Medicinal Plants and Spiritual Evolution Intensive (2017) – David Crow

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EXCERPT FROM PLANTS THAT HEAL: ESSAYS ON BOTANICAL MEDICINE BY DAVID CROW, L.AC.

We are entering a period in history when human health will be seriously challenged. If the destructive trends of rapid global warming, accelerating loss of biodiversity, widespread pollution and degradation of ecosystems, deepening poverty, malnutrition, and political instability are not reversed, all forms of medicine will become increasingly ineffective, unaffordable, and unavailable. For large populations in many parts of the world, this future has already arrived.

The causes of these conditions are numerous, complex, pervasive, and seemingly overwhelming. There is, however, one solution that has the potential to unify humanity in worldwide healing – the plants.

Plants are the foundation of civilization and culture. They created the biosphere of the earth’s surface, and they regulate its functions. Plants are the ultimate source of all health and prosperity; they feed us, give us clothing and shelter, provide fuel, fiber, and countless other necessities. Every breath we breathe is the breath of plants, which supports all life. Plants are the origin of medicine.

When healing an illness, there is often relatively little that doctors and patients can do to directly produce optimum functioning of human physiology. Plants, however, provide the biochemical and nutritional compounds that assist the body’s internal ecology and promote its innate homeostasis and equilibrium. Phytonutrients nourish the organs, support the tissues, and enhance immunity, while the medicinal constituents of botanical species detoxify metabolic waste and xenobiotics (harmful foreign substances). No synthetic pharmaceutical drug can perform these functions.

Similarly, there is relatively little that people can do to reverse global warming, to stabilize disturbed weather patterns, or to detoxify environmental contamination. But plants do all of these things. They cool the planet, help regulate the seasons, recharge groundwater, restore soil fertility and stop erosion, regenerate the ozone layer, bind atmospheric carbon dioxide, and purify the toxins we put everywhere. Plants perform the same crucial functions in the outer environment as they do in the inner environment of the body.

This article, along with “The People’s Pharmacy” and “The Pharmacy of Flowers,” outlines a broad vision of plants as humanity’s primary resource for solving the complex and potentially devastating challenges we face. The article begins with a brief overview of how plants created and sustain the biosphere, followed by an exploration of the parallels between human and plant physiology, and comparisons between disease processes in the human body and planetary ecosystems. Finally, it outlines some of the ways plants are being used for healing the environment, and how these functions are similar to healing mechanisms in the human body.

Plant physiology and planetary evolution

The life-supporting elements that we often take for granted are the result of unimaginably long cycles of evolutionary processes. It can accurately be said that plants created, and continue to create, the world we live in. Recognizing our dependency on the eco-functions performed by plants increases our sensitivity to the conditions of the environment, and encourages us to protect and restore the natural world.

From the perspective of plant eco-physiology, four events are of major significance in the long biological history of the earth. The first is the appearance of single-celled photosynthetic organisms in the primordial ocean about three billion years ago. This preplant photosynthesis brought about three planetary changes: the radiant energy of sunlight began to be converted into chemical energy, which became the nutritive foundation for all subsequent life forms; atmospheric oxygen increased, which allowed the evolution of more complex organisms and life forms; and atmospheric oxygen was converted to ozone, which provided protection from solar ultraviolet radiation and allowed migration of life onto land.

The second evolutionary step was the migration of multi-celled organisms, the precursors of modern plants and animals, onto land about 450 million years ago. By 400 million years ago, early vascular plants were radiating across the land.

The third important development was the evolution of plant roots. By 375 million years ago, root structures penetrated almost a meter into the soil. This development brought about major changes in the soil and atmosphere; between 400 and 350 million years ago a 10-fold decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide occurred, as a result of plant respiration and microbial activity in the root systems.

The fourth evolutionary step occurred around 100 million years ago, with the appearance of flowering plants. This relatively sudden development brought about a rapid expansion of biodiversity, culminating in human beings, as new forms of life evolved in symbiotic relationships with the plant realm. [End of excerpt]

Read on to find out more about David’s Medicinal Plants and Spiritual Evolution course …

RECEIVE PROFOUND INSIGHTS, PRACTICES AND TEACHINGS FOR CONNECTING MORE DEEPLY TO THE NATURAL WORLD AND HARNESSING THE POWER OF PLANTS FOR YOUR HEALTH, WELLBEING AND SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION.

Have you long suspected there is much more to understand about plants, spirituality and your connection to the natural world?

Have you been fascinated about systems of natural medicine like Ayurveda, Chinese wisdom and working with herbs?

Are you curious about how essential oils and herbs affect your moods and shift your consciousness?

Questions like these lead us toward a profound new understanding of medicinal plants, one that links our biology, our ecology, the growth of our consciousness and our felt sense of connection with all of life.

Scientific evidence now shows that plants are sentient beings that are connected in profound, complex and mysterious ways to the health of our bodies and minds.

We generally think of plants as sources of food, and sometimes we recognize their healing powers when they help us cure an illness, but we may not be aware of many crucial functions they perform continually inside us.

Becoming aware of these activities through simple methods of mindfulness and contemplative study opens our eyes to our deep biological unity and intimate interconnectedness with life.

Through the photosynthetic actions of plants we are directly connected to the sun: we can learn to feel this unity in the metabolic warmth of the body.

We breathe together with plants: every breath can become an opportunity to feel our kinship with other living beings that nourish us.

Plants, therefore, offer essential keys to spiritual evolution, if we know how to commune with them to discover the expressions of their life-giving intelligence.

We’ve been trained to relate to the plant kingdom in a mechanistic way, cutting us off from the benefits of a real relationship with the natural world, which affects our relationship with people as well.

Becoming sensitized to our deeper biological interconnectedness is a kind of spirituality that deconstructs our false notions and identities. Feeling yourself connected to the sunlight moves you into realizing everyone is, quite literally, made out of sunlight.

As we create a different kind of relationship with plants, the path opens to a kind of spiritual awakening that is grounded, earthy and sustainable, one where we become intimately interconnected with the intelligence of nature in a very tangible way.

The links between medicinal plants and our spiritual evolution has been deeply studied in ancient systems of natural healing such as botanical medicine, Ayurveda and Chinese medicine.

When you connect with the deep sentience, wisdom and healing power within the plant kingdom, your eyes are opened to new realms of knowledge, and you come home to your body and life in a different way.

As you begin to experience your biological unity with the plant kingdom, you embark on an exciting voyage in consciousness that can open you up to a new understanding of medicinal herbs, aromatherapy, meditation and spirituality. This manifests in many ways, from the kind of herb gardens you grow to how you use essential oils in your practice.

For instance, when we smell an essential oil such as lavender, we can begin to perceive that it conveys elements of the earth, and moonlight and sunlight directly into our consciousness. So lavender is relaxing but what we’re looking at is why because it’s conveying something from the outer environment into our internal environment.

By understanding plants in a more multi-dimensional way, we open up a deeper cosmological view and a more dynamic relationship with the life force around us. We cultivate more prana or chi. We harmonize our bodily systems. We heal old traumas.

You can envision this new relationship with the plant kingdom by thinking of it in terms of growing new and deeper roots for embodied living. This strengthened root system in your consciousness allows you to weather metaphorical storms, droughts and other life challenges.

This increase in groundedness applies not just at the personal level but the collective one. If we’re trying to grow a healthy new culture, we need to deepen our roots by connecting to the biological realities that allow us to grow in a way that is sustainable.

Put simply, by reconnecting with plants, we re-establish a relationship with the ground of being.

Our planet is in ecological crisis at least partially because we have grown to see ourselves as separate and “above” nature in a way that leads us to be destructive, wasteful and neglectful, not to mention unhealthy and unhappy.

THE VALUE OF A MASTER GUIDE

There is perhaps no better guide for the journey into a new paradigm of relating to the plant kingdom than Floracopeia founder David Crow L.Ac., who unifies wisdom from many streams of healing practices into a coherent understanding.

For more than 30 years he’s pioneered a path that’s about harnessing the power of plants to infuse more intelligence in your body, mind and soul – giving you a more organic wisdom and sustainable connection with life.

David will show you how to relate more deeply with medicinal plants for rejuvenation, awakening and health.

He’ll draw from strands as diverse as Ayurveda, Chinese medicine and essential oils to shift the foundation of how you relate to plants – from seeing them as mechanistic objects to wise, sentient allies.

You’ll receive a profound understanding for working with medicinal plants, food plants, flowers, aromatic ceremonial plants and essential oils as a doorway into understanding spiritual realities about the interconnectedness of life.

In every class, you’ll gain important practical information about medicinal plants that can be applied for several health imbalances. However, the primary focus of this course is to develop a greater sensitivity to learning how to receive the many benefits of herbal medicine and understand the deep and ancient intelligence that plants have carried long before humans appeared.

Recognizing this intelligence, the power it has to heal us individually and collectively and our biological inseparability from it, is the beginning of reverence for plants – which really is the beginning of a sacred relationship with nature. This program offers a gateway to ecological spirituality – the antidote for the destruction and suffering we are causing ourselves and all life on Earth.

During this 7-module program, you’ll:

• Develop increased sensory awareness of your interconnectedness to nature and plants.
• Practice body-based meditation to feel your biological unity beyond a conceptual level.
• Study the four levels of using herbs in Tibetan and Ayurvedic medicine, from medical to spiritual.
• Understand how to bring plants into your life to enhance your immunological, neurological and emotional intelligence.
• Develop new ways to work with energy, consciousness and healing.
• Learn how medicinal plants can specifically be used to develop awareness of our unity with the elements of the cosmos.
• Understand how rejuvenation and detoxification therapies can support your spiritual evolution.
• Discover the differences between the molecular intelligence of medicinal plants and pharmaceutical drugs.
• Learn how to use classical meditation methods such as Vipassana to cultivate ecological spirituality.
• Establish more botanical intelligence and understand how that relates to your own chi and health.
• Increase your olfactory awareness and expand your ability to taste foods, notice body sensations, and become more aware of the toxicity around you (in home, in food), allowing you to create a healthier, happier environment.
• Expand your self-awareness leading to lasting lifestyle changes because you can actually feel what is going on.
• Release toxic patterns and get natural feedback from your body, enhancing your health and spiritual evolution.
• Develop discernment of the internal healer – the awareness about what to eat, what to avoid and which products to use.

This program is appropriate for professionals in any discipline who work with herbs, plants, oils or energy, as well as any person who is intrigued by the healing and personal evolutionary benefits of botanical medicine.

This course will draw from David’s more than 30 years of studying the healing powers of plants in various cultures with many gifted teachers, from the shamanic traditions of the Amazon to the alchemical mysteries of the Himalayas and the ancient wisdom of Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine. It is a unique offering of knowledge, information and insights that we are sure you will find deeply enriching as well as practical.

WHAT YOU’LL DISCOVER IN THESE 7 MODULES

In this 7-module transformational intensive, David will guide you through the fundamental skills and competencies to become attuned and aligned to your deeper biological interconnectedness with the plant kingdom. You’ll develop a broader spiritual lens that will support a deconstruction of false notions about your relationship with plants, and you’ll learn how to work with energy, consciousness and healing in new ways.

Each contemplation and training session will build harmoniously upon the last, so that you’ll develop a complete, holistic understanding of the practices, tools and principles of evolutionary healing with plants as you connect to the greater biological realities of creating a sustainable culture that supports all.

Module 1: The Evolution of Light Into Consciousness

Cultivating Awareness of Biological Unity & Understanding Its Importance to Human Survival

Module 2: Botanical Intelligence

Plants as Agents of Nature’s Self-organizing Intelligence

Module 3: Children of Flowers

Our Biological Relationship with Flowering Plants

Module 4: Soma

Elixirs for Rejuvenation, Longevity, Wisdom and Transcendence

Module 5: The Perfumed Garden

Plants, Olfaction and Consciousness

Module 6: Wish-fulfilling Gems

Ceremonial Plants for Removing Obstacles, Creating Synchronicity and Attracting Good Fortune

Module 7: Freedom and Fulfillment

Medicinal Plants, Detoxification and Spiritual Evolution

An Unprecedented Opportunity to Join The Medicinal Plants and Spiritual Evolution Virtual Training

We, at The Shift Network, feel deeply honored that David Crow has chosen to partner with us on this exclusive online training. As you may know, this is a rare opportunity to learn directly from one of the world’s foremost experts and leading speakers in the field of botanical medicine and grassroots healthcare whose powerful insights and pioneering work are helping us heal and awaken ourselves – and our world.

Through this powerful online format, you’ll not only save time and money on workshop costs (plus travel, accommodations and meals – which would cost thousands of dollars). But you’ll be able to benefit from David’s incredible teachings and exercises from the comfort of your home – at your own pace!

If you are serious about understanding the deeper internal dimensions that are inside the plants and all around us to heal and transform, then you owe it to yourself, your loved ones – and our world – to take this one-of-a-kind training.