How to Easily Connect with Healing Plants Every day

You are wired to perceive nature and your perception expands with awareness

Here’s something I do every day to connect with the plants. It’s something really simple that you can do. It’s happens after I park my car in the driveway.

When I get out of the car, I notice which herbs greet me as I walk the pathway to my house.

I stop, smell, touch and taste the plants that grow along the pathway to my doorstep. Of course, only taste the herbs that you have 100% accurate identification for and know that you can safely eat.

One of the most amazing ways to connect with herbs is to pay attention to the plants that greet you as you walk toward your doorstep.

The first plant that greets me is lemon verbena. I touch it and get the oils on my skin. As I walk toward the doorway, the next plant is lavender. I keep going, lemon balm and rose geranium are always there. I know I’m home when I smell the rose geranium.

Rose geranium at my doorstep

I’d love to hear which plants greet you as you walk towards your front door. What plants grow near your doorstep?

Let’s talk about this for a bit. Maybe you live in an apartment and the plant that greets you could be growing through a crack in the sidewalk, like dandelion or plantain or a weed that you don’t know yet.

Maybe you have grass in your front yard or maybe there’s a tree that you notice near your driveway.

Whatever it is, what you want to do is bring consciousness to the plants that are there when you come home.

Lemon verbena, rose geranium, lavender and lemon balm greet me when I get home. I breathe deeply when I arrive. I know that smell. I know I’m home. I’m grounded. I’m here. I love the aroma. It enters my bloodstream. It enters my body, and even though I’ve smelled it a thousand times before, I feel a big relief and my body says, “ahhhhhhh.” My body says, “Yes, you are home. You’re out of the car.” It’s a great way to transition from the road.

The thing I figured out is that when you’re smelling an herb, you don’t think. Check it out. The next time you take a deep whiff of a flower or aromatic plant, notice that your mind stops. Isn’t that what meditation is all about? Just getting your mind to stop even for a minute? So, take that big inhale.

The old saying, ‘Stop and smell the flowers’, takes on a deeper meaning…

How does this help us with studying herbal medicine?

What this simple act does is help us connect deeply with the plants knowing that they are living beings and acknowledging that they affect us all the time.

So, you arrive home and you create the thought pattern, “These plants are greeting me. This is the plant that I live next to.” It’s not just any ol’ lemon balm. It’s this lemon balm plant. It’s alive. It lives with me, I live with it.

Every time you come home, just saying hello, acknowledging, recognizing, taking time to say hello consciously—not just, “Look at those pretty flowers growing in my yard,” but you stop for a moment. Smell it if it’s appropriate. Taste it if it’s a plant that you can eat. Be completely present with all the sensory input that the plant gives you. Color, taste, touch, smell and feelings.

You may have smelled lemon balm 100 times before, but not today. Deeply smell it today.

Lemon balm by my front door

Hold the intention to truly greet, acknowledge and recognize just as you do with anyone else you live with.

You begin to establish a mitochondrial pathway, a neural and heart connection pathway between you and the plant that gets stronger and stronger over time. You are letting the plant world, the trees, the green world know that we’re aware again; that we’re awake, that we’ve awakened to the living being that the plants are, that we’re listening.

The moment you pause and put your awareness on these plants, you’re touching them with your consciousness. They feel that. It opens you, especially when you engage your sense of smell and touch. It helps you to relax a little and opens you up a little more so that your senses now can perceive them in a deeper way.

You are wired to perceive nature and your perception expands with awareness

Everything about us is wired to perceive nature. That wasn’t validated when we were young.

Communicating with the earth wasn’t validated for most of us while we were growing up so we just forgot. We just stopped doing it, but we are wired for it and you can awaken that capacity again.

There are many ways to do this that we explore in depth in my Plant Wisdom Online Course. This is something that anybody can do no matter where you live. At some point, on the way to your home—it doesn’t have to be in your yard – It could be at the edge of your driveway or wherever the first weed or tree or plant is that greets you when you come home, you stop and you acknowledge.

This is so easy. You don’t even have to put it on your ‘To Do’ list.

You already come and go every day, right? Walk by your plants and greet them. Say hello. Say, “I see you. I see what stage you’re in. You’re such a beautiful green today.” Say something out loud to them, and then allow yourself to receive them. Allow yourself to receive their smell, receive their color, their texture…

As you fortify your relationship this way, over time, it nourishes your herbal studies. We grow with our ability to cultivate plant relationships through our intention and attention.

I would love to hear which plants greet you as you walk to your doorstep. Which plants, trees or weeds can you stop and acknowledge even for a couple of seconds each day to let the green world know that you’re looking, you’re listening, you’re paying attention.

There’s an entire amazing world, right outside our door, the insects, the birds and the plants.

Believe me, that world is aware of us.

The plants are aware of us. Believe me the plants are aware of your coming and going and what we’re doing. When you practice this coming home greeting, you throw out a thread of communication that you are now ready to be more aware of them.

We can just live our lives with, “That’s a pretty tree,” or “It’s fall, the leaves are turning color…

OR

We can start to cultivate a much deeper awareness of this world that’s just right outside our door; saying hello to the plants, saying hello to the trees and activating the intention that we’re listening. We’re watching. We’re in relationship. Like I said, we can just go about our busy day or our busy day can include a deeper awareness of what’s happening with the plants around us.

What I’ve found is that when we spend a little bit of time cultivating this consciousness, our life is so much richer, so much deeper. It’s one of the ways to deepen our love and relationship with the earth.

We know we’re destroying the earth. We know we’re on the brink. How is it that we’re going to deepen our relationship with the earth to the point where we feel like saving her? It starts with one place, falling in love with one place, connecting deeply with one place enough that you want to protect it and save it.

That can’t come from the head. It comes from the heart. It comes from deeply connecting. You can start with the plants that live right next to you.

What plants greet you as you come home?