The True Meaning of Plant Spirit Medicine
I am known as Plant Spirit Medicine Woman. I received my natural name during a Sacred Tobacco Ceremony whilst in training with a Shamanic teacher called Seersha, around 8 years ago. Seersha was facilitating a traditional tobacco ceremony for a small group of shamanic students, she held space in the traditional way that had been taught to her by her Ecuadorian teacher, a famous shaman known as Kurakindi. I had also worked with Kurakindi, I had sat with him in 2 tobacco ceremonies in previous years, working once in circle and once 1-2-1 and hold deep reverence for his gifts as a healer and protector of the rainforests.
During our sacred tobacco ceremony, we sat in circle, called in our spirit guides and the elements to protect our sacred space, and we drank a bitter-tasting cup of tobacco tea. Tobacco is a really powerful plant medicine used by the people of the Amazon rainforests to help clear parasites and bring clarity and visions. And when you drink it as a tea, it can make you purge like a demon! After a few of the participants experienced their purge phase, we meditated for a few hours.
During the meditation, I fell into a very deep trance state. I was fully conscious of the room I was in, like a deep state of hypnosis. I could hardly move my body, and my eyes just didn't want to open. The spirit of tobacco came to me during my deep trance state and whispered in my ear, ‘You are Plant Spirit Medicine Woman’. The funniest part for me was as I was coming out of the trance, it was time for Seersha to gift us a natural name, which she had channeled for us. She whispered in my ear, ‘You are Cacao Spirit Medicine Woman. ’ I remember feeling slightly defiant; in my mind, my inner voice said, ‘No, I am Plant Spirit Medicine Woman! Tobacco just told me!’ I didn't say this out loud to the group; that would have appeared rude and ungrateful. I wanted to act respectfully, not act as if I was rejecting my teacher's gift. I also deeply appreciated that she saw my ceremonial work with cacao and the power and grace I bring to this work as a channel for Mama cacao’s medicine, as a medicine I carry in service to the world, for all our relations.
Now, I choose to work with the name ‘Plant Spirit Medicine Woman’ as my professional name. In truth, I am both, as my work as a Cacao Spirit Medicine Woman is a very big part of my work at this time. But declaring myself as having 2 names, on top of my original name Sorrell Robbins, would be too confusing, and quite frankly - terrible for SEO! Plant Spirit Medicine Woman encompasses the work I do more fully as a Medical Herbalist and teacher of Plant Spirit Medicine. My Plant Spirit Medicine teachings weave into my work as a healer and teacher. Whether it involves working with cacao or peppermint, calendula or sage, I am here to connect the people to the plants. I am here in service the plants and to help us, humanity, come back into balance with nature. And plants are, in my view, our greatest teachers in this respect.
In recent years, my natural name has led people to me who are really searching for psychedelic therapy. During the last couple of years, at least once a week, I will receive an email or a message via social media from a new connection asking if I host psychedelic ceremonies. Because Plant Spirit Medicine has become a phrase very much synonymous with the practice of psychedelic therapy, people new to my work, often quite naturally, assume this is the work I am doing. I spend time with each enquiry explaining that I only work within the law of the country I live in. I also always encourage them to connect with sources outside of the UK to find a way to receive psychedelic medicine in a legal, safe, and sacred way.
There is a small part of me that is frustrated with the way that Plant Spirit Medicine has been chosen as the term that psychedelic therapists use to describe their work. I believe they chose this phrase because in most countries, psychedelics are illegal. In the UK, both Mushrooms and the DMT-containing herbs that are used in ayahuasca ceremonies are illegal and considered A-class drugs. Now, Plant Spirit Medicine is being used as a term to covertly describe psychedelic therapy, and I am approached regularly for psychedelic therapy, which I do not offer.
My solution to this…I would love to see psychedelic therapy legalised so we can all speak our truth and stop using misleading language and making it harder for people to find what they are looking for. I would also like to see psychedelic therapy regulated so that people can find trained and reputable practitioners to work with. People approach me for healing following traumatic psychedelic experiences, which are mostly due to being given too strong a dose or inadequate integration support. They may have been to a ceremony or worked alone with psychedelics. They come to me struggling to integrate their experience, and I do manage to help them, most of the time. And sometimes, I have to refer to psychiatrists because, unfortunately, the psychedelic experience has triggered a significant psychosis.
When I can help someone with their post-psychedelic experience, I give people herbs to help their nervous system settle after the intensity of such a profound shift in consciousness. Helping them with gentle herbs to integrate the teachings that the psychedelic therapy brought to light. Helping them to heal the trauma wounds, past and present. My training and experience with the shamanic path is also crucial to this. As the shamanic perspective of reality helps me to see the otherworldly view that psychedelics share with us. I understand that all plants are our teachers. Psychedelic plants and mushrooms are more popular again these days, but let us not forget the importance of ALL plant medicines as healers and teachers!
My own journey with Plant Spirit Medicine began whilst I was in training as a Medical Herbalist during the mid-1990s. And when I say Plant Spirit Medicine, I am referring to connecting to the spirit of a plant - any plant, not just psychedelics such as psilocybin mushrooms or DMT-infused ayahuasca. I was studying Herbal Medicine from a purely scientific perspective at University to obtain my BSc(Hons) in Phytotherapy. At that time, I was rather closed to the spiritual perspective of plants I now hold dear. The first teachers that came into my life was during a weekend workshop with 2 Romany Gypsy Plant Spirit Medicine Shamans. Although I had a scientific perspective of reality, I was open to exploring as many perspectives on plant medicine as were available to me. I worked with Chinese Herbalists, too, for several years, which also helped me to understand the many perspectives on reality that humanity holds as their truth.
Anyway - back to my Romany teachers. There were 2 teachers, a man and a woman. The woman explained that plants talked to her. I asked her what they sounded like - she said ‘Minnie Mouse’, referring to the Disney cartoon character. So when I first started tuning into plant spirit medicine myself in another shamanic training course, I waited for the squeaky tones of Minnie Mouse to appear in my mind. But it didn't happen for me like that, and I learnt that we all ‘hear’ spiritual messages in different ways.
My first Plant Medicine Experience was with a Holly Tree. I was taking shamanic training in a wooded area somewhere North of London - I forget the exact location now, some 30 years on! We were invited to go for a shamanic trance walk into the woods to connect with a plant spirit. Our teacher guided us with the rhythm of a shamanic drum into a gentle meditative state, and then we walked off alone into a woods to connect with a plant spirit and sit with it for an hour or so to tune into or sense the message it had to share with us.
I remember being quite scared of walking into the woods alone, this is a bit of a phobia of mine following a childhood trauma. I could hear the sound of the shamanic drum continuing as I walked off into the distance, which helped me sense I was safe and held in a sacred space. As I walked deeper into the woods, I searched with my eyes to sense something, anything calling my attention. Expecting something to almost wave at me and say ‘Hi - over here - I’ve been waiting for you’. After 20 minutes or so of walking mindfully through the woods, a tree caught my eye, a tall Holly tree - perhaps 4 or 5 metres tall, and the same in width too. This tree had the most deliciously dark, silky leaves, but no red berries, so it was most likely a male tree. There was something else I could sense, though, something invisible, a connection with this tree being within my body. I felt warm, I felt safe, I felt at peace. I felt I was in the presence of a wise elder, and I wanted to sit with this tree, so I did.
Once I had settled into the space, opposite the tree, I gazed at it, and I felt the surge of love, connection and peace rising within me. I asked the tree if it would be open to communicating with me. I had never talked to a tree like this before. I felt a bit weird, perhaps embarrassed, but no one was watching, so I just carried on. I asked the holly tree to share her medicine with me, to share her story. Then I sat and closed my eyes and waited for a thought, a feeling, a story to unfold.
I tried as much as possible to quieten my mind, to empty it of thought, to slow it down. Trees and plants don’t communicate like humans - they don’t use words in reality, but the message that this Holly tree conveyed to me was discernible in words, and I will share it with you now. The Holly tree explained to me that it was OK to be a bit spiky sometimes, that she had to be a bit spiky at her base to prevent the animals in the forest from eating her and draining her life force. She has very spiky leaves at her base to protect her trunk from damage. But if you look up, she has smooth leaves with no spikes above a certain height. This is because she doesn't have to protect herself at that level anymore. She invited me to learn this lesson, to protect my energy, be a bit spiky and not overly nice to everyone I meet, as was my habit at that younger age. I need to be careful who I share my energy with and, to some extent, test people out to decide if I want to share time and energy with them. She showed me a message from her trunk too, the symbolic scars of growth there. She explained that the scars were moments of growth; sometimes that growth may feel like a trauma, but as we heal from these experiences of growth, we become stronger, and the healed wound becomes a source of strength. This simple message was perfectly timed for me, as I was healing from my traumatic childhood wounds during that phase of my life in my early 20s. And I was very excited that I had had my first communication with a plant spirit!
Holly tree has been with me as a Plant Spirit ally ever since. Every time I perform a Soul retrieval healing for someone, she journeys with me in spirit as my protector, wrapping me up in her spiky leaves to keep me safe as I travel into the lower realm on behalf of others to help them heal their spiritual, emotional and sometimes even physical wounds. I have 2 holly trees in my real-life garden too, acting as guardians to my sacred healing space. A male and a female, because holly trees are dioecious, having separate male and female individuals. And they get a lot of love and attention, I feel they are more like my pets than a plant; we talk every day.
I am not the only Plant Spirit Medicine Person on the planet, this is a practice as old as humanity itself. There are many amazing teachers that I can recommend other than myself, of course, and I have personally worked with Pam Montgomery, Elliot Cowen, Pip Waller, and Emma Farrell. All of whom have wonderful books you can buy to explore the practices in more depth. I promise I will produce my own version of Plant Spirit Medicine in book form as soon as possible too; its my next big project!
For now, I want to encourage you to explore Plant Spirit Medicine in ALL the ways it is available to us. You may wish to work with a plant like I first did, go on a walk and connect with a plant, ask it to speak with you, tell its story as you sit with it patiently, in meditation, waiting for a voice (not necessarily Minnie Mouse’s voice!) to come into your mind, or a sensation, or a knowing in the body. Plants will communicate with you in whatever form is best for you, and the most important thing we can do is be open and patient, drop all expectations, and allow yourself to receive and sense whatever information is sent to us
Plant Spirit Medicine is a practice, a technique, a process that I integrate into ALL my shamanic trainings. This is one of the unique ways I am different to all other Shamanic teachers. Whether it be as part of a simple Cacao Ceremony, teaching the art of Drum Healing or guiding people on the Shaman’s Way. I am Plant Spirit Medicine Woman and I am here to connect people to the plants, to nature so we can remember that we are one planet, we need each other - to breathe they gift us oxygen, to eat they supply food, to clothe us they offer us fabrics, for shelter they offer us wood, and as medicine they are the largest supplier of our world’s medicines and offer a valuable contribution to our pharmaceutical sources too!
So if you need a psychedelic therapist, well, sorry - that's not me! But if you would like to connect more deeply with Plant Spirit Medicine and be guided by me, you may like to check out the offerings I have online and live events coming up this year.
Discover the Power of Plant Spirit Medicine:
Masterclass in Creating Healing Vibrational Plant Essences
Online Course
My comprehensive online training provides everything you need to understand Plant Spirit Medicine and craft your own potent Plant Spirit Essences.
The Shaman’s Way: Immersion for Women
Immerse yourself in deep shamanic wisdom: Embark on a profoundly healing and awakening journey, receive sacred initiations passed down to me from the Q’ero Shamans of Peru, discover the sacred teachings of the Medicine Wheel, and explore Plant Spirit Medicine in more depth with my Shaman's Way Trainings.
This summer, experience the transformative Shaman's Way Immersion for Women (Held over 2 weeks, once in June & once in September)
Cacao Ceremonies
Experience a heart-centered connection: Join me for a transformative Cacao Ceremony, held each New and Full Moon, and open yourself to the wisdom of this sacred plant.
Shamanic Drum and Crystal Healing Workshop.
Monday 19th - Tuesday 20th May 2025.
Margate, Kent
Unlock your healing potential: In my two-day Drum Healing workshop, learn the ancient art of Shamanic Drum Healing and discover how to infuse plant essences and crystals into your healing drum practice.
The Shaman’s Way: 13 Moons
Immerse yourself in deep shamanic wisdom: Embark on a profoundly healing and awakening journey, receive sacred initiations passed down to me from the Q’ero Shamans of Peru, discover the sacred teachings of the Medicine Wheel, and explore Plant Spirit Medicine in more depth with my Shaman's Way Trainings.
Join the year long Shamans Way 13 Moon Journey starting this October.
Still unsure which path resonates with you?
I invite you to book a FREE DISCOVERY CALL with me. Together, we can explore how we might connect and how I can best support your healing and spiritual growth.
I look forward to connecting with you.
With Love, Plant Spirit Medicine Woman & The Plant People!
