The Spirit Botanica Ethos

Sustainable & ethical herbalism is at the heart of the Spirit Botanica apothecary, prioritising: 

• Sourcing high-quality, vital, organic herbs.

  • Herbs grown in this way offer superior benefit to our bodies, whilst their farming & harvesting are also supportive for Earth.

• Using Australian grown herbs wherever possible.

  • This fosters connection and relationship with the local land we live upon, whilst also reducing the ‘food miles’ the herbs spend being transported, supporting Earth's health also. 

• Choosing home compostable packaging, labels & mailer bags wherever possible.

  • To reduce the amount of plastic & waste that otherwise takes excessive time to break down, again placing Earth at the center of our decision making.

• Grow roots in place:

  • Growing my own herbal medicines where possible, and connecting with and sourcing medicinal plants from local growers. Making medicine from this place, for these people.

• Continuing to learn:

  • More about the roots of western herbalism, and unpack colonialist thinking and appropriation when revealed.

• Listen & give back:

  • Seek opportunities to listen and learn from local indigenous people, currently the Gubbi Gubbi/Kabi Kabi people. Additionally, seek ways for Spirit Botanica to give back to local and international communities.

Connecting with the Land Around You

An integral part to connecting more deeply with this land, and therefore the Earth, is to use what resources I have around me. 

To look in my garden, down the road or at the local nature reserve for the things I am seeking. 

We have an abundance of native plants in this country. However…

Research into their medicinal properties is in its infancy. 

The listening to First Nations people about the health and culinary benefits of this continent’s plants is small. 

And yet on the flip side, the herbal medicine industry is a multi-multi-million dollar industry. 

• We ship in Ginseng from Russia and China. 

• Peppermint and Chamomile from Europe.

• Echinacea from America. 

• Licorice from China. 

• Withania/Ashwagandha from India

Beyond using plants for medicinal purposes like those above, we also use natural items for ritual and spiritual connection.

However, we have almost innumerable ways to connect spiritually with the land around us. 

We have so, so many tools and elements found on these lands that could facilitate our spiritual practices. 

And yet, 

• We import Cacao from Guatemala. 

• Palo Santo from South America. 

• White Sage from America. 

• Singing bowls from Tibet. 

I’m on a curious mission to find what this land has to offer.

I endeavour to connect more deeply with the land whilst reducing my consuming footprint on this Earth. 

But also, this isn’t just a sustainability issue. 

It’s a personal one too.

In doing these things, we’re missing out on a beautiful, sacred and potent opportunity to connect more deeply with the land around us. 

What if we instead walked out our door, and asked:

• Asked what plant native to these lands will help me open my heart? How should I use or consume it?

• What plants and herbs can I collect and burn to help clear and move the energy in my space? 

• What plant, stone, mountain, space or element can show me how to connect to my Higher Self?   

• How does the land wish for me to give back in thanks for all she shows and gives me? 

How fulfilled we would be, how blissed out and connected in, how loved up the land all around us would be, if we shut down the PayPal cart and instead walked outside. 

There is so much richness waiting for us in connecting with the land this way, so much healing available to the Earth. 

Another opportunity to strengthen my roots here. 

Every natural being around me, that I pass by through my day, has some potential wisdom to share with me. 

I never feel more tapped in, connected, peaceful and deeply content than when I am working with the land. It is a soothing balm, a sweet panacea to the modern world.

I am reminded of my place in the web of it all. And how much nature is alive and wanting to communicate and connect with us all.

The Land I Come From & Land I'm On - Reconciling Place & Relationship

My ancestors hail from England and Ireland (mostly). 

My complexion and bodys’ general intolerance to heat certainly confirms that for me. 

And yet, I’m here. In Australia. 

Arrived by way of British colonisation, a lineage full of convict stories, I am the result of people being offered this foreign land as an alternate option to death. 

For these ancestors of mine, I ponder:

• What roots can you fuse with a land when you don't actually want to be there? 

• When the landscape seems so harsh, and all you’ve ever known is back at the start of a one way boat trip?

• What connection can you spark when you arrive with a colonists mindset, seeing the land as yours to own, take and exploit? 

After this initial migration, subsequent generations perhaps started to feel more similar to me I can only guess. Born here. All they know. Did they feel like I do, that within their viscera Australia is their home?

Within my family tree, whatever new roots were shooting down into this land, they grew a little deeper as the generations past and more people spent time here. 

But I am here today, the result of one to two hundred years of my ancestors walking this country, and my roots still feel shallow. 

Because that time pales in comparison to the age and timeline of the Earth. 

Because it’s but a fleeting moment compared to the tens of thousands of years that my ancestors lived upon their indigenous Northern European lands. 

Because the quality of this colonist-based connection is so flimsy compared to the true relationship that my ancestors had with the land that they and I are actually indidgenous to. 

But I am here today. 

Privileged to be here. 

So I ask myself, in benefit to the Earth and me, how can I deepen these roots?

How can I enter into right relationship with this land? 

It feels like my duty and right, being here as a result of colonisation, to try and develop a different relationship, made up of reciprocity, listening, co-creation and tending. 

Because if I don't start consciously building and strengthening my roots, how will the people to come after me ever start to feel this place is deeply their home? To be revered, celebrated and protected at all costs. 

Green rolling Irish hills, falling mists and alpine forests conduct a deep Knowing resonance within my bones. I feel their call, because of how much of me comes from there. 

Could I even comprehend how many hours my ancestors would’ve spent walking on their land, farming and tending it, foraging it, celebrating amidst it, creating life, mourning death and living alongside it? 

I feel this resonance in my bones for those European lands because of how inextricably linked and connected my ancestors were to their part of the Earth. 

I only feel that connection because they were so connected. 

How can Australia, the land all around us, ever truly thrive: 

• If we do not become as inextricably linked? 

• If we maintain this colonist mindset of ownership and extraction?

• If we do not sit at the feet of First Nations people who DO have this link and connection and listen to them?

So yes, how can the land ever thrive if we don’t connect.

But also, how can we as humans living here ever truly thrive if we don’t connect with the land. 

I want to acknowledge the deep roots I have in lands across the sea, that I’ve barely walked upon, because of the people who came before me. 

And I want to acknowledge the shallow roots all non-indidgenous people who live in Australia have with this land, simply by living here, and how much it is our task to strengthen and grow them.  

Each spring and summer especially, as my pale skin burns under this hot sun, I wonder how I can make sense of it all within me. The history in my bones, and the current land and task at hand. 

Whilst also celebrating it, my deep DNA still seems bewildered sometimes by the humid heat, rolling surf and dry scrub. 

But we’ve inherited the job of entering into a true and important relationship with this land, listening to it and tending to it. 

It is our exchange for having the privilege of being able to call it home. 

And as we do this work, our roots will grow - ever longer and more pliable. 

Till the resonance of this land down our lineage hums so strongly, so resonantly, it is revered like the sacred Earth that it is. It becomes the land the generations after me feel so so connected to, it is knitted into their bones just as the UK is to me now. 

So I am always pondering, and I invite you to do the same:

• How can I land more deeply on this land? 

• How can I listen to her with more presence? 

• How can I always arrive to work WITH her? 

• How can I preserve and regenerate her? 

• How can I invest in this land with my time, energy and love? 

The vision I hold and invest in, is that all our roots grow.  

Stuck? Feeling Big Things? The 1 Thing You Can Do

If it's all feeling too much, too big or too unknown, tap into the once resource that is always here waiting, holding you and rising to meet you - however you're feeling.

Audio Transcript

Next time you're struggling with something, you don't have the answer for something, you're wondering about something - an unknown, an angst. I invite you to do one thing.

Just go outside.

Go outside and find a patch of nature. And let the environment transform you. It may not mean that the answer will come to you. It may not mean that you will get insight necessarily, although you very well may.

But she will hold you, Earth will meet you. She will soothe you, and the trees and the grass and the flowers and the animals and the insects they will provide solace.

It is impossible for this to not happen.

It is one of our most beautiful jobs, being a human being on this planet, and also one of our rights, and also something that the Earth asks us to do, to anchor things into her.

And maybe we think that this has to be sunshine and happiness and joy and gifts that were meant to give her, but all she asks us to do is show up in our most raw and human state. Where there can be anguish, or mourning or loss or shame or guilt or anger. Or rage or resentment.

And she says to you: gift this to me, anchor your energy into the Earth. Put your rage into me, put your loss into me. Gift it to me, because I want it all.

So all you have to do when you're struggling with something, all I invite you to do, if you feel like you can't do anything else, if nothing else feels possible or doable, understandable...

Just go outside. Go out into nature. Let the wind be curious over your skin, and let all of the natural things around you soothe you. Even if that's all they do in that moment, but put your anguish, put your questions, put your uncertainty out into the Earth.

Anchor it into everything that you can see around and let that yearning to know what to change or transcend to be there.

And then ask: what do I need to know? What guidance can you give me about this? How can we work on this together? And it is so fascinating and so beautiful, but also feels like a total homecoming and total remembering at the same time - to see what can rise up to you.

And that all comes from just walking outside.

Learning From Nature - When Things Take Time

Audio Transcript:

We bought a house about 2 years ago, and finally we got our shiz together and planted a garden a couple of months ago. So last year in Australia was coming to the end of winter and we set up all the garden beds one weekend, and then we transplanted lots of the plants that I had had in pots on our veranda.

I got some cuttings from family from my mum from friends for some random lady down the road and planted some seeds, so fascinating this morning now, a couple of months on or in the last few weeks.

Spring has really hit its stride, all of the flowers coming out to play and all of the trees and the bushes and well all the little trees at the moment, and the shrubs that were growing or sprouting leaves.

And it was such a reflection for me because we've been away for the last couple of weeks as well like coming back and knowing all of my plant friends so intimately in my garden. I could go through and look at each one and be like Wow, you've got like an extra five flowers on you and you have these brand new leaves when you haven't before and you've tripled in size.

It was like coming back and seeing how all of my little plant friends and allies had grown. But for so long, like for this couple of months between planting them, getting it all set up and then now, for a long time, nothing happened.

Well, it looked like nothing was happening. We put some plants in and maybe it looked like that they withered a little bit and some of the leaves on the outside of the bush or the little grass, you know, like shrivelled up, Or just it wasn't growing, it wasn't wilting or wasn't dying. It was stationary and just sitting. Or you know its petals closed off and it kind of looked like it was going dormant a little bit.

And being someone brand new to this gardening in the Earth game - t's just so easy for those stories to blow your head to be like, Am I doing it right? Is it dying am I feeding it? Is it in the right spot? Is it getting enough sun? I don't really know. I feel a little bit unsure about all of this.

And then all of a sudden, you know all of these shoots will show up and all of these new leaves will come through and all of these buds will start to grow. There had to be a time in between. And I really think that all of us, especially us who are consciously aware and trying to live, you know, emotionally rich lives. We are always in a time of transition. We're always in a time in between where we explore something we ponder we desire to make change or we wish to reach a goal. And then there's a scene between states where we're working towards achieving or yearning for and wondering how it could come to be and surrendering, waiting for the answer to arrive.

And this is so reflected in nature. You know we are nature, and it's just very what I really want to remind you here is all the stories that came up to me with my garden, where so much was going on underneath the surface. You know they have been planted in fresh new Earth these plants, which in our analogy is akin to our new ideas or new dreams, and they had to send that energy down or they had to bring that energy inward for a period to create roots and to connect with a new environment they were in and then they could start to flourish on the outside with new leaves or new flowers when the buds.

But so much was happening underneath the surface in that time that I couldn't see. And in that time where nothing looks like it was changing. When really so much was, that's when all those stories came up for me being like, Am I doing this right? Is this really going to be, these desires that I have for this garden are they going to come true? Am I doing right? Am I doing it wrong?

It's so natural for these things to come up when we're in the midst of a personal transformation, but something is happening. Something is changing. There are things going on. The most beautiful, most utmost example is the butterfly going into the chrysalis coming out as the butterfly. You know from an external observer, it looks like nothing is happening in that little chrysalis, a raindrop looking thing hanging on the bottom level, when really inside of it there isliterally the soup of the catapillar, that ceases its current form and then completely rebuilds itself into something new, and that is such a feminine way to flow with life.

Our truest superpower is surrender. And the more that we can work on harnessing that the more that we can be in those times in between and be like heck yeah, I've got this.

Heck yeah these stories coming up of like, Is this for me? And is this too much? Will come up. But I know that it might look like nothing's happening. But the answer is coming to me. And the truth will be illuminated or the change that I desire is coming or the changes that I'm making in my day to day life or how I run my energy or live my life are all adding up to something. I know this to be true.

So please take this to any part of your life that you are transitioning. When you're at a stage or space in between - that you are in the incubation, you are the beautiful little seedling newly within the Earth. It might look like no change is happening when really everything is happening. And you're having a magnificent interaction with the environment around you and what is going to happen will come to pass. It's just some surrender in the meantime.

Your Soul Came to Experience It All

Bad emotions.

Good emotions.

We spend our time running from one and toward another.

Actually - emotions are neither bad nor good.

So what do we do then?

Watch, listen or read below to learn how, and why your soul came to experience it all…

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Transcript:

Have you ever felt a bad emotion?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that you have.

I think it's pretty an unavoidable part of being a human being! And bad emotions that can span anything from annoyance, frustration, all the way through to these bigger ones. Bigger emotions like anger, fear, resentment, guilt, shame, loss, projection. And I don't feel super fun when we feel them, do they? It's not a very common for our brain or our nervous system to be like, "Sure, feel these, these are great. Let's go here. Let's actively choose to spend time feeling fear and sadness."

But we label these as bad emotions. And I want to put these into inverted commas because really feeling any emotion, whether we as human beings have labeled it as good or bad, is actually a very, very good thing, no matter what it is. And that is primarily because we are a soul or spirit that has come to have a human experience. At the moment of conception your soul incarnated into you, into your body and came into physical form. And there's a couple of reasons that a soul will do that. First is that it may or does have a purpose, a greater sole purpose, that it wishes to come and fulfill and to birth and to gift the world at this particular time.

It comes, your soul or she comes with particular gifts that she will give you and work with you to harness and to cultivate, to then give the world at this particular time, in this particular moment. And then another reason that your soul will also come to earth is to experience the light and the dark. So our soul is universal consciousness. Unconditional love is a way to think of our soul. Our soul is very, very used to or knows very well coming from a place of source, energy, of unconditional love, of feeling the good, of feeling the light. And it actively chooses to come to earth to also experience the dark.

Think about that. Your soul actively came here to experience the dark, to experience it all. And if you can think about how by experiencing the dark you can experience more light. That is a primary reason why your soul chooses to do this. By going into the dark, we're able to expand our capacity and our appreciation for the good. A very general example of this, which you may have experienced in your own life, I know that I have, is when you experience loss, loss of any kind. When you experience that, you enter into that space of experiencing those bad emotions. You might be experiencing the sadness and the fear and the loss that comes with that experience. That may also come with some anger and some guilt or some shame or some regret. But going through an experience like that invariably has us sitting in a place where these bad emotions are rising.

But if you then sit with these emotions and you really let them be here and you feel them, you can then turn to the other parts of your life that are filled with light, that do bring you those good emotions. And you can enter into them and be enriched by them so much more. You can look at all of the other connections or relationships or elements of your life that do bring you joy and happiness, and you treasure them and you appreciate them with so much more depth. And you can go into those moments where you're experiencing that happiness or that joy or that pleasure, and you can really go there and be there so much more.

So by being with the dark or the bad, we're able to experience more of the light.

And so it becomes about that Yin and Yang. You can't have one without the other. You can't have more of one without journeying into the other one. This is what your soul came here to do. She wants to experience the dark or the bad. So when you are in a situation where you are feeling emotions that we as human beings have labeled as bad, it's because they are perceived by our brain or our nervous system as a threat to our survival or as a threat to us belonging in the tribe. Because our brains and our nervous systems, they're pretty ancient and they can't really distinguish between physical or psychological stress. And so if we're experiencing rage or regret or anger or loss or fear or sadness, that then activates that ancient part of our brain that says, "Wow, maybe we're at threat here. Maybe my survival is threatened. Maybe when I feel vulnerable and exposed, my capacity to belong to the tribe and to be accepted is threatened."

And so to our ancient nervous system and our brain, that equals bad. That equals no-go. And your brain will want to either get you to leave that situation, skip out of it, or it will want you to take those emotions, pack them up into a box and put them somewhere else. Because overall our brain, our nervous system wants us to just not feel and not be threatened. Because our brain and nervous system is trying to keep us alive, trying to get us to the next moment in one piece. But we know this higher energy, this soul energy of unconditional love is very powerful and it's part of our purpose to come here and feel it all. So even though our nervous system might be telling us that it's bad and that it doesn't want to, we have the capacity to feel these emotions, and not only do we have the capacity, we as souls yearn to feel it all. The whole entire spectrum.

And what a job as a human being, to look at the whole entire spectrum of emotions that we can feel and not label them as good or bad. But to just a label them as emotions and sensations that we can experience. And it's quite profound to then understand that if I can sit with and embrace an emotion that feels uncomfortable or that I may or society may have labeled as bad, it then actually allows me to journey through into more of the good, into more of the light. And when I experienced more of one, it then allows me to experience more of the other. So I can't have one without the other. I can't have the good emotions or to feel them and experience them with such richness and such depth, I cannot do that without fully experiencing a bad or dark emotions with richness and with depth as well. Because the deeper we go in that area, the deeper we can go into the light.

And this is part of your soul's mission. This is what she is lit up by. And when you are experiencing emotion that brings you hurt and brings you pain, it is a moment where things are intense and it will not stay and it will not be there forever. But it is a moment that your soul relishes because it means that she gets to be here having this human imperfectly wonderful experience that she electively chose to come and have when she incarnated into physical form here in this lifetime. So here's the challenge for all of us, and this is something that we all continue to work with and journey with our whole entire lifetime. How when we are experiencing an emotion that our brain may label as bad, can we stay? Can we invite it? Can we be here with it? Because that is what our soul, the bigger, more expensive energy, much bigger than our nervous systems energy, that is what she yearns to do. And that is where the richness and the light and the dark experiences of life lie.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this in the comments!

Claire xo