Matthew Wood Institute of Herbalism

... as he leads us in an exploration of the relationship between the realm of shamanism and practices and the traditional use of herbs. Matt builds upon the foundation developed in the endocrine systems class to deepen our understanding of the interrelationship between our bodies, the animals, and the plants. We move from the logical and literal into the dream time knowledge that exists in the world of spirit.

He paints a picture of how to connect with the spirit of the plants through journeying and how to use the doctrine of signatures (what a plant looks like, how it is used by animals, their spirit signatures) to better understand the fullness of their medicine.

Then he moves on to the use of animal medicine powers to help understand illnesses and find the right herbal treatments by matching people’s specific constitutions, personalities, and cultural contexts to the herbal remedies. We visit the medicine animals and explore how it is that these creatures embody specific archetypal energies that correspond to specific plants and their healing properties. One example: Bear (burdock, angelica, spikenard).

Matt says that in a previous edition of this class “many students understood what an important lesson I was trying to convey: this material, mixing the doctrine of signatures, Nature Wisdom, animal and plant medicines, and endocrine typology reveals the underlying patterns of herbal medicine in a way that nothing else does.”

Herbs can act as shamanic forces to open us up to with wisdom of Nature so join us to step out of the Materia medica and into the interplay of spirit, plant, and animal wisdom!

We highly recommend taking the Endocrine System class prior to this since much of what is discussed is tied to the knowledge shared there. 

This class is included in the Animal Medicines course.

NOTE - This course was filmed before the MWIH officially began. The sound is less than ideal. Newer classes are filmed with high-quality video and audio equipment.