Meaning

When you wake up in the morning, what are you grateful for? What excites you? What delights you? What brings joy and meaning into your life? What are your daily practices, that cultivates this meaningful life?

Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference

Another amazing year at the Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference. Here's a few stories/ highlights: excerpts from my journal, and a write-up for Plant Healer magazine.
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We arrived just as it got dark, and the sliver of Moon set over the horizon of waving coniferous tree tops, in the little valley that we made home, for the next few nights of the 2015 TWHC. Mating elk sang their love songs into the night. I could hear them walking ever closer to my little bed under the oak tree, where acorns regularly fell above and around me, where I and the acorns lay under a canopy of stars, that blessed reminder of who we are and where we are in the Universe, with the bright white dash of Milky Way magic strewn across the middle of the deliciously dark night sky.

We rose early the next morning, to set up our tables, and give and receive one warm loving hug after another. TWHC feels like a family reunion. I got to embrace, reconnect with, meet, and enjoy the presence of herbalists from all over the country, from a diversity of backgrounds. And, classes hadn’t even started yet.

I’ve been thinking about TWHC for the whole year. Each time I feel tired or lackluster in my struggles as a “new” herbalist, I think about TWHC, and get reinspired. Even though it’s only four days, I made lasting friendships and professional contacts that I regularly reconnect with throughout the year to ask questions, share experiences, and stay connected with, as I grow and help spread our mycelial herbal network of friends and connections wherever I travel, teach, learn, and explore.

Time flew too quickly. This is manifest in the faces of the children. I helped with the new Children’s Camp by teaching a little, but mostly by hanging out with the kids around the gathering. The students from last year remembered me, and I, them. Their families also feel like families, and their moms feel lovingly protective, caring, and somewhat mom-like towards me, too. I accompanied the kids upstairs to look for Rebecca the ghost, ogling the dark landscape from the high vantage point, and then danced with them late into the night. It’s wonderful to see them grow up. I hope to return year after year, and thus be part of their lives. “I don’t want to be an herbalist when I grow up,” said one of the pre-teens in my classes, “my mom’s always talking about herbs, and I’m a little over it.” She stills knows plants though, already confident with her basic plant families. We had fun creating our own plant language, changing the plural form of “petal” from “corolla” into “pet-us,” then “pet-me.” Perhaps it’s an inside joke. It makes my heart sing, these little moments.

TWHC brings together wonderful herbalists from all over the USA, including some of my favorite teachers, role models, inspirations, and beloved people. We shouted at each other above the loud music and laughter on the masquerade ball night, smiling through masks and colorful costumes, bodies grooving to unfamiliar music. The second nights’ dance party had most of us dancing, jumping up and down to the powerful music and clackety drums, soaring flute and vocals, and twanging guitars pulsing through our bloodstream, under the hundred twinkly small white lights, under the old wooden roof beams, under the big Sky Island sky. I danced with the kids, my young friends and students, at the front of the hall, twirling each other and laughing, experimenting with all the different ways to express the music, laughing harder as 7song brought all of us together into a big circle, which eventually snaked around and pulled everyone in the room into a giant circle, which twisted and turned around and into itself, eventually interploding back into a packed room of dancing bodies and uplifted spirits.

(From my journal):

At one moment, looked up while dancing: glittering lights above, an undulating wave of ecstatically dancing herbalist bodies: plant lovers, misfits, oddballs, outsiders. My kids jumping around in front, and I with them. Tears came to my eyes, my body grooving in synchronistic harmony with the music and those around me, feeling completely alive and harmonious in that moment, my heart soaring from every pounding beat my feet sunk into the wooden floor upon sacred Earth, every wild and untamed twirl of my young lithe body getting older, housing this ancient spirit that feels so glad, and so right to be here in this moment, celebrating with a crowd of beautiful, courageous, wild creatures, dancing deep into the night.

I took classes from as many different teachers as possible, to taste different teaching styles, possibilities, and herbal approaches. If I didn’t get a chance to take a class with a teacher, then I made a point to hangout with them.

I notice that most of the teachers were self-taught: highly self motivated, curious, and intelligent people. I’m preparing to embark on Chinese medicine graduate school studies, and question my expensive new journey, especially in the face of all of these skilled practitioners who taught themselves so much, primarily through the practice of living the medicine: starting schools, clinical practices, and apothecaries.

I sidled late into Guido’s class, for my final class of a packed weekend of amazing classes with some of the strongest and most beautiful voices in western herbalism, at the end of this conference. He was mid-story, weaving a story-spell about how the Silvanis helped a young man and the Moon princess live together. He went on to describe various plants of the Alps that are also used in western herbalism, such as Alder, Linden, Nettles, and Elder. His way of combining magic and mythology, science and clinical gems, inspires and excites both the part of me which is still a kid and just wants to hear stories, as well as the “teacher” part of me which is leading classes for both adults and kids. I hope to build such brilliant bridges as these, too.

I found myself drawing little Sylvanis on my plane ride “home,” back to an unknown future: how to continue with my work as an herbalist. Continue onwards to Chinese medicine school, or not. How to best walk in this world. I outlined my hands, filling them with dancing Sylvanis from Guido’s Dolomite Alps stories. Little magical men with red capes who appear out of nowhere in the Alps, and guide people on how to use plants, or gets them in trouble. Like Coyote, but with red capes. And, trees from Juliet’s tree class, Rosaceae family plants from Kiva’s class, inspiration from Sean and Asia’s class, the faces of my friends, children, people and plant herbal family, and more.

I love walking by myself, crunching the red and gold leaves beneath my feet in the frosty late autumn air, geese honking above, turmoiled questions and colorful inspirations swirling within my chest, released with each outbreath. I’m grateful for opportunities to ignite myself in the fires of community, setting fire to my latent passions and budding possibilities and impossibilities. “Where to from here,” becomes less of a question, and “How can I make THIS opportunity NOW and HERE the BEST it can possibility be,” rises, instead.

Small hand in large hand, large hand in wrinkled hand, hand by hand, a roomful of people dance around, under the sky stars in an old room, weaving together a fibrous fabric of time. We are creating our own mythology as the gods of our own lives.

(From my journal): 

After TWHC, I feel powerful, inspired and unwilling to compromise me for my dreams... a mutual movement of me reaching for the world and vice versa, not a solo one way dance.

The elk are mating right now. We got serenaded each morning and night with their haunting songs, plaintive love cries that echoed across the cliffs and canyons, and the sounds of their footsteps, the chattering squirrels, and the falling acorns of autumn. Night sky: bright stars, Milky Way, dramatic sunsets and sunrises, a thin crescent moon that grew to a quarter moon by the time the Gathering ended. Sleeping on the ground warmly ensconced in two sleeping bags, bare face smiling up to a ceiling of stars and fattening moon, wind, elk, squirrel, and acorn songs to sleep, and days filled with herbal speak: inspiration, wisdom, experience, possibility--- didn’t make any photos while here. Fully present and engaged, four days lost to the world, fully present in the world. Now, at the end, flying on to my next adventurous journey--- I realize this is what it feels like to be fully alive. And, I want this (!) in my life.

NCNM Personal Statement

There's a 1000 word limit that I had to stay within. Sometimes when I get inspired, I just write and write. I cut a lot out to meet the word limit; there is so much more to say. There is always more to say. And, when it comes down to it, the story means nothing (even though it sometimes feels like everything. And it does provide a basis for everything else, in the mythology of my life, and the world that I've woven around myself in my head, and therefore also in reality.)

I left the Academy for Five Element Acupuncture (AFEA). It was a complex multi-layered decision that I still feel deeply conflicted about: sad, angry, somewhat helpless... and, necessary. And now, onwards.

I just sent in my application for the National College of Natural Medicine (NCNM) in Portland, OR. I don't have many friends or connections in the Portland area, and am looking for connections and support, especially around finding affordable housing, preferably an "alternative" housing situation where I can do worktrade in exchange for a place to make a nest, make beautiful, and rest at night. NCNM will be an intense education; a "real" Chinese medicine education that includes the study of classical Chinese, translating ancient texts, as well as engaging full-time in school, work, clinic, personal practice, memorization, experiencing, and so much more.

I applied for, and hope to embark on, the Doctors of Science in Oriental Medicine (DSOM) program, beginning January 2016. It will be more than double the cost of education at AFEA. The total should add up to around $130,000 for just tuition alone. After considering my options, this one still feels like the best one. Daunting, yes.

I want to share one of my application essays with you. And, I want to ask for your assistance for school finances, again. You can donate via my Jiling Botanicals business page here, or you can just send me a check (preferable, so I don't get money deducted from using a credit card). Any help is appreciated--- I'm asking for at least $5 from each person, if possible. If not, then send me your prayers; I'll need it!

There are four essays required for the application to NCNM. I should hear if I get accepted or not within a week or two. I expect an easy acceptance, but who knows.

Writing all four of the essays brought me to tears. Making this commitment is truly life-changing for myself and all those I come into contact with. It feels like a decision that is larger than just my life, not just affecting my future clients and students, but also wrapped into the fabric of my very being, and all of my ancestors. It feels deeply personal, and through its depth of connection with my heart and being, touches humanity.

Thanks for reading!

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Personal Statement

Jiling Lin, 10/ 2015

We lit candles, placing them into lanterns, then paraded around the empty streets with our colorful florally painted paper lanterns swinging from ropes, suspended on chopsticks that we delicately held in our small hands, as we tried not to run too fast, or jump too high with excitement. I loved singing the old Chinese songs, eating moon cake, and staring at the moon during the Moon Festival, lighting our incense sticks and wafting their magical perfume up towards the sky, with muttered prayers flying up with the smoke, to reach the ears and nostrils of our ancestors. I grew up in a white neighborhood, getting stereotypical Asian-sounds thrown at me like bullets from across the playground. I wore red often, feeling a connection with a land across the ocean where my parents and ancestors came from, where I spent the first year of my life, where I didn’t get to return to much at all again, until after I grew up, after experiencing the blessings and difficulties of being a first generation Taiwanese-American in a new land but still feeling a curiosity, affinity, and pride, for where I felt like I really came from.

I studied Native American traditions, western herbalism, Thai massage, Yoga, esoteric spiritual new-agey traditions from all over, and more. Nothing really connected, until I met a man nicknamed “Tofu” through a series of coincidences, who sees patients for free in his humble mountain abode of the YangMingShan Mountains that lie to the north of the capitol of Taiwan, Taipei, where my parents were born and raised, where the pre-birth of my birth arose from the Earth, where my grandparents fled when the Communists took over China, where I went and lived for three years after three years of travel around the USA as an adult after graduating from UCLA, where I re-fell in love with something ancient, refound my bones, resculpted myself, and then returned to the USA with something that I didn’t have before: a vision.

I just started teaching my own western herbal classes last July, after completing 1.5 years of formal intensive education at two different herb schools. Teaching has been invaluable for solidifying all that I learned in school, while continually challenging all I think I know and don’t know, constantly humbling me, while slowly and gently increasing my confidence. Embarking on this Chinese medicine school journeys feels like starting all over again, but also like returning home, back to something so very familiar, tucked into the folds of my childhood dreams, of falling asleep to the sound of my grandma counting her prayer beads, knocking on her wooden fish, and singing all the old Buddhist chants in a high-pitched, nasal, single-toned sing-song voice, led from her heart; falling asleep to the smell of complex Chinese herbal formulas stewing in old clay pots, then waking to the babbling of a community of elders and children, a true community moving around me.

He placed a needle in my hand. “Start with yourself,” he said. He showed me where my He Gu (LI 4) is, and how to needle it. It took me a while to actually dredge up the courage to needle myself. Then, I did it. The simultaneous pain and exciting electricity shot from the point of needled contact up the meridian line, and electrified, ecstatified my entire system. “Sing the body electric,” said Whitman. I felt it.

Where to, from here?

I started traveling intensively after graduating from college, eventually landing myself at the bottom of a cliff after a failed mountain summit deep in the Sierra Nevadas, after free-falling forty feet, and rolling 400 feet to what luckily was not a death, but was instead a rebirth: two broken wrists, a fractured chin, a cracked skull, and half my face torn off. Many stitches and surgery later, I returned to the world physically, emotionally, and spiritually shattered and changed. Impossible to return to my job as a “mere” photojournalist, I turned to the road, to a life of infinite possibilities and possible impossibilities, where nothing was clear, until after walking with the unclarity for a long enough distance, I eventually stomped out a clear enough path to notice the way I was walking, the patterns therein: wilderness, creativity, and spirituality. Body, mind, and spirit. Healing the entire person, the entire being.

It starts simultaneously inside and outside, and there are no clear answers. Every process is a journey, a process. I start with myself.

I experience dull chronic pain in my wrist, which is exacerbated by stress, coldness, and dampness. Coagulated scar tissue sits at the area of surgery, right along my Pericardium meridian. I experience numbness and tingling in my fingers, among various other symptoms that arose after my transformative mountain experience. Part of my travels was learning how to feel better, how to heal fully, how to embrace life again, after being so painfully close to death. I learned that the best, most powerful medicine that one can embrace is that which one feels an affinity with. I feel passionate about old traditions, paths that carry weight via time, experience, story, and lived lives. I love the tales of those who came before, especially if they are finely wrapped in magic and mythology, these nonliteral metaphorical tales that fire my blood and reinforce all the ways in which I’m woven into this world, via my heartstrings, inspired connection of Earth, plant, body, and life medicine. Story, connection, and Earth healed me back into life. Now, for more questions: how can I continue to walk my path in such a way as to continue helping others on their own healing paths? Herbalist, adventurer, educator, and bridger between the worlds of Taiwanese and American, seen and unseen, old and new, microcosm within macrocosm--- here, I stand at the brink of Classical Chinese medicine studies at NCNM, knocking on the door, with an open heart and mind.

Culture

What is your cultural heritage? Who are your ancestors? What is your relationship with them? How are they present in your life? What cultures do you feel connected with, or curious about? What is the cultural backdrop of your current life? What kind of input are you providing, through your own life, for the future generations?

Herbalism Learning Models

Ways of Learning about Herbalism

(From Paul Bergner)

NORTH= tradition

EAST= science

SOUTH= personal experience

WEST= intuition

Understanding Herbalism

1. Plants

              - botany

              - how/ when/ what part to harvest

              - medicine making

              - materia medica

2. People

              - constitution

              - condition

                            - roots---> branches/ symptoms

                            - internal causes (constitution); external causes

3. Matching Plants and People

              - clinical skills

                            - external (communication)

                            - internal (distillation; differential diagnosis)

              - The Medicine

                            - protocol

                                          - formulation

                                          - dosage

                                          - working with the person; patient compliance

(Note: different traditions/ approaches to all of the above!)

Plants/ People/ Dis-ease Differentiation

- Quality (energetic)

- Appropriation (location in the body)

- Property (action)

Doshas (from Ayurvedic constitutional analysis)

Vata (air and fire)

Pitta (fire)

Kapha (earth and water)

Treatment strategies

“Law of Similars” (ie. Alchemical medicine, homeopathy)

Vs.

“Law of Contraries” (ie. Galenic, Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda)

Plants’ Profile

(What to note, when creating your own materia medica)

- Taste (sour, sweet, bitter, pungent, salty)

- Tissue state (hot/ cold, moist/ dry, tense/ lax)

- Indications/ body systems/ medicinal use

- Preparations/ dosage

- Cautions/ contraindications

Botanical:

- Name(s): scientific name (genus, species, family), common name(s), species list

- Appearance

- Habitat

- How to collect

- Ecologic status

- Primary constituents

- Preparations

- Medicinal use

- Cultivation

References

The Earthwise Herbal, by Matthew Wood

Michael Moore

Autumn 2015 Botanical Medicine classes

Jiling’s                                             

Botanical Medicine

                            Classes

Learn to use the natural medicine chest surrounding you: plant identification, medicine making, edible and medicinal properties and usage, and so much more!

Class info

WHEN: Sundays 6:30-8:30 PM, 9/27 - 11/22 (Level 2 classes)

           Wednesday 6:30-8:30 PM, 10/14 - 11/25 (Level 1 classes)

WHERE: Out on a Whim Farm

           (312 Litchfield Turnpike Bethany, CT)

COST: sliding scale $30 - $50 per class (pay as you can)

           (Includes tea, samples, projects. Inquire for trades. All welcome.)

REGISTER: call 607-262-0302, or email Jiling at LinJiling@gmail.com

(visit www.LinJiling.blogspot.com or “Jiling Botanicals” on FB for more info)

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Weekly schedule

(Schedule may change. Please RSVP for an updated schedule)

“Level 2” Herbal Body Systems and Plant Walk classes:

Plant walks every other week: 10/4, 10/18, 11/1, 11/15, 11/22

Lectures every other week:

9/27- herbal energetics

10/11- nervous system herbs

10/25- digestive system herbs

11/8- respiratory system herbs

11/22- herbal first aid

“Level 1” Medicine-Making classes:

10/14- Welcome to Herbalism

10/21- Gathering, Processing, and Storing Plants

10/28- Creating Tea

11/4- Oil Infusions and Salves

11/11- Making Tinctures

11/18- Sweet Medicine

11/25- Incense, Dreaming Herbs, and Flower Essences 

Love, Hate

What do you love? What do you hate? How do these preferences, and the choices that arise from them, shape your life?

Lyme: my story

I just swallowed my final Doxycycline hyclate capsule, or “Doxy” for short. I started taking Doxy almost as soon as I landed in Gainesville, FL, less than 24 hours before beginning a three year Chinese medicine academic journey with the Academy of Five Element Acupuncture. We just finished our first “intensive” yesterday. I’m unsure if I will return. I’ve swallowed 100 mg of Doxy every morning and night for the past 19 days of school, besides four pills (loading dose) on the first day of my treatment regime, and my final pill this morning. I’ve also been taking three pills three times a day of Green Dragon Botanicals’ “LB Core Protocol” pills, which includes Japanese Knotweed root, Cats Claw vine bark, Andrographis, Sarsparilla root, and Dandelion.

I staffed a campout with Two Coyotes Wilderness School’s “Scout Tracker” program ten days before leaving CT for FL. I worked the camp season for most of July, spending the bulk of almost everyday in the field with kids, and regularly pulling ticks off of my body, with raising alarm, but also recognizing that it’s just part of life in the northeast, especially CT, the state where Lyme disease was first discovered, and in fact the town of Old Lyme peacefully resides. I drove home quickly after my final campout, as I had a busy evening planned, that led into a busy weekend, that led into my final few crazy whirlwind over-scheduled days in CT before leaving for FL. I did my regular tick check when I got home, extracted two tiny tightly-embedded ticks out of my body, noticed what looked like a tick in a hard-to-reach area, tried to extract it but couldn’t so left it, then proceeded to my evening activities. I started taking Astragalus and Echinacea prophylactically, in case I didn’t extract one of the ticks in time. It usually takes about 48 hours of a Lyme-carrying tick being embedded for the spirochetes to transform themselves into their correct shape to successfully enter and take over a human body. But, it really depends on the individual. I take Astragalus preventatively, just in case. But, the stress of the past month of work and upcoming travels probably kicked my immune system down several notches. Plus, that little black dot at the top of my butt crack that I couldn’t extract was actually a tick.

The bite flared up at the end of the weekend, after I returned from a trip to the north. I thought it could be a spider bite: hot, pulsating, painful, and tender to the touch. It hurt to sit. I remembered the little black dot that I couldn’t extract being on the same location as the bite, and so upped my Astragalus intake, but started treating the huge rash like I would topically, for a spider bite. The rash stayed for the rest of the week, not changing at all. It wasn’t until I boarded the train, that things changed.

Bumping along in the dusk approaching North Carolina, I had trouble falling asleep. It was difficult to get comfortable in my seat, due to the huge welt on my butt. In the tiny stinky bathroom, I inspected the rash. To my horror, it had changed into a Bull’s eye rash, one obvious symptom of Lyme disease. Sometimes people present with Bull’s eye rashes, but not always. The center of my rash had dried up and was peeling, due to my spider-bite treatment of cooling and drying the bite. The couple of days before leaving CT, the bite had developed a thin red line along the edge that I thought could be Lyme, but didn’t want to be, so refused to believe it. Note to others: if you think it can be Lyme, take care of it immediately. And, ask for help. I was “too busy” to stop and take full account of what was happening. I felt too shy to ask for help initially, as the little black dot was right at the top of my butt crack, an awkward place to ask for assistance in extracting what could be a tick... but what if it wasn’t? Well, it was. Take no chances.

I share this story because Lyme is so powerful, unexpected, and potentially life-threatening. Left untreated, chronic Lyme can render a person consistently tired, in pain, and can manifest in a variety of ways from completely debilitating to mildly uncomfortable. Having listened to Lyme specialist Julie McIntyre’s experience and stories and watched her in her clinical practice, I am fearful and respectful of Lyme, and do not want it in my body, especially as a young person, a fresh student, and a whole world, a whole life, in front of me.

After finally accepting that I had Lyme, crying as I entered Gainesville on the bus, and frantically text-messaging a bevy of friends across the country for suggestions and support, I felt ridiculous about my life. I grew up in California. My family is still there, and my extended family is in Taiwan. Most of my extended-non-blood family is in the northeast. My heartstrings are attached to the northeast and southwest. What am I doing, coming to school down here in FL. What am I doing, living on the east, where Lyme is a part of life and mountains are not that big, continuing to cultivate life and love in a place that doesn’t quite suit me. What am I doing. I belong in a dry warm climate, with mountains and wilderness. The longer I spend there, the more friends I will find there. And all of my northeast friends, work, community, possibilities? I can travel. But (I think) I want to--- need to--- root down back in the west.

I got Doxy as soon as I could after landing. It’s a strong antibiotic, and pretty much the only known “cure” for Lyme that usually only works if taken within a short while after infection. I lucked out with the herbs; a local herbalist had some extra pills leftover from another Lymey person, and bequeathed me all of her leftover pills.

I will continue taking the LB core protocol herbal pills, three pills, three times a day, until I run out of them. I can sit on my butt, again. The painfulness of the rash went away after a week of taking Doxy, though I still have a huge gray circle on my ass, where the rash was, before. I hope it goes away. But now, when I look at it, it reminds me of important questions. The big gray circle where the rash was is at the top of my butt crack, and the bottom of my sacrum, coccyx, root chakra, Muladhara. Where do I come from. Where do I belong. What’s really home. What’s really important. What do I sit upon, root into. What’s my base, my foundation. What’s really important.

I’ll let that question sit within me and help direct my next steps, as I fly back to New Mexico on Tuesday, and then back to Connecticut three weeks after that.

I’m living my questions.