[Lecturer] Hello, everyone,
and welcome to the final lecture
in the final module,
which is about the role that herbalism can play
in nourishing transformations
at both individual collective and planetary levels,
and, ultimately, seed and guide
and nurture our collective liberation.
And we've talked about community herbalism
and the role it can play
in supporting sustainable, resilient,
and healthy communities,
and really an opportunity for communities and individuals
thriving in the presence of accessible,
local, vibrant, plant-based medicine.
And this is a vision and it's a partially manifested vision
in many communities.
But part of what I wanna talk about is why,
and really deepening our understanding
of how community herbalism can nourish the transformation
that many of us would like to see
in our bodies and in our communities,
and also offer some strategies to achieve this.
So a couple of questions that I'd love for you to reflect on
in a free write before you proceed in this lecture are,
first, given your experiences in this class
and in your life so far,
how are these two questions related?
First, what transformations are needed
to advance herbal medicine?
And you could consider the Burlington, Vermont community
or your own community.
Second, how can personal wellness contribute
to effective community action and change?
So answer these two questions independently,
and then explore the interrelationship between them.
And when you've recorded some of your thoughts
in your journal or on a piece of scrap paper,
proceed to the next slide.
So I wanna spend some time talking about visioning
as an important part of any transformational change process.
This is an image of the Railyard Apothecary
when it was being renovated and converted
into the current space arrangement that it is now.
And Yogi Berra is quoted as saying,
"If you don't know where you're going,
you'll end up somewhere else."
And visioning is a part of community
and social change processes that often is left out
or swept to the side and not enough time is spent on there.
So I want to guide you through a visioning activity.
And before the time of COVID in this class,
this would be a group activity
where students would shift out of their rational brains
and shift more into their intuitive and spatial brains
and use drawing as a way to explore this.
So it isn't about being a skilled artist,
but using your hands to draw something
initiates different thinking pathways in the brain
than thinking verbally or in writing.
So this was an activity we did as a class.
And it was really an exploration of,
what's our current baseline?
What is the community herbalism system
in our community right now, what does this look like?
And this would be one thinking activity.
And then students would switch
and explore 50 years from now,
how would you like it to change?
What would you like it to look like in 50 years?
What is the vision for a community herbalism system
that you would like to see?
'Cause 50 years is a significant amount of time.
It's not a lot of time,
it's enough to be able to imagine,
but what could that look like?
And then of course the most important piece
is not what happens in 50 years or what it looks like now,
but what happens in between.
So we would add a piece of paper
in the middle of both of these drawings
and ask students to consider what are some first steps
to point us in this desired direction.
And so this is where I want your thinking to lie.
And as you prepare to write your final paper,
this is also gonna be a part of the prompt for that paper.
So given that, when we're thinking about organizing,
it can be helpful to have frameworks.
So I've already talked about the sustainable food
or sustainable health systems framework
and particularly supply chain components.
So take a minute to practice on your scrap paper again,
what are examples of community herbalism initiatives
in each category of the supply chain?
So what are some examples where herbal medicines
are being grown in the Burlington community
or in your own communities?
What are examples where education and marketing is available
so that consumers can be aware
of the benefits of these remedies.
And what are opportunities, challenges,
to that transformation to creating those,
to growing them, and where are the gaps?
So take a moment to do what's called a SWOT analysis,
a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats,
for the community that you are considering in this activity
and perhaps in your final paper.
And the yin and yang model has come up a lot
because it is an ancient symbol
for balance and health and wellbeing
and has relevance for topics
such as community transformation and change.
So I shared already that the yin yang model
mirrors community change processes
or individual change processes
in the way that planning is an important part of it,
action is an important part of it,
but also nourishment and visioning
is an important part of it.
And just as Brendan Kelly described how our bodies tend to,
our bodies and the way we spend our energy
tends to overemphasize yang action activities
and underemphasize yin nourishment activities,
I also find this in community change processes.
And a lot of this teaching
comes from my experience as an activist,
but also teaching a class.
I taught a class cross-listed between education,
community development, and public health
and natural resources for about six years
at the University of Vermont.
And it was a project-based class in research methods
for community change
and really looking at collaborative change models
within communities between universities and nonprofit
or community-based organizations.
So this is where a lot of my insights are coming from
as far as the imbalance of efforts
in community organizing that I observed.
And then of course we know the yin yang model
represents balance in the seasons,
and we can leverage the seasons
as models for health and wellbeing
in a social change process.
So if you think about a social change process
and to what extent you can mirror the the seasons
in the process, winter when things slow down,
particularly in a temperate region such as Vermont,
is a great time to be doing the rest and the nourishment
and the reflection and the evaluation of what works
and coming up with new visions,
whereas spring and summer can be great times
for gathering people, doing the planning, doing the events.
And there's a natural rhythm of the seasons.
There's also a natural rhythm of every moon cycle
that can support or thwart those sorts of activities,
and this can be a way to align your community organizing
with the rhythm of the seasons for greater effect.
And this also relates to our bodies
in the Chinese model of yin and yang.
It doesn't just relate to external actions
or external balance or imbalance,
it also relates to internal imbalance.
So if you find as a community change maker in your process
that you are struggling to nourish oneself,
the organ system to look at
are the spleen and the stomach for nourishment,
that's the earth,
or the adrenals, the kidneys and the lungs.
So the adrenals are about energy and appropriate rest
and the lungs are about grief.
And sometimes grief is what is holding us back
from having the energy to move forward.
Conversely, the liver and the liver system,
liver and gallbladder,
is the wood element associated with spring,
and that's really necessary for channeling that deep knowing
that comes to us from the water element from the winter
into the manifestation of the heart, the fire,
the action, time of a process.
And if we're finding that we are hung up
on being perfectionists about how the process goes
or we're really focused on analyzing the process
but not actually taking action,
those can all be signs of what are called a wood imbalance.
And so supporting the liver and gallbladder
with bitter herbs can be an effective strategy
for you as an individual.
Or if it's a pattern in the team having conversations
about what's holding us back,
do we not have enough of a plan
or do we have too much of a plan that's stifling?
And bringing us back to other symbols around the world.
The Maiden, Mother, Crone comes to us
from the goddess religions.
This is a Celtic medallion that depicts the rhythm
of a woman's lifecycle,
but also mirroring the seasons and this process
of planning, manifesting, and nourishing and visioning
as it relates to the cycle of the moon
and the cycle of a human's lifetime.
So speaking specifically about the first question,
what transformations are needed to advance herbal medicine
in the Burlington, Vermont community or your own?
I'm gonna share some specific examples,
and specifically, strategies because I feel that this class
has shared a number of examples and struggles
and celebrated different aspects of what's happening
in the Burlington community,
at least ones that myself
and the guest lecturers are connected to.
But I wanna talk a little bit about strategy.
So before I speak to it,
you may already know what works as an effective strategy
for community, individual or institutional change.
So for this, I want you to, again,
take out a piece of scrap paper, your journal,
and think about a time where you observed
or participated in what seemed like an effective strategy
for a community initiative.
And this could be at any scale,
but ideally larger than your own family.
And describe that strategy.
What were some of the elements
that stood out to you as effective
and how might that be extrapolated or generalized
to other community change efforts
that you or others might participate in?
So take a moment to write about that
before you advance to the rest of the video.
So one of my favorite theories of transformation,
and again, this came about a decade into my work
as a social activist, both being an activist myself,
but also teaching community change
and democratic participation in citizenship
at the University of Vermont.
And this is the four Rs,
this was one of your readings for this week,
and it's a theory of community transformation.
And basically, it breaks it down into four approaches
to community transformation.
One, and I'm gonna start in the bottom right, resistance.
So this is where protests raising awareness
of what's not working to essentially resist
and criticize the current system.
This is an important part for raising awareness
of where systems aren't working
so that we can move into other aspects of the change cycle.
There's also the reform.
So I'm going sort of counterclockwise.
So reform is working within the current system.
And I would see this if you're thinking about
food justice and food sovereignty.
Food reform is the role that many food shelves are playing
to work within the current system
to redistribute food to those that need it.
And this is a really important strategy
as larger transitional processes are happening
because in the case of food and hunger and food security,
people are hungry now.
So even though the system is imperfect,
these reform strategies allow for a certain ease
for those most affected by inequities in our current system.
And so the important thing to realize here
is that we need all four.
So resistance and reform is just part of a larger whole
of what it takes to create transformation in the community.
We also, in the next quadrant,
have conceptualizing new systems,
re-imagining envisioning new systems.
And this is where our artists and activists
and creative thinkers
are really important for thinking conceptually
about what might be possible
and how we can transform the system to be more equitable.
And it may be completely different
and should be, in many places, completely different
than the current system, the status quo.
And then the last quadrant is recreating.
So this is the actual action,
putting our hands to the ground, to the tools,
to actually generate these new systems
that are being imagined
and actually moving in the direction of transformation.
This is when we actualize or manifest
these imaginings of a better future.
And what I wanna emphasize here,
similar to the yin and yang, this is not a hierarchy.
There's no one approach to change
that is better or more desirable than the others.
The important thing is to not overemphasize
one or the other.
And I have found that in a lot
of the activist efforts that I've been in,
there is an emphasis on getting stuck in the resist phase.
So focusing too much on protests without offering solutions.
But there can also be a problem of offering solutions
that aren't grounded in the realities
of needing to actually build something
and create something and actually move
from the current state to the future vision.
So one way to think about this
as you prepare to write your final paper
is to think about which one of these strategies
most aligns with your personality
and your approach to the world
and your approach to solutions and creating change,
and getting to know yourself
as an activist through that lens.
And again, it doesn't mean that if you are more of a reform
or reimagined person,
that you're somehow better than someone who is aligned more
with resistance and protest.
It just means that you offer that gift to the collective.
And if you are someone that's more aligned
with reform and reimagining
are resistant to resistance or protests,
then you may wanna be looking to who in your community
is good at that and forming alliances.
'Cause, ultimately, we as individuals
are not expected to form the whole,
but we need to be strategic about who we form alliance with
and how we build partnerships and collaborations
in order to offer whole support to,
a holistic approach to community transformation.
And this comes from Joanna Macy's.
This was actually artwork that was given as a gift
to Joanna Macy,
and you all had a chance to read Joanna Macy's article.
And she's one of our elders in the environmental movement.
And she saw the community transformation process.
And this relates to individual and collective change,
starting with gratitude at the roots,
honoring our pain, feeling our pain,
seeing with new eyes as we've transformed that pain,
and then going forth in the world as activists again.
So it's a cycle of rejuvenation, a cycle of healing,
specifically related to activism.
And what is interesting to me about this is,
most of this model speaks to elements of activism
that would happen in the yin side of the cycle.
Gratitude is earth, honoring our pain is metal.
Metal, so that's the fall and autumn season.
Seeing with new eyes is starting to shift
into winter and spring,
and then going forth is more of the fire
or the yang aspect of the cycle.
So again, a holistic model for approaching change
from Joanna Macy who's one of our elders
in the environmental action and spiritual
and environmental action movement.
Albert Einstein is very famous with this quote of,
"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used
when we created them."
And this, again, reminds me of yin and yang
and Brendan Kelly's comments about activism
and this assumption that I think is really important
to bring into this conversation
that if the problems of climate change
or the problems of racial inequity
come from a very young, dominated, and emphasis
on overproduction, de-emphasizing of relationships and care,
then we cannot solve that by continuing
to work ourselves to the bone,
making hundreds of phone calls
and peppering people with mailings
and having a very yang oriented approach to change.
I think that what is needed to change the current system
is a completely different approach, which is involved,
which is characterized by reconnecting,
establishing connections to community,
and really focusing on healing and some of the deeper work
that's required to create lasting changes.
And given that a lot of the change efforts
in the environmental movement have been led
by predominantly white educated males,
I also think looking to new voices
in the social change movement,
and this class has sought to bring in
many of those voices.
Leah Penniman and Sherry Mitchell and Lila June
rise to the top,
and Adrienne Maree Brown and her book,
"Pleasure Activism," was one of your readings for this week.
And her book prior to "Pleasure Activism"
was called "Emergent Strategy,"
And here are some of the tenants
that Adrienne Maree Brown puts forward
as strategies for transforming communities.
"Small is good, small is all."
"Trust the people.
If you trust them, they become trustworthy."
"Change is constant.
Be flexible like water."
"Move at the speed of trust.
Connection is more important than mass."
Quality over quantity.
"There is always enough time for the right work."
So resist resisting urgency,
which is a characteristic of white supremacy culture.
"There is a conversation
that only the people in this room right now can have.
Find it."
"Less prep, more presence."
"What you pay attention to grows."
"Never a failure, always a lesson."
And again, I see a lot of these tenets of emergent strategy
that align more with yin aspects
of the community change process,
the importance of building connections,
the importance of emphasizing relationships before results.
And I can tell you that the a number of the community change
efforts that I've been involved in over the years
in climate change, social justice, food systems,
there is very often
relinquishing of process and relationships
because of this assumption that we need to achieve results.
And those projects often aren't sustainable
because if you don't protect the relationships
with respectful and equitable process,
people burnout or people,
their interpersonal conflict erodes
the ability to achieve results,
and ultimately, the projects fail.
So I see a lot of wisdom
Adrienne Maree Brown is putting forth here.
And let's think about the second question,
how can personal wellness contribute to effective community
action and change?
And I'm hoping that all of you will share the musings on
your free writes on Yellowdig
in the class discussion as well as in your final papers
so that this isn't only my voice answering these questions
because we've been talking about these for weeks
and I think you have a lot to contribute here.
But I'm gonna share my thoughts about how personal wellness
can contribute to effective community action and change.
So I wanna talk about caring for ourselves
and being our best selves
in the context of leadership and activism.
And when I use the word leader or activist,
I'm not only talking about those that are, you know,
giving leaders the labels of leader
and activist in our field,
thinking about people like Joanna Macy
or like Adrienne Maree Brown.
I want you to think about leadership in activism
as having personal agency
towards something that is important to you.
And there are many different ways
to enact that in our lives.
But traditionally,
we think of leadership and activism as radical.
I think about images of activism of people in the streets,
a fair amount of aggression, and a lot of activity.
Activism is related to the word action.
But if we go to the roots of the word radical,
the etymology of the word radical,
it actually refers to our roots
and the roots of our social change
and the roots of our action.
And I want to use this as a call
to radical nourishment
and the role that nourishing ourselves
and nourishing our activism
helps to sustain our leadership into the future.
So where do we act from
and where does our activism come from?
Does it come from a deep sense of justice and care
or does it come from a desire to belong
and be aligned with the efforts
and actions that our friend group is involved in?
There's no shame for where you're acting from,
but knowing where that comes from
and knowing if it comes from a sense
of your own deep rootedness and groundedness
and your own sense of self and your gifts
versus if it comes from a place
of seeking, belonging,
or trying to as so edge a certain amount of guilt,
these are all important motivations
to tease out and be aware of.
So why self-care for activists?
This idea of radical nourishment
is essential not just to sustain the work into the future,
but also because it colors the nature,
it shapes the energy of the action.
And I'll speak a little bit more to that.
But before I do that,
I wanna talk about self-care
in the context of cultural legacies.
And this came up earlier in the semester.
But knowing and honoring that self-care
is a loaded term for many, specifically for white women.
And looking at histories of messaging
such as no pain, no gain.
The idea that we need to suffer in order to achieve results.
"Pain is weakness leaving the body."
This is something that I haven't always used,
but I've heard other activists say this
in the sense of needing to suffer for the cause,
and then also I wanna center in the work of Eleanor Hancock
around whiteness related to self-care,
and specifically the idea that whiteness
is associated with lack or a reduced sense of empathy
and the ability to feel
and that the urgency that is associated
and often praised and privileged in white culture
and particularly in activist communities,
is also associated with numbness or an inability to feel,
which allows us to and amusing us
and we to talk about myself
and those of us who identify as white.
I'm not assuming that all of us have that identity.
That allows white activists
or those who are socialized as white to suffer through
and put their needs aside.
And Parker Palmer was one of the first white authors
and activists that I heard speak about this.
And he identifies as Christian, also Quaker,
speaking to this idea of the fear
of being called full of oneself or being selfish.
And Parker Palmer says,
"Self-care is never a selfish act.
It is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have,
the gift I was put on earth to offer to others.
I found in my research that the biggest reason
people aren't more self-compassionate
is that they're afraid they'll become self-indulgent.
And I share these words
because it resonates with my journey,
especially in the ways that I was socialized
as a white person in New England
in a female body identifying as female,
there's a lot of conditioning around self-sacrifice
and serving others before serving yourself.
And the only time that you take a break
is when everyone else around you has gotten what they need.
So I've been in resistance
and sort of trying to disentangle
some of the ways that I've been socialized in that.
And so I share this for those of you
who might be coming to this with similar backgrounds
or similar resistance to self-care.
By contrast, Sherry Mitchell who is Wabanaki
and is the author of one of your readings for this week,
A foundational principle of the Wabanaki people
is that good self-care is necessary
for establishing a trusting relationship with the self.
And if we recognize that we are part of a living earth
and that everything within this sphere
of life on earth is sacred,
then we cannot remove ourselves from this equation.
As we learn to care for ourselves,
we also teach ourselves how to care for others.
So this is providing a little bit of a rationale
for self-care and the value of self-care,
but also speaking about the importance
of our cultural legacies
and how we may have been shaped to either value
or devalue self-care or feel shame around self-care.
And that's really important
when we're talking about self-care
as a really important motivating force within activism.
Brother Wayne Teasdale,
who's another white male activist and mystic said,
"People's hearts must change before structures can change."
This change is the basis of genuine reform and renewal.
We need to understand to really grasp on an elemental level
that the definitive revolution
is the spiritual awakening of humankind.
So this is one perspective.
And I've also seen perspectives
that we need to change the structures
before people can change.
I think it's a combination of both
and I think that's the value of herbal medicine
and what I'm putting forth here,
is that there's an opportunity to work at the individual,
collective, and planetary level
through the lens of herbal medicine
and sustainable food systems
to achieve some of these changes in the world.
This is a quote from a past student in their final paper.
And I wanna share it because there's so much wisdom here.
"It is exciting to live during a time
in which humanity is coming back to ourselves
and to our roots.
Plants, as consciousness movers and teachers,
are showing us how to take back our power.
The power I speak of is to connect deeply within
and with other beings,
the power to explore consciousness.
In taking back our power,
we open up to so many new relationships and ways of being.
To bring about this paradigm shift,
to recreate the world I envision,
I am beginning by cultivating presence.
The change begins with me,
and I am the change I wish to see.
In developing the skill of present mindedness,
I'm allowing others to do the same."
So I wanna do a little bit of review
around nervous system physiology
as it relates to self-care and how self-care
can cultivate a responsive and resilient nervous system.
So as a reminder that our nervous systems
have the ability to be in reactive mode,
stuck in stress mode,
I also call this kind of a fixed mindset
or a problem oriented mindset.
Or we can also cultivate a responsive nervous system
which is more associated with positivity,
solutions seeking and effective problem solving,
effective collaboration, also makes us much more open
to relationships and partnership.
So we tend to be less grumpy when we're in responsive mode.
And again, a review of Rick Hanson's comments,
and I invite you to read this in more detail
if you aren't familiar with it from my previous lecture.
But that reactive mode and responsive mode
not only affect our worldview,
they also have an effect on health of being,
health giving. or health depleting.
And the central experience is drastically different
simply depending on the physiology of your nervous system.
And a lot of this is related to,
not just the autonomic nervous system,
sympathetic, parasympathetic,
but also polyvagal theory
and the importance of the vagus nerve,
which (indistinct) and other teachers
around trauma-based activism speak of.
And I'd like to reframe this a little bit
to talk about not just reactive and responsive mode,
but survival versus thriving mode
because this is an important distinction to be made.
Rachel Budde from Fat & the Moon
who's a healer and activist says
that we, as a culture and as a people,
she's speaking of the average American,
have habituated the activation of a survival response
in our nervous systems and in our culture,
and this is detrimental to our health.
"When the sympathetic nervous system is working overtime,
we cannot thrive."
And this is just another way of saying what I've said
and others have said
about the importance of nourishing
and cultivating balance in the nervous system.
And the sympathetic nervous system is associated
with a yang way of being in the world
versus the parasympathetic nervous system
is associated with more of a yin way of being in the world.
And astrologer and activist, Virginia Rosenberg, says,
"We thrive when we center nourishing ourselves
above all else."
And I chose to put this quote
over an image of a floral dessert pizza
that we made at the wood-fired pizza oven at Rock Point,
which is one of our medicine teaching spaces.
And there's also a medicine garden there
that I'd urge you to visit at some point.
And we've adorned this pizza with borage and violets
and other edible blossoms such as calendula.
And so this opportunity to care for ourselves,
nourish ourselves with beauty
is not a frivolous act
when we see it through the lens of self-care to fill
what may be a void
that's created by an overactive nervous system
or an overstimulated nervous system.
And again, going back to Parker Palmer's comments,
he speaks about the difference between a full self
versus an empty self.
And that what he has seen in his work
and with the American public
is not an epidemic of selfishness,
but an epidemic of an empty self that is created by people
giving too much, not being connected to their roots,
not being connected to what truly fuels them
in a sense of purpose,
and that is where dysfunction arises from.
It doesn't come from overindulgence or self-indulgence
in many cases.
And I wanna speak about the somatic intelligence,
the body intelligence of tears.
This is a quote from Washington Irving.
"There is a sacredness in tears.
They're not the mark of weakness but of power.
They speak more eloquently than 10,000 tongues.
They're messengers of overwhelming grief,
of deep contrition and of unspeakable love."
And I've long held this opinion
that tears are sacred from a spiritual perspective,
but I wanna speak to the practical and anatomical function
and benefit of tears that they are our body's only way
of shedding the stress hormone, cortisol,
without burdening the liver.
The liver is responsible for breaking down
cortisol in the body
and breaking it into smaller molecules for excretion.
And other than the liver having to work hard to do this,
we can cry.
And so this idea that tears and crying helps to shed stress
actually has a physiological explanation.
This is from Pip Waller and Holistic Anatomy.
And for those of you aren't as familiar
with liver physiology,
the overburdening of the liver from toxins,
not just from stress hormones,
but also reproductive hormones and toxins in our food supply
is a huge issue and often can relate
in many health issues such as hormone imbalances,
headaches and migraines, skin conditions such as acne.
So supporting the liver by crying can be a really effective
and somatically intelligent thing to do.
Here's a quote from Nayyirah Waheed.
"I love myself.
The quietest, simplest, most powerful revolution ever."
So this is taking the idea of self-love
beyond just self nourishment for thriving,
but also bringing in the idea of self-love as revolutionary.
So this is something I also want to consider.
And this speaks to the new science
of intergenerational trauma.
And this has been brought up in previous lectures,
certainly relevant to discussions of herbal justice,
not just of indigenous people
and people of color in this country,
but also white people
and the history of the extermination
of medicine women and the witch burnings
and the science that,
because of epigenetics
and the ways that epigenetic settings
are heritable across generations,
they've found that trauma can be inherited
or passed down 14 generations back.
So stress that your ancestors experienced
up to 14 generations ago may be stored in your body,
which may explain why we react to situations with more fear
than makes sense for that given situation.
And the reference for this is...
Or there's a recent book
called "Studies of Trauma Across Generations"
by Fromm in 2018.
So I'd encourage you
if you're interested in reading more about this
to check out that source.
But committing to healing legacies of pain
and the role that self-love plays in deep ancestral healing
because of the trauma that we may be carrying in our bodies.
Marianne Williams had said,
"Love is what we were born with.
Fear is what we have learned here,"
or what our ancestors learned.
"The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear
and the acceptance of love back into our hearts."
And this reminds me
of something I read recently about triggers
that a trigger is when the fear steps in
and blocks the love.
And I can think of many examples
where I lost touch with my sense of purpose,
my sense of flow,
because of something that triggered me,
whether I knew that or not.
Often, triggers are unconscious
until we start to map and learn what our current,
what our sensitivities and triggers are
so that we can show up more consistently with love.
And triggers can be healed once we become conscious of them.
And often it's about feeling those feelings
so that we can release them.
Here's the quote again from Candace Taylor about wholeness
and working on oppression
by working on the fragmentation in our bodies.
"When we understand the framework of oppression,
we begin to recognize how our fragmentation
supports and sustains its systems
and consciously working towards wholeness."
And this is also revolutionary.
So self-love, wholeness, are both revolutionary strategies
in a world where fragmentation and oppression
has kept us separate from that love
and separate from that sense of belonging.
And I wanna share a short video from Adrienne Maree Brown
about her "Pleasure Activism" book.
But an important quote from that
that stood out for me is that,
"Pleasure is a way that we reclaim our whole selves,
our real selves, our true selves.
Once we have had that awakening,
we will no longer settle for self negation.
We will no longer settle for suffering as a way of life."
And I think what this is bringing forward is the idea
that suffering can be a learned pattern from this lifetime
or from our ancestors' lifetimes
in the way that is stored in our body.
And I think about the Christian ethic of martyrdom
and hard work so that you can relax and enjoy life in heaven
and sort of postponing pleasure
as a part of the white European Christian tradition.
And I think that that has been enforced on many bodies
that are affected by privilege and power
of white Europeans and the colonial system.
So I'm gonna share this video from Adrienne Maree Brown.
There's an us before the wound,
there's an us before oppression.
And to me pleasure is a way that be tapped down into that.
I'm like, well, I'm having orgasm.
Ah, slavery.
I'm like, you might be my slave.
But, you know, like in a good way.
It's really about like, "Oh I feel very free."
To me the work was about like how do we remind people
that you were free to begin with?
You were always free to begin with.
(gentle music)
For me, I was like,
how can I bring like the best feeling when I'm,
it's like the best high or the best mushroom (indistinct).
You know, when you're on mushroom...
How many of you have done mushrooms?
All right, everybody else, just get to it, all right?
Life is short.
And they're natural.
Okay, good.
My name is Adrienne Maree Brown.
I am the author of "Pleasure Activism:
The Politics of Feeling Good."
Right now we are sitting in Bluestockings bookstore,
which is, forever... I used to live in New York,
I lived here for like 10 years.
Bluestockings has always been a (indistinct)
bookstore for me.
So I'm really excited to get to be here tonight.
We're doing our New York event for "Pleasure Activism."
"We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves,
our deepest cravings,
but once recognized,
those which do not enhance our future
lose their power and can be altered.
The fear of our desires keeps them suspect
and indiscriminately powerful for to suppress any truth
is to give its strength beyond endurance."
Audre Lorde's (indistinct) the erotic
is a foundational text for "Pleasure Activism."
And I feel like what she was saying to us,
what she was teaching us so much
was that pleasure and the erotic, the awakening,
the erotic awakening
is the way that we actually reclaim our whole selves,
our real selves, our true selves.
And that once we have had that awakening,
we will no longer settle
or (indistinct) will no longer settle for suffering
as our way of life.
Like, oh, this is just how (indistinct)
'cause we're black women.
I started asking myself like,
"How did I unlearn pleasure?"
"When did I unlearn pleasure?"
When I look back it's like,
"Oh, there's an ancestral pleasure,"
a way that black women on this country
have been trained to be in service with our bodies
rather to be in pleasure in our bodies.
I realize that we're not the only ones,
that almost every human on earth in some way
has been disconnected from their natural relationship
to the planet,
their natural relationship to themselves,
from our natural relationships to each other.
And that pleasure is one of the ways we know like,
"Oh, god, I'm in nature."
"Oh, god, I'm with my lover."
"Oh, god, I'm connected."
"I'm part of something I belong, I'm safe."
Pleasure (indistinct) all that, right?
So for me I was just like,
it's actually a measure of freedom.
It's a way that we say, "I have decolonized,
I have returned to myself, I have been healing."
"Our acts against oppression become integral with self,
motivated and empowered from within.
In touch with the erotic,
I become less willing to accept powerlessness
or those other supplied states of being,
which are not native to me
such as resignation, despair, self-effacement,
depression and self denial."
-Right? -(audience applauding)
So Audrey is the bomb.com.
That's how I feel like, yeah!
Let's just give it up for Audre Lorde.
-Yeah! -(audience cheering)
I was particularly drawn to the uses of the erotic as a text
because it was published August, 1978,
and I was born September, 1978.
And so I lived like my whole life
like trying to figure out my relationship with pleasure
and it was like, "Oh, someone had written a text
a month before I was born."
I was like, "Boom, here it is."
And I'm like, "Oh, just like I missed it."
There might be other people who still are missing it,
Who still are not getting this.
Part of being a survivor myself
and part of being in communities with survivors
is recognizing that even when we get to good,
even when we're like,
"Okay, I'm not in total trauma land,"
there's still a lot of our lives that are like,
I have to earn pleasure, I have to earn rest,
I have to do more for my community
to get something good for myself.
That's to me the unnatural mythologies of capitalism.
That's what we have bought into together,
is like I have to earn education,
I have to earn home,
I have to earn food.
Like, no, like, I'm a part of a community.
That should all be part of what I receive.
I also think pleasures to me
at the same level as those things.
So like when I'm like, "Oh, what do I need to survive?"
And Octavia showed that over and over again, Octavia Butler,
in her novels and her work.
Like, what do we actually need to survive?
It's not enough to just have food if we're miserable
and shelter if we're totally hating each other.
There's something else.
And almost every text that she has, her characters,
we're surviving apocalypse, of lovers.
They have symbiotic communities
that are giving and taking care of each other.
I think we're the same way that we have to be doing that
as a part of what survival even means.
And how that connects to political work for me
is there's this quote from Gracely Box
who's one of my mentors that's,
transformed yourself to transform the world.
That every oppression of all these systems,
they are constructed inside of us.
And often, when we start our work and we get politicized,
we're like, "The bad people are like over here."
And we learn our organizing by learning like,
who can we identify and point to as the causers of harm?
And I love what Grace says
as like this is our potential
for some radical responsibility.
It's like, those front lines are inside of us.
And so again, it ties in, I'm like,
"Oh, the front line is inside of me for pleasure."
Like, if I want all black women
to be able to access pleasure,
it really matters that I'm experiencing pleasure.
And actually that's been an interesting thing
as I've been touring this book,
is I keep showing up to events and I'm just like,
I'm in a deeply fully satisfied life
and it shows and you can feel it
and keep that reflection.
(indistinct) was like,
"Wow, it's just amazing to be a brown black woman
and like free about her feelings."
And like that's not orgasm stuff, you know.
To me that is a huge portion now of my political work,
is to be a satisfied black woman for people to see that.
And I'm like, yes, I get angry,
yes, I'm sad, yes, I feel the full range of emotion.
Fundamentally, when you ask me, I'm good.
I'm good because I made myself good.
I'm good because I found the right community
to be around me,
'cause I somehow dodged the bullet
of like getting my life tied in
with some patriarchal like downfall of man.
Like, I'm just like, good, right?
I'm happy.
I feel like a lot of people need to witness that
and be that in their own communities.
And I like the idea of echo chambers of transformation.
That it's like if mine sets off yours,
just like mine was set off by someone else,
it's like someone else helped her.
And like I love that idea that said,
we just keep popping off
until it becomes the most compelling thing.
You're so deeply requested
that anyone experiencing even a tiny bit of pleasure
like, you were free, right?
(audience laughing)
You guys are laughing so hard.
I'm like, "Am I on the wrong light?
Am I in standup comedy?"
(audience laughing)
I think I might be.
[Lecturer] So what Adrienne Maree Brown
does so compellingly is teaches us about that relationship
between the inner landscape and the outer landscape,
and that when we are meeting our own needs,
we are better prepared to notice spaces
where others are not getting their needs met.
And this idea of pleasure activism
and finding pleasure within
so that we can create more systems of thriving
and not just surviving outside of ourselves.
So I want us to take some time to review
how we cultivate wholeness, how we cultivate resilience,
how we cultivate pleasure and wellbeing inside of ourselves.
And again, this is review
of the emotional health and wellbeing,
but this idea that we can actually cultivate responsiveness
and thriving and resilience in our nervous systems.
And again, this is based on some of the research
on ecological resilience
and seeing that human systems and ecological systems
have very similar,
have things in common around their ability
to cultivate resilience.
And that ultimately,
it's a function of supporting resistance of that system.
So the human body's ability to remain the same
through a shock or following a shock could be a stressor.
But also the adaptability and the ability of the system
or your body to recover function following a shock.
That ability to reset and get back into thriving mode.
Because ultimately,
it's not about being in thriving mode all the time.
We can't avoid stressors,
we can't avoid unexpected events,
but we can cultivate the resilience of our system
to recover quickly and to sort of get back
into thriving mode or responsive mode following an event.
And ultimately, it's about nourishment and strategies
or coping skills for restoring flow.
And from an herbal perspective,
we need to focus on building and maintaining,
nourishing that foundation of wellness
to support an active and full life.
It's not about maintaining a foundation
of wellness to survive,
it's about maintaining a foundation of wellness
so that we can thrive and have the fullness,
have like a vibrant life.
It's also cultivating skills
and those coping skills that help us to restore flow
and allow us to experience joy and connection
and get out of that trigger mode
that shuts us off from the love
and not getting stuck in stress mode and survival mode
like so many of us have become habituated to do.
So, the wellness foundation,
you've seen this before,
and to me it's ultimately about what type of system
or how do you wanna manage your system for productivity.
And again, this is using the language of capitalism
because this is something that is familiar to us.
But if you think about your body as a commodity,
your body as a factory, your body of producing something,
what type of cultivation technique do you wanna use?
Do you want to use a sort of intensive agricultural system
which is about rapid returns,
but ultimately there might be burnout?
Or do you wanna take more of a sustainable
agriculture approach, diversified,
in line with the seasons,
more of an agroecological or sustainable farming approach?
And I would argue that since many of us
have a lot of time on this earth,
we may want to try more of a sustainable approach.
And that's certainly where more joy,
more attending to the rhythm,
and ultimately, there is an extended productivity.
So it's more of an endurance approach
rather than the sprint approach to getting energy out.
And this might be really hard to hear as a college student
because ultimately,
the academic system is pretty much created
around a sprint mentality.
But I've also seen a lot of burnout with that model
and within that system.
So it's something to be critical of.
And where do plant allies fit in
as far as supporting our emotional resilience?
So some of the major classes of herbs are the adaptogens,
as well as any herbs that help us digest
and help us rest and help us connect with those around us.
All of the aspects of the wellness foundation.
But the adaptogenic herbs are the ones
that really work at the nervous system level
to nourish the adrenals and protect our body
in terms of chronic stress
and help us maintain that flexibility
and really build our foundation for wellness
so that we can be resistant to stressors
as they come along.
And then we also have these aromatic nervines
such as lavender,
that really excel at resetting our nervous system
out of stress mode.
Resetting our nervous system,
we get disconnected from our heart rate
or when our heart rate variability goes down
in periods of chronic stress.
These are proven remedies for resetting the nervous system.
And I also wanna comment about this idea
of challenge versus comfort, challenge and support.
Resmaa Menakem says in his On Being podcast,
which was assigned in the last module,
"Our nervous systems are in knots."
And that's the piece
I'm trying to get people to understand,
specifically white people,
is that you're gonna have to build culture and community
to be able to hold this.
Your niceness is inadequate to deal
with the level of brutality that has occurred."
And what I feel Resmaa is speaking to
is this intergenerational trauma not just in our bodies,
but in the bodies of our community members
that may or may not look like us.
And there is a cultural entitlement to comfort
that comes with whiteness.
So niceness is a way to achieve a certain sense of comfort,
but it also is a way to avoid challenge.
And I believe that privilege plus comfort
creates that white fragility,
which is problematic in any sort of racial conversations,
but also when it comes to activism
and challenging the status quo.
And then we get stagnation
because those with power and privilege
aren't wanting to engage with discomfort
and the growth that comes from engaging with discomfort.
And then we basically maintain the status quo.
So it's about those of us in power, those of us with power,
those of us who are choosing to align with power
to get uncomfortable.
And this idea that deep lasting healing
really requires yin forms of activism.
So I shared in the herbal justice that anti-racism work
is shadow work activism.
It's working on our inner fragmentation,
our inner triggers, to address what's inside
so that the work that we do in the world
isn't informed from a triggered place,
but is actually informed
from an integrated and balanced place.
So cultivating resilience is not just about comfort
and not just about seeking support.
Obviously, too much challenge will hinder health and growth,
but too much comfort and support
also hinders health and resilience.
So being in an environment that is safe and coddling
and not challenging can actually be harmful as well.
And I believe that our bodies are made
and they're made to be shaped
through challenge and adversity,
they're made for growth.
And I really like this quote.
"Every time I witness a strong person,
I want to know: What darkness did you conquer in your story?
Mountains do not rise without earthquakes."
And this has been my experience too.
There's often a shaming of trauma
or a sense that we don't want to identify
with the more troubling or challenging
parts of our path,
but many of us will find that our gifts
and our contributions to society
come through the healing that occurs
when we go into that darkness.
And it may not be our own darkness,
it may be our ancestors' darkness, for example.
And Rick Hanson again says,
"The goal is to learn how to resource yourself
so that you can feel compassionate and open
to the sorrows of the world
without being overwhelmed by them."
And there is a way that we can,
when we have privilege,
we can distance ourselves from the sorrows of the world
because we have access to that comfort.
And the challenge is taking care of ourselves
in community as Resmaa Menakem says,
also with proper nourishment, with resource,
so that we can show up for that and stay connected
and feel the feelings
because until the feelings are felt,
then they can contribute to that stagnation and the blockage
to actually moving towards healing
both individually and collectively.
And those coping skills.
Resetting ourselves to responsive node are really important.
And I mentioned the aromatic nervines,
but mindfulness meditation, walks in nature, yoga, exercise,
these are all strategies that I hope you all have developed
and no one strategy is better than the other.
Certainly thinking about the the resource usage
of your strategies as one is one consideration.
But finding what works for you
to shift yourself out of that stuck in stress survival mode
so you can get back to thriving mode
is not only going to serve you,
but also serve the projects and communities
and initiatives that you're working in.
So I wanna speak to transformative healing
and I wanna speak to the power of sweetgrass
because Robin Wall Kimmerer has been a companion to you all
throughout the course in her book "Braiding Sweetgrass."
And I want to end with her comments
on transformative healing
through her passage in the "Defeating Windigo" chapter.
So it's a little bit of story time for you all.
So Robin Wall Kimmerer in the "Defeating Windigo" chapter.
"In the spring,
I walk across the meadow toward my medicine woods
where the plants give their gifts
with unstinting generosity.
It is mine, not by deed, but by care.
I've come here for decades to be with them,
to listen, to learn and to gather.
The woods are adrift of white trillium where the snow was,
but still I feel a chill.
The light is somehow different.
Across the ridge where unrecognizable footprints
followed mine in last winter's blizzard,
I should have known what those tracks meant.
Where they were,
I now find the deep redded prints of trucks
headed across the fields.
The flowers are there as they have been beyond memory,
but the trees are gone.
My neighbor brought in the lagers over the winter.
There are so many ways to harvest honorably,
but he chose otherwise,
leaving only diseased beech
and a few old hemlocks worthless to the mill.
The trillium, bloodroot, hepatica, bellwort,
trout Lilly, ginger, and wild leeks
are still smiling their last into the spring sun,
which will burn them out when summer comes
to a forest without trees.
They trusted that the maples would be there,
but the maples are gone, and they trusted me.
Next year, this will all be brambles,
garlic mustard, and buckhorn,
the invasive species that follow windigo footprints.
I fear that a world made of gifts
cannot coexist with a world made of commodities.
I fear that I have no power to protect
what I love against the windigo.
I throw myself on the ground pounding my fists
and grieving the assault on my medicine woods.
I know how to defeat the monster,
or I don't know how to defeat the monster.
I have no arsenal of weapons,
no legions of fighters
like those who followed Nanabozho into battle.
I am not a warrior.
I was raised by strawberries
who even now are budding at my feet amid.
Amid violets and yaro and asters and golden rod
that are just emerging
and the blades of sweetgrass shining in the sun.
In that moment, I know that I am not alone.
I lie in the meadow surrounded by legions
who do stand with me.
I may not know what to do, but they do,
giving of their medicine gifts
as they always do to sustain the world.
We are not powerless against the windigo, they say.
Remember that we already have everything we need
and so we conspire.
When I get to my feet,
Nanabozho has appeared beside me
with resolute eyes and a trickster grin.
'You have to think like the monster to defeat him,' he says.
Like dissolves like.
He points with his eyes to a line of dense shrubs
at the edge of the woods,
'Give him a taste of his own medicine,'
he says with a smirk.
He walks into the gray thicket
and laughter overtakes him as he disappears.
I've never gathered buckthorn before.
The blue blackberries stain my fingers.
I've tried to stay away from it,
but it follows you.
It is a rampant invader of disturbed places.
It takes over the forest,
starving other plants of light and space.
Buckthorne also poisons the soil
preventing the growth of any species but itself.
Creating a floristic desert.
You have to acknowledge
that it's a win winner in the free market.
A success story built on efficiency,
monopoly, and the creation of scarcity.
It is a botanical imperialist stealing land
from the native species.
I gather all summer sitting with each species
that offers itself to the cause,
listening and learning its gifts.
I've always made teas for cold, salves for skin,
but never this.
Making medicine is not undertaken lightly.
It is a sacred responsibility.
The beams and my house are hung with drying plants,
shelves filled with jars of roots and leaves
waiting for winter.
When it comes, I walk the woods in my snowshoes,
leaving an unmistakable trail toward home.
A braid of sweetgrass hangs by my door.
The three shining strands represent the unity of mind,
body, and spirit that makes us whole.
In the windigo, the braid is unraveled.
That is the disease that drives him to destruction.
The braid reminds me
that when we braid the hair of mother earth,
we remember all that is given to us
and our responsibility to care for those gifts in return.
In this way, the gifts are sustained and all are fed.
No one goes hungry.
Last night my house was full of food and friends.
The laughter and light spilling out on the snow.
I thought I saw him pass by the window,
gazing in with hunger.
But tonight I am alone and the wind is rising.
I heft my cast iron kettle,
the biggest pot I have,
onto the stove and set the water to boil.
I add to it a good handful of dried berries.
And then another.
The berries dissolved to a syrupy liquid,
blue, black and inky.
Remembering Nanabozhos' counsel,
I say a prayer and empty in the rest of the jar.
Into a second pot,
I pour a pitcher of pure spring water,
and onto its surface,
I scatter a pinch of petals from one jar,
bark shreds from another,
all carefully chosen each to its purpose.
I add a length of root,
a handful of leaves, and a spoonful of berries
to the golden tea tinged with rosy pink.
I let it simmer and sit by the fire to wait.
The snow hisses against the window,
the wind moans in the trees.
He has come.
Followed my tracks home just as I knew he would.
I put the sweetgrass in my pocket,
take a deep breath, and open the door.
I'm afraid to do this,
but more afraid of what happens if I don't.
He looms above me,
wild red eyes blazing against the hoarfrost of his face.
He bears his yellow fangs
and reaches for me with his bony hands.
My own hands tremble as I thrust
into his bloodstained fingers
a cup of scalding buckthorn tea.
He slurps it down at once
and starts to howl for more.
Devoured by the pain of emptiness, he always wants more.
He pulls the whole iron kettle from me
and drinks it in greedy gulps,
the syrup freezing to his chin and dripping black icicles.
Throwing the empty pot aside, he reaches for me again,
but before his fingers can surround my neck,
he turns from the door and staggers backward
out onto the snow.
I see him doubled over, overcome with violent retching.
The carrion stench of his breath
mixes with the wreak of shit
as the buckthorn loosens his bowels.
A small dose of buckthorn is a laxative,
a strong dose is a purgative,
and the whole kettle, antiemetic.
It is windigo nature.
He wanted every last drop,
so now he is vomiting up coins and coal slurry,
clumps of sawdust from my woods,
clots of tar sand and the little bones of birds.
He spews salve waste, gags on an entire oil slick.
When he's done, his stomach continues to heave,
but all that comes up is the thin liquid of loneliness.
He lies spent in the snow,
a stinking carcass,
but still dangerous when the hunger rises to fill
the new emptiness.
I run back in the house for the second pot
and carry it to his side
where the snow has melted around him.
His eyes are glazed over, but I hear his stomach rumble.
So I hold the cup to his lips.
He turns his head away as if it were poison.
I take a sip to reassure him,
and because he's not the only one who needs it,
I feel the medicine standing beside me.
And then he drinks,
just a sip at a time of the golden pink tea,
tea of willow to quell the fever of want
and strawberries to mend the heart.
With the nourishing broth of the three sisters
and infused with savory wild leeks,
the medicines enter his bloodstream.
White pine for unity, justice from pecans,
the humility of spruce roots.
He drinks down the compassion of witch hazel,
the respect of sea cedars, a blessing of silver bells,
all sweetened with the maple of gratitude.
You can't know reciprocity until you know the gift.
He is helpless before their power.
His head falls back, leaving the cup still full.
He closes his eyes.
There's just one more part of the medicine.
I am no longer afraid.
I sit down beside him on the newly greening grass.
'Let me tell you a story,' I say, as the ice melts away.
She fell like a maple seed,
(indistinct) wedding from the autumn sky."
So what I hope you gather from the story,
there's so many layers to it,
but that the knowing of what ourselves
and our community needs is in us,
with support of these plant allies.
And Robin Wall Kimmerer also says
that many indigenous people share the understanding
that we are each endowed with a particular gift,
a unique ability.
It is understood that these gifts
have a dual nature, though,
a gift is also a responsibility.
Asking what is our responsibility
is perhaps also to ask what is our gift
and how shall we use it.
So my hope is that through the guidance
of the lectures and the readings and the authors
and the videos and my words and the plants,
that you all have started to get a clearer sense
of what your gift is.
Perhaps you came in knowing what it is,
and so you're further honing it
or you're still exploring.
And I hope that you'll continue to share with me
and with your communities what those gifts are
for the world that really needs us
to step into our thriving and heal together.
I'm gonna end with this quote from Guido Mase,
who certainly started me on my journey in many ways.
Guido says,
"I have great faith in the power of herbal medicine
to heal not only people,
but also culture, species and ecology.
It's really pretty simple:
we need plants in our lives,
even only a little bit.
And once their green tendrils begin to grow in our hearts,
like the first pea vines of spring,
there is no turning back.
Thank goodness, thank greenness."
So I wanna close this lecture
with a bit of, sorry, not sorry,
because I imagine that there are some ways
that the plants have gotten into your hearts
and you found your passion in this exploration of plants.
And I hope that you'll continue to share your journey
and your curiosity with me,
even as this course comes to a close.
And I just wanna thank you all for your commitment
to learning and curiosity,
and also showing up for the challenge
that a lot of this course material
may have brought up in you.