Posted December 17th, 2011 by
Ann Armbrecht 
Photo by Larken Bunce
Numen: the animating force in all things living.
Numen: the Healing Power of Plants bridges worlds that aren’t often linked: spirit, ecology, and health, to show how each is essential in healing. We are creating this blog to extend the exploration initiated in the film to conversations about healthcare in our communities.
Our vision in producing Numen is to help launch a grassroots medicine movement that is as widespread and powerful as the local food movement. We hope that the film as well as discussions around topics in the film at screenings and here, on-line, can spark new conversations and debates about health and wellness and inspire real, tangible actions in communities across the country.
Posted May 15th, 2012 by
Ann Armbrecht 
Florence Williams is a contributing editor at Outside Magazine and a freelance writer for New York Times, New York Times Magazine, Slate, Mother Jones, High Country News, O-Oprah, W., Bicycling and numerous other publications. Recently she was a visiting scholar at the University of Colorado's Journalism School.
“Breasts are a mirror of our industrial lives,” Florence Williams writes in her new book, Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History recently published by Norton. As she goes on to say,
“Twentieth century medicine taught us that germs make us sick, but human health, I came to realize, is far more complex than this model. It is also governed by the very places we live and the small-print ingredients in the water we drink, by the molecules we touch and breathe and ingest every day.”
Florence’s book is funny, smart, and incredibly important - I’m so grateful she took the time to share some of her thoughts below.
Posted May 3rd, 2012 by
Ann Armbrecht 
Larken Bunce MS is a clinical herbalist, educator, gardener, writer, and photographer deeply inspired by a life-long love affair with plants
I’ve known Larken for many years, through her work creating the new herb school in town, while working together in the Health Arts and Sciences Program at Goddard College, and most importantly, while dancing! Larken is a leader in envisioning how we can create more sustainable and resilient community-based healthcare and in working toward that vision by co-founding the Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism. Some of Larken’s fantastic handouts on using medicinal herbs for common ailments can be found in our resource guide and her stunning photographs of plants can be found here and on our website. Thank you, Larken!
For up to date herb tips from Larken, follow her on Twitter @physicgardener.
Ann: What was your vision in creating the Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism?
Posted March 26th, 2012 by
Ann Armbrecht I first came across Lisa Rose Starner on Twitter – which I reluctantly started using while doing outreach for Numen. I was new to the world of social media and blogging and I was impressed with how she brought her love and knowledge of plants to engage with others with similar interests. I was especially interested in Lisa’s herbal CSA as a smaller-scale complement to the larger, farm-based herbal CSA described by William Siff, founder of Goldthread Herbal Apothecary. You can find out more about Lisa at her blog, Burdock and Rose.
Lisa Rose Starner is an urban farmer, backyard herbalist, freelance writer and herbal CSA owner.
Posted March 26th, 2012 by
Ann Armbrecht We tend to make different demands of medicine than we do of other commodities. Instead of focusing on how these products are made, we focus on whether and how they work, assuming that the two are unrelated. But they are related. Once while undergoing chemotherapy treatments for breast cancer, a friend was warned by her doctors to be careful not to let her urine splash on her body because the chemicals from the chemotherapy made the urine toxic to the body. The disconnection at the heart of this warning stuns me. We not only have developed a system of medicine that assumes you can cure one part of your body while poisoning another, but we have been told to accept that disconnection as a precondition for getting well.
Didi Pershouse is part of a growing movement challenging this disconnection. I first came across Did’s work while searching on the Internet about ecological and sustainable medicine.
