A guide book for tapping into the medicinal power of wild plants for recovering and maintaining spiritual, emotional, and mental wellbeing. Our ancestors drew health, strength, nourishment, and meaning from their relationship to the natural world, and yet today most of us have lost that vital connection. It should then come as no surprise that we are living in an age of unprecedented anxiety, depression, loneliness, and illness. Drawing from herbal medicine, somatic psychology, Celtic wisdom, and his own experiences, author Seán Pádraig O'Donoghue outlines an approach to herbal healing for the mind and spirit that is uniquely suited to our modern times. Plants are our wild kindred and have the power to connect us with the life within and around us. O'Donoghue takes readers on a journey through some of the ways our bodies, minds, and spirits have become unbalanced in an unbalanced world. He then blends lyrical, mythic, and scientific understandings to help us to understand the potent power of plant medicine. Also included are simple rituals designed to deepen our connections to our own bodies, the land, and both new and familiar plant allies. This is the ideal book for anyone new to herbalism, as well as seasoned herbalists, naturopaths, body workers, and psychologists. Reviews: “The Forest Reminds Us Who We Are is exquisitely woven with lore, poetry, science, and personal experience. Seán’s approach to plants is both enchanting and realistic, touching at places deep within the soul that long for reconnection with the wild world and with self. This book encourages a reconvening and offers an invitation to ‘come home.’”
—Jennifer May, herbalist, Sage Moon LLC “This book is an intimate and sensual plunge of a poet’s heart discovering the power of plants that heals him on many levels as it also transforms him into what he wanted to be all along. It is a doorway to the wisdom the forest wishes to teach us and, if we allow ourselves to listen, what it can reveal to us of our own nature.”
—Cornelia Benavidez, author of Victor Anderson: An American Shaman “Not just an important contribution to herbal medicine, but a significant contribution to Irish literature itself.”
—Matthew Wood, herbalist and author of The Book of Herbal Wisdom About the Author: Seán Pádraig O'Donoghue is an herbalist, writer, and teacher, and an initiated Priest in two Pagan traditions. He lives in the mountains of western Maine. Seán's approach to healing weaves together the insights of traditional western herbalism and contemporary science. He regards physical, spiritual, and emotional healing as deeply intertwined. He is a member of the faculty of the Mathew Wood Institute of Herbalism. Prior to becoming an herbalist, Seán was a political organizer in movements for peace, human rights, and global economic justice, and a freelance journalist documenting the human and ecological impacts of U.S. policies in Latin America. He grew up near Boston, a short distance from where his great-grandparents first landed when they arrived from Ireland. Since childhood, he has been an avid student of Irish history and folklore. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1996 with a degree in English Literature and Creative Writing. |
