The Birds and the Bees

This past Spring, while the birds and bees were out buzzing about, I was in a classroom taking an Anatomy and Physiology course. On a particular class, a licensed Acupuncturist, Herbalist and Medical Qigong practitioner came in to talk with us about Chinese Medicine theory, Western Medicine, Acupuncture, Herbology, Nutrition, and very importantly, “the birds and the bees.” In short, she questioned where we stand physiologically and mentally with our own sexuality. Bet you didn’t expect that to be brought up at an Anatomy and Physiology course. Well, neither did I…but it did turn out to be the greatest A&P class I’ve ever taken!

We gathered in a circle to share stories, and watched an enactment between practitioner and client, and seriously played with our wonderment at the birds and the bees. And more specifically, why do we culturally refer to sex as the birds and the bees? 

Birds build nests to prepare for their offspring and bees are busy bumbling to all the pretty flowers in the neighborhood, spreading pollen so that plants can reproduce. The magical work of these animals is definitely overlooked if we only work with their nature when we’re educating about sex. Don’t get me wrong, sex is important for our well being physiologically and mentally when we share a healthy outlook on it. I joke around with my friends about the statistics you hear of young men who think about sex every ten seconds. I don’t joke about it in any way that would be shameful, but I just wonder, what if every ten seconds, boys were literally thinking about birds and bees? If this were our reality, I believe the awareness around colony collapse disorder and rapidly disappearing species would be spread around the world so fast, we would have a cure to save all the birds and the bees in one day.

Juliette de Bairacli levy has said, “where bees can live, man can live. With the bees disappearing, this is a warning. Man cannot exist without the bees.” 

I recently came across a very special woman who likely thinks about the birds and the bees more often than anyone else; and has transformed her vision into magical, healing action. The woman’s name is Sophia Rose. She is the founder of La Abeja Herbs, which is Spanish for The Honeybee. Sophia is an herbalist, a nomad, an inspiration. This is her completely true story of how she came to find love in the honeybees:

La Abeja was borne out of the passionate devotional love I felt and continue to feel for Honeybees.  In 2011 I was completing training and clinical residency at the North American Institute Of Medical Herbalism.  At that time I was in the clinic seeing clients a couple days a week and in the midst of writing my thesis, the Magikal + Medicinal Uses of Solomon’s Plume. My greatest joy that year was gathering and crafting all of the wild medicines for the clinic’s apothecary.  I felt as though I had truly found my calling.   Up until that point in my life, I’d felt that my Soul’s Path had been fairly clear–I’d always known my next step, even if only vaguely.  But as my graduation from NAIMH drew near, I felt totaly uncertain as to how I wanted to proceed, as an herbalist or otherwise.  One evening, I was alone in my bedroom–high up in the Rocky Mountains–four months into the punishingly windy subzero Winter.  I was watching Queen Of the Sun, a movie about colony collapse disorder and the implications of life without bees.  I was suddenly overcome with a mix of grief and joy and fervor.  Tears streamed from my eyes and I clutched at my breast, gasping.  And while I was moved by the film, it wasn’t the reason for my tears.  They were, rather, the result of my realization that I was meant to devote myself, totally, to the stewardship of Honeybees.

Photo Courtesy La Abeja Herbs

La Abeja Herbs is currently stewarding the growth and continuation of life for all in many unique places. I would joyfully travel to any one of these places Sophia Rose calls home to meet her and collaborate with the work of La Abeja Herbs. I hope we cross paths soon, though I can’t say where. Honeybees are so footloose, they can’t be pinned onto a map. Again, these are animals which hold up a radical mirror reflection of our own nature. It seems, most of us have forgotten what the birds and the bees really stand for: growth, regeneration, healing and interdependence with all life.

It’s time we listen closer to the softest and sweetest sounds of those creatures who we surely couldn’t live without. You can learn more about the work of La Abeja Herbs here. And you can find more information about how you can help the bees here.

Photo Courtesy La Abeja Herbs

For all of those things in your life that you delight in, and maybe don’t always remember to share your gratitude for having it in your life, thank the birds and the bees. What world would this be without them? What would we think about every ten seconds without them?

The Ocean in Emotion

Ancient folklore describes the horse as being created from the ocean.

From Juliette de Bairacli Levy’s Herbal Handbook for Farm and Stable, she writes “Legend tells that the horse, stallion and mare were created from the sea waves and emerged white as sea-foam…further legend from Greece tells of Chiron the centaur (half horse, half man) who, long ago, was so wise in knowledge of medicinal herbs that heroes and demi-gods went to him worshipfully to be his pupils.” If you’ve ever experienced the fortune of running with horses on the beach or in gentle waves, you may have already gotten the feeling that they belong on the seaside. Juliette, the famed grandmother of herbal medicine for animals who was one of the biggest influences in bringing herbal medicine to the states, writes that “the horse flourishes when raised by the sea or within reach of sea winds… and certainly benefits greatly from the addition to the daily food of iodine and general minerals-rich seaweed (of most types, though deep-sea kelp is the preferred one).”

The reason I write this is because, first of all I haven’t written in a while. And second, the reason is because of an ocean of emotions in my life that has me learning to breathe under water…again. While it seems most of my existence on this planet has been time spent around horses and their magnetic hearts, because that’s where I gravitate to now, in truth the first few years of my life were spent in the water. When I was young, I could swim better than I could run. I could say that by the first time I rode a horse I gave up my sea legs for the saddle, but I never really gave them up. Water is in my blood, not just in my physical body, but in my family tree. My Grandfather was a passionate fisherman and raised every one of his children by the sea. My Dad has likely spent the greater part of his life in water, whether surfing, diving for treasure or swimming just for the hell of it. And I amazingly enough got to grow up exploring California’s coast line with my father, in search for the perfect wave.

My family tree, if I was to illustrate it, would look like deep-sea kelp because we are inextricably linked to an ancient ocean of wisdom. We all learned to swim before we could walk. We, like horses thrive on sea breezes and make our roots close to the coast, our homes sprawling up and down the California and Baja California Coast. Knowing the roots and listening to the stories that are dug into the roots of my family tree warm me deeply. And when grieving needs to happen or when we let go of some of our losses, I believe we can ease our pain by looking to our oceans.

We all have an ocean within us, in Ayurveda it is related to the kidneys and our lymphatic system. One of my anatomy teachers goes as far to say that our bodies, as a whole, are one big ocean. Every one of our cells is bathed in water, and within every one of those cells there is more water. When we look deeply, we see that the macrocosm and microcosm of the environment to the body and the body to the internal environment keeps on scaling down until our microscopes can no longer scale down. Life, in its full field of vision is one amazing spiral which shows us time and again that what it outside of ourselves is within ourselves too.

Photo Courtesy La Abeja Herbs

During clinic this past week at the Ayurvedic healing center where I am working on my residency, the lead practitioner in my group was speaking to the importance of staying hydrated to begin to change anything in our health. They way she explained hydration has stayed with me, as she said that when our bodies are well hydrated and we are stressed, we are able to bend. But when we are dehydrated and we become stressed, we don’t just bend, we break. So what is the lesson here that the ocean, horses, our families and trees especially have to teach us? The lesson is wonderfully simple enough: when we take care of our oceans, (not just kidneys, lymphatic system but our WHOLE BODY) we will be better able to bend with stress, not break apart from it.

The Ancient’s may have believed that horses were created in the ocean, but I recently learned from a friend a new perspective on what it means to believe. Of course, no matter what we believe the truth will remain true, to believe could be seen sometimes as “being in the lie”. I cannot accept that to believe is to be caught in a lie, though sometimes it can be that stubborn beliefs can blind people to the real truth. I’m sure we’ve all come across what holding onto these kinds of belief can do. However, because my father is a fisherman I was raised on stories of what treasures and mysteries the ocean held, and see belief as an essential tool to have in our lives, (especially on the open sea). Each story my dad shared was incredible and unbelievable in its own way, but the lessons I caught onto in each story of the sea was that absence of belief in a story of shipwreck and encircling sharks may be the difference between life and death. As a fisherman, you may be taught emergency procedures and possess the knowledge of survival in such circumstances, but without a strong belief that you will survive, what will keep you looking for reassurances from lighthouses?

Our emotions are governed by the intuitive waters within ourselves. It’s been shown that we share with all living creatures in varying degrees these emotions, but I do believe that no one has ventured as far to say that all other creatures, in addition to having senses capable of feeling, are capable of belief. Whose to say something so daring anyway! Since belief in itself is a tool very similar to the mind in that we only know its existence because it tells us so. Therefore let me be as bold as to say that if belief works mysteriously in our process of making discoveries about ourselves, then other living creatures undoubtedly can believe, although maybe they have no use for it.

Since beliefs have the power to focus us on reassurances we are seeking, and blind us altogether if we are unwilling to give up that which no longer allows us to grow, I find it more useful myself to use beliefs only until they get me to a place of knowing. Indeed, knowledge can change and researchers and scientists discover new information all the time that changes the paradigm as we once knew it. However knowledge as a tool seems to me to be more flexible a structure than a belief as a system. The two are equally powerful when used properly and with finesse, however they can both trap us in shells if we aren’t careful to shed them once we are ripe to grow beyond them.

To clear this matter up requires some water. Where there is water, there is life, change, flow, growth and regeneration. Knowing and believing are tools that allow us to come to conclusions. But the truth is, no one cares what you believe or what you know until they know how much you care. To conclude, the best way to use knowledge and beliefs is to share them in such a way that demonstrates effectiveness and promotes experimentation. Find for yourself what is true. Let go to the deep tide that moves your stream of consciousness ever onward, keeping a healthy circulation going between knowing, believing and living so that your well of wisdom may never run dry. Strive for balance in your lifestyle, truth in your knowledge and forgiveness in your beliefs. As Sarah Crowell said and Sacred Ecology Films later wrote about, “The way we’ll hold it together is to hold it – together.”