Announcing: Free Sample Issue of Plant Healer Magazine!

A Gorgeous and Generous Offering to our Community, from Kiva Rose and the Anima Lifeways School. I personally recommend making sure you have every single issue of this historic (and growing) collection of plant medicine knowledge, practice, and art.

Enjoy! --Love, Ananda

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Announcing:A Free Sample Issue of Plant Healer MagazinePDF Download Gift 

140 Pages, 20 Complete Articles, Over 250 Illustrations

“Plant Healer is amazing... the most beautiful magazine I’ve ever seen, bar none!” -Phyllis Light

 

Plant Healer Magazine Free Sample - www.PlantHealerMagazine.com

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We’re giving away a free 140 pages long Plant Healer Magazine Sample – the size of a small book! Those of you who subscribe, will have already read the 20 articles that appear in their entirety here, but now the rest of you can get also get a feel for the “Magazine Different”... while taking advantage of this gift of valuable information for anyone interested in herbalism, wildcrafting or foraging articles:

Jesse Wolf Hardin: For The Love of Plant Lovers 

Choosing An Herbal School 

Herbal School Directory 

Paul Bergner: Critical Thinking For The Herbalist 

Phyllis Light: Tree of Life 

Rebecca Altman: In Defense of The Quick-Fix 

Stories of The Herbal Resurgence Rendezvous 

Herbalism On The Frontier: J. I. Lighthall

 The Art of Plant Healer: Ernst Haeckel 

Herbalpreneurship & Making a Business Plan 

Kristin Brown: Make Your Own Herbal First-Aid Kit 

Jesse Wolf Hardin: Finding Your Path in Herbalism 

Matthew Wood: The Lymph/Immune System 

Juliet Blankespoor: Growing Medicinal Herbs in Containers 

Sam Thayer: Wild Rice 

Loba: Harvesting & Drying Wild Plants 

Susun Weed: Edible Seeds 

Robin Rose Bennett: Everything is Medicine 

Kiva Rose: Exploring Traditional Models of the Healer’s Practice

Please help yourself to this PDF download, and share it with others. Unlike the Plant Healer subscriber download codes, this link in unmonitored and free for all.

Free Download:

"This is the first publication I've seen in my 38-year career that captures the wild diversity of herbalism in North America while still reflecting excellence and high-level practice... points of view from many regions, traditions, and schools of thought.. for the practicing herbalist from entry level to advanced, inclusively." -Paul Bergner

Plant Healer Described

If you didn’t already know, Plant Healer is the largest, most comprehensive publication ever created for the herbalist and forager communities, a quarterly PDF over 250 pages per issue long, a yearly total of over 1,000 full color pages covering the practice, history, culture and art of folk herbalism as well as wild foods foraging. Plant Healer combines cutting edge science with heartful intuitive practice, practical skills that enable and personal stories that inspire. Enjoy a diverse range of articles on everything from botany and cultivation to wildcrafting and traditional foods recipes, from diagnostics and treatments to coverage of regulations and the history of herbalism, from herbs for expecting mothers and tools for starting an herbal business, to plant art and herbalist fiction. Contributors include:

Paul Bergner, Matthew Wood, Kiva Rose, Phyllis Light, Jim McDonald, 7Song, Sam Thayer, Loba, David Hoffman, Susun Weed, Christa Sinadinos, Juliet Blankespoor, Sam Coffman, Robin Rose Bennett, Sean Donahue, Rebecca Altman, Rosemary Gladstar, Christophe Bernard, Henriette Kress, Kristine Brown, Virginia Adi, Wendy Petty, Mélanie Pulla, Traci Picard, Darcey Blue French, Renee Davis, Susan Leopold, Sabrina Lutes, Catherine Skipper, Sarah Baldwin, Sophia Rose, Katheryn Langelier, Charles “Doc” Garcia, Kiva and Wolf... and many, many more.

Plant Healer Advertising

Plant Healer Magazine provides unique advertising opportunities for businesses, schools and causes we support, reaching a focused and impassioned readership of thousands that includes professional practitioners as well as herb loving consumers. Ad space is also available separately in the Plant Healer Annual book series. For full details please go to the website and download the Plant Healer Media Kit.

Submitting Your Work to Plant Healer

We encourage submissions of compelling artwork and photography, as well as of quality, previously unpublished articles for any of Plant Healer’s many departments. For full details please go to the website and download the Submission Guidelines.

To subscribe, advertise in, or submit you work to Plant Healer, please go the appropriate pages on the website: 

www.PlantHealerMagazine.com

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To Download Your Free Magazine, Click On:

Plant Healer Sample Issue-----

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Plant Healer ~ A Journal of Traditional Western Herbalism ~ Open for Subscriptions!

I'm immensely honored and inspired to be a contributing writer for the premier issue of Plant Healer Journal. This promises to be an articulate, rooted, and outspoken voice for us Plant People, as well as a calling to the world at large who suffers at the hand of profound disconnection. My hope for this journal is many-fold. I hope people with flora curiosity will dive in head first. I hope that us herbalists will finally have informative, dynamic, applicable, and delicious reading we can count on. And daringly I hope that some people in a little corner of the political box, will close their greedy wallet and go eat some weeds, and realize that we are more sane than anyone for doing so. And maybe pull some strings on our behalf.

But back to the simple hopes ~ I feel really lucky to be a part of a resurgence of home and community herbalists who are so passionate about plants and healing, and who are getting back to the ground in their practices. I hope that this magazine, in it's unprecedented content, sells wildly.

Below is a clip and link for the original article.

~Ananda

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Subscriptions Open Today For

Plant Healer:
A Journal of Traditional Western Herbalism

Get the Premier December Issue
& 5 Exclusive, Free Video, Audio & Visual Bonuses!
$37 yr.(4 Issues) – Go To:
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please continue reading this article at it's original source:

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Sweet Medicine

This month's blog party hosted by Kiva Rose is all about Sweet Medicine. Thank you Kiva!

I know herbal honey, cordials and syrups are well covered ... so I hope to offer something a little different... one of my dearest specialties, if I do say so myself.

Sweet oil.

I'm probably most in love with making herbal oils over many other menstruums. I love the feel, the versatility, the romantic, sensual nature, and really everything about it.

One of my formerly best selling skin products was my Lover's Cream ... a sweet, light, edible cream with herbal oil, herbal honey, and some tingly yet gentle essential oils.

But you don't have to get that complex... for sweet oils are easy to make!

First, you may want to use a different oil than the usual olive, as some sweet herbs taste too culinary in olive oil. But suit yourself. My favorite is apricot kernel, with it's fresh cherry-almond aroma. You can also use grapeseed or sweet almond oils. Unrefined coconut oil is especially sensual, and is lovely to use from it's semi-solid state, or warmed until liquid. Yum.

Next, you'll want to comb your cabinets or garden for your most favorite sweet or aromatic herbs. Fresh herbs should be carefully made or wilted first to avoid mold. Herbs that I really adore infused in oil include:

Vanilla beans

Cardamom pods/seeds

Stevia leaves or powder

Damiana leaf

Anise

Fennel

Grated Nutmeg - in moderation

Lavender

Lemon Verbena

Meadowsweet

Orange peel

Dried roses

Peppermint leaf and flower

Hyssop leaf and flower

Freshly ground coffee beans

Sassafras root

Cherry bark (Prunus spp.)

Birch (Black birch or yellow birch bark, also leaves)

Next, fill your jar 1/3 full if using powdered herb, or full if using loose dried herbs or freshly wilted herbs. It's best if freshly harvested herbs have wilted 2-5 days, depending on how much water content the plant has.

Cover your plant material to the brim with oil, label and cover. Let steep in a warm spot for one moon cycle.

If you're using powdered herb, stir it at first to saturate the herb in the oil. I have also found the taste and fragrance releases better if gently warmed before straining.

If you wish to use a fresh root such as ginger, a yogurt warmer or carefully watched crock pot method (two days intermittent low heat) work beautifully.

When your sweet oil is ready, strain it through muslin or layered cheesecloth, bottle, label, and store in a cool dry place - that is if it makes it to storage.

There are a million lovely ways to use your oil, both internally and externally. Obviously, you can use your oil for sensual massage with your sweetie, without displeasing your taste buds. But you can also enjoy the health giving benefits of self massage, using this heart centered oil to massage gratitude and attention into your own muscles and skin. Sweet herbs relax the nerves as well as work through scent to relax the limbic system - all too hyper in this day and age. These herbs, combined with self love in the form of intentional massage, can serve to clear up stagnation in the abdomen, throat, and neck areas, as well as feeding and soothing all your layers of skin. For more information on the rejuvenative powers of Ayurvedic self massage; abhyanga; you can read the description at the Maharishi website.

If you are a cream-maker, you can invent lovely creams with your sweet oil. If you are a kitchen Goddess, you can use your sweet oil in desserts, sweet bisque soups, or in your warm milks and hot toddies. If you are a locks lady, you can treat your dreads or tresses with sweet warmed oil mixed with vitamin E, shea butter,or Basil essential oil. And ... if you make salves... you can make the most sensual of body butters and lip balms when combined with cocoa butter and unrefined beeswax.

Gifts of sweet oil are well loved, too, and look so pretty in a basket. Women experiencing female transitions or discomforts appreciate a belly and breast soothing oil, and women dancing with breast issues or ovarian cysts can benefit greatly from applying healing oils, especially when combined with specific herbs such as Red Clover blossom, Violet leaf, or Dandelion flower oil.

I hope you will gift yourself with a little collection of sweet herbal oils for all of your daily treatings.

(photo of sweet oil #9: pink rose powder, sassafras root, vanilla beans, and crushed cardamom pods in apricot kernel oil)

Medicine Woman Tradition, new website

So beautiful! Congratulations, Kiva, Loba, and Wolf for reaching this most lovely and far reaching threashold of sharing!

Medicine Woman's Gathering Announcement

Blessings to you, my friend Kiva, and your beautiful family for offering these healing, transformational gatherings!

All nature, herbal and healing oriented women are invited to journey to the amazing Animá Learning Center and Botanical Sanctuary for the 1st Annual

Medicine Woman Gathering

Aug. 1st - 6th, 2008

A full week of reconnection, celebration and Medicine Woman Tradition lessons and practices – with Tradition cofounder and SageWoman columnist Kiva Rose. Explore the essence as well as practicalities of healing, learn how to use the Animá Medicine Wheel as an aid in diagnosis and treatment, identify and help gather Southwestern mountain and desert plants, join in the processes of medicine making, and feast on native foods lovingly prepared. This event and all Animá opportunities by sliding-scale donation.

For more information and to download the registration form, go here.

Anima Center Events

For those of you who travel and for those of you searching for just the right sacred journey to save for:

THIS IS IT

Anima Center's Sacred Canyon is the place to go.

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We invite and welcome your participation in any of the following workshops and gatherings, held in a magnificent river canyon and ancient place of power, deep in the mountains of the enchanted Southwest… 5 hrs. from the Tucson airport, or 4.5 hrs. south of Albuquerque.

Anima Wilderness Learning Center & Medicine Woman Tradition

SUMMER EVENTS(by donation)
May 22-27: The Wild Women’s GatheringA six day event for women only, with a focus on primitive camping, interaction with the natural world and personal rewilding: learning to trust our senses, instincts and needs – and to heed our callings and live our dreams regardless of constraints, norms, fears and habits.

June 12-17: The Woman Spirit GatheringAnother six day women’s event, a memory-making celebration of the spirit of womanhood, dedicated to self nourishment, sisterly sharing and sweet savoring – with inspiring teaching circles, wonderful outdoor feasts, swimming, singing and riverside dancing!

July 3-6: The Shaman’s Path IntensiveFor men as well as women, a four day long workshop imparting insights and techniques for heightening awareness, connecting with inspirited nature, exploring alternate realities, instigating ecstatic states, developing our powers to affect events, and defining and fulfilling our individual most-meaningful purpose.

Aug 1-6: The Medicine Woman GatheringSix days of presentations and discussions, plant walks and medicine making – for women who feel called to a healer’s life of intense awareness and personal responsibility. The Medicine Woman Tradition defines healing as contributing to wholeness and balance… of our selves, of others, and of the living world we are a part of.

Aug 29 -Sep 1: The Wild Foods WeekendFour days of learning to identify, gather, preserve and deliciously prepare a wide number of the wild native foods of the mountainous West and Southwest – increasing observation skills, self confidence and our ability to survive, while helping us connect deeper to the natural world and cycles of life that we are each a natural part of.

If you can forward this announcement to your email lists, it would be greatly appreciated. For more information, or for Registration forms you can download, please go to the Anima Events page at:www.animacenter.org

Anima Center also offers Retreats with meals in riverside cabins, Vision Quests, personal Counsel, resident Internships and Apprenticeships, and empowering Correspondence Courses including the Way Of Heart, Shaman and Medicine Woman paths. There is no set charge for any of the various opportunities, services, courses and events… only a suggested, sliding scale donation.
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Divine Goo

I know this just looks like a plate of globby yuck. But if you could smell this divine goo you would see it through a different lens. This is freshly harvested Pine pitch, from my Aunties huge old pines in her back yard. The two trees were virtually gushing and I couldn't resist. This plate is only about 1/4 of what we got. We were sure to leave a coating on from each spot through, not to leave the tree raw.

The white powdery looking coat is where the sap had begun to dry out, the area where it was exposed to air. Th more mature the sap gets, the harder it gets. Some Red Pine sap that my son recently found was nearly hard, and not nearly as sticky. I'm guessing it was at least five years old. It takes a long time.

Usually what I like to do with the pitch is make smudge. I make little rolled balls and 'flour' it in Lavender or Rose powder. This helps keep it self-contained and keeps your fingers from gluing together. Plus it smells really sweet. When you have finished rolling them, lay them out on a wax-paper covered tray, indefinitely. If you jar them up you will have a jar full of melted sap and good luck getting it out. The little balls are easy to pick up and add to a hot rock or glowing ember to bless your home or ceremony. However, I don't recommend using it in your fireplace or wood stove. To easily remove the sap from fingers or floors or clothes, apply rubbing alcohol.

Another superb use for this wonderful gift of the trees is for splinters or slivers. Our beloved Kiva has dealt with this recently only with glass. Sucks it right out and keeps the infection at bay. A wound or cut in the woods is treated swiftly with an application of fresh pitch. Blisters can be helped when nothing else is around and you're mid-hike. Gum infections are also traditionally helped with sap - although I have to say it's not palatable. Natives also used it as glue and water sealer for their canoes.

Amazing stuff.

Elder Harvest

Mom?

Yes Dear.

Did you remember to thank the Elder?

Yes, I thanked her before, offered cornmeal, and again after. And I made sure to ask for, and receive permission.

That made my day, my ten year old daughter asking me this on our way back from picking. She usually participates, but today she has one arm in a sling with a badly sprained wrist, and so was not up for teetering along the loose wood chipped bank. She opted to find the first of the ripening blackberries, along with her brother, on steady ground. So, I thought she wasn't really paying attention, but of course, she was.

The blossoms towered over me as I stood under the great Mother, invisibly annointing me with the softest, most lovely powdery scent. The gleaming sun poured in from the ripening morning sky. We got up early for this walk, since hotter weather was expected for today. The stems were hardy, some brown and woody, some young and tender green. All have interesting blemishes all over, like pretty warts or eccentric polka-dots. This reminds me of how soothing Elder is for blemished skin and chicken pox. I carefully lower the branches with the newly opened, white flowers, though cream colored is really more true, and snip the stem above the first leaf thereafter. I laugh as the tree showers me with loose and falling blossoms. I think of the water nymphs, being seduced by the reed music of Pan, and of sorcery being conducted by Gypsies. And more practically I remember two weeks ago curing a Nettle sting on my Son's leg with a spit poultice of Elder leaf, and it curing it more rapidly than Plantain. I made sure not to swallow any juice, but alas I was dizzy and nauseous for much of the remaining day.

I use her medicine with care, and this first real harvest has come only after planting two of her in my own yard last year to watch her transition through each season, and much reading and watching of her over the last few years. Elder is a plant I wanted to take my time with, to get to know her in's and outs, and to discover all of her multifaceted personality. I dare not pick prematurely .... for I have been warned against pissing off the Great Elda Mor!

Some parts of the plant (leaf, root, stem) are not gentle medicines like the flower and berry are. The tincture of the flowers I use for colds and flu's and just if I am under the weather a bit. I love the taste and smell, so gentle and soothing. Elder berries I love, for throat troubles, bad colds and especially for my children. But there is such a panacea found in our dear Elder that I couldn't possibly list .... I'd be writing for days. Kiva Rose has shared with me wonderful knowledge about Elder as an adaptogenic.

As you can see from the picture, I have decided to try making an Elder Blossom infused oil along side my tincture. Let's hope it doesn't spoil. Usually I use Olive oil for infusing plants, but for these lacy, ladylike beauties, I chose my good stuff; Organic cold pressed Apricot Kernel oil. MMMmmmmmm, it's my favorite, it's silky feel and apricot-cherry aroma is simply divine. I thought it the perfect carrier.

I also gently removed some small dead branches that were not growing anything, in hopes of having a wand.

When I got home, it was getting hot. I had to get out of my pants and socks. So I went upstairs to change, and guess what I found? A little, tiny, single blossom, perfectly intact, resting right inside my belly button! It was like a kiss from Mother Elder. And yes, I did take a picture, but it's not going up here:)