August 1st marks the day of Lammas in Celtic pagan calenders, Lammas festivals revel in the beginning of the harvest, the time to reap what you have sown, to enjoy the fruits of your labors- literally and metaphorically. I will be celebrating this day of fruition with a long awaited departure out into the wide wild world. My partner and I will be starting an endless journey we have been carefully planning and building for over a year now, along with our faithful black Lab, and our carefully tended VW bus (she goes by Juniper), we have decided its time to become American gypsies. We have stops along the way; friends, family, farms, but our overall goal is to explore this huge country, meet its strange people, and learn some great lessons. We have our mobile skills (he’s a carpenter/arborist, I am a gardener/herbalist) and we will follow our hearts and hands and learn from the locals (be that tree, human, flower, or river).

My gratitude and love goes out to all here at Rainbow Natural Remedies(and who shop at Rainbow) who believe in the power and complexity of the forces of nature, and who believe we are an integral part of that force with a duty to learn, care for, and participate in the remedies, energies, and lessons that nature has to offer us. Thank you to all of my lovely co-workers who exemplify the most beautiful of human qualities: Compassion, humor, and a thirst for knowledge and truth (just to name a few). Thank you to Ross for starting and continuing such a rare and necessary option for health in mind, body, and spirit. I truely believe that people leave here with greater confidence, knowledge, and tools to become healthier happier people. I know that I am.

And thank you to Seattle for welcoming and supporting this and the few other herbal/natural remedy stores in town. I believe there is a crisis of disconnect in this world, where sickness seeps in too easily to our bodies, our hearts, and our minds. By reconnecting ourselves, and reconnecting to the natural processes and systems of the natural world we may have a chance to find our niche and evolve into brighter healthier creatures who participate in the web that cradles and nurtures life. Unfortunately, this is not the modern trend among humans (esp. Americans) and so supporting your local passionate naturalists in all their forms (herbalists, farmers, therapists, artists…etc) is infinitely important and appreciated!

May all your own journeys (physically, emotionally, intellectually) be fruitful and fun. Take care of each other, this town, and the woods, mountains, and oceans that shelter it. I will miss it so!

~Leah

Blah… blah blah… blah blah… blah… blah.

We could go on and on about this topic. Trying to touch on the spirit realm never really does it justice. I hand-wrote several pages and it wasn’t done and, well, it’s just too big for here.

So, just a few suggestions:

1) Choose a grounded approach. If you’re a skeptic, and even more importantly if you’re not, start by reading some grounded writings that help to branch the world of what we know with what we don’t know. Look into information about homeopathic medicine; any books by Stephen Harrod Buhner, such as Sacred Plant Medicine and The Lost Language of Plants; The Book of Herbal Wisdom by Matthew Wood; or, if you feel ready to step out a little further, Plant Spirit Medicine, by Eliot Cowan.

2) Choose your practitioners wisely. Everybody wants to be a “shaman” these days. Heck, it means you can make your own hours and avoid the 9 to 5 doldrums. Remember that most real shamans don’t run around calling themselves “shamans.” In fact, in the cultures from which most of what we call “shamanism” arises, people who are expected to follow such a path usually go running in the opposite direction. Look for someone called to their work, who is no longer running from it, but has settled in to an acceptance that their life is not their own.

3) Remember that you can’t always heal yourself. Healing Ourselves was a great book when it first came out. It gave people a sense of freedom from the growing “medical establishment.” But now everyone thinks they’re their own best shaman, just by reading a book or taking a class or two. There is some healing work we’ll need in our lives that we can’t do on our own. We can’t perform our own heart surgery. Why do people think they can effectively doctor something as esoteric as Spirit. Don’t be afraid to turn your healing over to someone you trust.