This Is Your Mind on Plants

by Michael Pollan

“Trauma” is a word in heavy rotation these days. Taloma talked endlessly about it, how trauma “settles in your body” and “blocks energy” and, if it’s not addressed or acknowledged, can fester, leading to physical illnesses such as cancer, as “dis-ease” turns into disease. An unrecognized trauma can also lead to addictions, it’s often claimed, as people seek to “self-medicate” with substances or compulsive behaviors. Healers talk about how plant medicines often “surface hidden trauma” so that they can be “worked through.” How often? I wondered. Wasn’t trauma by definition an exceptional event? Now it seemed like everyone suffered from some trauma; they just didn’t know it yet.

“When any part of your body has been affected by destructive energies or trauma, the heart will close down to protect itself. A closed heart will not heal. It will not express its feelings. The mind becomes more active because the heart’s not feeling anymore. The mind will go into the past or it will go into the future, which doesn’t really exist, and it will get stuck in a chaos, between remembering the past and trying to go into the nonexistent future. And it will lose the gift of life, which is to live and be present in the moment.

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