The Sensory Continuum in Herbal Energetics
Before you can even begin to understand energetic terms like stimulating and relaxing, cooling and heating, moistening and drying, you need to realize that we are not speaking in terms of dichotomous polarities. Rather that viewing different herbs and herbal actions as opposites, realize they are actually dynamic continuums.
A continuum is “a continuous sequence in which adjacent elements are not perceptibly different from each other, although the extremes are quite distinct.” according to the dictionary. Still, this kind of continuum implies a straight line, and reality is more like a color wheel or musical scale, more like a spiral with many layers.
So understand, you’re not looking at neat little boxes defined by precise terms that can be cross-referenced in a textbook. You’re looking at energetic patterns, directions and tendencies as interpreted by a manic herbalist’s typing fingers. I’m not here to give you a system, not even a “natural system”, I’m providing you with a set of tools and perspectives to help you get down on your belly and taste and see and smell and engage with the complex and magical people we call herbs.
Herbs are rarely pure embodiments of one action or end of the spectrum. Just go ahead and accept that an herb can be both astringent and demulcent, stimulating and relaxing, even hot and cold, all at once. It’ll all be much easier if you can allow yourself that kind of flexibility of thinking. In fact, not only can they be, they almost inevitably are a blend of actions and tendencies. Because just as with humans and life in general, the polarities of black and white are a limiting illusion.
Reality, for people and plant, is much more complex and beautiful and disturbing and breath-taking. A thousand shades of colors and subtleties of sound, one layered on the other and woven together in an intricate knot-work and weave that ties us all together in the web of life.
This concept of shifting from seeing everything as blocks (packed with categorized info) to seeing a wheel of color and song (flowing with wisdom and sensory magic) spiraling in on itself will be an essential part of “getting” energetics on a gut-deep level.
We’re not looking for static categories or pre-determined equations, we’re observing patterns and experiencing the tendencies of living, intelligent beings and how they interact with our bodies. And as much as we herbalists like to dabble and blather on, this isn’t a science experiment or discourse, it’s a dance.
