The Other Way

080: [FEMALE STORIES] Cycles of rebirth and the healing power of nature and herbs with Marysia Miernowska

August 31, 2024 • Kasia Stiggelbout

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🌱 BONUS TREAT: Marysia's School of the Sacred Wild Apprenticeship program starts 9/7; we have a special 15% off code for The Other Way listeners:

https://apprentice.schoolofthesacredwild.com/plans/1442208?bundle_token=dcd7a347476a35c8b05bba5b42147e80&utm_source=manual

(Valued at $525!)


What if you could transform personal trauma into a thriving career? Our latest conversation with Marysia Miernowska, a celebrated herbalist, teacher, and earth activist, promises to reveal exactly how she did it. From the brink of homelessness after a traumatic divorce, Marysia built a successful herbalism school, authored insightful books, and launched an award-winning skincare line. Discover the profound wisdom she gained along the way and her practical tips for using herbal remedies to find peace amidst life's chaos. Her Eastern European heritage, especially the wisdom passed down from her great-grandmother, adds a rich cultural layer to her journey.

Marysia’s story is not just about professional success; it's a heartfelt exploration of motherhood and personal resilience. We examine the emotional tides of becoming a (single) mother, from the grief over lost freedoms to the deep reservoirs of love and empathy motherhood uncovers. Through personal anecdotes, Marysia shares how she navigated family illness and found beauty even amid hardship. Her experiences offer insightful reflections on accepting life’s cycles of death and rebirth, ultimately fostering greater personal growth and resilience.

Finally, our conversation turns to the incredible healing power of nature and herbalism. Marysia recounts her early memories of foraging in Poland and her transformative experiences in Northern Vermont. Hear how she overcame a difficult breakup and near-homelessness, which deepened her commitment to herbalism and community support. Learn about the practical benefits of connecting with nature, from managing acute stress to syncing daily rhythms with natural cycles. Marysia also shares tips on functional freeze, balancing calm and warrior practices, and the importance of morning rituals. Join us for an enriching discussion that might just inspire you to explore the natural world for emotional and spiritual nourishment.

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To connect with Kasia

Kasia Stiggelbout:

Hello and welcome to the Other Way, a lifestyle podcast exploring uncommon, unconventional or otherwise alternative approaches to life, business and health. I'm your host, kasia. I'm the founder of InFlow, a women's wellness brand that designs intentional products to help women reconnect to their unique cyclical rhythm and find a balance between being and doing. This podcast is an extension of my mission within Flow. Here we provide intentional interviews with inspiring humans trailblazers, researchers, spiritual on the journey of doing things the other way. Hello everyone and welcome back to our first episode of the fall 2024 season of the Other Way. I'm your host, kasia, and today I have an incredible guest with me, someone I've admired for a while now Marysia Miernowska. And in case you didn't notice or don't know, marysia is actually Polish, so I'm just so excited to be speaking to a fellow Eastern European woman, a trailblazer and truly an inspiration, which you'll hear about in this episode. Marisha is an herbalist, teacher, earth activist, green witch mother and the director of the School of the Sacred Wild, where she runs a yearly online apprenticeship teaching herbal medicine, regenerative gardening, earth magic, holistic healing and plant spirit communication. And actually I've chosen to launch this episode several days early because this nearly near long apprenticeship is kicking off on the 7th of September and doors are closing for registration tonight. And Marisha has been extra generous in providing us with a 15% off link in the show notes below and that is 15% off of the apprenticeship, which is $525 off of the year long program. So definitely check it out in the show notes below. So Marisha, in addition to her incredible work with teaching herbalism, is the author of the Witch's Herbal Apothecary, which I love, and she's a formulator and co-founder of an all-organic regenerative, award-winning anti-aging skincare line, sacred Ritual.

Kasia Stiggelbout:

Today's episode is so raw and inspiring. A lot of you may know Marisha from her work in the LA community and online, but today I feel like we are getting such a raw and real behind the scenes view of Marisha's journey into herbalism. We talk about her path as a single mother at the tender age of 29, her journey going from single mama and nearly homeless after a very traumatic divorce through to building her incredible herbalism school and authoring books and launching a skincare brand. I mean listening to this story was so inspiring. We talk about non-duality, embracing the light and the dark, grief and joy, the power of plants and healing our trauma, including some examples, and about the power of finding the eye of the storm within us.

Kasia Stiggelbout:

This one lands so true for me. If you listen to one of my last season's finale episodes, you know that my family's been going through a lot and I think that there's something truly inspiring about hearing other women's stories of resilience and finding that center of the storm, the eye of the storm within us, and how to do that. We talk about navigating stress, chronic and acute, with tangible practices that are accessible for each of you listening. We talk about powerful herbs for navigating and dealing with that stress and finding balance within, and so much more. This is such an incredible episode. I was buzzing after our conversation, so, without further ado, let's dive on in Marysia. Welcome to the podcast. Dziękuję, thank you.

Kasia Stiggelbout:

I think, you truly are my first ever Polish guest, so I am so honored and honestly, it was pretty amazing kind of running into your content. I saw you first on the retreat, Then of course I checked out your page and read your book and it's very rare for me to meet other Eastern European women that are so prominent in the herbalism space first of all, but like the wellness space as a whole. So I'm just so excited you put your work out there. It's really expansive for me.

Marysia Miernowska:

Thank you. Yeah, I feel like we actually have this really amazing ancestral knowledge coming from Eastern Europe, where a lot of our grandmothers are still practicing folk medicine and herbalism, so it's nice to be able to teach from that and highlight that and share it. And thanks for having me here. I'm so happy to be here and with your audience.

Kasia Stiggelbout:

Oh, I love it. All right. So before we get started, there is a question that I ask every single guest, and that is what are three words that you would use to describe yourself?

Marysia Miernowska:

How fun. Okay, I didn't know you were going to ask that, so. So let me just take a moment. Um, well, I would say witchy, and um loving heart-centered, and um, I would say embodied.

Kasia Stiggelbout:

I love those and I will say, as somebody who's meeting you face to face pretty much virtually the first time, all of that comes through, like in your book and how you speak. So I absolutely I love it when those things align, because you kind of get a different side of people sometimes online and all of that truly comes through, especially the embodied part, so I love that. I wanna start with something very exciting that I know is going on in your life Congratulations. You are pregnant again and that is like so huge. I know, we just talked about it before we got started. Congrats, Thank you. Yeah, I heard about it before we got started. Congrats, thank you. Yeah, I heard about it on the Mother Days podcast and this is your second child, right? Yes, yes.

Marysia Miernowska:

I have a 12-year-old named Flora, and I had her when I was 28. And then I turned 29 right away, so I didn't think that I was particularly young to be having a kid. But then, you know, throughout my thirties, I kind of started to feel like, yeah, I guess I was kind of young. You know, I was the first of my friends to have kids. There was a lot of that experience. That kind of was about the maiden dying and and me, as I had known myself, you know as this like person who could go into the wilderness and do all these things alone suddenly being like, oh my God, no, I can't because I have this baby. And then I became a single mom when she was one, and so it was just a real.

Marysia Miernowska:

It was a series of years of very difficult initiations and of many portals of death and rebirth. And you know, just, I think anyone who becomes a parent there is a death cycle of the parts of us before we had a kid, and it can be very uncomfortable and there isn't really anything in our culture and society that teaches us how to go through those initiations, and so people feel lost. A lot of women have postpartum depression. You know, our culture tells us this will be the happiest you've ever been. And then, when in fact women are like, this is the most tired and disconnected to who I am that I've ever felt. Something's wrong with me is what they think, but in fact it's actually quite natural. It's part of the process of the maiden dying and then the mother really rising from the ashes.

Marysia Miernowska:

I don't think it's an easy rebirth and it's not pleasureful really. It's like a full embodied, hardcore death and rebirth. Death and rebirth and with it comes a surge of, in my experience, power and responsibility, and I think when we have more power, we have more responsibility, and when we have more responsibility, there's also a potential for moving more energy. So my experience with my daughter was, yeah, a series of many deaths and rebirths and many initiations, and I was a single mom, for you know she's 12 now and I'm now pregnant with an incredible partner who's so emotionally intelligent and sensitive and kind and he's a total badass and he's so loving and responsible and amazing with my daughter and it just has been incredibly healing to feel already, even though this baby hasn't been born yet, to just feel this like cellular healing that is happening from feeling so supported and held, and this like knowing that I'm gonna have a really different experience as a mom, you know, with this awesome partner and then also with my 12 year old, who's like. She's like, move over, this is my baby.

Kasia Stiggelbout:

Oh my God, I love that Well.

Kasia Stiggelbout:

Okay, it's amazing that you're gonna have that help to have kind of like a mini tween adult in the house.

Kasia Stiggelbout:

But I wanna backtrack for a second, because you talk about this initiation, and I'm so glad you mentioned this, because a lot of the time when I talk to female founders on this podcast kind of women who have gone through that whole process one of my questions is always like, how did your identity shift when you had a child and I feel like that's something that we're starting to talk about now but I mean, back when you were pregnant and had a baby and, oh my gosh, to be a single mom as well during that time.

Kasia Stiggelbout:

I mean that was like the era of like boss, babe, you know, independent women, kind of that was like all rising up and you know, as somebody who comes from Eastern European descent, like there's a lot of strong ancestral narratives around like what a woman should be, like what was that like for you, like in terms of shedding, what were you letting go of and how did you do it? I think is the better question, cause I think a lot of women might also feel guilt for feeling that way, like going through that maiden to mother journey and guilt for perhaps struggling with that. So what helped you and how did you get rid of some of the things that you were letting go in a graceful way?

Marysia Miernowska:

Yeah, that's such a great question. I mean I want to start by saying that I hope that anybody who feels that way can just release any guilt or shame or narrative that they have about them doing it wrong or that they shouldn't feel this way. And I actually have been super vocal about my experience as a mom, and especially in the earlier years, you know, I was just really I would share about it a lot with my students because I think that we do ourselves a disservice as women when we hide the truth. And I think this has to do with, like, our stories about miscarriage, abortions, about birth challenges in relationship. We are all healthier and can move through these things. That will touch us all if we are honest and open and able to share our stories with one another.

Marysia Miernowska:

So, you know, as I mentioned, I think it's a huge disservice that there's this cultural narrative that, like when you have a baby, it's the happiest you'll ever feel, because my experience is it's actually the most exhausted you'll ever feel, and alone sometimes and bored. I mean, honestly, when you have a baby it's kind of boring, you know, especially if you're like a creative, dynamic person. Suddenly you're like okay, like now it's nap time, now it's feeding, now it's hanging out and belly time. You know, like there are parts of our brain and our mind and our identity and our being that are immensely challenged because suddenly the way we're moving our energy, spending our time, you know, able or not able to connect with ourselves, is just, it's all turned upside down. And so it's entirely normal to feel bored, to feel exhausted, to feel disconnected from ourselves. And if we can understand that it's part of the process, that there's nothing wrong with it. We are not wrong. We are not worse mothers, we are going through the process of parts of ourselves dying and, in fact, if we can be honest with ourselves and our loved ones, then if that honesty, that facing of the truth, the being in the discomfort, is part of the alchemy that allows us to then become more expansive and resilient. And I have gained so much capacity to be with pain, to move through the many heartbreaks of life, to sit with others in their pain as a healer, becoming a mom, it was that process of death and rebirth and like tempering me through this fire that allowed me to hold so much more.

Marysia Miernowska:

So, yeah, I kind of went more into that, but for myself personally, there were things about my identity that I didn't realize were so important until they went away. One of them was being able to travel alone into the mountains for weeks on end. I love backpacking. I used to ski also every single winter, and these weren't things that I thought at all were critical to who I was.

Marysia Miernowska:

But yet when I had a kid, suddenly I was like, oh my god, I can't just go into the wilderness and backpack and spend weeks on end, or even days, like going deep into the wilderness. It's just not really accessible. And maybe you know it will be with my partner, who's an amazing mountaineer, and we can backpack with a baby, but anyways, things like that. And then just you know having time, even just you know my creative energy not really being available for myself or my projects or my own thoughts, and that's okay, you know, that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that.

Marysia Miernowska:

It's part of the process. You know, an indigenous elder once told me that the difference between being a child and an adult is that when we're children we're meant to be selfish and when we're adults we're meant to take responsibility for other life. And so I do feel like that death of the maiden and the birth of the mother is a process of us grieving the deliciousness of being able to be selfish and then having this other part of us that's ultimately more. You know, that has a greater capacity for love and endurance and empathy and compassion and non-judgment. That capacity comes through, I think, on the other side.

Kasia Stiggelbout:

I love that and you know you speak to a lot of resilience that I think kind of was birthed through those difficult times, which I mean I'm just kind of in awe right now because not only I didn't know that you were a single mom, quite frankly, but to kind of know that and to kind of see not just the incredible mother that I'm sure that you are, but to kind of know that and to kind of see not just the incredible mother that I'm sure that you are, but having you go through that experience and birth, the business is like just completely mind boggling to me frankly.

Kasia Stiggelbout:

But just to kind of go back for a moment, I mean you speak to this incredible resilience that feels so transformative when you go through those difficult times, as you were speaking to, and it's just so interesting because you talk about, you know, how things change, where you know maybe you can't go mountaineering quite as much when you have this newborn, or skiing every weekend, but it's almost like okay, that part of your maiden life is now kind of transformed into something else and it's not like an, I guess, like a complete replacement with nothing, Like that void is filled with something else, and that's a beautiful part of transformation and I think it's like so important to call that out because, as I shared right before we started recording, I'm going through quite a difficult time with my mom, who is she was recently diagnosed with stage four cancer.

Kasia Stiggelbout:

Of course, a very different situation, but there's this experience of you know, there's no going back right Like this is now my life and it's my family's life and it looks unknown going forward. There's so much uncertainty and there's a lot of grieving to the way that things were, but there are also so many beautiful gifts right now, like presents and the love that I feel for my family and bringing a child into this world. I can only imagine, because I'm on a fertility journey, the trade-offs of letting the maiden shed come with so many gifts in this new season of life and I just love the way that you spoke to that and, like honestly named the things that perhaps you grieved, but also named that it can be very beautiful on the other side as well.

Marysia Miernowska:

Yeah, I love how you shared about that because it is a maturing process, right, like we're not meant to be the same forever. We're meant to have many deaths and rebirths throughout our lives. And when we cling, you know that causes suffering. When we, you know, or even like, as women, right, if we're like clinging to the beauty of being 20, it's just unrealistic and a waste of time and then a waste of resources. So, you know, how can we understand that we are the living earth that is constantly transforming herself, and how can we allow for and midwife those deaths within us and the beautiful rebirths and the seasons of life?

Kasia Stiggelbout:

Oh, so good. So this is kind of a perfect segue to talking about a bit more of your journey. So I'm curious you became a mother at a young age. Where did this whole path with herbalism start? Because you're an herbalist, you're a teacher, you're an author, earth activist, green witch which we'll get into as well and you are the director of the School of the Sacred Wild, where you run an incredible online apprenticeship almost a year long apprenticeship so can you chat a bit about how all of this came to be? With your baby in tow? What kind of helped you step into the world of herbalism?

Marysia Miernowska:

I was born in Poland. Some of my earliest memories with the plants are my great-grandmother showing me how to pick nettles so I wouldn't get stung, and I have these memories of these plants and my grandmothers. And I went on. I moved to the US when I was young. I ended up studying architecture and my passion was to create intentional communities and neighborhoods and spaces that could influence society and how we exchange and interact with each other in a positive way. So I was studying really the psychology of space and how the way that we build our homes or our neighborhoods can either create more isolation and sickness or it can create more community and collaboration and have a positive impact on the environment. So I was totally into this and I went on and started working for an architect and was really, you know, in this field that I thought I would be in and I got incredibly burnt out.

Marysia Miernowska:

Architecture is a very patriarchal profession. I think it still is. It was 20 years ago and I was working way too much and there were some unhealthy work dynamics and, you know, with my male boss. That didn't feel nourishing and ultimately I got really sick. I got really sick, really sick. I got really sick adrenal fatigue, you know, just a lot of like digestive issues, like just this chronic fatigue and and inflammation, and it's kind of this unknown what's wrong with me. I don't feel alive, I don't feel like myself, but I can't put my finger on it, sort of a thing.

Marysia Miernowska:

So I ended up moving to Northern Vermont with my then partner, flora's dad, and I ended up teaching art and Spanish at a ski academy and living in the woods in Vermont and there I, you know, I was trying all these different ways of healing myself, all these different kinds of alternative medicines, and and nothing was really working. And then I found the wild weeds that I had grown up with and I was really healed by just walking in the forest and nibbling on the tips of pines and just being in nature every day and then drinking infusions of nettles and of these wild plants that were all around me. And at the same time I found the Gaia School of Healing, which is started by Sage Maurer, and began studying herbalism with her, and it completely brought back this ancestral tradition of working with plants that are wild and abundant and free and that grow in a way you know they're thriving in all kind of bioregions. Really, nettles is a plant that grows on every single continent. It's a wild weed, you cannot tame it, and it is the most. It's one of the highest sources of nutrients, enzymes, minerals, vitamins. It completely will replenish and heal tissue and works on all systems of the body, and so I began flooding my body with this wild green nourishment, with this wild green nourishment, and as I was doing this, I became more attuned to the cycles of nature, to the moon. You know, I was living in a remote part in the woods, so I was sleeping just in starlight, moonlight. It was like circadian rhythm, really. Just completely I started bleeding with the moon, started doing a lot of ritual and ceremony and, you know, witchy stuff in nature, and my vitality and aliveness just fully came back in a way that actually was greater than ever before, and so that really just completely shifted my life and the plants wove into me and ever since then I've been a student of them forever and a teacher and someone who guides other people into this path of wild green nourishment. You know, and the truth is, is it's like we can be healthy and, you know, drink green juice or buy organic food, but unfortunately our soils are incredibly depleted and so any domesticated food that we're eating or green juice, you know, is not holding this level of resilience, and wild nutrition that actually is essential to our deep resilience and thriving is essential to our deep resilience and thriving. And you know I've trained thousands of herbalists. At this point, and, as you mentioned, I run this 10 month long apprenticeship that's about to start again, that all of you are incredibly welcome to join. No one needs to have any experience with plants, and in that apprenticeship we drink herbs daily and we start with these wild weeds that completely plug us back into this vital source of connection of the earth.

Marysia Miernowska:

And so then I moved to Los Angeles and I was designing medicinal gardens and then got pregnant with my daughter and then had this huge rupture and dramatic breakup with her dad. That was incredibly traumatizing and almost ended up homeless. Oh my God, yeah, yeah, he was supposed to move out, we were decided to split up and then he actually just woke me up one morning at five in the morning and was like no, actually I'm keeping the apartment on floor leave, and all of my things were in trash bags on the street and I just picked up my daughter and walked out and it was. You know, I still talk about it and it's like hard and I still like my breath gets tight. It's. You know, this was 11 years ago.

Marysia Miernowska:

I actually used to do this really publicly on podcasts, but until just recently, you know, I did a podcast on single mothering and I shared this story for the first time. But it was something that I would have never thought would happen to me and it was incredibly humbling because, you know, I was 29. I had a one one year old and I didn't have a lot of money in my bank account. You know, I had like maybe a couple thousand dollars. Like I was living, you know, kind of paycheck to paycheck in a way of gardening and raising my daughter you know, gardening part-time and suddenly I was like, oh my God, no one will rent to me because, you know, there's all these young tech men who are single and it's a lot. You know who wants to rent to a single mom who has almost no money in her bank account? And it was such a traumatizing, like root chakra Kali, you know just obliteration and put me into a huge survival mode.

Marysia Miernowska:

A lot of, you know, adrenaline and, um, my parents lent me $10,000, which allowed me to. I, you know I wrote letters to different places and someone finally rented to me in Flora. This, this whole experience made me realize like how alone single moms are and how unsupported they are in our culture, and how anybody, from any background, can end up, you know, homeless. And you know, ever since then I've been like one of these days I'm going to have land and I'm going to be teaching how to regenerate the soil of the earth, how to heal the mother, and there's going to be yurts and places for single moms who are in a time of transition to come and be in the garden and just be supported.

Kasia Stiggelbout:

You mentioned, adrenaline was flooding your body in survival mode. I feel like adrenaline is flooding my body just listening to this story. I mean, first of all, you're in such a vulnerable place with a one-year-old child. Going through a breakup is difficult and then to have that experience of going into ultimate survival mode in this vulnerable, helpless time, I mean, Marisha, it's just such a wild story and I cannot believe that your reaction out of all of this is to have this dream of lifting up women. I mean it gives me chills because the reality is we, as I was listening to you talk about how healed you were from nature, I have this. You know, I was having this experience of this coming home to the you know, mother earth and this innate feminine and then having that kind of flipped on its head, going into survival mode to like protect yourself and your daughter, Like it just sounds like such a incredibly daunting and like a complete shake up experience. It's just truly it was really traumatizing.

Marysia Miernowska:

But you know, what was good about it in my experience is those moments that you would never expect would happen to you. Those things really teach you nonjudgment would happen to you. Those things really teach you non-judgment. And yeah, and I don't think I've ever been a super judgy person I wouldn't ever judge someone for being a single mom or for being homeless. But it felt so outside of something that could happen to me that, you know, being in that position opened my heart and my mind and humbled any part of my mind that would think that I'm different than someone else. And that's been really good medicine, really good medicine, and I wish that for everyone. I don't wish that experience, but I wish for all of us a little bit more compassion and a lot less judgment to ourselves and others.

Marysia Miernowska:

So yeah, to kind of complete the story, that huge death, that was a huge. It felt like Kali came in and like chopped my roots off, right. No root, no home, no stability, no safety, my, my family also. I'm the first person in my family to have gotten a divorce. So there was, there wasn't. There was a lot of like what are you doing? Sort of coming at me, a lot of judgment and I couldn't digest it. You know, I had diarrhea for the for four months straight and it was that's indicative of like, my inability to digest what was happening.

Marysia Miernowska:

At the same time, as soon as I walked out that door, the first thing I heard in my mind and in my heart was and now I have to be entirely calm and loving inside of my heart and I have to be the eye of the storm. My nervous system has to be completely centered and harmonized to love, because my daughter is still breastfeeding and she's one and her nervous system is developing through my nervous system. Like babies and their moms are really one body for a very long time, are really one body for a very long time. And if our nervous system is experiencing anxiety, our kids feel it and it imprints them. And so this level of like the goddess really like the goddess and resilience and wisdom I don't even know what the words would be, but it's like the energy of the goddess came through and and this clarity right around like, yeah, things might be burning, shit might be falling apart and Flora and I are going to be just fine, and and it's like a non-negotiable truth, and so that energy was part of this energy that then moved me into opening a branch of the Gaia School.

Marysia Miernowska:

And it was, of course, with the blessing of my teacher, sage, who said open up a branch of the Gaia School in California. And I did. And so I taught then for the next 10 years and ran this herbalism school in California and it was incredibly wonderful and successful. And you know, so many lives were changed, so many single moms took that apprenticeship and sat with me on the earth drinking these teas. So much healing, so much magic happened. And then, when the, when COVID came, I went online and started the School of the Sacred Wild.

Kasia Stiggelbout:

I am completely floored. I mean this. This story is absolutely wild and completely inspiring because I think it is just such a powerful reminder to how much of our the way that we experience the world we can have control. We can't have control of our circumstances, but we can have control over how we choose to see the world or even show up as much you know, kind of as much, as as much as we can. It can be very difficult. I'm curious actually. You know we talked a bit offline about the connection between stress and how nature can be so healing. What did you do to process that trauma, that like betrayal and that extreme shakeup? You know, especially I don't know if you did it while you were still breastfeeding or after the fact, like was there something that was really helpful for you?

Marysia Miernowska:

Yeah, I mean the plants, honestly, and nature, and it's a long process. I think anybody who's listening, who's ever done any healing work, understand and can relate to the fact that it feels like an onion. You know, you, you, you peel back the onion and there's another layer, and another layer and another layer, and these things take time to heal. And that doesn't mean that we're broken. It doesn't mean that beautiful things can't happen. But you know, these events and things like this go deep. They go deep and they touch many parts of us. And so, for me, working with the plants has been the single most healing thing. And it's because I work with them not just physically, like I drink herbs all day long and it's great and they help me stay energized and healthy, but it's only when I'm sitting in meditation with them and doing these shamanic plant meditations that we do throughout the apprenticeship, where I'm like praying. I'm praying with them, I'm drinking them, I'm meditating, I'm asking for these spirits to come in, I'm allowing my heart to open, I'm sharing what's on my heart. If something's heavy, I'm asking for guidance and I'm listening to the spirit of these plants that are older than we are. You know, these healing herbs have been on the planet longer than we have and they hold so much wisdom and beauty and love. And you know, one of the most healing things about working with them is that I think, as humans, like we often think that all of our love and connection should be coming from other people, and then it can feel very disappointing if, like, our partner isn't meeting all of our needs, or if our parents weren't like the most unconditionally loving, supportive parents, or if we never had that grandma that made us soup or whatever. It might be right, and humans tend to carry these as like deficiencies and wounds and sorrows. But no one's really meant to be everything for everyone and humans just actually can't fill all of our requirements for nourishment and connection. We never were meant to.

Marysia Miernowska:

We're part of beautiful, animate living earth, and relationships with animals, with trees, with land, with the cycles of nature and with herbs, in my experience, offer us these different flavors of love and support and guidance that our souls desperately need to heal and to grow. And so I remember when that all happened, the spirit of comfrey came in, and comfrey is this wild plant that's like a total weed, and if you ever try to dig it out in your garden and you kind of break the roots up, it'll actually sprout more plants. So I'm in this moment where, like, my root chakra is totally destroyed. I feel like I'm like completely severed, and this plant comes in and is like drink me every day and I will regrow your roots and they will be stronger and deeper than they've ever been. And that was my experience. That was true and it's been that way with all of the plants.

Marysia Miernowska:

And you know, to this day I teach this work. I, every month with the apprenticeship, students come from all over the world. We, every first Saturday of the month, we prepare our teas there's four different teas each month and we meditate and I guide students in these shamanic plant meditations, meditate and I guide students in these shamanic plant meditations and so everyone is receiving direct information that's pertinent to them from these plants. And it's so healing to develop these relationships with the healing herbs and the non-human and the spirits of the earth and it can give us so much comfort and guidance and wisdom.

Kasia Stiggelbout:

Ah, there's something so soothing, as I kind of hear you describing this, because you know, as you mentioned, there's so many people out there who I mean I would even argue probably every person out there has some sort of an experience that feels very unhealed, may it be from their childhood or even adulthood, and sometimes talk therapy and I mean, I'm a huge advocate of talk therapy it cannot heal those deeper things within us and we cannot maybe go back and change our parents or have different parents or have partners that weren't abusive or horrible to us. But there's something so soothing about feeling like, okay, we can turn to the earth and be held by her in that way, and it's also very empowering to be able to perhaps like work with nature in this very different way, to heal from the inside the things that perhaps you can't even put into words, to be able to like process and release them. I mean, wow, Exactly.

Marysia Miernowska:

Exactly yeah.

Kasia Stiggelbout:

So I'm curious.

Kasia Stiggelbout:

Stress has been something that has been top of mind for me.

Kasia Stiggelbout:

I mean not just because of, obviously, everything we're going through, but my mom and I spent a lot of time talking about unprocessed or repressed emotions, and so I just love to hear how you've worked with nature and worked with these plants to kind of release some of these things, both in the moment and after the fact.

Kasia Stiggelbout:

For someone who is listening and I kind of maybe wanna split this up into two categories and you can tell me if this makes sense or not. But there's like the acute moment of stress right, like oh my gosh, homelessness could be a reality for me right now, and a lot of people are going through financial stressors right now or relationship stressors or whatever. And then there's the repressed, like deeper rooted stuff that we haven't quite let go of. Can you maybe speak from a herbalist's point of view? What are some of the actual plants that people can look for or seek out? And I know this is maybe hard to generalize, but for those acute moments of stress, what can we do? And then, what are some of the things that we can start to investigate if we're trying to release some stuff that is repressed within us?

Marysia Miernowska:

Yeah, that's great. So I'm going to reframe it a little bit. I'm really hearing what you're saying and feeling it as like acute stress and then chronic stress. So with acute stress, you know if, if suddenly, like if you got in a car accident or like you know, something happened suddenly, it's more like there's a few things that you can do in the moment or shortly thereafter that can really regulate and support the nervous system. You're not necessarily going to be brewing a cup of tea, right like if you just got in a car accident, or if you're not necessarily going to be brewing a cup of tea, right Like if you just got in a car accident or if you're still in the car.

Marysia Miernowska:

But in those moments of acute stress, the body actually is incredibly wise and the body and our survival instinct is incredibly intact. And so you know even the story that I described of what happened to me. It wasn't really me being like now I'm going to be thinking about how to be loving and calm for my daughter, or now I'm going to like know that I should just pick up my things and call my friend who has a truck, like it just all kicks into place, and so trusting our animal capacity to move through those situations is actually just the right thing to do, because you will know what to do and your body will support you. And then there'll be a moment when you're like holy shit, that just happened. And so, in those moments where you kind of regain consciousness, it can be very helpful to look out into the distance.

Marysia Miernowska:

Every time we look at our phone or look up close to our face, we're reinforcing a pattern in our brain that puts us into a stress response.

Marysia Miernowska:

Every time we look out into the horizon, our nervous system starts to calm down, and so it's a very simple thing we can do. We can even practice this when we're working, or if you're, like in a meeting and you're feeling like you're starting to get stressed and your boss is, like you know, putting pressure on you, like look out the window or look try to like see how far you can see in a certain direction. It can be very healing to look at plants. You know, there's like a tree outside of your window instead of like looking at a building far away. It's going to feel a lot better, but the body is going to start to calm down. Breathing, obviously right, just taking a really deep breath, putting our hands on our body and like squeezing, can be really helpful, especially like our legs and our thighs, like a I am here, here we are, you know, tapping, tapping, and then, once the kind of stress thing is done, shaking, literally shaking our body and animals.

Kasia Stiggelbout:

Yes, I was just going to say that, like my dog does that Wow?

Marysia Miernowska:

Yeah, an animal can like be scared or have something happen or get attacked or something occurs, and they just completely shake it out and then they're like yawning, which is a sign that their parasympathetic nervous system just kicked in and that they're in healing, and they go and take a nap or, like, eat a meal. And so, for us, we carry chronic, you know, chronic and acute stress all the time, and actually shaking our body, like wiggling it out or like ah, kind of, you know, expressing or making a sound, even like screaming in your car, those things can really actually help. Similarly, you know, I had this one situation once where I was in the car. My daughter's dad continues to be a source of stress, and there's acute stress that comes in and moments of, like, panic we don't have a great co-parenting relationship and it's hard and so there've been many moments where suddenly I'm activated. You know he says something, he doesn't show up or whatever, cancels plans, da, da, da.

Marysia Miernowska:

And I go into, you know, I feel my, I feel like I'm starting to sweat, I feel like I'm starting to have short breath, and there was a moment in the past where I'd be like, okay, marisha, just calm down, just breathe, take long breaths and there was a moment where I was like, no, I actually have to move this energy out.

Marysia Miernowska:

And so being in the car and like yelling was so helpful and it was totally not like my go-to thing to do, but it allowed me to like get out the feelings of, of shock, of anger, of disappointment, and then what's that energy left?

Marysia Miernowska:

My body would like go into this like super calm state of like, almost like fatigue, of like okay, and so it's like we need to. When we're working with our nervous system. We need to see the feeling through instead of suppressing it, like we need to take it all the way through. And, of course, we do that in a responsible way. Like you know, if you're angry at someone, you're not going to yell at them. You're going to say I'm feeling really triggered. Some part of me is immensely triggered right now. I'm going to go take a walk or just like go move this out of my body so I can come back and we can continue this conversation, you know if that's something that you want to do, but yeah, so that's, that's kind of some of the things I would think about in acute situations of stress.

Kasia Stiggelbout:

Yeah, I want to actually just pause for a minute and point out so much of the narrative out there is kind of focused on almost like settling down and meditate, and I'm I'm a very avid meditator, but I love that you mentioned that sometimes your body needs the opposite and it's actually movement to like work it through so it doesn't stagnate within. And I love that example with the way that animals shake off their emotions I noticed my dog doing that and the kind of idea of looking further away, like I wonder if that's why forest bathing is such an effective strategy for like lowering our stress levels, because we're surrounded by like dimensions versus, you know, like one foot away from our face with our phones all the time.

Marysia Miernowska:

Or even like looking at the ocean. I don't know if you've ever noticed, like how healing it just like rise in at the ocean, it's like yummy, it's so calming and yummy. Yeah, and just to speak to that, you know, when we go into a stress response, we can go into fight, flight or freeze, right, and I find that many women go into this fawn freeze reaction of like you know, okay, I'm just gonna, okay, I'll just step back, and that's our survival mechanism. These are unconscious survival mechanisms, nothing wrong with it, but it's important to notice, like if you're, for example, you know, if you have a, if you're like co-parenting with someone and you're constantly in this like fawn response, or in this like I'm just going to stay calm, I'm just going to make, I just don't want to ruffle any feathers Then then you're in a functional freeze, you're. You're actually you know, and and I think that single moms are often in a functional freeze, like me having this traumatic thing happen and be like I'm just going to stay perfectly calm and get things done. That's functional freeze, you know.

Marysia Miernowska:

And so there was also a moment, and I'm also. I love yoga, I love meditation. It's been incredibly healing to have practices where I'm down-regulating my nervous system and experiencing deep calm and able to heal from the stress, and there was also a moment in my journey where I was like I need to go, like, take boxing classes or something. Everything that I'm doing is to calm myself down, but I actually need to strengthen my capacity as a warrior and I need to be able to access the part of me that actually can respond strongly if I need to, and that was a huge wake-up call. And so, yeah, I think just kind of, for each of us is going to be different. Some people tend to go more into the fight, response or flight, and so you know, then we really just want to support balance within ourselves.

Marysia Miernowska:

And especially for women, out there who perhaps have things that you know that they feel within their bodies but they can't release verbally. Yeah, so we're all. We are all victims of chronic stress. Like, I don't believe there's anyone here who isn't under chronic stress. If you meet her.

Marysia Miernowska:

let me know yeah she doesn't exist, because, unfortunately, our modern life is not built in accordance to our biology. The fact that we have phones and have emails and are expected to respond, and the fact that people from all over, everywhere can get ahold of us, like our nervous system never developed past thousands of years ago, where we're just meant to have relationships with the people around us, in front of us. And, of course, it's so wonderful, like there's so many benefits. I mean, look, we're having this conversation right across the continent and and I have so many incredible students from all over the world that I get to pray with you know, in real time, with these plants. It's like such a blessing and it means that we have to be aware that our life, the way that it is built, creates chronic stress, and so there are some practices and then lots of herbs that really help, a few practices that are so simple, and I think sometimes, as humans, we make things more complicated than it needs to be and we feel like we have to do like expensive therapies or like there's all sorts of things like float tanks, which can be amazing, but also like are really expensive, and it's like, yes, you can go into a deep restorative state in a float tank, but is that sustainable? Like can you float every other day? And and in fact it can be so much more simple. So a few things that make a huge, huge difference is outside being outside, getting fresh air, walking, taking, moving outside and having endorphins. And getting fresh air, and especially if you can go to a park or be in nature, like you mentioned, forest bathing. There's even studies that show that in hospitals, where there are trees, or even just photos of trees, the healing rate is like 80% higher. So literally just being in nature is healing and it attunes our nervous system.

Marysia Miernowska:

Another thing is sleeping in the dark, like our sleep is our key to regeneration, and I'm so into proper sleep, because if I sleep well, I have energy and I can show up, and if I don't sleep well, then I get depleted and I have a lot of responsibilities and so I can't afford to. You know, like I don't really drink alcohol, I don't do things that are going to deplete my energy, and I'm also not drinking caffeine because I don't want to deplete my long-term energy reserves either. And this isn't like a dogmatic thing, it's not about being like pure, that doesn't exist, it's just about finding what works for each of us. And in the case of sleep, like sleeping with an eye mask, if you live in a city or if you have light pollution around you, then sleeping with like a silk eye pillow, an eye mask, is just a game changer, because then you're sleeping in true darkness and your body goes into the delta brainwave state, which is when the human growth hormone is released and then the body is literally regenerating itself, healing, repairing, creating new cells. But you can't get into those deep states of consciousness, in the deep or I should say unconsciousness, the deep dream states, if you don't down-regulate in the evening.

Marysia Miernowska:

And so, for chronic stress, it's important to try to sync our rhythm of the day with the rhythm of nature. This is what we do at the apprenticeship, and like understand what practices in the morning connect us to that energy that is available. There's like a natural energy in the morning that's one of inspiration and clarity of mind. And if we like first look at our phone and just get inundated with messages, we're missing the opportunity to actually be in a much more kind of expansive, innocent, hopeful place. And so in the morning, like praying or saying affirmations, like putting your hands on your body, greeting your body, taking like five minutes to be in this sweetness, you know, and if you can take 15 minutes, better. But that is going to really kind of fill you up with more inspiration and hope and actually a clearer mind for the rest of the day.

Marysia Miernowska:

Then, like, the main part of the day is like the fire element. It's it's when you know you get shit done and that's like great to do your meetings and work and et cetera. It's when your digestion is best. You know you want to have your biggest meal of the day in the middle of the day at lunch, but then once like afternoon starts coming around, when people often feel this crash, right, it's good to start down-regulating the nervous system and instead of looking for like chocolate or sugar or coffee to get more energy, we actually want to work with teas like Tulsi, holy basil or lemon balm. Teas like that still will keep you like aware and kind of mentally sharp, but they're also calming to the nervous system, opening to the heart, soothing to digestion and so you can. If you still need to get things done, you'll still be able to do that. You're not going to like zonk out at all, but you're also going to start getting more in the body and then, really, like at sunset time, we want to be bringing in herbs that are kind of consciousness shifting.

Marysia Miernowska:

I'm not talking about, like marijuana or, like you know, psychotropic plants, but teas like Damiana or passion vine are wonderful teas to drink in the evening. They're both aphrodisiacs, which also means that they open up sensuality. They like relax muscles. So if you feel any tightness from the day, your body starts to relax. You know some people like to have a glass of wine after work, you know, in order to like let tension melt. But you don't have to have alcohol, you can have like Damiana or passion vine or kava, kava, and you're going to get that same physical like, ah, melting of tension and and release of anxiety. And ideally that like evening is a time for relaxation, sensuality, creativity. Relaxation, sensuality, creativity. Taking a bath, making love, reading a book, really like self-massaging yourself, stretching, cuddling with your animal, having intimate conversations with your loved ones that's the down regulation that then allows you to go into restorative sleep and get into those deeply healing brainwaves that then, when you wake up in the morning, you feel really refreshed.

Kasia Stiggelbout:

Okay, I'm trying all of this, starting today. This was amazing. Oh my gosh. I love kind of viewing, not just. You know, we talked a bit about seasons and the seasons of the year, the seasons of nature, but really thinking about also your day as cyclical and how can we work with that flow instead of against it. I mean, I can just I feel downregulated already. So just imagining that that is incredible, that that is incredible. Oh my gosh, marisha, I could speak with you for hours, but we are over time, so I want to make sure that, before we wrap, if you could, please let our audience know about your apprenticeship, about your book. I'm going to link everything below, but I know people are going to want to check it out, so please.

Marysia Miernowska:

Thank you. Yeah, I'm warmly inviting everybody listening to join the apprenticeship to the sacred wild, and this is a 10 month long journey that you can do from anywhere you know, from the comfort of your home, and it's all about reconnecting you to the sacred and the wild within you and all around. And, like I mentioned, we drink medicinal herbs, so you get a full tune up of all of your chakras in correspondence to the seasons, of all of the systems of the body the respiratory, digestive, immune and we get to connect and meet people from all around the world that are doing the same work together. It's such an incredible loving community. It's such a safe, nourishing space and it really leads to this deeper connection to ourselves and the earth and spirit. And then you're also learning folk medicine. You're learning how to make herbal medicine. You're learning how to blend your own teas or infusions and making lotions and all sorts of things so that you know if you feel sick or if someone in your family is sick, you can support them.

Marysia Miernowska:

It's a very empowering and beautiful and fun journey and it's really it's hard to explain, but I invite anyone to join and I'm going to be sharing a 15% off coupon with your audience, which takes $525 off of the full course tuition, and then in addition to that we do have other sliding scale and financial support, especially for single mamas or BIPOC community or anybody who needs a little bit more financial support. So registration's closing at the end of the month. We sometimes give a little grace period the first couple of days of September, but we're starting September 7th and we really invite you to join us. I also have a book. It's called the Witch's Herbal Apothecary. You can get it on my website, you can get it on Amazon, all the other places, and I make really beautiful skincare that's all organic and regenerative. It's called Sacred Ritual and if you want to try that, you can use the discount code SacredWild20 for 20% off.

Kasia Stiggelbout:

Oh, my gosh, and I'm going to hyperlink everything below. Marisha, it was so wonderful having you on. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Marysia Miernowska:

Thank you so much and so many blessings to you and the listeners and all of the lands that you call home, ooh.

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Kasia Stiggelbout

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