I grew up in Costa Rica, where my grandmother’s lineage runs hundreds of years deep into the land. On weekends, she and my great-aunt would speak to their altars and plants with the same profound tenderness. Nobody explained that a plant was a living intelligence. I was simply raised in a world where that was self-evident.
Later, I studied Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine, European alchemy, and Western herbalism. While I remain deeply grateful for each of those individual pathways, every tradition eventually pointed me back to what my grandmothers demonstrated:
Healing does not begin with a remedy. It begins with a relationship.
We’ll start there in the first lesson of the course I am teaching this fall. That foundation underpins both my book, The Rainforest Herbal Apothecary: A Healer's Guide to Folk Rituals and Shamanic Remedies, and my upcoming five-week live course, The Curandera’s Apothecary: Cultivate Well-Being with Plant Medicines, Healing Rituals & Ancestral Folklore, hosted by The Shift Network. Because without discussing the cosmological foundations of Indigenous healing traditions across Central and South America, we cannot talk about principles like reciprocity, ethical plant medicine, lineage, and respectful cultural stewardship, which inform the work of traditional healers.
What Is a Healing Cosmology?
Ask most people what an herbalist does, and they picture a pharmacy made of leaves and flowers: a symptom arises, a plant is selected, and the plant is the focus. That is, in part, because modern medicine often approaches healing like a mechanic fixing a broken part. On the other hand, traditional herbalism approaches healing like a gardener asking what the entire ecosystem needs to thrive.
A cosmology is the story a culture tells about how the world is ordered and where humans sit within it. In dominant Western paradigms, nature is a backdrop, and plants are resources to be extracted. In contrast, Central and South American Indigenous traditions—such as the Bribri people of Talamanca, Costa Rica—view nature, spirituality, and human existence as inextricably linked. Disharmony is rarely just physical; it involves social, spiritual, and environmental dynamics.
Plants as Living Kin and Spirit Teachers
If the forest is filled with conscious beings, a plant is a living relative, not merely an active constituent to be studied and processed into a botanical formula.
Treating plants as living intelligences changes how we interact with them:
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Resource Mindset: Extract maximum material as efficiently as possible.
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Kinship Mindset: Introduce yourself, state your intent, ask permission, take only what is offered, and leave an offering behind.
In Central and South America, people address plants with the same reverence as prayer and spirituality. This distinction shapes how we harvest, prepare, and apply herbal medicine. Kinship carries inherent obligations. In traditional herbalism, the core guiding principle is reciprocity, or the understanding that every act of gathering requires a sacred exchange. Whether offering tobacco, cacao, song, clean water, or a prayer, the return gift maintains balance within the ecosystem. Taking without giving creates a rupture in relationship, and in Indigenous cosmologies, a ruptured relationship is considered the root of vital imbalance.
What Is Curanderismo?
Curanderismo is a holistic, fluid healing tradition of Latin America that integrates Indigenous plant medicine, Spanish folk healing, African traditions, and sacred devotions. Practitioners (curanderos and curanderas) serve as herbalists, midwives, community healers, and more.
The general framework rests on five core precepts:
- Plants are sentient beings and spirit teachers.
- Healing is relational, and wellness cannot occur in isolation.
- Spirit and matter are unified.
- Knowledge is ancestral, passed down through direct communion and lineage.
- Individual health is bound to collective and environmental health.
4 Steps to Build a Daily Plant Relationship
You do not need to memorize every plant’s Latin binomial to begin practicing relational herbalism.
- Find a Local Plant: Choose one tree or plant you walk past every day.
- Learn Its Name: Research its common name and the Indigenous heritage of the land you occupy.
- Offer Acknowledgment: Speak to it out loud or offer a silent note of gratitude.
- Observe the Ecosystem: Notice the insects, soil, and sunlight surrounding the plant over time. Take notes. Return often to explore the subtle changes.
Plants are living kin, spirit teachers, and medicine beings.
This core belief underpins everything else. I wrote The Rainforest Herbal Apothecary so this knowledge would not be lost before my own children can hold it. And I’m teaching this course because a book can hold wisdom, but only a living conversation can pass it on.
I would love for you to be in the room with me.
