Foraging for Joy - Connecting the Dots on Natures Bounty and Joy

Kari Stultz was my guest on April 14, 2019 and during our time together we talk about how returning to her roots through an intuitive nudge about foraging brings her joy. She also shares how she has to negotiate with her critical brain to follow her intuition recently when she took 2 years away from her role in the local school division. She also makes the connection how much the energy of others or her environment impact her intuition. Is energy intuition? I think in the context she is speaking about it, absolutely. I believe many people can learn about tools she has incorporates to support her as energy gives her her intuition. 

Kari “It’s always been that way. And for the longest time I had no idea that that was happening so I would be inundated with this information that I didn’t realize other people weren’t necessarily processing. Once you figure out that that is actually happening to you, it takes a little time to adjust but I think that everything has an energy signature so ya I’m getting an energy signature from people but I’m curious if I’m getting the same information from people as well. If that’s why I have noticed those pieces. I’m not sure. I think I need a little more time to let my critical brain wrap its mind around those things because well you know what I’m like. There’s my intuition piece and my critical brain and they often like fight it out. “

Kari “It really comes in as just a knowing. I just have information that I’m not sure how it got there and a lot of the times I even question whether I’ve made it up or if it’s actual information. Now through trial and error I found out a lot of the times it is very accurate. When it just happens I find myself I can be really logical and I find myself fighting with it. That doesn’t make sense. Why do you think you know that? Why is that happening? Why are you responding to that because of something you feel? I’m doing it less now though.”

Kari  “I think I deal a lot with energy and sometimes it gives me an insight into something whether you want to call that intuition. Some people I guess would. But I think for me it’s pretty energy based. “

Kari’s favourite book on her wall of books is A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Copy and paste this link to find it on Amazon 
https://amzn.to/33oCwKb
(As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases)

Here is the link to her foraging and herbal medicine courses through The Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine

https://chestnutherbs.com/

Plant that helps with PTSD and trauma – Ghost pipe even sitting with helps. 

Kari's Bio:
Kari Stultz is an Artist, Educator, Adventure-seeker and Nature-Lover but feels these are best summed up as a Learner. She is a Teacher by trade and has recently started a journey back to her roots. She also enjoys spending time creating, with her recent focus being on salves, tinctures and tonics. These medicines are created in her kitchen with plants from her garden and from her foraging adventures. Combining these loves with her intuition has been amazing. She lights up just talking about it.

Transcript

Heather : 0:02

Welcome to See'rs, be-ers, knowers, and doers, a podcast about intuition. Do you know what that is? Intuition to me is that inner sense for knowing that something is true and yet I have no proof, but there's so many definitions and there's so many ways it can come and we'll give you to bring together and share with you some amazing guests. You have some amazing life stories and also some insights into how intuition can come in. I'm looking to gather those crows in the trees. I hope you're one of them. I hope that this podcast inspires you to be more connected to your intuition and I hope that by doing that we make the world a better place. Thanks for coming on this journey with me. My guest today is an artist educator adventure seeker in nature lover, but most of all, she's a learner. She's a teacher by trade and has recently started a journey back to her roots. She also enjoys time creating with their most recent focus being on salves, tinctures and tonics. These medicines are created in our kitchen with plants from her garden and from her foraging adventures. Combining these loves with her intuition has been amazing. She lights up when she talks about it.

Speaker 3: 1:22

Hi everybody. Today our guest is Kari Stultz. Hi Heather. Thank you so much for coming on this ride. Well, I'm a little nervous, but we're g onna see how it goes. Okay, cool. So can you tell everybody about yourself? Well, I was born and raised here in Moncton. U m, I've lived here most of my life. I taught for the past 16 years, but two years ago I decided that I n eeded to take a little bit of a break. So I took a leave of absence and I'd been supplied teaching because, well, you still need to have an income, but I'm getting some side projects a nd t hat I was really excited about. I started taking a f oraging class and that just came out of nowhere. I shouldn't say nowhere. It started with, I would like to be spending more time in the woods and I would like to learn more about what we have around. So I for my birthday had purchased myself some guides but then have no idea how to read the guides. That was really enthusiastic. It was like Woohoo, I have guides. But then wasn't even sure how I was translating them and my birthday's in July so they just kind of sat with it and then by December it was you need to, you need to take a course. And the course I wanted was a medicine making course. Oh cool. Yeah, yeah. And I was really excited about it. So I went looking and trying to decide where to do that and how to do that is not a very linear concept. So I am looking everywhere and finally find this course that just keeps coming up. And the the person who does this course, she was just so genuine and she was just so friendly and welcoming that I decided that I would sign up for her medicine making course. And then I got in there and there was also a foraging course, which is really how everything had started. So I decided that I would do both courses, but I'm there with no money. So I have that moment where I'm like, this is not the best choice. Um, but I couldn't give up that opportunity. So last year I did the foraging course, it was an online course and this year I've been working on the medicine making course and the things I get to learn are really astounding to me actually. Speak to your soul. Like there's moments where it does, but when I was little, well I say little bit my whole life, everyone in my life, we've spent time in the woods. I have very vivid memories of getting May flower bouquets with my Grampy or going to collect tea berries or harvesting Fiddle Heads or going fishing. Like we spend a lot of time in the ones that we spend a lot of time, um, harvesting what was out there that we knew about. Okay, what was safety? What was safe to eat, what was interesting and kind of all linked back to my great grandmother, she knew a lot about this environment. So there was a lot of things that way. And, uh, it just seemed like, it just seemed like there was magic there that I hadn't seen for a long time. Oh, nice. So, it was accessing, how did that magic in that wonder that you have when you're little and walking through the woods? It comes back and get excited about finding that there's Hawthorn on a trail that we walked yesterday and to know how that can support people and how it supports the environment. I like that. I like it a lot. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. One, one of the things you were telling me that I find interesting is that intuitively people will live by the plants they need to support their health. And I thought, holy cow, lots of people need liver support with all the dandelions. And it's funny, I've only found out that that was an older theory and some people still believe it, but what I had noticed is that as I learned about the plants and what they were used for, so I'd be in people's yards and I'd be like, oh, they've got some self heal. Oh, they've got some euro growing. Oh, they've got dandy lions and they have this, and I'm going, well, wow. That kind of speaks to what that person requires. So then I kind of started paying attention to what do I know about the person I that lives here and what do I see in their space? And often I would see things that melded so perfectly with how that person needed to support it was really kind of amazing. Yeah. I imagine it would because then you'd be walking around thinking, Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah. But you know what? People don't like, hey, you need this. The plants are so patient. They just stand there waiting. We're here, we're here. Alright. Here smiling at you. Yeah. Supporting you. Even if you don't want to be supported because we have pollen or we have energy. Yeah. We're right here. Even people who say, you know, I feel this and I looked down and there's the plan that helps support that sometimes you've been just drawn to that space. Wow. That's what I find. I curious as to what other people find too, who've done this kind of work, but I have noticed. Yeah, yeah. Wow. And you are detailed, you will do the math and you also are somebody who picks up on the vibration of people, how they're doing emotionally and energetically and physically without even trying. It's like you look at a puzzle and the puzzle is already done. It's always been that way. Heather and I, I didn't know that for the longest time I had no idea that that was happening, so I would be inundated with this information that I didn't realize other people weren't necessarily processing. Once you figure out that that's actually happening to you, it takes a little bit of time to adjust, but I think that everything has an energy signature, so yeah, I'm getting information from people, but I'm curious as to whether I get the same information from plants as well, if that's why I've noticed those pieces. I'm not sure. I think I need a little more time to not make critical Braden rapids mind around those things because while you know, when I'm like, there's my intuition piece and then there's my critical brain, they often like fight it out. Well that's okay. I think we have that happening in a large part of the population. I Dunno. It's curious to me how you were basically like back to your root. It's curious to me that you've always been in the woods your whole life and yet kind of repeating the pattern of your grandmother, but in a more structured way between going back and learning more than just, Oh, there's the name of that plant. It strikes me that probably your gran was making medicine without knowing she was making medicine. My guess is probably, and her living room was chocker block full of African violet, which I've learned because are really finicky plants, but beautiful. And when my mom talks about her, my mom will say she couldn't cook at all, but she had agreed to shift gears like the podcast called See'rs, be-ers, knowers, and doers. But there's multiple ways to get intuition. It's not just those four things. What, how does yours come in? It really comes in as just a knowing. I just have information that I'm not sure how it got there. And a lot of the times I even questioned whether I've made it up or if it's actually information. Now, through trial and error, I found that a lot of the times it's very accurate. When it just happens, I find myself, I can be really logical and I find myself fighting with it. That doesn't make sense. Why do you think you know that? Why is that happening? Why are you responding to that? Because it's something you feel. I'm doing it less now though. Yeah, I doing it less but that took some pretty intense, not nice lessons to make me go, oh wait, I, I did know that. I did read that situation correctly, or I have often and knowing, but sometimes I also have dreams and I don't get those as often, but when I get them they're very clear and very specific about what's going on. Sometimes it's good, sometimes you just go, what the hell? When I dream it's never about the right people and I think that's by design. Well, if they're me, I don't get anything that clearly, but I do separate between when I'm getting information about a situation for me. And at other times I have people come to me in my dream. So there are two types of dreaming for me. There's one that's kind of, it's not as clear, there's more symbolism to it. It's often mine, it's me processing. And then there's another one where people will come to me in a dream like dead people or people I have very few times dreamed of people who were passed away. It's often people who are living wow, good. Either need some kind of healing or want to talk to me, but can't have that conversation. One person, it's because they physically don't speak. So they came to me to have this conversation. I was surprised to see them there. And then more surprised when they opened their mouth and started speaking to me. They had a conversation that they wanted to have with me. And um, it's really interesting because seeing this person after the dream, there's a change. They know. I know, I know. That sounds crazy. No, it's lovely. But it is, it is what it is. Like that is my life and that's how things play out for me. Yeah. That is lovely, I mean imagine the healing that could happen. I wonder if that happens to others. Kind of cool. Oh I think it does it happens. I think it would have been happening for a really long time. So now I have to kind of give the parameters of I need this many hours of solid sleep to myself and then if anyone needs anything, feel free to make it during either the beginning of my sleep cycle or the end of my sleep cycle. Just I don't want the whole evening to be doing work because I was waking up really tired. Yeah. But once I put those parameters on things that helped, that's probably something a lot of people need to hear or maybe process in terms of be you can have healthy boundaries with your energy. Yeah. No. And and different forms of intuition in a sense. Cause those would be, oh, so is that intuition or is that energy? Yeah. Anyways, whatever. It's yeah, people can figure that out for themselves. I think I deal a lot with energy. Yeah. And sometimes it gives me an insight into something, whether you want to call that intuition. Some people I guess would, but I think for me it's pretty energy based. Neat. Like has there been a situation where you were rewarded greatly for listening to your intuition, I am sure there is. I cannot think of one at this exact moment. You know, ask me at 3:00 AM tomorrow morning I'll have an answer for you. So, and I think of the joy you have when you get in the woods with a dog and get to do kind of innately what you've been drawn to do. It's joy. And I guess maybe that's part of my issue is that I try to see things as an adventure and I tried to take joy from all things. So have I been rewarded? Yes. Can I give you a specific example? No, no. I think I'm rewarded a lot by the people that I have around me, by the situation that I currently get to live in. The fact that I could take some time off of work and was able to supply teach for two years. Like that in and of itself has its own kind of reward. Don't get me wrong, it was hard fought. It was logical brain fighting, intuition. Intuition saying you need to back up for a little bit logical brain saying, but you have a good job and a good salary and a good this and a good that and it. Yes, I do, but now I need this for awhile. So I guess the past few years have been a great experience, but it was a hard fought fight with my intuition and sometimes a hard fought fight with people who love me. What are you doing?! I'm just, I'm going to go to work. Cause that I think there's a balance at all times, right? Like you get the payoff, but somebody's going put it in that work in the beginning. Right. I remember you sharing a few stories of people in the hall going, but your full time teacher, what do you doing? Substituting and then the pennies were dropping like, oh you don't have report cards teacher. Oh, you don't have administration. Staff is, Oh, oh wait, how do I do that? I don't know if I could do that. And many years ago there is uh, an amazing, crazy intelligent woman that I've had the opportunity to work with who was doing a deferred. So and when you teach, sometimes you can take money off of your salary during the time that you're working so that it covers a salary for when you're not working. Okay. So you can take like six months off if you put in so much time. And she was doing that in really quick succession. She would, it's all the two over three. So over two years she'd get six months off in the third year, which is a really big cut when you're looking at the end of the day paycheck. Yeah. And I remember looking at her and say, I couldn't afford that. And very sweetly gently, calmly looked at me and said, well, you choose not to afford that. And at the time I thought, you don't know me, you don't know me, but I respect this woman so much that I'm like, okay. So I took it. And then on this side of things, I have people saying, well, I can't afford that. I can't afford to take time off. I can't. And I think to myself, it's, you choosing not to do that. So it's echoed back. I hear her. Cool. Yeah. Well, and I mean I've had the same experience when I quit the corporate and we came to this, the salary, you know, I retired. So I was taking money from RSPs and use that money to go back to school. And My shopaholic spent a lot of money and time and retail and got happy with grocery shopping. So the actual amount that I spent in time and money out there in retail and drops significantly because I actually was happier. I found that, but it wasn't that easy of a process for me. It was moments where I'm like, I'm just gonna find something else to do cause I'm not gonna run out and being mass consumer of something because I'm looking for something to do. So for me, it took a little bit of recognizing that about myself first. And once I recognize that it was able to like, like I don't want to do that. So like, let's back up here and let's do something else. I would say finding something in the woods that you can introduce to somebody that you love as a food or a medicine. This is good to high for sure. By the look on your face its a better high. It is a better high, it is. I just felt that was too cheesy to say and I've been one of those people who've been in the woods with you and you light up as soon as you do that connection of teaching, which I find interesting because that's the career choice you made. Yup. But as soon as you go into, let me share this information, I've got love above this. You're just like glittery. Yeah, I love it. Well, sometimes I can share with you something and for you in particular, I know that if I share it with you, it might not be yours, but you're gonna run into the person who needed to know them. Right. And that's what I love. I love to is you have so many people that you're in contact with that are looking for certain things. You were describing a plant that was all the PTSD and trauma before this podcast, and I immediately went to, oh, we just as a city went through trauma five years ago, and yet there's these cool plants that are just sitting here waiting energetically even to support us with my head does. But yeah, absolutely. It's weird. Then we turn around as a society and stomp on or picked or do something damaging to it. What we don't realize with the plan is that when we, I'm not saying that you should look at plant medicine specifically and completely turn your back on Western medicine. There's a time and there's a place, but even just walking in the woods more as a society would help us like, oh, absolutely. But I think that what happens in that regard is that people don't realize it took you time to develop whatever it is you're concerned about. So if you're looking at something natural like a plant, it's going to take time to work. It's not the fast route. Plants don't work as magic bullets. You know you have an infection and you need some kind of anti something and it's gotta happen very quick. Then you have got to go to your tongue. Now the question is how did it get to that state in you that you didn't see it before? You have that disconnection that you didn't see that you were either pushing yourself too much or something was not working well. Lowering the immune system, we're so disconnected that we're not seeing when things start to go wrong. If we could see where they start to happen. I think that plant medicine is an incredibly powerful ally. Prevention. It will work in most of our medications are based on plants. Yeah, I think we have it with, it will work for anything. It's just that do we have enough time to let the plant work? Sometimes we let it go so long we don't have enough time to let the plant work. And so the question is, how do we let it go so long? And I think it's because we're disconnected in a big, big way. True enough. Okay, so now I'm going to go into process that you put on my radar. Okay. After the actor's studio questions, so woods or beach? Can't pick that, Heather. That is not even a choice to be made by world. There is specific reasons you go to one specific to the other, but you can't make that choice. Lake or ocean? Ocean dog or cat? Nope. Can't do that one either. Staycation or travel? Yeah. Both of those. I think they both have their, I'm not really good at that. I'm not really good at choosing. Can you tell him indecisive, sweet or salty? Salty, salty. Sour or savory? Savory. Winter or summer? Well, snow shoeing and swimming and whenever, when I'm do both of those in. I want to snow snowshoe and swim. Music or silence? Silence. Day or night? Night. Favorite book? Well for those of you who haven't been in my house, I have a wall of books. So favorite book is a really tough question. I'm going to say a fine balance by row hitting history. Favorites. Apple blossoms or may flowers. Time you were most brave. Time I was most brave, probably dealing with cancer. Thank you. Thank you. That was fun, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 22:54

Thank you so much for giving us your time today. We truly appreciate our guests for sharing their stories and insights about how intuition has impacted their lives, and I'm so grateful for Peter Trainer for his time and giving me this original music. It's now your turn. It's your turn to listen and act on your own intuition and help make the world a better place. Until next time, keep seeing being, knowing, and doing. If you l ike this podcast, please share it. If you want to find others like it who did www.healingvitality.ca or wherever you would find your podcasts, we would love to have you join us on this journey.

Speaker 1: 23:46

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