2 hr 53 min
#65: Wild Tending Series / Janet Kent and Dave Meesters of the Terra Sylva School of Botanical Medicine on disempowering the engines of disruption through intentional land-tending The Ground Shots Podcast
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- Philosophy
Episode #65 of the Ground Shots Podcast is a conversation with Dave Meesters and Janet Kent of the Terra Sylva School of Botanical Medicine out of Madison County, North Carolina. https://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com/podcastblog/terrasylvaschool
After trying to get together for a conversation all summer, we finally met up in the early fall at Dave and Janet’s herbalism school classroom at the Marshall High Studios, in Marshall, North Carolina. It was a frigid fall day and when I arrived, they had tea going and snacks out on a table in their beautifully lit and decorated studio space. It was obviously curated and inhabited by herbalists.
Dave and Janet run the Terra Sylva School of Botanical Medicine with Jen Stovall, and have a clinical herbalism practice in the rural area where they live and the nearby city of Asheville, NC.
Dave Meesters grew up in Miami, Florida and attended college at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He moved to Asheville, North Carolina in the winter of 1998. In 2003, his formal herbal training began with an apprenticeship with CoreyPine Shane at the Blue Ridge School of Herbal Medicine, and since then his experience has included organizing and staffing a free clinic in New Orleans in the months after hurricane Katrina, and starting and practicing at a free clinic in Asheville’s homeless day shelter. Dave has plans to be involved with another herbal free or low-cost clinic in the future, but until then he sees clients privately and provides care to the mountain folks in his rural Appalachian neighborhood, most of whom would rather see an herbalist than a doctor.
From 2013 to 2016, Dave was, with Janet, the director and primary instructor at the Terra Sylva School’s summer apprenticeship program, which was held on the communal mountain land where he resides before the school moved to Marshall. He and Janet are the founders of Medicine County Herbs, an herb apothecary, medicinal plant nursery, and blog.
Dave sees herbalism as a way to provide a more appropriate, accessible, pleasurable, and effective form of health care than the dominant model, and as a means to bond and integrate ourselves with plants, the garden, and the wilds. His herbalism is wedded to a life-long resistance to the forces of domination and alienation, especially domination of and alienation from Nature. His practice and his teaching reflect a deep evolving holism attained by listening to, honoring, embracing, and collaborating with the whole of Nature, and by his study of the threads connecting holistic physiology, energetics, ecology, gardening, systems theory, magic, alchemy and permaculture.
Janet Kent is a clinical and community herbalist, educator, gardener and writer. The child of two naturalists, Janet grew up in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains, learning the amazing diversity of regional wild flowers at an early age. She began studying the medicinal uses of plants when she moved to a rich Appalachian cove high in the mountains of Madison county, North Carolina fifteen years ago. She did not set out to become an herbalist, but as she learned over the years in her forest home, if we are open, we do not change the land we inhabit as much as it changes us. The transformative healing power of the plants around her turned an interest into a calling.
The vast power to heal through reconnection is the medicine she most seeks to share. Whenever possible, she encourages her students and clients to grow their own herbs, to make their own medicine, and most of all, to experience the more-than-human world first hand. Here is where deep, foundational healing is most profound.
Janet views herbal medicine as a means of reconnecting to the long tradition of plant medicine in rural Appalachia. This tradition has become more relevant with the ailing state of the dominant health care system and the rising cost of herbal medicine. Janet considers herbalism the best option for addressing injustice in health ca
Episode #65 of the Ground Shots Podcast is a conversation with Dave Meesters and Janet Kent of the Terra Sylva School of Botanical Medicine out of Madison County, North Carolina. https://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com/podcastblog/terrasylvaschool
After trying to get together for a conversation all summer, we finally met up in the early fall at Dave and Janet’s herbalism school classroom at the Marshall High Studios, in Marshall, North Carolina. It was a frigid fall day and when I arrived, they had tea going and snacks out on a table in their beautifully lit and decorated studio space. It was obviously curated and inhabited by herbalists.
Dave and Janet run the Terra Sylva School of Botanical Medicine with Jen Stovall, and have a clinical herbalism practice in the rural area where they live and the nearby city of Asheville, NC.
Dave Meesters grew up in Miami, Florida and attended college at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He moved to Asheville, North Carolina in the winter of 1998. In 2003, his formal herbal training began with an apprenticeship with CoreyPine Shane at the Blue Ridge School of Herbal Medicine, and since then his experience has included organizing and staffing a free clinic in New Orleans in the months after hurricane Katrina, and starting and practicing at a free clinic in Asheville’s homeless day shelter. Dave has plans to be involved with another herbal free or low-cost clinic in the future, but until then he sees clients privately and provides care to the mountain folks in his rural Appalachian neighborhood, most of whom would rather see an herbalist than a doctor.
From 2013 to 2016, Dave was, with Janet, the director and primary instructor at the Terra Sylva School’s summer apprenticeship program, which was held on the communal mountain land where he resides before the school moved to Marshall. He and Janet are the founders of Medicine County Herbs, an herb apothecary, medicinal plant nursery, and blog.
Dave sees herbalism as a way to provide a more appropriate, accessible, pleasurable, and effective form of health care than the dominant model, and as a means to bond and integrate ourselves with plants, the garden, and the wilds. His herbalism is wedded to a life-long resistance to the forces of domination and alienation, especially domination of and alienation from Nature. His practice and his teaching reflect a deep evolving holism attained by listening to, honoring, embracing, and collaborating with the whole of Nature, and by his study of the threads connecting holistic physiology, energetics, ecology, gardening, systems theory, magic, alchemy and permaculture.
Janet Kent is a clinical and community herbalist, educator, gardener and writer. The child of two naturalists, Janet grew up in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains, learning the amazing diversity of regional wild flowers at an early age. She began studying the medicinal uses of plants when she moved to a rich Appalachian cove high in the mountains of Madison county, North Carolina fifteen years ago. She did not set out to become an herbalist, but as she learned over the years in her forest home, if we are open, we do not change the land we inhabit as much as it changes us. The transformative healing power of the plants around her turned an interest into a calling.
The vast power to heal through reconnection is the medicine she most seeks to share. Whenever possible, she encourages her students and clients to grow their own herbs, to make their own medicine, and most of all, to experience the more-than-human world first hand. Here is where deep, foundational healing is most profound.
Janet views herbal medicine as a means of reconnecting to the long tradition of plant medicine in rural Appalachia. This tradition has become more relevant with the ailing state of the dominant health care system and the rising cost of herbal medicine. Janet considers herbalism the best option for addressing injustice in health ca
2 hr 53 min