What is Plant Spirit Medicine?
A gentle healing tradition in which plants themselves become the medicine, for the spirit, not just the body.
Plant Spirit Medicine (PSM) works differently from herbalism. Rather than being taken as remedies for their chemical properties, plants are approached as living, aware beings with their own healing wisdom to offer. In a session, a practitioner works in partnership with the spirit of a plant, asking it to help restore balance in a person's emotional, mental and energetic life, often bringing relief to physical symptoms as a welcome side effect.
A living tradition
Plant Spirit Medicine was founded in the 1980s by American healer Eliot Cowan, who wove together two much older traditions into one practical approach.
Our lineage
An acupuncturist who began asking plants directly for their help in healing his patients, and found they answered. He named the resulting practice Plant Spirit Medicine.
Cowan trained under Worsley in England, learning the ancient Chinese Five Element framework that still shapes how PSM understands a person's character and health.
A Japanese acupuncturist who devised an elegant method, still used in the tradition today, for reading the left,right energetic balance in the body. Worsley learned it directly from him and folded it into Five Element practice, from where it passed to Cowan and into PSM.
Cowan apprenticed for many years with this Huichol elder, whose indigenous tradition of speaking directly with plant spirits forms the practice's shamanic heart.
Active custodians
Visit Touched by NatureLucy came to Plant Spirit Medicine after a journey through community arts, tai chi and other energetic healing systems, and has been in practice since 2006. She combines her healing work with other arts and performance activities which also explore the nature of deep and transformative change. An initiated firekeeper with the Sacred Fire community, she is a therapeutic counsellor and has also trained as a funeral celebrant. She is the author of The Wave Hub Chronicles (2011), and in 2019 co-authored Touched by Nature: Plant Spirit Medicine Journeys with Pip Waller.
lucywells.ukA medical herbalist and Plant Spirit Medicine healer living in North Wales, UK, Pip has been practising and teaching natural healing methods for nearly 40 years. Her first book, Holistic Anatomy (2009), continues to grow in popularity. In 2015 she wrote The Herbal Handbook of Home & Health, 501 herbal recipes for everything from laundry and medicines to string, followed in 2018 by a shorter 350-recipe edition, The Health and Beauty Botanical Handbook. Her third book, Deeply Holistic, an inspiring book about being human and caring for all of our needs, came out in January 2018. In 2019 she co-authored Touched by Nature: Plant Spirit Medicine Journeys with Lucy Wells.
pipwaller.co.ukThe Five Elements
At the heart of the medicine sits an old Chinese map of nature: five elements, each governing a season, an emotion, and an aspect of body, mind and spirit. Everyone leans toward one element more than the others, it shapes character, gifts, and the particular way a person tends to fall out of balance. The elements flow into one another in a continuous cycle, each nourishing the next, the way spring gives way to summer, and summer to harvest.
The energy of growth and vision. Its gift is the drive to become; its imbalance shows as anger or frustration.
The energy of connection and warmth. Its gift is joy and relationship; its imbalance shows as isolation.
The energy of nourishment and care. Its gift is sympathy and security; its imbalance shows as worry.
The energy of essence and worth. Its gift is respect and quality; its imbalance shows as grief.
The energy of will and depth. Its gift is courage and endurance; its imbalance shows as fear.
What a first visit is like
Your first session usually opens with a long, relaxed conversation about your health and life story. There's nothing to prepare, just come as you are.
No needles and no undressing are required. You simply rest while the practitioner works with the plants on your behalf.
PSM tends to work gradually, helping people feel steadier, more themselves, and better able to meet whatever life brings.
PSM Healer Directory
With practitioners Europe-wide, discover the PSM healers closest to you on the map below.