Episode 59: 'Unity Through the Power of Plant Medicine' with Rasheeqa Ahmad

 
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Rasheeqa Ahmad is a community herbalist and project maker. She’s involved in developing the Community Apothecary vision of collaborative herbal healthcare in Waltham Forest, as well as part of the UK Radical Herbalism Network and the Mobile Apothecary in London.

Rasheeqa trained in Herbal Medicine with the aim of helping people (including herself!) to enjoy positivity and intelligent health in collaboration with our living universe. She’s excited by the possibilities of plant medicine, both those understood since ancient times and those emerging now. Rasheeqa believes that understanding our connections and symbiosis with the other living beings of the earth can yield great potential for our future development and success – all of us together.

Her practice encompasses consultations and treatment, plant-gathering and medicine-making, community activity including knowledge-sharing, practical workshops and herb walks, and vital connections with people and organisations working in peace and productivity with the earth and universe.

 

In this episode, we talked about:

  • Rasheeqa was fascinated by plants as a child, and remembers making up stories about them.

  • She studied English Literature and worked in arts marketing but she realised she was call to learn the ancient knowledge of the earth

  • Her father’s grandfather set up a ‘herbal medicine house’ in Northern India, based on ‘Unani Medicine’, an Islamic system that originated from Ancient Greek medicine

  • Rasheeqa studied at the Scottish School of Herbal Medicine in Glasgow

  • Hawthorn is good for the heart

  • “The potential of plant medicine is that you don’t have to rely on somebody else” 

  • Feeling connected to the earth systems and connecting with the plants

  • Growing and gathering herbs in community to share the labour

  • Strengthening your own knowledge and autonomy and not having to rely on others for your own health

  • Shrubland Garden in Hackney , a community space in an old car park

  • Start with culinary herbs as they are familiar and also have medicinal benefits such as basil, mint, rosemary, lavender 

  • Medicinal teas - infused for 15minutes- feel the effects in the body

  • Kitchen spices are anti-microbial and were used to prevent food spoiling

  • Linden trees or lime flowers are around in high summer

  • Elderflowers, hawthorn flowers 

  • Mugwort

  • Buds in the Spring, Flowers in the Summer, Fruits in the Autumn

  • https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hedgerow-Medicine-Harvest-Herbal-Remedies/dp/1873674996/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=hedgerow+medicine&qid=1597169312&sr=8-1

  • Understanding the close habitat around you

  • Keeping knowledge within the community so that people are equipped with the tools to be healthier

  • Privilege and herbal medicine

  • “Plant medicine is the medicine of the people”

  • Radical, community herbalism gatherings with practical skill sharing

  • Rhizome Community Clinic in Bristol

  • Lisa Flannan - Feminist Healthcare gatherings

  • Herbal medicine as primary healthcare e.g. in New Orleons

  • The direct impact of economic, gender, racial etc inequality on health

  • Goethian science, including the intuitive, magical view of the Cosmos

  • Nathaniel Hughes, The School of Intuitive Herbalism in Stroud

  • Karen and Fi, Sensory Solutions 

  • Ancestral connection with plants

  • Rewilding

  • Organic Lea in London

  • Bethnal Green Nature Reserve

  • Herb walks 

  • Lost knowledge of herbal medicine, especially during the witch hunts of Medieval times, and the lasting trauma from those times

  • Mama Dee - ‘Community Centred Knowledge’ - traditional knowledge from the Carribean

  • The ‘energetics’ approach, including elements and constitution

  • The Common House, Bethnal Green

  • Learning to make herbal medicines, from locally gathered herbs, for the community

  • Hackney Herbal

  • Scottish Radical Herbal Network

  • Boo Armstrong, Camden

  • Evidence-based medicine

  • Grassroots Remedies, Edinburgh

  • Herbalists Without Borders, Bristol

  • Herbalista, Atlanta: By The People, For The People

  • Sharing knowledge

  • Nicholas Culpeper translated the pharmacoeipias into English from Latin

  • Yarrow - a strong, protector plant

Resources

Hedge Herbs

Twitter

http://www.hedgeherbs.org.uk/links-resources-connections/

Radical Herbalism Gathering

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