When we sit with a plant long enough to stop thinking of it as a quick fix and instead meet it as kin, our orientation to the healing power of botanicals becomes more rooted in relationships (to the self, others, and the environment) than in getting what we want. The willingness to be transformed naturally stitches our wounds, softens our grief, and awakens in us a will that is wedded to the well-being of all of life.
The rainforest has always taught me that healing is not a transaction; it is a deeply humbling relationship that invites your fiercest presence. As you walk within it, distraction dissolves quickly; the forest asks for clarity, reverence, and full attention. It is not sentimental about carelessness. A poisonous encounter, a hidden thorn, a sudden danger can remind you that life within the jungle responds to the quality of your awareness. When approached with humility, grace, and a quiet step, the forest opens to you. It reveals pathways, medicines, and a wisdom far older than language. To be welcomed in is to remember that true healing is reciprocal: you do not simply take from nature, you learn how to belong to it.
On Earth Day, I returned to the plants that have most faithfully returned me to myself. A circle of trusted allies: some that fortify the physical body, some that bring steadiness and calm, and a few that have quietly shaped my inner landscape. Each one is a teacher. Each one a threshold. Each one a reminder that the Earth still knows how to nourish us if we remember how to listen.
From my jungle home in Costa Rica, surrounded by the chorus of insects, rain on broad leaves, tangled roots, and the breath of ancient trees, I have been writing a book on shamanic remedies of Central and South America with profound devotion. Page by page, I have sought to honor the depth, nuance, and sacred practicality of these living traditions. I am deeply excited to bring it into the world, and to offer a more luminous understanding of these medicines, their preparation, their spirit, and the timeless relationship between nature, consciousness, and healing. This is only the tip of the iceberg, yet these are a few of the essential allies I keep on hand to navigate through nearly anything the jungle may ask of me.
For the Body
Pau D’Arco
(Tabebuia impetiginosa) is a tree of warriors. Its tall pink-blossomed canopy has watched over Amazonian communities through epidemics and long seasons of depletion, and its bitter inner bark is brewed slowly into a dark tea that is cuts through fungal heaviness, parasitic burdens, and digestive stagnation. The Guaraní considered it a medicine that teaches endurance. You don't drink it daily, only when you need to remember how strong your own blood can be.
Uña de Gato
a.k.a. Cat’s Claw (Uncaria tomentosa), is the one I reach for when my body feels under siege. You might be dealing with a weary gut or a mysterious recurring ache. Amazonian curanderos call it a spiritual surgeon, and the name fits. It works on resilience the way a wise elder works on a family: by asking what troubles you carry, and whether you can finally put them down.
Jergón Sacha
a.k.a Fer de lance (Dracontium loretense) is the serpent in the apothecary. Its mottled stem resembles that of the fer-de-lance viper, and Indigenous healers in the Peruvian Amazon have used its tuber for centuries as the first line of defense against snakebites. Beyond the physical, it's a plant of radical transmutation: the ally you call when venom in the form of a debilitating pattern needs to be drawn out and alchemized into something else.
Sangre de Drago
a.k.a. Dragon’s Blood (Croton lechleri), is the deep red resin of Croton trees, and it has a protective, sealing impact. A drop dries into a protective film over a cut. A few drops internally soothe an irritated gut. In ceremony, it’s anointed on the solar plexus or the back of the neck to close energetic tears left by shock or grief. If you've ever felt scattered after a difficult experience, sangre de drago is the medicine that gathers you back.
Muira Puama
a.k.a Potency Wood (Ptychopetalum olacoides), is reduced in Western markets to a libido tonic, which misses the point. It's a plant for when vitality has become a still river within, after illness, heartbreak, or a season of too much efforting. Brazilian healers see it as a medicine that restores the spirit to the muscles. It's the slow return of an inner yes.
Catuaba
(Erythroxylum catuaba) is its cousin in the restoration world and one of my deepest loves. There's a Portuguese saying about it: Acende a vela sem gastar o pavio. That is, “It lights the candle without wearing down the wick.” It warms the root and sacral centers, coaxes sleep back to the insomniac, brings dreams forward, and rekindles desire. Take it as a slow decoction.
Passionflower
(Passiflora incarnata) —maracujá—is the descending plant. When fear, fever, or exhaustion have lifted awareness out of the body and into circling thoughts, passionflower gathers it back. The leaves, steeped (never boiled) into a simple evening infusion, ease cramping, slow racing minds, and soften a nervous system that has forgotten how to rest.
Graviola leaf
Mucuna
(Mucuna pruriens), known as “the velvet bean,” is a revered tropical legume with a long history of use throughout Ayurvedic, African, and Indigenous healing traditions. It is one of nature’s richest known sources of L-DOPA, the direct precursor to dopamine, and has drawn significant scientific interest for its potential role in mood, motivation, and cognitive vitality. Traditionally, mucuna has been valued as a deeply restorative ally for states of fatigue, stagnation, reproductive depletion, and when the will feels present but the body struggles to respond. Healers have long turned to it as a medicine of forward motion, helping reweave the bridge between intention and action, and restoring momentum in graceful, embodied ways.
For the Heart & Spirit
Bobinsana
(Calliandra angustifolia) grows along the edges of Amazonian rivers, pink-pompomed and luminous, and it is called, with good reason, the heart vine. Its medicine is found in how it carefully expands the heart. For grief, for numbness after love, for the sensitivity that we’ve placed under lock and key for protection, Bobinsana mollifies the rigid, tired heart and brings looseness and vitality to the heart. Healers speak of Bobinsana as a plant that softens rigidity, restores sensitivity, and returns looseness and vitality to both emotional and physical tissues. It is also considered a teacher of deep listening, the kind curanderos describe as hearing the river moving inside another person.
Cacao
(Theobroma cacao) is one of the most sacred botanical elders of the Americas, stewarded for thousands of years by Mesoamerican cultures long before it became a confection. Traditionally whipped with water, chile, flowers, or maize and shared in ceremony before councils, unions, and important thresholds, cacao has always been more than a food—it is a relational medicine. Rich in compounds associated with circulation and mood, and offering gentle stimulation, it is cherished for its ability to warm the chest, deepen the breath, and awaken presence. If you drink only one thing during Earth Week, let it be cacao—unsweetened, warm, and taken slowly—so you may remember that what is ancient still dances with what keeps us young at heart.
There are countless rainforest allies already living quietly in millions of kitchen pantries worldwide! Beloved spices woven into modern recipes, such as cinnamon, cardamom, and turmeric, are not merely flavorings, but ancient botanical medicines that have traveled across generations and continents. The rainforest has also greatly shaped modern pharmacology, offering plants whose chemistry inspired essential medicines widely used today; one notable example is Curare Vine (Chondrodendron tomentosum), whose alkaloids helped inform the development of muscle relaxants used in anesthesia. What many call ordinary ingredients or modern medicine often begins as the intelligence of a plant.
The Practice of Reciprocity
These plants are powerful relatives—sentient, specific, and generous. They have survived centuries of extraction and erasure because Indigenous communities across the Amazon, the Andes, Mesoamerica, and beyond have continued, against all odds, to tend, protect, and remember them. Earth Day, at its best, offers us the chance to return to reciprocity, relationality, and the radical recognition that we are never above nature, only ever held within it. Keeping the stories of these allies alive—and the forests that birth them protected—is one small but meaningful doorway back into right relationship.
