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Plant Medicine Summit™ The Plantventure Experience: Reigniting plant-based rituals

William Siff David: Welcome to everyone. This is David Crow, your host of the fourth annual Plant

Medicine Summit where we are exploring the many wonderful and diverse uses of medicinal plants around the world in different cultures for all their healing benefits. In our segment today, we're going to be joining a gentleman who I have known for many years who has done incredible work in the world of ethnobotanical research, the herbal world, herb cultivation and herb education. William Siff a licensed acupuncturist, a clinical herbalist, an ethnobotanist and plant medicine advocate. He's the chief formulator for Goldthread Herbs line of plant-based tonics and travels the world cultivating a direct trade network of small farmers to source ingredients for the tonics. William, welcome.

William: Thanks for having me. It's good to be back. David: Well, I've known you for many years, and you have always been at the forefront

of innovative and radical ideas of how to bring herbal medicine to people. You are one of the first people to actually start a kind of CSA program, an herbal version of a CSA program out of your Goldthread farm in Massachusetts which I had the great pleasure and honor of being able to join you for many summers actually. You are now working on a new phase of bringing herbs to people and that includes traveling around the world and that is the topic of our discussion. But I'm curious just to set the context here and let people know a little bit more about the kind of work you are doing which will take us directly into the bigger topic of integrating herbs into our daily life. What have you been up to?

William: Well, let's see here. When we last hung out in Massachusetts, like you

mentioned, the model that I was really involved with was sort of a local plant-based grassroots medicine movement which included herbal pharmacy and an herb farm and a clinical practice and educational programs and distillation of oils and a whole bunch of things. The question had always been on my mind, how to scale this thing, because it got to a point where really the idea has started to become very compelling, but it seemed like where we were in Massachusetts was quite an area for organic agriculture. There was an ethos there of people kind of keeping it local and in a sense being all set up with this capacity for integrating this form of plant-based medicine into their lives. It wasn't like a big hard sell for people there. They were already kind of on that track and living that way. The question had always been how to scale it.

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I moved into creating the plant-based tonics because really one of those things that grabs hold of people the most is when they actually get plants into their body and feel the sort of sensations of aliveness and the noble kind of feeling of what plants can do with their complicated kind of chemistry. It sort of gets things across to people in my experience that words can't and information doesn't. I'd also been noticing that people more and more are going to different places for healthcare. It used to be that people go into the supplement section of a Whole Foods or some kind of natural grocer. What's happening now is that a lot of the locus of where people are going for health in the plant-based world is actually in the beverage cooler. This is not about that, so much of this conversation. But the plant-based tonics are right next to kombuchas and medicinal vinegars and different kinds of tea and so on. You see the sugar content is going down in the beverage cooler and the sort of medicinal characteristics going up and kefirs and all this other stuff. It seemed like a good place to get the point across to people is to get plants into people as much as possible. Get it to where there's no barrier to entry and where people are already going and looking for this kind of stuff.

A big part of my work in formulating up these drinks and one of the most

enjoyable parts of my work actually has been to go to the countries where the raw materials are that go into these drinks. There's something like 65 different medicinal herbs and spices in the entire plant-based tonic line that we have going down. That's a lot of herbs to seek out and that's been one of my favorite experiences over the past few years as I've gone in a different direction is to seek the sources, meet the farmers and, with my background, kind of really do a detailed curation of where the best plant material comes from. At the same time, from my own learning, I'm getting a chance to meet people who are growing plants that I've grown for years and years on the farm in Massachusetts, but I had not really gotten to see a lot of them in their cultural and sort of bioregional context. That has been a big eye opener for me and really, really exciting to meet a plant like cardamom or ginger or something I might have grown in the greenhouse and to go the forests where I know you've been, the cardamom forest of Kerala where there is just cardamom growing in a region about the size of Rhode Island. Things like that have been fantastic. I'll say a couple more things besides going to do that and we can talk about it.

I'm also has been bringing a lot of the material that I source in different places

around the world back to this location here in California. We offer a program called Plantventure. It's a Plantventure experience is what it's technically called. It's an educational program where people come, and I basically do like an herbal show and tell. This time though, it's interesting because in Massachusetts and I think in the Northeast in general, when I taught there, people mostly want real facts and everyone's got their notebook out and they're taking notes. When I came to California, I realized that I had to kind of adjust my teaching style

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because people are really into experiences here. This is sort of a real sensual way to transmit this sort of teachings about plant medicine to people. I really saturate them and saturate their senses with plants from all over the world. When they leave, it's almost like having a group treatment. They leave the experience feeling like their physiology has just been stretched and massaged. Their nervous system is real chill at the end of these things. They're feeling really bright and awake. It's just a result of strategically passing around all these really potent plant medicines and then discuss in the context of where they come from and a little bit about their botany and so on and so forth. Those two things and also doing my clinical practice here in Santa Monica are what's keeping me busy these days.

David: Right, good. Well, that sets the context very nicely. Thank you. Now, I know that

one of the primary topics that we're going to get to here is how we can actually incorporate plant-based rituals into our lives. You've already given us a hint of that, talking about these events that you are doing where you are getting people to drink the herbs and use the essential oils and make a direct connection through their senses to the people that have produced them.

Before we get to those specific details about what plants to use and how people

might use them, let's back up a little bit and talk about some of the things you've discovered in your travels to these different places and these different cultures because what you are doing actually is transporting people in these events to these places where the plants come from. Your work, as you've described, is reconnecting people to the plants and you're doing it in this particular educational sort of herbal party almost kind of context. But what are some of the basic things that you have learned and found out about how different cultures are maintaining a close connection to plants? In other words, what is it that you are trying to revive in our own culture? What is you are trying to educate people about, about where these plants came from? What is it that you are telling people about the value of this relationship that people have to plants in these particular areas?

William: Yeah, that's a great question. There's a lot of things here and I'll try to just

unpack a couple of them. One thing that first jumped out at me was we've gone to quite a few places. One recent place we went to actually was Fiji. We were there in part for a honeymoon and in part for a plant venture of our own. The plant that we were seeking when we were there and to learn more about and to really dive into deeply was kava-kava because it's indigenous to the South Pacific, in Polynesia as you know. Fiji has a really vibrant kava culture. When we went there, I participated with my wife Edith in many, many different kava ceremonies. Some of them were large and some of them were small and intimate. Some of them were out in the bush, in the countryside, and some of

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them were in the cities. We went to markets where kava was sold and all that kind of stuff. We learned a lot from a lot of different people.

One of the things that struck me the most which wasn't surprising actually in a

certain sense was that the way that kava is consumed in Fiji, in Fijian culture, has a whole different context in the sense that it's not such a narrow focus on its pharmacological effects on us. We know kava as an anti-anxiety plant, a plant that maybe helps to encourage sound sleep or to relax the muscles when they're tense and so on. It does all of these things. But in the context that we were consuming it there, there's a real deep way in which kava is sort of stitching the culture together and creating a group bonding experience that is really unique in the sense that you don't see too many people drinking kava on their own or sort of taking it for because they're feeling anxious. Really, they drink it to celebrate and they drink it to communicate. I've always heard and it's well documented that kava is one of the first things that people would do is to get together and drink kava and settle, sit down and talk out dispute to foster like deeper communication amongst sort of neighboring tribes and so on.

That context is very much still alive and they're very proud of it. For example,

you'll get to sit in these large rooms. I mean, I'm not sure if you've done this, but for the listeners, in the room, there's a lot of protocol. A chief sits on one side and there's a special person that pours the kava out in this big ceremonial bowl. Then there's another person who's sort of like the curator of the kava. Is this the right kava? Is this strong enough brew? Is it too weak? Are we going too fast? Are we pouring it too slow? Things like that. There's a little bit of that going on. Then guests have a very specific seating arrangement where they sit. Then there's a lot of prayer and there's a lot of song and there's a lot of dance going on during these ceremonies. People get up and speak about things that they want to share with one another that might not have another forum available to them to share about something that's going on in their life or a challenge or something they're celebrating. It goes on for a really long time, these experiences.

As you drink the kava, you get the pharmacological effects of feeling relaxed and

quite numb in a certain way and warm and tingly and at ease. Then what seems to happen is there's a real flowing and outpouring amongst the group of heart energy in this really amazing way that's a big, big part of what occurs. I see is happening with the kava is loosening up something in the group and in the individual. It's like a lock-and-key effect. What happens with the feelings of relaxation and ease that are promoted with the kava-kava get amplified by the context in which you're drinking the kava-kava in so that it's not just my sense of relaxation, but it's what I'm now able to and willing to do with that sense of relaxation in the context of a community. That just again builds upon itself.

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By the time we leave these sessions, everyone is just glowing this warm heartfelt energy and good vibes. It's very different than if you're sort of going to the shelf and buying your kava-kava tablets in a modern Western setting here in the US and taking it home and chomping them down and kind of having that experience which nothing against it, it's just very, very different to go to the culture where it's from.

Another thing, one last thing I'll say about that is one of the first places we went

to in the country is you always have to kind of bring a gift to the chief of the particular village. It's still a society that is tribal, and there's always a chief in every village that you bring a gift of, and frequently that gift is a bundle of kava-kava. You bring your best roots to the chief when you're visiting. Then you sit down in the hut with them and a few of the other elders. They have a chat and you drink some kava with the chief. Then you have permission to be in the village and everything is cool and everyone knows you. But in that first or second village we went to, the chief was describing this kava-kava variety that he said, "You really got to get this one and it's growing on this hillside." He instructed one of the farmers to bring us down there and get that kava-kava and has this really black stem. It's very different. It's shorter than the other ones that were around it. It was very unique. He said, "That's the one I drank when I was a boy. That's the one that has the real tonic effects." I was very curious about this because my learning about kava-kava, my education about it, my experience, which is kind of extensive, for 20 years I've been using kava-kava, I didn't know there was a tonic effect. Then I asked him more about it and he said, "Yeah. This kava-kava, it relaxes you, but it strengthens your energy, it strengthens your libido, it strengthens the muscles," basically the kind of description that you might get about something like Panax ginseng or ashwagandha or something like that.

I asked him quite a bit about that and it really became clear that was another

thing that I would share with you that I learned. When you go right to the source where these plants have been nurtured and curated and stewarded for centuries, thousands of years, I often will learn about uses for medicinal plants that are not in the literature, not commonly taught, that are sort of like outgrowths of a real deep intimate knowledge of the plant from its source. It's kind of like every household has a folk use or a remedy that involves plants such as kava-kava or cardamom in India or things like schisandra berries in Korea that you wouldn't ever think would be something it would be used for. Kava-kava being used as a tonic, in this case, you walk down the road and someone is using it externally as a wash for insect bites and skin conditions and so on. The point is that the diversity and the sort of the usefulness and the sort of power of a lot of the plants that we commonly use in botanical medicine is really a lot larger than I had first realized since I started to visit some of these places. How's that for a long answer?

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David: That's great. Well, that gives us some kinds of teachings right there based on your adventures. You're telling us that the plant is part of the culture, it's part of ceremony, it's part of politics and problem-solving and the interaction to different groups. It's also a source of information that we don't typically see in the more conventional educational sources that we learn about the herbs from. These are all really good lessons.

William: Can I say one more thing about that, David, just to give you one more example of

that while we're on the topic? David: I was just going to ask if you had other teachings from other places as well

before we actually talk about doing it at home. William: Great, yeah. I was thinking while we're speaking because it's such an interesting,

I'm thinking of another really popular plant. I was just looking at it on my wall so I thought about it. I was looking a little tin of matcha powder. It wasn't too long that I went to Japan to source the matcha powder for one of our drinks. As a general rule whenever I go anywhere on one of these sourcing learning trips, one of the guiding principles is to really deeply saturate myself with the plant, in fact, overly so. I mean, every day, I'm taking in the plants that we're looking for in every potential way that I can, in every setting that we can find.

Matcha is a really interesting one because, again, having had experience with it

as like a great cognitive enhancer, alternative caffeine source, really high in antioxidants, kind of alternative to coffee potentially in the morning. I obviously knew of its health benefits. I know about Camellia sinensis and tea and the benefits of tea. But when I went there, and I've been to Japan twice now, the second time, we really did a deep dive into the matcha culture. We're very fortunate to have a great tour guide to go around with, a friend of mine. He took us to places that were matcha houses that were 700 years old and still in business. Things like that. All the way to drinking matcha in temples to drinking it just in the middle of fields and with farmers and so on and so forth. It was a really great wide range of experience. What I found there is that my experience with matcha was that the setting makes a huge difference. Again, we think of a lot of these things, I think, as just plants that will improve our health, and all we really need to do is consume them. In actuality, when I was drinking the matcha in some of these settings, I realized that there's so much more to it because the space that's created in a matcha ceremony or even just an intentional matcha house is one in which time seems to slow down quite a bit. Obviously, it's a really amazing colored plant. There's a lot of interesting tools, from the bamboo whisk to the clay pots, to the little scooping mechanism, and everything about it has an intention built into it.

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What my experience is is they don't serve matcha quickly there. There isn't really like a matcha latte that you can get fast. It's really something where you sit down and it's presented to you in phases and in stages. Usually the setting is quite beautiful, and there's lots to look at. It's often quiet. People are sort of just spending a lot of time being in kind of the present moment. The settings are built in such a way that like they're very nice to look at, whether it's the plants that are planted or the art on the wall or the lighting. It all seems to be that they built the matcha tradition in such a way as to promote mindfulness, to promote awareness. The way it's presented is very precise and very impeccable, you could say. There are teachings in there about what it means to have order and to have attention to detail and to have an eye for beauty and symmetry all built into this matcha ritual.

Then when the final product is being whisked, you take the powder, you put it in

the bowl, you whisk it, oftentimes what I would find is they would make a stronger, thicker brew there called koicha. The koicha was really like matcha, but less water and more whisking. It was very thick, very dark green, almost like a paste. It was kind of an amazing experience to have matcha in that way because drinking that on a couple of occasions, even though it was strong and bitter and really intense, it was almost psychedelic, I'll tell you the truth. It was very, very powerful and sort of eliciting a different kind of mental and physical experience than having a simple cup of matcha somewhere or a couple matcha in coconut latte or something like that. It was very awareness-enhancing, I guess you could say. It really, really brings the present moment into full focus with all these other elements.

Long story short, they've been cultivating this ritual alongside of this plant to

create a space that seems to be very important in their culture, a communal space of being together, but also being able to be in one's own awareness and one's own center at the same moment. It's a very intimate space, very different than the kind of raucousy space that I experienced in Fiji with the kava. But no less intimate, just very different, and it reflects a lot about the different cultures.

David: Excellent. Well, you've had a lot of blessings to be able to travel the world and

immerse yourself really deeply into the study of plants in the container of their culture and their history. I know that you've been doing this now for a long time, and you've been all over the world and become very familiar, very intimate at a deep level with many plants. You just told us about two, but I know that you've also been all over Central and South America and India, ginseng culture in Korea, lots of different places.

But I'm wondering now what your perspective is and what you are doing to try

to bring all of this because obviously these cultures have been working with these plants and creating this aesthetic and this container for them with

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ceremony and ritual. It's all embedded in the cultivation, the agriculture, the philosophy, the religion and so forth. Here you are bringing these plants to people and trying to basically help people to understand the deeper context and learn these deeper lessons about what the plants represent, not just get them to consume things as consumers, although there is a part of it. But you are facing a formidable challenge I think because you are transplanting things from very old cultures into Los Angeles which I think is in a certain way kind of a culturalist culture and into Western culturalist culture of the United States. We're not an agrarian culture. We don't live in villages close to the plants. We don't have these plants as part of our lives. Where do we start? How can we incorporate some of these aspects of relationship to plants into our daily lives to possibly start to create our own plant-based culture?

William: Yeah, that's the trick. Actually, like a lot of what I used to talk about with you

that if information was going to save our culture from ecological catastrophe, I'll just say it, then we would have already done that because we have information. We have more than enough information to know what's going on. We know what's good for us in terms of healthcare and how to take care of ourselves, what's a healthy lifestyle. It's all out there in spades. It's not about necessarily only transmitting information, although that's an important piece. Some of what the way that I've been doing it and teaching it, I only will teach it based upon my experience with it over the past couple of decades and what has worked the most for myself and my own incorporation of plants and plant-based medicine into my daily life. It's about creating rituals and using the language of rituals. I don't use that word lightly because it can be co-opted so easily into meaninglessness.

But what I've been describing to you in this conversation in a sense is about

ceremony. It's about ritual. It's about stitching our life together with these ceremonies and rituals both as a community but also as individuals. Having your own individual relationship to plants thought of through the lens of daily rituals actually can be quite a great way to have it really take root in a way that has a full-bodiedness to it that's not so mechanistic and deficiency oriented, meaning like I take these pills because. Our friend Prashanti calls this thing if you think of things as like herbal priests, it doesn't work so well. That's been my experience.

For example, let's just get right to specifics. I was in Kenya and I was able to go to

Northern Kenya and go to where the frankincense trees where, and I got to gather some really great oil from there and bring it back and learn a bit more. You taught me a lot about frankincense yourself, and I learned quite a bit more when I actually went to see the trees. I have a bowl and some of the volcanic ash on my desk here in my office. I have one right in the door where I put my keys and my wallet when I walk in the house. I have one in my room. I have several bowls of volcanic ash with some charcoals. Basically, here's an example of daily

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ritual. I will come to work and when I get here, I burn some frankincense, just a couple of pieces, and sit there for a few minutes with the smoke and then get going with my day. When I get back from work and I want to sort of step across the membrane from mentalizing and digitizing and sort of linear thinking world into a spacious place where there's more possibility and sort of a more receptive state of mind, I will burn the frankincense and walk into the house in a different state of mind. Then before sleeping, I'll do the same thing.

Now, I don't always hit every single one of these things religiously every single

time. But because I've strategically placed these bowls in there and I've learned the benefits of burning frankincense to open up the senses and relax the mind and to create sort of a new sense of possibility, all it takes is seeing the bowl and then I'm kind of aware that that's an opportunity right there, that there's another space that I could enter if I so chose. The more that I burn this frankincense and breathe it in for a few minutes intentionally, the stronger the relationship between the fragrance and the chemistry and the neurology. This is actually part of the medicinal effect. The fragrance and the chemistry is going to work on my physiology regardless, but the stopping and taking the moment to breathe it in in these strategic time periods throughout the day is what creates the ritual. That's just one example of a ritual that anyone can incorporate if they want to alter their mind state in a very subtle but over time a very pervasive way.

That's another thing about this. One of the places where I really already had I

guess similar relationships to a lot of places where I've gone to visit these plant cultures is that they use plants a lot more than we do in general. They saturate themselves with plants. That means that they're really integrated seamlessly into the diet. There's no sort of separation between the plants as supplements and special medicines that I only take here and there. There are some like that, but for the majority of them, they're really getting a lot more medicinal plant chemistry into their bodies. Having that ritual of frankincense on multiple times a day, throughout the day, if you do this one time, you get one effect. If you do this for weeks, months on end, and then in my case and in your case years, you have a very different relationship and the ritual is very deeply established. I hope I got that across, but it's more about the rituals behind the usage of these plants combined with chemistry and the medicinal effects of these plants.

David: Nice. Okay. You've given us three very good options and suggestions here for

plants that we can use to create some ritual. The frankincense and that's a beautiful description of how you use it. Drinking matcha tea and using kava and all of those things are available to us. Kava bars are now coming. It's not exactly the same thing, but it's a social gathering place and people do get the medicinal benefits. I'm wondering if you can just give us a short list of a couple other

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primary species that would be easy to bring into this type of daily or weekly kind of ceremonial use easily in our homes.

William: Yeah, definitely. In my mind I was thinking about the Indian culture. We were

there sourcing turmeric and cardamom. But what I realized was I was there for several weeks. I mean you know this better than most. Everything has medicinal spices in the diet. I mean, in the cooking, the cuisine is just chockfull of all the medicinal spices. After you eat three meals in a really good Indian cooking, I know this time I was just trying to calculate how many grams of these really anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, antiseptic, circulatory-enhancing plants am I getting into my diet just without even thinking about it. The spice rack is so full and so effulgent with medicinal benefits. It's right there in everyone's kitchen. It's something that's so easy to take for granted, but it is clearly the easiest way to get medicinal plants into the body is just to remember that cultures that have long-standing cuisine that have also people with uncommon longevity and sort of uncommon vigor and health, these are the places that in general are what we want to be modeling our own cuisines after on a daily basis.

Think about Thai food. Think about Japanese cuisine. Think about India. You

think about Vietnam. There's a lot of places, Greece in the Mediterranean. We have access to all of it at this point which is just like our fortune, our good fortune. But that's the first thing that I would just kind of point to. Then speaking of Greece, there's a tea there, they call it Greek Mountain Tea. The genus is Sideritis. It's a mint family plant. It's getting pretty popular now, Greek Mountain Tea or Greek Mountain Mint sometimes it's called. It's kind of one of the secrets of the Mediterranean diet.

Well, you probably heard of the movement the Blue Zones. What that

represents is places where people live into their 80s and their 90s and older with low morbidity. They have vigor. They maintain strength and cognitive function. They can really live into their older years. In these Blue Zones, wherever they may be, Japan, again the Mediterranean, South America, they're always including wild and medicinal plants into their diet. One of the ones that I really like a lot is this Greek Mountain Mint, and we get ours from Greece. It's the old people that are still usually that source for picking these kinds of awesome plants and getting them to us. But it measures right up there with the green tea in terms of its polyphenols and its antioxidants. It's not too well known about. It tastes quite good and they drink multiple cups every day. Sencha in Japan. Sencha is kind of like the everyday green tea that they drink there. In every country we go, people are in their 80s and they're still farming. Older people, a lot of times they'll say, "Well, I have 13 cups of green tea a day." To me, that was a big eye opener. I said, "On average?" The farmers over there are drinking between ten and 15 cups of green tea a day. They don't make their tea so strong and bitter like you might get at like a cafe here, but just kind of getting enough of

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the green tea, in this case, the sencha, the everyday green tea. It's mild but you're getting a continuous drip of plant chemistry throughout the day in a very easy assimilative form. That's another thing that I've taken up. It's a great ritual to have. What else? There's so many.

David: Yeah. Nice. Well, unfortunately, we're going to have to close things down here

because these segments are so short. But before we do, I want to touch on a very important aspect to all of us because what you are proposing in the work that you've been doing, not just with your Plantventures but with your cultivation of the plants and your clinic and education is spreading a kind of message and transforming the consciousness of culture. But there are some things that we should not be too idealistic about either. I'm curious, what you saw, you gave us beautiful descriptions about these cultures and the way the plants are used in their long traditions and so forth. But the reality is as I mentioned that here in the West, we're not an agrarian culture and nobody is actually very interested in doing this kind of work. Americans are not a farming people and people do not want to do farming in general. The farming system that we have is so industrial that the kind of farming that an agrarian culture that these plants come from is simply impossible.

Additionally, in these places that you have described so beautifully, and you have

seen the beautiful centuries-old integration of plants into these cultures, people are losing interest in their own traditions. The young people don't want to do agriculture either. I don't want to end this on a depressing note. What I would like to do is actually frame this so that people understand that this work that you are doing of preserving plant-based culture is incredibly important not just for introducing people here in the West, but also for maintaining these cultures in the places where they are disappearing. I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit about the other side of the equation. It's not just these beautiful terraces of tea which I have seen or the beautiful cardamon forests. It's not just the beauty and the tradition. It's also the fact that those things are disappearing. That makes your work of preservation even more important and crucial.

Tell us a little bit about that side that you have seen because I know that every

place you have been that there are forces of destruction. The frankincense trees in Kenya, this is a crucial critical ecological situation. It's not very sustainable for much longer. The cardamon in India, all of these things are facing significant challenges. What have you learned on the ground about some of these challenges and how is your work actually supportive of solving those bigger issues in these beautiful places of traditional cultures that you are also trying to bring here to the West?

William: Oh, man, I wish we had another two hours for this one because this is actually

kind of approaching some of my favorite topics, the most important topics as

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you're mentioning. There's so many. What you said earlier, for example, first of all, it's not easy to get to these places that we are actually going to. When it comes to the cardamom forests of Kerala, for example, our intention was to go there to source some organic cardamom from the place where cardamom is the strongest, the best and sort of where it's indigenous. Cardamom, it's currently being grown in Central America. But on average, it's about 10% to 20% less essential oil content in the stuff that's being grown in Central America because they're just getting their feet on the ground. They've been doing this in India for a really long time, and it's also from there so plants tend to be stronger in the places where they're actually indigenous to and absorbing the environment where they're from and so on.

But 95 or more percent of the cardamom in Kerala is completely addicted to

toxic agriculture. Basically the farmer's imperative is to grow as much as possible and get as much weight as possible because that's how they make their money, by the kilo. They're hooked in on pesticides that will make these plants grow large and have not much predators because they're also full of pesticides. Once people as you know get hooked into that kind of agriculture, it's very difficult to get off. Now, to make matters worse, the Kerala forests are surrounding some of the last known tiger reserves on the planet. The Periyar Tiger Reserve is sort of in a giant valley surrounded by mountains of cardamom that is like for many decades now been on toxic agriculture. That stuff is running off into a very sensitive ecosystem where again some of the last tigers live as well as a whole bunch of other threatened species.

It is a problem. It is a major thing. It's actually a good place to intervene in sort of

where there's an intersection of related issues. Besides the fact that the ecosystem is in jeopardy in a place like that, the people have huge amounts of cancer. They have tons of crazy health problems that are going on. Not surprisingly because they're like drenching themselves in these chemicals all the time. We went specifically to find organic and we're met with quite a surprise. We went there and had to search far and wide and extend our trip and go deeper and deeper until we found an organic source that we could use in our plant-based tonics. Now, that particular farming operation has needs. They need to be organically certified in order to open up markets for themselves to other people besides us. So now we're working with them to support their organic certificate and help them with the paperwork and the cost and the expense, which otherwise there's no way they could ever afford. Therefore, they're one of the many, many millions of farmers in the plant industry that are stuck in between sort of on one side, toxic agriculture, on the other side, organic certification. In between is this big gray area that's neither because you can say you're growing things organically, but you actually can't be proving it with a certificate, so that diminishes the demand for your product. At the same time,

William Siff | March 20, 2019 | p. 13

you're not making as much as you would if you just went along with the system of toxic agriculture. It's a tricky place to be.

There's a lot of our farmers in that position. We try to go for the farmers that are

actually trying to rise up out of toxic agriculture into organic certification in their home countries. Now, that's just one example. There's so many. I know we're at the end of our time, but we're supporting farmers all over the planet at this point who are not only growing organic but are often in the midst of an otherwise huge tidal wave of the opposite in their countries combined with the fact that what you said, most of the farmers in most of these countries are old. In this country, like you said, we're not farmers. Well, a lot of those countries, the younger people don't want to be farmers either. A lot of these places like Japan have huge amounts of land devoted to green tea production with a hugely shrinking population of people who are actually going to be able to tend to those fields. They're looking at things like artificial intelligence to start growing their crops, but that's a first-world kind of industrialized culture. The other ones that aren't that are looking at people going to cities and taking other types of jobs and abandoning the whole thing in an effort to kind of be more like the West. It is a huge and critical topic.

Most importantly or equally importantly is that when these plant-based

economic system in these different countries shrink or become unviable, so too is the context in the ethnobotanical wisdom that allows people to take good care of their plants in a balanced way and to actually use them to maintain culture and to maintain connections with their ancestry, with one another, and certainly with their own health as it relates to being connected to the larger ecosystems in which they're a part of. It's a huge, huge topic and hopefully we'll talk more about that when you come down here.

David: Well, we do have to wrap things up, but I just want to point out that we have

now gone full circle and moved from your trips around the world to coming back to the West and incorporating the knowledge and wisdom and ceremonies in different ways in our own homes, and then going back out into the world and seeing the challenges that are happening out there. What I am taking away from your brilliant discussion here is that we all need each other. We all need the plants, and the modern world needs the traditional, and the traditional world needs the modern world. Thank you for articulating that so beautifully.

To conclude, I just want to let people know about your websites, William. This is

quite easy. For the first one, it's just williamsiff.com. The second, goldthreadherbs.com. These are the websites where you can find out more about the wonderful work that William is doing and find out about the end result of his travels and his work supporting people around the world and how that is translating into very high-quality medicines coming into his line of products.

William Siff | March 20, 2019 | p. 14

William, thank you so much on behalf of all of us for your very articulate and

insightful adventure stories really and all the education that goes with that that you have given us. Just for me personally, thank you for the incredible work that you've been doing for decades and the incredible contribution that you've made to our society to help raise consciousness and health at this level. Thank you.

William: Thank you. Thanks for letting me be a part of this and inviting me in. I really

appreciate it. Also, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. As you know, you have been and always will be one of my chief inspirations in terms of the global grassroots plant-based healthcare revolution. All that you have taught me over the years has really been kind of a big, big part of my overall development in this work and continues to inspire me as well. I'm really looking forward to seeing you again and working with you more.

David: Nice. Well, thank you for the acknowledgement. It's been a pleasure and

continues to be. For everybody who's joined us in this segment, thank you for listening in, and join us again in another segment of The Plant Medicine Summit.

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