We begin SHI Monthly Meetings with someone leading us on a plant journey. Participants turn off their zoom cameras or close their eyes and settle into their chairs while we are led into our bodies and, through our bodies, to the earth, often to a place on the earth we love, our garden, a forest near our home. For a few minutes, 5 or 10, we settle. We’re invited to notice a plant that may appear. We’re invited to notice certain things about the plant and to see if it offers insight or guidance or grounding in some way. We thank the plant and then are led back into the room where we sit and to the screen that connects us all.
When I lead these, I never know what others are experiencing. When they turn off their screens, I have no idea if they are checking messages or deep in conversation with angelica or black cohosh. I do know that I am always grateful for the time when someone else leads. I’m grateful for the stillness, for the invitation to pause, which I always mean to do but in fact I rarely do. And I’m always grateful for the insight, as small as it might be, some something that helps me see whatever I am working on in a different way, from a new perspective or with less anxiety and more clarity.
These journeys can be a stretch for those not used to traveling in their mind’s eye to meet a plant. I am sure they can feel awkward for newcomers to SHI. I may have stopped doing them except I’m not the only one leading them. Guido Masé, principal scientist at Traditional Medicinals, often leads them. Sometimes he and Angela Willard, co-founder of Harmonic Arts, do them jointly. And then in the small business working group meeting, I wasn’t necessarily going to begin with a guided journey, but Chris Alstad, owner of Eclectic Herb, offered to lead one. And so I know they matter.
These plant journeys are many things. First, they are a moment to pause. A chance to quiet our brains and be still in the middle of our workday. That in itself, to me, is worthwhile. They also are a way to bring the plants as plants into our circle. Everyone in these meetings works with plants in some way, as roots or leaves to source, as stories to tell in marketing, as constituents in a lab, as supply chain challenges. Rarely do they spend time with plants as plants. And so these journeys are a chance to do that. To just meet the plants as plants. And to bring them into the circle. I like to think about what difference inviting these moments of connecting with plants makes in our conversations.
They are a lovely pause but I felt that we did them as a way to remember the aliveness of nature more than because they had any direct impact on our day to day work.
The Awakened Brain
And then recently I heard Lisa Miller, the author of The Awakened Brain, speaking with Shankar Vedantam on the podcast, The Hidden Brain. She spoke about how spiritual practice awakens certain neural circuits. The first step of this she said is to quiet our mind, that kind of presence is the threshold of the door we need to pass through to experience what she calls transcendent awareness or the awakened brain. She described the three networks that then are activated: our bonding network through which we feel and know we are loved; our ventral attention which means shifting from control to asking what is life showing me now which leads to a sense of being guided. And finally, the realization that we are all part of one whole and that we are never alone.
Listening to Miller, I thought about the plant journeys.
Lemon Balm
Just that morning, I had invited lemon balm. She appeared immediately.
“Thank you. I know I don’t always offer you much,” I said.
“Attention is an offering,” she said. She took me by the hand and led me down a path through a green meadow, snow peaks in the distance.
“Follow me,” she said. “Follow me: my scent. Don’t worry about where we are going.”
I’d just been wondering where we were going.
“Follow me and focus.”
“Focus on what?” I asked.
“Well, the beauty, always,” she said. “Never forget anywhere the beauty. Even when there is none, there is some, always, and be grateful for that. As a shift from the agitation that underlies the distraction.”
We continued for some time. And then at the end, she said, “You have all of us, here.” She gestured to the other plants in the circle. “All of us. Do you understand that? Do you really? You aren’t alone.”
“Everyone on earth has the capacity to be in a deep transcendent relationship through which they know the deeper force in life,” Lisa Miller said in the interview.
This shift, Miller then explained, is at the foundation of moving from a transactional way of life, from: ‘What do I want and how will I get it? And how will you help me get what I want and I need?’ To, when we experience a loss or disappointment, asking instead, ‘What is life showing me now? What is the universe directing? What am I being asked to do? Am I asked to love more deeply? To listen in a different and deeper way?’
In this way, Miller says, we become discoverers of our journey, able to let life unfold in extraordinary ways.
What This Means for Our Work
At SHI we talk about shifting from transactional relationships in business to those based on respect and reciprocity, and about the steps to do that: contracts, fair prices, etc. As Miller spoke, I realized that our ability to make this shift begins in how we show up in ourselves. We need the planning brain that is looking at strategy and taking care of our needs. But if we only bring that part of our brain to these conversations and to this work, we will never make the changes needed in ways that can be sustained.
I am able to visualize a future where we have succeeded at the work we are doing, where plants are sourced in ways that create thriving, resilient communities where everyone is well, from the forest and field to the shelf.
But I can’t see the pathway there.
I know that the plants guide me as I navigate this journey, yet I’ve thought of them as particular journeys, personal to me. I feel hesitant to share them because they feel too precious, like I’m claiming I received insights from a plant.
But, I realized, plant journeys aren’t just an aside. Nor are they magical thinking about how we can be in conversation with plants. They offer a way to experience what Miller calls the awakened brain.
Miller’s comments helped me shift my focus from my personal encounter with a plant to how that encounter is building my capacity to navigate that pathway by staying open and in dialogue with life. This means in conversations and meetings to not only bring the parts of myself that provides structure and direction, but also those that are able to listen and be guided. It means seeing the ways we are connected as we talk about differences. And to know that I’m not alone.
“You have all of us here. All of us. Do you understand that?” lemon balm asked.
“Do you, really?”