Plants are complex beings, so much that the remedies obtained from them are able to act upon all the contitutional levels of Man. When the plant complexity meets human complexity, an “integral” therapeutic act takes place, thorugh which plants truly become our Allied, showing us the road to follow at physical, mental, emotional and spiritual level in order to achieve healing and personal growth.
The concept of “vital energy”, that often seem so strange to us nowadays, is of outmost importance in all the traditional healing systems: it’s the Qi of Chinese Medicine, the prana of Ayurveda, the rouh of Unani medicine and the pneuma of Greek physicians. The plants reputed to act most specifically on the vital energy have usually the ability to work on the most subtle levels and were often believed to be “magic” by the various traditions (vervain, St. John’s wort, motherwort, lavender, all the hallucinogenic/entheogenic plants, …).
