Exploring the mythic journeys we undertake when coming to know ourselves through interviews with herbalists, story keepers, ancestral listeners, consciousness explorers, earth dreamers, and other wise folk. Story is medicine, magic is real, healing is open-ended & endless.
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Medicine Stories


We can’t talk about fascia, the connective tissue that touches every single cell in the body, without talking about water, memory, and the quantum information that travels along this network at speeds 1000x faster than biochemical/neuronal signaling. When we bring tactile witnessing to our fascia through presence and touch, mountains move. Get read…
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101. Rooting With the Ancient Mothers: Healing Wounded Lineages by Reclaiming Physiologic Birth & Radical Togetherness - Aimee Aroha
Our modern disconnection from land and lineage mirrors the culturally normal- but biologically abnormal- separation between mother and baby, parents and children. The consequences of these intertwined attachment wounds are vast. But many of us are dreaming into a different way forward. Let us speak truthfully about what isn’t working, divest from t…
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Medicine Stories


Want to go on retreat with me? Take this survey to help us decide what that would look like! How we eat (not just *what* we eat) is how we receive life, and our state of nourishment determines everything from our fertility to how we perceive the passage of time. Disembodiment and dietary confusion run amok, but beneath the noise is the quiet wisdom…
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Medicine Stories


Many of us yearn for the lifeways of our ancient ancestors, and evolutionary mismatch can account for the majority of today’s health issues, yet we cannot go back in time nor fully recreate their lifestyles in our modern world. Let us find well-being, nourishment, and the richness of community in the here & now, and stop buying into the false dicho…
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98. Parenting Sensitive/Spirited/Neurodivergent Children, Leaving Schools, and Proudly Engaging in Wrongthink - Teva Johnstone
Kids today face more challenges- and are showing more signs of distress- than ever before. Parents must learn to effectively co-regulate, repair when things go awry, and create the right environments for our children (be they dandelions, orchids, or somewhere in between). When trending cultural ideologies come to replace ancient biological reality,…
Medicine Stories turns five years old! And you’re just gonna have to listen to hear what else I talk about (you’ll understand why…) LINKS: Three Black Friday to Cyber Monday 2022 Sales- 35% off Mythic Medicinals St. John’s Wort Oil 50% off Confessions of a Well Nourished Woman: Ancestral Wisdom, Sacred Foods, Deep Healing 50% off The Confessions Mo…
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Medicine Stories


The plants have so much more to teach us than what has been written down by others; there is another level of wisdom that can only be accessed by direct communication with the living Earth. When we cultivate an embodied knowing of the natural world we realize that we don’t need any special gifts or gurus or long lists of memorized plant constituent…
My family’s slow, meandering, imperfect journey toward what semblance of ancestral living we can scrape together in the 21st century. Get the Off-Grid Homestead Bundle for $50- over 140 resources (ebooks, guides, and full online courses, programs, and membership sites!) covering these topics: - How to start homesteading and live off the land - Perm…
A cathedral to nature, ancient standing stones, highlands & islands, our lost luggage saga, and the only city in the world I’d want to live in… Our two new medicines! Kinship Woven in Deep Time Earth Essence & Cosmic Convergence: St. John’s Wort & Mugwort Herbal Body Oil Take my survey for podcast listeners (just 5 quick questions!) Photos from our…
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93. Mirrors in the Earth: Self Remembrance & the Non-Stop Nurturance of the Natural World - Asia Suler
Earth-centered cultures have always held that each person is born into this world with their own unique gifts and strengths, but this knowing has been put aside by our modern, disconnected overculture. The consequences of this mass self forgetting are profound. But nature is always there to remind us of who we are, where we come from, and why we’re…
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Medicine Stories


Ten years ago I was a broke single mom; next month I’m taking my daughter on the European trip of our dreams. I cringe at abundance/manifestation talk, and yet there’s no doubt that shifting your mindset is the first step to making more money, which allows you to take care of yourself, your people, and the causes you care most about. Quite simply- …
We were made from our mothers, who were made from the earth, which is made of stardust, which is made of minerals. A well mineralized body heals itself by providing our cellular metabolism what it needs to create energy and clear exhaust. Our ancestors didn’t give their mineral status a second thought, but modern humans are almost all imbalanced (w…
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Medicine Stories


The women’s embodiment movement tends to stop at the womb, but cervix lies even deeper and contains an abundance of information about where we’ve been and what is needed now. From healing abnormalities and infections to connecting with the deep self for guidance and healing, let us peel back the layers and remember our innermost knowing. TOPICS: Ho…
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Medicine Stories


Sacred to the goddesses of old, known to all ancestors who occupied the Northern Hemisphere, and beloved by wise folk and herbal healers from the Ice Age until today, mugwort is one of the most magical and practical medicinal plants in the world. May we come into relationship with this potent ally in order to widen sensory gating channels, ground i…
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88. Confessions: Ancestral Foodways, Modern Matriarchy, & the Power of Radical Honesty - Katya Nova
Did my guest get more hate when she announced she wasn’t vegan anymore or that she was flying out of the country to connect with an ex lover while pregnant with her fourth child? Leave your judgements behind and explore food, sex, motherhood, and what is gained when you hurl yourself into the abyss only to discover that it’s a feather bed. Get acce…
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87. Elemental Interbeing, Food Information Overwhelm, and Cell Deep Nourishment for Women - Kymber Maulden
The cell is the foundation of life, and biological science is clear on what our cells need to most efficiently generate the energy that runs our bodies. Gut, autoimmune, and hormonal issues all have underlying metabolic causes. Let us cut through the noise and remember how to eat to enjoy, nourish, and repair, and not for ideology. Dive much deeper…
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Medicine Stories


Psychedelics are the most potent medicine we have for remembering what it is to be human upon the earth. Many ancestral communities integrated plant and fungal healing ceremony into every age and stage of embodiment (and disembodiment). At this turning point in history, let us call upon our entheogenic allies to unlock our truest, most deeply human…
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Medicine Stories


A replay of the only episode I’ve ever deleted. Please listen to Episode 84 Our Complex Humanity Cannot Be Cancelled first. Our ancestors were in constant biochemical conversation with the world, and so are we. Plants are a gateway into the depths of our consciousness, emotions, and physical experience of being alive. Let us come back into relation…
Let us step out of the mass psychosis of cancel culture and remember compassion, tolerance for differing viewpoints, and recognition of the deeply complex nature of human behavior. TOPICS: Losing compassion in the name of compassion Cancel culture does nothing to create justice or healing It’s an ouroboros- the more a person participates in cancel …
When Amanita muscaria says “Hey bitch, what’s up?”, you listen. Also known as the fly agaric, this most culturally significant fungi of all time has been maligned and misunderstood by modern people. May we reweave the ancient relationship between Amanita and humans and hear what these sentient, wise beings are saying to us. TOPICS: How a chance enc…
In this meandering medicine story, I share about my mama’s unexpected death in 2015, the unbelievable coincidence of losing my father-in-law the same way 5 years later, the amazing thing my stepdad did at her memorial service, the worst and best things to say to someone who’s lost a loved one, the final gift she gave me after her death, and always …
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81. We Belong to What We Long For: Reclaiming Lost Lifeways in the Age of Loneliness - Becca Piastrelli
It is through land that we find ourselves. It is through lineage that we return to ourselves. It is through community that we expand ourselves. In this age of disorienting change and fracture, let us wander within our daydreams of another way of being. TOPICS: A Western suburban childhood- television, processed food, malls, and fear of nature’s dan…
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80. Serenading the Waters: Grandmother Medicine & Expanding the Parameters of Herbal Care - Damiana Calvario
Herbalism is an outlet for creative expression, a tool for community care, and a pathway to our own inner knowing. Let us revel in the freedom we have to make our own healing medicine with guidance from the land, the ancestors, and the mythic realm. TOPICS: Being an abuela in training When an ancestral name is tied in to a landscape Kitchen herbali…
St. John’s Wort has evolved over millennia to capture the ultimate expression of sunlight on our planet and turn it into the molecule hypericin, which has numerous profound effects on our human bodies. Find our St. John’s Wort Oil & check out my teacher Kami McBride’s course Handcrafted Healing Herbal Oils. From deep nerve healing, relaxation, and …
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Medicine Stories


In these times, we all need all the healing help we can get. How lucky then that an infinite source of renewal and vitality lies just beneath our feet. Connection with the earth and plants never fails to shift our animal bodies into a place of calm receptivity and deep entrainment with the rhythms of nature. This is our ancestral birthright as huma…
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Medicine Stories


For most of human history, herbalism hasn’t had a name. It was just a way of life, part of being human upon the earth. The folk traditions of our ancestors have deep nourishment to offer us, and are an antidote to the depleting and disheartening realities of modern life. Let us reclaim an embodied relationship to plants, come into alignment with th…
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76. Nature’s Ancient Design: Exalting Life by Honoring the Physiologic Truths of Childbearing - Rachelle Garcia Seliga
How do we support thriving life on earth through the pathway of maternal health? Our physiologic design is the inarguable truth, but in today’s confusing online culture well meaning morality politics often obscure what eons of evolution make clear. If we want to best support babies and their families, do the deep repair work of these times, and bec…
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Medicine Stories


If the phrase “school wounds” stirs something inside of you, or the words “crisis schooling” describe your current reality as a parent or caregiver, or you’ve just always intuited that there’s something not quite right about modern compulsory schooling, this episode is for you. TOPICS: The reimagining of schooling as we’ve known it Akilah's story o…
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Medicine Stories


Your ancestors are with you every time the portal of the womb opens; our blood connects us to our lineage, to the mythic archetypes that hold meaning for us, and to our deepest inner selves. Whatever sort of womb release you experience, it lies on a continuum of commonality with all releases. Let us explore these interconnections so that we can be …
From time immemorial, women and wise folk have carried the knowledge of how to manage fertility. From menstruation to contraception to birth to miscarriage to abortion, these processes and this knowing has always belonged to the people. Ending pregnancy outside the modern medical paradigm and the cold, impersonal clinic is not only possible, but th…
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“Water is life’s matter and matrix, mother and medium.” -Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Nobel prize winner We return to the endlessly fascinating and enormously important subject of water, exploring the fractal edges of H20 and beyond. From its ability to generate free energy to how to structure your own drinking water into a liquid crystalline state to the…
We’ve all heard that we’re about 70% water by weight, but we are almost 100% water by molecular count. Water is the most abundant *and* the most mysterious substance on the planet. It is the source and the mediator of all of life and consciousness, and the single most important metric in the health of individuals and the earth as a whole. The diffe…
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Medicine Stories


“If I could give my life for hers, I would” -Cheree’s murderer, expressing remorse at his sentencing. I first interviewed Mea on Episode 6, when she told us the story of being very pregnant when she received the news of her best friend's murder at the hands of a stranger in 2010, and how she immediately chose to not hold on to hate while she was ca…
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69. Healing the Bones: Holistic Dental Health, Lineage, and Being Soft with Yourself - Rupam Henry
The health of the mouth reflects and predicts the health of the rest of the body (and our emotional, spiritual, and ancestral wellbeing too). Everything is connected, and few things make that clearer than a big picture look at the state of your oral ecology. IN THE INTERVIEW: 13 generations of plant medicine people Remembering the time when pharmac…
Relearning ancestral skills is the best antidote to the fear and chaos of these times. Let’s recreate a culture of simple home healing and feed the river of resilience so that all may drink from it. Check out Kami’s wonderful online course Handcrafted Healing Herbal Oils! IN THE INTRO: Cultivating self and community sufficiency IN THE INTERVIEW: Ho…
In a brilliant act of human photosynthesis, our cells evolved over millennia to receive and transform information from the source of all life on earth, the sun. Yet our species has moved further and further away from the consistent solar interaction that our ancestors thrived on. As industry seeks to instill fear for profit, and as millions of us s…
This time of covid and quarantine is a rite of passage for humanity, and phenomenally rapid change is possible. What we believe and what we project into the world matters deeply- especially in times of chaos, when a new story is being written. Let us act wisely in the wake of this culture-shifting pandemic. IN THE INTERVIEW: Everything happening as…
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Medicine Stories


It is our ancestral inheritance to know and work with the plants growing around us. Tending to, nurturing, and gleaning nourishment and medicine from the land is a way of life that is available to us all, and is the most direct path to healing people and ecosystems alike. Let us remember. IN THE INTRO: Self and community sufficiency, wild foods, & …
As Slowness Medicine is being experienced by the collective consciousness on an unprecedented scale, we can more clearly than ever see that the frenetic pace of the human species under endless growth capitalism is the root cause of global ecosystem disruption (one consequence of which is the emergence and lightning fast spread of novel viral pathog…
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63. Your Cycle, Your Self: Period Empowerment, Fertility Awareness, & the Risks of Hormonal Birth Control - Dr. Elizabeth Wade
Modern medicine now recognizes the menstrual cycle as the fifth vital sign. By simply paying attention to what our periods are telling us, we greatly increase our body literacy and quickly regain the deep self knowledge that is our birthright. Whether you want to avoid pregnancy, optimize your chances for conception, or gain insight into the state …
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Medicine Stories


These times call for potent healers. If you’re feeling the call of the plants, this episode is for you. IN THE INTRO: There is no right way to be an herbalist Guidance for navigating your unique plant path IN THE INTERVIEW: The soul’s need to connect with nature The most common mistake that newcomers to the plant path are likely to make Why an herb…
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Medicine Stories


We cannot talk about collective health, planetary health, or the health of future generations, without talking about the health of mothers. As Rachelle says, “The dysfunction and disharmony within our human environments is manifesting through the vulnerable bodies of postpartum women. In fact it is through the bodies of mothers that humanity is bei…
The old stories that have guided our recent ancestors are falling apart, and we live in a time of great upheaval and division as we grope for a new guiding mythology. Yet enfolded into this chaos are the seeds of deep and revolutionary change. Charles Eisenstein has a knack for expressing the thoughts and feelings that many of us born to these time…
My favorite herb book has been out of print for decades, but is now available again! In celebration, I had the extreme honor of interviewing the author. We talk about weaving enchantment and changing our inner states through language, the opposing paradigms of holistic, herbal healing and modern, mechanical medicine, how resting and rooting down in…
Poisonous plants have long been misunderstood and even forbidden, yet they hold a special medicinal power. Let’s do as our ancestors did and carefully, respectfully ally ourselves with this potent family of healing herbs. IN THE INTRO: Poisonous plants, visionary journeys, and Samhain/Halloween witches IN THE INTERVIEW: How trees and plants compani…
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society" -J. Krishnamurti "Medical science has made such tremendous progress that there is hardly a healthy human left." -Aldous Huxley "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." -A…
Owen never thought he’d be a dad, neither of us planned on getting married, and we had no idea that our love for plants would play such a big role in sustaining our relationship. Here’s a peek into how we make our lives together work... IN THE INTRO: Elderberry & Motherwort Three things that make our marriage work IN THE INTERVIEW: How we met and t…
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Medicine Stories


Empaths are trending right now; let’s dig beneath the surface into what it really means to be empathic and/or to have a highly sensitive nervous system, and then talk about the plant and fungal allies that can help us to relax, recalibrate, and ground. IN THE INTRO: The difference between empathic and highly sensitive people High sensitivity is an …
Myth is the power of place speaking, and the story threads that made meaning and held guidance for our ancestors can be found anew and re-woven for our times. When we tap into the mythic imagination, we remember the calling that brought us into the world. IN THE INTRO: Dreaming the ancient ways Sisters of rock and root IN THE INTERVIEW: The Loss of…
Every woman throughout time has taken some kind of plant and some kind of fat, put them together and used it as medicine. Herbal body oils are the One Remedy to Rule Them All. And no one knows more about making and using them than Kami McBride. IN THE INTRO: Ancient sacrament, modern necessity Handcrafted Healing Herbal Oils online course IN THE IN…