EMPATHY WITH PLANTS

A first combination of exercises - still needs revision

Stephen Buhner

I listened to a series of Stephen Buhner's videos on Plant Intelligence. There is a story about monkeys who feel ill – and search for appropriate healing herbs. (It's in the 2nd video and starts at 1.39). They then lick the plant.

The plant then responds and produces enzymes etc. appropriate to the stimuli in the monkey's saliva – wonderful and obvious once its pointed out... the healing power of a dead dried herb can never be as efficient as a living sensitive herb that you've comminicated with. It's a vast subject and i'm glad Buhner is studying it.

Anyway, this started me off experimenting with a meditation on empathising with plants.

Sensitivity to Taste and Light

I started tasting inside, (we have a sense of taste all over our bodies), and then seeing light all around with the eyes closed. I'm familiar with both of these now (and please read the appropriate pages if you haven't already done so).

The self-taste and sensitivity to light, seem a good basis for any plants self-awareness.

Seeing light with the eyes closed is another thing which is easy to do once you start doing it, (which for me means that it's natural) and this leads to a feeling that you have light passing through your skin all over your body which i imagine plants experience (leaves are translucent etc.).

Usually people see stars or squiggly lines or kaleidoscope images or etc. when they close their eyes, and this is as a result of focusing. By panoraming with the eyes closed, paying attention especially to the sidewards peripheries, you see light all around.

The Brian is in The Roots

Then following his idea (and other plant researchers) that the brain is in the roots – imagining my feet sprouting roots and my brain from the knees down (feet flat on the floor) and this was also surprisingly easy to do, and activates a very nice energy in lower legs.

I've done this several times now, and why in 'earthing exercises' did i never think of this before? : roots growing out of the feet! – I also started experimenting with listening through the roots. In the fashion of the wild west indian putting his ear to the ground to hear distant buffalo or horses, sound travels through the earth, so i imagine plants hear with their roots.

The Flower

But every now and again i came back into my head, and wondered what the head was and thought of flowers.

I thought of how with fly catchers the head is like a hand or mouth. Then thought of normal flowers with their scents and colours, and bees and realised actually my head, my flower, was the genitals – so i laughed a few times but found it quite difficult to imagine my head as genitals, easier as a vagina than a penis, but still when something's difficult then i think it's not quite natural.

So i'm wondering what else the flower is and does – and some flowers follow the sun around, so the flower can obviously get quite focused. I'm still wondering how the flower fits in the plant's self-awareness... it seems to be a point of great sensitivity, and so i've been empathising with plants which have flowers at the sides as well and flowering areas from the head and hands... each finger... elbows and shoulders ...

Panoramic and Focused Sensing

Buhner doesn't distinguish between and shows no awareness of the difference between a plant's panoraming and focusing sensory abilities.

I can only imagine that plants senses are always basically panoramic, but obviously some flowers focus on the sun, and from Buhner obviously plants can focus when under specific stimuli re: the monkey's out-breath and saliva.

Breathing and Research Notes

So all these are very naive ideas from me, but the idea of empathising with plants had never occurred to me previously and i find it very stimulating, have done it several times now, and i really appreciate Buhner leading me to this new area.

I'm sure to google for "function of flowers" and "how do plants breathe" sometime – but i always find it useful to spend a bit of time just empathising and using imagination before i go to the scientific explanations.

Plants obviously breathe out because they have a scent, and they breathe in because there's a difference between daffodils growing at the side of the road and at the side of a field full of cow shit. But I wonder if plants breathe in and out at the same time, or if the shadow side breathes in while the sunny side breathes out...?... whatever, it's a lovely thing to think about... !

Please continue with Experiments and Combinations

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