Touched by Nature

Book excerpt: Touched by Nature is about the incredible healing power of plants. Just as their bodies are able to heal our bodies, as evidenced by the many successes of herbal medicine, so their spirit - or energy - offers much needed help to our spirits.This book is specifically about five-element based plant spirit medicine as developed by renowned international healer and teacher Eliot Cowan. Pip and Lucy trained with Eliot and have been practising the medicine since 2005. They see Plant Spirit Medicine as a very much needed medicine for our time and wanted to offer an accessible way into understanding its power and potential. Story telling offers that way. The book speaks in many voices, and it is a combination of narrative and description by the authors, as well as stories offered by colleagues, teachers, patients and students. The theme of the journey is used throughout: the journey of life which presents us with the challenges and struggles that call us toward the healing offered by deep nature connection; the journey of the seasons which encapsulates five-element understanding; journeys of personal healing and growth experienced from receiving the medicine; the shamanic dream journey in which humans can meet and interact with plant spirits directly through our imagination and beyond; the journey a person must undertake to become a healer and the part plant spirit medicine offers to play in the journey of our societies as we navigate this time of great imbalance and change, returning to a time when the songs and stories of the earth are once more able to be heard.