The Telepathy Tapes - S2e6 Plant Intelligence And Ancestral Wisdom

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

What if plants aren’t silent at all but communicating in ways we’ve simply forgotten how to hear? In this episode, we meet Nina, a non-speaking teen who says she’s been telepathically connected to plants since birth. She offers herbal remedies no one taught her, identifies health issues her family hasn’t shared, and describes plant communication as naturally as breathing. Her accuracy forces everyone around her to rethink what plants know and how they share it.We also hear from indigenous elders, herbalists and experts who say this isn’t new. Mycologist Paul Stamets explains how fungi and trees send messages through the “wood wide web.” Herbalist David Winston shares moments when plants spoke directly to him and indigenous teachers from the Tsimshian, Lakota, and Kuntanawa nations describe plants as relatives, healers, and living intelligences who pass on wisdom across generations.Across all these stories, a simple idea takes root: the natural world may be far more aware, more connected, and more communicative than we’ve been taught. This episode asks us to slow down, pay attention, and consider that the plants around us might have been speaking this whole time.-Join The Telepathy Tapes Backstage Pass to get ad-free episodes, never-before-heard interviews, behind-the-scenes documentary footage, and access to our private Discord community.This is your invitation to come closer. To help shape what’s next. To be more than a listener… to be a co-creator of this paradigm shift. So if you’ve felt moved, if you’ve felt seen, if you’ve felt the call—subscribe today and join us: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thetelepathytapes.supercast.com.Thank you to our Sponsors!Visit CBDistillery.com and use promo code TAPES for 25% off your order.Visit Quince.com/tapes for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Visit happymammoth.com and use code TAPES to get 15% off your entire first order.Save 20% Off Honeylove by going to honeylove.com/TAPES! #honeylovepod.Get 40% off your entire order at Lolablankets.com by using code TAPES at checkout. Experience the world’s #1 blanket with Lola Blankets.Visit Progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance.Visit Graza.co/TAPES and use TAPES to get 10% off your order.Use code TAPES at jonesroadbeauty.com to get a Free Cool Gloss with your first purchase! #JonesRoadBeauty #adVisit Tonetoday.com and use my code TAPES to get 20% off your first order.Visit FactorMeals.com/TAPES50OFF and use code TAPES50OFF to get 50% off your first box, plus Free Breakfast for 1 Year.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode shares personal stories and practices around herbal remedies. This show is not medical advice and does not replace care from a qualified physician. Do not start or stop any treatment or supplements because of something you hear on the show. If you have a medical condition, mental illness, or an emergency, call your doctor or your local emergency services. Hi, everyone. This is Kai Dickens, and you're listening to the telepathy tapes podcast. In season one, non-speakers showed us that telepathy is possible, shattering our assumptions about the world itself.

This season, we're turning to others who, also been dismissed, doubted, or mocked for the ways they claim to know, see, heal, or create. What if only by listening to those who've been ignored, we could unlock the deepest mysteries of who we are, where we come from, and where we're going. This is the telepathy tapes, and we're opening up the next channel. Bobby's USDA Organic, European-inspired infant formulas were created by moms who couldn't find a formula that met their standards, so they decided to make it themselves. And thank goodness they did, because when my son was born, he was transferred to the neonatal

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We'll hear from psychologist Paul Stammats, herbal experts, indigenous elders from the Lakota Nation, the Simshan Nation, and the Kunta Nawa Nation. And possibly, most consequently, we'll meet a non-speaker named Nina, who says she effortlessly communicates with plants via telepathy. I'm Natalia. My youngest sister is Nina, and she is a non-speaker who communicates through spelling and is telepathic.

This is Natalia Meehan. We got connected immediately after the first. first season of the telepathy tapes came out last year. My family knew about the telepathy because everyone was experiencing it inside of our home with Nina, but I did not feel like it was something I could talk about. I binge the telepathy tapes in two days, and now I feel like I'm able to finally talk about all of these things with no judgment and total openness and realize that we have not been alone. Nina is 19 years old and lives with her family in Connecticut. When I hop done a lot of Zoom with Natalia, I met her sister Nina for the first time, and I asked her what she, as a non-speaker,

thought about the telepathy tapes, and she spelled that it wasn't that impressive to her because it was old news. And here's a clip from our original Zoom call. She ended up saying, I'm so not impressed. This is so normal for me, but I'm glad that this is getting out into the world. I love that. I just think the best response from a non-speaker ever is that it's old news. I mean, I love that. Of course, telepathy feels like old news to those who've been utilizing it. And as we'll explore in this episode, a lot of the abilities and connections our society has dismissed as being impossible or magical would be considered old news or even no news at all to our ancestors and many of the indigenous populations

who've kept their traditions intact for millennia. And perhaps there's no older or more profound tradition than our relationship with plants and the ways that we've communed with them. Nina, for the majority of her life, had really no effective way to communicate. The challenge wasn't Nina's intelligence. It was motor planning. Nina has apraxia, a mind-body disconnect that makes motor planning difficult. And as we explored in season one, speaking relies on fine motor coordination. And that's nearly impossible for those with apraxia. But pointing to letters on a letterboard or a keyboard uses gross motor movement.

And with time, guidance, and practice with a professional coach, many non-speakers can learn to spell their thoughts. It can take years for the motor pathways to form, but when they do, a non-speaker can be unlocked, and they can finally communicate. When Nina was 17, it all clicked for her, and she began communicating via spelling on a letterboard. When she started to spell, all of our lives changed completely. It was really like getting to know her for the first time. Simple things like knowing her favorite color or what she wanted for dinner that night was huge for us. But then the deeper layers of how intelligent she is and the things she would bring up on her own about, her interests were extremely surprising and shocking because she had no formal education when it came to any of these things,

whether it was with different languages, with math, or with science and biology and plants. Nina has two older sisters, Paloma and Natalia, and Natalia has become one of Nina's chief communication partners. And so once she was openly spelling, one of the first things she said was, I'm telepathic. And I remember my family and I were like, what does that even mean? She definitely made it a point to make it known that she was telepathic. I mean, she brought it up all the time stating it, but then also showed us in different ways where she would know where people were throughout the day, conversations they had, things that happened in the past,

things that even happened and turned out to transpire into the future. It kind of scared us initially. I think we were all really surprised and taken it back. And it wasn't like any of us even knew about telepathy before. And one of the things that Nina would communicate to her family most about was her relationship with plants. Nina would share things about plants spontaneously and really bring it up on her own and share about their medicinal properties on a physical level, but also in a spiritual sense.

And she knew things about plants that nobody. knew. It surprised me right away because she would write about a plant. She would talk about its medicinal properties, how it's traditionally used, why, where it's from. And I wouldn't know anything about it. I would have to look it up online or something or in a book. And once I was able to verify that, I was like, oh my gosh, something is going on here. Natalia and the family made sure I understood that they didn't know about the plant information that Nina was discussing, because as we explored in season one, some non-speakers claim that they can hear thoughts or read minds.

So if Nina's family didn't know any of this plant or herb knowledge, and Nina, because of apraxia, couldn't control her body well enough to type or search for information on her own, then where was all of this information coming from? How did she have such accurate information about plants and herbal remedies? Everything she's saying is totally accurate. And it became super interesting to me because it was obviously something that was real, happening. When I asked her, Nina, how did you know that? How did you know these things?

She would tell me, the plant told me, I speak with the plants. I commune with the plants. She talked about being able to receive information from plants, regardless of distance, regardless of time and space. I mean, most of the plants that she talks about are plants that she's never even physically met. One of the things that completely changed the family's worldview was this. Nina wasn't just talking about plants. She was offering loved ones and acquaintances, extremely specific herbal remedies that turned out to be right. They weren't just vague insights, but precise plant and herbal medicines and uses that nobody had taught her. She would want to tell people what to take, like different plants, and she would say that she can connect with the

energy of plants and of the earth. And here's Nina's mom Raquel, who has witnessed this time and again. It was just like, wouldn't you actually know? And how do you know it? She's like, the plants commune with me. I can read the plants. That's how. And I don't know what that means, but I just know that she would go right into so-and-so needs passion flower because they have da-da-da-da-da-da. And then we would look it up and then sure enough, there it was. It was like that. She could see what was going on with a person and know their issues with their health before they ever said anything. And it was always a surprise. and a shock for me. And so after Nina identifies maybe an ailment or medical condition for someone, does she always offer like a medicinal suggestion? She does always offer some suggestions and they're always so fascinating to me because they're very specific.

And the story gets even more personal than this for Natalia. Part of the story with me coming back home and working with Nina was because I became really sick. And I was living in New Orleans and I had to come home. And no one really knew what was going on with my health. I mean, I was in and out of the hospital constantly. And there was a lot of scary, unanswered questions about what was going on. But even though the doctors couldn't figure out what was occurring in her body, Nina seemed to. Nina began suggesting specific herbal remedies as a way to address the things that not even Natalia's doctors had identified yet. She recommended me this plant initially called Estragalus, which I was not familiar with.

And she told me that I needed to take it every day, multiple times a day, and that it was going to help me slowly build back up my immune system and become more resilient. And she was like, this is going to be really nourishing to you and helpful to you. So I didn't know if that was how it works or if it was. going to be helpful. And I ended up looking into it. And Estraglis is a herb in traditional Chinese medicine that's used exactly for that purpose. And I ended up taking it and using it and it had profound benefits for me and my health. And she knew things that I didn't know that turned out to be true later on once I was able to actually figure out what the diagnosis was. And Natalia,

isn't the only family member who's been touched by Nina's spontaneous suggestions. One day we were together and she started telling us what we need to take for our health according to the issues that we were having. This is Karidad, Nina and Natalia's grandmother, or Abuela, and Raquel's mother. And she was correct in everyone. She said, Abuela, you have to take Kingo Villova for circulation. And she told my husband to take a gins. to our friends, all of the organ in his body.

How she knew our health situation, all of us, and how she recommend to each one of us what to take. Incredible. My uncle was visiting. He hadn't seen Nina in a really long time, not since she was able to spell. And it was a great experience to be together and to see him. And I remember she was really excited.

to see him and when we were all together, she spelled, I'm so happy to see you, so much has happened, and I have my new voice now. And after that, she became dysregulated and had tears in her eyes. And I asked her, what's going on, Nina? And she said, he is not doing well. He's at risk for a heart attack and he has high blood pressure and he needs help right away. And I remember just not knowing what to do in that moment because I didn't want to make him afraid. None of us knew anything that was going on with his health. He hadn't shared anything with us. No one in my family. So I just told him exactly what Nina said. And I asked him, does this resonate with you at all? Or is this something that is happening? This is what Nina just shared. And he turned white as a ghost and was like, I just went to

the doctors a few days ago. And they told me the exact same thing. And it's been nerve-wracking for me because I'm dealing with these health challenges. My uncle's health challenges that no one else in our family knew about at the time, and she kind of unearthed that. And from there, she gave him some recommendations with herbs. And she was like, you need to take Hawthorne Berry and drink beet juice and do this type of exercise. And she came up with a protocol for him and was like, it's going to be okay. And from there, he implemented a lot of the things that Nina suggested and, you know, suggested. And was really working on it. Months later, he went back to the doctor,

and they were like, oh my goodness, you're looking so much better. Wow, like what's going on? I wanted to understand how Nina could pick up on someone's medical issues without knowing their medical history or looking at x-rays or blood panels. So I wrote Nina a series of questions that she spent time answering, and here's Nina's answer in the digital voice that she chose to represent herself in this episode. I can often see people's atheric fields, which means I can see where there may be blockages or disruptions.

Everything has atheric fields, including plants, so I can see where there is a vibratory match. I looked this up, and an atheric field is often referred to by energy healers as the life force that surrounds the physical body. And we're actually going to do an incredible episode on energy healing later this season, which will underscore some of the late-breaking research that really proves energy healing works. So to understand what Nina's doing, it helped me to understand her process as two distinct steps. So first she starts by reading the etheric field, or that energetic layer, closest to the body, and then identifies areas that feel blocked or disrupted. And then she tunes into plants for guidance

and not poetic generalities about herbs, but specific and targeted insight. And to Nina, this communication sounds like it's as natural as listening. Here she is again. Their communication feels like gentle sounds, images, and emotions wrapped into a hazy plume of smoke. And then through the smoke, I know exactly where the fire came from who created it.

What kind of fuel and starter it's made out of and the stories or teaching shared around it. Telepathy is not complicated in fact. It's our most natural form of information exchange. The exchange is effortless, like breathing. You can focus on it intentionally, but just as you automatically and naturally exchange oxygen for carbon dioxide, you are always breathing.

Telepathy is more subtle and powerfully precise than the messy language of words. Wow. And for Nina, this connection with plants didn't suddenly appear or evolve as she got older. She says she's always been connected to them. I've been communing with plant spirits since I was in my mom's womb. I could always feel their frequency and nourishment. Humans wouldn't exist without plant support. We rely on the oxygen they give us.

They are original medicine, original food. They work on the energetic and physical bodies that span from microbial measures to the macrobials of our planet. They regulate Earth's body. All beings are telepathic, especially plants. Plants tell me information and are my family. Plants are perceptive healers. They are my guides, teachers, allies, and friends. To commune we spend time in sacred space where we speak the same language.

What strikes me most is this isn't just information exchange. It feels like a relationship, and like any good relationship, it begins with truly seeing, with recognizing another being for who they are and what they carry. And here's Nina again. I can't fully capture and tell you with words how loving and nurturing plants are. They give and give. They want to help us, to heal us, to guide and need. nourish us. They see us for who we really are and accept us exactly where we're at.

Nina's experience is undeniable to the people around her. She knows things that she should not be able to know. She offers remedies that no one taught her and they work. But that raised other questions for me. Like, is she truly communicating with plants or is she tapping into a larger informational field? Or are plants themselves broadcasting what they know? Kind of like the magnetic field is always there. You just need the right instrument like a compass to tune into it. But before exploring any of this, I feel like we first have to ask a more fundamental question. Do plants communicate at all? And if they do, does that communication stay within their own kind,

or can it move across species? To answer this, we turn to someone who has spent his life listening to the forest. I'm in communication with fungi every day. And you are, too. You're just not aware of it. This is famed mycologist Paul Stammitts, featured in the Netflix film Fantastic Fungi,

or as he would say, fungi, and author of the best-selling book Mycelium Running. I'm a scientist who studies fungi, and I've been a mycologist for, well, ever since I was 14. Paul is an expert on the Microrizal Network, the vast underground web, where fungi and mushrooms connect trees and plants. Think of it as the forest's internet, often called the Woodwide Web, a living operating communication and resource sharing system. And through it, trees send nutrients, exchange information, warn of danger, take care of their kin and support each other. Let's first accept a basic premise. Does mushroom mycelium, for instance, or nature have consciousness and does it have language?

Now, we have to accept the fact that we're articulating these concepts within the brain that's evolved that we receive from nature. And so the constructs of our language and our capability of cognition is admittedly a limitation. So by framing the question in that sense, we have an extremely narrow field of view and understand. If language shapes what we recognize as conscious and real, then this next discovery widens reality. Scientists are literally recording language patterns coming from mycelium networks, the networks of fungi and mushrooms under the forest floor. Just in the past year, they decoded 50 words and word packets that mushroom mycelium is using. So we're starting to decode the language from another kingdom. and they're actually using word packets through electrodes that were placed across the mycelial networks.

They could see repeated word packets. And the words were a little bit more sophisticated than the words I'm using right now. That was on basically the first attempt that this was discovered, was published in a renowned journal. There's probably thousands of words. And moreover, when they start talking, what are the responses from the other organisms? What words are they using? So we have to keep this in context.

The level of complexity here is so exciting because we're entering into a realm of interspecies communication. And just because they don't have vocal cords, just because they don't have a body like us, doesn't mean that language communication systems have not been developed. Ever hit that point in the day when you're so drained, even finding the remote feels like a workout? That's where CBD from CB to Ciliary steps in and says, hey, I got you. and it's not just about helping you get better sleep to stay engaged and alert. CB Distillery has solutions that work with your body to help with stress, pain after exercise, even mood and focus. And it's all made with the highest quality, clean ingredients.

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So head to graza.com and use tapes to get 10% off and get cooking on your next chef-quality meal. So what if Nina's tapping into something? We simply don't yet know how to measure, the same way tree communication sat in the shadows for decades before science finally recognized it. Suzanne Simard's work actually kind of pierced the envelope and brought us to a new level of understanding that deciduous and conifer trees can actually exchange nutrients.

Dr. Suzanne Simard is a forest ecologist whose research changed how the world understands tree communication. Her groundbreaking book, Finding the Mother Tree, is incredible. And here's Dr. Seymard in 2012. So we set about one of her experiments. So we set about an experiment, and we grew mother trees with kin and stranger seedlings. And it turns out they do recognize their kin.

Mother trees colonize their kin with bigger mycorrhizal networks. They send them more carbon below ground. They even reduce their own root competition to make elbow room for their kids. When mother trees are injured or dying, they also send messages wisdom onto the next generation. of seedlings. So we've used isotope tracing to trace carbon moving from an injured mother tree down her trunk into the mycorrhizal network and into her neighboring seedlings. Not only carbon, but also defense signals. And these two compounds have increased the resistance of those

seedlings to future stresses. So trees talk. Trees talk, a groundbreaking discovery that has now become foundational science. It's like a symphony of connections and messaging and delivery and delivery of nutrients all at the same time. This is Teresa Ryan from the University of British Columbia's Faculty of Forestry, whose work bridges indigenous knowledge and forest science in the Mother Tree Project. She's a member of the Shimsian Nation, Native peoples who are indigenous to the Pacific Northwest in British Columbia. My Simsyan name is Simaetsk. I did my second postdoc with Suzanne Simart.

She had read my dissertation, and she was amazed by our indigenous. views of connections to place, how our indigenous social institutions were connected to our landscapes. The Shimshan social systems mirror the living networks of the forest. There is competition in the plants in the forest. From an ecologist's perspective, we understand that competition, but there's cooperation as well. Cedar and maple have a unique relationships. They take turns sending carbon to the other when they need it most. Douglas fir and Birch. The birch, the birch, actually have antibiotic properties with Douglas fir.

Birch also provides shade for Douglas fir when they are seedling. So it is a relationship that's on a continuum throughout their life cycle histories. And if something happens to a mother tree that is a threat, then the mother tree, it's been shown that the carbon gets offloaded to its younger generation. fairly rapidly. So it's amazing to see this reciprocal exchange with these species that are interconnected in the forest. A few decades ago, the notion that trees communicate was dismissed as fantasy. Today is peer-reviewed science. And if forests exchange information through underground networks between species, sending warnings and nutrients, is it so far-fetched to think that humans might connect with the plant world too?

And if Nina can seemingly do it, what about those who work with plants every day? To explore this, we turn to herbalist David Winston. He's a renowned clinical herbalist, ethno botanist, and author with over 50 years of experience in herbal medicine. He's the founder and director of the herbal therapeutics research library and co-founder of the American herbalist guild. So he felt like a great candidate to weigh in on whether or not he thought it was possible for plants to communicate with people. My first experience with plants that I can remember is I'm maybe four or five years old. I'm in the backyard and I'm picking this plant, just one type of plant. I'm picking the leaves and putting some water in a plastic bucket and I'm to have a rock and I'm mashing them up.

And I'm probably covered with this stuff. My mother comes out and she looks at it and she goes, what are you doing? And I'm saying, I'm making medicine. This is good for when you get a boo-boo, you know, when you get a cut or whatever. And my mother just shakes her head and wanders away. at the time, I didn't know the name of that plant, but I do now. And it's plantain. And plantain, of course, is a great vulnerability. It's a great wound plant. It's anti-inflammatory and it's antibacterial. And it is used to treat a wide range of topical inflammation, cut, scratches, bee stings, ant stings, etc. And if you said to me, how did I know that? It's because the plant told me I could do that. David went on to enjoy a five-decade-and-counting career in herbology and ethnobotany. And incredibly, he continues to receive messages from plants on how he can harvest them and use them for medicinal purposes.

I had a patient who has glomerular nephritis, which is a chronic autoimmune disease of the kidneys. And at this point, when she came to see me, she had 18% EGFR, that's the estimated glomerular filtration rate. And I had put her on a Chinese formula, which is the Ramania. a six formula. And that formula will help keep people from getting worse for a while, for a year, if you're lucky. So she had been on the formula for about a year in three or four months, and she had just come back from her nephrologist and her EGFR rates had dropped significantly. And when you're down at 18, you don't have a whole long way to go before you need to go on dialysis. And so I knew at this point it had stopped working. And I was feeling really bad because as a clinician, your job is to

help people and you want to help people. It wasn't just that I had nothing left to offer her. I couldn't think of anybody who had anything to offer her. And that's just a terrible feeling. And I was sitting out by the barn at my old farm and it was a typical late August, New Jersey day. And all of a sudden I look up and I have this big patch of nettles and the nettles is shaking. What do I think? I think, is there a bird in there? Is there a squirrel? Is there a chipmunk or rabbit, whatever. And again, it's shaking and I'm looking around. Nothing else is moving. There's no wind, nothing. So I get up figuring again, something's going to either scurry away or fly out of the, of the nettles. Nothing happens. And I get over to the nettles and all of a sudden in my head,

I hear, I can help her. So I'm thinking, all right, but I had to argue, it's the wrong time a year to gather nettle leaf. Nettle leaf, you know, the leaves look terrible. They're all bug-eaten and and nettle leaf is a great medicine. And it's useful for kidney problems, but minor kidney problems. It's not going to help something really significant like lamarial or nephritis. And then I hear, not my leaves, my seeds. So after I managed to kind of pick my jaw off the ground and pop it back into place because I was rather stunned, I'm thinking about nettle seed. I've never used nettle seed. I've never heard of nettle seed being used for anything. I know of no uses for nettle seed. I know of no uses for nettle seed. The only thing I know about nettle seed that gives me some measure of comfort is that I know

in Europe it was used as an emergency food during famine. So I know it's not toxic, but that's about it. So I go back to the house. I get some tobacco, which is a traditional offering. Just a touch of context. In many indigenous cultures, tobacco is often offered to plants as a gesture of gratitude and respect, a way to acknowledge the spirit and life force within all living things. So when someone harvest a plant, they might sprinkle a small amount of tobacco on the ground or at the base of the plant to say, hey, you know, thank you for giving your life so that I might have medicine or food or materials. So I'm offered to the plant and wearing gloves because it's also known a stinging nettle. I harvest a bunch of the seed. I go to the house. I make a tincture out of it, which is an

alcohol and water extract of the plant. I let it, you know, macerate the requisite amount of time and press it out. And then when it's done, I called up my patient and I said, listen, I'm I've got this thing. It's experimental. And if you'd like to try it, I'm happy to give it to you. I know it's not toxic, but I can't tell you much more than that. And she said, look, you've helped me as much as anybody's been able to help me. And I trust you. So I'll try it. She starts taking the nettle seed. And in six to eight weeks, her EGFR has gone from about 16 back up to 19, which is higher than it had been. it had been at 18. In four months, her EGFR is at 20. At a year, her EGFR is at 28. The nettle seed worked. She continued to take that nettle seed for 12 years. And that nettle seed

kept her EGFR and all the other kidney markers at a much better level. And when she died, 12 years later, it had nothing to do with her kidneys. And that was the first person I treated with nettle seed. I've treated, and I don't know an exact number because I've never counted, somewhere between probably 50 and 80 people with degenerative kidney disease. After David's discovery of this use of nettle seed, acceptance of this medicine has become much more foundational in herbal medicine and helping to treat chronic kidney disease. But I wanted to know more, like, how exactly did David know it was the nettle that was talking to him? It sounded like somebody speaking to me. It sounded like a voice, you know, but it was in my head,

and I knew it wasn't me. It definitely was nothing, not something I was aware of. Whether we are talking about dreaming when you're asleep, whether we are talking about opening yourself into what we'll call a meditative state where you are open to other consciousnesses that communicate differently, quietly, and allowing yourself to be open in hearing those things and then using your judgment and discernment to determine whether this is something that's coming from you or coming externally from you. And again, I think that when it's, you know, a plan is telling you something, you weren't even thinking about it.

It's telling you you can use me for this. You know, why would I even be thinking of something like that? And so for me, it's not a question of trying to prove it. I know it's all true. And Nina agrees. Here's what she said about this. Discernment is the most important thing to remember because it instructs us on how to know what's what. Without discernment, we can get lost in confusion in these realms is scary.

So discerning what is of value. is essential. And David isn't the only one who Nettle has communicated with. I'm Sophie Strand. I'm a writer at the intersection of ecology, storytelling, science, and myth. When interviewing author Sophie Strand for research for this episode, she unexpectedly told us a story of when she was visited by Nettle in a dream to help with her own chronic kidney disease. I went into pretty severe kidney failure. I've had experiences on and off for many years. My doctors believe it's autoimmune. They've never been able to figure out what triggers it, why it happens. And there was a flurry. Like, was I going to need dialysis? What kind of intervention was I going to need? And I asked my doctors,

I said, give me four days. Like, please, just give me four days. I'm not saying that anyone else should do this, but I was at this time in my life where I was like intuitively like, I need four days to just think about this. And I asked for a dream and I dreamed of nettle. And I drank so much nettle infusion. Nettle infusion is, you know, I put nettle in water and then I put it out in a glass jar and let the sun really steep it. And I drank so much nettle. And when I went back in and retested, my numbers had all re-corrected it. My doctors could not believe it. They had no explanation for it.

If you want to explore something like this, I encourage you to talk to a doctor. This show does not give medical advice and cannot replace care from a qualified physician. And I'm not saying anyone else with kidney issues should do this. I'm saying that I asked for guidance and a plant showed up for me. And it really did work. I asked David if he knows what about Nettlseed is so effective in treating the kidneys. And he said, quite frankly, he doesn't, but it also doesn't really matter. What matters is that it works.

In herbal medicine, people have used, let's say, willow bark, probably for, I don't know, 50, 100,000 years as an analgesic and pain reliever. We've only understood the mechanisms of how Willow Bark works for 50 years, or maybe 70 years at this point. We have used things for long periods of time without understanding them, but recognized that there was validity to them. Listening to herbalists like David, I noticed that even in the most clinical settings, many of those who communicate with plants, including Nina, reference indigenous ways of knowing,

where plants are not just resources, but relatives, where medicine begins not with analysis, but with gratitude and what feels like communion. The spiritualness or the connectedness to spirits throughout the forest, it's expressed in our indigenous way of life. Here's Teresa Ryan, who you met earlier in the episode. She's a member of the Shimsian Nation. I asked if, based on her traditions, she believed plants and trees were conscious.

They have spirit. I would describe it as spirit. And that's partly because I'm immersed in a way of life that has a different understanding of the spirits in the world. In indigenous teachings, community isn't limited to people. It includes the trees, the rivers, and the spirits that move through them. Maybe what we call consciousness is just another name for spirit, the living current that carries ancestral knowledge through all things.

And what if the reason some people can hear plants or feel them is because of the ancestors who never stopped listening? Maybe in some cases, they're even the go-betweens. The ways trees use fungi to speak, maybe humans use memory and lineage and even ancestral spirit as our invisible network. And here's Nina to weigh in on this. My connection to my ancestors is a major part of my connection to plants. For example, my Cuban roots hold information about plants as spiritual tools that are tried and true.

She has known things about our ancestors that I did not know about or that other people in my family had no idea about that turned out to be true. I come from Cuba. I came many years ago as exile. I've been living here in the United States, but I do remember my ancestry. This is Karidad, Nina and Natalia's grandmother. Our ancestry did work with plants. My great-great-grandfather used to love herbs and write about herbs. And he was famous.

He was very intellectual and he was very holy. And he talked about plants and wrote a book about it. In our countries, in Latin America, the Caribbean, Cuba and Mexico, Part of the culture is healing with herbs. And those people are called curanderos or curanderas means healing through plants. And how Nina knows all of that? We don't know. My abuela, she is my mom's mom.

She's very Catholic. And so it's very taboo to talk about, like, more spiritual topics that don't fall in line with the traditional religious beliefs. So we never were outwardly talking. talking about any of this kind of thing. I'm Catholic, and when Nina started talking about all of those things, it was kind of scary where that comes from, where all of this come from. She's experienced Nina knowing things about Cuba and their ancestors, having never been there and never been taught them, and those things turned out to be true.

Nina was telling us about plays in Cuba. The city is called Santa Spirit, too, which is Holy Spirit. and where the sea meets with the river, and she talked to us about that place. When we look at the map, we saw what Nina was talking about. We never talked to her about that. It was not in my life, in my mind. Nothing. I didn't know anything about that.

She knows more her roots that I do. And you've talked about Nina having other gifts, too. And so what are some of those? Telepathy, dream work, going to people in their dreaming, precognition and being able to tell when things happen before they happen, remote viewing, being able to see things from afar that there's no way she would be able to see in any other way. So she's gone to people in their dreams and is able to speak to them and give them messages and show them different things. As Nina's family explains, remote viewing, which is the ability to see a location even though you're not there, might explain. how Nina's able to know so much about her ancestry and about plants and herbs that she's never been exposed to.

After we investigate what Nina says about herbs and ancestors and the map, after we investigate everything she said, it happens that it was true. It is true. Nina's understanding of plants seems to reach beyond biology into ancestral memory, which of course makes you wonder what our ancestors may have known that we have since forgotten. Across cultures, indigenous people have understood

that plants aren't just resources, their living relatives and teachers, and communion with the natural world and that those who came before us wasn't unusual or strange. It was just woven into life itself. To explore this deeper, we turn to the Kuntawa people

who say they've used telepathy to connect with plants and ancestors for as long as they can remember. In fact, we have our form to connect to... This is Haru Kuntawa. of the Kunta Nawa Nation and the Amazon Forest in Brazil. So primarily the people of the forest have their own way of connecting with the forest,

their technology, which is this connection that they have with nature and with the forest. And this is Ruta, who will be translating for Haru. Haru is describing what the Kunta Nawa Nation call their technology, which is how they refer to their telepathic ability to communicate with plants, nature, animals, and each other. And this biological connection that we have with nature, the people with the forest, allows us to also connect with the spiritual realms. It is telepathic connection because when you're connecting with these plans, it allows you

to step into a realm where you can be in the present, but you can also be with the ancestors in the past and as well as stepping into the future. There's the energy with everything that could manifest in what we eat, what we consume, and those energies then transform into frequencies. And through the frequencies, we understand the more subtle, but the deeper connections with the vibration. And of the frequencies that come from the energies that we get from nature. And this is something that has been passed on from generation to generation from the ancestors, and it's something that you develop, and when you start to understand that, it starts to become more of a flow.

What Haru describes is not an isolated worldview. From the Amazon to the Northern Plains, indigenous people have always understood that the natural world is alive and conscious and in conversation with us. The Lakota hold their own teaching about this, and their language itself is shaped by wind, water, animals, and the spirits moving throughout the land. I believe that some of the oldest words and some of the oldest language does come out of the environment and nature itself. Using the sounds that the nature makes, we develop our language. This is Ion quickly. She's an elder of the Lakota tribe, a Native American tribe indigenous to the Great Plains.

But I believe that nature itself has a language that we Lakota know it's there. We know it's there. The Lakota have a deep relationship with nature. They believe all things, plants, animals, elements, and the land itself are connected and share a sacred bond. We believe that everything has a spirit. There's no such a thing as an inanimate object to us. Everything is alive. And this is Rick Tudogues, also a Lakota leader.

There's some medicines that are passed down through the, what we call it, The Tiospaye, the extended family. A lot of the traditional healers get their own through fasting, through dreams. Tiospaye, like Rick said, is the Lakota concept of family that extends beyond blood relations to every member within the tribal clan and community, even those who've passed on. And just like Nina gets information and gifts from her ancestors, this is how knowledge and spirituality is passed down in the Lakota tribe. And the close relationship with their environment also allows them to communicate with and

gain wisdom from the plants, animals, and elements of their surroundings. Ione herself had a personal experience of this. She and her brother went with an elder from their tribe to harvest a plant from the forest. But when they found the plant they needed, it was surrounded by poison ivy. Ion and her brother thought their journey was for nothing, until the medicine man said something incredible. He told my brother, he said, never mind all the poison ivy. They're just here to protect that plant. So they won't hurt you.

They won't do anything to you because you're here for that plant. And so he went up with him. They did the prayers. We make an offering to the plant before we harvested. And then they did the plan up. And when we got home, my brother, well, there was no poison eye on him, although he was in the middle of it. But that grandpa had asked the poison I to let him make his way to the plant.

So he did. Rick Two Dogs shares a story from Black El, a revered medicine man of the Lakota, born in 1863. If you read and do research into Black Alk, in his vision they show him this plant that he's supposed to find. So this man goes with him who is a thunderdreamer, what we call a Heoka. So they sat on this hill and they sang Heoka songs. And this Red Tail Hawk was circling down in the valley there. And so he told his friend, he said, that is where the medicine is growing. So they went down and sure enough, they found the medicine.

So he made a prayer before he dug the medicine and offered the tobacco. A lot of these plants even have their own songs. So you sing that song before you harvest the plant. And in his prayer, he said, Now we're going to go among the weak and the sick, and there will be happy days among them. As mentioned earlier, making an offering such as singing a song or leaving a gift like tobacco is paramount to the communication

between the Lakota and the natural world, especially when they're asking or looking for information about plant medicinal use. Here's Nina explaining her own process when she's communing with plants. Honorable harvest methods are important like introducing yourself, asking for permission, and giving an offering. Plant stewardship is a sacred art form. Each plant has their own energy and character. Plants are sentient beings.

They want to help us, to heal us, to guide and nourish us. They see us for who we really are and accept us, exactly where we're at. The Lakota called intuition. Nina calls it telepathy. Whatever the name, the experience seems the same. Communication does not just happen through speech. It happens through sensing and knowing and feeling. And here's herbalist David Winston again. There is what we'll call the language of plants, and it seems like most indigenous people, most cultures have a language of plants. Sometimes it has been forgotten, and sometimes it has been subsumed. After researching this episode, it was clear that the language

of plants was once spoken everywhere. In prayer, in ceremonies, in medicine. But the rise of materialism and colonization and modern technology taught us to value what we could measure and doubt what we could feel. Most people who grew up in this culture were not trained from a young age to understand intuition and things like that. And our greatest error may be believing that there's only one right way to know. Science is a way of learning. Intuition is a way of learning.

Dreams are a way of learning. communicating with plants or other parts of nature is a way of learning. Observing patients is a way of learning. Reading books is a way of learning. And none of them are better than the other. And I think they especially work really well when you combine them and you don't shut yourself off to any avenue of learning. In modern day Western medicine, I've never read where the Nogai, the spirit is very,

really addressed. Here's Rick Two Dogs and Naomi Quigley of the Lakota again. They compartmentalize everything. They don't see the whole holistic spectrum of things and that were just kind of a minute particle of it all. And so

they're missing a big part because our belief is that the spirit is the core or the root of our being. And Nina sees the holistic spectrum as essential to understanding our place in this world. Humans wouldn't exist without plant support. They regulate Earth's body. They regulate your body and mine. They are not to be seen

as dead matter. They are animate, alive, and ever-loving. Nina has talked about how she gets information and knowledge directly from communing with plants, but she also absorbs energy from plants and nature. And now that Nina can spell, she can often advocate for her own well-being and give her family tools to better support her. A big part of her healing process and recovering from not being able to have a voice for so many years has been through nourishing herself with the plants in all types of forms, whether that's through food or through teas or through being outside in nature. Those things are all really important to her and really regulating for her. And I witnessed this myself.

Nina will be featured in the upcoming telepathy tapes documentary, and when we were filming her one day, she became extremely dysregulated, and I wasn't sure if we could or should continue. So the crew and I went outside to hold calming space for Nina while we waited for guidance from the family on what to do next. And asked her what she needed in that moment and she said, I need to go to the forest. And so Kai and all the camera people packed up and we went to the forest.

And she said, this is going to help me regulate my nervous system. And she took her shoes off and was walking barefoot through the forest. And it was amazing because she went from this really heightened state to this super relaxed state where she almost fell asleep in the leaves and was looking up at the trees. And so it can be a really beautiful thing to even engage with the plants through our natural environments and being outside and connecting with them that way too. And this powerful process of gaining grounding and calming energy isn't specific to Nina. In Japan, doctors still prescribed forest bathing for stress and hypertension and anxiety and immune support.

The Japanese government has even designated official therapy forests across the country. And taking in healing from plants by being in nature, absorbing their frequencies, is also, again, a way of life for many indigenous cultures around the world. And for some cultures, it goes even further. They don't just feel plants or forests or heal with them. They consume them ceremonially as a way to link into the greater web of spirit, ancestral knowledge and consciousness. And that brings us to one of the most powerful plant teachers on the earth, ayahuasca.

And the reason we're going to end the episode with ayahuasca is because we'll be turning to psychedelic medicine next week. And who guard this memory? Here's Haru of the Kuntanawa Nation in the Amazon Forest in Brazil, being translated by Ruta. Ayahuasca is not only has a spiritual piece, but it also holds a lot of the teachings and the wisdom and the knowledge of the forest, the plants, of the animals.

So it goes much deeper than just the ceremonial aspect of it because it holds this knowledge that is integral. Haru goes on to explain how ayahuasca enhances the tribe's telepathy, or as they call it, their natural technology. Ayahuasca, the sacred plant, is much greater and more powerful than the technologies of today, for example, like the internet. It's sort of like a library of plants. I mean, it's very central to the ancestrality and bringing on the teachings. They say that ayahuasca, a plant that they consume like tea, opens a doorway into a wider field of consciousness, revealing information they could have never known on their own.

And next week, we begin with a story that gives real weight to that possibility. When you realize that we are a family, we'll be able to connect and be wherever we are on the planet will be connected. The indigenous peoples also have this, and that knowledge and that wisdom goes back to the ancestors, all of those that came before us. Do we doubt the integrity of indigenous wisdom? Did we say that's just fanciful and it's not based on real world experience? I think the hubris of science just take a back seat to this. Here's Paul Stamos again.

I think we're at a time for a paradigm shift and our revolutionary understanding of the universe and the definition of what consciousness is. We want to explore and rejoice our biodiversity, not only culturally, but also the biodiversity of ideas. that which was thought to be preposterous years ago or not preposterous today. There's a lesson here in the evolution of science.

I'm pushing the envelope of change and understanding. But at my back, I got tens of thousands, 100,000 million of ancestors of Earth people that are supporting me in this effort. It's important that we know not marginalize people who pushes the envelopes of science just because it doesn't conform to your conventional wisdom.

And this is the paradigm shift that Paul points to, the possibility that plants and fungi are not just resources, but partners in our evolution. They may hold ways of knowing what we've forgotten and ways of healing that we are only now rediscovering. So if plants can share their wisdom, what happens when human beings ingests them? What opens in us when we allow these ancient teachers

inside our bodies into our dreams and into our neural pathways. In our next episode, we follow that question into the world of psychedelics, from indigenous ceremony to modern neuroscience, from centuries of secrecy to decades of stigma to the cutting edge of clinical research. We ask what these substances change in the brain, what they unlock in the mind, and what they might reconnect us to in the larger web of life. Because if consciousness is shared and if nature itself is speaking,

then psychedelics may be one of the oldest ways human beings learn to listen. This podcast shared personal stories, indigenous and historical practices, and interviews with guests. It is not medical advice and does not replace care from a qualified clinician. Do not start or stop any treatment, herb, or supplement because of this show. Statements about herbs and supplements have not been evaluated by the FDA. Nothing in this episode is intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. If you have a health concern or medical emergency, contact your doctor or local emergency services. If you want to go deeper, ask me anything, or get ad-free episodes,

Subscribe at the telepathy tapes.supercast.com or tap the supercast link in the show notes. It takes a village to make this podcast, and I want to thank our producers, Jesse Steed, Jill Pichesnik, and Catherine Ellis, consulting producer Natalia Meehan, and field producer George McCullough. Original music is by Rachel Cantu. Mix, mastering, and additional music is by Michael Rubino. Our associate producer is Selena Kennedy. Original artwork is by Ben Kandor Design. And I'm Kai Dickens, your executive producer, writer, and host.