The Essence of a Plant

The northern desert was alive this weekend. My partner and I and our two dogs have a small casita up in Dolan Springs, tucked away on two-and-a-half acres that backs up to a mountain and public lands. The sun sets over the Mojave desert with Joshua trees silhouetting the property. And when I’m there, I’m home. In the next few years, when I move up there full time, we plan on turning that haven into a fertile land to sustain all matter of life. But for now, it’s a place I go for a long weekend, unplug, create, and make medicine with the native plants.

Beavertail prickly pear blossom in the Mojave Desert at the Dolan Springs Trail system

This weekend, the plants were bursting with life, purple chia was dotting the paths, desert marigold was popping up along the roadsides, the Joshua tree yellow-green blossoms were coming to life, and the prickly pear bursting forth with their vivid, hot pink, 24-hour blossoms that to me rival the beauty of a peony.

As an Energy Alignment Guide, my primary calling is to help people align their energy. Sometimes, our energy is running one way, when we need and want to be headed in another direction. When that gap occurs-- the fracture of our energy and spirit shows up as resistance.

But resistance doesn’t have to be the enemy. It can be the puzzle piece that brings us back together and moves us into flow. When we unlock flow, the deepest and most beautiful expression of who we are comes out in our work, our relationships, and our own life. The result? Fulfillment, joy, ease, and peace.

But what makes plants such a powerful ally in this quest for energy alignment? 

They can’t move. 

We can run. We can exit. We can go somewhere else. We can physically relocate ourselves away from our environment and into new environments.

Plants, to a large extent, cannot. At least not as quickly and on the timetable we can.  Because of that, plants are masters of adapting to their environment vs. changing their environment in order to survive and thrive.

Those lessons and blessings are encoded and expressed in their phytochemical make-up, which we then consume as food and medicine (or avoid as a toxin). For example, the prickly pear now in bloom is known for their ability to easily procreate from a pad that dries up and lands on the ground, which it does by default at maturity if not consumed. They grow quickly compared to their cacti counterparts, and most of them have thorns to keep them safe. However, if you get past the thorns, they are the most nutritive cacti you will find in the desert. Everything from their pads (nopales) to their fruit (tunas) are edible and you can drink their cactus water without the same psychoactive, emetic (nausea and vomiting), and dehydrating effects that you would find with most other cacti. In addition, the medicine of the nopales is traditionally used to help pull out the fine cacti hairs that like to get stuck in your body. So the plant herself becomes the antidote to her defenses.

Plants have energetic signatures, just like we do. We may not know exactly how it works all the time, but we know they communicate through signals ranging from colors, scents, chemicals, and vibrations. They communicate with each other, pollinators, other animals, and plants, and if we learn to listen, they can communicate with us too.

When I first sat down with a prickly pear in full bloom, I felt nourished, mothered, and uplifted.

That is the essence of the prickly pear's lessons and blessings. They have learned to survive and thrive in the desert by growing and propagating with ease, so they pass that same nourishment to us, reminding us there is always enough to feed and nourish tired bodies.

This wisdom is carried in the plant's phytochemicals and its energetic structure.

And that is where flower essences (or any plant essences) support energy alignment. When we consume a flower or plant essence made with care and with the permission and co-creative powers of the plant, we are consuming the plant's energy. We are subtly reminded of the lessons and blessings the plant learned because they had to adapt to their environment vs. leaving it. In small micro-doses, one moment at a time, we are reminded how to do what they do best.

Which explains why the prickly pear felt so nourishing. I wasn’t surprised when I researched her essence and learned that the prickly pear flower essence nourishes dry and tired souls.

This weekend, I felt the beauty and gratitude of being deeply soul nourished by the prickly pear blossom as it came and went. Twenty-four hours of brilliance capturing the day-to-day truths she holds deeply in her DNA and has decided to share with the world.

Whether you work with a plant on an energetic or phytochemical level, you are choosing to work with the wisdom of that plant because it’s what you need a bit more of in your life right now.

So if you are starting your plant journey, the first question is. What plant is calling to you? And what wisdom do you need the most in your life right now?