Integral Healing
“Your truest self and the land are one”
Both Insight Herbalism and Celtic Shamanism offer pathways to deeper healing that are rooted in an integral, holistic perspective. These practices invite a balanced engagement of body, mind, spirit, and the natural world, aligning closely with the principles of Integral Philosophy and Holistic Science—approaches that seek to understand the interconnections and underlying unity of all aspects of life.
Inspired by the Integral Theory of thinkers such as Sri Aurobindo, Jean Gebser, and Ken Wilber , these healing practices recognize the multi-dimensional nature of human experience. Healing is not just about alleviating symptoms but addressing the full spectrum of human existence: from the physical to the emotional, mental, and spiritual.
Insight Herbalism works to reconnect the individual with the living intelligence of plants and the land, while Celtic Shamanism taps into ancestral wisdom and the deeper dimensions of consciousness, enabling a more complete, holistic transformation. Together, they embrace the notion that healing must integrate multiple levels of being,
Holistic Science & Living Systems
At the heart of Holistic Science is the understanding that the world is a living, interconnected system.
Insight Herbalism recognizes plants as living beings with unique intelligence and healing properties that influence the body’s systems on energetic, physical, and spiritual levels. Similarly, Celtic Shamanism draws upon the natural world and its rhythms to guide individuals back into balance, recognising that the spiritual and physical are inseparable in the healing process.
Through these practices, we move away from reductionist views of healing, embracing the idea that health emerges from the harmonious integration of all parts. In which mind, body and the natural world are deeply interconnected.
Jean Gebser & the Evolution of Consciousness
Jean Gebser’s work on the evolution of consciousness aligns deeply with the principles of Sacred Fifth. Gebser’s idea of the "integral consciousness"—a shift beyond the rational and mental into a more direct, holistic experience of reality—is echoed in these healing practices.
These practices encourage the practitioner to engage with the world not only through the intellect, but through the senses, the body, the imagination, and the spirit. By cultivating embodied presence, intuitive knowing, and deeper communion with nature, we facilitate a transformative shift in consciousness,
Goethean Science: Perception Beyond the Ordinary
Goethean Science emphasises direct, participatory observation of nature rather than abstract analysis. It invites us to perceive the world with all our senses, engaging deeply with the living processes around us.
This approach resonates strongly with both Insight Herbalism and Celtic Shamanism. In herbalism, this means working with plants not just as remedies, but as living teachers whose wisdom can guide our healing; Where the Archetypal patterns and processes underlying their emergence and metamorphosis is directly perceived.
In Shamanic Healing, this means journeying into the realms of psyche, nature, and ancestral wisdom through direct experience, where the boundaries between self and world become fluid, and the wisdom of nature is accessed in non-ordinary states of consciousness.
Both practices are grounded in experiential knowing—the understanding that healing occurs when we perceive and interact with the world in a deeper, more intimate way. Through journeying, ritual, and plant meetings, we enter into a participatory relationship with life, where healing is not only about “fixing” what is broken, but about returning to wholeness.