Description: Meet Pam Montgomery, author, teacher, and practitioner who works with plants and investigates plants/trees and their intelligent spiritual nature for more than three decades. She is a founding member of United Plant Savers and more recently the Organization of Nature Evolutionaries, O.N.E. She and others strive to connect the heart of nature with the heart of humanity. Join us for an engaging and enlightening discussion. All comments are appreciated. Please like and share. Thanks!
About My guest: Pam Montgomery is an author, teacher, and practitioner who has passionately embraced her role as a spokesperson for the green beings and has been investigating plants/trees and their intelligent spiritual nature for more than three decades. She is the author of two books one of which is the highly acclaimed Plant Spirit Healing; A Guide to Working with Plant Consciousness and Partner Earth; A Spiritual Ecology. She operates the Partner Earth Education Center at Sweetwater Sanctuary in Danby, Vermont where classes, plant research, and ceremonies take place. Pam also teaches internationally on plant spirit healing, spiritual ecology and people as Nature Evolutionaries. She is a founding member of United Plant Savers and more recently the Organization of Nature Evolutionaries or O.N.E. Her latest passion is to engage ceremonially in full symbiosis within the plant/human matrix where the elder common plants and trees initiate and guide us into being truly human.
Description: Did you know we can hear the plants sing? Science and technology have advanced so we can capture a plant’s vibrations and translate it into music. As a healer, mentor, earth advocate, and voice of the plants my guest, Jen Frey, does just that. Their music stirs us to fall in love again with this mysterious realm. And, at the end of this interview, Jen offers us a treat: we hear music from red roses.
About my Guest: Jen Frey is a Healer, Mentor, Earth Advocate and Voice of the Plants. She is the Founder of Heart Springs Sanctuary, where she helps people deepen their connection with nature through plant communication. With over 20 years of experience with plant essences, energy work, and herbal practices her private consultations and plant-based protocols are known for helping clients through emotional life transitions, physical health crises, and chronic conditions. Jen has dedicated her life to the spiritual path of plant work. Her apprenticeship certification programs, ceremonies, retreats and workshop offerings are designed for people wanting to open their hearts, fall in love with plants and deepen their relationship to the planet.
Visit www.Brigidsway.com to learn more.
We have many problems facing us today and our future. Many of us are tired, angry even with the lack of legislative action protecting water, food, air, and soil. It seems we take two steps forward and now we seem to be taking three steps back. Yet, much innovation abounds, often at the grassroots level. We are making a difference. Yes, more needs to be done. Can we grow stronger more fulfilling communities without gangs, violence, with sustainable food, water, soil, and air resources?
My podcast series, Holistic Nature of Us seeks to be a voice, adding a contribution to our global community following my soul path. Yet how many of us are taught about Soul? We hear Soul referenced in specific work, as a common metaphor but what inner work are we doing to move from intense consumerism which is ego based to one that is ecologically based? Bill Plotkin defines soul as: “a thing’s ultimate place in the world”
My work with dreams, archetypes, the shadow from Carl Jung’s framework has helped me dig deeper into understanding my soul’s path and destiny in ways I could not have imagined. The podcast series was born, following my inner guidance and passion, I enjoy interviewing, I do a lot of public speaking and so I combined two loves into one venue. I have to tell you I am enjoying the process immensely.
My podcast guest this week, Rebecca Wildbear, river and soul guide works with Bill Plotkin’s Soulcraft program. Bill founded Animas Valley Institute based in Colorado. He reminds me that the post-industrial world is collapsing. What can we contribute to the reinvention of a more healthy culture? He feels we are basically stuck in early adolescence. We need to help each other, get back to more soul-based, mystical work, honoring the natural world once. While this will take time, generations even, we, as part of this masterful world have our own unique contribution to offer. What’s yours? I offer this video to give you an overview of his timely perspective.
For me, this is exciting work. I have been a dreamer all my life and can only tell you how much I have grown doing the deep inner work. I have been privileged to partake in ceremony, deep rituals that have given profound meaning to what I do, who I strive to be, and what fosters my contributions.
What does soul mean to you? What inspired you about Bill’s message?
Have you discovered what makes you sing? get up and go to work from gratitude and joy? Dance with family and friends? What gift do you feel you are bringing to your community? What do you think about Bill’s SoulCraft message?
I enjoy your comments, your stories. Please share. Thanks.
Description: Rebecca Wildbear is a river and soul guide, compassionately helping people tune in to the mysteries that live within the wild Earth community, the Dreamtime, and their own wild nature. This podcast takes a different approach to sustainability. It ‘s about how we sustain ourselves through the journey of life that can detract us from finding the “soul ” of things, for our growth and happiness. Rebecca leads journeys into the wilderness, allowing us to spend time in nature to reconnect on deeper levels. After all, we are so alike, made from earth, air, water, and fire. We need the Earth and she needs us to awaken again to her gifts, her presence, her majesty.
About my Guest: A nature-based river and soul guide, Rebecca guides Wild Yoga and Animas Valley Institute programs. She supports people in tuning into the mysteries that live within the animate natural world, dreams, and their own body and deep imagination. Rebecca supports people in discovering their soul’s deepest longing and living a life of creative service while rediscovering their deep belonging within the Earth community. Rebecca is the creator of Wild Yoga™, a sacred way of breathing and moving, aligned with Earth and Soul. For more about Rebecca, visit www.rebeccawildbear.com
We use them for food, clothing, shelter, tools and containers, fibers for tieing. We are connected to this kingdom of species because our survival depends on them. Trees give us oxygen. We give them carbon dioxide. We are interconnected with them. Our ancestors knew this. They were deeply in tune with the natural world, created ceremony and ritual to honor and give thanks for what they used.
Ethnobotany delves deeply into the cultural uses of plants, their contribution to providing that which we need. Ethnobotany is also concerned with lore, the knowledge passed down from one generation to another. We know from John Robbins research in Healthy at 100, once western civilization moves into more secluded areas, community structures break down. The connection to the elders breaks apart, too. Where do the stories go when children leave and seek ‘a better life’?
My first job out of nursing school was in the field of geriatrics. My patients were Jewish, a few were concentration camp survivors. My staff came from Jamaica, African Americans. I am Caucasian with Northern European and Native American roots. We were culturally a blend. I may have been the youngest staff member too.
I enjoyed getting to know my staff and patients. One lady was the neighborhood piano teacher and suffered from dementia. Her stories were lost. Another woman sat by her husband’s bedside crocheting every day as he suffered from a debilitating stroke which left him speechless. She had her own store, a businesswoman who wove her memories into each stitch because her husband could not talk. While I was not into wild edibles and medicinal plants at that point in my life, I valued their wisdom, their adventures, their perspective.
Today, with the exception of grassroots groups like United Plant Savers, herbal
networks, many of our stories on the uses of plants are almost lost. Books like Cherokee Herbal, by J.T.Garrett, offer plant wisdom. Stories are sprinkled throughout the book to bring the message from the plants in a way that strokes our imagination. Euell Gibbons books tell us about his experiences with plants, how he used them with specific recipes. His tales offer practical advice. He busts through some misperceptions too.
My students were interested in my plant stories and that is how At the Garden’s Gate was born. More importantly, I met students very interested in anthropology, and ethnobotany. Ethnobotany, as Dr. Manuel Lizarralde my guest this week so beautifully explained, is about more than just plants. It’s about our cultural uses and our dependence on the plant world: shelter, housing, food, medicine, clothing, tools for living and the lore that comes with them. They contribute to the richness, the mystery, and magic of our life
What stories do you have from your ancestors? Do you continue to weave baskets, make medicine, weave fibers into a rope? Let me know. Send in a short story or two. I would enjoy hearing your stories.
Description: Ethnobotany involves the knowledge, wisdom, and experiences from many different cultures around the world, especially those close to mother earth, (called the Indigenous People). While Manuel enjoys gardening and talks about some of his favorite plants, he also focuses on producing. He sees himself as a producer rather than a consumer, making bow and arrows, baskets etc. from natural products, some available in our local environments. Join us for an entertaining discussion involving the art and science of ethnobotany.
About my Guest:Dr. Manuel Lizarralde is an Associate Professor of Ethnobotany, teaching in the Botany Department and Environmental Studies Program at Connecticut College since 1998. Dr. Lizarralde’s principal research focus is the botanical and ecological knowledge of indigenous people of the tropical rainforest. His research focus is the Barí people of Venezuela with 34 months of fieldwork over the last 29 years. He has also done ethnobotanical research with the Matsigenka of Peru and is the author of an index and map of South American Indigenous languages. He is the author or co-author of 24 journal articles or book chapters, 3 maps and one book. For the last 18 years, he has been working with the Mohegan and Mashantucket Pequot Nation in Connecticut on the reconstruction and uses of traditional bows and arrows. Dr. Lizarralde is also an avid bowyer, basket maker, and bow hunter.
Judith Dreyer, MS, BSN, Writer, Speaker, and Workshop Presenter, Master Gardener.
What does soul mean to you? What inspired you about Bill’s message?
