What It’s Like Being on A Master Plant Dieta
When speaking with people new to the process of doing master plant dietas, I find it challenging to describe how it actually feels to be in these portals. Often the plants themselves will cater my words to the individual person, so as I begin to explain the experience of merging with a plant in marriage, I welcome them to usher in the language that allows you to best relate to how it feels to develop this intimate connection with a plant spirit.
To start, we often illustrate the relationship that develops with the plant we are dieting as a marriage, as this union involves all of us: Body, mind and spirit. As humans, we crave connection, especially as all too often we feel a separation from nature and each other. Going on a journey with a wise master plant is the best way that I know to remember that we are nature and thus cannot be apart from her. Though each plant comes in their own way when we open the dieta, the feeling of their spirit joining with ours is almost always a homecoming. It’s a whisper of a memory, a way of being, that feels new and familiar at the same time.
The Physical Connection
What generally hits me first is the feeling of the plant spirit joining me in my body. They can move energies within us, create warmth, and bring attention to areas of the body that are calling to be healed. It’s not a surprise that what they call our consciousness in this way is always directly aligned with what this particular being has as a healing superpower. I have, at times, even felt surges of pain as energy was being moved within me, but I have also had the incredible experience of being absolutely held in love from the inside. I have also sensed plants loosening tightness in places that were holding on to a lot of tension and supporting me in releasing what was being bound there.
Another way they connect with our bodies is by guiding what we are consuming. When on dieta we follow a very strict protocol for what we nourish our bodies with. However, within those guidelines, some plants may let us know that they do not want us to eat something that is normally permitted on dieta while others may at times stretch the boundaries and allow us to consume something that is not regularly encouraged.
For example, when on my first diet with White Sage, she made me very conscious of how much oil I was eating, and I knew immediately when I hit the limit. Not only was she showing me how oil was affecting my body and what was a healthy amount for me, but it was just one of many ways she would illustrate working with boundaries, one of her specialties. When dieting the same plant more than once, how they work with food can vary between our diets with them. Cacao was very strict with me on my first diet around not only what I ate but also how much, but when I dieted her the second time, I joked that she actually “tricked” me into eating a little bit of salt. Both times, she had a reason for doing so, and she altered her directions around food to cater to what she was working with me on in each journey together.
The Mental Connection
Since we are in complete mergence with a plant during these experiences, they also have access to our thoughts and thought patterns. In moments, I have watched how my thought patterns would shift with a particular plant as they demonstrated a new way of thinking. This is part of their magic, but hard to discern, as sometimes it’s challenging to identify where we end and the plant begins. This is, of course, part of the point!
Recently, with Douglas Fir, I realized that the way that my mind responded to what would normally cause me stress was completely different. He opened me up to letting go of my resistance in many ways, but one method was illuminating new ways of thinking about what was happening in my world. These moments of recognizing them in our thoughts can radically shift old habits of thought and massively transform how we think about the world.
The Emotional Connection
It is exceedingly common for emotions to surface powerfully on diet as our plant ally has access to our emotional world as well. What stands out to me here is that having them join us as we process deep emotions, grief, and trauma is still challenging, but you are literally connected with a support system. Just like with the physical connection, the emotional aspects of us that arise to be healed are things that our plant ally is particularly adept at helping us to heal or transmute. In fact, this may very well be the reason that the plant called to us to begin with, as they knew they could empower us to heal things deep within us we had been avoiding or were too scared to do on our own.
Sometimes, they will even dig into things we thought we had already healed, but that still had tendrils remaining within us. I was once married and had a lot of grief and a long personal journey of self-discovery and healing around that supported by many plants, so I felt like I had mostly completed that chapter. Until my diet with Mullein, that is. Mullein wrapped his velvety leaves and gentle but strong divine masculine essence all around me; then, he told me I had not fully healed what had happened between myself and my ex-husband. Next, he dove into all of the other relationships and experiences around that time period that had not been fully witnessed. The ways that I had felt let down and left alone by people that I called friends, how the experience had affected my work life, and on and on. He held me as I pulled out stray root after root. In this way, it can feel like the plants know us better than we know ourselves. Perhaps, in some ways, they do.
The Spiritual Connection
How the spiritual connection with a plant feels may be the most difficult to describe, especially as each of us experiences spirituality in our own way. Just as with the other forms explained above, they know exactly what we need within our spiritual lives and in what ways we want or need to grow. Various plants can work with dreams, help us to open our psychic and extrasensory abilities, illuminate past lives, and guide us toward new methods of communing with the spirit world. Again, just as with the other ways that they connect with us, the plant that has called us into this union together has a special ability to bring in or expand whatever it is that our spirit needs at that moment.
When this unfolds, and a plant relates to us on such a core level of our being, it can absolutely explode your heart. The fact that a wise and magical plant spirit would come to us in such a tender and profound way is one of the most beautiful experiences I have had in this lifetime. And many times, they have shown me how many lifetimes we have been doing this together, which makes everything capable of feeling love inside of myself swell to overflow and fill with such gratitude for all of the beings of nature and their connection with us.
The Forever Connection
Perhaps the greatest aspect of this experience is that just because we close the dieta container with them does not mean that they go away. While they may pull us out of our bodies and begin to give us our sovereignty back, they remain a friend for life. After a short period of space from them post-diet, we welcome them back to commune with us, and the relationship just continues to grow from there. We can call on them at any time and build that connection for the rest of our lives, if not longer.
In a world fraught with uncertainty and chaos, having these master plant allies to call on is the greatest gift I can imagine. If you feel called by a master plant dieta or would like to discuss this process more deeply, feel free to reach out to me. Few things bring me as much joy as talking with others about what these loving and magical beings have to share.
If you’d like to learn about what it means to be on the other side of plant dietas, read my blog, “What It’s Like Hold and Guide Master Plants Dietas.”
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About the Author
Lindsay Calliandra Rose is a Medicine Carrier, an accomplished herbalist, Plant Medicine integration specialist, and a woman with a profoundly sacred relationship with nature. She began her Plant Medicine journey many years ago with Ayahuasca and Huachuma, and she has completed multiple Master Plant Diets with beings like Rose, Bobinsana, Juniper, Jurema, Cacao, Oak, and Blue Water Lily. Lindsay is an initiated server and carrier of Hapéh. She now works as a preparation and integration guide for those answering the call to work with sacred medicines, and she is apprenticing in the art of guiding Master Plant Diets as well. She is a passionate advocate of safe and transformative experiences with the plants, and she loves helping people navigate these mysterious spaces with grace, love, and support.
