Ayurvedic Magazine - Joyful Belly Journal

Judgment projects our emotions and feelings externally, onto others. Discernment is internal, about our own emotions and process. Discernment is about setting boundaries. In discernment, we can still experience a state of love.

Medicinal herbs give our body an experience. Through meditation on the experience we learn about our internal pathways and relationships between them.

"The vitality of the plant begins to dissipate moments after it is picked," says Green Light at the Wyoming Rainbow Nationals, 2008. "So I eat plants the way animals do, with my teeth."

Plants fill the empty space of a certain niche. They survive there because they express unique qualities, unique energetic. The life force they express is their message. When that message interacts with you; what happens?

says Frank Cook, of Plants and Healers, who also explains, "All over the world, people don't know the weeds."

"Plants are closer to the light and they bring us with them." says Frank Cook of Plants and Healers, "Once you start eating something wild, you'll never forget how rotten a candy bar is."

Donate your poop to nature. Poop is a great resource which has been wasted in the last hundred years. These days, composting toilets are making a comeback. Poop is an offering and a sacred gift to the mountain. Frank Cook (Plants and Healers) explains, "The Chinese have a joke about a farmer who invites a guest to dinner. After dinner, the guest turns to leave before he has time to visit the toilet. The farmer says, 'I invited you to dinner but didn't say you could take my resources.'"

Frank Cook (Plants and Healers). How long is a moment? Is it 1/9 of a minute? Looking at the sunset, how long does the feeling last before we become aware of it?

Frank and I are driving across southern Colorado west toward Durango. High on the plateau, we were also spiritually high. The land is expansive. We met nestled in the mountains of Asheville, in the womb. Landscape effects my spirit; I'm learning how.

We step into a cave in Las Huertas Canyon of Albuquerque, New Mexico. In the ear of the mountain, I ask for permission to harvest the wild herbs of the region. Energy is wobbling. "Spend seven days here in total darkness and you will dissolve," explains Frank.

Too often, mixing our favorite ingredients in a one-pot surprise turns gray and lifeless. But if your bean dish looks vibrant, it's probably correct! That's the challenge of beans. They're not only delicious and warming, but also bland, heavy, and difficult to digest. So we have to be careful.

Plants bring us the love, the nourishing power of the sun, which is the same energy of all the stars, of all light. These cosmic energies emanated by plants thus nourish, sustain, and make us grow our own astral body. In this way the existence of plants is a great offering, a sacrifice.

p3-6 Lad, Vasant; Frawley, David. The Yoga of Herbs - An Ayurvedic Guide to Herbal Medicine. Lotus Press; 2nd edition (January 1, 1986)

Ayurvedic Chefs

http://michellepalmer.wordpress.com/ - Michelle Palmer is an Ayurvedic Chef, Diet & Lifestyle Consultant living in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England. She teaches cooking classes and gives Ayurvedic health consultations.

Western Herbalism

Plants and Healers
Over the last fifteen years Frank Cook's passion for being a repository of plant knowledge has grown steadily. He has studied with Herbalists, Shamen, Vaidyas, Sangomas, Doctors, Professors, Medicine Men. . . ..around the world. They have initiated him into many ways of walking with plants. More and more there are opportunities to share what he has learned at workshops, schools, conferences, and gatherings of all types.

Appalachia School of Holistic Herbalism
The earth's bounty is always reaching out to us, offering its aid to restore us to vitality. Learning in nature and through nature at NCSHH, on our thirty-acre campus, connects the student to the roots and essence of Herbalism. Through the study of medicinal plants and holistic living skills, we return the ancient art of healing to the individual and to the family, rebuilding conscientious communities and embracing our divine potential.

Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine
We offer classes in the tradition of Roots Herbalism - the kind where your hands get dirty as you develop life-long relationships with plants. Our classroom is the outdoors - garden, forest, field, mountain, and stream. We hold no indoor classes except during inclement weather or insect challenges.

Before returning home, Frank and I visited Jemez and San Antonio Hot Springs. Before bathing, he prays, "For the person I am now and the person I will become." Water hemlock, spikenard, and sister ivy twist around our ankles on our walk up. The trail, covered with steam and an aura of sulphur, tells us the earth is breathing here.

We put our whole bodies into the cave. I "Om" three times and put my feet deeper into the source, into an unknown, dark, clammy crack in the rock where hot water gushes. Minerals bubble up through this opening from deep within.

Hours later, we drive the rough terrain to San Antonio Hot Springs. We pass beneath "The Father Stone" and Frank says, "Spend three days here eating wild plants and they will talk to you..."

Wherever the mind goes, let it go there. Let it go to hell even. Who cares? Awareness is God and awareness is love and freedom. Concentration resists distraction but distraction is a piece of awareness. Concentration is focus, and a focused mind is a narrow mind. A mind which focuses is a particular mind. A very personal mind; it becomes a stupid mind.

But a mind with clarity is completely aware, everything is welcome. All inclusive. Concentration is exclusive, it rejects everything. Behind concentration is a desire to achieve. Concentration is effort and effort denies the existence of God. Effort makes a person tired but awareness comes without effort and brings great energy.

Concentration puts aside God and we become the doer. Listen to distraction with all of your being. Awareness is doing it without the doer. We should never 'do' concentration. Concentration just comes as a gift from awareness. Enjoy life as it is. Moment to moment awareness is staying with 'what is'. You are really, 'staying with yourself.'

-Transcribed from classes with Dr. Vasant Lad (hopefully I captured the essence of what he was trying to say)

Visualize the pain body (we often talk about the auric body, physical body, etc.) When the ego faces an obstacle it creates painful feelings (the pain body), then it triggers the mind to have thoughts (the story) that explain the feelings. Through identification with the store and the emotions, the pain body takes over the entire organism; we act out the pain and inflict pain on others.

-Oren Weinrib, an apprenticing shaman who studies under Hawks of New York.

Experience the emotion fully without hiding from the feelings. But talk to the story and ask about its needs and fears. Thank the story for sharing but set boundaries with it, "Negative aren't not very helpful. Come back later with something deeper."

-Oren Weinrib, an apprenticing shaman who studies under Hawks of New York.

-Oren Weinrib, an apprenticing shaman who studies under Hawks of New York.

-Oren Weinrib, an apprenticing shaman who studies under Hawks of New York.

-Oren Weinrib, an apprenticing shaman who studies under Hawks of New York.