Healing With Nature

Medicinal Plant Knowledge

In ancient Indian culture, several plants were considered sacred because of their medicinal properties. Many of these were grown at home and people had a common knowledge of how they could take care of simple ailments through home remedies. This plant based medicinal knowledge grew into schools of medicine such as Siddha, Ayurveda and Naturopathy. While Indians today, still consider some of the plants sacred and might have rituals worshipping them, very few have an intimate relationship with them or know how they are to be used to keep ones daily health robust.

 

The Healing with Nature program aims to revive these simple techniques by helping people learn to grow them at home once again and make simple home remedies using these plants.

SEEDS

eCoexist is helping a women farmers group, Vanastree,  based in Sirsi Karnataka, who have a seed saving network for organic open pollinated seeds. For those of you looking for high quality seeds, this is the group to order from.

SAPLINGS

eCoexist will be collaborating with the Jambe Forest Farm, to supply organic saplings of medicinal plants.

REVIVE TALKS

As part of our REVIVE web series, eCoexist holds regular web based discussions around aspects of plant based medicine and
health.

WHY AND HOW?

A workshop on learning to identify, grow and use medicinal plants offered by Dr Rahul Saraf , an Ayurvedic doctor, and Vivek Gour Broome an organic farmer and botanist. This workshop starts with an online introductory session on REVIVE and then moves to a farm based hands on workshop.

Health is an Exchange of Energy

When the connection between humans and their natural environment is restored, many ailments caused by stressful urban lifestyles quite naturally get relieved. Handling soil, bathing animals, spending time in the sun and the breeze stimulate the senses and revive them. The pace of life and work slowdown and the natural rhythms of day and night are respected once again. This is the basic principle on which the Healing with Nature program is being designed. On allowing the exchange of energy between ourselves and Nature to flow again.

Work on an Organic Farm

Healing with Nature involves reconnecting our mind body and spirit to the earth and her rhythms. For most urban residents, there is little occasion to do this directly. Once a month we offer opportunities for volunteers to work on an organic farm, doing the labour that is required to keep a farm going. This allows them to use their bodies in a way they don’t normally do and experience a sensory contact with Nature directly. The program helps people reflect on their day of work and how it has shifted their perception. 

Healing with Animals

The interaction between humans and domesticated animals has
the capacity to heal both.

 





Plant Based Medicine: Why and How?

About the Workshop- December 13th, 2020

As part of our Healing with Nature campaign, eCoexist in collaboration with Jambe Forest Farms, is happy to bring to you the first of a series of workshops we hope to do on simple ways to stay healthy while deepening our connection to Nature.

Date : 13 Dec

Time: 9 am to 12.30 pm

Most traditional healers or vaidus use fresh plant material like juice or paste made from leaves, stem, bark, roots or fruits. Ready availability of fresh plant material is one of the main benefits of cultivating medicinal plants at home. Fresh plant material is usually more effective than dried or preserved material and ensures authenticity of the material. Though there are numerous plant based material like powders, aristha, asava, paak, kalpa, etc. available in the market, they are primarily made to preserve the fresh plant based material and to ensure that these medicines are also available in the seasons or in places where fresh material is not available.

This workshop will help us understand our body type, the plant based remedies we can use to stay healthy. We will get an introduction to a diversity of common medicinal plants, their specific properties, basic identification skills and will learn to make some common healing formulations from these plants

The experts:

Vaidya Rahul Saraf has been a practicing Ayurvedic physician for last two decades, his speciality is making different ayurvedic formulations. In addition to their use he has worked on various areas related to medicinal plants such as cultivation, marketing, and processing of medicinal plants with the help of taxonomists, farmers, government agencies and educational institutes. He believes there is no disease that cannot be treated with Ayurvedic medicines.

Vivek Gour-Broome is a naturalist with a special interest and expertise in ethno-botany and herpetofauna and has been a wildlife photographer. He lives on a farm and is an organic farmer who specialises in cultivation and domestication of medicinal plants, wild tubers, indigenous rice varieties, vegetables, indigenous trees, bamboo varieties, rare wild grasses and wetland plant species, among others. Currently he is engaged in landscaping projects promoting indigenous trees and cultivation and use of medicinal plants. He believes every plant is useful in some way or the other.

About Jambe Forest Farms:

Jambe Forest Farms is a beautiful patch of forest grown and nurtured by the Broome family over the past forty years. Tucked away in Hinjewadi, close to Marunji village, on the outskirts of Pune, the forest farm has been carefully cultivated to host a diversity of rare and indigenous tree and herb species. It is also home to a unique medicinal plant nursery with organic and open pollinated herbs. Vivek Broome, who is passionate about rare medicinal species has hand picked them from deep within forests to cultivate and propogate them here. A day at the farm spent in silence is a deeply healing experience in itself.

The Healing with Nature workshops will be conducted at the Jambe Forest Farms among bamboo groves, far from the hustle of the city. Within an hours drive from Pune central the farm is easy to reach while yet being a well kept secret from urbanity.

The workshop fee of Rs 1200/- per person includes:

  1. An online intro session w experts – 4 Oct ( two weeks before the actual workshop)
  2. A visit on the farm
  3. Simple healthy refreshment
  4. Visit to medicinal plant nursery (where you may purchase saplings)
  5. Hands on workshop to grow and use medicinal plants for basic immunity w recipes
  6. Materials for workshop

Language : English / (Marathi – if needed )

Post workshop support : We will also be creating a community of people on Whatsapp to continue discussions after the workshop as you experiment with the techniques you learn here.

Healing with Nature campaign:

Healing is an exchange of energy between the human body and Nature at large. Nature provides us everything we need to grow and to stay healthy. Urban environments disconnect us from our natural environs and this leads to ill health. The Healing with Nature campaign will look at the healing available to us through growing medicinal plants, through interactions with animals and with time in the wilderness.