The Animá Tradition of Herbalism: A Grassroots Approach

* accessibility * bioregionalism * sustainability *

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by Kiva Rose

“Clothe yourself in your authority.  You speak not only as yourself or for yourself.  You will speak and act with the courage and endurance that has been yours through the long, beautiful aeons of your life story…”
-Joanna Macy

A tradition is the transmission of customs, practices and knowledge from one generation to another, an unbroken thread of wisdom that evolves and yet remains intrinsically true to itself as it moves from the heart and hands of one person to another. From mother to child, from teacher to student, from earth to human, from plant to person, we remain connected to the roots of traditional healing.

From the Latin tradere, to pass or hand over, a tradition is not a static dogma or dictated way or doing but rather a living web of knowledge, understanding and practicing that can serve to both unite and inform those who choose participate in its dance. They are not simply the ragged remnants of the past, but a vital aspect of today’s music, healing modalities, art, gardening and nearly every aspect of the human journey of life. We continue the paths first laid down by our ancestors, and create new traditions from the wellspring of practical knowledge and earthen inspiration.

We may most clearly see the impact and the understand the blending and emerging of traditions in n the folk music passed from one generation, people and place to another. The melodies shift and align themselves with the current context of place and time, and to the musician and the audience. Through time and adaptation, the lilting tunes of Ireland and the driving rhythms of Africa have twined together in the ancient hills to become the familiar, yet completely unique tradition of Appalachian music.

Likewise, the skill to mend wounds, heal hurts and facilitate bodily and spiritual wholeness has traveled across every continent, changing with the needs and affinities of every new generation and evolving with the plants growing in each location. Within healing, traditions are especially important. The experience and wisdom of our teachers and those who’ve come before lays the groundwork for each student’s understanding the tradition’s continued growth.  Much of what an herbalist learns on her path is not simple facts or memorized methods but subtle techniques, special ways of practicing and place based information that is best passed from one individual to another, tailored to suit the situation and person.

It is for this very reason that my partner Jesse Wolf Hardin and I have concentrated our healing and herbal knowledge into a cohesive practice and well of knowledge for current students and future generations. The Anima Tradition of Herbalism is a way of perceiving and acting, specifically designed for those seeking the perceptual and practical skills and tools necessary for global as well as personal and interpersonal healing, and grounded in common sense principles and skills rather than complicated or artificial structures.

The Animá Tradition is a contemporary herbal and lifeways practice rooted in the lessons of the natural world, and manifest in intuitive ways of healing. At the core of this comprehensive practice is personal response-ability, trusting our intuition and instincts, feeling empowered to act on what we know, believing in our calling and power to help heal ourselves, each other and our world.
-Jesse Wolf Hardin

In the Animá Tradition of Herbalism, to be truly healthy is to be whole, and medicine is anything that contributes to that wholeness.  The Animá Traditions provides a unique collection of tools and insights that contribute meaningfully to that wholeness of self, of our loved ones and community, and of the living land we’re each a part and extension of.  It teaches the use of whole plants rather than isolated constituents, the healing of the body, emotions, psyche, family and ecology as inseparable, interrelated and interdependent, providing a combined lifeways and healing practice that encourages not only physical well being but the fullest experiencing of conscious existence, not only curing illness but heeding a calling and fulfilling our dreams.

The Animá Tradition takes a vitalist approach to all of living and healing, aware of and tapping the power of the anima – the animate essence and motivational force impelling all of life… from the unfurling vine tendril to the wheeling ravens overhead and the herbalist gathering her special plants, inspiring and providing our body’s innate ability to heal itself, the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly, the impetus for each plant to focus its energy into procreative flower and fruit, the insistence or sprouts. It manifests in our conscious creativity as well as the unconscious call for healing focus when we’re hurt, in the instinctual urge to either run from or confront a threatening situation, and through expenditures of will such as when we respond to an urgent need with renewed vigor no matter how tired we thought we were.

The vitalist perspective leads the Animá herbalist to facilitate healing through nourishing the body’s natural processes and triggering gentle shifts, rather than forceful suppression or other heroic methods. Like the land we gather herbs from, the Animá practitioner knows that the human body is also a complex ecology that thrives upon diversity. Viruses and bacteria are seen not as enemies or “bugs” to be automatically eliminated, but as both coinhabitants to be kept in balance, and as a means to better test and know ourselves.

The Animá Tradition teaches that health is not a state of final, static perfection with no discomfort, but rather, a dynamic balance contributing to this essential wholeness we’ve been talking about, a never ending process that sometimes includes painful change, stretching and growth. While modern allopathic medicine wages war on dysfunction and disease, the Animá herbalist perceives them as imbalances to treat, needs to meet, challenges to strengthen and lessons to learn from. Pain is one way that our anima-informed bodies alert us to situations, conditions or activities we need to urgently alter or heal.

All people are born with constitutional tendencies that are affected by life experiences and environmental factors, and recognizing these patterns allows the healer to be much more effective in finding the appropriate herb, food or therapy for each person. Therefore in Animá we look at the whole of each person, listening to their stories, noticing the subtleties of  their constitutional makeup, as well as watching for a pattern of underlying disconnection, absence or excess that might be causing their illness or dis-ease. To assist in diagnostics, we utilize a dynamic Animá Medicine Wheel that we continue to develop, an aid in charting constitutional types as well as other energetics-based phenomena.

We know that in addition to caring for humans, our work is also in tending the land and plants that give so generously to us, and thus intentionally participating in the gifting wheel of consuming and producing, living and dying, giving and taking. Thus there’s also a strong focus on promoting ecosystem health through sustainable harvesting methods, conservation, bioregional herbalism, and giving back through plant propagation and devoted caretaking. Every Animá herbalist is also an ecologist in a sense, intensely and intimately concerned with the well-being of their own bioregion, as well as the planet as a whole. Great care is taken in the selection of nourishing, traditional foods from sustainable sources both for the self and also when making dietary and nutritional recommendations to others. Wild foods and herbs are prized as superior sources of healing that contain all the complexity and primal vitality that humans evolved to survive and thrive on. Wild and locally grown foods and medicines also allow us to celebrate the special botanical blessings of our bioregion and give us further impetus to take care of the land we live on and with.

The study and practice of Animá helps each person to realize that they have the wisdom, capability and knowledge to make a positive impact on their well-being, and that healing is not a commodity dealt out by pharmaceutical conglomerates or even well-intentioned doctors and so-called experts but a birthright, wisdom waiting to be tapped and acknowledged in each of us. We teach that authority rests solely with the individual and with the community, to determine who is able to called to heal and teach. No outside source can effectively define what constitutes good health for every person, or determine who can or can’t credibly help themselves or others.

In the Animá Tradition, every moment is considered a decisive moment, every choice pivotal, and every action of significant consequence. The individual is indeed response-able, able to respond to the shifting balance of their self, relationships, surroundings and world. Like the medicine women and shamans, grannywives and curanderas that came before, the Animá Herbal practitioner rallies when there are things to be done and accepts credit for our accomplishments, contributing to wholeness every day and in their individual ways.  We have created a contemporary tradition, true to our times, one that empowers our conscious co-creation of our world and our lives.