Showing Up Whole
Welcome to Showing Up Whole!
If you’re tired of constantly trying to figure out how to integrate spirituality, self-care, and mindful living into your busy life, only to feel like you’re getting nowhere—you’re in the right place. This podcast is all about helping you align your mind, body, heart, and spirit so you can show up whole in your everyday life—without feeling like you’re running a three-ring circus.
Hosted by Christina Fletcher, you’ll receive practical tools for conscious living, spirituality, and mindfulness. With lighthearted stories, insightful learning moments, and powerful interviews featuring leading experts in mindfulness, spirituality, mindset, and practical magic, this show offers inspiration and guidance for your spiritual and human journey.
Thank you for being here - Let’s align and make the world a better place together.
Connect with us beyond the show at SpirituallyAwareLiving.com and on Instagram @SpirituallyAwareLiving or Substack https://substack.com/@showingupwhole
Showing Up Whole
Embracing the Wisdom of the Green Witch with Robin Rose Bennett
Embark on a magical journey with us and our guest, Robin Rose Bennett, a seasoned storyteller, writer, and herbalist. Robin's journey from vulnerability to wholeness, through the embrace of her shadows, has led her down a path of earth magic and conscious living, ultimately finding her identity as a witch. She generously shares her wisdom on how to embrace our true selves in our daily lives, a lesson we believe many of us need to hear.
We've often heard about the power of nature, but have you ever considered plants as a source of guidance and faith? Robin delves into the profound wisdom plants possess, their role in our self-discovery, and how the absence of electricity can shift our bodies on a molecular level. We also explore the potent power of labels and how finding one that truly resonates with our identities can be a significant step in self-discovery.
As we journey further into the realm of witchcraft and spirituality, we discover that listening and belief hold immense power. Robin teaches us the importance of befriending discomfort to unlock a different way of being. We discuss the magic of herbs, plant medicines, and home remedies for a healthier life, and the importance of being surrounded by love and light. If embracing the wisdom of the green witch sounds enticing, this episode is one you won't want to miss!
Robin Rose Bennett is a story-teller, writer, and herbalist. She has been offering classes in WiseWoman Healing Ways: Herbal Medicine and EarthSpirit Teachings since 1986 - at herb conferences, festivals, clinics, medical and nursing schools, and most joyously, outside with the plants.
Robin Rose shares herbal medicine with gratitude for the loving generosity of the plants and the magic, mystery, and beauty of the web of life.
She is on the faculty of the New York Open Center and the Arbor-Vitae School of Traditional Herbalism, and is the author of two meditation MP3’s and the books: Healing Magic- A Green Witch Guidebook to Conscious Living and The Gift of Healing Herbs - Plant Medicines and Home Remedies for a Vibrantly Healthy Life.
For more information please visit her websites:
https://www.robinrosebennett.com/
and
Christina Fletcher is a Spiritual Alignment coach, energy worker, author, speaker and host of the podcast Showing Up Whole.
She specialises in practical spirituality and integrating inner work with outer living, so you can get self development off of the hobby shelf and integrated as a powerful fuel to your life.
Through mindset, spiritual connection, intuitive guidance, manifestation, and mindfulness techniques Christina helps her clients overcome overwhelm and shame to find a place of flow, ease, and deep heart-centered connection.
Christina has been a spiritual alignment coach, healer and spiritually aware parent coach for 7 years and trained in Therapeutic Touch 8 years ago. She is also a meditation teacher and speaker.
For more information please visit her website www.spirituallyawareliving.com
Want to uncover where you need the most energy alignment?
Take her new Energy Alignment Quiz to identify which of your energetic worlds (mind, body, heart or spirit) needs aligning the most!
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Hi everyone and welcome back to Showing Up Whole the place where we discuss alignment in mind, body, heart and spirit in every aspect of our lives. And today we are diving into a really exciting conversation because we are talking to Robin Rose Bennett and we are talking all about being a witch and some beautiful magic. Robin is a storyteller, writer and herbalist. She shares earth wisdom with gratitude for the magic and mystery of the Web of Life. She's the author of Healing Magic, a Green Witches guidebook to conscious living and the gift of healing herbs, plant medicines and home remedies for a vibrantly healthy life. And the forthcoming, a Young Green Witches guide to plant magic rituals and recipes from nature. And her most recent book, which we'll be talking about today, is called a Green Witches Pocket Book of Wisdom. So, everyone, let's talk all about being a witch. Hi Robin, it's lovely to be talking with you and to be sharing in your magic, and I can't wait to dive into this conversation.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Christina. Thanks for having me here. It's delightful to be with you.
Speaker 1:Oh well, it's really delightful to have you. So this is such a wide, wondrous, magical topic and I will say I've been reading your new offering, your new book, and thank you so much for sending that, and it's what I love about what I've read so far is the beautiful intertwining between the understanding of earth magic and yet the conscious living and lightness that you bring to it. You really do bring this sense of presence, I think. I think people have a tendency to to feel like being a witch or practicing witchcraft is something that's so distant and not in integrating into your everyday life in a lot of ways. So it really feels like in your work. I will say I congratulate you on how present it feels and how embodied it feels. So it's a really beautiful offering. So thank you for that. How do you tell us a little bit about your journey into earth magic and being able to actually call yourself a witch? What? What does that journey look like?
Speaker 2:Okay, all right, and what I'm going to do, and I think that it will be audible I'm going to light some grandmother's cedar who the sequels here at Crackle.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's beautiful, right, it's a beautiful, beautiful herb, for you know, it's often called like for protection, but as we grow into understanding that, to be woven into the web of life as our unique but into the oneness it's like, well, are we protecting ourselves from ourselves? So one of the things I like to think about it, as is this, is a plant that helps us move into divine alignment. So beautiful and I meant right is when we are walking in divine alignment. In truth, that is its own, it is its own protection.
Speaker 2:So I, when you ask about my journey, I can say that I I kind of started from a place and that's this life of not feeling at all safe in this world, not really feeling thrilled to be back in a body again and and you know, vulnerable as a woman, and you know so many aspects of this and things that made sense in my life and things that didn't make sense on the surface.
Speaker 2:When you looked at the stability of my home and the safety of where I was, you know, growing up, and the love that I was surrounded by, really you know I wasn't like an abusive harm or anything, far from it, and yet I did carry those feelings very strongly, which you know, now I think of it as have come from other times and also from an empathetic reaction or response to the kind of, at that point, unconscious kinship I felt with everyone and everything and had no idea how to understand it Right. So so I was very self protective, very private in my emotional expression and in all these things as a as young girl, but it didn't necessarily show, but but anyway, just I'm saying that from things other people tell me, oh, how we perceived you was, you know you were confident. Relate to that.
Speaker 1:Yes, I definitely relate to that. When I sell people that out with any insecurities, I do often get people going no.
Speaker 2:As please understand that I work really diligently, right to be conscious and confident and so forth. So, but in terms of the journey, so then, as a like, as a teen I I was in college in Northern California, which was really like a mecca of everything quote unquote alternative and magical, and you know spiritual or you know hippie, whatever you want to call it right. I was a little past, a little after the official hippie years, but that energy of you know braids and Birkenstocks, and and then I met, so I did explore it, but essentially what happened was I met two wondrous teachers, two absolutely wonderful teachers who are now ancestors June and Jim. Their life story is a fascinating one that we won't go into where it'll take our whole time together. They had a huge age difference Just I'll just peak people's interest with that. She was elder and they fell in love and I worked with them for over a decade and I started very young.
Speaker 2:I was really like I don't know 18 or something like that and they were deep, like they were doing work that is not like designed to get you on, to like you know, every new show that exists or what have you right, they were first of all, they were ahead of their time and, second of all, their work was deep.
Speaker 2:It was about embracing your wholeness through really illuminating your shadows and coming to accept them, right. So not trying to be like spiritual, like it's all only light, it's all only good, right, but nonetheless so moving forward. Oh, and I but I will say that on my website I do have a link to a site of their work that some of their students, who were devoted to them, created to keep their, their teachings, alive. So they're really good, but anyway. So I met these wonderful teachers, I worked with them for a long time, I began to teach for them and ultimately I saw that there was still a disconnect in me between that, what you spoke of, christina, that grounded, embodied, daily experience of this magic of interconnection that we were exploring spiritually all the time. So that led me to go into a study of herbalism, having no conscious knowledge that I had a great grandmother who was a renowned herbalist.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really love discovering that, because I thought all of my ancestry was spiritual ancestry. Right, I didn't know I had any physical bloodline of this, so anyway, I did learn about her after I'd been an herbalist for about 10 years in New York City.
Speaker 2:I might add, in New York City, the beautiful island of Manahata, as the native people called it, of course, and which means land of wild strawberries, by the way, and so that marriage began to happen immediately, of, ah, I no longer want just these transcendent moments of highs in my life, right, and I mean they were beautiful, don't get me wrong. They were just like wow and love, to the point where your hearts flying open and tears are streaming down your face. Right, but not sustainable daily, and again kind of still in that hierarchical understanding of, like spirituality as being something above or like, like you know, emotion, the very you know Western thinking as well. Right, the mind is higher than the feelings, the feelings are higher than you know, and so forth. And the body, you know, leads the wall.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so into herbalism through a green witch.
Speaker 2:So I originally right, I originally just was looking for an herbal class and I found this and I found that.
Speaker 2:But when I came to the approach of a green witch, it was Ah, this is, this, is it, this is, and so what I mean by this is it is one of the first things I learned was that the plants are the teachers, the plants are the teachers, they have the if I can learn how to listen, right, and so this is what being in which means to me.
Speaker 2:Right, it's about opening to the well, many things, but in particular, I see a green witch as a person who often a woman, but not always right who is awakened to the magic of nature, right, and they, she or they may express that as an herbalist, as a painter, as a gardener, as a mother. You know, it's like it's not an automatic pilot of you know well, that means you work with plants. It's more than that, right, it's more than that and it's like the greatest side effect of herbal medicine that I see for people over these decades that I've now been sharing is an awakening of kinship To nature, with the natural world, and that these deepening relationships with plants and animals and so forth, and birds, actually in forms and then enhances our relationships with other people. Of course it does. Of course it does, of course it does we're all nature.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we are nature, exactly, we are nature, but it's also just the way, like where, if we started from safety or not safety, grandmother's cedar, helping one feel their body, is sacred space. Right, is that plants are generous and loving beings, right, and they, you know, one of the greatest realizations I've had that has shifted how I live my life is that the plants know who they are. Plants really know exactly who they are. Sorry about that.
Speaker 1:Don't worry, that's fine. Yeah, it happens.
Speaker 2:It happens, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay so they know who they are and when we take them into ourselves in herbal medicine with gratitude and respect, they help us know who we are. Yeah, beautiful, beautiful, it's ourselves.
Speaker 1:That's beautiful. I think my son would like to really love to hear this, because he's 14 and he's a nature fanatic. He does it with photography, that's his thing. He loves taking nature photography and it's a fascinating thing, as you said, that you can be a green witch, and it's not just about herbalism, it's about that connection to the surrounding world and I think that's such a beautiful.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And as a photographer, right, your son is doing the thing that, whether we're looking through a lens or we're not, he's seeing Exactly. And if we will stop and take the time to see a dandelion, yeah, like the whole world opens up the exquisite patterns of nature. Yeah, it opens us up and we must open and awaken in this time of chaos and evolution. Well, I call it the evolutionary chaos of now. Yes, very well, for at least, thank you, we're really in this profoundly pivotal moment, right, everything, anything that we do for ourselves or one another, it ripples out into the world right For good or ill, yeah, and to be able to actually see is presence Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And it's a fascinating thing. I find nature such a resilient force that I think we so often just take for granted it's I've seen it in so many different times Everything from how you can work really hard and tending it and leave it for like a little bit and all of a sudden it takes over and has its own mind. So there's that version of resilience which you know.
Speaker 2:My heart is like that right now.
Speaker 1:Yes, but at the same time too, you know, my husband and I we were actually away in our trailer for about 10 days and we were away from wifi and from any busyness and we came back to our house and as soon as we got back in, we're like feel something. I feel this buzziness in my body just from general wifi in the house. And there's the big difference. And yet then we looked around and we were sitting outside and we looked at, you know, and we have loads of plants in our house and we were looking at. We're like, you know, they still are thriving and growing and they just adapt. And there's an adaptability, there's a flow that there's this inner force within nature that just is, and no matter the evolutionary chaos, it's not sitting there responding. Throw anything at it and it just goes. Okay, I can adapt, I can adapt, I can adapt. And it's this beautiful lesson. There's such a deep wisdom within it.
Speaker 2:There's such a deep, there's such a like a guidance system for us, the answers of how to move ourselves to a new, you know, a new, ancient, new, ancient way of being on the planet together. It's all here, yeah, right, it's all here. And you look in that mirror of nature's adaptability and flexibility and there we are right. But we need to rally enough will, right and willingness, yeah, and faith and faith, yeah, to shift right, like, oh, who's that? Famous Will Durant, right, orian? You said you know the gardener, right, basically, you know, to plant a garden is a sign of faith in the future. Right, plant a garden is a sign of faith in the future. And he also said, which I love. He said, you know, whenever I think that my work is terribly important, I know that I'm getting close to a nervous breakdown. So I think that's a marvelous, marvelous thing that I think it's so like, earnest and about you know the need and the. And really, if we don't do our thing with joy, it's not shifting the paradigm, it's not shifting.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, so that's the plants. Give us that too, and this, yeah, and I hear you too, though, about coming in after you've been out. It's really profound. I've experienced that, too with them when there's been a power outage and like, let's face it, we're doing this because we have, right, this knowledge. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:I deeply appreciate that, yes.
Speaker 2:And yet when there's been a power out, it's like this whole different level of happens in bodies, because actually, electricity itself shifts molecularly the hemoglobin in our blood.
Speaker 2:It actually shifts it. So, which is why when you walk out into the woods right, that's one of the main reasons why when you walk into the woods, away from you know electricity et cetera, right, you immediately can, or you begin at least to wind down, Right, the more like when I would go, when I lived in the city for 10 years, they called me the Greenwich of New York City. Ha ha ha. When New York Magazine did a piece and they said that, and it's just stuck to this day, even though I live an hour out of Manhattan and have lived out of Manhattan now for, oh, a while, like decades, it's still that title stuck, which is, it's kind of fun, it's kind of fun it is fun, and I think it's fun and yet it's such an honor, I do believe, because really to have that recognize even within a city, like to have it as it's it's, it shows how strong of resonance that you had in that space and that that's definitely a huge compliment.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, it's common, I think, like a popular, trending fatty thing at that point, either yet at all.
Speaker 1:Let's. Can we touch a little bit on that, because this is something that often comes up and I know, before we hit record, we are talking about it. I guess the question is how did you, did you feel comfortable stepping into calling yourself a green witch?
Speaker 2:No, of course not Okay.
Speaker 1:I always like to ask.
Speaker 2:Sure, of course not. But the answer is no, because when I was say it, I mean people would be confused and sometimes repelled or frightened or so, and of course that can still happen, but it's not. It's not as it was then. But I guess it depends what circles you go into. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I have a really fun tiny, tiny short video called, of a haiku that I wrote, called the witch persists, and if I can remember it by memory, I will. I will share it with those listening to us either now or in perpetuity. I just don't. It's a haiku, so I have to have it. You know, I have to say it right? So, but I'll come back to that minute. But in the, in the video, most of the response, which has been very positive, but there was a little. There was like one comment recently that was, you know, really, really off the wall. I then my best friend sent me a quote and I think it's so brilliant, and that quote was they taught us to be afraid of the witches rather than of the people who burned them. I've heard that. Yeah, I think that's a problem.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when I read that the first time, I it hit me hard because it's like it's true, it's true, it's um, yeah it has.
Speaker 2:It has lingered, is definitely. The other thing is I have found, christina, that the green softens it.
Speaker 1:Well, this is what I was. I was actually curious. Do you always say green, which always?
Speaker 2:absolutely always. Well, because it's a better like. Honestly, I don't care what label someone gives me. I am aligned and and it was so many traditions and I, I just feel like a citizen of the world. So, but you know, in these times, right, and you're putting yourself out there, you have to call yourself something. Yeah, so that is the term that best. Well, writer. I'm not an urbanist to write specs, I'm a writer who's also an herbalist, because the writing is the is that you know from the earliest part of me, although I say that, and I found a, um, and I'm going to go back to what I was saying, but I, just a little aside I found a photograph, old family thing, and I am tiny, I don't know, I'm maybe, I'm too maybe, and I am right. It was an old video which in those days was like a super eight, I believe, eight millimeter Right, and I'm running up to the camera and I'm holding out a dandelion flower, like right into the camera, and I was like, oh see, so I've always been there.
Speaker 2:It's always, always been there, and apparently I did like to not have clothes on whenever possible.
Speaker 1:So that's part of the green which, yes, coming out. Well, I think that's that that's actually an interesting place to take it, because this is actually a conversation that I've been having with my son and this is something that I went through in my twenties as well that it's very easy to want a label of something, and I think we all go through periods of time that we want to label, and yet it's really important to find the label that matches who you really are, your natural sense of yourself and what you feel called to, versus having a label that then you bend yourself or bend your own beliefs, and it sounds so taken for granted when you say it, but it is phenomenal how often people say, well, I want to be a witch, and so, therefore, then it's like I will study to how to be a witch, where really, from what I'm hearing with you, it's a question of really diving deep within yourself in order to uncover your own Right, who you are right, your own wild wise woman or wise person, wise being.
Speaker 2:Yeah both its wildness, its wiseness, or wisdom, rather, and the other thing about, you know, choosing to take on that, where it was a very conscious choice on my part, you know, I really looked at it.
Speaker 2:I thought about it in terms of, like you know how I was writing about myself. I didn't, I didn't know I was going to end up with all these books that were a green which is this and a green which is that, but the choice was to own it because it has been used as a weapon. Historically. Right has been used as a weapon and I, you know, even to this day, a friend was telling me about a custody battle where he's going through it and, and you know, the wife is someone speaking accused of being a witch, right as an actual way to keep children from them and believe it or not. This is not the first time I've heard this. I wish it was so as kind of cool right as it is right now at you know which it is undercurrent and all things churn polarized in many ways and we live in a very polarized time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we do. So wait, let me just finish this so the you know the the how I was thinking about it was. So if this has been used to silence healers, in the past this has been used to silence midwives. Herbalist, very you know death to us which were not called. That then right, but the wise use to silence the wise women.
Speaker 1:Mm, hmm.
Speaker 2:Then, by owning it, it's taking, it's defanging it, it's taking the weaponization of it out, because then somebody says you're a witch. And I'm like, well, yeah, yeah, my books is on my website, it's a normal art, yeah, yeah. And so what else is new? Right? And so it just takes that power Out of it, right? And so it's owning the actual power of it and taking the destructive power out of it. And of course, people have different definitions, especially eccentric people like herbalist and witches, of what it means, right, but I can only speak to. You know my sense of my lineage and how I live it.
Speaker 1:So what would be the advice that you offer to people? I changed my question halfway through. There we go. What would be the advice that you would offer people based on your own experience as they? I was actually just talking to a client and she was talking about how she has like the witch books. She's just kind of cracking open you know all the different books about being a witch and her husband's kind of like what are you looking at, kind of thing, and she's like I don't even know. And she's like I feel called to read these things. And of course there's things like Lisa Litzner's book on witch and it's like there's all these different concepts of being a witch and, like you said, it's the cool term now.
Speaker 1:And yet it's almost like I think there's this interesting space where people are now questioning how they approach the word witch. They feel uncomfortable with the word witch. Then they go well, that must be my witch's wound. So therefore they pursue it with a little bit more force perhaps, or a little bit more determination, and yet it's still this kind of push and pull. It's this little bit without fully embodying it. I'm not sure if there's a question in here, but it is a question of. They don't know how to fully assimilate it within themselves because it feels like it's part of the battle over here a witch wound versus becoming the witch, about divine feminine versus the patriarchy. It becomes the outward topic versus the how do you actually become a witch?
Speaker 2:Right, like it's not about where it's at, but it's not about.
Speaker 1:And it's not even about doing the stuff. It's about actually seeing through, allowing the perception of a witch to become your worldview.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's true. I mean, it's you know, the thing about human beings. One of the things about human beings is that we tend to be impatient and we tend to, like you said, all one or all another and set up the polarizing and the battles and the stuff. But really coming into yourself, by whatever name, is a process and it takes place over time. And you know, I think the most important thing in terms of going back to the advice question is one is discover through your explorations whether it's through conversations like this or books or you know, or your granny right Discover practices and processes that help you hear and discern true inner guidance Like that, and even verbally. That's what I tell my clients too. I don't want you to take this because I'm telling you to. I want you can start there, right, but then I need you to be in relation with what you're doing into field. Is this helping your indigestion? How does this serve field taste to you, and so forth. But now going right back to where you know where, we were so discovering that.
Speaker 2:What helps you find your inner voice? This is much more important than you know. Like, is this the right color or candle to use for such and such spell? That's you know I mean, but you could have fun with it. It's like it is. The outward trappings can be distractions, right, which I think is kind of what your question was getting at.
Speaker 2:The caution I like to give people, whether they're studying witchcraft or Buddhism or you name it, you know anything is if somebody says to you, overtly or covertly, that they have the only way or they are the only conduit for you to come into yourself. Walk the other way, 100%. Walk the other way. That is the one. And then the other thing is because there is no one right way. But I said, you know, find the practices that help you hear your inner wisdom, your inner guidance.
Speaker 2:But one of the things very specifically I wanna mention is learn how to be in your body and then listen to your body, because bodies tell the truth. Bodies are the most honest part of ourselves. Right, they really are. This is something I've learned and, like I said, it's not where I started. I was all about transcendence and my spiritual experiences and visions, oh my right. But coming back into the body not only brought me into a place of much more sustainable joy at being alive, which I can then share, which is wonderful, but also into the experience ongoing of having my own truth barometer that I walk around with right, and that's really important, yeah absolutely.
Speaker 1:It's a powerful time and the way things have been just isn't working anymore. If you've been feeling disjointed, overwhelmed or scattered, you're not alone. Many are feeling that there's a feeling of needing more. Something's missing. What this feeling tells you is that it's time to claim your inner self and step away from the stories you've been taught to follow. It's time to listen to your heart, to heal your hurts and learn to lean into the universe. Having your back, it's time to take all of that self-help book knowledge and embody it, assimilate it and make it your own.
Speaker 1:I'm Christina Fletcher and as a spiritual alignment coach at Energy Healer, I can help you take spirituality off of the hobby shelf and into your everyday, sometimes messy life so you can truly show up whole. Through coaching courses, books and more, I make sure you have practical tools to support you through these challenging times. To learn more, check out my website spirituallywearlivingcom, where you'll find information on how I work, as well as the resources that I can help you work, as well as a free guide to releasing the beliefs that have been holding you back. I look forward to connecting with you. Love and light. From what I'm hearing and this is such an interesting thing because I've never actually gone in this conversation before like this, but it feels like if you were to define the language, it was someone who listens.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's part of it. I think that's a big piece of it.
Speaker 1:Because it's, and I think that maybe that's why we get into these things with the concept of being, which is it feels like it's someone who does those outward trappings in order to create things that happen. But the thing is is that what people often forget is that, before even doing a ritual, there's a moment of listening so that you know the right ritual to do, you know what is integral to that moment, and please correct me if I'm wrong on this.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it's a part of it. I don't think it's all of it, because it's. I think it's an essential part of it the listening. But I think feeling is essential, seeing, and it doesn't mean somebody could be blind and still see Right. So we have our third eye, which I like to call our first eye, 100%, absolutely. We can't leave out the web of life, we can't leave out the All right To listen. You have to have something to listen to, right. So it does automatically suggest that. But it's really about relational perception and very much I think this is a vital piece is it's about learning how to have power with, rather than dominate, or rather than power over Right. So I think some people may be Well, certainly, people can associate witchcraft with you.
Speaker 2:You want power over me, but that's not Now, here I'm going to just be super opinionated. That's not a real witch. That's not a real witch. It's just not yeah, right, because it's. It's not wise to command anything or really even to manipulate Right. Like my first spiritual teacher, the universe gets the final word and I have found that to be true approximately 1000% of the time.
Speaker 1:Try the club.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, it's so much you know. It's learning to ask Right, like even in terms of healing, right, when I teach a lot about self-care. But part of self-care doesn't mean you do everything yourself. It means you ask for help. You learn to ask for help. I see way too many healers who almost pride themselves on oh, that's hard for me, oh, I can't do that. I'm like well then, how can you ask people to come to you in their vulnerability if you're not learning how to do that? Like, that's important, yeah, that's important. So, yeah, listening is a huge piece of the, but it's the re-weaving too right In being part of the web. And I mean to me, it's like once you start to feel that, then it's absolutely natural that compassion grows. It's absolutely natural that the best aspects of our humanity begin to flower. Right, we don't have to make it happen right, but it's like one thing leads to another. It's like the outbreath that follows the inbreath. It happens, right. That's another way you can know you're on the right path If you're feeling your heart more open.
Speaker 1:Right, no, that's beautiful, and I think the image it's so interesting because we talk about the flow of life, we talk about the current of life, we talk about the web of life has this beautiful sense of interconnectivity to each other, as well as interconnectivity to divine flow or divine essence or whatever. It's all one.
Speaker 2:And mountains and water and flowers and lakes, and air and fire and water and earth. It's really opening to the elementals because now, this is Well. Here's what I've. For me, in any event, what I have found is that green witch wisdom is very akin to any indigenous wisdom I've ever had the blessing to be had shared with me. Right, very akin, very much so, honoring the sentience of all life, from the stone to the river water. It's honoring the aliveness in everything. And again, going back to the beginning of my particular journey, because many people find the journey of herbalism takes them into spirit, but for me it was sort of the other way around. The journey of spiritual work brought me down to earth, into herbalism. Wait a minute, where was I going with that? There was something I was just saying about the yes, so going from this sense of spirit always being something transcendent, like beyond our earthly daily walk. But this wisdom, the earth spirit, with which wisdom, indigenous wisdom.
Speaker 2:this is about immanence, which is spelled I-M-M-A-N-E-N-C-E. Immanence not imminent like coming up soon, or imminent like important right, but immanence meaning the spirit, the aliveness contained within every blade of grass. And this is now intersecting with science. Science shows us this, but we haven't culturally caught up. Our medical system for sure hasn't caught up. And immanence science.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, even our medical systems are structural systems, the way we build, the way we. It's entire culture has not been able to embrace that kind of.
Speaker 2:And that's why we're in the time when it is crumbling, we're in the last dying gasps of this dominator approach to life, this dominator cultures that have taken the lead around the world. And obviously there are many beautiful pockets of rebirthing, of respect for their own traditions, among indigenous groups, among the grandmothers, among wise women, among various and sundry peoples of different persuasions who are aware of who we really are. And it's like this wave is growing, and this is how I think of it. It's like it's very obvious the deathing that's happening in our time. And what's right under the surface, just right below the high levels of visibility, is the labor, the contractions of the birthing of a new way of being in the world. It won't be the same as the old ways of being in relation, because the world has gotten so widely connected. You know, when we were in older times we might live in a healthier way in our village, but now our village is connected to the other villages. It's not about going backwards, it's about bringing wisdoms from the past that are being held alive as little sparks in various places, here, there and everywhere it's not in the evening news and spreading these ways more widely.
Speaker 2:It's inevitable To me. It's inevitable. It is like an acorn is inevitably going to grow into an oak tree. We are inevitably evolving, it's just the way it is. It's like you said you look at nature and you see this resilience and adaptability. We're adapting, we're adapting and it's just that the status quo is being pushed back, you know, not as tight as humanly possible, which is pretty tight, you know, thinking of what they're losing, not of all the new opportunities that are opening, and that is sad and destructive. And I think that you know there's many paths. Everybody can find their own, what they are here to contribute to this evolution, and together is the way that we will turn it around. None of us can do this alone and there's not one path to do it.
Speaker 1:It's interesting because the image that comes forward is you know, like you know, when you have the garden slabs, can you tell? I've had a lot of gardens overgrown. You know, you have the garden slabs which then some plants underneath become so strong that those start to just literally break through. And you look at something like that and you go how can a small sprout of a plant actually push back?
Speaker 1:My husband was going through a stage of growing sprouts and you know, he would just have sprouts growing in the garden and he'd have, you know, these I think they were mung bean sprouts that were growing and he had, you know, he had them stacked where they were stacked up and of course he'd water them and they would have bricks on top of them. And we literally watched as there was times where these plants would literally lift up and they'd be bricks on top, but because there was this multitude of all these growing plants underneath, they could lift up with such strength this, this brick, and it's phenomenal. And you kind of go, that's what we're in. We're in a time where the concrete slabs are breaking apart and people are running around going, oh my goodness, my garden slab is breaking apart, rather than saying what is the strength that's underneath here, and how can we support the life force that's underneath?
Speaker 2:That's chance. Yeah, see. And now you bring me to. How do we support the life force? So asking expansive questions is such a good approach, right? I don't think our answers are as important as our questions. What questions on a live by, oh, what questions you want to live by.
Speaker 1:That's beautiful. Yeah, absolutely, because that is how you begin that path of tapping into the web of life, of of that and that greater sense of listening, because the answers come but the questions are what you live by.
Speaker 2:I love that that's fantastic Thanks, and so that's kind of why I, or how, in a way, I came to write the Green Witch's pocketbook. Right, because you asked you know how do people proceed? How do they find their, you know, inner? You know a Green Witch or witch of whatever color, yeah, and so you need to have practices, you need to have reminders or things that get you going on your yeah, so, in fact, like to let's, let's talk about that.
Speaker 1:I was just going to say let's, let's, let's now get to your book, because I could just talk to you forever and ever and ever. But I want to make sure that everybody knows about your new book coming up, which is now on a launch the month of October. It is a prelaunch special, so can you just talk a little bit about that, because what I love about this book and I will say it's a passage book this is a pocket book of it's passages. It's simple, daily passages that you can just grab one and let them.
Speaker 2:It feels like you can let them ruminate and sit within you Exactly, it's sort of an oracle on every page, yeah, yeah, and it's like a little book. Because my hope was because I like to have like a little book that I just open to and get some guidance and either about something particular or just give me some guidance for the day. And I have found I do that with this book, a Greenwiches pocket book of wisdom, Big Little Life Tips, and it does weave together the kind of initial teachings that I was studying right that were not herbal, with my herbal earthy greenwich wisdom, and it's a beautifully illustrated book that I'm very grateful to my artist.
Speaker 1:Right it really is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a wonderful job and, yeah, my thought was that these are the practices and reminders that working with them have helped me, like, grow myself and grow into myself and how I live my life, and so I wanted to share them, because they've stood the test of time. They've stood the test of really horrific losses I've had in my life. They've stood the test of going through the height of the COVID years, right, or the depths of the COVID years, however we wanna look at that. So they've held up Beautiful. They've held up. They've stood the test of time and they're I'm not on any pedestal whatsoever. They're the things I continue to practice, right, because growing and learning is forever and that's part of what makes life fun and juicy and you know so. So I-.
Speaker 1:I landed on one of the passages and you use the word juicy and I have to say, like anyone who has listened to me for a long period of time or you know, there was one year that I did my intentional word of the year was actually juicy Cause I was like I want a life that I could just bite into. I want, like this, juicy life experience, and I use juicy quite often. And then I opened up like, oh, it's juicy.
Speaker 2:Yes, I was so excited to do that Life juicy, what makes your life juicy. So yeah, like a peach or mango or you know whatever, but see you saying you opened to that and how it resonated for you. That's what I'm hoping for for readers. That's what I'm hoping for and that's what you know. Before it was published, I would do it before a class or with a clinic client, or my apprentices would come and we were always myself included like kind of flipped out at how uncannily that it would resonate. So I did do and I loved learning this word, bibliomancy, which means when you open a book, ask for a message, and open a book and see what's there for you. I didn't, I always did. I didn't know it had a word.
Speaker 1:No, I didn't know it had a word either. I've done it always. Never done it, that's fantastic.
Speaker 2:Bibliomancy, bibliomancy, bibliomancy. I love it. So I did a little bibliomancy Literally the second before we started talking today and I opened to a picture of a woman's face with chamomile you kind of draped around her and the wisdom of this page is, and so for you listening, it's basically each page has like a line or two of the main you know thought and then a little explanatory words underneath it. So the main section is believing is something you do. Knowledge is something you gain. Wisdom is something you have.
Speaker 1:Oh, how perfect for this conversation, I will say, because I think this is so often. This is what we've been talking about today is how to allow that wisdom to flow from you, rather than the pursuit or the push for it. It's that integral rising up, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Well, and making space too right, because you have to believe, and this is, I think, why so many people are afraid to grow and change and evolve, because it means to let go of beliefs that have been helped, even if you know in your heart of hearts they're not true. And it's that clinging to the familiar. I mean, it could be something as basic as, like you know, you can hold a belief that's so self-limiting like, well, I don't really deserve.
Speaker 2:You know, goodness or abundance or prosperity or something, and you might know intellectually that that's not true or I don't deserve to be treated well, right? Like a really deep thing like that and you might know intellectually it's true, but it's what you're familiar with, it's what you've taken in. The further explanation on the page says you might feel pressure to defend a belief you hold dear, like knowledge. Belief implies something external, separate from you. Wisdom, once earned, is inside you. It can't be taken from you. Oh, that's beautiful, right, but where is that?
Speaker 1:I wonder if wisdom ever needs to be defended.
Speaker 2:No, no, it doesn't. And that's the beauty, that's the liberation that comes from knowing who you really are, right Like, so somebody can write something nasty about you know the way I think they said you know, repent or perish, and there was comments like that. I know, yeah, like I thought about writing about that wonderful line as a rebuttal.
Speaker 2:You know that they taught us to feel the people who you know, who burn the witches, rather than people who burn them, and I thought, well, if I do write that, it will only be for the people who see that comment and are distressed by it. That person does not yet have space to heal it. Right and so. But when I was a younger green witch, a younger herbalist, right, there was that kind of desire to prove that what I knew, but it was what I believed in, right, and that belief, it's a separate thing that what I believed in had validity, that you know that trees listen. That it had validity that Rosemary helps your circulation. That it had validity, right, that it was real right.
Speaker 2:And I watch a lot of my students of all ages. They don't have to be young students right, go through this as they meet. Resistance in their family is there, in the you know, with their doctor, whatever. But I think you have to if you're going to open doors to a way of being that is not, you know, the norm. There is a certain amount of making friends with discomfort that it behooves you to do. It does.
Speaker 1:Yes, you know, and you have to challenge your own beliefs continually to welcome the new sprouts cracking up through your own concrete. There you go.
Speaker 2:Like I say exactly, it's there it is. You know, we're always learning, so yeah, so I'm hoping this book helps people. I open to another one that I love for myself too, which is this. One came from June, my first teacher Don't shoot on yourself.
Speaker 1:Oh, I saw that one. I love that.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, it takes away and robs you of energy. Try, could, I should return that call. I could return that call. You know I should apologize. I could apologize. Right, it's a different. It lands, and there we come back to the body. Yeah, how you listening. Consider how things land in your body. Yeah, right, because your body will give you the yes and the no, and the little by little, because that's another listening. Right, christine, you have to learn how your body communicates to you. You have to learn what your symbols and your signals are. And you know, witchy, magic is like the icing on the cake in a way. Right, it's. It can be really helpful to remind you that reality is the most magical thing there is Beautiful.
Speaker 1:Absolutely beautiful. I think that's a profound note for everyone to kind of just let that to simmer, Because, yeah, I think that's an important, important piece for everyone to remember. I've got to say this has been a fantastic, fantastic conversation and I just I love it. I could talk to you forever. We'll do it again sometime. We shall. We'll have to do that. I want to make sure everyone knows your website. Do you have a new?
Speaker 2:website. Yes, I do. My main website is robinrosebenetcom, and my brand new website and I'm so excited is Robin Robin, yeah, let's choose Robin Rose Bennett Books. Ok, robin Rose Bennett Books, and that's where I mean. I know you'll again put it in notes, but that's where you can pre-order Green Witches pocketbook. You can order my other books Healing Magic, green Witch, godforsaken, conscious Living.
Speaker 2:That was my first and the next was is Healing Magic? No, the gift of healing herbs, plant medicines and home remedies for a vibrantly healthy life. And that one is filled with hundreds of simple recipes Amazing For your health, and also a lot about the spirituality of healing, of finding what is the story connected to the challenge you're going through, because I find that makes the healing go deeper and be more sustainable. But what I would love is, if you are interested in my work is to sign up for my newsletter on my website. That's the best way to stay in touch. I do have all the other IG and Facebook and blah, blah, blah. I have all that YouTube.
Speaker 2:But the books what I do want to emphasize is in the month of October I have a special that I'm offering because it's really helpful to an author to pre-sell the books Especially go on sale October 31. And yes, that was intentional, but the special is truly a beautiful booklet that I wrote just for this, wrote and designed. That is, herbal recipes for enhancing meditation, dreams and deepening intuitive wisdom. Oh my goodness, that sounds phenomenal. Yeah, so that's a giveaway for the month of October. After that I'll sell it right, but for October it's a way for ordering the book.
Speaker 1:Amazing, ok, brilliant, and there's all kinds of wonderful things to find on your website, and so we'll send everyone over there, by all means, and we will talk again, because this has been truly magical. So thank you so much, and all the best for your launch and your pre-launch of your book. Yeah, may it be surrounded in love and like. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you too, bye, bye.