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The Language of Plant Energy

The natural healing force within each of us is the greatest
force in getting well.
Hippocrates

HUMAN BEINGS—INDEED, all animals—are naturally interdependent with the plant kingdom. Plants offer us many gifts. Certain plants are believed to contain sacred and magical powers as well as natural medicinal properties. Plants have served as a primary source of nourishment and have also been used for heat, shelter, clothing, protection, and medicine.

Our relationship with plants goes back to earliest recorded history. There is a longheld tradition of relating to plants, talking to them and being with them, that is not well-understood by modern science. However, traditional and Indigenous cultures all over the world, going back thousands of years, have developed a sophisticated body of medicine that integrates knowledge of the language of plants to bring about healing, and this knowledge has been passed down to us through countless generations of medicine men and women. Today’s herbal wisdom derives from the practices of these ancient and traditional cultures, which acknowledge the role of plant consciousness as an energy used in healing.

Plant energy medicine gently inspires change in the basic essence of our being, our energy, through a process of resonance. As is now confirmed by quantum physics, before we come into physical form we are first and foremost energy and vibration. Plant energy medicine seeks to encourage the healthy flow of energy throughout the body by employing the subtle vibrations of healing plants. Plant energy medicine offers a blueprint of any given plant that includes all the medicinal values that the plant carries. This blueprint identifies the signature and design of a plant. The signature of a plant refers to its characteristics and may include its unique form of root, stalk or stem, leaves, bark, blossoms, or medicinal properties. A plant’s signature shows us how to gain access to the spirit of the plant.

The design of a plant supports its growth as well as the impact of that growth in its development from seed to fruit. Our awareness and experience of the natural evolution of plants draws attention to both the visible and invisible intelligence of the plant kingdom. By experiencing the intelligent nature and pure beingness of plants through our body, mind, and spirit, we go deeper into the human-plant connection. Doesn’t it make sense, then, that the development of higher consciousness in human beings runs parallel to the same development of higher consciousness in the plant kingdom?

Human language is a living, changing phenomenon, as seen in the earliest pictographs of Stone Age humans, the petroglyphs of Indigenous peoples, the hieroglyphs of ancient Egyptians, and the digital bits and bites of computer age humans. So it is true for plants, whose language has evolved along pathways parallel to ours. Learning the language of plants is like learning the language of different peoples and cultures. It allows us to connect with a plant and that plant’s biological family on much more intimate terms.

Just as human language is expressed in symbols, signs, letters, and pictures that represent an idea, word, or phrase, the language of plants is expressed by the plant’s roots, vascular system, structure, stalk or stem, leaf patterns, veins, petals, blossoms, seeds and seed pods, as well as its cellular makeup. Learning the language of plants can help us connect to all levels of our being—physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. By becoming aware of the energy that a plant carries, both in seen and unseen ways, we have an opportunity to become more mindful and step into a deeper state of self-awareness. This in turn supports a state of inner and outer balance, or homeostasis, as we become wise energetic beings with the support of plant energy medicine.

THE VITAL LIFE FORCE ENERGY

To become aware of the energy of a plant, one must first understand what the vital life force is.

Herbalist JoAnna Castigliego Sánchez writes the following in her curriculum Breaking Ground:

Rooted in natural laws, herbalism captures our hearts and spirits

and guides us along towards many wisdoms and knowings. Through

direct experiential association with the natural world of creation,

herbalism is both an intuitive art and exact science. We best learn

of nature with curious exploration, keen observation and eyes of

wonder, with sensitive hearts filled with awe, with patience and

deliberate awareness as well as deep contemplation and introspect-

tive thought. Through research and study, we blend experience with

knowledge, and then learning is an appropriate context. There are

fundamental concepts, groundwork that is required and manda-

tory as requisite foundational study for the newcomer to the herbal

profession.1

Let’s take a moment to understand the plant mind, not in the sense that a plant has a "mind" as we humans understand it, but referring to how a plant navigates its existence. In many ways, how a plant lives is instinctual. When you stop and think about it, it’s the same as when a baby is born. The newborn is instinct and feeling first, and then sometime later, experience and training are added to that instinctive drive. We are all born with the instinct to survive, the same as any living organism that has taken on a physical existence.

Just as a fetus lives in its mother’s womb and a seed lives in the soil, both fetus and seed naturally find their way forward through feeling and sensory perception. With further nurturing and environmental support, both the fetus and the seed naturally begin to develop a vital, energetic life force field. In a fetus, some heart rates are stronger and some are weaker. Infants born with a physical disability generally have a lower life force energy and require more medical attention to build up their life force. The same is true of seeds. If a seed, which is an embryo, is undeveloped or lies dormant and is delayed in germination, the seed is put on hold. Often this is related to too much or too little water content and lack of oxygen.

All living things possess the vital life force energy, and they all have ways of processing sensory input. They possess what American herbalist Stephen Harrod Buhner calls "sensory gating channels . . . tiny apertures or gates or doors in specific sections of the nervous system’s neural network."2 The quaking aspen tree, Populus tremuloides, offers an example of how a plant’s nervous system works via its signature of quaking or trembling in even the slightest breeze. Sunflower’s flower head is radiant and bright, tilting toward the sun all day long, triggered by the intensity of the sun, which energizes its sensory input and neural network and sustains its life force. Yuccas are night-blooming plants, its blossoms opening to their fullest under a full moon—yet another example of how a plant connects with its life force and sensory system, as yuccas emit a sweet aroma that attract the plant’s sole pollinator, the yucca moth, which flies only at night.

Known by a wide range of names in countless cultures—as chi in Chinese medicine, prana in Vedic medicine, and Spirit in traditional Indigenous medicine—the vital life force is a universal energy that flows through all living things, from the celestial to the molecular. It is essentially spiritual in nature. As herbalist, alchemist, and medical astrologer Sajah Popham says, "It’s the animating factor that gives all forms their unique expression of life. It is invisible, but it can be seen through its effects upon a physical organism."3

The concept of the vital force began with Hippocrates (460–350 BC), the Greek physician known as the "Father of Medicine," who referred to it as a healing power in nature. Swiss physician and alchemist Paracelsus (1493–1541) called the vital force "archeus, an arch-principle dominating life processes in a biological entity . . . It was all-pervading and powerful within that milieu, yet invisible to the material eye. Only through its effects could the existence of the archeus be known. Through these, the realization was possible that life was governed by a self-regulating and self-healing intelligence."4

Dr. Samuel Hahnemann (1755–1843), founder of the science of homeopathy, referred to the life force as the dynamis:

[The] spiritual vital force (autocracy), the dymanis that animates the

material body (organism), rules in unbounded sway and retains all

the parts of the organism in admirable, harmonious, vital operation

as regards both to sensations and functions, so that our indwelling,

reason-gifted mind can freely employ this living, healthy instrument

for the higher purposes of our existence . . . The material organism,

without the vital force, is capable of no sensation, no function, no

self-preservation.5