With the fate of health care reform still up in the air, filmmakers Terrence Youk and Ann Armbrecht discuss healing alternatives to Western medicine by traveling across the country to explore the healing powers of plants and the natural world. This smart, engrossing, and thought provoking 95-minute documentary uses the subject of plants to demonstrate how our disconnect from nature effects humans and environmental health. Escalating costs of health care can perhaps be balanced with alternative medicines in many cases. But the bigger issue relates to how healing is made possible by embracing our place in the wider web of life.

The film details the difference between Western doctors who treat only the patient’s condition, in contrast to herbalists who frequently address the whole person, taking into account the environment in which they live including their work, home, and community, in treating their illnesses. This is in part due to the fact that health coverage frequently will only cover a 5 minute doctor’s visit who can therefore only can offer a quick fix with a prescription that frequently doesn’t address the underlying issues surrounding many physical ailments. Experts weigh in on this exploration of differing visions of medicine, including Bioneers founder Kenny Ausubel (http://www.bioneers.org/about/founders/kenny-ausubel) who highlights the life of plants as improving individual health and well-being that ultimately enhances the health of the earth. “Our relationship with plants and our knowledge of those plants is perhaps the most important collective heritage we have…That knowledge is ultimately what is going to sustain us,” states Ausubel in the film. Also featured is Tieraona LowDog, MD, the Director of Education at the University of Arizona’s Program in Integrative Medicine, and Larry Dossey, MD, author and editor of EXPLORE: The Journal of Science and Healing who was featured on the Bioneers Radio Show Think Globally, Act Non-Locally in 2005 (http://www.bioneers.org/radio/series-archives/2005-radio-series/think-globally-act-non-locally/?searchterm=larry%20dossey).

Numen: The Nature of Plants shows us how the process and ritual of healing is really about our intimate relationship with nature, more than store bought products can possibly provide, herbal or otherwise. Numen will be shown at the Santa Fe Film Festival, Saturday, December 5th at 4:45pm. For more information, please go to http://santafefilmfestival.com.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Numen-The-Nature-of-Plants/148488938118?ref=nf

Ann

Thank you so much… I’m so moved just reading your words! We did work so long and hard on this and faced our fair share of challenges and it is so very gratifying to hear that the film reached you in this way.

Thank you.

Ann

I do find myself making ‘that face’ when someone starts in on the SCIENCE of it all, but THIS…..this stunning weaving of the beauty and magic that IS science IF we don’t lose sight of the beauty and magic that is numen, the life force….with that deep, resonant feeling of being in communion with the plants and the people….the whole thing is following me around today, truly.

I will be fascinated to see how it affects the folks not already ‘in the garden’. All of you who worked so long and hard on this and gave so much of yourselves have produced something totally remarkable. I do believe it is going to resonate with a very WIDE audience in a seriously consciousness-altering way.

And I very much want to compliment whoever chose to do all those interviews with everyone talking just slightly off-camera. I was profoundly aware of how that ALLOWED me to take it all in. Had everyone been talking directly into the camera, I would have been exhausted. (brava)

All in all, a magnificent piece of work. Thank you all so, SO very much!
LadyB