Today we’d like to introduce you to Constance Lynn.
Hi Constance, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
Fifteen years ago, shortly after following an intuitive call to Boulder Utah, my partner Matt and I said “yes” to a 10-acre parcel of land that was offered to us. While half this land is covered in the native vegetation that defines a pinion/juniper/sagebrush ecosystem, the other half was barren from decades of cattle overgrazing. We decided to locate the garden in the old corral and started watering the sand to see what would come up. I was surprised when plants I was familiar with from the gardens and farms I’d worked on started emerging.
One day I asked the yarrow, comfrey, red clover, and other plants in my garden what they would like me to do with them. Their response was quite clear: “We would like you to make remedies with us and offer these to your community so that people will remember that plants are here to heal.”
This was the beginning of Night Raven Wild and Organic Herbs and my modest start at our local community market. Until this time I kept the herbal remedies I prepared for my personal use and for friends and family. While I had decades of experience turning to plants for healing, I never considered selling my remedies.
The first year I simply offered Desert Salve (a first aid balm) and Pain Relief Balm. Each year thereafter I expanded my offerings to include a wider array of healing salves, tincture, teas, and eventually face and body creams. At the beginning, I hand-wrote my labels and chopped my own beeswax and a sign that I was doing well was when my wrist and shoulder began to ache!
Early on I realized that I was having a conflict selling my herbal remedies as people are accustomed to using herbs, allopathically, the same way they would use a pharmaceutical–using this herb for that symptom. I felt a loyalty to the plants knowing that they require us to make lifestyle and dietary changes to create a foundation for their medicine to work. From this commitment to the plants, I started offering holistic health consultations.
As well establishing myself as an herbalist in my community, I was invited to teach a five-day herbal apprenticeship at the Boulder Outdoor Survival School in 2011. After 3 years of teaching Medicine At Our Feet at the school I transitioned to personally offering this as a 7-month apprenticeship that meets one weekend a month from April to October. I currently offer this apprenticeship annually.
I soon found that the plants were calling people in and deeper healing was occurring. Recognizing that the plants had opened a door to the soul realm, I felt a responsibility to support my students with another offering—The Inner Forest Medicine Journey. This is a Rite of Passage that spans nearly a year and includes a solo in the wilderness for four nights and days.
I never set out to start a business and to this day I still consider what I do as an offering. Inseparable from Nature, to nourish Self is to nourish the Earth and All Beings. Nourishing the Earth and All Beings nourishes Self. This reciprocal healing is at the heart of the ReWilding Project, the vision that over-arches all that I offer through Night Raven Holistic Health.
What sets you apart from others?
What sets me apart from others is that all my offerings are place-based and very personalized. I believe that healing is in relationship, and this begins with the relationship I have with plants and Nature and how I translate this to the individuals I work with, whether as clients in my consultations or apprentices in my groups.
I hand collect all the plants I use in my remedies from my garden, the desert, and mountain. I approach a plant as our relative, sit with them, listen to them, give them an offering of tobacco or cornmeal, and ask for permission before collecting. Unfortunately, the commercial practices used today in order to offer herbs for the masses betray the Spirit and the Beingness of the plant. In my eyes, this destroys the medicine and most of what is packaged as herbal remedies are void of true potency to effect healing. There is a very big difference between herbal medicine and products made with herbs.
My apprenticeships are in person and meet in my garden and out in the wildlands. My teachers have been the plants themselves and my intention is to teach others how to be in relationship with the plants and learn to listen to what they have to share with us. Overall, I teach people how to fall in love with the Earth and All Beings and this can really only happen through direct experience…and this is the source of healing that is soul deep.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
In the sense that I have been responding to and following a deeper soul calling, yes, the manifestation of what I have to offer has been mostly a smooth road. I would say the biggest challenge for me has been to translate what I know from the feeling and intuitive realms into language for my students. When the plants first opened to me in my late teen years, I didn’t know why I could meet a plant for the first time and know their name, and feel a sense in my body of the medicine they carried. Learning to translate this way of knowing and supporting individuals in discovering their own way has been something I’ve had to work at very intentionally.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I love Life…all of Life. I love this gift of Life…each and every tree, plant, bird, animal, insect…all the creatures of the earth, waters, air…the mountains, deserts, weather, waterfalls, rushing rivers, whispering creeks…This experience of Life is a great gift. My love of Life inspirits my care for my clients and students and the tending of my garden and land…it infuses the remedies I make; the classes I teach and the consultations I engage in. I am devoted to supporting a great awakening where each person remembers to remember their interconnection with all of Life.
Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
The most important lesson I have learned is to trust my heart and to stay true to myself. I live very simply, in relationship with Nature. I don’t have a cell phone, I’m not on social media and I don’t market myself. I’ve always believed that if I offer what I offer in integrity with my values then those who value what I share will find me through referrals and also through being interviewed for podcasts or publications. Thank you for your support, Voyage Utah!!!
Pricing:
- $300 2-part Holistic Health Consultation
- $70/hour Holistic Health Coaching and Mentoring (after initial consultation)
- $1050-$1400 Medicine At Our Feet Herbal Apprenticeship
- $70/hour Private Yoga Session
- $8-40 Night Raven Wild and Organic Herbs
Contact Info:
