Learning from Trees by Grace Butcher

If we could,
like the trees,
practice dying,
do it every year
just as something we do—
like going on vacation
or celebrating birthdays,
it would become
as easy a part of us
as our hair or clothing.

Someone would show us how
to lie down and fade away
as if in deepest meditation,
and we would learn
about the fine dark emptiness,
both knowing it and not knowing it,
and coming back would be irrelevant……

See below for the rest of the poem and free Vines, Tassles and Metta basic practice…..

Contents

Online Yoga continues
See Home Page for July, August and Sept dates on
Wed and Sat Ams + Michelle’s Tues Ams
Summer Theme: Grounding, Growing and Flying!
- Honoring the Natural World

Summer Online Special for Newbies!

- One 2 One monthly private sessions

- DropIn to DEEP YOGA - 6/30 and 8/4


In Person Yoga:
Yoga in the Garden, Ukiah 7/30 - 8/13 Tues Eves

Earthing! A Day of Yoga and Clay in Albion 8/11


Retreats 2024

Spanish Spa Retreat 9/15-21, 2024 - Registration Open - Last Call!

Note: No more monthly updates, just occasional reminders re longer workshops. This year I will, after the Spa retreat, be gradually winding down my computer presence and in 2025 will be taking a sabbatical.
See Below: For the rest of Grace’s poem, an article on Wood Wide Web, a free class, and info re Spa Retreat, Online Special and News

Would Trees Vote for Bernie Sanders?

Recently there have been a plethora of plant books appearing and some of them suggest that we know so little and assume so much about trees, this species that actually occupies a biomass thousands of times more than that of our own human species. Since the publication of a book in the 70s called the Secret Life of Plants by Tompkins and Bird (not to be confused by many other similar titles), there has been a magnetic draw to unravel tree mysteries, their powers of communication and the possibility that they live in a more kindly cooperative socialist world than the one that most of us live in right now.

Unfortunately, this book although its enquiry still inspires many towards the lure of plant intelligence today, was righteously discredited in terms of scientific data and plant truths. For many years afterwards, scientists would refrain from using the word “intelligence” or even “behaviour” in reference to plants and trees. This was explained in a recent plant inspiring book by Zoe Schlanger - The Light Eaters, and in a Guardian article by Daniel Immerwahr. Both decry the damage that this book did, creating a great deal of skepticism in the scientific world and drying up funding for research, but they also acknowledge that there is fascinating information appearing from all over the globe about plant “behaviour”. Even dare we say it, plant consciousness!

Recently studies are coming to light that actually support some of the basic premises of that 70s popular favorite - where we all learned to talk to our plants - despite all its inacuracies. In 1997 Suzanne Simard, author of the more recent “Finding the Mother Tree”, published in the magazine “Nature” with 5 co-authors research that indicated trees share resources via fungal connections, which defied the 1970s hue and cry re Tompkins and Birds book.
Suzanne: The forest is ”a system of centres and satellites, where the old trees were the biggest communication hubs and the smaller ones the less busy nodes, with messages transmitting back and forth through the fungal links”.
Suzanne’s TED talk on this theme in 2016 was heralded as an exciting vista into the wisdom and lessons to be learned from fellow species. Suzanne met a great deal of resistance in her early research years although she has since found acclaim being honored as one of the 100 most important people on the planet, her research is being questioned and the idea of plant consciousness, and tree web communications. Her work inspired another popular book, the Overstory by Richard Powers. German Forester Peter Wohleban’s bestseller, The Secret Life of Trees, written at a similar time to Suaznne’s talk, describes tree roots as “fibre optic internet cables”, and we have been getting - even the botanical lay person - a powerful sense of a magical reality previously ignored or dismissed.
Immerwahr: ““We are standing at the precipice of a new understanding of plant life,” the journalist Zoë Schlanger writes. Her captivating new book, The Light Eaters, describes a set of researchers studying plant sensing and behaviour, who have come to regard their subjects as conscious. Just as artificial intelligence champions note that neural networks, despite lacking actual neurons, can nevertheless perform strikingly brain-like functions, some botanists conjure notions of vegetal intelligence.”

Zoe Schlanger left her career as a climate journalist, somewhat burned out, and turned to the inspiration of plants, traveling the globe and meeting scientists in jungles and in forests and labs. Their research peppers her book with fascinating details of plants like the Boquila plant, a plant from Chile that mimics other plants. It is still unclear if this mimicking is through some type of visual faculty, or possibly some air born microbial transfer and once again, scientists are relatively guarded about how they language their findings these days. A scientist in Missouri discovers that plants recognize their kin, and give preferential treatment to them in terms of access to light and space for roots.

At the Bioneers conference in 2018, I remember listening to a talk by Monica Gagglioni, about other amazing potentials in the plant world - where her experiments showed how plants communicate. She also discussed the importance of imagination in the scientific world and has to deal with a great deal of skepticism and ridicule in the academic arena, especially after her book Thus Spoke the Plant revealed that part of her scientific inspiration came from an ayahuasca ritual in Peru. In spite of this and perhaps in part due to it!, her work has appealed to wider audiences and her argument is that the only way we create new revelations in the world is by bringing imagination and rigor together.

So what is it that appeals to us so strongly about this mysterious weblike interplay? Is it simply an escapism into a reality that is less tarnished by the competitiveness and brutality of our everyday? Or do we sense, know on a deeper level, that this is at least one of the ways nature evolves and thrives. Zoe doesn’t mention Suzanne in her book (at least so far, not finished yet!) but she does voice her own delight and fascination at all things plant like and the whole discussion around plant consciousness. Immerwahr mentions literary scholar Rob Nixon, who sees the wood wide web as an economic parable, it just feels instinctively right. “It gives us the trees for our times: anti-capitalist, feminist and extremely online”

If plant life is sentient, what does that leave us to eat? I know that personally Zoe’s book has made me extra conscious of walking on plants - the research on plants feeling pain is there! And whether some of the details of Suzanne’s, Monica’s and others research are not entirely accurate, there is something more than just a deluded comfort zone here. We are so disconnected from the natural world that perhaps we need to anthropomorphize to actually regain something lost, to belong. The pandemic proved to so many how significant contact with our wilder being, and our wilder kith and kin, is. There is enough evidence to simply marvel at how much is going on way below (or above!) our rather limited sense of human intelligence.

In yoga practice, the inspiration that can come from our plant kith and kin indubitably eases that sense of disconnection. Some of the classes that I receive the most appreciative feedback from, are those that bring the wisdoms and inspiration from trees, flowers, oceans, animal - our kith and kin into our movement and breath. Even if my botanical language and understanding is crude! one is clearly tapping into a more profound sense of collective learning that the indigenous peoples knew and know. Children understand this. The ancient yogis knew this - so many poses have animal names - Eagle, Locust, Lion - or refer to the natural world - Mountain, Tree. These are our invaluable gurus.

The trees and plants are not going to save us anytime soon from the intense current election cycles and our political and climate chaos, but it is exciting that more and more is being revealed that can lead us to a clearer and more compassionate view of the universe. How can it not?

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Take care and talk/listen to your plants and the amazing web of your dear bodies…
M

From Grace Butcher’s Learning from Trees

Whatever it is the trees know
when they stand undone,
surprisingly intricate,
we need to know also
so we can allow
that last thing
to happen to us
as if it were only
any ordinary thing,

leaves and lives
falling away,
the spirit, complex,
waiting in the fine darkness
to learn which way
it will go.