Living Glossary  

These are words or phrases that you may find in the website or in Frank's dissertation that are not common in the United States or may not be found in the present day dictionaries. These words help form a new language, an evolving language, that encompasses and represents who we are becoming as a conscious-based global culture. Many of these words are specific to healing systems of the world.

active constituents:  This is a belief that a plant’s constituents can be separated and isolated and tested so as to determine which ones are active in treatment of disease.  This is one of the main driving forces behind the current herbal movement in the economic market.   This view can be in conflict with a belief around seeing the whole plant as the agent of healing.

ama:  Within Ayurveda this term denotes the toxins within the body which arise from impurities in air, water, food.

analogs:  These are local plants that can be substituted medicinally for well known plant medicines within the same genus.

Bioneers:  This is a conference held each autumn in Northern California presenting the alternative research of the previous year around a wide range of new age topics.

botanical treatises:  These are scientific studies done in depth in certain locations or ecosystems or on populations of plants.  Though often encoded in the language of Botany, they are filled with lots of detailed observations of that which is studied.

codex alimentus: The World Health Organizations developed Codex to ensure international food standardization and labeling including supplements and vitamins.  The has been adopted by the EU and at least four times it has been brought before the US Congress to consider adopting those standards.  The concern with this is determining who has the right to decide whether vitamins might become prescription items instead of over the counter supplements, whether the price of vitamin C would become $140 because of this, and whether multinational corporations with hidden agenda should regulate the supplement industry and attempt to standardize and regulate items that have traditionally been regarded as foods, herbs, or supplements, not drugs or pharmaceuticals. There is lots more to it.  Look into it.

counterfeit wholes:  This is an term made popular by Henri Bortoft in which one can notice a lack of presence in something that seems perhaps externally complete but is missing qualities that compromise its authenticity.

Earth jurisprudence:  This view point was first introduced by Thomas Berry and is a philosophy of law and human governance that is based on the idea that humans are only one part of a wider community of beings and that the welfare of each member of that community is dependent on the welfare of the Earth as a whole.

feng shui:  This is a Japanese phrase that encourages us to look at the context and setting  in that creates an overall impression of a situation.  This can be seen and discussed by considering the qualities that make up something including but not limited to color, texture, size…to create an overall sense of balance and health.

Flora:  This is a botanical book of the plants that have been found within a region with a key to provide a means of identifying specimens.

food feet:  This is a term to bring awareness that the amount of energy to bring food to our door from afar is costly (in the U.S. for every calorie of food it takes 10 calories to produce and transport it).  In a post-petroleum era this understanding will be crucial to our having food available.  Introduced by Rob Hopkins of TC.

food miles:  This is a much popularized among alternative cultures to get people to be aware of how far their food is coming from.  Though important it is more important to look at Food Feet as explained above.

fractal:  This is a repeating pattern found in nature most clearly illustrated by the roots of a tree or the tributaries of a river but also the veins in the human body.

gaia:   Gaia is both the Greek mythical name of the first goddess to come from the original god Chaos, and the name given by Dr. James Lovelock to initially a hypothesis and later a theory about how the earth is self-adjusting to maintain an environment favorable to life.  One of Lovelock’s primary students is Stephan Harding, a core professor at Schumacher.

gaia’d:  This is a term I first heard from Stephan Harding which encompasses the feeling of the gestalt that takes place as people realize that Gaia is alive and that we are part of Gaia.

gaian awareness/consciousness:  This is the state in which a human is aware of our interconnectedness with Gaia; indeed that we were created by and have evolved with Gaia.

goethean science:  This is a the missing perspective from western science that embraces the intuitive and feeling aspects of phenomena.  It is named after the famous German genius, Wolfgang von Goethe, whose studies of nature has created techniques for us to subjectively explore nature.

green path:  This is a term used to describe a way of living life that works in harmony with nature’s web of life.

grok:  This is a term created by Robert Heinlein in Stranger in a Strange Land to describe when you embody an understanding of something.

 holistic science:  This science honors the logic and rationality of western science but also embraces the intuition and feelings of phenomena and seeks to understand them in their complexity and inter-relatedness.  

 indigeneity:  This is the belief that indigenousness is directly related to a sense of place and how one lives his/her life.

kindom: :  Since the 1960’s the number of kingdoms of organisms has grown from two to over thirty with a new level over that called Domains.  Well, why not free up the lexicon some more and get ride of the royalty allusions and acknowledge our kinship to everything.  This term embraces that notion.

Lammas:  This is the halfway point between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox.  It is the time of the first harvests and a time to assess what the autumn harvests will be like.

magico-medico:  This is a term used to describe the combination of ritual and spiritual contexts found in many healing modalities.

meridians:  Within Chinese Medicine these are the energy lines that run throughout the body carrying chi to the different organs.  In acupuncture and acupressure, it is these channels that are being influenced.

morphic fields:  These are fields which provide the blueprints from which the genes are instructed to bring forth matter.  Rupert Sheldrake is a scientist studying this and proposing hypotheses  of how these fields can be explained.

nature cure:  This fascinating healing modality came into being through Gandhi’s efforts to improve the health of Indians.  He combined the healing/rejuvenative branch of Ayurveda with the natural methods of healing being experimented with in the US and Europe at the turn of the 20th Century.

palliative:  Within the healing modality of Ayurveda there is the cleansing path of pancha karma.  Prior to the actions of pancha karma comes a phase of preparing the body called the palliative.  This may include medicated oil massages, certain herbal teas and a restricted diet as well as other techniques aimed at preparing the body to be cleansed.

pancha karma:  These are traditionally the five actions done to cleanse the body within Ayurveda.  There is actually a longer list than five.  This is done after the body is prepared with palliatives and is followed by rejuvenatives to rebuild weakened systems.

pan-psychism:  This philosophy puts forth that everything is sentient and that there are either many separate minds, or one single mind that unites everything that is.

permaculture:  This is the philosophy developed in the 1970’s in Australia which integrates the historical innovations around the planet in holistic manner to create an sustainable culture.  It is now being practiced worldwide by over 100,000 people who have been certified.

phenomenology:  This is the study of the world in which one acknowledges the subjectivity of everything perceivable and approaches understanding through immersion and interchange between the observer and the observed.

phytotherapy:  Broadly, this term refers to the use of plants for medicine.  There are many approaches one can take within this definition from looking for active constituents to meeting the whole plant as an ally.   It is a term popular in Europe.

planetary culture rising:  This is an awareness spreading worldwide that recognizes humans as connected to each other around the planet as well as part of a much larger network of all living beings.  The internet can be seen as a technological expression of this growing awareness.

post-Newtonian physics: A collective term which encompasses the physics that has developed since Einstein began to challenge Newton’s connotation that the universe is mechanical.  Some to the theories in this include the Relativity theories, Chaos theory, Complexity theory, etc..

prakuti:  In Ayurveda this is a terms that describes what one’s birth constitution is based on the tri-doshic model.  This is one’s natural state

procussing:  This is the procedure of potentizing a homeopathic mother tincture through shaking it on a daily basis.

potentized:  The energy that comes into something through an action as in this case, the making of homeopathic medicine.

red road:  A Native American term which indicates that one is leading a life of dignity and moral righteousness.

rejuvenative:  Within Ayurveda the processing of cleansing the body is called pancha karma.  Following this cleansing is a phase called rejuvenation in which you take tonic herbs and practice yoga to rebuild your systems.

sangoma:  In southern Africa this is one of the terms used to describe healers.  There are hundreds of thousands of sangomas.  Each family has one.  They are a kind of shaman who connects to the spirit realm to assist in Healing.

Schumacher College:  This is a college in Devon, England established in 1992 by Satish Kumar in honor of the famous economist, E.F. Schumacher.  It offers  short courses throughout the year and a masters program in Holistic Science in which I participated.

set/setting:  This is the realization that the primary determiners of how someone will react in a particular situation rests with their mindset and the setting in which the situation is occurring.

Siddha:  Though most people think of Ayurveda as the traditional medicine of India, it actually has come from earlier traditions including Siddha which originated in pre-history in Tamil Nadu.  It has five qualities it focuses on rather than three.  It also relies on alchemical preparations as its medicines.

shamanic:  The word shaman (originally from Siberia) has been universalized to mean healers who interact with the spiritual realm to assist in the curing of people.

spring herbalists:  These are the hippies defined by Anthropologist Morgan Brent as those who got gaia’d and realized the importance of knowing plants as whole beings.  They spurred on the health food movement and are the people who established the first herbal schools and made available the herbal knowledge that is now prevalent throughout the western world.

sylvaculture:  This is the practice of using trees in obtaining our needs—it is broadly defined so can mean monoculture tree farms though I prefer the vision presented in agroforestry of a more integrated relationship with forests.

transition culture:  This is a movement formed in Ireland by Rob Hopkins, now centered in Totnes, England.  In the last several years it has gone worldwide with over a thousand communities awakening to the realities of peak oil and global warming and the paradigm shift needed to adapt to that.

tri-doshic:  This is at the core of Ayurveda and defines that all manifestations in the universe are made of three forces: Vata, Pitta, and Kapha, that are combined in varying amounts to express various qualities.  In this system, though everything contains all three qualities, there are 10 types created by the different combinations.  This includes more than the body types of humans, but can be seen throughout the universe including time of day, time of year, elements of Nature,  and everything else.

whole plant:  This is a holistic philosophy  in which the medicinal impacts of a plant are greater than the healing of isolated “active constituents”.  It recognizes that there are meta-levels, energetic qualities and a vital living spirit present in a plant that can be lost through isolating parts.