Margaretville, NY (PRWEB) January 15, 2013
It is easy to recognize how plants offer food, oxygen, and medicines. But less known today is that plants have spirits with wisdom to nurture and heal people physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Ancient cultures and shamans have known for millenniums that the medicine of plant spirits can bring us into balance and harmony, but much of this tradition has been lost in the West. Plant Spirit Medicine has now been remembered, revitalized, and reintroduced by American healer and shaman, Eliot Cowan, and has proved as effective in today's world as in times past.
Eliot is the author of Plant Spirit Medicine, and a fully initiated Tsaurirrikame (shaman) in the Huichol Indian tradition. He began the study and practice of herbalism in the 1960’s and completed a Master of Acupuncture degree with J.R. Worsley in England in the 1970’s. Eliot subsequently apprenticed with Don Guadalupe Gonzalez Rios, a Huichol Indian Shaman. On the occasion of Don Guadalupe’s retirement in 2000, he ritually recognized Eliot as a guide to shamanic apprentices in the Huichol tradition. This was an unprecedented honor for a person of our culture. Twenty-eight of Eliot's former apprentices are now initiated shamans.
Alison Gayek has been teaching Plant Spirit Medicine with Eliot Cowan since 2002. She began her studies with Eliot in 1997 and graduated from the PSM course in 1999. Since then, Alison has maintained a strong effective PSM practice. As a teacher, Alison also teaches graduate clinicals and skills courses, working to teach, mentor, and support new graduates as they start their own practices. In addition, she is a qualified clinical supervisor and provides clinical supervision for students and graduates. Alison has continued her healing work through various pilgrimages with Eliot Cowan and other shamans. She is a Granicera — a Weather Shaman — in the Nahua tradition indigenous to Central Mexico.
Plant Spirit Medicine is the shamans' way with plants. It recognizes that plants have spirit and that spirit is the strongest medicine that can heal the deepest reaches of the heart and soul. In students learn to speak a language of the world — the language of the Five Elements. This millennial Chinese study teaches us to see humans as the expression of the forces of nature. It is important for healers learn to see these forces, to smell them, to hear them in the sound of the voice, to feel them in the throbbing of the pulses, to sense them emotionally. In this way the natural world determines what is needed in order to restore a person to balance. We know that balance is health and imbalance is illness.
In addition to his teaching of Plant Spirit Medicine, Eliot Cowan is the founder of the Blue Deer Center and is a member of the Council of Elders for the Temple of Sacred Fire Healing, which inducts qualifying Plant Spirit Medicine graduates as “Lay Spiritual Healers.”
Blue Deer Center provides an important setting for teachings and practices that promote balanced relationship with the natural world. They particularly welcome ancestral approaches to healing, ritual, and retreat. The Center's origins are rooted in the Huichol shamanic tradition and living connection to the universal and sacred spirit of fire.
