Seven Ways to Open to Plants

 

Marking the launch of his immersive new book and card deck, Wild Enchantments: Learning from plants co created with artist Fiona Owen -  Nathaniel Hughes, herbalist and founder of a herbalist training school, shares salient wisdom for connecting with plants.

Our new book Wild Enchantments distils insights gleaned over decades of plant meetings, initiations and healing into doorways that invite you to step deeper into relationship with plants. Here I’d like to share with you just seven doorways, or steps you can take, to open to the plants and invite them to inspire and teach you. I hope you will feel inspired to seek out living plants to connect with, feel their presence, allow all your senses to be touched, and discover your own relationships. At this time when our ecological crisis calls us to do all we can to nurture and protect nature and our earth’s ecosystems - to step up, take action and inspire others - the plants can help us dream into a future where we live in healthy symbiotic relationship with this planet and each other. We already know all of this. We already know how to listen to the plants, how to heal ourselves and how to live well. The plants simply remind us, if we are ready to listen.   Here Nathaniel shares seven ways for opening to plants… 1.  How you approach matters: In modern culture, plants and other living beings can easily become commodities, seen and valued primarily for their use to us. What would it be to approach plants as ancestors, teachers full of wisdom from their hundreds of years of evolution? Approaching plants with respect and as a mystery opens doors to feeling more. 2. Make time: Creating space for receptivity is essential. Block out an hour just to walk in a park, and within that, allocate 15 minutes with a specific plant. Create a simple ritual to mark the start and end of this - treat it as sacred time, prayer or meditation. Always close with a moment for gratitude. 3. Cultivate openness and vulnerability: Know that only you can choose to let a plant affect you, but you have to be willing. You have to open the inner doors to let the plant in. Curiosity is a beautiful way to meet plants, but meeting in our vulnerability leads to deeper experiences. For instance: it is easy to feel the strength and age of an oak tree when we are feeling fragile and needing more of this ourselves. 4. Follow your attraction: There are often deeper reasons why we are drawn to certain places in nature, trees or plants - trust this calling and start with trees or plants you feel naturally drawn to. When spending time with them, ask yourself, Why am I drawn to this? What does it meet within me? How do I feel in this presence? 5. Awaken your senses: Our visual perception can easily dominate our other senses. Close your eyes. Give your other senses a chance to tell you about the world. Spend a little time focused entirely on one sense: touch, smell, hearing, even taste (if edible!) 6. Let sensation expand within you: If a smell is ‘sweet’, think of this as a doorway - ask yourself to dive deeper. What kind of sweet? Find three words for this type of sweet. Take each of these three words and find three further words within. We tend to skip over sensation too quickly - give time for it to expand. Once you’ve let this expand, ask yourself - how does this sensation affect me? 7. Express gratitude: This plant may well have been a companion to the lives of many of your own ancestors - we have grown alongside these being for generations. Relationships thrive on gratitude and reciprocity: find ways to express this.     Check out our latest issue here.