Interview with Pam Montgomery

Sajah: Pam, thank you so much for joining me today. I’m super excited to see you again. 

Pam: It’s great to be here with you. It’s been way too long, and it just warms my heart to be able to sit and chat with you, so thank you. 

This morning, I was thinking about the summer when I moved out to Vermont for a period of time and spent a lot of time with you and Mark out there on your absolutely beautiful land. I have fond memories, so it’s great to see you again.

Good to see you, too. 

I’ve been thinking about what I want to talk to you about, and I would love to go back to the foundations of your work. 

There’s a golden thread that weaves through the books that you’ve written and the teachings that you do, which from my perspective, is based on a certain perception of nature. We’re shifting our orientation as human beings to how we see nature and coming to a place of realizing and remembering that we as human beings are a part of nature, as much as anything else. In our modern, subconscious cultural view of nature, we want to wall it off sometimes. Nature can be scary, or maybe we think nature is just a resource to be extracted. But you have this perspective of a “co-creative partnership” with nature. I love the terminology that you use. So, can you talk a little bit about what co-creative partnership means? And why do you feel it’s important? 

Well, yes, you’re right. This is a thread that moves through everything. And it’s our birthright, as you say, to be a part of nature. We are a part of nature. I mean, we’re an animal too. So we are a part of nature, and yet we’ve forgotten. Really what’s happened is we’ve just fallen into this deep amnesia, and we’ve forgotten who we really are and that we are a part of nature, and that we do actually remember and know the language of plants.

We actually do. And we do know what wild water tastes like. It’s all here. It’s just that we’ve forgotten. So this whole idea of co-creative partnership and moving back into partnership beyond relationship, we already know we’re in relationship, especially with the plants.

Hopefully, everybody knows we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the plants. So, the plants, I mean, because we breathe, we’re in relationship, that’s a given. Everybody across the planet, that’s a given. And yet when we bring it into consciousness that we are in relationship and that we are sharing breath with the green beings, you know, we are the breath of another being and another being is the breath of us.

So we are sharing this, and it’s a back-and-forth. We’re actually engaging with the green world all the time, and it’s so simple, breath, it’s so simple. And yet extremely profound. Once you go, “Oh. I am the breath of another being.” And you go into the intimacy of that and what that means for you, another being giving you your life. That’s huge. And yet so simple. So, this whole notion of partnership is just taking it a step beyond a relationship that already exists. And then together, we actually bring about balanced manifestation together so that all life can thrive.

Not just us, not just the almighty humans. You know, we step away from that place of being like the crown of creation and realize that we’re on equal ground here with all of our nature kin, and I’m going to put emphasis on the plants and the trees because we’re so symbiotically related to them on every level. The plants and the trees, they’ve been around for a really long time. So they have the long view. They have been adapting since day one. So they know how to do it here. They know how to be on this planet. They know how to thrive. They’re the most abundant aspect of nature.

And so, co-creative partnership is really like a coming home. It’s like coming back into our natural way of being as a part of nature, remembering that we know how to communicate, we know all of this, we’ve just forgotten. 

So I feel like this whole separation from nature is what’s gotten us into this incredible challenge. We are in a very challenging place right now. Both environmentally and existentially. It’s huge. And if we don’t kind of come back—well, I don’t want to make it sound like we’re regressing or something like that. We can always move forward in a new way that fits within our modern reality. Of course. But I feel like we really need to stop being separate from nature. And like you say, nature’s still out there. It’s like, “Oh, isn’t it pretty over there?” But the engagement with it, it’s so important. It’s so important to engage. 

Something you said there I think is really interesting, because as you say, it’s like this remembering, if we think back, humans a long time ago lived so integrated with the natural world, right? We think about pre-development of larger culture and cities when people lived in villages or lived in community closer to the earth and had farming communities and things like that.

I think a lot of the development and technology has been in a way to isolate us from nature to preserve our life. Because if you think about it, nature is harsh. Nature kills people all the time. Extremes of heat, extremes of cold, difficulty finding food, and things like that. So I think a lot of the developments were in a way, to help humans, to protect us from nature. But at the same time, it also created a disconnect. 

So I love what you’re saying—it’s not like we have to go back to living like cave people again. There’s a way that we can move forward to live in a co-creative partnership with nature, but not, as you said, going back. There’s a way to move forward—the pendulum was here, and now it’s over there. We can find that middle ground. That recognition of the plants, like you said, they’re giving us life every day, every breath, every morsel of food. Even if you’re a carnivore, even if you only eat meat, those animals ate plants.

So it always comes back to this, and how, in a way, the design of the human organism is such a mirror of the natural world. You were talking about trees, and I was thinking about how the respiratory system is like an upside-down tree.

You have the trachea as the main trunk, and then it branches into the bronchioles and then out into the alveoli, which are like the little leaves. So much of the way we are put together is a microcosm of the greater pattern of the natural world. And the recognition of that is profound.

For me, it’s one thing to recognize those things and go, “Wow, that’s amazing. That’s profound. That blows my mind.” But then we come back to, “Okay, what do I do with that? How does that look in how I live my life every day?” So I’m curious if you can speak to that part a little bit.

I just want to mention that what you’re talking about here is living, being a part of nature within a modern context. It’s really about the balance. It’s not either-or. It’s just, where’s the balance between the two? Because there is beauty. If we didn’t have computers, you and I wouldn’t have this opportunity to sit here and chat with each other. That’s an example.

Does that mean we should be sitting at this computer 24/7? No. Because that’s not healthy, but it’s a balance. So bringing it into, how does this play out in your day-to-day life? There are many aspects of co-creative partnership. One of the ones I’m playing with a whole bunch right now is this internal/external time. We’re operating quite a bit on external time. And again, you and I had to agree on a time [for this interview], otherwise, we wouldn’t be here because we’d show up at different times. We agreed, let’s show up on the computer at this time and we had to do it by the clock. 

So that works. And yet so many people are really ruled by external time, whereas internal time is like tapping into your own rhythms, which tends to put you into sync with the rhythms of the Earth. So for me, because I’m near the ocean right now, and I’ve never lived near the ocean, and I’ve been quite a mountain girl. A point came of, “You really need to get to know the ocean.” It’s one of my edgy places because I’m a little afraid of big water. It’s powerful, and I don’t like getting tumbled by waves, and I don’t like getting pulled under by them and all that kind of stuff.

So I was like, “Well, you have to go live near an ocean.” And I thought, “Oh, and does that mean I have to get in it too?” So, yeah, of course I do. But what’s happening now is that I’ll do my morning walk, so that’s with sunrise. I try to be on the beach every morning before the sun rises right up out of that big water.

And then in the afternoon, this is when I go into the internal time space. I’ll go in the afternoon, and the waves are lapping up on the beach. And I lay between two palm trees. Tip: Don’t ever lay underneath a palm tree because those coconuts are big, and they do fall randomly. So, in between two palm trees, and just lay back on the sand and these incredible palm branches with all these little finger leaves coming out. And they’re waving in the breeze, and they’re doing this little clickety clack thing, and then there’s the shhh of the waves, and then over here is a tropical bird singing its song. And I just lay back, and I look up at this, and I go into that state of being completely present. 

So this is what the internal time does for you when you allow yourself to just be and not have an agenda. In the morning, I have a little bit of an agenda because I’m going to take a walk, and I’m going to walk from here to here and then loop back around to my house. And so I have a little bit of an agenda, but when I go in the afternoon, I do not have an agenda.

I might get in the water and swim or float, or I might walk, or I might just lay on the beach with the palms. But what happens in that state is that it puts you right here at now. There’s no whatever happened yesterday that you’ve got to process or what’s going to happen tomorrow. You’re right here, right now, in the now moment. And that’s where everything is happening. That’s where you make that connection. 

The other piece about the now moment is that it opens the doorway. It’s like the portal to other dimensional realities, to a whole other world that exists simultaneously to this one.

So that’s one of my big explorations right now in co-creative partnership. I would’ve never guessed, when I first came here to Belize, which is where I am. Palm trees—I thought, “Oh yeah. A dime a dozen. There are palm trees everywhere. There are coconut palms everywhere. Oh yeah, whatever.” And then I started doing this practice of really allowing, and so the palm starts to go shhh clickety, clickety, shhh clickety, clickety, relax, relax. So I just melt into the sand. 

So that’s something that happens in my almost daily life that really helps me—because I’m super busy these days and have lots of computer time doing lots of podcasts and lots of classes. So I’m kind of like, you know, get it done. But this is how I be in co-creative partnership. And right now, it’s particularly with palm trees, which I would have never in a million years guessed that I would’ve been called in by palm trees or that they would’ve taught me so much ease and total relaxation. I just want to share it with you because this has all happened recently, and it’s fresh in my mind. 

There are so many other aspects. Communication is a big one. Learning the language of nature, learning the language of plants, or remembering the language, actually.

And so I work a lot with light and sound, which are the foundational ways of communicating in the biological world. Nature communicates through vibratory resonance that’s in light, sound, and our breath. So, breath would be a part of that, too. That’s where we come in, with our breath. But, of course, you know all this because you’re so up on this kind of stuff, Sajah. At the nucleus of the cell, there are biophotons, and at the nucleus of the cell of plants are biophotons, particles of light. And when we start to move into coherence, meaning making a beam of light between us and the plant, communication starts to flow.

So, how does that communication flow? It’s through vibratory resonance—we have a felt sensation in our body. We have memories that may come. They might be from this lifetime or from another time period. Memories of our ancestors start to come through. It’s an amazing way to connect with the plants, and the plants actually have a greater ability to fine-tune themselves to us than we do to them.

It’s all in the science. This is not “Pam’s new agey idea.” Fritz Popp is the German biophysicist who did all this work. I get a little excited about this stuff. What he also did was he discovered that people who were really compromised physically (and I’m talking big stuff, like cancer), in cancer cells, the light at the nucleus of the cell, he said it was that the light had gone awry. Meaning that the light pattern had changed from a healthy light pattern to one that was not healthy. He did this through a machine, giving the vibratory resonance and projecting the biophotons from plants to people’s unhealthy cells. And it re-informed—that’s what he called it—the light toward health. Now, I call that leading edge. These are plants that are doing this. So I feel like we have this ability to communicate on this light, sound, breath level with them, where we feel those vibratory resonances as a sensation.

We also learn a lot through our senses, our sensory awareness. So that’s huge. And now people say, “Well, what about the words in my head?” Yes, you might get words in your head, but the words in your head are a translation of the vibratory resonance. They are the translation of the light and the sound. It’s okay because that’s what we’re familiar with, communicating through words. It’s really the least effective form of communication, but it’s what we do. So there’s the whole aspect of working with plants to see what their gifts are.

Some people will say, “Oh, well, that’s a poisonous plant.” Yeah, okay. It doesn’t mean it’s evil and awful; it just means it has constituents in it that are not ones that we want to ingest or we don’t want to rub it all over our skin because we’ll get incredible dermatitis. It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t carry a gift. 

Maybe its gift is an ecological function. You know, thinking beyond the human-centric perspective.

That’s right. Absolutely. Moving beyond. And that’s part of our problem is that we think we’re it, and it’s all for us. Everybody’s thinking all of nature’s doing stuff for us. And it’s kind of like, where’s the reciprocity here? You know, this is a two-way street. It’s us giving back, and you know, they’re giving to us, and we’re giving back to them. So I’m so glad you said that because absolutely.

And then there’s this incredible joyful encounter, these “Aha” moments are like, wow, you’re in nature and that sun just rises up out of the water and there’s a point at which it just comes up over the horizon, and it’s still close enough to the water. So there’s a reflection of the sun coming up in the water. So you see two suns, and then it rises just a little bit more. And then the beam of lights starts to go across the water to you, usually. And it gets to a certain point in the sky, I call it fire on water. It’s this amazing orange-red glow. And you’re just kind of like, “Oh my goodness.” So we have these moments in nature, and this is when the oxytocin gets released. You know, we all have oxytocin. We’re born with oxytocin. It’s how we bond. It’s one of our main ways of making the connection with other aspects of life, with nature.

And so here you are in this take-your-breath-away moment, and oxytocin gets released. It starts to go through the bloodstream, cell receptors uptake it out of the bloodstream, and bonding occurs. So that means me and that sun and the water, we’re like “boom.” And it is just amazing, and then, of course, oxytocin initiates the restorative response. So, here we go. We’re coming back into restoration. It’s way different than cortisol, which initiates the stress response. It happens at birth, it happens at peak moments, and it happens at orgasm. It happens for us humans at those kinds of times. But it also happens at these peak moments in nature. So, when you want to make that “boom” connection with plants, allow yourself to have an oxytocic moment. Just looking at a Stargazer Lily takes my breath away completely. Or Passion flower, here [in Belize] I can grow Passion flower, Sajah! I’ve got some growing out on my deck, you know, it looks like a flower from another planet or something. It’s unbelievable. Every time I look at one of those flowers, it takes my breath away. So, if you can do that, that really initiates a jumpstart almost to a way of merging, bonding and coming together and communication, it just flows really easily then. There are so many ways.

Love it. You know, it’s interesting because when you were sharing all of that, you brought it full circle. Because when you were sharing that image of your afternoon walk and you’re laying on the beach between the two palm trees and you’re allowing that inner time, like you were saying, what I was thinking about is how those moments—that is the rejuvenation. That’s how we receive rejuvenation from the natural world by taking a moment to depart the world, to exist in a moment of peace on the earth. And through that, we receive a rejuvenation. I was thinking about how that is one way of keeping the balance of the earth, balance of nature and city, so to speak, and you really brought it full circle.

By bringing in oxytocin and how it is this moment of—we’ve all had moments like that in life, right?—where there’s a moment and you may get that little chill that runs down your back and everything slows down and all of a sudden you can visually see all the details and out the peripheral vision and all the little subtle sounds. Your senses become really heightened. We’ve all experienced that, and I think those are moments that we have and maybe don’t take the time to reflect on. We’ve all had that, but it’s like, wait, let’s talk about that. What is that? Because there is a feeling of magic to those moments. Isn’t that what we would call a magical moment? And I think being able to learn how to navigate our own awareness, senses, heart, mind, to be able to get to that point consciously rather than it just spontaneously emerging. I think this is the premise of this work and being able to do it, especially with the plants.

That brings up another thing that I wanted to touch on and talk with you about because this is something that I’ve noticed: teaching about how to connect and communicate with plants and receive communication from plants. You’ve obviously been teaching that stuff for a lot longer than I have, and it’s a question that I get. I’m sure you’ve gotten it a bunch. I’m sure people listening have it a bunch, too. How do you differentiate that what you’re getting is actually from the plant versus your own thoughts? There have been a lot of moments where I’ve had to really check myself and be like, wait. Actually, if I’m going to be honest with myself, that was just my own thought. Sometimes, people will share, “Oh, the plant told me this.” And a part of me thinks, “Are you sure? Did it really tell you that? Or was that your own thought?”

So I’m just curious, what’s that process like for you? Because it’s an edge, right? It’s a delicate edge there where we don’t want to go out and spout, “The plant said this and this plant said that.” And we want it to be accurate, right? We want what we’re receiving from an herb or a medicine to be true to that remedy and not just some random thing we’re making up in our own mind.

Well, yes, that happens, comes up all the time. It’s like, “But maybe it was just my imagination, the whole thing, and was I just making that up?” Well, I think it’s a real ego thing and that you have to take this little ego that sits up here in this head and just, in all my work with Martín [Prechtel] that I did over the years, he would say, “Send it out for donuts.” He would say that you really have to take your ego that wants to run the show and control everything and be right and be in charge. You have to ask your ego. It’s not that the ego is bad, awful, and evil. It has its place, but when you’re doing this kind of stuff, you need to ask it to just take a break. He really drilled that one in. 

So what I do is I literally visualize this [ego] sitting over here on my shoulder. Literally. I don’t want to get rid of it. I just want it to take a break over here. And not rule everything going on. You know, just let me be the hollow bone. You can sit over here for a minute. I’ll let you know when I’ve got a job for you. But just sit over here. 

I do a couple of things. First of all, when I’m receiving what it feels like I’m receiving, I do the ping thud method. You know, Sajah, I’m not about rocket science at all. You are a little bit, you are a little bit like a rocket scientist. I am not. I’m just a down-home girl, Earth mama kind of person. I can sometimes talk about far-out things, but I’m really kind of right here on the earth. And so I do simple things. I do things that are simple and that work. And so my dear friend Kate Gilday taught me this years ago, and she said, “Don’t you do the ping thud method?” And I said, “The what?” She said, “Just bring it into your heart. This communication, bring it into your heart, and does your heart go ping or does your heart go thud?” And it’s really a way to, I probably shouldn’t really say this, but it’s similar to like the principles of kinesiology. It’s based on the field and the field that we’re in, and so [the question is] does it give you energy? Or does it take the energy away from you? 

When it gives you energy, that’s the way of the unified field, kind of giving you that positive impulse, that positive reflection. Or if it goes, eh, and your shoulders drop and your energy drains, it’s kind of, “Nah, that’s not right.” Not on track. So I do that simple thing, and then the proof is in the pudding. So, check it out. You’re being told, or you’re channeling or whatever, or you’re getting pinged for a particular thing. And it could be how you’re going to cooperate with the plant. Physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. It could be that, or it could be something else. 

So that’s what I do. What I’m receiving says that this plant could possibly cooperate with me. Another key ingredient. Not necessarily everybody else. Me. We’re vibing. We’re doing our little vibratory resonances together. So I check it out. Does it work? Let’s see. It’s not some big, grandiose thing. It’s kind of common sense. Just check it out. If every indication up to that point has been “Yes,” then follow it through. See.

I had a great thing two years ago: I was doing a Hawthorne tree initiation at my place. And I have a relatively young, 10 to 12-year-old Hawthorne tree that some students gave me. It’s at the edge of the labyrinth. I was up near the labyrinth, and my gaze went over the tree, and I was like, “You know, I always wanted to do an initiation with you here.” I said, “But you never bloom.” And Hawthorne was like, “Well, maybe if you do an initiation, I’d bloom.” And I went, “Oh. Is that how it works?” So, it’s the chicken or the egg moment. So I was like, “Oh, alright. Does that mean next year, we can talk about plant initiations too, about what those are, but next year you’re gonna be the initiator?”

It’s where we spend three days with one plant in a ceremonial context and do all these things. And Hawthorne was like, “Well, yeah, you get it together, and I’ll be the initiator.” And I was like, okay. And there’s another big Hawthorne on the other side of the road. I’m not sure if you and I ever went over there, but it’s where I harvest all my berries, and it’s a big old grandma tree. I was over there cleaning up around the bottom and pulling vines out of it and said, “Oh, I’m so happy you’re gonna be the initiator this next year.” 

And that Hawthorne said, “Oh yeah, and you’re gonna bring everybody on a pilgrimage.” And I went “Oh, a what? A pilgrimage?” I mean, I know what a pilgrimage is, but I was kinda like, what would that look like? And this big old Hawthorne says, “It would look like everybody would come on pilgrimage from your place. And they’d all walk here, and they’d be on a pilgrimage.” So that was a whole thing in itself. 

I had two initiations that year, and it turned out one was the big tree and one was the young tree. And of course, the people who showed up for those two, all needed a pilgrimage. So then spring was coming. I thought oh my gosh, I haven’t been paying attention to that young one. I need to go look at that young one. I’ve been working with the old grandma, and I go up there and here’s all these little [blooms], and I thought oh wow. [And the tree] was like, “Yeah, isn’t that what I told you? Didn’t we agree that I would bloom? You would make the initiation happen and bring the people, and I would bloom and I would be the initiator. Isn’t that what I said?” Yeah, but you bloomed! I was over the moon that this tree actually boomed and it was such a good teaching for me.

After all these years. I’m talking 40 years now. I still was questioning that tree even though it said, “Hey, you know, you want a blooming Hawthorne, no problem. I can do that.” And even though this was our exchange, I was all excited about Hawthorne, but I still was in doubt. Until I went and saw it and it was a huge. So, what I have learned over the years, and especially with this Hawthorne, is that plants  and trees don’t lie. They don’t lie to you when they’re right on. And they’re communicating to you the truth of their being. They’re not trying to deceive you or betray you or lie to you. No. People do that, not plants and trees. So I feel like it’s really important for us when we feel like we’re getting those pings and we’re getting that vibration from the plants and the trees, we just go with it and then see what happens. Carry it all the way to the end. And even though I carried it all the way to the end where that tree was blooming and made beautiful flowers and beautiful berries that year, and it was just, wow, it had never bloomed. It should have bloomed by then. 

Wow, a 12-year-old tree, huh? Wow. That’s amazing. Thank you for sharing that. What an awesome story. 

It was just one of those magic times of, if a plant tells you it’s gonna do something, you can trust that. 

And those are the things that reaffirm the belief in all of this, right? Where it’s like, of course, yes, this is real. This is not just some figment of my imagination. There is something real that is happening here. I feel like, as plant people, as herbalists, we have to be strong in our relationship to the plants and our connection to the plants, and our belief in the plants.

How can we expect a remedy that we give to someone to heal them if we ourselves don’t have a belief in the healing power of that plant? So we have to fortify ourselves. And it’s experiences like that that are just so reassuring in a lot of ways. On a grander cultural scale, from most people’s perspective, it’s crazy. A lot of people will just be like, “What? A plant can’t talk to you. That’s crazy.” It can be easy to have that get people down and doubt themselves and not believe in all of this. So I really appreciate you sharing that story because it also shows that you, even after doing this for so long, still get those little moments of “Really? Really?” 

I think part of it was that I was in awe of the amazing plant consciousness that exists. And so when I saw those buds, I was just over the moon. But there was that part that was like, I was expecting to go up there and not see any [buds], and I got so excited when I did see them. 

I think the more we wake up and the more that we pay attention, really attend to these plants and trees, our partnership will grow exponentially because they want us to succeed. We’re like their little brothers and sisters. They want us to succeed, they want us to thrive. 

We’ve been doing this symbiotic thing with them for a long time, and they want us to succeed. They want us to be all we can possibly be. They want us to live in full potential. So it’s possible. They always have evolved prior to their animal counterparts. And so I look at it like, well, what’s our evolution right now? I feel like our evolution is of a spiritual nature or consciousness-raising state, but I think that’s our evolution right now. Getting to the point where we stop destroying the planet would be a good place to be for peace on earth. But that might be down the road just a wee bit. 

If you observe what the plants have been doing since the sixties for sure, but maybe even before that, is there’s been this huge explosion in interest in the psychotropic part of plants or flower essences, which has no chemical constituents at all, or plant spirit healing, which as you know, you don’t even have to ingest the plant. 

And now, it’s like the old Buddhist saying, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” What I find is when I’m ready, the plants go, “Here’s another piece.” And it keeps happening. It has never stopped. So now they’re initiating us. The plants and trees are the elders that are the initiators, and they’re initiating us into what it means to be truly human. Living “sanely” (keyword) within the collective. We’re just a bunch of modern people who have not been initiated. So we don’t have a clue of how to live within the collective in a way that’s sane. And the plants know how to do that. They have been doing it for a long, long time. They have been interconnected with their other nature kin and other plants, and they’ve been cooperating and being together in that collective and actually interdependent on each other. 

And now I feel like they are just ahead of us in their spiritual evolution and that they’re guiding us in ours and to raise our consciousness to that point where we get it together. Take it to the next level. You know what I mean? 

Absolutely. I love that. And I think about that word initiation—it’s such an interesting word. Because you think of when we initiate something, what does that mean? We’re beginning something new. 

And I think of this concept within the domain of traditional medical alchemy and how, in the alchemical tradition, they would speak of how the alchemically prepared remedy, when ingested, is the work itself. But also, the ingestion of the medicine is the source of initiation. It’s bringing us into a greater level of understanding nature within ourselves, of our own nature and who we are, but also of the world outside us.

It’s healing us and teaching us, and through that greater level of knowledge of Self and of the world around us, we are, I suppose in your terminology, and in my terminology for that matter, it is “evolved.” We are evolved, right? We are at a greater level of harmony with the self and with the environment. So the concept of initiatic medicine, I think it’s really interesting, especially in terms of alchemy as a nested part of the greater hermetic tradition of the West, where a lot of those esoteric circles would be very dependent on another person to initiate you.

You’re the acolyte, and they’re the magus, and they’re the one that has to initiate you in their order of whatever their system is. And in this perspective, it is just through the plants and through nature. The way I see it is through healing. Because the healing and the spiritual development and evolution, in order to spiritually grow and develop, we have to heal ourselves. Oftentimes, in order to heal ourselves, we’ve got some work to do on ourselves. And the plants are so incredible in the way that they can assist in that process.

You talked about it a little bit, but I’m curious to hear a little more about these plant initiations. 

These plant initiations, they’re phenomenal. It’s kind of a lengthy story on how it got started. But basically, I’ve been doing these plant initiations since 2010, so 15 years now.

Basically, what it is, is one plant that you work with in a ceremonial context for three days and make what I call an elixir. It’s not technically an elixir, but it’s different parts of the plant, different mediums, and it all gets put together. This is, of course, an ingestible plant. And, we do a stirring process like the biodynamic stirring. We’re stirring one direction and then the other direction, having an earth come in. So a lot of the alchemical elements come into this. We make enough for each person to have 16 ounces over the three days. So we do two ounces eight times. We encourage people to fast, so there’s not a lot of food in there getting in the way of bringing the plant in to do its thing. Some people have a difficult time with fasting. But we encourage that. And then we [do] different kinds of things with the plant. We’re sitting with it, we’re going on shamanic journeys. We make masks, and we embody the plant. We have a fire circle with a council of, whatevers, Hawthornes [for example]. This year, it’s Mother Wort. So everybody has embodied the plant. And they have made a mask, and everybody speaks around the fire in council as if they’re not a human. It’s based on The Council of All Beings, [which] John Seed and Joanna Macy created years ago.

Anyway, we do that. We do green breath, which is the long transformational breathing, and that is incredibly transformative. And spontaneous healings happen. We work with the sound, we work with the light. We work with dreaming, daydreaming, nighttime dreaming, shamanic dreaming. We work with the labyrinth, with this one plant, and it’s really profound. When you’re done with this plant, it’s like being transformed. It’s like dismemberment, dying to the old and being reborn to the new. It’s quite transformative. And these plants are stepping it up and bringing forward this massive healing. Talk about the healing, all the healing we have to do. Some of the things I’ve seen happen on the spot, like spontaneous, blow your mind away. 

And then we continue it. Once people leave, everybody goes home with an essence, and they continue with it for at least six weeks. Some people would refer to this as dieting the plant, but it’s a little different than dieting the plant. Because dieting often means for several days, you’re ingesting the plant. But this is in a ceremonial context, which really changes the container within which everybody [does] the work with this plant. 

I’m telling you, Sajah, it’s been miraculous what has happened. And the plants brought it to me. I did not choose this. I was in England teaching a class, and a volcano went off in 2010 in Iceland, and I couldn’t get home. So I was like, “What do I do?” And I was like, “I have to try to get back to Ireland. My friend Carol Guyett lives in Ireland. “I need to go somewhere where I’m with friends and people that love me and I’m not in some skanky hotel in London trying to get home.” So I did that, and she is the one who actually brought this forward. It was the end of April, and she does her things on Beltane, the cross quarter days, and the solstices and equinoxes are when she does her initiations.

So she was preparing for the Beltane initiation, which was Primrose. The hillsides are covered in these beautiful little yellow primroses. There I was. Because I couldn’t get home because of the volcano. Now, I couldn’t even make that up if I tried. I could never come up with something like that.

When you said volcano, I thought it was an inner volcano of inspiration! Like a volcano in your head. But you mean a real volcano went off? 

No, haha, a real volcano happened. So I was there. I helped her harvest plants. I helped her make the elixir, and she showed me how to do everything every step of the way. And she sent me home, and I was able to get home before May 1st. She sent me home with some of the elixir, and I did the initiation by myself at home with the elixir we made. And her whole group was doing it at the same time in Ireland. 

So that was my first initiation. But I didn’t do it. I wasn’t the one that made it happen. It just happened. So then I realized, this is really powerful. So then, she came to Vermont from Ireland, and we did Angelica. She led it. So I was right there to be right by her side to see, “What are we gonna do and how are we gonna do it?” And then from there on in, I started doing them myself, and doing them in Vermont and other places. I’ve done lots of them in other locations, and it’s powerful. It’s amazing work. And the plants are just right there. It’s amazing, I love it.

Why I love it is because you’re just creating a context through which the plant is able to really come to life within people and heal them and teach them. And I feel like this is something I’m always talking about. Especially for herbalists, it’s so easy when we’re learning herbalism to get all the books and do the research and go to workshops and go to conferences and do programs, and that’s really good. But I think there comes a point where we have to balance our intellectual knowledge with an experiential understanding. Knowledge only gets us so far, and for me, I don’t want to just know about the plants. I want to understand them. I want to understand not just what they’re good for but who they are.

The only way we can really get to that point is by creating that kind of “push everything else off to the side and just focus on that one plant.” And that’s why I always encourage people wanting to learn their materia medica. Do one plant a month. Just take one month and study everything you can about it, but drink it and infuse it and make a decoction and take three drops of the tincture. Take five mils of the tincture, just infuse yourself with that herb so that you can feel it physically in your body. 

What does a diaphoretic feel like? What does a stimulant expectorant feel like? That’s so useful, [more] than just having it be this concept in the mind. So I just absolutely love this work that you’re doing by creating that space for people to be healed and taught directly by the medicinal power of the plants. It’s just so good. And, like you were saying, too, they want us to do that. I think from an herbalist perspective, it’s like the plants need an herbalist. Hawthorne has all these profound healing properties for the human organism. That’s not a mistake. I’m not saying the only reason Hawthorne is here is for the benefit of humans. It has other purposes, but it also has all that it does for us. And I think that’s for a reason. But the only way a Hawthorne berry is going to get into a human body, typically, is for there to be a certain kind of human that can understand the language of the Hawthorne, that can understand the language of a human. Hawthorne can cross that bridge to help that other person. In my opinion, I think that’s what the ecological function of the herbalist is, to be that bridge between the human and the plant kingdom in a healing way. 

That’s how I see what you do, being that bridge, that the plants are able to cross to touch the life of another human and help them. I feel like that’s just such a huge part of all this. So thank you, it’s just beautiful what you do.

I don’t know how to do anything else. So this is my life, this is the gift I came in on, you know, so I have to do it. And I love it. And I just want to say to you that I’m so glad we did this together because it’s so great to see you really doing it and sharing all your incredible knowledge. 

I remember when you were in Vermont, you had your notebook, and the pages were all crumply, and you had all kinds of things stuffed in. But something would happen and you’d write something down in that notebook. I was like, “What’s that notebook you’ve got?” You said, oh, this is going to be my book someday. And it turned into a beautiful book. And so I just want to say, Sajah, I love seeing you flourishing in your element. 

Aw, thank you. Thank you so much, Pam.

Thank you for being willing to walk the path, which sometimes can be challenging, as we know, but it’s a beautiful path, and you’re one of those bridges, too, so thank you.

Your work has been hugely inspirational and hugely transformative for me. I spent a lot of time with you in class and workshops and participating in those things, and, um, it just was like when, you know, it’s like. You have those points in your life when you look back and you’re, and you think of when there were distinct turning points in your life, but when you’re in it, you don’t realize it’s a distinct turning point in your life, but it’s only upon reflection where you’re like, “Oh, whoa that was kind of a big deal.” I feel like my time with you was like that, and I have a lot of respect for you and honor you and the work that you do. And I’m happy to hear you’re keeping going, even though before we talked, you were saying, oh, at this point in my life, I thought I’d be relaxing on a couch, and you’re busier than ever and keeping going. I thank you for doing that. I feel like that’s what the plants want from us. I think these are the times when that is needed. 

So you have a new book! 

Do you wanna see it? 

Yeah I want to see it. There it is!

Co-Creating with Nature: Healing the Wound of Separation. This talks a lot about what we’ve been talking about today and about co-creative partnership. There’s a whole section on plant initiations, and particular plants that we’ve done initiations with and what’s come through with them. I talk a lot about the separation and how did this happen? How do we deal with it? Basically, we deal with separation by engaging in co-creative partnerships. 

I actually started writing it here in Belize, and the lushness of the environment, the ocean, I love the colors in the ocean, the kind of the turquoises and the greens and the blues. And of course, I’m surrounded by plants and lushness. There’s something about this environment that really gets my creative juices flowing. So this is where I started writing this book. And I’m telling you, man, whenever I’m here, maybe that’s why I’m working so much right now, I call it work. I should be calling it play, but I feel so creative when I’m here. I’m just doing it. So let me know what you think [about the book], I’d be interested to hear. 

Awesome. It looks like a thick book, too. I encourage everybody to go check out not just Pam’s new book but her other books, too. I highly recommend them. Go and check out Pam’s work. 

Pam, I really enjoyed chatting with you today. Thank you so much for joining me. Blessings to you, and enjoy the rest of your time down there in Belize. Good luck with your book and all the wonderful work that you’re doing moving forward into the future. Hopefully, we can do this again sometime. Take care.

Okay, Sajah, thank you!

To learn more about Pam and her work and books, visit her website at: https://wakeuptonature.com