44. Animism: Coming into Kinship with All Life - Daniel Foor
Release Date: 04/24/2019
110. Women's Bodies are Metabolically Expensive (Why Things Break So Easily) - Dr. Suuzi Hazen
Medicine Stories
Chinese Medicine holds that women’s bodies are 10x harder to heal than men’s, as our reproductive system is biologically much more precious and metabolically more intensive to maintain. In this conversation my good friend, third time guest, and Doctor of Chinese Medicine Suuzi and I catch up one year after we both underwent severe energy loss to share how we’ve rebuilt and healed. We talk about shifting away from the mindset of achieving “optimum human health” (an illusion that contributed to our health crises), working and mothering in a state of total burnout, how our childrens’...
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109. Loving Ourselves Home: Finding Sanctuary in Herbal Medicine - Kami McBride
Medicine Stories
The times are unprecedented and there is no template for the future. We all feel this, and we feel the overwhelm of information, influence, and opinions. Herbalism, as it always has, offers us sanctuary from everything vying to take hold of our attention and life force. Not so that we can check out in an endless fog of self care, but so that we can be truly present and embodied as we navigate this time of rapid and radical change. The plants call us home to ourselves. Kami’s Free Workshop (week of 3/3/24 only) Kami’s Free Webinar (week of 3/3/24 only) Kami’s revered course ...
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108. The Mythic Hive & How Bees Heal Us - Ariella Daly
Medicine Stories
Nothing exemplifies the magic of nature more than honeybees. They are insects yet their colonies are akin to a mammalian being, they produce numerous healing substances from their bodies and within their hives, and they have been revered and mythologized since time immemorial by countless cultures. Beekeepers live longer than folks in any other profession, and being in relationship with bees is deep medicine for the spirit in these frazzled times. Let us relearn ancestral ways of tending and listening to bees so that we may maximize our chances of reclaiming a vibrant and thriving Earth....
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107. Death is the Great Healing: Reclaiming Ancestral Relationship w/ the Dead - Perdita Finn
Medicine Stories
“I pray to the dead to help me remember who I am while I’m still alive.” To be in relationship with those who’ve gone before us is a deeply human way of being. Our ancestors knew that the “departed” never left, and that they answer when called. The way modern Western people conceive of the dead is a deviation that discards millennia of human knowing. Let us pray to the ancestors to help us sober up from civilization, remember what we’ve always known, and reclaim the long story of the soul. RESOURCES: Perdita’s website (book giveaway & course coupon code) by Bernd...
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106. Chronic Illness: Telling Honest Stories, Navigating the Underworld, and Tending the Roots - Sarah Ramey
Medicine Stories
It is estimated that half of all Americans have chronic health issues, and yet these conditions are new to the human species. What has happened? And how does an afflicted individual navigate a medical system that dismisses them and offers little help, embedded within a culture obsessed with self improvement and the hero’s journey of triumph? Sarah and I talk about the multifactorial nature of chronic illness and what has changed between generations, walking the fine line between self-responsibility and acknowledging that we’re all embedded in toxic systems that are out of our control,...
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105. Synchronicity Reveals Our Ecological Niche - Sophie Strand
Medicine Stories
Healing is communal. Settle in softly for this wide-ranging conversation with my most requested guest. Sophie and I talk chronic illness and trauma, diagnosis as blessing and as hex, the theater of medicine, the aquatic nature of memory, and the entanglements of time. RESOURCES: Sophie on Sophie’s newsletter by Sarah Ramey ACE- by Bessel van den Kolk (giant trigger warning; read the book below instead) by Rupa Marya and Raj Patel by Erik Wargo by Julia Cameron by Barbara Ehrenreich (a podcast beloved by both me & Sophie) Read by Ursula K Le Guin by Karen Barad by Joanna...
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104. Your Body is Not a Closed System: The Sun, Cell Signaling, & Metabolic Wellness - Sarah Kleiner
Medicine Stories
The sun rules the rhythms and the well-being of all life on Earth, and humans are no exception to this rule. With the very recent (evolutionarily speaking) advent of indoor living and the even more recent advent of indoor lighting, we have inadvertently shut down the vital communication between sunlight and our cells. This is as upstream as it gets when it comes to health, and when we come back into relationship with the sun all manner of issues (insomnia, obesity, infertility, and so much more) can resolve. Let’s talk about the science behind circadian rhythm and practical ways to heal with...
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103. Midlife Burnout for Women & Why Healing Work Can Make Us Worse - Dr. Suuzi Hazen
Medicine Stories
Suuzi has been one of my best friends for 15 years, and our lives have taken parallel tracks recently- deeply interested in health & natural living for decades, we have nevertheless both found ourselves in total burnout at the edge of collapse in our early 40s. We share what got us here (and the irony that so much of it is doing things we truly believed were making us healthy), the current state of our metabolic/thyroid/mineral health, and our paths going forward. We hope this inspires others feeling stuck and confused- despite tremendous effort to be healthy- to quiet the outside noise, self...
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102. The Living Matrix of Fascia & the Resonance of the Heart - Lindsay Courcelle
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 ready to have your mind blown and, if you’re anything like me, to spend the rest of your life diving deeper into these subjects. RESOURCES: Lindsay on Amber on Lindsay’s Lindsay’s (use coupon code MEDICINESTORIES for 66% off) Get the 100+...
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101. Rooting With the Ancient Mothers: Healing Wounded Lineages by Reclaiming Physiologic Birth & Radical Togetherness - Aimee Aroha
Medicine Stories
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 the systems that break our sacred bonds to the Earth and to one another, and heal into the wholeness that is our ancestral inheritance. Join me on my in September. RESOURCES: Aimee’s website Aimee on (podcast bonuses!) Take our fun quiz...
info_outlineWe are in relationship with plants, animals, fungi, mountains, metals, fire, bodies of water, spirits of wind and weather, deities, human ancestors, star people, and others we don't have words for, whether we are conscious of it or not. In this conversation Dr. Daniel Foor and I talk about reclaiming kinship through earth-honoring ritual, getting right with your ancestors and with the land you're living on, finding your own unique medicine, and so much more.
IN THE INTRO:
- Making animism practical
- $300 herbal medicine giveaway! (ends May 1st)
IN THE INTERVIEW:
- Living humans are only one kind of person
- Animism isn't necessarily spiritual- that other beings also exist and that we are accountable to them is just fact
- The distinction between animism, shamanism, and indigenous ways
- Food and the psychological implication of realizing that both animals and plants are people
- Understanding the human dead as part of the sacred ecology of place
- The impacts of colonization on trusting our own knowing
- Being consent-minded and respectful of boundaries: how to hear no from (and say no to) the spirits/ancestors
- "Colonialism is a massive systemic consent violation"
- Expanding our vocabulary for the sacred by recognizing the incredible diverse of bodies and wisdoms of the world
- Contextualizing our devotions amidst the current crises the earth is undergoing (we need to get really good at grieving, but also not lost in it)
- Finding your own medicine and soul level calling
- Hierarchy is an intrinsic part of nature
- Seeing where you're at as the Holy Land (even if you're in suburban Baltimore)
- Everyone has an ancestral connection with plants (let go of your story that you're not a "plant person"!)
- Earth as deity (and exploring how we project a gender binary onto the this ancient, complex, multivalent being that is dreaming us up)
- Down to the water to pray: grief, the erotic, ancestors, food, healing
- Understanding deeper layers of magic at your specific place
- Considering inclusive ways to think about deities, archetypes, and weird old gods
- Harmonizing ritual skills with cultural and political advocacy- not compartmentalizing an animist approach to just our spiritual life, but taking it out to the wider world as well
- Daniel's three steps to get your life together (so real)
LINKS:
- More info on the Practical Animism Online Course
- Enter the $300 giveaway by taking my fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? quiz
- Medicine Stories Patreon
- Medicine Stories Facebook group
- Mythic Medicine on Instagram
- Music by Mariee Sioux (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)