Every Plant is a Master.
every plant has a gift to offer us.
Something I feel in my bones: plants are alive. Not just biologically, but with a spirit, a body, a will to offer their support to us humans and animals. We have the potential to build real relationships with them, to invite them into our bodies and let them work on us mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
I’ve spent years in this relationship. I work with plants and mushrooms on a personal level, I sit in ceremony, I make medicine, and I run a small tincture business with over 30 different plant and mushroom allies. Everything I know came through my teachers, through elders who shared their lineages with me, and through the plants themselves, who are, without question, the most honest teachers I’ve ever had.
In the world I move through, there’s a category that carries a lot of weight, master plants. Most people use this term to describe plants that take you into psychedelic experiences like, Ayahuasca, Yagé, Yopo, San Pedro/Wachuma, Peyote/Hikuri. They’re called masters because they are master teachers. They come to awaken you, to deepen your healing, to connect you to the Earth, to God, to realms that we normally do not experience. They are an extraordinary gift. They can strip away years of pain and confusion and free you and return you to the reason why you are here in the first place - to be love and to be in purpose.
I’ve sat with several of these medicines, and I can tell you each one is completely distinct. Different flavor, different personality, different way of moving through your system.
One ceremony with Ayahuasca opened my heart in a way I still don’t have full words for. What came through was every instance of love I had ever received in my life, going all the way back to being a baby. It all came in flooding in all at once. Not as a memory exactly, but as a felt experience. Like something in me that had been holding love at arm’s length finally let it all the way in. It brought me into grief and into gratitude at the same time, both of them so big. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever lived through.
These plants are not subtle and they are not for everyone. There are real contraindications… physical, psychological, and circumstantial. Even when they are right for someone, the work doesn’t end when the ceremony does. Integration takes time. Some of these medicines can be depleting to the system and liver. So, I really don’t push anyone toward them. They have their own timing and their own way of calling someone in.
But here’s where my view point might differ from others.
The term “master plant” has become almost synonymous with psychedelic plant. And I understand why, those experiences are so deep and profound. But even within the traditions that gave us this term, rose has always been considered a master plant. Rose. One of the most tender, gentle, widely available plants on Earth. Which tells us something important: intensity was never actually the point. Mastery was never about how hard a plant hits.
Which leads us to what I really want to say, all plants are master plants. Every one of them. Because they are all teachers, all carriers of spirit, all capable of meeting you in ways that go far beyond their chemistry.
I’ve watched this happen again and again in my online plant dietas, where people sit with a single plant for seven days, not an entheogen, not something on any sacred plant list, and they find themselves in their own kind of psychedelic experience. Something that deeply moves them and stays with them.
Because here’s what I actually believe, nature is psychedelic, period.
Let me tell you about marshmallow root.
On a physical level, marshmallow root is a mucilaginous plant, meaning it produces a thick, silky coating along the throat and digestive system. It allows things to move more freely. It brings what I can only describe as the element of water, softening, flowing, creating space.
The first time I learned about marshmallow root, I was in class and a teacher showed us a picture. For some reason, I was brought to tears. I had no idea why, but knew I was meant to connect with her. So, I sat with marshmallow root in a dieta, and every single day she showed up to do the same thing on an emotional and spiritual level that she does in the body. She was teaching me that I could let things in. That I could let them move me, flow through me, and release. That I could create more room in my life, for joy, for pleasure, for abundance. It wasn’t a flood or all at once. It was gentle and consistent, like a teacher who shows up every morning and patiently works with you until you actually learn.
And that’s the thing, I learned. Not just experienced it in a journey or ceremony and then spent weeks integrating. I learned how to do it myself. Because the teaching came in doses I could actually digest, repeated over days, until it became mine.
What I find is that this is actually part of what makes these plants master teachers too. They require you to really listen. They won’t show up for you, won’t support you in the ways they’re capable of, if you’re not willing to meet them halfway. That means silence. Eating cleaner. Tuning out the noise of the world and creating space to just be in your own energy, with the plant. In a way, they ask you to begin letting go of the things that don’t serve you before the work even starts. And then the real teaching can come through.
There’s something profound in that. A plant that demands your presence and your devotion in order to reveal itself is not asking less of you than a ceremony. It might be asking more…
When I compare that to my Ayahuasca ceremony, where the same essential truth arrived, all the love flooding in at once… both were real, both were beautiful and profound. But they worked differently. The Ayahuasca showed me the destination in an instant, breathtaking and incredible. Marshmallow root walked me there, step by step, and made sure I knew the way.
Most clinical herbalism focuses, understandably, on the physical, the anti-inflammatory, the adaptogen, the liver support, the nervine. And that alone is miraculous. The fact that a plant growing in the ground can meet us in our suffering and help us heal is something I never stop marveling at.
But it doesn’t stop there. Every plant with medicinal properties has what I think of as a profession, a particular way it serves the soul. The psychology and the spirituality of a life, not just the biology. The way I prefer to work, and the way I work with clients, is more gentle, more subtle, more digestible. Not because the healing is smaller, but because sometimes the deepest work happens slowly, in relationship, over time.
The hierarchy we’ve built, master plant - common herb is manmade.
What if we approached every plant as a teacher worthy of real attention and life changing lessons? What might the weeds growing through the cracks in your sidewalk have to say, if you actually listened?