SHSG May 2021: An Organoleptic Experience

This month's class has been a long time coming. One of the best ways to improve your skills at reading herbal energetics (damp, dry, tense, etc) is through using the senses to identify smells, tastes, texture, appearance and other ways in which the plants communicate to us how they work and what they do.

Sometimes we are biased in our pursuit of this insight because of what guidebooks, herbal authors or "known" medicinal uses tell us a plant does. But there is inherent value in the type of direct learning we get when we quiet everything else but the plants themselves. Therefore, this month we experience a plant without knowing its name.

We will spend the evening using all five of our senses plus our intuition to identify the qualities of a plant that we don't know. We will use various formulations of the same plant in order to familiarize ourselves with every aspect of its character, making sure to keep and open heart and mind as we go.

It's amazing how much you can learn when you experience a plant this way. How much you begin to understand why a bitter plant is stimulating, or a slimy one is protective and nutritive. Why an aromatic plant can be used to calm the nerves and the relax the mind.

This class is the perfect opportunity for folks looking to enhance their skills with plant energetics. We will review how to translate the information we receive from sensual interaction into medicinal uses and how that guides us to pairing specific plants with specific people or pathologies. Highly recommended for all students actively treating clients or hoping to in the future.

Class location is TBA, and will depend on the number of students attending. Masks and social distancing continue to be mandatory, and we will offer both a livestream option for folks not wishing to join in person but still wanting to attend live, and also a recorded option. Please indicate through email which option you are choosing when buying your ticket, so we know how many students to expect and so we can be sure to send the Zoom link out to those joining through livestream. Please feel free to email syracusehsg@gmail.com with any questions.

Come join the conversation on plant medicine!