Cultivating wellness through process and plants while tending to the shoots and nursing the roots of well lived life  

The seed is sown. Life begins. Life emerges. Cells replicate, join and form a living matrix. Each cell an individual and together a body, your body. Each cell a story, together your story. Not in isolation. Not through independence but dependent and in relationship with the mother (matrix) that shelters and nourishes the growing being. Nine months in the warm womb, bathed and cradled, fed, cleansed and shaped. One fertilized cell becomes millions and millions dynamically weave the web that is you, a continuous web from beginning to end.

Emerging from the womb, born to place, born to people, born to culture and born to the earth. Air enters the lungs and light the eyes, skin touches skin and mouth meets the breast and the next cycle of life begins with child, mother and the world. Her breasts, eyes and fingers nourish the growing infant. The cycle of nourishment and waste management continues and will continue until death.

Place will define many things like food, clothing, temperature, light, movement, air, water, relationships, culture, safety or danger, joy or sorrow, language, opportunity, curiosity, stimulation, freedom or repression.

The mind will be fed and encouraged to develop or not. Relationship cultivated or not. Spirit given space to breathe and explore or not. No matter the circumstances the organism will adapt or adjust as that is the nature of life. We are in a process of continual emergence as we interact and become our environment. 

Our ability to process our environment will largely determine our ability to thrive, survive or die . When to encourage our shoots, when to prune them and guide us to where we send our roots for water and nourishment.

As we grow freer, we may have more choice to seek new places for our growth and nourishment. Seek new relationships for our joy or sorrow. Adopt new challenges to test and develop our skills. Books, teachers, mentors and experiences will help us to deepen and expand our education and knowledge. Work or career will have a strong influence on our life as will the relationships we choose and cultivate.

Place will continuously influence and shape us with its conditions, people, opportunities or lack of opportunity, safety or danger. Our edges will challenge us and edge us on or defeat us sending us spiraling down. 

Our ability to be aware of our edges and process them will be a determining factor, a critical variable in our development or lack of development. Process oriented healers may come along to help us with our awareness and edges. There will be inner guidance from moods, emotions and the presence or absence of joy or happiness. 

Choices will have a strong influence on the trajectory of our life and if it is a well lived life. Some of the basic choices like what we decide to put into our body and how we make that choice will have a strong impact on the health of our cells and extracellular matrix. Movement, the air we breathe and the water we drink will also strongly impact us. So many decisions we make will modify the quality of our health and life experience. Decisions like: to partner or not to partner, who we partner with, how kind and compatible our partner is, the work we choose or the creative projects we take on, the balance of challenges to skills and the ability to recognize edges and navigate them.

Maybe healing plants will be part of our choices and they will help heal some of the damage done and they may help us to better adapt to the environments and challenges that we choose.

There will be sacrifices asked of us and some of those sacrifices may challenge us beyond our capacity. We may choose a challenging career that is constantly taking us to the edges of our comfort zone or even beyond. We may choose to live only for ourselves or we may choose to live for other people, which often entail sacrifices. Ask any loving supportive mother or father.

At times we may be forced into or choose solitude. Solitude can be healing to one and damaging to another. Bliss for one and crippling loneliness to another. Relationships may nourish and heal us or they may damage or even kills us. 

Life is an intricate dance and there are many strands to the web we weave and the tapestry may be a work of art or not.

In cultivating wellness, choice will be a deciding factor. Choices one has made in the past, choices one makes in the present and choices one will make in the future. Awareness will be a critical variable. 

Will we be able to see our choices?
Will we be able to find and cross our edges? 

Can we sense which edges are important to our goal of well-being? Or are they just another distraction or even potentially dangerous or damaging?

Will we be able to explore these edges and eventually grow over them?

Finding healing allies from the plant kingdom is part of cultivating wellness. Plant medicine people are able to help you with this, as they are trained in the knowledge of healing plants. That is a choice they have made for their life and service. It takes time and devotion to develop that knowledge and skill.

Awareness facilitation and edge processing is another set of challenging skills and knowledge that can help others with their well-being, challenges and choices. Better choices lead to a better life. 

Our goal is increased awareness, healthy behavioral changes, less suffering and increased experiences of joy and happiness.