Rooted in the wisdom of ancient cultures and thriving in today’s world, herbalism takes a holistic approach to health and wellness through recognizing the healing properties found in plants. Botanical medicine has played an important role in Indigenous cultures and millenia-old healing and folk medicine traditions around the world, and those repositories of knowledge have been preserved and passed down for generations. Contemporary herbalism draws from this wisdom, offering a bridge between ancient practices and today’s use of plant medicine. 

In this week’s newsletter, learn about contemporary herbal medicine, the healing promise and pitfalls of plant medicines in a globalized world, and what we miss when we oversimplify nature’s complexity.

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Exploring the Healing Promise of Plant Medicines in a Global Industry 

Ann Armbrecht is an author, filmmaker and the director of the Sustainable Herbs Program. Since her time studying with legendary herbalist Rosemary Gladstar, who emphasizes a kin-centric relationship with plants, Armbrecht has explored the nature of plants as living entities rather than merely inanimate objects to ingest. In this interview, learn more about her book, “The Business of Botanicals: Exploring the Healing Promise of Plant Medicines in a Global Industry,” and how the commodification of herbal medicine affects the essence of plants.

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Layla K. Feghali | Food is Our Medicine, Love is Our Medicine

In her book, “The Land In Our Bones,” Lebanese ethnobotanist, sovereignty steward, and cultural worker Layla K. Feghali offers a layered history of the healing plants of Cana’an (the Levant) and the Crossroads (“Middle East”). Tying cultural survival to earth-based knowledge, Feghali asks into the ways we become free from the wounds of colonization and displacement. 

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The Pitfall of Plant-Based Pharmaceuticals and Therapies

Why might someone develop resistance to a pharmaceutical drug based on one active plant ingredient but be successfully treated by the plant itself? In this article, ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin and physician-scientist Karyemaitre Aliffe discuss what we miss when we oversimplify nature’s complexity, and how we can correct our thinking.

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Katsi Cook | Revitalizing Indigenous Knowledge and Medicine, Nurturing Health and Cultural Resilience

Katsi Cook, a wolf clan Mohawk, is a prominent midwife, environmentalist, and women’s health advocate known for her impactful work in the Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne. In this talk, she shares a deeply edifying look at the cultural context of Native American plant use in general and then of peyote use. Her descriptions of indigenous views of plants and their relationships to humans offer the non-indigenous among us very important cautions about the risks of arrogant and disrespectful use of plant medicines and sacraments.

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How To Find Plant Products You Can Feel Good About

“We live in a world where we are all using the earth’s energy, the oil, water, the resources of the earth. I don’t think any business would deny that. What is important is that those companies are doing their utmost to ensure that they are putting back what they are taking out.” – Sebastian Pole

It can be challenging for consumers to know where to look for the best product – one that is good for your, for the people doing the work, and for the Earth. In this article, learn about ways to let companies know you are paying attention and how to take action as a consumer.

Learn more.

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Upcoming Bioneers Learning Courses & Community Conversations

Through engaging courses and conversations led by some of the world’s foremost movement leaders, Bioneers Learning and Community Conversations equip engaged citizens and professionals like you with the knowledge, tools, resources, and networks to initiate or deepen your engagement, leading to real change in your life and community.

Upcoming Bioneers Learning Courses:

• EveryWoman’s Leadership: Cultivating Ourselves for Full-Spectrum Flourishing | Starting January 17 | Strengthen your female side and reclaim your agency by learning practices for composting the self-limiting biases and inner voices that can defeat our efforts.
• MeToo to WeTogether: Transforming Gender Injustice into Beloved Community | Starting February 10 | Speak the depths of your truth, experience the power of collective healing, and transmute dysfunctional gender conditioning into beloved communities.
• Speak Your Truth: Leadership, Writing & Public Speaking for Social & Environmental Justice | Starting March 1 | Gain specific tools for effectively communicating your vision for a positive future, as well as strategies for building a campaign to make your vision a reality. 
• Attuning to, Aligning with & Serving the Impulse & Flow of Universal Evolution | Starting March 20 | Wake up to a radical reality and discover as a species who we really and truly are and who we can evolve to become.
• Being a Good Relative: Allyship with Indigenous Peoples | Starting April 24 | Understand and come to embody what it means to be a good ally through interactive teachings, discussions, and hands-on activities.
• The Four Sacred Gifts: Indigenous Wisdom for Modern Times | Self-Paced | Discover how the Four Sacred Gifts of forgiving the unforgivable, unity, healing, and hope in action provide us with a path to our most grounded, loving, healed, and generous selves.
• Regenerative Agriculture: Nourishing the Soil, Healing the Planet | Self-Paced | Be enlightened on the practical applications and impressive potential that regenerative agriculture has to revive healthy landscapes; contribute to human and animal health; create an equitable food system; and help heal the climate.

Upcoming Community Conversations:

• Love, Resistance, Dignity, and Power: Exploring Bodily Autonomy as a Framework and Praxis | February 14 | Unveil practical strategies to center bodily autonomy in practices of love, dignity, and power within our lives, families, and communities, and movements.
• More coming soon!