcho herbalism which um i have a an apa citation for it actually um anarcho herbalism

00:27:28.720 is something that i found a few years ago when i was writing my last paper

00:27:31.560 and it really encapsulated the way that i feel about about the health care system about the

00:27:37.940 medical system so the first part being anarchy um anarchy contrary to popular belief and

00:27:46.880 demonization is this idea that people are doing things that are for good they're doing things in

00:27:53.660 what is good for them not but not in the commonly misunderstood self-interested kind of way they're

00:28:00.860 doing things that they know that they need to do to be happy and healthy and well-rounded

00:28:06.100 but they also have this this greater interest of what is good for everybody sort of in the in

00:28:13.980 that's kind of encapsulated in the definition as well and again not in the way that we see

00:28:20.980 a lot of it utilized in toxic systems where it's like well the greater good meaning this tiny group

00:28:28.420 of people over here that want it this way and so everyone else gets sacrificed it's not it's not

00:28:32.660 like that so i would say if you're interested in finding out more about it you should probably do

00:28:38.540 a little more not you the global year no me too doing some more research into into what the

00:28:47.560 tenants are underlying this sort of um this anarchist sort of idea of the world um it's a

00:28:56.200 way of of thinking about population and people and communities as an ever-evolving self-regulating type

00:29:06.280 of system that doesn't necessarily need a ruling class to tell people what to do and so

00:29:15.380 what i love about it is that it it rejects the um the very popular belief that all people are

00:29:24.880 inherently bad it rejects that entirely and it's like no actually whenever people are allowed to

00:29:30.720 be in community and and have the resources they need instead of being driven into scarcity

00:29:37.120 um actually people are actually they're really good and and we can live together in a very

00:29:43.720 healthy way if we did not have specific power structures that are causing these

00:29:50.300 unnatural pressures on our choice making so that work combined with herbalism

00:29:56.960 uh the idea that all knowledge about plants and healing and your body should be for everyone

00:30:07.600 so a very important part of this kind of anarchist mindset is that knowledge and um

00:30:15.700 well knowledge is the best word for it i guess that knowledge is not uh something to be

00:30:21.460 sequestered by a tiny group of individuals um knowledge about your body about the world about

00:30:30.820 plants about you know the ways that that the two can interact that is not for sale that's not

00:30:37.060 something that should be kept secret until you can pay your way into the club so anarcho herbalism

00:30:44.140 is about the free exchange of ideas for people to understand about plants and their healing

00:30:51.340 properties so if you know something about a plant or you you found this thing that works you don't

00:30:57.320 patent it and then sell it and make a profit off of it you share the knowledge you share the plants

00:31:02.240 you understand that property is an entirely constructed meaning and and it doesn't exist

00:31:08.440 so you know it's it's just a different way of thinking about

00:31:12.800 things and and and healing a lot you know an anarcho herbalist would probably bucket the

00:31:22.840 idea of having to buy a book about herbalism because this should just be common knowledge

00:31:27.820 it should just be things that people share with each other because this is for everyone because

00:31:32.380 the world is for everyone anarcho herbalism is kind of that in a nutshell um but there's a there's

00:31:41.340 a really there is a cool sort of um stream of ideas around it that that kind of are

00:31:48.840 building up what that means and how you could actually utilize it in the world

00:31:53.000 and how about our our listeners who live in urban areas you and i both do not live in urban areas

00:32:00.860 we're very lucky that way but how can they sort of begin to or expand their understanding of

00:32:07.600 a connection to plant medicine that is something that has come up a lot lately actually especially

00:32:14.500 with the recent um the pandemic and people are thinking like wow i need to kind of get a hold of

00:32:20.460 my supply chain and how can i do that when i live in a three an apartment three stories up

00:32:25.820 with no ground to put things in

00:32:28.860 and it's it's an opportunity for us to find uh creative new ways to be instead of instead of

00:32:40.240 panicking and shutting down and going oh it's hopeless it's a great opportunity for us to

00:32:45.560 become something new so there's a lot of resources that are coming up because this is a big question

00:32:53.660 and I've seen a bunch of them on Instagram and on some other other places about how to do this

00:33:00.280 so for one thing you could try if you have like a porch area or if you have an area where you just

00:33:06.800 get some good sunlight you can try potted plants and even just picking one or two kind of herbs

00:33:15.640 that you know that you like to use and that you want to get to know better and growing them in

00:33:21.120 the house is a great way to just connect to the plant itself and also get to know what is it like

00:33:28.680 to care for something that requires your interaction to live and how does how does your

00:33:38.020 presence sort of affect it and you know if you're i hear i have a lot of friends um that i work with

00:33:45.720 and they're like oh my gosh you know i just i kill plants like it's it's i can never keep a plant

00:33:50.060 alive and i'm like you know i actually thought that about myself at one point and i decided

00:33:56.120 that i did not want to do that and i wanted to be able to um have an indoor plant and not kill it

00:34:05.260 um but i it took a lot of learning it took a lot of sitting there with a plant and studying it and

00:34:12.360 going you're yellow why are you yellow what's the matter what's wrong with you that you're yellow

00:34:18.660 and what am I doing to make you yellow it's a really interesting reflective process because I

00:34:25.120 think people people think that like plants are like I don't know throw throw this in the microwave

00:34:30.260 and press start but it's more like learning to play a piano yeah you know like you wouldn't expect

00:34:37.020 to get it right the first time no and expect to get it right the first time no no you never do

00:34:43.840 and um it's a it's also this that's another learning process because right now we you know

00:34:49.440 we're living in a culture that's so um fixated on uh perfectionism and i was just thinking about

00:34:57.720 this this morning and because i i submitted a manuscript and they said no thanks and i was

00:35:03.080 like oh god that hurts and then i was like man i i know that i am a good writer like i know i love

00:35:10.420 writing but it's why do i feel like i have to be a child prodigy in order to be validated as a good

00:35:18.300 writer and it's like oh there's a perfectionism again crap get don't want to i don't want to do

00:35:23.820 that to myself and so we we have this idea that um we have to be good at everything and especially

00:35:31.980 in our social media culture where we feel like we're watched all the time by by everybody and

00:35:37.760 if you're not doing it great then why are you doing it at all it's so toxic so with plants

00:35:43.820 they're so forgiving in most cases um where they can they can teach you about themselves and if

00:35:51.800 you're willing to sort of go i'm going to learn something new i'm not going to be good at it right

00:35:56.600 away but i'm going to keep trying that's that's the magic so you can do the potted plants and

00:36:03.360 there's there's really cool books about like vertical gardening um if you have a small space

00:36:08.780 and you can plant something in the ground and you can let it grow high um you can do uh container

00:36:14.940 boxes you can do hydroponic gardening there's all kinds of resources for uh non-traditional

00:36:22.300 type of type of growing things um and what i also like to do is you figure out what might grow best

00:36:30.140 in your area um so like we've got a really it's the high desert here it's really arid and dry

00:36:36.680 succulents grow amazing here i have a ton of them now because because they love it and they just

00:36:45.080 they just pop so finding out what what plants want to be your friend um is a good way to go about

00:36:53.320 you know trying to just start just start with one start with one little plant make friends with it

00:36:58.060 give it a name see what you can find out about yourself those of you who follow us on instagram

00:37:03.700 have seen the my uh journey of the green onion the miraculous journey of the green onion that

00:37:10.020 has been blowing my mind like i'm trying to learn about plants i really am just a beginner

00:37:15.080 so for me that was like like a legitimate miracle to watch this thing regenerate itself they're like

00:37:21.940 the vampires of the onion world it's just you close your eyes and they're they're back it's

00:37:29.520 amazing ivory grown green onions i think three or four times um in in just some water um they're

00:37:37.760 not the only ones that do that you can do that with celery uh with onions i want to say carrots

00:37:44.140 definitely potatoes if you've ever taken a potato out and you're like what is the tuberry thing on

00:37:48.940 this it's the it's going to be a plant it wants to be a plant cut that cut it out cut the little

00:37:54.500 eye out and stick it in you know some hydroponic solution and see if you can grow another potato

00:37:59.820 it'd be so cool um that's yeah that's been one of my experimenting areas as well is to see what

00:38:06.820 things can I grow back from from stuff I bought at the store um my my whole goal is to have all of

00:38:15.840 my, all of my vegetables come from my own garden. And so I've been learning the Montana environment

00:38:22.220 and, and getting better at it, getting better at it. And, um, now I've got this community garden

00:38:27.720 plot, which is what I was, what I was digging through whenever we started the call and it's

00:38:33.580 huge. And I'm going to put all these plants in it and I'm really excited about it. Um,

00:38:38.780 but you know last year my experiment was uh what did i buy at the store that i can regrow

00:38:47.460 and would it regrow and would it create a fruit because if you're if you are learning about plants

00:38:53.660 you might be hearing about how um like monsanto puts in this terminator gene whenever they're

00:39:02.120 developing their plants basically they there's a lot of patents out on seeds right now and

00:39:08.500 if you're interested at all in the in the political landscape about this the international

00:39:12.520 seed savers is a great place to start where um there's patents on all of these seeds and all of

00:39:19.980 these this food that will preclude people from growing it unless they purchase it and it's

00:39:31.200 they're also um making it so that these plants in a lot of cases won't won't make more food

00:39:37.520 they're a one and done like they're like their dna has like a self-destruct button in it it does

00:39:43.240 yeah that's the terminator gene they've they've spliced in this gene that once they reproduce

00:39:47.740 then they die they're messing with the whole sacred cycle of plants and they're privatizing

00:39:57.160 um our natural world it's it's really scary um and and so if you're interested in

00:40:06.600 in ecological activism it's a it's a little niche that i feel like not a lot of people know about

00:40:12.780 but once you start learning about it you're like whoa that's intense that's a lot i didn't know

00:40:18.460 that was happening in a lot of cases it's quite insidious so um yeah one of my ideas was i want

00:40:25.900 to see if this is happening in my food what am i eating and so i did successfully regrow

00:40:33.080 some tomatoes and some potatoes that had been bought um just at a regular supermarket and i

00:40:39.540 was really excited about that um so i i've i've also um i just got some heirloom tomatoes from

00:40:47.780 the store the other day and i was like i'm saving your seeds i'm gonna see if you grow

00:40:52.060 let's see what happens it's a lot of fun i love that i love that so so uh our platform is your

00:41:01.920 platform what is your like grand message to the missing witches out there to the coven

00:41:07.940 oh my gosh and you know i was kind of thinking about this and trying to figure out i knew you're

00:41:16.640 gonna ask me this and i was like wow i don't i like big hard impossible to answer questions

00:41:22.000 yes um i'm gonna come i'm sure that i'll come around to a very profound single sentence here

00:41:30.260 after i babble for a minute so let me just babble babble through my thoughts my biggest

00:41:36.220 uh passion point i would say the thing that i write about the thing that i teach and the thing

00:41:45.520 that i do as a nurse and as a yoga teacher and as just a person in the world is that

00:41:55.560 you are your own final authority on everything in your life. There is absolutely no person or

00:42:05.700 system or institution that gets to tell you who you are, what you do, or what you should be doing. 0.73

00:42:13.300 Not a damn one of them. The minute you figure that out, you're a witch. 0.99

00:42:25.560 the minute the second that that clicks in your brain you are unfucking touchable you are 0.98

00:42:34.480 an absolutely unstoppable force in your own life and that more than anything else is what i want

00:42:41.740 for people to find in themselves i want um my daughter to learn that i want for my friends

00:42:48.840 that i come into contact to see that in me and to be like whoa i totally can do that too

00:42:55.480 um it's constant work though it's it's constant so I don't want to set myself up as like oh no

00:43:02.040 I have everything figured out because I don't um but you know we started this conversation with

00:43:09.300 me saying like oh my god what am I even doing with my life and that brings me back to that sort

00:43:14.620 of because a you know the the shoulds of the world we're going to tell you a lot of things

00:43:22.960 and you can't pay attention to those because those are going to drive you nuts and take you

00:43:26.780 down a path that you never really wanted to be on. And then B, if you think about your life as

00:43:31.900 what do you want to do? What do you like doing? Literally at the next moment in your life,

00:43:39.120 is that making you happy? And if not, get rid of it. If you can, there are limits, I'm sure.

00:43:45.160 um but you know it's it's very much up to you it's very much your own book that you're writing

00:43:55.960 and no one else gets to be the author so you should write your own story and I remember I

00:44:04.440 got kind of on this track in my mind after reading the four agreements um yeah and he I read it when

00:44:12.420 I was in like high school or early college and I remember him saying you don't have to agree with

00:44:18.340 what people think about you and I like it blew my actual mind I stopped and I thought about and I

00:44:25.240 was like oh my god whoa uh uh well then what do I think about myself and you know set me on this

00:44:33.020 whole journey of you know stop listening to what other people are telling you um you know you you

00:44:40.700 can do it um so when it comes to my particular areas of things like herbalism and plants and

00:44:47.760 and healing um my my my teaching points always revolve around this idea of autonomy

00:44:57.360 and if if what you're doing is really what you want to be doing i used to teach a chronic

00:45:05.580 disease self-management class when I was in working in public health and it was a really

00:45:11.960 really cool class I loved teaching it and the thing that they taught whenever you go to make

00:45:18.220 goals and whenever you go to think about how you want to be healthy you have to think about it from

00:45:24.080 what you want if you're going to do it because someone else has told you that you should do it

00:45:28.660 this way research has shown that you are not going to stick to that if your doctor tells you

00:45:35.520 you have to take this medication and they don't really you know like talk to you much about why

00:45:41.320 because that happens a lot um you're probably not going to do it because you don't know how it's

00:45:46.120 really benefiting you but if you are able to understand more about the system that you're

00:45:52.340 working with in your own body that the medication is supposed to affect and the doctor like why he

00:45:57.420 you think that they need to that you need to take this medicine and and all these things in and then

00:46:02.160 you decide through your own sort of uh knowledge gathering process that okay that is a benefit

00:46:08.380 i like that i'm gonna do it i think that's gonna make my life better then you will actually take

00:46:14.080 that medication it's it's just um it's when you think about it you're like well of course it's

00:46:22.080 common sense, but it's really hard to do. And so again, a lot of my, my, my, my research really

00:46:29.040 revolves around the, the female body in the sense of like what the medical system has termed the

00:46:37.100 female body, those of us with a uterus. And again, Sylvia Federici, Barbara Ehrenreich, Deirdre

00:46:45.560 English, there's, there's tons and tons and tons of authors that can tell you about the

00:46:51.740 historical methods of controlling this particular part of the body and why I started looking into

00:47:00.160 how we make choices in our system and why we make these particular choices and so what is

00:47:10.300 influencing our whether or not we feel like we have power in our own bodies and what I found

00:47:18.160 was that there's just all of these discourses all of these these lines of information that

00:47:25.220 are coming at us that are telling you what you should be like and how you should be behaving and

00:47:33.180 so again yeah I'm just starting to ramble so what am I trying to say

00:47:39.380 autonomous decision making comes when you have all the information and no coercion that's the

00:47:48.800 definition of it and that is impossible let me just repeat that all the information and no coercion

00:47:55.560 yes information and no coercion that sounds like a like capital g goal yes so having all the

00:48:05.500 information and not feeling like you're being pressured in any particular direction then you're

00:48:11.920 making autonomous decisions if you don't have information and you have a lot of pressure from

00:48:18.700 these other lines of people that have an interest in your choice they have some money to make off

00:48:25.000 of you for choosing a particular thing for instance that's not an autonomous choice and so

00:48:30.980 with when it comes to health you should be very interested in who's telling you things what

00:48:39.900 they're telling you why they're telling you that and how it is going to play out in your body and

00:48:45.360 in your life and if it's not in your best interest and you don't feel like you can make an autonomous

00:48:50.720 decision then you need to pause and evaluate that situation sometimes there's some blind trust that

00:48:59.780 goes into it so you know as as a nurse and working in the western health care system

00:49:04.040 there is times where you're just like i don't have time right now to tell you exactly what's

00:49:11.260 going on please trust me i have your best interest in mind and that's why you know we take all these

00:49:17.120 oaths about doing no harm because that on the individual level i do believe that most people

00:49:24.120 who got into the medical fields really really care and most of us really really want the best

00:49:30.980 for our patients and so it's not always time for us to be like you know let me tell you all about

00:49:37.740 these things that we could do for your heart while you're having a heart attack it's just not

00:49:42.500 practical no please just trust me you're having a heart attack and let's talk about it later

00:49:47.680 um but you know nursing again takes into that idea of the patient is part of the health care

00:49:54.420 decision making team and so even in the middle of an emergency we want you to feel like you have

00:50:00.460 some control here and we're not just working on your body because you know you're an inert

00:50:05.000 piece of equipment uh we're we're interacting with you on the human level it's uh it's very

00:50:11.260 it's super complicated convoluted i love it um we don't shy away from the complicated around

00:50:18.720 these parts that's for sure yeah there's this there's there's differentiations to make between

00:50:24.180 like what the system is doing and what the individual is doing that's a whole other bag of

00:50:28.880 bag of worms um so in in a systemic sort of sense whenever you're trying to make a decision that

00:50:36.240 seeking of knowledge and that, um, also the voicing of your own experience are, are really

00:50:44.420 important. It's, there's been this movement in medicine, well, in the patient side of medicine

00:50:49.900 lately about, um, the patient being the, the best, uh, the most knowledgeable about their experience.

00:51:00.900 you find in chronic diseases and in a lot of trauma and different things like that

00:51:07.780 that these the people are coming up with these stories about how their doctors didn't believe

00:51:14.500 them and then like you know they had to go and figure it out for themselves and that's tragic

00:51:21.960 is a failure of our system and it's also amazing that these people are putting this out there

00:51:30.800 and letting you know that you can figure it out and you are smart enough to know this about

00:51:37.320 yourself and if someone's not listening to you go find someone who will if you have that privilege

00:51:44.720 and you have that ability um you know don't stop until someone takes you seriously and

00:51:52.340 and that's a really important part of the autonomous sort of process is you know no

00:51:59.900 trusting your own voice trusting your own body's wisdom and figuring out for yourself what's going

00:52:04.760 to work best in partnership with these other people that are that are trying to help you as

00:52:10.040 well um there's a lot to to be said about the integration of these kind of sometimes what

00:52:19.120 seems like competing sort of discourses um we've got you know the the doctor side that says we know

00:52:25.080 best and you have like this the patient activist side that's going uh no um in a lot of in a lot

00:52:31.600 of the cases and what i strive to do as someone who kind of straddles both sides of the fence the

00:52:38.960 cam and the witch sorry i say cam and i don't know if you know what that is complementary and

00:52:43.200 alternative medicine um the so like cam and witch and herbalism and all these things and then also

00:52:51.040 I work in the in an acute care setting in a hospital where it's very Western and it's very

00:52:57.080 very scientifically rigorous um at first glance they look like they're they're opposing but I

00:53:05.820 think that our work as people who want for the best for everyone and we want to make the world

00:53:12.380 a better place is to say you know it's not either or we need a both and and let's work on both and

00:53:20.020 so it's both these amazing amazing things that we do with medicine such cool stuff there's things

00:53:29.220 that go on in the hospital that i'm like that is science fiction that can't be real but it's real

00:53:35.480 and you're just like wow that's cool but then you there's also and also this other side where

00:53:42.340 you're talking about plants and they have consciousness and how how they can interact

00:53:46.920 with the body and that's amazing as well that's science fiction as well you know there's there's

00:53:54.020 wonder and there's magic to be had in both sides and bringing the two together to work with each

00:54:00.800 other is going to get us way further than either of us standing on one side of the fence going no

00:54:06.320 i'm right no i'm right no i'm right that doesn't get us anywhere listening is so key listening is

00:54:14.580 so key and that's i mean that's why intersectional everything is the best possible version of

00:54:20.900 everything for sure yeah yeah and yeah i i really really am grateful that that word has gotten

00:54:29.600 more popular i was reflecting on um like tv before and after 2016

00:54:37.760 and like before before we had uh such visible hate we sort of just um kept playing along like

00:54:55.100 like it was like nothing was a big deal there you know nothing was really at stake and then this

00:55:00.100 happened and suddenly it was like all right no now y'all are gonna listen now we're putting

00:55:06.260 everything out there and that's not okay anymore and this is why and and we're not just playing

00:55:12.660 along it's been really really cool to see i never thought that the words that i learned in my

00:55:19.400 graduate program for feminist studies i i have a graduate certificate and i never thought that

00:55:26.800 those words that i was using in these papers were going to be common everyday language

00:55:31.220 on facebook and instagram and twitter i like the first time i saw that happen i nearly fell over i

00:55:37.300 was like holy crap yes ma'am this language is going mainstream it's mainstream and it's happening

00:55:45.240 and it's really cool to see um it's really helped to empower me as well because i um like i mentioned

00:55:54.520 uh you know the feminist killjoy uh type like label i have been called the isis of feminism

00:56:01.180 um you know i i've done a lot of my own internal work because i did get an academic degree in it

00:56:08.620 and it was very privileged and very white feminism and so all of this conversation that's come up

00:56:15.300 i've been like oh oh oh that makes sense yes i'm gonna adjust that in my life thank you

00:56:24.240 and it's been really cool to go through that growth process and to see that growth process

00:56:30.760 and other and other people and our sort of everyday kind of discourses it's been really

00:56:35.260 cool and I am I'm very grateful for all the voices and and the voices that are also saying

00:56:42.820 we're not going to teach you go look it up and and then you do and then you're just like

00:56:48.780 wow, that's a whole world that I didn't know existed.

00:56:51.940 And just the learning process is cool.

00:56:54.160 So like you're saying with the listening,

00:56:57.600 so I have an author, a teacher that I really appreciate, Tara Brock.

00:57:04.960 Sorry, was that Tara or Kara?

00:57:07.860 Tara with a T.

00:57:08.880 With a T. Thank you.

00:57:11.160 Tara Brock.

00:57:12.520 She wrote Radical Acceptance.

00:57:15.980 And she's written a ton of stuff.

00:57:17.240 But that book changed my life. Absolutely. She writes about becoming curious and the process of change, not necessarily like that being your goal, but the process of acceptance through curiosity.

00:57:37.140 um so with yourself and with other people instead of seeing something and automatically putting up

00:57:44.640 your walls and you know oh i know what that is and labeling it and so i'm going to either engage

00:57:49.520 or disengage or judge that um because i think i know everything about it instead of doing those

00:57:56.320 things you just have sort of an open curiosity about what could this teach me and when we do

00:58:04.840 that with each other, the world changes because we're suddenly not super self-interested in our

00:58:12.460 own protection. We are being a little vulnerable and allowing space for things to be different

00:58:19.620 than we thought they were going to be. And one of her reasons for talking about that is because

00:58:25.380 that is what truly alleviates suffering. Whenever we let go of the things that we think are

00:58:32.340 concretize in our life and we sort of get to know them a little bit better and we're open to that

00:58:39.660 change then we're not suffering anymore because we're not holding on to these ideas that are

00:58:46.580 causing pain i'm not doing it i'm not doing this description justice i highly recommend

00:58:53.020 reading anything she's written we'll put some links in the show notes and i know i am going

00:58:58.620 to go and read some tara brock as soon as we hang up here she's got an amazing podcast too um

00:59:06.000 it's called okay what is it called um

00:59:10.120 i don't know the title of it but if you just look her up like she's the only one everybody yeah and

00:59:17.220 we'll we'll i'll find it and we'll link it in the show notes for sure okay yeah she's i listen to

00:59:22.320 her a lot um especially uh mornings going into work and getting ready to to work um a 12-hour

00:59:29.800 shift she she just is uh it's really it's a really cool way of sort of shifting your thinking a little

00:59:38.080 bit and and bringing some compassionate change to um to some to some painful situations it's

00:59:46.540 really cool so i think that this kind of relates to um i think you and i share a role model

00:59:54.080 yeah and so maybe you could answer this as a as a final question and then we'll sign off

01:00:00.120 um why do all of our listeners and coven members and everyone in the world immediately

01:00:08.460 need to go and tonight watch harold and maude oh yes i love her i love everything about that movie

01:00:19.680 yeah okay oh reason number one the music um pat stevens um his song if you want to sing out

01:00:29.400 sing out is like my anthem i love it um number two she's the character that that

01:00:38.000 that you and I are talking about is Maude, even though the main character could be argued to be

01:00:43.640 Harold. Maude is just everything that a divine female, divine person could be. She's

01:00:57.480 absolutely belongs to herself, and she is totally free in her world because of that.

01:01:04.460 she um has lived through horrible things and has seen the worst of humanity and yet she still

01:01:12.200 is open and loving and curious enough that she finds this random person and is just like dude

01:01:20.600 let's be friends you look cool and and she teaches without even trying to teach and so like the

01:01:28.980 And the story itself of the kid that can't find a reason to live and then finding this person who kind of frees him from that suffering, that's one part of it.

01:01:45.220 But that is not what the movie is actually about.

01:01:49.040 It's about Maude.

01:01:51.040 And she is everything I want to be.

01:01:54.920 she is the most passionate loving kind and amazing character that i can think of

01:02:01.080 um the movie itself i feel like we should put a little disclaimer is the movie itself can be a

01:02:07.280 little shocking a little triggering if you don't yeah definitely but it softens i think it opens

01:02:13.820 kind of harshly and then it softens immediately so yeah yeah yes yeah careful for the first five

01:02:19.600 minutes or so they can be a little yeah but i actually ended up that movie ended up being my

01:02:24.960 litmus test for partners um and yeah it didn't it wasn't intentional um i just like one boyfriend

01:02:32.980 that i had um i put on harold and mod one day says like i love this movie i want you to watch

01:02:37.960 it with me and he was like oh god no i don't like that at all and i was like all right well

01:02:41.800 this is not gonna work out no way and it didn't like three months later we had broken up and i

01:02:49.900 was just like that's for the best i find i find maude like i said like to be such an incredible

01:02:55.500 role model one of my favorite parts is again i don't want to spoil anything for anyone so i'm

01:03:00.440 gonna take as big as possible she creates a work of art and someone tells her that he doesn't like

01:03:09.520 her work of art that she has created and instead of being upset maude says that's okay artistic

01:03:17.080 appreciation takes time yes lying that it's not her work it's that he is not at a high enough

01:03:24.340 level to be able to appreciate the part yep yep yeah i think hill hurston she kind of said the

01:03:33.380 same thing like she can't understand why anyone would want to not have the pleasure of her

01:03:38.920 yeah so yeah maude as role model i love her i think everyone should try to aspire to be maude 0.57

01:03:47.200 and um i know when i was growing up my my mom which my mom is the one who had us watch this

01:03:53.900 movie i think i watched it for the first time i was in middle school and um you know one of

01:03:59.360 maude's final sort of lines where you know i whenever um i don't want to do how do i do this

01:04:07.080 without spoilers spoilers ahead skip if you don't want the movie spoiled um when harold says he

01:04:15.680 loves her and she's dying and and she goes that's wonderful go out and love some more and like love

01:04:23.720 oh my god just oh how beautiful it's never the end there's not an end there's not a finality to

01:04:33.100 things that makes it so that you can't love anymore it just keeps going and the idea of

01:04:39.400 possessions when they have that like again skip skip skip if you haven't seen this movie

01:04:44.240 yeah but like the amusement park coin yeah gives it to her in this this beautiful loving gift that

01:04:51.140 he gives to her and she takes it and throws it and throws it away and he of course he's shocked

01:04:56.180 and maude is like now i'll always know where it is yeah i remember not understanding that scene

01:05:01.560 when I was a kid and like but now she doesn't have it anymore and my mom was just like it's not the

01:05:07.840 thing it's the gesture and and she was a really cool teacher because she she would say like we

01:05:14.920 would be worried that someone would steal something of ours and she goes if somebody steals something

01:05:18.420 it means they need it more than you do and and she kind of brought that back up where she was

01:05:23.020 just like it's not the thing the thing is not where the love is it's the gesture and it's the

01:05:28.380 person and it's the moment and that was that was a really cool teaching moment my favorite part of

01:05:34.460 the movie though i think whenever he first comes to her house and you see it and i like when i was

01:05:40.180 like in high school i was like oh that's my future cool a train car out in the middle of the air

01:05:47.160 filled with instruments and stuff and and she says you know the trick to a healthy life is to

01:05:56.440 greet the dawn with a breath of fire so when i started to study yoga i found in kundalini that's

01:06:06.440 a real thing yeah and and i was just like my god she's a wise person that movie is like

01:06:12.940 so layered like you know maude is fictional but she is very very real to me yes i love it so much

01:06:22.600 Okay, lest this become the Harold and Maude podcast officially, let's go back to anarcho-herbalism. Tie that in a digestible bow for our listeners who are, like myself, are hearing this term and are like, this is something I want to know more about.

01:06:45.400 Yeah, okay, in a digestible bow.

01:06:48.060 Good luck.

01:06:48.500 you have a right to knowledge and you have a right to know what's going on with your body

01:06:55.500 and to make decisions about your body and what you put into your body for healing

01:07:00.340 the right to knowledge includes the world around you and the plants and the medicine that that you

01:07:08.720 want to know about now i'm going to put a caveat on that because there are traditions of medicine

01:07:14.160 in plant work that you must respect as not your own or as something that you should ask permission

01:07:23.140 to know about talking specifically about like indigenous methods um absolutely especially as

01:07:30.220 a white person myself i've been towing the line and trying to figure out how do i fit into

01:07:35.380 wanting to learn about this type of thing and it's not it is not my right to just barge in and go hey

01:07:41.420 i want to know so with the caveat of humility and of asking permission and of knowing that

01:07:50.900 you absolutely have to deconstruct your privilege and a settler mindset

01:07:55.460 in order to go into this work you can't go into it charging around going i have a right to know

01:08:02.780 tell me things you can't do that anarcho-erbalism is saying that there is a sacredness to the world

01:08:13.800 that we're all part of and we all have an inherent right to be here and to interact with that sacred

01:08:23.280 knowledge that that we um to you know to the extent that we can so it's primarily talking

01:08:31.240 about you know if i an example is i see these like ads for supplements and people that are like

01:08:40.100 it's from the amazonian jungle and it's supposed to make you live forever and look like a newborn 0.98

01:08:44.760 child um that's that's that's absolute bullshit it's horrible um for one thing if you have to 0.99

01:08:52.080 pay gads of money for it um you it's just a business scheme um all right i'm thinking 1.00

01:09:01.220 it's more about responsibility of the self you have you do have the rights and knowledge and

01:09:11.700 you have a responsibility to move through the world risk responding in a

01:09:18.980 um in a curious and open way let's say that way

01:09:26.980 some things this is hard for the for the little bow and i always feel like i'm trapping people

01:09:36.680 into trying to explain i don't know concepts and i don't feel packages no no no i don't feel like

01:09:44.700 it's trapped i feel i feel like i want to do a i want to do justice to the to the concept without

01:09:50.820 without being too so general that that i'm gonna do harm um because because there there's a lot to

01:10:00.860 it so the digestible bow is that this is a complex issue and it is multifaceted and layered and it

01:10:10.100 has a lot to do with deconstructing the current way that we go about doing things in the world

01:10:19.940 so if you're interested in it approaching it with a with an attitude of humility and attitude of

01:10:27.820 learning and curiosity and knowing that you have you know your autonomous self you have this um

01:10:35.960 the sacred right to be here and the sacred right to know about yourself and if you choose to

01:10:43.620 utilize herbs and to learn about them and to ask other people for their teaching that you do so

01:10:52.840 from that center of humility um you're also responsible for for going back out and teaching

01:11:02.440 people what you know and sharing that and and not necessarily just holding it to yourself and and

01:11:11.740 you know with with businesses they find something and they patent it and then they want to sell it

01:11:18.260 and i'm like i realize that we all need to make peace with the fact that we have to have money

01:11:23.120 right now but you know it health and healing and methods of healing and um just the

01:11:30.540 the the way that you can access those things those those those should be things that we all

01:11:41.160 can have it it shouldn't be something where you know we we oh god like we have this health care

01:11:48.940 system where we've got these amazing things that can be done and amazing healing that can be done

01:11:54.100 and only a tiny percentage of of people can actually afford to do it

01:11:59.080 anarcho-erbilism says that that is true harm that is

01:12:05.080 the definition of of evil it's you know there should not be a situation where somebody

01:12:13.340 can't get what they need because in an anarchist sort of context you're you are doing things so

01:12:20.480 that your needs are met in a responsible way um it's it's much too large of a concept to to boil

01:12:29.360 down to just one or two words um you know a couple of sentences i would say go look for it

01:12:37.440 find things that speak to you about it uh learn about it approach it with a with a um an attitude

01:12:45.280 of curiosity and seeing what you can learn and what you want to keep about it and what you're

01:12:51.260 like maybe that's not for me like maybe you like the herbalism part but you're like anarchy still

01:12:56.780 kind of makes me uncomfortable cool do you you know it's all good um it's a it's a really cool

01:13:05.420 thing that will you know it takes time I'm still learning about it and deconstructing my own ways

01:13:11.540 of thinking about things and you know incorporating it in some ways and in other ways I'm like

01:13:16.680 well maybe not that part and and that's part of the process too and that's okay we don't need to

01:13:25.060 be fundamentalists about anything really no no good I really really hope that I was able to

01:13:33.220 um encapsulate through my rambling sort of the ideas they're they are so big I would hate it 0.97

01:13:40.720 if somebody like went out and tried to look it up and was just like that's the stupidest thing 0.94

01:13:46.880 I've ever heard and that's so harmful and how could she say that I'm like oh god that's not

01:13:51.260 what I meant well I mean the thing is like I personally I'm collecting perspectives one at a

01:13:57.040 time and I think we're all very clear that like this is your perspective this is my perspective

01:14:02.340 anyone who's listening to this podcast I hope has enough critical analysis to be able to work

01:14:09.660 through things and again um if someone is listening and I've been called out before and pretty much

01:14:15.260 every person that's ever like written to me and said I think you're wrong about this I've invited

01:14:19.860 to be on the show so like never never worry about being being wrong is just an opportunity

01:14:25.740 for me i'm like oh i'm wrong good i got proven wrong today i grew and i learned yeah that's that

01:14:33.020 is how i felt um uh with the whenever the deconstruction of all the white feminism

01:14:37.940 stuff started really coming up and i very much was like it was very threatening to me i felt it

01:14:46.320 And I was like, okay, opportunity to learn, not react here.

01:14:50.800 And my God, that's an everyday sort of thing for me that I'm so grateful for because I

01:14:57.900 know that I'm becoming a better person by thinking through these things instead of just

01:15:03.940 going, oh, no, that doesn't feel right.

01:15:05.700 No, I'm not doing that. 1.00

01:15:07.600 I have a special trick that I use to counter my own white feminist defensiveness. 1.00

01:15:13.040 and that is anytime it starts to bubble up and I start to feel that white feminist defensiveness

01:15:18.880 coming up I say to myself how do you feel when you see hashtag not all men hashtag all lives

01:15:25.920 matter and then I you want to puke right and so I I want to puke at myself after I think about that

01:15:33.140 when I get when I get defensive like you you know uh it's hard to hear a criticism of yourself

01:15:39.640 and to say yeah you're right but I mean I'm not perfect you're not perfect I mean we're all just

01:15:46.860 trying our best and my I'm big into like get into your imperfections you talked about the

01:15:52.660 vulnerability like yeah let's dig into our imperfections if you have a hump throw some

01:15:57.560 glitter on it that's mine right there's there's some cool um some cool witchy talk about like

01:16:05.580 your shadow side and the dark goddess and all those things i just either got or put on my wish 0.56

01:16:11.400 list a book that was talking about that and i'm like yeah yeah fuck yeah how can we find our

01:16:16.820 strength in the places that we've traditionally rejected like how can we do that there's a lot

01:16:21.780 of cool stuff coming up about that too yeah and one of the things that i found is that um when i

01:16:27.740 admit to my own faults or my own shortcomings or my own um you know i i don't like the word failure

01:16:34.000 because it, you know, if I've learned something, then a failure doesn't exist. But when I talk

01:16:39.100 about my own vulnerabilities, I see people physically relax when I do that. So to me,

01:16:46.420 it's like a superpower. Like by admitting this about yourself, you can, like you were saying,

01:16:51.500 like you want to be that role model. You want people to look at you and say, if they can do

01:16:56.300 that, I can do that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I like that a lot. And there's a, there's

01:17:03.680 really cool um academic discourse around the concept of failure and not necessarily reclaiming

01:17:11.540 that but using the the label of failure to point out very important things about about these systems

01:17:20.980 and what we're what we're talking about and failure being like oh you didn't do it right well

01:17:27.640 the way that you have it set up is flawed like that kind of thing yeah it's definitely like

01:17:33.820 unsettling this like colonial linear method of like quote-unquote progress you know

01:17:41.680 so to like revel in the failures it's definitely unsettling work i think it is disruptive

01:17:48.680 it's really really cool description for sure um so i also i just i've been trying to kind of

01:17:56.980 figure out how i want to do uh so you know i have the sovereign health project as my business and i

01:18:03.640 it was herbalism for a minute but then as i was looking into like all the fda restrictions and

01:18:08.340 stuff i was just like okay never mind just forget it so i'm not that's when i i got rid of that

01:18:15.380 instagram because i wanted to kind of have a clean slate and i was like i'm ch i'm changing

01:18:20.220 the direction of it. Um, I've turned it more into general education where I can write about

01:18:27.400 this stuff, but also an invitation that if you were wanting to utilize having someone who's a

01:18:36.300 nurse, like as a one-on-one sort of discussion about health and yoga and how like these things

01:18:42.200 can, um, you can use these things in your life to, to heal yourself. Um, I created a Patreon

01:18:49.500 for that. Um, and it's, there's not a lot on it yet, but, um, but if you wanted to, to tell people

01:18:58.060 that they could, they could seek that if they wanted to, I'm still sort of putting information

01:19:02.640 on it and building it. Um, that's my, like, I guess, life slash career goal, I would say is

01:19:10.620 to combining these the holistic side of nursing with the with the scientific side with the yoga

01:19:17.700 kind of all together into you know working one-on-one with people if they wanted to

01:19:22.700 can you just rattle off your links right now so that yeah um so the patreon is uh you know

01:19:31.500 patreon.com slash be sovereign um b e and then the word sovereign

01:19:36.840 and uh and then my instagram i'm usually posting when i do post i post things about um you know

01:19:46.440 kind of that that healing mentality and the autonomy mentality but those are my main two

01:19:51.580 things right now because you said your handle what's your handle i am the nurse witch um yes

01:19:59.040 uh and so i'm still kind of building offerings i'm trying to figure out instagram tv and how to

01:20:09.340 put yoga on that um once i once i do start getting patrons i want to offer like a monthly

01:20:15.620 sort of newsletter or yoga sequence that they could have um so yeah i would say if you if you

01:20:23.680 do seek out that information please be patient with me as it is a work in progress but um

01:20:28.600 I would love it if people could also tell me what they want and and then you know if they come on

01:20:36.020 the page and they're like man I'm really looking for this kind of thing like sweet let me add that

01:20:41.500 um that would be really cool I love the conversation and the the finding out what

01:20:46.120 people need to heal and then if I have it in my bag of tricks my um my little my nursing cauldron

01:20:52.560 then i would love to work with you on that so what's the best way for people to reach you is

01:20:58.600 instagram the best way like slide into your dms at the nurse witch there are no dots no underscores

01:21:05.400 no dashes at the nurse witch yep yeah hit me up um i would love to talk to you about about all these

01:21:14.980 these cool witchy things awesome thank you again so much let's let's sing ourselves out okay i'm

01:21:21.560 going to start join in ready okay well if you want to sing out sing out and if you want to be

01:21:32.120 free be free because there's a million ways to be

01:21:38.160 you must be a witch

Missing Witches - May 07, 2020

Flower Moon 2020： Nurses Were Witches Once with Ravi

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