Season 4, Ep. 8 - Do Plants Have Personalities? Holistic Women’s Health, Animism, and Cultural Repair with Bindi Stables
If you’ve been searching for “plant intelligence”, “Ayurvedic healing”, or “animism and climate change”, this episode is exactly what you need.
In this episode, you'll learn:
How Ayurveda understands hormones, health, and healing through cycles
Why women’s bodies are not problems to fix, but intelligence to trust
How listening to plants and the body restores regulation and vitality
We also cover:
• Holistic healing beyond symptom management
• Cyclical wisdom and seasonal rhythms in women’s health
• Animism and listening to plants as a cultural shift, not a belief system
• How disconnection from nature impacts hormones and nervous systems
• Why embodied, relational healing matters more than ever during climate crisis
This episode weaves holistic health, women’s hormonal wisdom, animism, and nervous system awareness into a conversation about cultural transformation. Megan and Bindi explore how listening to plants, to cycles, and to the body offers a path toward healing that is relational, ethical, and deeply alive. If you’re longing for a more integrated approach to health that honors both the Earth and women’s bodies, this episode is an invitation home.
Listen Now:
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/episode/09nlmDoUAp8oUz7ydtLIkD
Apple Podcasts -https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/do-plants-have-personalities-holistic-womens-health/id1498731180?i=1000757814829
Connect with Megan:
🌐 https://www.megandlambert.com
💌 https://www.megandlambert.as.me/discovery-call
If you’re curious about my offerings, visit me at www.megandlambert.com.
If this episode moves you, please let me know by reaching out by email, Instagram DM (@megandlambert), or leaving a review!
Episode Resources:
• Ayurvedic and animistic approaches to plant medicine
Cultural perspectives on listening, relationship, and ecology
Women’s health and intuitive medicine practices
Bindi on Instagram: @bindistables
Episode Transcript:
Before we talk about climate, before we talk about culture, we have to talk about bodies.
Because women's bodies, our hormones, cycles, our rhythms are often the first places that culture breaks. These are the places we stop listening, the places we try to control instead of relate. In today's episode of Eros and Earth, I am joined by Bindi Stables, a woman's health practitioner and Ayurvedic guide for a conversation about holistic healing, plant intelligence, and what happens when we return to cyclical wisdom, both in our bodies and in the living world around us.
We explore how Ayurveda understands health as relationship, not optimization. How listening to plants through an animistic lens mirrors learning to trust one place again. And why hormone health, nervous system regulation, and ecological healing are not separate conversations, but the same conversation told at different scales.
This episode is about remembering that healing doesn't come from overriding the body or dominating nature, but from listening deeply, from slowing down, from re-entering into relationship with what is alive. If you're craving a more holistic approach to health, one that honors your body, the earth, and the cultural moment that we're in, this conversation is for you.
Let's dive in.
Hey, welcome Bindi, I'm so glad you're here.
Aww thanks Meg, I'm so happy to be here. Yay!
Hey. So I thought I would open this episode by sharing this memory I have of you, where we were walking down into my little permaculture food forest. And then you looked up at this plant, and you start talking to it. And you're like, isn't the personality of this plant so delicious? Such a playful spirit of a plant. And it was the first time I remember somebody talking about the personality of a plant.
Where did you get that feeling, that insight?
I love that. Yeah, I'm remembering back to that moment too. Yeah, it goes back many years for me. So kind of working in women's health and functional medicine, my first love of medicine was actually with Ayurveda. And I lived in India for some time studying Ayurveda. And my teacher, like I expected to go to India and have like a textbook of herbalism. And I was really passionate about studying plants.
And one thing that really surprised me about studying Ayurveda in a very traditional setting was that our teacher would, you know, our class plans was us to go outside and sit in the garden and walk through the forest and meditate. And that was so much of our lesson plan. And then, you know, we'd all, we'd all sit and we'd listen and we'd meditate and we'd drop in and we would feel and sense and experience the plants through all of our senses and our, our intuition. And then we'd come back to the classroom.
and share experiences and insights. And then we would bring in the left brain, the logic and understanding. And something that really surprised me was that so many of the other students' experiences were very synonymous. And so sitting down and hearing like, okay, my experience of this plant and kind of just the felt sense that I had of really meditating upon the plant and really being with it and observing it and sensing it.
is so many other people had the same or similar experiences. And then learning it from kind of the textbook side of, well, these are the benefits and here's the tangible, measurable benefits of it to see that it was so synced up was really profound. So I had such a delight and such a pleasure of learning and studying plants, not just through the textbook side, but really through the direct experience that, the beauty of nature and the healing of nature really has to offer us.
That is such a cool way to get to know a plant. It sounds like you had first that direct intimate relationship with the plant when you were sitting and meditating, and then later had the intellectual heady side, which is almost exactly how our Western culture does in reverse, right? I can imagine if I were going to learn about plants, I'd be like, so what's the Latin name? What is it good for? And so this orientation flipped it and said, okay, get to know the plants relationally first.
Mm, yeah, 100%. And to see people so synced up in their understanding of it was really surprising to me because I would have assumed that it would have been purely subjective and what is me imposing my opinion on this plant versus like, is it speaking to me and what is it revealing to me? And there was so much wisdom through that process, even through visually looking at the plant, we can tell so much about its medicine on a physical, emotional, energetic level.
This has echoes of animism. The belief that living things have a spirit, is older than what humans have believed for tens of thousands of years before modern religion. Do you believe that plants have their own spirit? Their own...
I know it. I like know it in my core. Anyone that has sat in nature long enough and really like dropped into presence, dropped into listening and seeing and meditating upon nature, you can't help but feel absolutely in awe and wonder. And you hear plants and you learn them and they've got this, every plant has its own unique energy and
and spirit to it that, you know, when we come into contact with that plant awakens different parts of ourselves. Like in India, you know, where I studied Ayurveda, every plant is its own deva or Devi, like its own goddess, god or goddess, you know, that these plants are worshipped. Not just my limited understanding of plants, but since the beginning of time, you know, we've had this profound, intimate, deep, just ancient relationship with
the plant and natural world that if we slow down and if we listen deep enough and if we open our hearts enough to see deep enough, plants reveal themselves and they teach us all kinds of things, not only about them, but about ourself through the process of being with those plants.
That is really beautiful. I'm really touched hearing that because it's a total worldview change. And the culture I grew up in as an American is much more, okay, our plants are there to serve us, right? Like what can you plant so that you can harvest so that it can benefit you health otherwise. And so that's very top-down using of plants rather than sitting with learning from plants, right? It's a very different orientation.
Mm, yeah, 100%. It's very backwards. It's kind of this like hierarchy pyramid way of understanding our relationship to the world versus this circular, you know, web-like where we're very connected, you know, with the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, and we're all here to serve, you know, one another. Plants need us just as much as we need them and vice versa. It's that symbiosis with the natural world. Yeah.
It reminds me of this hike I went on and I was hiking with someone who was also really connected to plants and he said, isn't it amazing that each inhale is like a gift from this tree, because we were walking through a forest and each exhale is a gift back. I was like, wow, it's true. Like I know it from biology class, right? The plants take in carbon dioxide, we take in their oxygen, but to think about it as this mutual gifting really touched me.
It is powerful. And how true is it? Like, we can feel it and sense it from kind of this like woo-woo, ethereal, like, we're all one, we're all connected. But at the very like biology of creation, you know, it's the sunlight that, you know, is captured by the leaves that creates photosynthesis. And literally the transpiration or the water that we're breathing out of our bodies is, you know, connected to the plants. The decay of life fertilizes the soil that then grows that plant. So yeah, even just from the most biological standpoint, we are so synced up and so connected with the plant kingdom and the natural world.
Yes, it's so true. And one of the things I'm really curious to explore on this podcast is altitude changes. we know, many of us listening to this podcast know in theory, we are all interconnected. We are all one. We're part of the web of life. But then how you experience that in your daily practice, like if you have daily, I'm calling them listening practices to help you remember this insight. So I'm curious for you, if you have any practices around plants or around nature that help you remember your connection.
I love this and perfect timing. since I've just moved across the world and I moved from Bali, you know, where we lived Meg and now I'm across the world over in Panama. And it's been really precious because I'm introduced to a whole new plant world and a whole new plant kingdom. And so one of my daily rituals right now is like, wake up and we've got beautiful, we're surrounded by jungle and I open our.
big sliding glass windows and I let the sunshine in and I light my incense, which I'm in a whole rabbit hole right now of making my own incense and just being with that process. It's been so fun and fascinating, but I light my incense and as I do, I'm, you know, setting an intention for the day, letting the sun come in and bless me. And I'm just so reminded, you know, by that interconnectedness of just like a simple, sweet, mindful moment.
And the connectedness of nature, know, nature is one of the easiest ways to drop in and connect, you know, to that interconnectedness. Like what more, what more like obvious and profound connection is there to, to God or to source or to the divine than just like the innate intelligence of nature. You know, we're in a new house and Meg, you and I share a deep love for plants and plant babies and nurturing life through, you know, cultivating plants.
So I've just purchased and brought home a bunch of new plant babies and just like watching them grow. What a tremendous reminder of like the beauty of creation and the intelligence of nature. It's just like every day going out and noticing like a new bloom or a new blossom or a new leaf, you know, sprouting and yeah, these are such simple, simple rituals, simple anchors in time that can really help me anyway to drop into that knowing and interconnectedness.
Beautiful. Such a beautiful idea of like tending to a house plant as a listening practice, right? As a chance to like really be present and to notice the daily changes and what shifts. So any listener out there, this is your cue to go get a house plant. Bindi, you are an anomaly because you don't have one or two house plants. You have a house garden.
I remember your Bali house has like 50 different plants and you would bring them all into the shower so that you could water them all at the same time and then put them back. So that's next level house plant cultivation.
I love it so much. It just feels like living with all these like little goddesses that you get to learn from and tend to and yeah it's such a joy but yeah it's a little extreme. I think there was like 150 when we laughed and we had just to give all our plants away it was like 150 I counted.
That's just insane. my goodness. Wow, that's seriously next level. But I also know your other twin passion is health, right? And especially women's health, cyclical health, hormonal health. How does that connect with your love of plants?
my whole foundation in the world of medicine, which I started with Eastern medicine of my study of herbalism and Ayurveda and the plant world, plants as medicine, and later moved into much more left brain functional medicine, lab testing, all of this. something that I keep coming back to through any kind of phase of my work and my studies and my practices that we are
you know, as humans, we're beings of nature first and foremost. And that as beings of nature, we are designed to heal, that health is our birthright, health is our natural state. And when we're experiencing imbalance in health, you know, whether that's showing up as symptoms with our menstrual cycle or symptoms with our gut health or low energy or just lacking vitality, that state of lacking of health is simply a state of imbalance.
And it's simply a state of we've moved away from our nature and our body is reminding us not to punish us, but as messengers, pointing us back to our true nature of balance and health and harmony within ourselves, the elements in our body and harmony with the worlds around us. And so just as nature, as beings of nature, our body is designed to heal and it is so intelligent.
and the same intelligence that recovers a forest from a forest fire. That same intelligence is encoded in our body and in every cell of our body. And so I'm constantly looking to nature for reminders of our resilience as human beings and our capacity to heal. The body's innate desire to be in balance, and then it has every capability to do so. And sometimes we're...
We're using plants as reminders, back, kind of attuning our body and our physiology back to that natural state of wholeness and balance. Wow.
One of the words that I've always wanted a better description for is exactly what you're talking about is resilience, regeneration, the nature's impulse to come back into balance and our impulse to come back into balance. And so I love that about your teachings that we are resilient, right? That is our natural state and things can knock us off balance. We can lose our center and develop health symptoms.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and the the fascinating thing that I find in that too Meg is like we have this capacity We have this resilience, you know where we get sick and and we heal and we recover or you know, we Get stressed and and we come back to to that baseline and somehow too in the symptoms Sometimes too in the forest fire. There's medicine right? It's like sometimes even we need to get sick
for, you know, to regenerate. That that's a very essential part of the process, just as, you know, how sometimes the volcanic eruption, you know, and what that does to fertilize our soil and regenerate, or the forest fire, as devastating and sad as it is, you know, it does fertilize the soil for new life and that composting. So I always find that so powerful, you know, just that we are designed to heal and recover, but sometimes we need those forest fires or those symptoms or those health issues to come up as a way to get us back, you know, just to go out of bounds again, just to come.
Yes, it's so true. And you have an incredible story on this. Well, maybe you can tell your story better about your healing crisis and how it brought you into this work.
Yeah, was, as a kid, I was very sick, very unwell. And for practically a year, I almost lived in hospital, you know, constantly in and out as a teenager, actually. And it was one of these cases where they tested for everything. They tried everything. And it was one of those cases where all of my blood work came back, quote unquote, normal. And I kept hearing the same messages from different specialists and doctors and practitioners that
we can't find anything wrong with you, right? And yet I was having seizures on an almost daily basis, right? Which is not categorically normal or, you know, a state of health or balance. was clearly something off, something wrong. And simply, you know, for after a year of trying all of the different things and seeing all of the specialists and just hearing this ongoing message, if we can't find anything wrong with you, there's nothing we can do. Here's an antidepressant, work on your anxiety. You kind of...
minimizing it to like, it's all in your head because there's nothing on the lab tests, you know? And it was through that process that like the deepest part of me knew that there was something off, there was something wrong. And it allowed me to seek out other answers and literally like a sign from the universe. I remember like praying to God and just like, you know, if there is a God out there as a young teen, like help me, like what is going on with my body? I couldn't get my driver's license. Like I couldn't go to school.
what teenager wants to live that life. And literally a sign, it was like a sandwich board sign on the sidewalk of this yoga studio with literally this like message from God that you can heal your life. And I was like, oh, what is yoga? And I entered this yoga studio and had the most powerful class. I was like, oh, what's meditation? What's herbalism? And it just led me down this, you know, one rabbit hole led to another, led to another, led to another.
And at 13 years old, I remember going to the library and checking out these like thick naturopathic university level textbooks on naturopathic medicine and root cause medicine and the medicine of plants. And it took me down this whole journey and it was such a blessing in disguise. Not only within one month of like full rabbit holding down this path, did I come out the other side completely seizure free.
and healthier and happier than ever before after a year of practically living in hospital. But it also opened up so much for me. over the next basically 10 years of my life, I traveled around the world studying the ancient healing modalities and different forms of plant medicine for my own healing journey, but then also to be able to share those insights and wisdom with other people that had been struggling with their health as well.
Wow, such a good example of symptoms as a messenger. Can you imagine if you had never had these seizures and you had never had this health crisis, your life would have taken a totally different path.
Absolutely. That's why I think it's their messengers, you know, and we can't blame the messenger. It's just it's a innocent bystander, you know, whether it's a seizure or, you know, any imbalanced state with our health, it's like it's really there to teach us something. And we don't always I didn't like to see that, you know, I was having seizures, I would not have loved the question like, well, how is this happening for you? You know, how is this?
In the forest. you're like, this fire is going to regenerate the forest. Great, but I'm in a fire.
Exactly. It was not the most compassionate thing that I wanted or needed to hear. and I wasn't supposed to know it in that moment. My only job was to be with it and to, yeah, be in the forest fire, you know, in order to find my way out. But I can now see like looking back, I'm like, wow, what a huge blessing in disguise, that real trust in my body, trust in my own intuition, despite what every doctor that had been to school for, you know, eight to 12 years was telling me it was really pointing to my knowing and my truth that there was a different way out and so many lessons just on self-trust and self-love and self-acceptance and then you know the ability to share that knowledge with others and wow that's just powerful to see you know to see your own healing journey but to witness that in other people is just what a tremendous gift.
Beautiful. And that self-trust in your body and in what you're sensing in your body, that's a core theme of this podcast. Like trust in the body, trust in what you're feeling and your sensing. So what a great story to bring that to life.
Mmm. I love that. What a great message. Thank you.
I'm curious as, so the body is earth, right? The earth is body. With everything that's happening around climate crisis and pollution and all the things that are happening in the world, are you seeing it ripple in health? Like are you seeing a connection between what's happening in the world and what's happening in people's bodies that come through your practice?
Mm, a million times. Yes. And let's go like a little bit into the like not so great part, but let's come out with a message of hope because there's a graph here. I know.
Yeah, dark as daylight. There's no question about it that these things that we're seeing in the world, know, that climate change and destruction, pollution, all the plastics that we're exposed to, there's no question about it. And it's not just a matter of politics. This is about biology. You know, this is about the wellness of all the species, humans, very, very included. What we're seeing now is that there are over a hundred thousand, you know, human-made chemicals that
we as humans are exposed to on a daily basis that we have, you know, we have very powerful detox organs. We've got a liver and we've got kidneys and we've got bowels and we've got skin that sweats toxins out and it's very intelligent, right? Intelligence is our nature. Our body's designed to heal, to detox. And yet at the rate that that stuff is coming in, our body does not know how and does not always have the inner resources to push those things out of the body at the same rate that they're coming in.
Right? There's even studies now that, you know, most placentas, most baby, you know, from babies being born, most placentas contain significant amounts of microplastics and that's being passed through into our babies. The heavy metals that we're exposed to as humans, as women, as mothers get passed down, you know, through generations where babies are being born with significantly elevated of heavy metals. I mean,
They just got here. They haven't had the exposure to the world yet to experience that. So there's no question about it. These toxic chemicals through the foods, through modern agriculture, that's just profit over people, over planet. That's just how can we increase growth yields while kind of compromising nature and balance. That glyphosate is not good for us.
break dust that we're breathing in in the air, the fluoride we're drinking in the water that affects our hormones and our pituitary gland. So all of that to say is that again, the message of hope is that our body is very intelligent and it knows how to heal. That being said, there's certainly things that we need to do to support those natural detox processes. And there's, you know, many both ancient and modern kind of detox protocols to help reduce that toxic load and build up what we're deficient in at the same time to create that balance and support the natural resilience we all have. But then the bigger thing becomes is, how can we not need to have that so deeply? And that's where the community comes in. That's where planetary health matters. That's where recycling and minimizing our usage of things and doing all these super important things to prevent this. And if not prevent it, at least slow it down.
Yeah, sounds like what I'm hearing is our body is really good at clearing out toxins, but the toxins are coming in faster than we can clear them. So your work is helping people continue to clear out toxins at the same time reduce their exposure. Like, I know you're really passionate about eating organic and you're also vegan and live a low-tox lifestyle. And I think that's really important. It reminds me a little bit, I've been following Sun Guy Watch.
I hear it even volume two. And they clean up rivers, right? And they like continually clean up, take the trash out of the rivers. But lately they've started to also do advocacy work because like we can't just continue to keep endlessly cleaning up rivers that are getting polluted faster than we can clean them. To change at the source.
Yeah, thousand percent. What a great analogy. That's like identical to it, right? We can detox and detox and detox the body, but how do we slow this down? How do we prevent this? And that's really where, you know, prevention is the best, you know, chance that we have with our health is to prevent and minimize our exposures and, you know, empty when empty ourselves of those toxins when need to, which we usually know when we start having all these symptoms like changes in our cycle, the brain fog, the gut.
digestive stuff, the low energy, all of those things. And in the same way with the rivers, right? We need to prevent that and focus on education and prevention more than just kind of damage control.
Totally. And what does that prevention look like in your work? Like how do people prevent themselves from all these toxins coming in?
Yeah. Yeah. So it's twofold, right? One is like, I'm so not about fear. It's, I don't know about you Meg, but it's easy for me to go down this like rabbit hole of like, my God, there's so much pollution. There's nothing we can do. It's so overwhelming. Like I can't possibly make a change. Right? So it's like, okay, we have to be centered about it and realistic. So, okay. We can't, you know, I have gone through seasons of like,
almost even obsession of like, will only eat organic and I will only do things perfectly and I will end that rigidity is not exactly an expression of health and balance, right? If health is a state of balance, that's not very balanced. That's pretty extreme. So I incorporate into my lifestyle. have these like fail safe situations where I'm like, I, even though I eat probably 80, 90 % organic, I'm still going to eat in a restaurant. I'm still going to go out with friends and you know, enjoy.
the pleasures of life and the beauty of life. So I have these things in place where at least once a year or a few times a year, I'm doing an emptying of those toxins. I'm clearing the river, right? So I'm currently in one, usually around New Year's, I do a 21-day functional medicine detox that just basically uses plant medicines and certain vitamins, minerals that are needed for those detox processes to be really supported to eliminate those toxins. So having those fail safes in place, like having, you know, a couple of times a year where we're intentionally emptying that kind of like gives the peace of mind that like, I don't need to obsess over everything all of the time, because that's not healthy either. And then in, you know, in daily life as much as you can, like 80 20 role, you know, how can we eat more organic foods than not organic? And sometimes, you know, organic food can be expensive. And I'm aware of just like the kind of privilege and luxury of one having access to organic things and also
Yeah, just like the financial element of that as well. So it's like not everything needs to be organic, right? There's something on the environmental working group, ewg.org, where they talk about the dirty dozen, right? So what are like the ones that if you were to prioritize getting organic for health reasons, for environmental reasons, what would those be? And which ones can you get away with not getting organic? So I never buy organic bananas, you know, like that's just one with the peel, you know, it's not necessarily.
I would rather prioritize that money towards buying organic strawberries that can be really expensive. those are a few. And then every day I'm working with the plants. Like I've got my herbal tea here with us now. things in your garden, cooking with beautiful natural herbs is full of antioxidants and phytochemicals. It's so good for our health. Honestly, the best way to support our health and prevent is to just get back to nature. More plants all around. More plants.
I was cooking with herbs the other day and I was thinking about, I think it was basil, and how basil is so good at warding off bacteria and parasites and all these things. And as I was eating it, I was like, oh, I'm borrowing basil's immune system.
I love that. That's so smart. I love that. And it's funny when you smell basil, like you get this hit of just like clearing your lungs, right? Like it's so purifying, so clearing that you can just feel and sense from it, you know, that that's what it's for. And we're definitely borrowing the immune system of the plant.
Yes, so true. Okay, cool. that's a really practical and helpful, like detox where you can't, like help your body get rid of toxins where you can. And you have different protocols for that, I know. And I'll link to your website so anyone listening can learn more about that work. And reduce your exposure where you can. But stay balanced.
Yeah, know. have gone absolutely extreme too. There was this funny reel on Instagram about someone walking through an artificial fragrance aisle and going, you're plugging their nose running in the other direction. And yeah, felt like, it's so true. very, very true. One less super easy one, that same website that I mentioned, the environmental working group. Do you use this, Meg? There's an app through it called Skin Deep where you can check your home products, your body care products, all of those to see what score it has. Have you heard Don't do this yet.
Yeah, but Alex Nashden, I just did another interview with her. She was talking about this as well, so okay, I need to look into it.
Okay, yeah, it's called Skin Deep. I mean, there's probably many apps like that out there, but it gives a score and will help you understand and learn. Because when you read a food label, when you read a body care, like a lotion, a shampoo, a conditioner, laundry detergent, all of those, it's like, there's a lot of big long names in there that we don't always know or understand. it's a great way to lower our toxin burden. And whatever's good for our bodies is going to be good for the planet. So it's very...
easy to support both in that way.
Okay, cool. So you can look up products on this database. That sounds... I also just want to do an aside. I love that I have friends that are crunchier than I am because I'm continually learning. You and Alex and some of the other friends love health and wellbeing and I'm continually loving. I want to go deeper into what you just said. It's like, what's good for our bodies is also good for the earth.
I want to say.
Yeah, we're not separate. It's so easy for us to kind of come into this world of environmental wellness from two spots, right? actually, I've gone through different kind of waves where initially I came to sustainability and really supporting the earth and, you know, from a health perspective because I was so sick and what was causing my seizures, right? I lived next to for a minute a plant that I didn't realize the things that I was breathing in from those plants were full of heavy metals and so when I tested my baby. It was a coal plant, right?
Actually, yeah. Good clarification. Not a natural flood. No, it was like coal or lumber or I don't even know. It was like a big chemical storm, you know, thingy that was black smoke stack, that kind of thing. Black smoke stack. Okay, okay. That's it. Yeah. And it was like seven minutes from my house. And, you know, I lived out in the middle of nowhere. thought how a coal power plant could that be like we didn't have EMFs and all of that, but that was a huge exposure. And I mean, the standard American Canadian, you know, kind of diet that I grew up on, like of Cheerios and pasteurized dairy milk was not exactly, you know, healthy and not supporting my health. So I think people enter either like from a health perspective and then start to like, wow, you know, the things that are good for my health also happen to be good for the earth. Like eating organic is amazing for my body.
That's also so important for our ecology, know, and for the planet, pollinators, the insects.
Absolutely. Like if I want to have beautiful, delicious, organic manuka honey, we have to have a planet, you know, that is stable and balanced for bees, right? So it has to go both ways. And some people enter the other side where it's more like environmental advocacy that gets them in and they're like, well, pesticides aren't good for the environment. And then they kind of get on this train of like, that's not good for my body either. But whatever kind of side or waves that we go through, you know, it is so hand in hand.
And a great just kind of practice is like, if this is good for my body, it's probably good for the earth in some way, if we're really honest, and vice versa. Our self-love becomes collective love and vice versa. Yeah.
I feel like that health angle is going be a really important one for the sustainability movement because even people that don't, for example, care about the bees and the plants and the pollinators, they probably want to live healthy lives, right? And they probably want to raise healthy kids. so that's, health is like a common denominator, no matter where you come from, what side of the aisle you are, what kind of political spectrum, what kind of background is like, we all want to be healthy and thrive. So I love that that's a really powerful common ground to magnetize people into this movement for the earth.
Yeah, absolutely. Like mine started really selfish, right? Like it was, it was sick. Like I, and here's the kind of, when we are sick, we're not always, we're, we have to think of ourselves first. We don't always have the lug. When I was sick and in hospital, I didn't have the luxury of thinking about recycling and how to do better for the planet. I was in survival, you know, but what came out of that was obviously so much healing for myself, so much more understanding of myself. And this kind of, as you spoke to this kind of ripple out effect that
did bring so much more awareness to the collective, to collective well-being, to the Earth, to the planet. And I think that no matter what angle we come in from, that's where all of these communities can really come together. It's like the Venn diagram, the middle can be environmental well-being. Yeah. So true.
Yes. And personal thriving, personal health.
Mmm, absolutely.
Okay, if you were to like wave a magic wand over our medical, the way that we look at medicine right now and change something about it, what would you change?
Hmm, I love this. It'd be like, in what's ancient, you know? Like modern medicine, we put so much weight on it and it's amazing, the science and the research and the data that we have now. That is so small in comparison to how people have been living in balance and harmony and in health for thousands and thousands of years. And we think, modern medicine is so amazing and don't get like...
If you break a bone, don't come to me. I'm not the person. If you're having a heart attack, please like bless Western medicine for that, for injuries, for accidents, like we've come so far. But there's so much profound wisdom in just our ancestors and how we've been healing and how we've been using medicine for thousands of years. And no matter what kind of angle, right? There's traditional Chinese medicine and there's so much insight in that. And there's Ayurveda from India.
And then there's shamanic and South American forms of medicine. they all, where's the overlap of all of them is they all lean on nature and they all lean on plants. And so the fact is, is that we're not deficient. If we look at some of the diagnoses that are given through Western conventional medicine, right? We're not deficient in ibuprofen and we're not deficient in heart blockers and we're not deficient in medication, but we are deeply deficient in
vitamins, in minerals, in the phytochemicals that are present in plants. so modern medicine is really that like bandage approach where it's like we can mask symptoms, we can adjust symptoms, we're not going to fix the problem. And that's where traditional forms of medicine come in. So my dream for Western, you know, the medicine model as it is, is to focus more on the acute based things. When you break a bone, that's great. On these medical emergencies, amazing.
But if we could bring in more ancient forms of medicine that have been keeping people well and thriving for thousands of years, I think we'd see a much healthier world.
Amazing. When I was a kid, I had eczema, like really bad eczema in my arm. actually still have a little bit right now. And when I would go to doctors, they would just always give me a topical steroid creams, different strengths, different brands, different things to try, but always topical steroid creams. Never once did a doctor say, hey, it might be something to do with your gut. Why don't we look at your doctor? Isn't that crazy? Looking back, I'm like, wow, that is just.
So order with is such a narrow focus on curing the symptom at the surface level.
100 % and here's the interesting thing is like even nowadays with these huge forward movement in modern Western allopathic medicine is like antibiotics are a miracle, know, like how amazing bless antibiotics when we truly need them and how much antibiotic resistance is there nowadays because of the overuse of antibiotics where in dire situations people are taking antibiotics and it's not having the effect.
Whereas traditional forms of medicine, we don't get the same resistance to because as bugs are surviving and populating, yeah, evolving, thank you, as they're evolving, the plant kingdom's evolving with us. Antibiotics don't evolve, but nature does. And so nature is constantly evolving to meet the pathogenic load that the planet is exposed to and the viruses and the bacteria. So I always find that so fascinating.
Wow, that's a really interesting point, right? That nature is continuing to learn and evolve and adapt to the world that it's in as our we can imagine, right? Yeah.
100%. And that's where plants win.
All right, plants, you are a living intelligence. Yeah. All right, well, this was an amazing conversation. We've gone through so many different places. We've talked about how our body is earth. We've looked at holistic health. We've looked at falling in love with plants from a relational way, not just an intellectual way. We talked about the listening practice of tending to house plants. If you were to think of this beautiful listener, who's listening to this episode, if you were to leave them with a question or a practice, what would you like to leave them with?
I think it's just this remembrance, this real remembrance in your core that you are this powerful being of nature and your body is so intelligent. So if you are experiencing something with your health or whatever it may be that all beings of nature, not only this vessel that you live in, but nature also is resilient. So it's just this remembrance of resilience and intelligence of nature that lives in every cell of your body.
And in every plant, every person, every animal out there is just this remembrance of resilience.
Love that. our capacity for regeneration and resilience. Thank you so much, Bindi. What an amazing episode.
Absolutely.
Thanks for having me Meg, such a pleasure. If this episode touched you. you liked it, share it with a friend or family member or you can leave a review to help get the word out.
I loved it. Thank you. Until next time.