I remembered again this morning, putting a drop of tree sap in my hand — plant medicine is contextual. That’s why it can be both more and less exciting than we expect.

Plants are not typically solely wiping out symptoms — they’re bringing us into deeper relationship with the emotional, physical, psychological, and relational roots of what those symptoms are calling us toward in the first place. This can be subtle and it can be awe-some. But the way plant intelligence moves in us is always contextual.

Meaning: the environment in which it’s received matters. The time and place are not separate from how the medicine is working, how it’s communicating. Some of the reason people say “I tried this particular medicine and nothing happened” lives right there: the context isn’t incidental, it’s part of the medicine.

The subtle realm, where a lot of plant communication is really moving, can be easy for us to miss in our habitual states. A plant can require a noticing that is otherwise out of awareness. That is part of the healing that brings us back.

What do you notice when you touch the medicine? When you smell it? When you see it, what do you “see”?

What is moving through your head when you engage with it?

When it enters your system or you make contact, what changes?

Mentally, emotionally, physically?

What do you notice you don’t notice?

One drop of sap can illicit all this and more.

In my long experience with pharmaceutical medications, they generally don’t operate this way. They’re not contextual medicine, which is also why they can be effective for symptoms but not for causes. They manage, they may even eradicate, but they generally do not address.

Causes are relational.

Causes are contextual.

Causes are multi-layered and take time to unravel.

Everything you notice,

matters.

There is always, always context to the causes of our illness — and until the layers of its context are addressed, there’s not really a way to offer the body the completion—the conciliation—it’s looking for by bringing up these patterns in the first place.