From HerbMentor.com, this is Herb Mentor Radio.
You're listening to Herb Mentor Radio on HerbMentor.com. I'm John Gallagher. My guest today is David Bruce Leonard. David is a practitioner and teacher of all five branches of Chinese medicine, acupuncture, herbal medicine, massage, food medicine, and martial arts.
Besides studying traditional medicines with healers in Asia, North and South America, David has also studied Hawaiian native plants for over twenty years and is author of Medicine at Your Feet, Healing Plants of the Hawaiian Kingdom and Wild Wisdom, Listening to the Heart of Nature. David founded the Earth Medicine Institute, and you can visit David at EarthMedicineInstitute.com. David will also be teaching at the upcoming International Herb Symposium, which is happening June twenty eighth to the thirtieth two thousand thirteen near Boston, along with dozens of amazing herbal educators.
Happens once every two years, and it's awesome. And information for that is at InternationalHerbSymposium,com. Aloha, David.
Hi, John. How are you? Well, it is that's the extent of my my Hawaiian.
That works.
So what island are you on?
Oh, right now, I'm on the big island in Hilo, but I also spend quite a bit of time on Maui.
Okay. And, so I'm curious about your, path as an herbalist.
Did are you from Hawaii? Or or how did how did how did this all happen that you ended up doing this work?
I actually well, I grew up on the East Coast in New England. And, but, I was living in Colorado. I I went to Naropa when I, Naropa Institute when I graduated from high school, and I was there. And my, I married a woman who was an herbalist, and she, had a really a pretty strong influence on me. So I started studying the the herbs in the Rocky Mountains with her.
And then I moved oh, and then I moved to California and went to, acupuncture school in Santa Cruz. Mhmm. And I fell in love with Chinese herbs.
And I moved to Hawaii in nineteen ninety one, and, one of the things that I I I thought was really curious about, about my Chinese teachers is they were, of course, phenomenal herbalists, but they didn't know what the plants looked like. They didn't have a connection. They didn't connect the plant to what they were using in the clinic. Mhmm.
Some of them had treated over a hundred thousand patients, but didn't know what these plants look like that they were using. So I I felt like, I wanted to I wanted to make that connection. I've I've always been an environmentalist. So I, began studying with Hawaiian Hawaiian practitioners who knew the plants very well, and then it took off from there.
Okay. So, and then you and were there are like, how does that work in Hawaii? Like, were the people doing workshops? Did you find native elders to work with or to mentor you?
Or Yeah.
I well, at first, nobody would teach me because I have, I'm very white.
Mhmm.
And, but eventually I had some elders take me under their wing. There was about seven or eight of them who took me under their wing. And, you know, there's a certain there's a certain way you have to approach Hawaiian elders that's different than you might do it, you know, in North America or whatever, in other in other, cultures. So I had I learned very quickly what to do and what not to do in order to, to be appropriate with them.
And I did. And they, they taught me a lot. And then after most of them are gone now. And then I continued to expand my awareness of of Hawaiian plants because many of the plants that grow in Hawaii also grow in the tropics all over the world.
So I began to cross reference, these plants with, from other cultures, how they were used in other cultures.
A friend of mine, Robert Newman, is, the herb department at Emperor's College in, California. And, he translates Chinese texts. So he was very kind and translated a lot of Chinese texts about the local plants. And then I I have a pretty good sized herb library, so I kept I started Crocs referencing and, took it from there. And I've been expanding it ever since.
And so, like, did you travel to you say you've done a lot with South American herbs or Asian. Did you travel to these places as well?
Or did you Yeah.
Yes. I did. I I, I studied in the Amazon Basin for a while, and and I've been in Thailand. I spent a lot of time in Nepal.
I've never been to China. I'd like to go there.
So I when and also whenever I, friends of mine, when they would travel, they would send me books from different places. So I've kind of got I have plant books from all over the world of the uses of the plants, mostly the tropics, but also other places.
Right. Are you someone who, like, just really likes to know the plant, you know, in its you know, getting to know it in person and learning to use it versus the book? Because it sounds like you have the books and stuff, but the ones you get to know more intimately that you use with your patients and all are do you tend to use more herbs that are ones that, you know, can either grow or harvest in your area?
I it depends on it depends on my situation. If I have a a full pharmacy where I'm at, like a Chinese pharmacy, I'll tend to use the prepared herbs from the book knowledge.
But if I don't have a full pharmacy, then I will use the local plants that I'm much much more familiar with personally.
I, you know, my, one of the things I learned from my Hawaiian teachers was, how to connect with plants directly.
One of my one of my Hawaiian teachers name was, Bill Kanekoa.
And one of the things I learned from him is that, it wasn't enough just to tell plants who they were. I had to actually listen to who they were.
That's a whole another part of the brain and whole another part of the nervous system. So at Earth Medicine Institute, we really focus on both, on the on the linear sort of cognitive part of plant medicine and then then also on the somatic intuitive part. And and I think they're both really important personally.
Yeah. So what the Hawaiian teachers told you, are these taught you on how to connect with the plan? Are these teachings that you also able to pass on to your students? Are these teachings that people can use anywhere? Like, I'm curious on how, like, the the gifts of the, you know, the the elders of your area can kind of help people all over learn about plants.
Yeah. My Hawaiian teachers, it's very much, in Hawaiian culture, you don't ask questions.
And they they don't give you a lot of, data. They're not big on downloading data.
List of things and things like that. There's a, there's a saying in oh, well, if I were to ask you a question, actually, sometimes they would say, why are you so? Like, why are you so nosy?
I learned very quickly not to ask questions. Right?
And then there's a Hawaiian phrase. It go it says, means open your eyes, open your ears, and be quiet, shut your mouth.
And so it was very much a traditional style to just watch very carefully and be quiet and observe and as kind of assimilate that way. Mhmm.
And so that's how I learned.
So a lot of what I learned from my Hawaiian teachers was sort of through osmosis and through observation.
I would watch the way they move their bodies, I would I would follow the way they were thinking when they were describing things and I would just basically imitate. And so a lot of the conclusions I came to in the material I teach is from that, from what I absorbed from them and from my own conclusions about what they were doing.
Okay. So let's take an example. There's it's can you think of a plant that you were curious to learn about, Hawaiian elders didn't give you much data, but you learned through using by opening your eyes and opening your ears?
Yeah. They would give me some data. It wasn't that they didn't tell me anything, but in terms of how to listen or how to open myself to plants, it wasn't that direct. They would say this is for colds or this is for hemorrhoids, but they wouldn't say sit down and, the what they would say to me is you always enter the forest with your naau, always, and you always pray.
So I did that. I did what they said. I I entered the forest with my, which is, is a Hawaiian word for guts or belly or abdomen.
And I always pray before and after doing any herbal practice. So and from doing that, I began to notice things in my own body.
So I knew that this plant they were talking about was, say, good for broken bones, but I but they couldn't they were they couldn't or didn't give me their direct experience of that plant. I had to learn that on my own. So I would just sit with the plant and watch what happened to my body. You know, first just sitting with it, then smelling it, then tasting it, and then eventually noticing, oh, when I sit with this plant, this is what I notice in my body. And then I would compare it to my friends who use that plant and just, you know, over time sort of gradually assimilating that information and creating a personal relationship with that plant.
And then has that then given you the information you need as a practitioner? Do you who as a I mean, you I know you're a practitioner of Asian medicine. When you're working with, patients, do you use, herbs that you've learned about, in in Hawaii through this process?
Oh, yeah. I I use herbs differently than anybody I know because I have, you know, some plants, I mean, for very bizarre some plants I'll use for grief.
Some plants I will use for allergies. It's never been written in a book that this plant is for allergies, but that's how I use it.
So, the only thing I've only done this with Hawaiian plants because the Chinese herbs are not alive when I'm using them in the clinic. So I've never actually done this. It might be interesting to try to connect with a a dried herb. But, the only sort of nonlinear, noncognitive data I've gotten from plants has been with live living plants.
Mhmm.
Because I'm I'm interested in that because this, because, you know, we teach on one level on on, like, on a website, for example, for giving people, lessons or teaching them how to use plants. We can give them instructions. We can tell them about ingredients or where to pick something. But what we're, but what I think that, we we lack is that sense, like, what you were saying that you're you're always listening, always praying.
You know, that gets a little, oh, you know, for lack of a better word, a little, woo woo or whatever for people when you're trying to take because they don't know really quite how to approach. I mean, how do you do this in a because for you, it's a very grounded thing because it's rooted in a culture, and you are fortunate to live in a place with an herbal culture that you can, you know, draw from. So, are there are is there ways that people can draw this into like, I say, I'm going out and I'm harvesting, hawthorn flowers or dandelion in my area. What what are things you could do to kind of connect and, really learn about the plants on that level?
Well, you know, we live in a very sort of reductionist linear culture. Mhmm. That's one of the one of the great gifts of Western society and also one of the great downfalls. So we value data, but we don't value the relationships between a teacher and a student. There's something and the Taoists talk about this too. There's a field create I mean, I'm sure you remember, your favorite elementary school teacher.
Mhmm.
That relationship is huge. That relationship impacts our life in a tremendous way and we never acknowledge that relationship because it's a nonlinear relationship. We can't quantify it. We we don't know how to describe that in in western in scientific, language, so we don't.
And because we don't describe it, we don't actually essentially, we don't value it. So I believe that that the data we get from the web and from books and from teachers is really important, but the field between things, the relationship between things is also really important.
And I think if people are willing I mean, we can go out and, you know, you can make up stuff in your head about data you're getting from a plant and whatever, you know, the new age stuff.
But if you have somebody to model that's very grounded, like, a lot of the data I will get about plants is just roof brain chatter. It's just my own thoughts about taxes or my partner or whatever. Right? I mean right?
And but there's a there's a really significant difference between information that I get that that kind of hits me on a gut level and brain chatter. And I think there's two things that's needed. My my judgement, there's two things that would be good for people. One would be to have somebody to kind of walk them through that process and the other thing would be a, noticing the difference in themselves between when their brain is just kind of squawking and when there's a a somatic and visceral kind of epiphy so when I'm working with a patient and this is something that, you know, we develop over a lifetime.
It's not you know, there's an intuitive, I don't even know the word for it. There's a powerful connection with we have with other people, and we can develop that. That's something that is developable that we've lost in the west, but but it's in our nervous systems. We just have to awaken it.
So I think that, the ability to go in and notice what's happening in our body when we're with a patient, when we're with our lover, or when we're with a plant is a really good place to start for that.
That makes sense. Just kind of, like, trusting more of the feelings that sensations that you have and then and then connecting that with your experiences when you're going out and working with a plan.
Yeah. And not believing everything you think. Mhmm. Like, when my Hawaiian teachers would talk about, would talk about we you know, I teach gathering protocols.
There there's a really strong, strong awareness of what's going on around. The Hawaiians call it means, omens. So we're really paying attention. So when you're asking permission if it you know, you're asking permission to gather from a place, we don't really have to worry about, you know, our roof brain chatter and the imaginary voices in our heads.
You know, we'll know if it's not okay. I mean, a bird will poop on us or we'll lose our car keys or we'll sprain an ankle or, you know, something. So that's what they're watching for. They're not, running kind of mental games in their head.
They're watching the environment. Is everything really okay? And then checking in with their body. Do I really feel okay?
And that's good enough Right. For my for my to check-in and say, okay. Is this okay to gather, or are things really not flowing? That's also a very Daoist idea.
Right. And that's something we all experience if something doesn't feel okay or not. Like, you know, like, if we we we know that. So it's just like paying attention to that and getting in touch with that quiet mind.
I'm interested in, gathering protocols. I think you're teaching a class on that, an international herbs imposing. Do you have anything you wanna share about that? Because that sounds really interesting.
There's a lot of gathering protocols. They're they're, you know, even in Hawaiian culture and in Chinese culture, there's different gathering protocols.
And in Hawaiian culture, there was, each family would have its own protocol and would have ancestors.
And, you know, there's specific things that are done. You'll use, right hand when gathering for a male, left hand when gathering for a female, and and there's there's chants and prayers and stuff. I think those are those are interesting and and somewhat important, but I think for me what's more important is that there's a sense of the sacred when we're gathering that we're we're taking what we're doing out of our normal, you know, put out the cat and feed the dog context. There's like a we're creating sacred space, and that I think is the most important thing. And it doesn't have to be it doesn't have to be pompous or, you know, demonstrative.
You know, it can be very comfortable.
My Hawaiian teachers, when they were gathering herbs, would not put on a big show, but they were creating sacred space. That was absolutely what was happening. It was unmistakable.
The Hawaiians have a term called Ohanianui, which means big spirit.
And somebody walks in the room with Ohanianui and and you just feel it in your body. It's like, wow. And some people are like that. They walk into a room and they they have a command presence, and that is, that's something that is it's it's not put on.
It's very natural for them. They just have a lot of mana, a lot of spiritual power, without showing off or bragging or anything. So, you know, when when I think the important thing about gathering protocols, at least for me, is that we're real and we're honest with ourselves. We're self confronting, but also that we that we, we create a space that's sacred, that it takes us out of our normal daily mind and brings us to a different place within our bodies and within our nervous system.
And that that's what's important to me.
Do you do you did you find for the gathering protocols that, like you're just talking about here, that when you went to other, like in South America, for example, or maybe Nepal, that there was, a similarity? Or or or is is there something unique to, Hawaiian, medicine?
Well, I think both. I think, you know, yeah, there's definitely similarities. There's, there's always prayer in all cultures and there's always connection.
Matt Kirk and I were up you know Matt.
Right? I do Matt from, from when he was here at, in in our area. He's taught at a local wilderness school.
Yeah. Matt and I were up at the top of, up top of Kauai one day. This was a couple of years ago and I had known Matt for years at that point but I'd never gone out into the woods with him. We were out and and, we're just talking and and, he looked at a, I looked at a plant and said, oh, a mouse has been no.
I said, oh, something's eating that plant. And Matt said, yeah, a mouse. I said, there's a mouse here? This is a native forest, you know, a very pristine native forest.
He said, yeah, there's a mouse right underneath that plant. I said, I've never seen a mouse in native forest. And he looked at me and said, I've seen six of them since I've been up since we've been up here. Right?
So he's a tracker. He's a tracker and I'm a plant guy. So he's seeing he's not seeing the plants, and I'm not seeing the animals. Right?
The mice. Right? Right. So as we were up there, we were, we were talking about the ways that we relate to, gathering gathering practices, but also just connecting to the woods, to the forest.
And I said, oh, yeah. Well, when I do this, I go into this place called Hokkalau. I use peripheral vision. And he looked at me, he said, really?
He said, I do that too, I learned that as a native American practice, we call it owl eyes. Really? I said, I said, what do you oh, he said, what do you call it when you're moving? I said, well, we call that hakahele.
And he said, oh, we call that box walk.
And it turns out that there were almost identical practices that I had learned from Hawaiians that he had learned, from Native American teachers, I'm sure from, John Young and Tom Brown Junior, but also in Africa.
And I realized that this is the same practices.
Wow. These are neurologically the same practices. It was scary. And we there was like five or six things that we were doing that were identical from totally different cultures.
Probably gratitude, right, and Thanksgiving as well.
Gratitude, but also very specific neurological things, feeling with your belly. And I I think these are these are traditional tribal ways or hunter gatherer ways of activating our nervous system.
They're they're actually techniques that cultures pass on because they work. He tells funny stories about peripheral vision and when he was, in the Kalahari Desert in Africa. And just funny stories about, you know, teaching the children how to use peripheral vision, little games they play. Because if you're if you're, you know, a toddler in Africa in the Kalahari, you have to be you have to use peripheral vision to avoid being eaten by hyenas and and big cats and things. So and I find the same thing with, with the gathering practice too. There's various there's almost predictable things that happen. There's an there's, the creation of sacred space.
There's an expression of gratitude to the world or to the plant. There's an honoring of what happens.
There's, a giving back of some part of the plant either to spirit. There's a ritualized way of of taking the plant in, and then there's again gratitude. And that's pretty pretty consistent that I've seen, in all cultures.
That's that that is that is amazing. And do do you have to as well I remember when working with John Young and we worked with various Native American communities and you work with a community and you wanna pass on the teachings or is that kind of, you know, sanctioning or working with, elders to kinda go through that process. Have you had to do something similar in in your area?
Yeah. There was there's definitely a kind of hazing that happens that's very traditional.
And a lot of it, honestly, has just been showing up and keeping my mouth shut. You know?
Really, for the first five years, just showing up and keeping my mouth shut was a huge piece of that because that was tradition. And, you know, I also learned very quickly that I shouldn't be writing things down because that was sort of immediately suspicious. So I did. I just stopped. You know?
And also just yeah. Like Woody Allen said ninety percent of life is showing up. Right? Yeah.
Yeah. Just showing and and being respectful. And there's, you know, there's protocols when you walk into a room and there's a bunch of local people, you go to the oldest person first, you say hi to them, and you go down in chronological order.
You know? You don't make too much eye contact. You keep your body language appropriate. That, you know, it's just sort of there's certain things you learn and that's what, that's what allowed me to, to develop relationships that, that helped people to feel safe around me and to, and then now, of course, I'm sort of I've been doing this for a long time.
So, it's appropriate for me to pass this on. I have you know, my teacher said it was fine to teach and I do. And but I never pretend to be Hawaiian. I never, I don't practice Hawaiian medicine, at all because they're, that's their kuleana, the, that's their responsibility and privilege, not mine.
So but the ideas I think are very powerful and I use them in my practice.
The, well, speaking of ideas, I I I'm a, five element acupuncture practitioner and, and in that tradition, it's there's a the the focus of the healing is often on the on on spirit side of things, spirit points and whatnot. And of course, that that then in turn eventually gets to healing the body.
So in Hawaiian herbal medicine, is a similar type approach where we're focusing more on the spirit than on the constituents and whatnot?
Oh, yeah. It's huge. There's in old Hawaii, not so much anymore, but in old Hawaii, there were, herbs were gathered specific herbs were gathered depending on the amakua or the deity of the Hawaiian family of the of the ancestors. So and they were paired. There's a Hawaiian creation chant called the Kumulipo, which is, kinda like the Koine book of Genesis.
And in that there are plants and animals that are connected to a deity.
So, when a healing would happen, that had to be aligned with the cosmology. Right? That's what we do in Chinese medicine. I'm sure you're familiar with that and in Hawaiian medicine.
If we're not aligning ourselves with the universe in our healing, we're not doing anything from from that sort of view, that sort of perspective. We have to align ourselves with the cosmos. And this doesn't have to be spacey or new age. This is just sort of common sense.
You know, we're not gonna, go out in the snow in our underwear and we're not gonna be, you know, be eating a lot of hot food in the summer. So there there's it's not so much that it's just paying attention to the natural flow of things and aligning with that. And the Hawaiians turn that awareness of their environment into, into a cosmology and that cosmology was brought down into the plant realm.
So plants, there was no differentiation between a spiritual ailment and a physical ailment. It was thought to be the same thing. There was zero differentiation.
After you know, I it's funny. I might I might have had a harder time, like, in in a previous version of me kind of like, oh, that all sounds good, but, like, you know, like, does that really work? But but I'm telling you as a having been a practitioner with that viewpoint for a while now, I I you know, as you are too, I I can't imagine, you know, anything else working, really.
Well, we're such we're such complex creatures. I mean, we're, you know, we are not we are not just a bag of skin full of chemical reactions. Right. That whole thought is insane. Honestly, it's I mean, science is a really good servant and a really poor master.
Yeah. Honestly. Right? So it's like to think of ourselves as only I mean, we are a bag of skin full of chemical reactions.
To think of ourselves only that way is madness.
This is the only society in the history that planet would that would ever dream of thinking of ourselves that way, that we are that we are somehow the same as a Mercedes Benz.
Right.
It's you know, the the again, it's that science is good at identifying the the things themselves, but not the relationships between things.
And if you look at the well, we know we're in, quote, unquote, alternative medicine. Right? That's our business.
I mean, even if there's been studies done that even if there's plants in the hospital room that people get better more quickly. I mean, I believe that that a physician is a shaman and that that stethoscope is a rattle And that that that relationship is primal and primary, and we can't escape it. We can't escape the power of that that shamanic relationship between a practitioner and a and a patient. So and when we if we ignore the nonlinear parts of that relationship, the parts we can't quantify, we do so at our peril. That's that's my my personal opinion.
Wow. Wow. So you probably have really come a long way in your own, practice as far as how you treat a person.
Totally. And, you know, I'm always struck I'm always struggling with the reductionist parts of myself. You know? I mean, you know, like, sometimes my students will say, well, so I'll say, well, the chi moves here, chi moves there, and they'll say, yeah.
But how does this really work? I'll say, well, it really works with chi. Really how it works. You know, it's like but in myself, I find myself thinking, no.
How does this really work? Come on. You know? And that's me that's the you know, I was raised in this culture, and I I I can easily default to that reductionist way of looking at things.
I have a a teacher of mine who's a, a Taoist, and people come up to him with a tumor, and they'll, they'll say I've got this tumor the size of a grapefruit and he'll look at him and say, it's amazing. How'd you do that?
How did you do that? You know?
If you really wanna get rid of this, it's pretty straightforward. We just figure out how you did it, and then we go backwards. You know? And we can undo that.
You did it. Right? I mean, I didn't do it. You did it.
Exactly. And and and they'll say, but if you if you if you really wanna get rid of this, we can get rid of this. But if there's a part of you that is really attached to this, it's gonna be a lot harder.
Right. Exactly.
Because attached to that is something that caused it in the first place, which is a lot harder to let go of when it's something on that spirit level.
Right. Which is a much bigger piece of shadow.
Right? Right. Oh, exactly.
And he also is also saying, you know, death is not a failure.
Death is not a failure. This is like you as practitioners we have to get over this. When our patients die we haven't failed. You know, there we just are not that powerful. You know, where you don't have that much control over the universe and things will happen. We only have, you know, we have to from his perspective, everything is really about what does it mean to be human and really embracing that.
So if we were, if you were out in North America, for example, and you're or you say you're out in in Boston, you're going back to your homeland this summer, right, in that area, And, and and you were giving a plant walk, you know, you to complete people completely knew at using herbs, you would probably show them dandelion, chickweed, plantain. Right? A lot of really important common plants.
If I was in Kauai and we were going on a walk, what are a few that you would share with me?
Oh, which plants you mean?
Yeah. Like, on that kind of like, when you've taken someone out, these and what what really important ones.
Let's see. We have oh my god. There's so many plants.
Let's see. In our certification program we're using. Going down the list, we're using Adjuratum. We we have I have a a a wildcrafting certification program that we're in right now.
And right now, I think they're about at Portulaca, which is you're probably familiar with purslane.
Mhmm.
That grows here. But so starting with A's, we start with adgeratum, which is a, adgeratum conozoidis, which is called Mylihojano, which is used for hemorrhoids and has PAs in it, pyrrolizidine. So I'm kinda careful with that. There's there's Adlerites, which is, a which is the kukui tree which is a which was brought by the Hawaiians.
It is it is a huge cultural and spiritual meaning to that because kukui means light in Hawaiian. It also implies implies enlightenment, that was used as a as oil for lamps, but also was a, Kinolau or a manifestation of the the Kamapua'a, who was the pig god, who was an incarnation of Lono, the god of medicine and farming and things. So oh my god. What else?
There's, adiantum, which is, the maiden hair fern, which is all used in Europe.
There's bacopa monnieri, which is called Brahmi in India, and that's used for, the intellect and it's also an antioxidant.
The Centella asiatica, which is got a cola. I mean, it can go on and on, but I I don't know how many of these grow in the mainland, but I'm kind of going down the list in my head of what no. Yeah.
Okay. Well, I guess that's a tougher question to get into then since you really they're they're right. There's just plants absolutely everywhere. So I'm sure they're all your favorites. Right?
My favorites. Oh, interesting. Okay. Well, my favorites would be got a cola and then turmeric and, Biden's, I really like.
And I think that grows in the mainland too, the Biden's pilosa. Mhmm. Albay. Yeah. Those are some of my favorites.
Banana sap actually is probably my favorite antibacterial.
Really? Banana sap.
So what do you do with, you go to the That's disgusting.
I mean, it's really Terrible. Put in your mouth. But, the whole plant is is, medicinal. You can there's different different parts of the plant.
The sap is either stronger or weaker. From the tips of the leaves, it's very strong.
And, my Hawaiian teachers would stick soda cans on the ends of the banana leaves. It was just comical to gather the sap. But there's also techniques for getting it out of the trunk and stuff. Actually Matt Kirk was showing me that I didn't know this. You could cut off a banana trunk and then dig out a hole and you get fresh water coming up from that that you can drink.
Oh, wow.
Yeah. And it's you know, because the plant disinfects the, the groundwater. It's, it's it's, potable.
So, yeah, there's I mean, it's, I I've been here so long. I I often forget how how weird the stuff I'm doing is because I'm so out of the verbal mainstream. You know, I'm in this sort of backwater, so I'm sort of some sort of, like, intellectual inbreeding. You know?
Yeah. That's so cool, though, that you have all these, you know, so many plants that you can explore and have several lifetimes that you would need probably to learn a little bit. Right?
Exactly. You know, experimenting on myself, which gets can be really comical sometimes. You know?
It's like is there a what wisdom, like, when you're teaching people as far as, you know, staying healthy, kitchen medicine type of stuff, do do you recommend?
You know, on top of eating all foods and all that kind of things.
Well, just, yeah, just listening to our bodies. Mhmm. Really, I mean, what what happens when I do this? You know, you watch short term and long term.
And, you know, I even tell my my students at the acupuncture college, you know, don't listen to me. You know? Watch your body. I mean, if I drink carrot juice, I have a half a glass of carrot juice, I'll have diarrhea, you know.
And that doesn't happen to anybody else except me. So I don't care what the books say.
Alright? This is my reality. So with anything, you know, I had a I have a a student, that was chewing on a very common, aphrodisiac. I was teaching a class in aphrodisiacs, and she almost went into anaphylaxis. Right?
From and I I searched the web, and I talked to all my Chinese teachers, and then nobody had ever heard of such a thing. There was no known reaction. That would be my that would be what I would say to my students.
Right. And it's it seems like, you you go back to, like, the whole t you know, having a teacher thing. And for a lot of people, it's kinda hard to find that mentor or that teacher where they live, but it is so important for getting just a good solid foundation on because a lot of people don't really realize that the very basic thing of listening to your body and and paying attention to that. It's kinda hard to just tell someone. You know? It's kinda something you have to have to experience or someone has to guide you through it. Do you find that, that that's important, like, for someone?
Yeah. I think it's well, yeah. Both having a teacher and listening to our bodies, I think, are really important. And it it happens slowly. You know, we you know, I'm I'm a work in progress and so is everybody else I know, including the people that are my teachers. Mhmm.
I think it's I think it's really important to be I honestly find the main block in, most of the people that I see, including myself, is this sort of deep seated belief that we have to be something besides just human.
There's this part of ourselves that just thinks that we have to do things right or be perfect or not make mistakes or, you know, and And really I think the people that I see that are most that I think of as being most in touch with the forest and with themselves are people that are very self accepting of and, you know, still they there's still a lot of self inquiry and a lot of self confrontation, but there's not this heavy kind of bad dog bad dog bad dog inner judgment going on.
The inner critic has sort of taken a back seat, and he's just brought it out when he's needed. So I think that's huge. And I think that and along with finding a mentor, having somebody that can mentor that self acceptance is really big also.
Exactly.
So what will your, you're also teaching when you're teaching your class at the IHS, I think you're doing one on on, spiritual plants of Hawaii.
What would be an example of a of a plant or I mean, you've gone already in this conversation a lot into this, but, is there a specific plants you will teach people, or is it more of an approach like we've been talking about?
Probably both. I'm not I don't remember exactly what I submitted to them, in the class, but I'll figure it out when I'm there. You know?
But the there's, yeah, there's there's, I mean, we can talk about spiritual plants of Hawaii, but without understanding the context that those plants emerge from, it it it's it's more challenging. It it it's not it's it's the Hawaiians have a view the same way the Chinese have a view. And with one view, you can fight a war, cook a meal, build a house, make love, heal somebody, you know, with one view. So traditional cultures often have a view and it's often impossible to to take something out of context and to really understand it.
So I'll be talking about specific plants but also the the context that that whole idea emerges from I mean, the Hawaiians had a hundred and sixty different words for rain, a hundred and thirty different words for wind. Wow. There's there's, they could identify the Polynesian navigators could identify more than twenty different wave patterns on the open ocean. Wow.
Right? That's And somebody somebody's paying attention. Mhmm.
And that that knowledge and that awareness only comes in context of the whole.
So, I'm sure I'll talk about individual plants but I can't really it doesn't it doesn't make any sense to talk about the plant without it's like in in a car, I couldn't talk about the brake system without talking about the tires and the steering wheel and, you know, it it has to be in context. So I'll speak about both, I'm sure.
Well, tie that into somebody living in North America and and just, you know, with something like burdock or mullein or dandelion growing in the backyard? I mean, what what and some okay. What I'm saying, Annette, is that people can listen to you and, oh, you're in Hawaii and it's this culture and there's these elders and all this kind of stuff. But there's also the connection which you just said about context, and I'm sure that wisdom could be applied just for people looking out their back door. So how would you make that connection?
I you know, I don't that's a really good question. So for somebody who's not in this sort of cultural context, I think there's two things. I mean, culture is something that we make.
So we can certainly, make things up. You know, that is fine to do that. I mean, I encourage my students to make up their own rituals. It's not like it's not wrong to create culture.
We're doing it right now in this conversation. We're creating culture. Right. And it's huge, you know.
We don't, you know, I I certainly don't. I imagine you don't come from a tribal hunter gatherer cultures that is MSU. Some of it is making stuff up.
You know, just MSU and there's nothing all cultures MSU.
But I find if we can if we can connect to an indigenous people that have lived in the area and hopefully learn their language a little bit, that that will help us. You know all cultures morph. Language morphs and cultures morph and change over time. So it's not that it's a rule that if we're in Alaska we have to study Inuit culture, it's just that it's gonna help us as, you know, as we caucasians create our own earth centered culture, which is what we're doing. Right? This is not that there's something, I mean there is something sacred about traditional culture, but there's also something sacred about what we're doing.
And I make culture without apology. I do not apologize for who I am. So I think that I think that we need both. I think we need to acknowledge traditional cultures and honor host cultures and learn from them what we can, but also go for it. You know? We need to just go for it and and see what makes sense, and bottom line is see what works.
That's brilliant. Because, yeah, that really helps.
Because then people see the, oh, just that it's so much more than just looking at a book, making a recipe, that it's a lifestyle, that it's a way of being, that it's something you bring into the world and it connects to your spirit, and that the healing is really through the relationships and not necessarily just through the constituents or the minerals or the vitamins that it's Yeah.
Exactly. And and being willing to make mistakes, You know? Being willing to quickly you know? Yeah.
Being messy. Being messy. That's us. And So, if folks are coming to Kauai or or, oh, sorry.
You're not you're I mean I'm down on the big island, and also I live on Maui.
Okay. Those two. Wasn't Matt on Kauai or is on Kauai?
Matt's on Kauai. Yeah. Thinking about Matt and I are talking about doing a, a week long, nature skills class on Kauai in August. I think on the I think in the middle of August or on the fifteenth. We're just setting it up now, so that'll be fun. Five days of of, serious dialogues from Matthew and myself. So it'll be it'll be interesting.
Well, that sounds wonder. And, like, I I know you you folks can see the wildcrafter certification, information, but that seems to be kind of a more intensive thing.
But, do you for do you have experiences, like, like that you're doing with Matt or other herbal things that you're doing for people that are just visiting the islands?
Sometimes like an on on Oahu. Well, I'm I'm the dean of the acupuncture college in Hilo, so I've got like three or four, full time jobs just doing that. It's like herding cats here. You know?
But, right. So but when I can and I but my fir I mean, I love Chinese medicine. I love this college, but my first love is, you know, on my hands and knees on the ground with my nose in the in the dirt. You know?
That's my that's my first love. But this this is also important work. So when I have time, I do certifications depending on my schedule. We've got I've got a class coming up, through Transition University on Oahu.
We have, one coming up at the end of February and one coming up at the end of March.
So there are periodically classes. And if people are interested, we can put a class together ad hoc spontaneously. I just need, I need enough people and a heads up, and we can make it happen.
So Hey.
That's an idea. So someone out there wants to put together a little, Hawaii Botanical Adventures, trip and tie David. Just make sure you call me up and invite me.
I'm actually going to be, on the big island, in a week, and I'm very excited.
I needed to look at the details.
You can go have a cup of tea or a beer.
That would be awesome.
And Yeah.
That's maybe that's what Gail even got me to to email and call you.
I just kinda gear myself up for Hawaii.
Great. And, actually, I'll be I'm leaving. I'm going back to Maui on, somewhere around the somewhere between the eighteenth and the twenty second. So, yeah. Cool.
So if we're gonna get together, it'll have to be before then on the big Sounds good.
And, oh, yeah. Your book. I wanted to mention. So Medicine at Your Feed, Healing Plants of the Hawaiian Kingdom.
And you could get that off of earth medicine institute dot com?
Yeah. You can get it from me or you can get it from Amazon.
Yeah. Okay.
And I have another book called How to Worship the Goddess and Keep Your Balls, A Man's Guide to Sacred Sex, which is also available from the website.
Oh, very cool. Alright. And you can find those on Amazon too?
Yeah. You can get those on Amazon.
Sounds like that's yet a topic for another show. Gosh.
Yeah. My partner and I teach sacred sexuality. And, yeah, it's really it's really interesting stuff.
Would have been good for Valentine's Day too.
Right.
So, let's see. And you are speaking at the International Herb Symposium and that's international herb symposium dot com. Learning herbs dot com is a proud sponsor of that event. So you can visit David there too if you happen to be on the East Coast or, actually, you can go anywhere into that. It's a great, great experience. I can't wait to get back there again.
Well, it's gonna be with, Margie. I'm gonna teach a class at Margie's, in Marblehead.
There's gonna be a weekend class. I think the weekend before the symposium, I believe. So we'll be doing a and that'll be a that's that's gonna be a great class. It'll be a lot of hands on stuff, a lot of very practical things you can do, Hawaiian techniques for relating to the forest and to plants and to each other.
And I am, googling, Margie here. And I'm just as as we're live here and trying to get make make sure we can because Margie's site is earth song herbals dot com.
Exactly. Yes. Yeah.
And so And we're doing a weekend class there, and that's gonna be that's gonna be the one where we really get into the, I mean, the the symposium's fine.
I think I have an hour. I have two hour two one hour lectures. But with Margie's, we'll be going in-depth into these practice and how to do them. So that'll be a lot of fun. Margie's wonderful.
Yeah. Well, we've interviewed Margie on her mentor radio, and we also on her mentor dot com, we recorded an herb walk with her at best University. That's gonna be coming up eventually.
We will Fantastic.
We'll get that because we love Margie.
And, and actually, Margie originally put me in touch with you.
So I was really, very excited. Oh, that's I forgot about that. Yeah.
That's right.
Yeah. And so, please, that's a chance to hear David's, teach as well. So earth song herbals dot com. Thank you for mentioning that.
And, because this will go out and lots of people should get this in time to to to Great. Just go go to that that class too. So, yeah. You know, it's been just thank you so much for taking this time, just, you know, with us. It was I mean, I really appreciate it. This was very enlightening, very awesome. I really appreciate your time.
Oh, thank you. Yeah. It's been fun.
And, again, folks, you can visit David over at EarthMedicineInstitute.com. David Bruce Leonard, thank you so much for joining me today on Herb Mentor Radio.
You're welcome, John. Thanks.
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