Clearing Cooties

The Columbia River meeting the Pacific Ocean

     In the world of the shamanic healer, there are some basic techniques that are part of our daily work, part of the standard “job description” .  One of these techniques is called extraction work:  this means that we find and clear foreign energy from the field of our clients.  I refer to it (somewhat frivolously) as clearing cooties. 
  
      Energetic healers such as shamanic healers work with the human energy field.   This unseen field encircles the physical body.   Normally it flows like a powerful river;  I think of the Columbia river as it carves its way through dense columnar basalt in the Gorge.  That river is strong, goal-directed and potent.  It not only carves up rock,  it breaches into the Pacific ocean, making that sea give way before the power of the river.  This river  knows who it is and where it is going.  It is like the Wei Qi  energy field described by Chinese medicine practitioners:  a powerful protective surge of energy and life that helps keeps us healthy.

The Columbia carving through Basalt

     However, this energy field can be blocked.  Think again of the Columbia river:  the ancient landslide near the Dalles that filled the riverbed with huge boulders and nearly diverted its course.  Think of all the dams that have been built on the Columbia that block its flow.  Think of the Colorado river, whose flow has been so drained to fill the swimming pools of Los Angeles, that it can no longer feed the estuary at the mouth of the Sea of Cortez.  These blockages happen to rivers, and they can happen to people as well.

The Q’ero indigenous people of the high Andes in Peru called these dense energetic blockages hucha.  For them, people are normally beings of shining light.  But when  foreign energy intrudes, we can lose our light, and lose our way in life, as well.  Our light gets overwhelmed by the density of hucha.

The Holy Light of the Sun

     The most common way we pick up these blockages is simply through the course of ordinary life.  It’s like picking up the common cold:  you go to the mall on a busy holiday weekend and ten feet in front of you, someone with a nasty cold blows a big sneeze.  There is a five foot sneeze cloud left behind and if you walk through it, you can easily breath in virus particles. 
     Foreign energy blockages are like that.  If you hang out in bars a lot, you can be easily exposed.    If you spend a lot of time under the influence of substances, you can easily be vulnerable to hucha.  Other common places where stuff can be picked up are hospitals, cemeteries and courthouses.

       It happened to me that way.  I had just had major joint replacement surgery and was in the hospital for four days, recovering.  While lying on my bed, weakened from surgery and blood loss, and gorked out on pain meds, I picked up some energy that was not my own.
      I was sluggish, very exhausted and my mood was low.  I had trouble finding my usual enthusiasm for life.  My healing was slow, too.  It was easy to miss the energy intrusion, since all these things could have been part of the surgery recovery.
      As it turned out, shortly after I left the hospital I had an appointment with my teacher/healer Mary Blankenship.  She saw the problem and quickly cleared it.  After her work,  I started to feel great, to sleep great, to have better energy.  My healing from surgery took huge strides forward.  Best of all, life once again was worth living.

     People often ask how to do this work themselves.   The good news is that that Wei Qi energy field I spoke of earlier does do a good job of clearing out many minor energies before they can get a foot hold.  However if something has truly become stuck in one’s energy field, it requires a shamanic healer who does extraction work to clear it out.  It’s sort of like repairing your own car;  you can do routine maintenance, but you wouldn’t dream of doing an engine overhaul by yourself.  The same is true with this type of shamanic work.

     So how do shamanic healers do this extraction work?  It depends, of course, on each healer.  My approach is to sit and talk with the person,  looking at how their life is working, or not working for them.  Are things stuck?  Is their mood low? Are they having trouble sleeping, with intense/scary dreams?  Are they having trouble moving forward in life, bringing their vision to fruition?  As we talk,  I am tracking their energy field, sensing the places of blockage and planning how to clear them.
      After this conversation,  the client gets on the massage table.  I call in Great Spirit, my guides, my plant and stone medicine helpers, and together we work to clean out the “cooties” and restore the river of energy back to a more normal flow. 

      Most people notice a big difference afterwards.  They feel lighter, more buoyant and optimistic.  As the healer, I see their own clear and bright spiritual light shining out from their eyes.  In the next days and weeks ahead, the person  begins to see that they are moving forward in their life;  old stuck things are falling away and they start to move to the rhythm of their own season. 

      This is the power of “clearing cooties”.

Janet

Resources:
Photos by Nancy and Janet Partlow

Earth Day at our Sacred Water

Today is Sunday, April 22nd.  It is Earth Day,  and our local planet has dressed up in its finest spring duds to make us maritime Washingtonians very happy.  Here in the late afternoon, it is 72 degrees, all of the trees are sprouting fresh green growth, and the sun is pouring heat out of a cerulean blue sky.

     I  spent the afternoon at Bigelow springs, an obscure pocket park on the northeast Olympia hills, overlooking Budd Inlet.  Here is a picture of the park, looking west towards the Black Hills.  The spring emerges from the ground to the right of the picture, then trickles down in a gentle stream to the left, then is piped (sadly) to East Bay.  It is Artesian water, part of the large aquifer that lies under much of Olympia and Tumwater.  If you go to the Garfield  stream ravine  and see the water draining off the steep hillsides, if you drive through seepy drainage pools off of West Bay drive, much of this water is coming from the Artesian aquifer.  Or of course, you can go the Artesian well along 4th avenue and drink the water clean from the pipe.  All of this is our water.

     This is ancient water.  Studies done by the Friends of the Well have found it to have a chemical signature that makes it about 2,000 years old.  In times past, this water fell on the uplands around the Salish Sea and drained into the aquifer under our feet.  This is ancient water.

     I went to Bigelow Springs with a group of Faery women.  We wanted to honor Earth day, but also the sacred waters and Great Mother Brigid.  She oversees not only all water, but also healers & herbalists & midwives (which roughly describes our group).  This custom of honoring sacred springs is a very old tradition in Ireland & Scotland.  All of us who came today to honor the springs have genetic roots to these homelands.  Today we reached back to our ancestors, connecting with our roots, and brought this heritage forward.

     This spring was no doubt revered by the Squaxin Indian people whose land this is.  But when  early Olympia settler Daniel Bigelow took out a homestead claim in 1851, his 160 acres encompassed the springs.  While he shared the water with his neighbors, it’s unlikely he welcomed the Squaxin people to come and do regular ceremonies to celebrate the water.  We think it has been a long time since anyone did so.  

      We kicked off our shoes and sat on the ground next to the springs,  reveling in the hot sun, and listened to the water gurgle gently past us. I borrowed Joanna’s Peruvian  rattle and led a shamanic journey to the Spirit of the Springs, introducing ourselves and  asking how we can honor this water.  We were told to bring flowers and float them down (Jess found golden dandelions to gift to the water).  We were told to gift the springs with silver ( that tradition of putting coins in a fountain comes out of the Celtic world), to give beautiful stones,  to leave hazelnuts and cream and Irish whiskey (traditional Faery gifts).  We were told to get our bare feet in the water;  the Spirit of the Spring especially enjoys the feet of children. 

    We followed an Irish tradition of walking a pattern clockwise three times around the well,  earth-stained bare feet on the grass, feeling the Great Mother beneath us, the water tumbling past, a male robin singing us around the circle.

     Here under the hot sun, Faery women of all ages:  maiden, mother and crone; come and go in the great circular pattern of life.   Here Julie played her Irish bodhran, the sound of the drum echoing down the hill.   Here Mia passed around water from the downtown Artesian well, helping us cool off from the unaccustomed heat.  Here I sang an Irish invocation song, calling in and praising Great Mother Brigid.  Here the women walked up and down the springs,  leaving gifts, leaving their footprints and taking home a potent sense of their Celtic roots.  And along the way,  we weave again an age-old and powerful connection to the water that infuses all our lives.

Resources:

•  Olympia’s Artesian Well:  http://olympiawa.gov/city-utilities/drinking-water/water-quality/Artesian%20Well%20Olympia.aspx

•  In Search of Ireland’s Holy Wells by Elizabeth Healy

•  photos by Nancy Partlow

Breaking Dormancy

It is nearly the end of March. And a cold, wet, gloomy & rheumy one as well. My spirits have been as low as the weather, and from what I hear around me, many of us are also feeling the same way, at least here in the Pacific Northwest where La Nina has presented us with yet another ugly spring. These are hard times for healers and our clients alike, as we all struggle to emerge from the cold, stagnant, closed-in days of a fading winter....

And yet...

• Last week we had a rare sunny day; by afternoon the temperature had climbed into the high fifties. I went outside WITHOUT A COAT and sat on the south-facing deck. I was basking in the golden sunlight, feeling a little like a hot biscuit all slathered with melting butter, sliding down onto the wooden bench. Around me a newly emerged Yellow-faced bumblebee queen flew in circles, checking out the crocus blossoms in our yard and then methodically searching the garden soil Glen had just dug up for possible abandoned mouse holes to nest in.

• And then there are the Bewick’s Wrens. This is a nondescript, sneaky little brown bird that lives year around in Northwest gardens; you might not even know they were around except they have a wide range of vivid, piercing songs.
I was sitting by the front window, looking gloomily out at the gray & rain, when up popped a pair of them in the mock orange bush next to the glass. They were clearly a mated pair, sitting very close to each other, gleaning bugs and also clearly picking through the moss for bedding for a nest they were building.
The wren was a sacred animal to the Celtic peoples of the Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Tom Cowan, a noted shamanic healer and Celtic scholar, writes this about the wren: “In the depths of winter, in the cold thrall of bitter weather, the wren sings. Alone among birds, the wren’s voice slides across joyful notes while nature is otherwise somber and silent. And in her song she reminds us of the beauty of spring, the mating calls of other birds who return in warmer days, the brightness of ever earlier dawns when all the world turns green again.” As I read this passage and remember the pair of wrens at my window, I realize how effective they are in lifting the gloom of winter, and reminding me that green spring is surely on its way.

• Then yesterday in a rare break from the rain I walked around to the sunny side of the house to check out my medicinal herb garden. I hadn’t looked at my plants for months, and was greatly heartened by what I saw. Both the rue and the helichrysum, native to warm southern Mediterranean lands, had survived the winter, a little beaten up to be sure, but still alive. At the base of last year’s dead fennel stalks, vigorous green shoots of new fennel are bursting through. And the mugwort, queen of my garden who is often slow to awake, has pushed through some vigorous green stalks of growth.

All of this makes a difference. I feel warmer, the blood moving more strongly through my veins. The cranky cold aches & pains of winter are subsiding, and I feel more energy pushing through, much like the stalks of mugwort pushing out of the cold ground. My spirits are lifting, and I once again find joy in the sight of the bumblebee, coming back to life after months in the cold ground. All around me, life is finding its way. And I , too, am breaking dormancy...


Janet Partlow

Resources:
• Wren photo by Nancy Partlow; all others by Janet Partlow
• Tom Cowan website www.riverdrum.com “Reviving the Wren”

Gifts from the Hawthorn

It is the end of 2011. Twenty-nine days into December, and the wheel of the year is turning. Last night’s pounding wind and rain gives way today to a watery winter sun, pouring in on me as I sit at the computer, writing. The picture my sister took of hawthorn fills my screen. Her picture reminds me that in this season, hawthorn gifts us with her presence...

Last week I was down along the Deschutes estuary, birdwatching. It was a clear, cold day with an assertive north wind. I went with my friend to watch the winter ducks that form birdy clots on the shallow sandbars. But our attention was caught, and held, by big loose herds of robins, flying and calling, flying and calling. The focus of their attention was a large shrubby hawthorn, its branches laden with shining red berries. The robins were flocking in, gorging themselves on the sugar-rich fruit, now slightly fermented after several hard freezes.

The robins know what they're doing. These bright red berries are full of bioflavonoids, powerful healing pigments which not only give the berries their color, but also provide key anti-inflammatory, anti-viral and anti-cancer affects. The berries are a calming sedative to people who are nervous, and help calm irritable bowel. They are also anti-spasmodic, helping to soothe and calm muscle cramps.
The robins also love the fermented carbs as a warming source of nutrients in this season of winter, especially when their usual insect grubs are scarce on the ground. Hawthorn berries are good food for all animals, robins and humans alike. And when the robins eat them, the undigested seeds pass through their guts, and are scattered throughout the area, starting new trees.

In Ireland, this plant is known as sceach gheal (Bright Thornbush). It is sacred to the Sidhe, the powerful Faery spirits of Ireland. Traditional Irish Medicine people (also known as Faery Doctors) used hawthorn for all the same uses we have today.
They also knew this plant as powerful magic. Many in Ireland grew hawthorn hedges around their houses, where its two inch spikes provided a potent visual cue to its role as a protector. It was also believed to protect against lightning strikes and storms, so planting it around the house was seen as an all-around smart idea.

I think of hawthorn as one of the Great Mothers: she warms us, body, mind and spirit. She inspires us and brings us her warm red light, to ease depression and darkness in this season of winter. She brings her gentle energy and helps us find our heart’s purpose and destiny. For me, she's like a warm fire in the woodstove, heating the entire house. All of these things are key in this cold, wet time.

Hawthorn is considered powerful magic in Ireland, past and present. If a single tree grows on a rise or hill, it is considered a Faery haven and as such, must not be disturbed. Rational, down to earth highway engineers in Ireland have learned this (to their sorrow) and have had to re-route major motorways. This photo is of a hawthorn tree and a re-routed motorway near Ennis, Ireland.

I think about its magic & medicine when I look at this particular hawthorn bush along the Deschutes estuary. Located on a narrow land bridge between Percival creek lake and the main Capitol Lake, it is “betwixt and between”: this is a place of power in the Celtic world, a place where nothing and everything exists, a place of infinite possibility. It stands alone on a rise of land, which in Ireland would mean that it was surely a place of Faery. And although there are other hawthorns in the area, this is the only one so loaded down with scarlet berries. It casts its own strong spell of enchantment & allure; the robins cannot leave it alone. And I, driving by on my regular route, cannot seem to stop looking.

Here is my recipe for fire/hawthorn vinegar, a fabulously sustaining herbal tonic for winter (modified from Herbal Remedies Info on the internet.)

Fire Hawthorne Vinegar

1/2 cup fresh horseradish root grated
1/8 cup of Garlic chopped
1/2 cup of Onion chopped
1/2 cup of fresh ginger grated
1/4 cup of hawthorn berries; if fresh, mushed up, if dried, just add to vinegar to soak.
1 tsp Cayenne powder

Directions
Place all ingredients in a quart jar and cover with Apple Cider Vinegar. Cover tightly. Steep for 8 weeks. Strain into clean jar.
How to Use Your Fire Vinegar
• Use as a rub for aching muscles and joints
• Make a poultice by soaking a clean washcloth in the fire vinegar to place on a congested chest.
• Mix with some honey to chase out a cold and cough (it's a great anti-viral).
• Drink it straight or diluted in some water or tomato juice. Start out with a one teaspoon or so to test your tolerance level.

Janet Partlow

Resources:
• Hawthorne photos by Nancy Partlow
• Faery tree in Ireland: see story at this link: www.irelandinpicture.net/2010/04/fairy-tree-that-delayed-motorway-ennis.html
• "Healing Herbs of Ireland" by Paula O’Regan
• "Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast" by Pojar & Mackinnon

Falling into Winter

Some years ago, I took a training program in Plant Spirit Medicine. I learned many many things in this medicine path; one of the things that has really stuck with me over the years since is a deep appreciation for the seasons, their changing nature, and also, how the seasons express themselves in me. Honoring the season is not only part of my personal medicine practice, but also part of my work. Sometimes, it is about coaching myself and others to be in and to live fully in the season that is at hand.


In this particular year, I have noticed that we went from a wonderful Indian summer of dense blue skies and abundant mushrooms into a very short autumn and are now knocking at the door of winter. These changes have nothing whatsoever to do with the calendar but rather how Nature expresses herself: the slant of sun heading south, the deep morning frosts, the fog that fills the estuary at night, the occasional nights of icy dark skies full of brilliant stars and a cold moon, the snow we found on our doorstep the other morning.

There's also the way I feel: in this early winter I long for the deep dark sleeps of these nights, going to bed early and sleeping like I've been drugged. There is an irresistible yearning for the warm bed, the thick fleece blankie and the hot water bottle snuggled against my back. I love looking out the kitchen window into the completely dark yard before I head to bed, and letting that silent darkness seep into me as I slide into dream time. Blessed darkness.

There's the deep hunger for hot and filling foods: bean soups and stews, potpies and mushroom stroganoff, macaroni & cheese served cheek by jowl next to piping hot baked potatoes. These comfort foods of childhood continue a long tradition of warming us up and reminding us the there is enough food and yes, we will be nurtured and cared for.

I learned in Plant Spirit Medicine about the critical importance in this time of taking care of our reserves. In this season, the best thing we can do is to stay home, bundle up in a warm blankie by a fire, inviting a purring kitty to share out lap, and reading an absorbing (but not too intense) book. We turn off the TV, turn off the phone and lock the doors. We fix a hot mug of (non-caffeinated) chai, and let its heat and spicy herbs warm us to the core. To the many holiday invitations that come our way, we say no rather than yes. We spend this winter season honoring it and ourselves by going inward, conserving our resources through a dark and cold time. This is my task and my joy during this season of winter. I invite you to do the same.

Janet

Resources: Photos by Nancy Partlow
Recommended book: Plant Spirit Medicine by Eliot Cowan

Plant Dyes Part 2

So I know I’ve already written about plant dyes in a previous blog, but I just COULD NOT stop myself. My herbalist buddies got together again, focusing on plants that produce yellow dyes, and it was just amazing.

There is something powerfully miraculous about putting a couple of handfuls of what seem like ordinary leaves in a pot of hot water, only to see these rich, intense colors come seeping out into the water. After an hour of simmering, then we pull out the plants and put in some basic natural colored wool. Then the proteins in the spirals of wool pull in the plant pigments and viola! We have color.

I wonder how, in ancient times, our ancestors stumbled across these additional gifts from the plants? I imagine a scene in Africa, with a woman sinking down by the fire at the noon meal, with a cup full of hot tea. Her child bumps into her, and she spills the steeped tea all over her leather clothes. The colors sink in and cannot be removed and she suddenly sees that she doesn’t to wear leather tan and brown color for the rest of her life...

So back to our kitchen. The greenish yarn was made by goldenrod, which in late summer sends up spears of truly golden color shooting up into the blue sky of summer. Our herbalist friend Rain sheared off the tops of some goldenrod volunteering on her property and put them in the freezer. In the dyepot, this plany makes a pale golden color, which is “saddened” by iron water (mordant) and turns a rich green.

Then there is coreopsis, which most of us know as a sunny blossom smiling in the summer garden. It turns out it holds intense amounts of plant color. For much of August, I snuck out to garden with the pruners and collected flowers, adding them to the bag in the freezer until we had a full quart zip lock. In the dyepot, these flowers produced a rich caramel gold.

Finally we worked with turmeric. This may well have been the first dye ever used by humans. A root food and medicinal plant beloved in India, every cook knows about its ability to stain. We tried it three ways: the medium yellow is wool only, while the deep orange is turmeric+ alum mordant. (Alum helps the colors be washfast and light fast). Finally we added a bit of iron mordant to the dyepot; here you see Susan stirring the yarn which has become a yummy, nearly edible brown.

At the end of the day, the yarn is hanging outside, drying. In a few days Rain will recruit some friends to wind it all up into lovely balls of color. And soon, I have my share: I cannot stop fondling them. This is one of the best parts of working with plants: seeing up close, in my hands, their mystery, their medicine, their gifts. I share it with you all...


Janet Partlow
Resources: Wild Color by Jenny Dean

Stories from the Stones

Okay, I admit it. For most of my life, I thought of stones as dead rocks, and those weirdos who talked about using them for healing were complete flakes. However, the stones have since taught me differently, and I guess now I must confess
(a little painfully) I too am one of the flakes!

It was about ten years ago that I was driving through the Black Hills of northwestern Thurston county, headed off to one of my earliest training workshops in Plant Spirit Medicine. Highway 12 cuts through the the Black Hills; in fact the roadbed had to be blasted out of some of the only bedrock you can find in our area (the rest was covered up by glacial till in the last Ice Age).

So I'm driving along on a Friday, pretty tired after a long week, just anxious to get to the workshop and settle in for the weekend. As I'm driving through the cut bedrock, I look over and admire the dark basalt, the cascades of bright water flowing down, the clustered green ferns. And then, THE ROCK SPOKE TO ME.

I just about swerved off the road, I was so freaked. And then I remembered a line from one of the Harry Potter books, where Ron tells Harry that even in the wizarding world, it's not a good thing to hear voices. I had brief paranoid thoughts of the inpatient psych ward at our local hospital.

As it turns out, the rock was only saying hello and inviting me to come and spend some time with it. I had a strong sense (once I calmed down) that in the past, humans had connected very strongly with this stone, but it had been a long time since it had had such visits. It felt to me as if the rock was somewhat lonely and eager to reconnect.

Since that time, I have learned that many of the indigenous tribes used stones extensively for their healing powers. Many of these people knew that the stones were alive, just like plants or mushrooms, but living in a different time frame than ours. One of these tribes were the Cherokees; they especially liked to use quartz stones. It's probably no coincidence that part of my heritage is Cherokee and my favorite healing stones are those in the quartz group.

One final story: a couple of years ago I managed to break the fibula in my left lower leg. This was my first broken bone, and I was really shocked how much it ached, for months on end. The pain did not resolve well with the usual ibuprofen, nor even, surprisingly, with my herbal pain oils. Then once again, the stones spoke to me: my malachite stone offered to help. I happen to have a small flat one; I put it over the fracture site and taped it on with bandage tape. My pain calmed down within 5 minutes, and by the next day, was gone. After a couple of days, I took the malachite off; within hours my bone was aching again. I cleaned the stone by running it under water, then put it back on. Once again, the pain resolved. After several weeks, the bone healed, and the pain went away.

I have many other stories like that, too many for this post. Today, in my healing office, I have a shelf full of shining stones. I work with them on a daily basis, and they are a key part of my healing practice. They are also my teachers, my mentors and my friends. Though they come from a world of long ago, they have many lessons to share in this world of today...

Janet Partlow
Resources: Black Hills photo by Nancy Partlow