Plantain Flower Essence

Plantain Flower Essence invites you to sink right into the ground, feeling as if you are Earth. In this place of deep rootedness, you feel safe to allow yourself to expand, as well as, release toxins held in your subconscious such as limiting beliefs, unprocessed emotions, intrusive thoughts, or traumatic memories: those distortions that often play in the background, draining your energy, and causing pain like a splinter you are unable to remove.

Healing Gifts of Plantain Flower Essence

Plantain Flower Essence helps us to connect with Earth, feeling solid, safe, held, and embodied. Supporting our root chakra and helping us to ground is the primary action of Plantain Flower Essence. Creating a sense of safety, invites the nervous system to calm, reducing anxiety.

For those who are prone to overwhelm and get flooded by the amount of energy, information, or messages, Plantain Flower Essence can help to build your resiliency and ability to manage the energy.

The sense of deep groundedness Plantain Flower Essence offers has other benefits as well. From this place of safety, it becomes easier for energy and information to flow into our upper chakras, enabling us to engage with higher consciousness. This can be a great benefit to anyone who wants to deepen their meditation practice, particularly if they are struggling to sit still. [As I write this, I wonder if Plantain Essence may also help people with ADD/ADHD who are struggling with sitting still and concentrating in school. If you experiment with this, please let me know your findings.]

Plantain is well known for clearing toxins. Ki’s* Flower Essence and Plant Spirit continue with this by clearing energetic and emotional toxins held within the body such as: limiting beliefs, fears, energetic stagnation, intrusive thoughts, intrinsic biases, held emotions, and traumas. Often these are cleared through the subconscious without overwhelming the conscious mind or body. 

One of the great gifts of Plantain Flower Essence (and Plant Spirit) is ki’s assistance in healing the wounds and imprints of colonialism, both within ourselves and the Land. Ki supports those who actively engage in healing and shifting systems of oppression. Plantain Spirit Essence helps to stop the cycle of the oppressed becoming oppressors, encouraging us to feel and then release held pain, fear, anger, and resentment while also taking responsibility for our own actions and harm or pain we may have caused. In this way, Plantain aids in ancestral healing.

Through clearing the toxins and distortions, Plantain helps us to align with joy, reminding us that play is our natural state, life is meant to be enjoyed. 

What Plantain Wants for You

The Spirit of Plantain wants you to feel safe and held, to know that you are an inherent part of Earth. Ki encourages you to sit and rest and be, feeling your connection to all. 

Plantain asks you to release the burdens that hold you down or keep you from being fully embodied, so that you can be free to dance around and play, enjoying life and the beauty that surrounds you. Ki says that yes, there are lessons to learn in life and you can learn them through play and joy. While you may have challenges, life is not meant to be a constant state of drudgery.

Plantain also urges us to acknowledge the wounds and traumas we have caused, especially through systems of oppression. Harming others causes great harm to ourselves as well. Plantain asks us to get into our Hearts and see what is underneath the pain, fear, and anger. Once we become aware, Plantain can help us to transmute and clear the pain and fear, releasing us from the burdens, and creating more space for joy.

Plantain also says to open your eyes, look around, and really see. Often the solution or support you are seeking is right there, you may simply be overlooking it or expecting it to be more complicated (or showy) than it is.

Mantra & Keyphrase of Essence

I AM OF THE EARTH

Pausing for a few moments to breathe and say this mantra while taking Plantain Flower Essence can help in the embodiment of the Essence.

Ways to Use Essence

Plantain Flower Essence is most effective when taken as a dosage Essence over the course of a month or possibly longer if needed. Brigid’s Way sells stock level Essences. For instruction on how to dilute and use a dosage Essence, see our Essence FAQs.

Taking 1 drop of the stock Essence before engaging in a meditation may help to deepen your practice.

For exploring shadow work or the threads of colonialism, one drop of stock Essence before a shamanic sound journey may support your explorations.

Brigid’s Way Plantain Spirit Essence can be utilized in Land healing ceremonies to help clear trauma from Trees and/or Land as well as to revitalize disturbed or abused Land.

**Brigid Way’s Spirit Essences have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. They are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease nor are they a substitute for medical care or advice. The information on our website is for educational purposes.

When to Use Plantain Flower Essence

Indications for when to work with Plantain Flower Essence:

• Feeling ungrounded or struggling to stay in your body
• Overwhelmed with energy, emotions, messages, information (often this shows up as anxiety)
• Wanting to support your root chakra
• Wanting to clear or being impacted by energetic toxins from body including limiting beliefs, fears, energetic stagnation, intrusive thoughts, intrinsic biases, held emotions, and traumas.
• Engaging in shadow work, looking at subconscious issues that are interfering with your life
• Trying to shift toxic habitual patterns
• Feeling stuck, listless, unable to engage in joy
• For anyone who tries to transfer their pain, anger, or fear into the Land or other people (what Resmaa Menakem calls “dirty pain”)
• When coming to terms with the harm you have caused
• Healing ancestral and epigenetic patterns of abuse and trauma
• Exploring the roots or imprints of colonialism in your life, community, or Land
• Engaging in shifting systems of oppression
• Removing traumas from Land

A Caution

Generally, Plantain Flower Essence helps to bring up and clear the toxins from our subconscious in a way that is not overwhelming. However, be cautious about overdoing it. It may be helpful to consciously seek out joyful activities while working with Plantain Flower Essence.

If you feel overwhelmed by what is coming up, you may want to combine Plantain Flower Essence with an Essence that helps to lighten the energy and elicits joy such as: Albizia, Anemone/Faerie Woods, Chickweed, Hawthorn, Rose, Tulsi, or Virginia Bluebells.

Herbal Applications for Plantain

Plantain (Plantago sp.) is also known as “white man’s footsteps” because it is said that ki sprouted wherever the colonists walked. Most of the Plantain that has naturalized in the United States today did come from Europe; however, Blackseed Plantain (Plantago rugelii) is native to the US. Everywhere that I have travelled, I have found Plantain growing, even in the caldera at Volcano National Park in Hawaii. Plantain has an affinity for growing in disturbed areas and compacted soil.

Plantain is well known for drawing out toxins and objects including bee venom, snake venom, insect bites, spider bites, splinters, and more. This ability to remove toxins is literally life saving, especially for those who are unable to quickly access medical attention. Most often a poultice is made by chewing up a Plantain leaf, spiting this mixture out, and placing this on the infected area.

It is believed that this poultice is most effective when ki contains the person’s own saliva. However, alternatively, you can create a poultice by blending Plantain leaves with a little water. This mixture can be used immediately or frozen in ice cube trays to be used later.

One time my Love was stung multiple times by Hornets. He is allergic to bee venom, though usually only after multiple stings. We immediately got to work chewing Plantain poultices and replacing them when they got warm. We both chewed so much Plantain that our mouths were completely dry, no saliva left. Fortunately, Plantain (and eventually one dose of Benadryl) did keep him from needing the epipen. 

Besides pulling poisons, I have used Plantain poultices for when there are little splinters of metal, glass, or wood or even thorns that I cannot pull out with tweezers. The Plantain helps to draw them out enough that the tweezers can be used or sometimes Plantain pulls them out completely.

Plantain is also helpful for inflamed and irritated intestines. I like to mix a little powdered Plantain into warmed applesauce. Note, a little goes a long way. The seeds of Plantain are known as psyllium and are used as a fiber to support digestion.

These are just a few of Plantain’s herbal healing gifts. Plantain truly is a remarkable Plant that often goes unnoticed. Though, those who love a “perfect” lawn tend to despise Plantain. Little do they know the valuable medicine that is right at their feet.

---

Brigid’s Way formulates unique Essences from Plants, Nature Spirits, and sacred places around the world that have come forward as guides to help humanity evolve and assist individuals in discovering their True Selves.

The essence shop allows you to search for essences based on ailment, emotional patterns, areas of need, healing desires. 

*Ki is an animistic, genderless third person pronoun which recognizes the aliveness of our more-than-human kin. To the best of my knowledge, in her book Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer was the first to suggest using ki.

Since 2003, Earth advocate and author, Jen Frey, has supported courageous, conscious groups and individuals return to a deep connection with Nature. She founded Brigid’s Way in 2010 offering classes in Plant communication, personal healing consultations, and apprenticeships for those who are ready to transform through remembering Sacred connection. Jen continues to support other practitioners and seekers through her keynotes and workshops while also traveling the world providing land consultations and making Plant Spirit essences for our awakening to wholeness.