Calling in the grandmothers! The more dependent we are on the industrialized food system- and the more entranced we are by diet culture- the further removed we are from our ancestors. Food is a bridge between the land, our bodies, and those whose bodies we come from.

Darla Antoine is a mixed race Okanagan tribal member, ancestral activist and healer, mother and accidental homesteader in the high mountains of Costa Rica. Darla helps mixed-race and mixed-culture seekers become rooted into place and lineage by combining her master's degree in food and culture, ancestral healing and her own experiences as a mixed race woman and expat.

In the Intro:

• My unexpected, super transformative podcast hiatus: shingles and a family emergency
• Fat is love (and an absolutely necessary nutrient for the brain & every single cell in the body)
• Giveaway!

In the Interview:

• Ancestry that’s deeply embedded in the land
• The Grandmother Hypothesis
• How diet culture keeps us separated from our ancestors
• Disordered eating & how the fear of fat is pushing us away from what it means to be human
• To learn about your ancestor’s lives, look below the level of empire (& what that means)
• Reclaiming kitchen wisdom as an act of resistance against the dominant, patriarchal, industrial food system
• The medicine that people of mixed race are bringing to the world right now
• Dreams as guideposts
• A mythic matriarchal dreamscape
• Charting serendipity: When you’re in the right story, nothing doesn’t fit

Links:

• Darla's website
• The Medicine Stories Patreon page
• The Medicine Stories Facebook group
• The Mythic Medicine website
• Take my fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? quiz
• Zach Bush's website 
• How to Feed a Brain by Cavin Balaster
• Head Strong by Dave Asprey
• Fat for Fuel by Dr. Joseph Mercola
• Music by Mariee Sioux (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)

Our denatured modern culture doesn't work for our Paleolithic human bodies, as the epidemics of autoimmune issues, degenerative disease, and so many other modern health problems show us. Relearning what our ancestors knew about plants, animals, the land, and the human body in order to integrate that knowledge into today's world is a vital step toward health and wholeness.

This is an in-person conversation between two close friends, two mothers (Suuzi once nursed my baby for me y'all), two women trained in different forms of holistic healing who share an interest in ancestral wisdom and a commitment to honest vulnerability.

Suuzi Hazen runs a small mixed farm in Northern California, where she lives with her husband and sons. She has a Master's Degree in Oriental Medicine and a BA in English Literature and Women's Studies. Growing up in rural Canada, she spent her childhood outdoors exploring nature and enthralled by stories of her farming ancestors. She's fascinated by and very knowledgeable about traditional and aboriginal lifeways, especially regarding families, child rearing, hunting and foraging, nutrition, and sexuality. 

Best NOT to listen with kids in the room.

In the Intro:

• Giveaway!

In the Interview:

• How we met & accepting help as an exchange of energy
• Sex & bodies & desire after having a baby and other realities of modern motherhood
• How we've lost basic wisdom about health
• The microbiome & the deep self (Dr. Zach Bush is everything)
• Mitochondria & degenerative disease
• Autoimmune issues are the new infectious disease
• Everything that happens in your body has meaning & everything you do has an effect (damnit)
• Modern Western medicine is LTRLY based on cadaver studies- dead bodies are considered baseline
• Our food journeys- from processed food and industrialized agriculture to vegetarianism and veganism to traditional foods 
• Ancestral food resonances 
• My past with anxiety, depression, self harm, weight gain & loss, and the aftermath of my vegan pregnancy
• Nursing babies literally deplete the minerals from your bones- deep nourishment is needed 
• The illusion of human supremacy: there's not such a big difference between plant and animal consciousness
• Nature is an ongoing life/death/life cycle and we all consume the bodies of other entities; as Susun Weed says, "Now I eat you, now you eat me"- we are not separate from nature
• Animism as the oldest form of human spirituality
• Distorted notions of clean v dirty food 
• Why our ancestors and modern hunter gatherers prefer organ meat over muscle meat
• A deep dive into the liver- human livers, animal livers, the functions and energetics of this vital organ
• Food choices, food prices, food privilege 
• Love languages and more on sex & motherhood (in which Suuzi introduces me to the word "choreplay")

Links:

• Suuzi's website Mother's Best Liver Pills
• MythicMedicine.love
• Medicine Stories Patreon
• Medicine Stories Facebook group
• Take my fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? quiz
• Dr. Zach Bush- such important info!!
• The Weston A. Price Foundation: Wise Traditions in Food, Farming, and the Healing Arts 
• Real Food: What to Eat & Why by Nina Planck
• Head Strong by Dave Asprey 
• U.S. Wellness Meats 
• The Five Love Languages 

The vital intelligence of nature is the force behind all growth, healing, and renewal, and our work as plant healers deepens greatly when we can match whole plants with whole people living inside the dynamic multiverse of the whole cosmos. 

One of the most common stumbling block upon the path of the budding herbalist is the this-herb-for-that-ailment approach to plant medicine. If you ever catch yourself asking "What's this plant good for?" then this mind blowing episode, and my guest Sajah's FREE online video course (which changed my life forever last year by deepening my understanding of what true healing is), is for you:

 Vitalist Herbalism Mini Course

Sajah Popham, founder of Organic Unity and The School of Evolutionary Herbalism, is a student of the universal truths found within both ancient and modern herbal traditions from around the world. The focus of his work is on integrating ancient teachings for a new paradigm of plant medicine, one that is truly holistic in its honoring of the spirit, energetics, and body of both people and plants. His unique synthesis bridges herbalism not only east and west, but north and south, above and below, into a universal philosophy that encompasses Ayurveda, western alchemy and spagyrics, astrology, clinical herbalism, and modern pharmacology. 

Sajah’s vitalist approach utilizes plants not only for physiological healing and rejuvenation, but for the evolution of consciousness, for a truly holistic practice of plant medicine. Sajah’s teachings embody a heartfelt respect, honor and reverence for the vast intelligence of plants in a way that empowers us to look deeper into the nature of our medicines and ourselves. He lives in southern Oregon with his wife Whitney where he teaches at his school, makes spagyric medicines, and practices his art.

In the Intro:

• The way in which most of us (including me) are called to the plant path
• It's time to remember who we are
• The multidimensional medicine of Calendula
• What I do when I want to remember new information forever
• How understanding the ancient idea of vitalism changed my approach to plant healing

In the Interview:

• The real definition of holistic medicine (it's probably not what you think it is)
• Approaching plant relationships the way we approach human relationships
• Why a balanced approach to herbal learning includes intellect, intuition, science, tradition, personal experience, and the experiences of others
• The best way to get to know a plant
• The two words that Sajah saw in a newspaper while clearing tables at a coffee shop job and how they changed his life forever
• The role synchronicity played in introducing Sajah to one of his most beloved plant allies
• Alchemy- the wholeness of the plant and the wholeness of the person integrated into the wholeness of the cosmos, and the importance using plants for the psyche and spirit as well as for the physical
• Mythic astrology, the archetypes of the zodiac, and plants as bridges connecting our internal microcosm to the celestial macrocosm
• Lung herbs and grief
• Ancient ancestral resonances and the memory we carry in our DNA
• The vitalist approach to herbalism- “something that is created by the whole is going to be more intelligent than something created by the part”
• Plants mentioned include oregon grape root, devils club, wood betony, ceanothus, osha, and mullein

Show Notes:

• Vitalist Herbalism Mini Course
• Evolutionary Herbalism website
• The Plant Path Podcast
• The Medicine Stories Patreon page
• The Medicine Stories Facebook group
• Take my fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? quiz
• Music by Mariee Sioux (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)

What fate is your intuition calling you toward? Who do you walk with outside of time? With what and with whom are you most deeply interwoven?

This is the story of a flower I fell in love with and what happened when I made an essence with it. It's about intuitive connection with the earth, the ancestors, and the deep self.

Show Notes:

Episode 4 guest Asia Suler's Intuitive Plant Medicine online course (registration closes 4/28!)

My blog post Flower Essences are Story Medicine

Our human roots go deep, both into the earth and into the past, and we cannot know ourselves if we don't know our roots. Yet most of us in the modern West feel adrift, cut off from those things which fundamentally belong to us and which have always sustained humanity. This sense of isolation and the loss of meaning causes us to feel lost, bereft, without purpose.

A lived, daily relationship with the natural world and an embodied connection with our ancestors are the birthright of every one of us, and more and more of us are reclaiming ourselves by reclaiming these simple, sacred things.

Vicky Salcido-Cobbe is an herbalist, gardener, teacher, writer, and the proud daughter of Mexican immigrants. After years of feeling lost to herself and engaging in self-destructive habits, her life changed in an instant when a clinician offered her a bottle of herbal extract as medicine. She and her husband Russ now work with the land to create small-scale remedies for their herbal apothecary La Tierra Buena Collective (formerly Grandmother’s Medicine.)

In the Intro:

• The usual, plus my crying toddler
• Herbal Medicine Giveaway from Vicky!
• Sorry not sorry

In the Interview:

• Names as seeds planted by our parents

• The years Vicky was lost to herself (with some drugs and tall cans), and how she found herself again (with the moon and tall trees)

• How having big, mystical experiences without proper integration can cause more confusion and pain 

• How nature and the ancestors have always sustained humanity, why we feel so bereft when we lose connection with them, and how we find ourselves when we rekindle those relationships

• How this suburban SoCal girl stumbled upon the plant path- “herbalism was the way I reclaimed myself”

• The realities of running an herbal products business

• (Random segue into One Weird Use for Breastmilk)

• Dreaming about Wal-Mart (& what it means when you have mostly mundane dreams)

• Vicky gets really really real about the evolution of her sexuality- masturbation, porn, the shameful stuff we don’t like to talk about in our culture- and being extremely candid with her husband now that she's figuring herself out

• 70s v 90s porn

• Why the dominant image and dynamic of women needing to please men and get their approval in order to gain entrance into a sexual relationship is the opposite of reality, the opposite of biology in most animal species, including humans, and is a dangerous paradigm that upends nature and hurts girls, women, boys, men, and everyone else

• Vicky’s recent transition from embodying the maiden to mother archetype (without having physically birthed children)

Show Notes:

• La Tierra Buena Collective
• Grandmother's Medicine
• The Medicine Stories Patreon page
• The Medicine Stories Facebook group
• MythicMedicine.love
• Take my fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? quiz
• Music by Mariee Sioux (from the song Wild Eyes)

Safe, therapeutic, and sacred psychedelic journeys have the potential to enact profound transformation and healing on both a personal and a societal level. Many mistake these substances for party drugs, but their true medicine lies in the properly prepared and undertaken journey inward.

Scientists were just starting to understand the therapeutic benefits of LSD, psilocybin, and more in the 1960's when the many studies being done were suddenly shut down. Research is thriving again today, and we are beginning to understand their role in healing addiction, PTSD, anxiety and depression, and so much more.

James Fadiman has been at the forefront of this research for over 50 years. He is a writer and researcher with a PhD in Psychology and is the author of many books, including The Psychedelic Explorers Guide, which details how both journeyers and guides can create optimal conditions to have the best possible experience. Jim has also popularized the phenomenon of microdosing (taking tiny, sub-perceptual microdoses of psychedelic substances to enhance performance and treat ailments). 

In the Intro:

• How Jim and I met
• The amazing free resource Jim is making available to listeners

In the Interview:

• That feeling when the future Ram Dass gives you LSD in Paris and changes your life forever
• Ken Kesey, Albert Hoffman, Huston Smith and other heroes of mine who Jim knew
• Why psychedelic research got shut down in the 60's and what was being researched then
• How psychedelics work
• How to have safe, therapeutic, and sacred journeys
• Microdosing for: depression, colds, menstrual problems, asthma, allergies, stroke, and SO MUCH MORE
• Dying is absolutely safe

Links:

• Jim's Website
• Free Journey Guide PDF at the Medicine Stories Patreon page
• Microdosing Psychedelics website
• Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS)
• MythicMedicine.love (my website)
• Take my fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? quiz
• The Medicine Stories Facebook group
• Music by Mariee Sioux (from the song Wild Eyes)

Safe, therapeutic, and sacred psychedelic journeys have the potential to enact profound transformation and healing on both a personal and a societal level. Many mistake these substances for party drugs, but their true medicine lies in the properly prepared and undertaken journey inward.

Scientists were just starting to understand the therapeutic benefits of LSD, psilocybin, and more in the 1960's when the many studies being done were suddenly shut down. Research is thriving again today, and we are beginning to understand their role in healing addiction, PTSD, anxiety and depression, and so much more.

James Fadiman has been at the forefront of this research for over 50 years. He is a writer and researcher with a PhD in Psychology and is the author of many books, including The Psychedelic Explorers Guide, which details how both journeyers and guides can create optimal conditions to have the best possible experience. Jim has also popularized the phenomenon of microdosing (taking tiny, sub-perceptual microdoses of psychedelic substances to enhance performance and treat ailments). 

In the Intro:

• How Jim and I met
• The amazing free resource Jim is making available to listeners

In the Interview:

• That feeling when the future Ram Dass gives you LSD in Paris and changes your life forever
• Ken Kesey, Albert Hoffman, Huston Smith and other heroes of mine who Jim knew
• Why psychedelic research got shut down in the 60's and what was being researched then
• How psychedelics work
• How to have safe, therapeutic, and sacred journeys
• Microdosing for: depression, colds, menstrual problems, asthma, allergies, stroke, and SO MUCH MORE
• Dying is absolutely safe

Links:

• Jim's Website
• Free Journey Guide PDF at the Medicine Stories Patreon page
• Microdosing Psychedelics website
• Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS)
• MythicMedicine.love (my website)
• The Medicine Stories Facebook group
• Music by Mariee Sioux (from the song Wild Eyes)

Herbalism has always been the medicine of the people, but most of us in the West have been cut off from our earthbound roots and encouraged to forget our innate, ancestral ability to work and heal with plant medicines. Both despite and because of this, an herbal resurgence is slowly uprooting the dominant paradigm as ever more people heed the calling in their hearts to return to the old ways. No one has done more to share knowledge, encourage people of all skill levels, and bring folks together than Jesse Wolf Hardin (and his partner Kiva Rose).

Wolf is an acclaimed ecosopher, author, ecological and social activist, artist, musician, and historian– a champion of both human and bio diversity, as well as of nature’s medicine.  He has been a leading voice of and for the natural world for over four decades, coining the term "ReWilding" in the 1970's. He has been a featured presenter at hundreds of conferences and universities, and is the author of over 600 published articles in over 200 different publications and over 20 books, his work earning the praises of luminaries such as Gary Snyder, Terry Tempest Williams, Joanna Macy, Ralph Metzner, and Starhawk.

IN THE INTRO:

-How I met Wolf & Kiva

-Story medicine, psychedelic healing, witches & wise ones

IN THE INTERVIEW:

-The Plant Healer vision and how it’s evolved

-A child’s life changing epiphany in an avocado tree at military school

-What re-wilding means, from the man who coined the now-ubiquitous word

-Folk herbalism and the infinite ways to walk the plant path

-The three books Wolf had with him when he came into the land he would go on to steward for the next four decades in New Mexico

-The recent planned unassisted home birth of Wolf and Kiva’s son of Ælfyn Wolfson Thorn Hardin

-The fabulous Good Medicine Confluence- “Any pretense of pretending it’s a conference is over”

-Helping plant people reclaim their own traditions

-Regulation and the assault on herbalism (and women) from the 1700’s to now

-Standing up for who we are as wild-hearted healers in a sterile society 

-How Wolf & Kiva met and why their partnership works and is so creatively productive

-The sense of enchantment that feeds those who follow their calling

-Balancing a rational and magical approach to herbalism

LINKS:

-Find Plant Healer Magazine, Herbaria newsletter, the Good Medicine Confluence, Wolf's books, and more at PlantHealer.org

-The Mythic Medicinals shop

-Medicine Stories Patreon 

-Medicine Stories Facebook Group

-Take my fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? quiz

-Music by Mariee Sioux (from the song Wild Eyes)

We evolved raising children in clans of 50 or more other humans; today we live in homes with just a few other people. It goes against our very biology to raise children in isolation. It's really hard and really lonely, and it's not your fault.

In this episode I ramble into the microphone about my parenting journey. I am brutally honest and don't paint a rainbow over everything at the end. If you're already a parent, this episode will comfort you. If you're not and want to be, it'll give you a glimpse of your possible future and also maybe terrify you. If you're not and plan to keep it that way, you'll learn how to better understand and support the parents in your life.

I talk about:

-How our fractured, nuclear family living hurts families and relationships

-Emotional labor, women's invisible work, and the endless To Do list

-The very different experiences I had with my daughters, born ten years apart

-Sleep: I've both co-slept and sleep trained (also- SIDS and entrainment)

-Realistic self care- does it exist? Kinda. Here's what I do

-Building community

-Herbs for mamas & kiddos

-When does postpartum end?

-Anxiety & motherhood

-Choosing not to have kids

-How the Maiden to Mother transition is different for everyone

-The bone deep depletion of mothering

-Being envious of non parents

-Failing every day 

-Come gather around this fire with me

Links:

• Medicine Stories Patreon & my favorite parenting resources
• Medicine Stories Facebook Group
• Music by Mariee Sioux (from the song Wild Eyes)
• Take my fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? quiz

Birth and death are the bookends that mark every human life, and in them and in between them there is movement. Our ancestors moved in a variety of ways throughout their days- foraging, hunting, seeking new landscapes, building shelter, birthing and carrying children, breastfeeding, processing food, finding water, etc. Physiologically, we are the exact same species; our bodies are identical to those of our prehistoric forebears.

Our biology hasn't changed, but our culture and physical environments have. Today, even the most active among us are mostly sedentary, and exercisers have just as many health problems and experience just as much injury as non-exercisers. We don't need more exercise (yay!), we need more MOVEMENT.

A biomechanist by training and a problem-solver at heart, Katy Bowman is radically changing our assumptions about what it means to live in an ancient human body in a modern and ever-changing world. She makes movement fun and shows people how to integrate it into every aspect of their lives. Her award-winning blog and podcast, Move Your DNA, reach hundreds of thousands of people every month, and thousands have taken her live classes. Her funny, wise, life-changing books have been critically acclaimed and translated worldwide.

In the Intro:

• How Katy's work changed my concept of myself & what I'm capable of
• Giveaway, Upcoming Event, etc.
• Herb Learnin'- herbs are not "pseudo pharmaceuticals"

In the Interview:

• Ancestral movement: stepping outside ourselves and looking at the wide scope of human time
• Exercise as monoculture and movement as permaculture
• Stacking your life- integrating movement into everything else
• Finding your own roots (not someone else’s), and why 2018 is the year Katie finds her ancestors
• Katy’s connection to the great-grandmother she was named after
• Self reliance and how we’re shaped by the times we live in
• The recent unassisted home death of Katy’s father, and the parallels Katy saw between that and birth
• The many other deaths in Katy’s life within a 12 month period and how her movement practice kept her in a state of grace throughout the process
• Movement as a metabolizer of stress and emotions
• Bringing movement into grief- wailing, keening, caring for the body, (pallbearing!)
• Keep moving because “there’s always another wave coming”
• Katy’s recurring whale dream and the moment she lived it in real life
• Reverence for the capacity and consciousness of cetaceans
• Katy helps me break through my limited thinking around some of the things I spend most of my time doing (while sitting still)
• The conscious practice of paying attention to what captures your imagination

Links:

• Katy's website Nutritious Movement
• Medicine Stories Patreon & my journey w/ pain & (non)movement
• My interview on the Self Care Club podcast
• The Good Medicine Confluence
• Our Extra Potent Elderberry Elixir
• Medicine Stories Facebook Group
• Music by Mariee Sioux (from the song Wild Eyes)
• Take my fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? quiz