Plant Meditation Club: This week we meditated on Gégēn, Kudzu root, or Chinese arrowroot, scientific name Pueraria lobata, which is an herb of classical Chinese medicine. This herb is often used as a food. This herb is highly invasive in the United States, so enjoy it from healthy land (not sprayed or otherwise contaminated).
Pre-mediation/taste
Me: dry, a pungent smell, a little sweet and moist in the end in back of mouth, after the first taste finishes,
My daughter: tastes like weird mushroom water, it has a taste that lingers in the back of my tongue, kind of sweet
Overall: Pungent with sweet, nutritious, starchy substance to it.
Meditation 1
Me: It felt like someone trying to get my attention. They want to help. They want to fix things. The things that are wrong feel far too big to fix. They are depressing. They are problems of oppression that are being acted out by the community and the law. The problems keep happening (to many people) because we all are collaborating/perpetuating the problem because many people refuse to see the problem and many who see it refuse to fight. It is so much easier to oppress victims. The helper wants to fix the problem, they have a simple solution. It is simple to them, but I am unwilling to compromise my heart to solve the problem. I don't even know if it is possible. But, I will not ever sell a piece of myself for freedom. I don't know how to do it, and I don't want to learn.
Then the energy went to my frontal lob. Like a cuddle on my frontal lobe. It felt like white light holding the front of my brain above my eyes and up to my forehead.
My daughter: I barely saw anything, but the second I closed my eyes my stomach hurt. It hurt through the entire meditation but it doesn't hurt anymore. General pain in my lower abdomen, more on the left side. It felt hot and a little vomit inducing. I had a lot of trouble focusing the entire time.
Meditation 2
Me: I see myself drawing myself. This is in a way that I draw what my body feels, not how things look. Although, sometimes what I feel comes out as how something looks. I see lines coming down from my shoulders. Pencil lines. They come down from my shoulder girdle, down my torso. I will draw later. I feel the fixer again, wanting to change things. I want things to change too, but I don't think it is possible. We might look back on the things I have faced (and many others) as similar to atrocities like slavery in America, or the near extermination of our Indigenous population (if we can even recognize this as what it is), or the Holocaust. Then again, we may not see it. I don't know what to say to the fixer. At this point the only medicine may be a great embrace. A balm of two hearts holding each other by seeing and being seen, and the holding of bodies too. Then again, sometimes change comes like a flash of lightning.
My daughter: I didn't really have an experience for like 9 minutes. Then I felt like I should be having one, and I did: There was an old Russian lady who pulled an entire turnip the size of her body out of the ground. She was actually a tiny cartoon Russian lady, so it wasn't the same as being the size of a regular body. The turnip was still huge, just not 5' 7". Maybe it was 4' 10"--it was a giant turnip and she was a small Russian. She pointed to something I couldn't see, she said, "Be gone, foul pest!" in heavily accented English. The foul pest was a baby elephant. I saw the baby elephant growing into an adult elephant (before my eyes). The growth process was really sped up. The elephant morphed into a teenage girl who was walking down the street with heavy head phones on. She was hunched over and looked really depressed. I felt like her heavy headphones represented the ears of an elephant. She was walking down the street and that was it. The turnip reminded me of a Stories Podcast story, The Ginormous Turnip, where they were trying to get a giant turnip out of the ground. They were all Russian. They were successful in the end.
Summary/Traditional Use
This plant is native to Asia and Australia, but now grows in North and South America, Africa, and Europe too. This is highly invasive in North America. It has a big root! According to the Iowa DNR "Kudzu roots are fleshy, with massive tap roots 7 inches or more in diameter, 6 feet or more in length, and weighing as much as 400 pounds. As many as thirty vines may grow from a single root crown." It is used extensively as a food (it is most common as a soup ingredient), and is considered more versatile than a turnip! It would certainly be impressive for anyone to pull this root out of the ground. Even a team of people!
All parts of the plant are used medicinally. This plant works primarily with the earth element, related to the spleen and stomach. This is no surprise considering the masses this herb creates under the surface of the land. This herb is used for treating heat in the body and vomiting (Wilms, The Divine Farmer's Materia Medica). It is also being researched for use in ulcerative colitis, the findings are positive (example study). As previously mentioned this is a valuable plant for food, and certainly abundant. Many modern scientific studies validate the traditional use of Gégēn in treating diabetes and obesity. This herb supports the fluids.
This herb was traditionally used in Chinese medicine to relieve tension in the neck and shoulders (in the drawing experience it brought down the energy from my shoulders).
This herb has long been used to expel pathogens (ex: flu) and promote eruptions (ie measles) to detoxify the body. This relates to the psychological issues the plant brought up in meditation.
The experiences we had point to its ability to unearth large problems (the elephant in the room) impacting the emotional (and physical) of the person. Alcohol abuse is an example (as is overeating) of an emotional avoidance strategy. This herb is used to treat alcoholism, both to treat cravings and hangover (sources here). In Chinese medicine the spleen is related to the grandparents. I think of the spleen as having the wisdom of ages--often carrying defense strategies from previous lifetimes to protect out body. The spleen is also persistent, worrying over problems. Spleen 21, Dàbāo, or "the great embrace", is an excellent point for bringing huge insults to the surface to be honored and released, and thereby improving health dramatically. Sometimes this happens as fast as lightning, which cracks the dark sky and brings the energy down to the earth. I started as a dreamworker and found herbs to be a quicker way to bring people to an Aha! moment. When an herb radically changes an aspect of our health we thought was fixed (as is so often the belief in Western medicine) we start to question what else in life is mutable. More about the relationship between herbalism and lucid living in my interview for Awaken, the conference, recording available here. This herb feels like a great one to affect this type of change.
As this is a highly invasive species, wildcrafting this herb (harvesting from safe spaces that have not been sprayed nor have problematic soil) to use for medicinal properties, food (find innumerable Japanese, Chinese, and Southern US recipes), or many crafts is a wonderful use of an overabundant resource. Please do not plant Gégēn in North America, it will overtake the land.
Invitation
Have you cooked with, gotten crafty, meditated with, or medicinally used Gégēn? Please share! I have used arrowroot for many recipes, but after reading up on this amazing invasive species I am excited to explore more. Basketweaving anyone?