Author: nigel2d51396e71

In Spring, when you’re still shaking off winter and haven’t quite fully moved on from the roast potatoes to salads, you need food, tonics, and remedies that support your body’s kick start.It’s no coincidence that Nature provides just the medicine you need, at just the right time,

These 10 bitter wild plants are part of Spring’s natural medicine chest that are just what your body needs  to throw off winter’s sluggishness: they’re pungent, spicy, warming and cleansing to get your system going again, says herbalist Alice Bettany.

​So if you are struggling with Spring coughs and colds, try some of these – they’re easy to spot and prepare.

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A few years ago I was at forager Robin Harford’s Green Gathering on Exmoor.

It was a weekend of plant-based experiences. From workshops on foraging and fermentation to herbal remedies and storytelling round the fire… one of the sessions that had the most effect on me was an Earth Mandala workshop by artist Keith Beaney.

Keith got us collecting natural materials to contribute to a mandala frame that he’d created for us in the woods.

It was very muddy and wet, and initially I struggled with connecting with it, but suddenly something took over and I got caught up in the process, of being in the woods and looking around at the trees and wildlife for inspiration.

I started gathering white leaves, interesting twigs and unusual flowers for my section of the mandala, absorbed in a child-like flow.

It was an inspiring and fun creative process.

Each person in my group reported a similar experience.
​And the mandala we made together was really stunning. As was Keith’s own work that he made from foraged and found seed heads and plant stems. (see pic above)

Back in Brighton, I met Dutch artist Anniek Verholt, she’s a leader in therapeutic arts and uses a similar artistic process to Keith.

We talked about putting on a session for School of the Wild on the South Downs: the result was a Land Art and Mindfulness workshop.

In this workshop, Anniek guided us through an approach to art that incorporates a love of nature, and leading to a place of silence, connection and creative expression at a beautiful outdoor location on the South Downs.

In a similar process to what I did before, we created individual land art pieces with gathered natural materials that we feel intuitively drawn to, and get to see unique creative processes.  

The idea is that by doing this, we each gain personal insights. 

It was great!

During the summer months in the UK, you can find an array of wild flowers on the South Downs that are useful for a range of health complaints, as well as being vital for wildlife. 

Local herbalist Lucinda Warner took us up onto the South Downs in Sussex to forage for wild plants that make useful herbal medicine.
​
Here are 12 of the wild plants that she showed us, and their uses. It’s an activity we sometimes includes as part of our outdoor team building and away day programmes for leaders and teams, it can offer useful learning.

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Venue: Saddlescombe Farm, E. Sussex
Date: Sunday 5th February 2017
Time: 9.30am to 5.30pm
Facilitator: Rebecca Card

No of participants: 7

Hypothesis:
When you create a ceremony with intention, something mysterious happens and the things that occur in the ceremony reflect what’s happening on the inside, and are symbolic – call it synchronicity, the Wyrd, the Mystery – which is helpful, nourishing and gives rise to useful insight.

Method:
Set up an altar, sit around it in a circle. Everyone shares their personal story, authentic as you are able is helpful. Listen to each other, then go off for a solo walk in nature, choosing our own threshold. On returning, share story of what happened, reflections from the guide and other participants clarify and embed what happened.Results – Story of the walk:
NB due to confidentiality I can only write about my own walk

February. It’s my birthday. I’ve sort of forgotten that, and instead of going out celebrating, I’ve arranged a medicine walk instead.

It feels right though, to be doing something reflective this year.

It’s a cold, grey start to the day, dry after a week of wet weather.

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Last weekend I drove to Exmoor for a gathering organised by Robin Harford, the best forager I know. (I’ll take every opportunity I can to learn from him.)

Robin is an intuitive forager. His method is to use all of your senses to get to know a plant: sight, touch, smell, and only when you’re 150% sure, to taste.To use all your senses like this when you forage you need to centre yourself, to quieten your mind and pay attention to what you experience, to what your body is telling you.

And to listen to your intuition.

Is it the plant you think it is? Is it good to eat? What does it remind you of? What could it go with?

Here’s 6 of the wild plants we gathered for our supper, you can find and eat all of them right now:

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I was sitting on Dartmoor last weekend, as part of a Medicine Walk, a solo walking ceremony that turns the land into a mirror for your inner world.

The weather on Dartmoor was gorgeous. The flowering gorse and gnarly hawthorn trees reminding me of the Downs, with similar stunning views across green fields towards the coast.

I’ve got a bit hooked on Medicine Walks after being introduced to them by Rebecca Card, and then running them with her on the Downs around Devil’s Dyke.

I have no idea how they work, but something unexpected, insightful and magical always seems to happen to me: from finding special trees and features in the landscape that resonate with themes in my life, to strange synchronicities that have made me laugh out loud.

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You use them every day to gather information about the world around you. Your senses that is. 

You have sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing… you have amazing powers of consciousness, reason, and creativity. 

But your body is chock full of ‘extra’ senses that you may not even be aware you’re using, like some of the mysterious powers that other animals possess.

You can access them if you drop out of your rational, thinking mind.

If you pay attention to what you feel in your body, you can detect and feel things around you that you can’t see: objects, movement, emotions…

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October. Outside the sun is shining and the air is clean and fresh. Inside, ten of us are sitting in a circle on the floor. It’s a hard floor, but we’re on cushions, the woodburner is alight and no one is complaining. 

We’re here at Saddlescombe Farm in the shadow of the South Downs for a Medicine Walk and Council, a ceremonial solo journey into the ‘Mystery’, a way of staying open to the land so that it can be a mirror for your inner landscape.

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I’m grieving. And I’m cold.  So cold in fact that I can’t feel my feet.

In the end the cold gets the better of me and I have to leave. The desire to get warm wins out over my desire to stay and grieve some more, sharing tears with the others round the dwindling fire.

It’s night and I’ve been standing on the pebbles of Brighton beach in a circle with a motley crowd of twenty or so others. We’re here to remember lost species, to hold a posthumous funeral ceremony to commemorate them, in particular the Tasmanian Tiger (Thylacine) which was pronounced extinct in 1936.

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I was listening to comedian and actor, Eddie Izzard, on the radio this morning. He’s just finished 27 marathons in 27 days. (!)

​They ask him if he’s taking a rest, or if he’s already planning to start running again.

“You’re asking this now?!?” he jokes.

Then after a moment’s thought, “I expect I’ll be doing half marathons every couple of weeks,” he says. He pauses. 

​“I need to move… like we did when we were kids… 

“At some point as adults, we decided that wasn’t a good idea, but we’re natural animals, and we need to move. We forget that.”

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