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KEEP IT GREEN
Harmony With Nature	JoAnna Cassidy-Farrell
March 2010 KEEP IT GREEN Harmony with nature By JoAnna Cassidy Farrell MH, CNHP There is a harmony and interdependence between human beings, and plants. In herb school I learned to gather plants with a genuine feeling of exchange from one aspect of creation to another. There is a two-way flow within the greater whole of the Universe. We are responsible for taking care of the planet Earth and the Earth is responsible for taking care of us, seeking a balance in each one’s health. Mother Nature’s harmony is healing medicine and goes way beyond the confines of a pathology book! She is capable of healing her patients mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically. I have never heard of a medication to do all that, maybe a mushroom I tried once, but I realized it takes you to the other extremes with a twist of unrealistic creativity not even close to harmony. Thank God those days are over! School has taught me to pay attention to this underworld of healing power of plants that emerge into the light and join our world making us adapt to them. This mystery has a message for us and it is up to us to make a connection with the plants. One of the connections I learned is called “plant journey medicine”. My teacher sent all the students out into a meadow full of beautiful orange flowers called butterfly weed. Each of us had to bring a notebook and pencil and we could not sit together. The instructions were to sketch the plant, and to use our imagination on how the root system looked, because we were not allowed to dig it up. I thought this sounded simple enough until she added that we had to talk to the plant and ask the plant what its purpose was and sit and record any feeling we got from of our senses, regardless of how irrelevant it may have seemed to us at the time; we had to journal about our “journey” with this plant. The teacher said the plant would speak to us through our senses if we just sat with it long enough. I was starting to question if she had gotten into the same batch of mushrooms I had many years ago. After an hour we all came back together only to share the same story. When we tried to visualize and sketch the roots, we all felt a shortness of breath, like it was hard to breath. We all agreed it had something to do with healing the lungs. The teacher revealed to us that the plant is also called pleurisy root (Asclepias tuberosa) and is a powerful expectorant used to treat colds, pleurisy and pulmonary problems. I was impressed what the plant revealed to me through some kind of invisible energy field I will never be able to understand. Kind of like the wind, I can’t see it, only its effects on the trees blowing. Since then I have had a lot of conversations with the underworld minus the mushrooms. JoAnna Cassidy Farrell MH, CNHP, owns and operates Keep It Green at 361-1416, mykeepitgreen.com
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JoAnna Cassidy Farrell MH, CNHP, owns and operates Keep It Green at 361-1416, mykeepitgreen.com