Show Notes:

Join us for a deep dive into the plant signatures and flower essence energetics of our two favorite trees: Redwood and Magnolia. These ancient beings have been on the planet since dinosaurs roamed the earth, and we think they have much wisdom for us. 

Redwoods are the tallest tree, one of the longest living, and grow in groups that are connected by their root system. They help us see the big picture, be resilient, and foster community — while connecting us to the earth and our own ancient sacredness.

Magnolias are one of the first flowering plants on the planet, and they imbue us with hope and enthusiasm for this earthly experience. They aid us in fully inhabiting our bodies so we can access our unique gifts and pursue our life’s work.

Audio:

FEP47 Listening to the Ancients

Join us for a deep dive into the plant signatures and flower essence energetics of our two favorite trees: Redwood and Magnolia. These ancient beings have been on the planet since dinosaurs roamed the earth, and we think they have much wisdom for us.  Redwoods are the tallest tree, one of the longest living, and grow in groups that are connected by their root system.

Video:

Flower Essences discussed during the show:

• Redwood, FES Range of Light, Wiseflower Essences
• Hope of Spring Magnolia, Flora of Asia
• Yulan Magnolia, Flora of Asia

Show Transcript

Welcome back, flower lovers. We are so happy to spend a little time with you today. And thank you so much for being one of our subscribers of The Flower Essence podcast. We have been really busy lately working on our Flower Essence conference, which has just recently concluded. Although it’s still alive, it still lives. It is still available for everyone who is subscribed to it and who is a registered attendee. You can continue to take in the content for a full year. So that’s what we’ve been doing and spending a lot of our time and energy doing of late.

But we wanted to get together today and talk about working with our friends, the ancients, and we’re talking about these ancient, ancient trees, the Magnolias and the Redwoods. These are some of our personal favorites. And we wanted to share a little bit more of our stories and experiences with them. That’s why we’re here today. So, hey, Ro, how’s it going?

Rochana Felde: [00:01:38] Hi, it’s going well, yeah. Still just enjoying the afterglow of that conference and the amazing community that it brought together. We had some incredible live sessions and all of those are recorded and still available, like you said. But it was just a really beautiful experience. I’m still kind of in awe of how it all came together and how wonderful it was.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:02:06] It really was. It was so sweet to bring in all of these teachers from all over the world, people who have all these different streams of flower essences and flower essence therapy, different theories, and different concepts. Flower essences is a world that tends to be so kind of apart where we’re all kind of doing our thing. And one of your and my goals for this podcast was to bring people together, and I think we did that as well with the conference project, was bringing in all of these streams of wisdom. And so that was kind of the really fun thing for me, was seeing everybody’s take on it. Everybody’s got an interesting perspective. And I learned so much as we were working with the speakers and recording all of the lectures ahead of time. I had so many aha moments. I’m sure you did too.

Rochana Felde: [00:03:01] Yeah, absolutely. And to bring all those people together in one place and to get all of the different viewpoints and the benefit of the experience, I mean, the sheer amount of experience, was really amazing. People that I had admired for a long time but had never met, and people that I hadn’t known much about and got to learn more about. So, yeah, it was a really amazing experience. So, for the listeners of the podcast, it’s all the stuff that’s right up our alley. It’s all the things that we’ve been talking about on the podcast and just going so much deeper into it. So it’s really this natural progression, I think. And there’s a lot of pieces that I think tie in to things that maybe we may have talked about before on the podcast but take it a step farther. So yeah, I’m very grateful to be a part of this, to be able to do this podcast, and to be able to have done the conference.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:04:06] Yeah, so much. And stay tuned, folks, because there is so much more to come. I know that we’re going to, at the end of this pod today, we’re going to be talking a little bit about what our plans are. Additionally for the podcast, we’re going to have some great guests coming up. And then, also just our plans as to the conference and as things go forward. So, hang in there, but let’s dive into our topic talking about the ancients. I know you and I have both been talking about wanting to have this conversation about our friends. Do you want to say hi to your Redwood friends first before we start?

Rochana Felde: [00:04:44] Yeah. So I live in a coastal forest right on the coastline of California, and that is the place where Redwoods grow. Redwoods grow on this very narrow strip near the coast from about central California up to southern Oregon. And in the past, they covered a much, much larger area of land. And they’ve been around for so long. And I love to get into that with you, like the age of these trees, because both the Magnolia and the Redwoods are ancient. And I love both of those trees, but I happen to work and live with the Redwoods and then you happen to work with all these Magnolias. So it’s just going to be exciting to kind of compare notes, I think, on some of their signatures and how long they’ve been around. But I do have friends that I like to say hi to every day when I take my little walks, and they continue to give me courage and inspiration and messages for living in these challenging times because they really have that aura of resilience and of being able to have perspective and that long view. So I really appreciate them. And whenever I consider living somewhere else, potentially, my God, I can’t leave the Redwoods. I just I’m too connected. It would break my heart to have to live in a place where I couldn’t visit a Redwood.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:06:31] Yeah. That is a deep soul connection that you feel with the Redwoods. And I certainly have experienced that also. Whenever I’m in their presence and if I can find myself in the presence of an old grove, you feel like you’re in sacred space. It absolutely feels like a temple to me to be in and amongst that presence. You’re in the presence of something immeasurably old and wise. And just that energy just permeates your whole being.

Yeah, the Redwoods are extraordinary trees, and I think anybody can recognize that. Wherever they land on the sensitivity scale, they can definitely recognize, like, hey, there’s something here, this is something important to be paying attention to. And I know that my ancients, my ancient friends, the Magnolias are coming from a time frame, 100 million years old. And in that time, if you look at it in geological time, the continents were different. Just the whole world looked very, very different. The climate was different, the sea levels were different. Everything was very, very different. And their natural range was way wide. They were all over the world. And I think Redwoods had a little bit of that, too. Do you know the time frame and experience of the Redwoods?

Rochana Felde: [00:08:16] I don’t know the exact ancient range of the Redwoods, although I know that it was much, much larger across at least North America and in the Northern Hemisphere. But I do know that they have found fossil records that go back 200 million years, which is just so mind-blowing. And those fossil imprints of the needles and the seeds are really similar to how they look today. So they aren’t hugely different. But some say that it might even be as old as 240 million years. And their name, sempervirens, it means ever-living. So, it’s just a very ancient tree that also lives a really, really long time. It can live into the thousands of years. I’ve seen some of those that are that old. And it kind of takes your breath away to think that this tree has been on the planet for 2000 years. Think about how old that tree, how much it’s seen on this planet.

And the Redwoods, they’ve almost been wiped out at one point. There’s actually been conservation efforts for the Redwoods for over 100 years. They became very popular with the logging industry. And if it wasn’t for these conservation groups, the Save the Redwoods Conservation Group has been around over 100 years now, and there were other people involved in this, we probably wouldn’t have any more coast Redwoods now, and the Giant Sequoias. So there’s two types of Redwood. There’s the Coastal Redwood, and then there’s the Sierra Redwood that is the widest tree in the world, the biggest around. And the Coastal Redwood is the tallest tree.

Rochana Felde: [00:39:30] Yeah, that’s a great place to wrap it up. The wisdom that we both feel from these ancient trees, it’s really special. And I hope that people listening, if you haven’t connected to a tree, any tree, to do so. It’s actually scientifically proven now that forest bathing has health benefits. So it’s a thing. It’s a real thing.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:40:05] Don’t let the haters stop you from hugging trees. Please get out there and be with the trees. So, thank you so much. I’m really glad that we did this. And I also just want to thank so much to our listeners and to especially our patrons, we are really, really grateful for your help and support and community in helping us keep this podcast going. It was our inspiration and mission to start this, and it really takes a community, and we’re really grateful for all of you, our Redwood patrons in our circle who help support us and who help funnel nutrients to us to help us keep going. So thank you very much. We’re really grateful. And on return, we are really grateful to send you nutrients in forms of perks. So, we encourage you to check out our Patreon and see what is available and just really appreciate you. Thank you very much.

Rochana Felde: [00:41:09] Yeah. And we have guests coming up that are going to be on the podcast to be excited about. We’ve got Lindsay Fauntleroy who gave an amazing presentation at the Flower Essence Conference, and she’ll be a guest coming up on the podcast, as well as Sarah Artemisia, who is the host of the Plant Spirit Herbalism Summit and her Plant Spirit podcast. So, we’re really looking forward to having them on the podcast, and other guests to be announced later.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:41:48] Yeah, it’s so cool. We’ve got so much to come. We’ve got so many little seedlings that are starting to germinate and to grow. And we thank you for being on this journey with us, and we thank you for listening, and we thank you for showing up for us. And we really appreciate your presence. Even though we can’t see you or hear you, we know you’re there. And so we just give you big leafy hugs and appreciate your help and helping us to share the podcast. I’m sure that you can think of at least one person in your circle of community who might enjoy this particular conversation. So we welcome you and challenge you maybe to drop a seedling their way and share the podcast with them and help them discover this like you did. So thank you very much.

Rochana Felde: [00:42:33] Bye-bye now.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:42:42] This podcast is meant for educational and entertainment purposes only. We are not physicians and do not diagnose, prescribe, or treat medical conditions. Please consult with your own physician or healthcare practitioner regarding the suggestions and recommendations made by the hosts and guests of The Flower Essence podcast.