Earth Medicine: How Does the Earth Heal You?

How does the earth heal you? What is earth medicine, and how do you bring it deeper into your life?

We talk about the weather. We talk about traffic. We talk about what we’re going to eat for lunch … But do we talk about how the earth heals us? Do we talk about the earth medicine that we receive every day?

Have you ever been stressed out and thought, “I got to go outside and get a breath of fresh air”? That breath of fresh air is earth medicine. Or at the end of the day, have you felt like, “I got to take a bath or shower”? That water is earth medicine healing you.

We seek healing from the earth in different ways. Sometimes it’s the water. Sometimes it’s the air. Sometimes it’s getting our feet on the ground.

 

 

Acknowledging Earth Medicine

The earth is always rejuvenating and healing us, yet we take it for granted. It’s like someone cooks you breakfast every day, and you never say thank you.

In my Plant Wisdom online course, one of the things that we do is work on acknowledging all the ways that the earth heals us, and bringing that acknowledgment of earth medicine into our everyday language.

We talk about the weather or the bad news. But do we ever say, “I went outside this afternoon after working hard, and I sat in the sun and the earth healed me. I felt so rejuvenated”? How much do you bring the conversation of how much the earth heals you into your everyday life? Think about it.

One of the steps of awakening our plant communication is saying thank you and acknowledging how the earth heals us every day.

One way that we do this is by saying grace or giving thanks before we eat. That’s good because it’s one way that the earth heals us—when we eat food or drink water. But what if we brought that more into our culture? I don’t know about you, but the culture I was raised in is very much about dominion over the earth. We must work on getting back to being in relationship and listening to the earth and bringing the voice of the earth to the table.

The gifts from the earth are endless. Can we say thank you more? Can we bring it to our conversation at dinner when we’re talking about what happened during the day? Can we talk about how great that bath felt or how much that water healed you? How much that walk just took that layer off?

One of the steps of awakening our plant communication and remembering how much we can hear, feel, sense, know, and listen to the earth is saying thank you and acknowledging how the earth heals us every day. At the end of the day, she’s giving us the water, the food, the air, the sun. Did we say thank you?

 

 

Waking Up Your Perception

Take a moment and close your eyes. Think about one way that the earth has given you medicine today or helped you restore, rebuild, rejuvenate, heal. Close your eyes and be aware of that washing of your hands or hair, that food or water, that breeze or walk that you took. Let it settle more deeply into your body. Just take a moment and feel that.

You have chakras on your hands and feet. You have incredible sensory perception all over your body. Drink in the sun. Drink in the colors. Acknowledge what you perceive. Sometimes it’s a warm breeze if it’s cold. Sometimes it’s a cool breeze if it’s hot.

The grass is always green, right, but you know how healing green is? The color green is so healing, so you stop, acknowledge, breathe in, and let that green color wash through you. Let it wake yourself up to perceive more.

We have these incredible organs of perception to be able to perceive earth medicine, but they go dormant if we don’t acknowledge them. It’s about waking up the deep capacity we have to feel, perceive, receive, and give to the earth.

 

 

Awakening Our Culture

Acknowledging earth medicine is so nice to do in a group of people. For example, if you’re working on a problem or you have a meeting, just stop and focus for a moment on the temperature or the smell of the air and give thanks for the air you’re breathing.

How is it that you can bring the medicine of the earth more into the conversation? At the dinner table, do you say, “The air was so fresh today” or “Did you notice the color of the blue sky today”?

This is about awakening our culture to remember the capacity of our reciprocal relationship with the earth to help us all remember the gifts we receive all the time. We get the air. We get the water. We get the food. We get the sweet smell. But do we say thank you? How is it that you are part of helping to awaken our culture to be more grateful? To be more aware?

This is about awakening our culture to remember the capacity of our reciprocal relationship with the earth and to remember the gifts we receive all the time.

If we think we’re top of the food chain and have dominion over all others, then we don’t have to be in relationship; we just get all the gifts and don’t say thank you. The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address reminds us of the beauty of beginning everything with giving thanks. When we can give thanks, it calms down the things that we might disagree on. It gets us to where we can, hopefully, be better citizens and make better decisions.

How is it that you help bring this awareness of earth medicine into the culture? Bring it to a conversation. Just start talking to people just like we talk about the weather or sports. For example, “Let’s go sit in the backyard, have a barbecue, and watch the stars. We’re going into the backyard to get the healing from the night sky and the stars and to breathe in the air.”

Whenever you gather or go outside, take a moment, and drink the air. Give thanks. Say it out loud. So much of this is about saying these things that we receive all the time out loud, so that others can hear our poetry for the earth. We need more poetry for the earth.

 

 

An Exercise

If there would be some homework, I would have you for the next three days become very conscious of three ways that the earth medicine touches you on those days. Maybe it’s your bath. Maybe it’s when you wash your face with water. Maybe it’s when you oil your feet with the oil that’s a gift from the earth.

Your job is to express how the earth is healing you. You can write a poem, a song, or a couple lines about it and to express it to someone else. Let someone else know how aware you are of the earth healing you.

 

I would love to hear from you! How does the earth heal you? What do you think of bringing earth medicine into your everyday conversations? Please share in the comments below.