Burdock — Arctium lappa

Deep and dark, rich and purely embodied earth energy. So sweet and full, tastes of dirt and soil, of Mother Earth, of foundation and home, yet there's a gentle bitterness as well. Generally it feels moist and lubricating but at the same time is slightly astringent in a gentle holding way. In my meditation journey I explored burdock by merging with her, by experiencing her body and way of being in the earth, engaging in her essence in a sensory experience. My heart space is level with the ground, this place where the earth and the sky meet; the expression of life unfolds in this space only by the grace of the moist rich soil below, the foundational nurturing that allows all to be. However I feel her most in my solar plexus regions, the soil of my body. I journey down into the roots, into the earth’s rich topsoil, feeling into how the taproot digs deep into the darkness, all the way down to the roots of my being. The energy flows to the root chakra, holding and connecting me all the way to the earth’s core; the taproot penetrates and draws up long forgotten and lost aspects of self, of unintegrated experience buried in the deep recesses of my reactive conditioning, of stagnation of flow, of trauma, of all that which I was never able to fully be with as it occurred and so it was put aside for the moment but never returned to, of my protection strategies, of overwhelm, of not being able to process and respond to the unfolding moment with all that it is, exactly as it is in each and every moment. And yet until all these old shadows are once again illuminated they will always remain obstructions to the capacity of the expression of my true nature, of my shining light as it once was when I first came to this world as a newborn. Every experience that is not fully processed in the exact moment, integrated, felt, understood, then let go, these experiences have shifted the way I respond to each moment now, a continual conditioning and development of ego and habituated patterns, the impediment of being with life as it truly is, of my true original nature enjoying this embodied experience as true raw unfiltered experience. This is all a reflection of being with life, of choosing to engage with the lessons, of replacing fear and worry of the unknown with faith, love, trust, and flow, of seeking out the unknown, the uncomfortable, for I choose to believe that each experience holds precious guidance, it is all here to be felt, to be honored in all that it is, not to be avoided. It’s not about getting it all done, it is limitless, rather it’s about learning, about growing and shining ever brighter. By having the courage to meet life we become an embodiment of creation experiencing itself in its fullness, it is the purpose of this life, to be with what is being asked of us in each moment.

In the first year of growth burdock goes down and in, tilling the terrain upon which all life lives, and waits in the stillness, she then emerges from hibernation sending all that yin, the lost and unprocessed to return back up and into the light to be digested and dealt with. She helps us shed that which no longer serves that was taking up space and congesting the vessel. I feel much in the solar plexus, in the soil, where all of life is held, where endless critters work in harmony together, where metabolism takes place. It is the place where all nutrient exchange occurs, where new experiences and brought into the vessel and integrated, and where all wastes from now processed experiences are shed and returned to the earth with gratitude. This exchange that allows for the constant existence of our lives is held in the earth, and mediated by water through fluid exchange. When metabolic processes stagnate, it is within the earth and waters of our bodies that this resultant stagnation exists. Then, I travel up into the massive leaves, big and broad, up the stalk, high into the sky, to the seeds with all the little hooks that look like the microvilli of the intestines, to the burrs that gather and collect all stagnancy to be processed with energy from the heavenly realm, with qi and breath and movement and purification.

After the initial calming and nourishing feelings come the tingles, a slight sweat, an opening and releasing to the outside, little churns in the belly, a general feeling of the movements of stagnant energy. Arctium means bear, and lappa means to gather and collect, just so. She is said to be bear medicine, she safely holds me up, holds me toned and together, and coats my insides with the nourishment to strengthen my earth, my stomach and my intestines, my receiver of postnatal qi, building my physical body to be able to do all tasks that are being asked of me. She makes me strong and builds the soil, the source of qi, just as dynamic accumulators do in the soil, they draw up lost resources, out of reach potentials, pulls them back into the light to have the opportunity once more to be understood, for life to engage with them and let learning and growth unfold from them. She then cleanses and scrubs my insides and makes me clean again, just as a bear uses particular plants after hibernation. So this medicine applies to both folks with deficient earth and water resulting in toxin accumulation, digestive insufficiency being not able to digest experience, both food and all which requires energy to process. One must be filled enough to be able to do what needs doing, a healthy physical body for the spirit to be rooted in. And she also cleanses in cases of excess. These go hand in hand, the avoidance, the unprocessed, the excess it congests the fluid passageways that regulate all processes in the body. From this this is overwhelm, the inability to keep up with the ever incoming experience of now. So the excess leads to the lack of capacity to be with now, leading to further congestion, and the body must work extra hard to process all this resultant stagnation, this causes heat, cooking down of the fluids, liberation of all reserves. New energy isn’t coming in, and old wastes can’t get out, so from this congestion there becomes deep consumption of stored yin, dryness, atrophy, weakness, hardness, rigidness, brittleness. It must all be engaged with to right this imbalance. Burdock is a beautiful helpful medicine in this world, aiding in all aspects of metabolism, restoring the capacity to be with life as it truly is.