Plant spirit healing is a branch of shamanic work in which healing and teaching are offered to us by the spirits of trees and flowers. This is possible through the relationship between the spirits and the shamanic worker, in which the worker acts as a kind of bridge or ‘transformer’, allowing the plant spirit energies to interact with the human world of ordinary reality.
It is important to understand that the practitioner in no way commands or controls the plant spirits, but approaches them as a grateful supplicant on behalf of the human community, and at most as a co-worker. The spirits who give us their powerful medicine do so out of generosity and not from any compulsion. Bringing healing to humans, animals, birds and other plants are some of many ways in which they work to support and protect Earth and her peoples.
The world is entirely different from what most of us were brought up to believe. Thankfully, more and more people are now beginning to recognise this incongruence. One of the effects of this rapidly opening awareness is that large numbers of us are now responding to the call of plants and trees, and developing relationships with them based not primarily on their decorativeness in our gardens, or their usefulness as food or drugs, but arising from a new depth of respect, gratitude and love.
The trees are letting us know that they too are suffering, and may not always be sharing this world with us. In southern England, as I am writing this, Ash, Oak, Larch, Chestnut and Crack Willow are all struggling against disease. The time is past when we can look out from the little capsules of our selves and see the world as an object which is there for us to consume. We are required now to grow up and take our place in a world where all life is endlessly creative and interdependent, and where relationships of benefit must be reciprocal. We can repay the gift of plant spirit healing by offering gratitude, prayers and care to these magnanimous spirits.
Plant spirit healing in practice
There are a number of ways in which I offer plant spirit healing. Here are the most usual.