Streptopus amplexifolius

Streptopus amplexifolius: Clasping twisted-stalk
Master Prover: Cynthia Shepard
Natural History
Scientific name:
Streptopus amplexifolius (L.) DC.
Streptopus is from the Greek streptos(twisted) and podus (foot), in reference to the bent or twisted penduncles; and
amplexifolius is from the Latin amplexor (to surround) and folius (leaf).

Taxonomy:
Classification:
Streptopus amplexifolius (L.) DC.

Kingdom; Plantae – Plants

Subkingdom; Tracheobionta – Vascular plants

Superdivision; Spermatophyta – Seed plants

Division; Magnoliophyta – Flowering plants

Class; Liliopsida – Monocotyledons

Subclass; Liliidae

Order; Liliales

Family; Liliaceae– Lily family

Genus; Streptopus Michx. – twistedstalk

Species; Sreptopus amplexifolius (L.) DC. – claspleaf twistedstalk

Common name:
Clasping twisted-stalk; claspleaf twisted-stalk, cucumber root, scoot berry.

Description:
Clasping twisted-stalk is perennial herb that grows from a thick, short rhizome covered with fibrous roots. Stems are erect, 40– 120cm long and succulent in texture. The stems, freely branched, are bent at nodes, noticeably forming a zigzag pattern. The herbage ranges from glabrous to fairly pubescent with thick, rigid hairs on the lower third of the stems. The leaves alternate along the stems and are oval to oblong-lanceolate in shape with parallel venation. Leaves are glaucous beneath and the margins are either entire or minutely toothed. They measure 5-15 cm long and 3-7 cm wide. The stalkless leaves clasp the stem at their bases (Those of rosy twisted-stalk do not clasp the stem.). Basal leaves are lacking. The flowers droop from leaf axils, hanging on thin, sharply bent stalks from 9-15 mm long. The flower stalk is jointed and abruptly bent or kinked; they contain a small gland at the bend. Flowers are white and greenish-tinged, consisting of six bell-shaped tepals 9-15 mm long; tepals are oblong-lanceolate, concavely tapering to long, pointed, spreading or bent-back tips. The 6 stamens are of unequal length, the innermost longer than the outer stamens. Each flower has one 3-chambered pistil. The fruit is a yellow to red, often becoming dark purple. Berry shape is oval to oblong and size is 10-12 mm long. The fruit hangs on the sharply bent stalk. Seeds are several to many per berry.

Habitat/Range:
Moist, rich forest, stream banks, subalpine thickets, avalanche tracks, clearings; widespread in the lowland and steppe to subalpine zones.
Clasping-leaf twisted stalk may be found from Alaska south to California and east through forested or mountainous areas of much of Canada and the United States; var. amplexifolius - circumboreal, N to AK, YT and
NT, E to NF and S to NC, TN, MN, SD, NM, AZ and CA; Greenland, Eurasia; var. chalazatus – amphi-beringian, N to AK, E to AB and S to SD, NM, UT, ID and OR; E Asia.

Distribution Map (for North America):

Taxon: Streptopus amplexifolius
Picture
Similar Species:
Clasping twisted stalk may be confused for other lily species including:

rosy twistedstalk, Streptopus roseus
fairy bells, Disporum hookeri
fairy lanterns,Calochortus albus
star-flowered false solomon’s seal, Smilacina stellata
false solomon’s seal, Smilacina racemosa

The branched stem separates this species from other twisted-stalks; the axillary flower attachment separates it from the terminal-flowered fairybells (Disporum spp.), which also have branched stems.

Human Uses – Ethnobotany, Herbal Use & Other Facts:

Edible Uses:
Most aboriginal people regard the plants and berries as poisonous. Young shoots of clasping twistedstalk were eaten by some of the Alaska peoples, but apparently this was learned from the Europeans.

Toxicity is unclear:
Some sources indicate plant and berries are poisonous and only young shoots are edible. Other sources, possibly newer or more regionally specific, indicate the following edible uses:

The fruit of twisted-stalk is edible, raw or cooked in soups and stews. Juicy with a cucumber flavor, they are reported to be slightly cathartic when growing in certain areas only. The fruit is laxative if eaten in large quantities. Tender young shoots, raw in salads or cooked like asparagus, can be eaten, too, and have a cucumber-like flavor.

Medicinal Uses:
The fruit is a powerful purgative or laxative, causing severe evacuation. A tea of the stem has been used to treat‘sickness in general’. The plant is tonic. An infusion of the whole plant has been used to treat stomach complaints and loss of appetite. A compound tea of the root has been used as an analgesic in the treatment of internal pain. Also, a compound tea has been used in the treatment of spitting up of blood, kidney problems and gonorrhea. The root has been used as a gynecological aid, chewed in order to induce labour in cases of protracted delay.

The Liber Herbarum cites this herb as being a laxative, an antihemorrhagic and an analgesic. It also is reported as being good for the stomach, effective in diseases of the kidney, and sexually transmitted diseases. It restores appetite thereby easing anorexia.

Stems of this plant were used by the Haida for a poultice on cuts.

Makah women chewed and ingested the root to induce labour in case of protracted delay.

Material Uses:
Whole plants and roots were used by the Nlakapamux and Secwepemc as a scent, tying them to the body, clothes or hair. Lower Stlatlimx fishing nets were boiled in a solution of Streptopus amplexifolius to improve fish catch.

References:
USDA Natural Resources Conservation Services; PLANTS Profile http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=STAM2
Accessed: July 2011
Streptopus amplexifolius. In: Klinkenberg, Brian. (Editor) 2011. E-Flora BC: Electronic Atlas of the Plants of British Columbia [eflora.bc.ca]. Lab for Advanced Spatial Analysis, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
Accessed 4 July 2011.
E Flora BC: Electronic Atlas of the Plants of British Columbia http://www.geog.ubc.ca/biodiversity/eflora Streptopus amplexifolius page: http://linnet.geog.ubc.ca/Atlas/Atlas.aspx?sciname=Streptopus%20amplexifolius&redblue=Both&lifeform=7
Plants of Coastal British Columbia; Jim Pojar and Andy MacKinnon; B.C. Ministry of Forests and Lone Pine Publishing, Vancouver, 1994.
Flora of the Pacific Northwest; C. Leo Hitchcock and Arthur Cronquist; University of Washington Press, 1973.
Flora of North America www.eFloras.org http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=1&taxon_id=242101972
Accessed: July 2011
Indicator Plants of Coastal British Columbia; Karel Klinka, V. J. Krajina, A. Ceska, A. M. Scagel; University of British Columbia Press, 1989.
Douglas, G.W., D.V. Meidinger and J. Pojar (editors). 2001. Illustrated Flora of British Columbia. B.C. Ministry. Environment,
Lands and Parks and B.C. Ministry of Forests. Victoria. 361 p. $40.00
Flora & Fauna Northwest; Columbia River Gorge Wildflowers
http://science.halleyhosting.com/nature/gorge/3petal/lily/streptopus/twist.htm
Accessed: Aug 2011
Liber Herbarum Minior – The incomplete reference-guide to Herbal medicine: http://www.liberherbarum.com/minor/uk/Pn4609.htm
Acessed: July 2011
Liber Herbarum II:
http://www.liberherbarum.com/Pn4609.HTM
Acessed: September 2011
Montana Plant Life
http://montana.plant-life.org/species/strepto_ample.htm
Accessed: Aug 2011
Washington Native Plant Society
http://www.wnps.org/landscaping/herbarium/pages/streptopus-amplexifolius.html
Acessed: Aug 2011

Trituration:
The specimen for the Streptopus amplexifolius trituration proving was collected in the Green Mountains of Vermont, on a misty summer morning, July 1st, 2011. Trituration began immediately after collection.

Parts used in the trituration were stem, leaf, and flower bud (we deliberately chose not to disturb the root as the slender rhizomes were well enmeshed with the roots of nearby trees and plants and difficult to isolate).

Five provers participated in trituration to the 3C dilution. The provers were all female, ages ranged from 46 to 63.

Proving code:
e.g. 4:3C = symptom reported by or observed of Prover 4 during the 3C trituration.

Commentary:
The group of women who participated in this trituration had met for one week of the early summer 2011, with special intention to be together – working and playing, sharing and learning. Part of our time together was to include doing a trituration (using the Great Lakes protocol) and we left ourselves open to see what might inspire us as the source material for this proving. While several members of the group ‘recognized’ the clasping twisted-stalk as being ‘it’ very early on in our week, it wasn’t until we’d had several days together, that we all knew the ‘twisted lily’ was to be our proving subject.

After compiling the trituration results, I’ve come to believe that this plant was well suited to being proven by a group of‘cloistered’ women, and that it is likely that the special healing affinities of this plant might actually be best revealed to a group with this special living arrangement.

We all ‘knew’the plant we were going to prove. We had all seen it when we had been on a hike together early in the week. We playfully established our own ‘folklore’about it in the ensuing days. We called it the “twisted lily” and we called each other “twisted lilies”. It became our password. The name arose out of a specific interaction on that first hike:

We had been hiking, steadily up hill on one of Vermont’s beautiful Green mountains. One member of our group had pointed out some of the plants along the way – some lovely Veratrum lilies, a streamside dogwood species, groupings of nettles, and also, the clasping twisted-stalk lily. After hiking further uphill one of the group asked, “Shouldn’t we turn back soon? What if we got stuck up here, what would we eat?” One reply was, “Well, we’d eat berries, shoots and plants.” Another of our party said, “And what about our meat eaters?” This same person then answered her own question saying, “I think I’d eat X (X = one of our group), she’s so sweet and spicy!” This was met with a witty quip, “You’re one twisted lily!”

There were several aspects to the proving that were remarkable. Symptoms were richly experienced in the Mind, Head (neck and shoulders), Jaw and Teeth, Female reproductive organs, and Extremities. Symptoms are ordered below in order of their occurrence and within their respective repertory sections.

This is a plant remedy, and the proving revealed the types of ‘wound’ best healed with this new homeopathic remedy. Seen in this proving were wounds of separation, isolation, and repression; also wounds of oppression and submission to servitude. The gift of the healing of these wounds was, not surprisingly, the gift of freedom. Freedom to connect – with others, with God or spirit, with nature. The suffering before the cure felt heavy and constricting; it came with darkness, too. The theme of the ‘yoke’ arose. The yoke is both a wooden frame by which two draft animals (oxen) are joined at the neck for working together and a device (formerly) laid on the head of a defeated person. There were physical pains that felt as if a heavy collar or yoke was pressing down on the head and neck, and the mental state revealed much about how it feels, both to wear the yoke, and to be freed of the yoke. It is interesting to note that one of the physical features that distinguishes this lily from other lilies and from otherStreptopus species is its leaf shape. The base of each leaf completely clasps the stem, encircling it and creating a shape much like that of a wooden yoke.

Following the formal completion of the trituration provers experienced further symptoms which relate to, and add
another level of depth to the understanding of this proving. Three provers felt profoundly deep, body wracking grief. In one case, it was over mankind’s disruption of our own ability to ‘connect’ with nature, and with the world, in a direct spiritual way. The grieving transformed and this prover experienced ‘oneness’ with nature that she likened to the ecstasy of religious experience. In another case, it was grief over the loss of connection with people; that the experience of sisterhood, of friendship and the ability to connect with others exactly as one is, was felt to be not a reality in this life. She completely lost hope, and then reached out for help; her friends and ‘sisters’ were there for her, confirming the possibility for connection with humanity. A third huge grieving experience was related to an empty nest; with her last adult child recently and happily moved out from home, this prover sobbed and sobbed for her loss. She felt it had been a bad decision to have had only two children; that her children were her most fundamental creations and her living legacy. It was time to find a new creative outlet, a new way to ensure her legacy. Another prover had a heart experience of another type. Feeling that she had always needed to withdraw from people, to recharge in quiet and solitude, had been a long-time habit of hers, and the appeal of the contemplative life was strong for this very reason. With the fusion of her dichotomous personalities, the nun and the prostitute, she found that she was no longer lacking anything. That she could be a nun, she could be a burlesque dancer, and be so fully engaged with people in a wholly worldly way.

The proving of the“Twisted Lily” is indeed a fascinating one. Below are groupings of other striking aspects from the ‘Mind’:

Constricted and Restricted:
Yoke-like feeling
Constriction:
Breaking out of constriction; vow of silence – all the things you never articulate
A need for fresh air, because of a feeling of constriction at the region of the diaphragm– as if liver and spleen are battling it out
Tandem

Freedom:
Freedom from inhibition; free to express - to speak what was felt
Freedom to feel joyful abandon
Freedom from guilt, shame or control; throwing of the ‘yoke’ of repression/suppression
Off the Parapet– the Flying Nun (Sally Fields)

Flirtatious:
Dancing with sexy/flirtatious moves (Don’t be Jealous of my Boogie)
Flirtatious with body

Nun and prostitute:
Within one person – desire to live in a nunnery, and dream about going to prostitute school

Hilarity:
Joking, giddy, silly – hysterically out of control with it
Laughing at own jokes
Laughing, at actions/songs/dances/statements of others
Laughing; tearing up with, sputtering with
Out of control laughter, like hebephrenia – laughing to the point of insanity

Playful/impish/carefree:
Playing with colored pens on paper, doodling, drawing
Pens are ‘toys’
Childish delight – fun, free, spontaneous
Innocent and curious
Playing with body, dancing, imitating a bug
Playing with words – puns, spelling, etc
Playing with objects – would juggle potatoes if she had the ability to do it
Singing – part of a sentence spoken by another triggers memory of song lyrics, then song is sung
Orally playing with the sound of words, exaggerating, or distorting them

Chattering:
Multiple, spontaneous conversations or comments; talking over others
Information quickly exchanged
Ideas bantered around
Not ordered or controlled conversing, such as by “Robert’s Rules of Order”
Vivacious verbal exchanges
Like a group of magpies
Sound of scraping down, during 3C, was noisy, like a bird, or tribal, like scraping on bone
Witty Quips

Games/surveys (Getting to know others):
Favorite animal& least favorite
Etymology/meaning of each participant’s given name
Person most admired

Drugged:
See through arms, like seeing a skeleton
Feeling as if on drugs, conversations are just “blah, blah, blah…”
Like I’ve smoked hash
More like mushroom, psilocybin, than anything I’ve done
A really druggy feeling
Feeling as if in a coma
Time slowed down; 30 or 40 minutes felt like only 15
Feeling really dull, spacey, woozy headed
Stoned feeling follows silliness; a heaviness within – not from over me but from inside the head

Hallucinations:
Pulsating, with a color between (pulsations)

Sight:
Wanting better sight
Pinhole glasses – a miracle!
You can see what you never could see, because you were trying to focus – it ALL becomes available

Exaggeration:
Pulsating movements, to add impact
Exaggerated, animated speaking, sound-effect type of vocalizations, singing, hush-hush voice like when sharing a secret, mock outrage, mock jealousy, mock pouting, mock hurt-pride
Ridiculous solutions/ideas – super glue for dental repairs

Mistakes:
Mishearing words
Some spelling errors

Getting disoriented or “lost”:
Map read incorrectly, cut off, no legend
Lost while doing a computer search; very slow to do this task
Story recounted in which the Holy Grail gets lost

“Be careful!”:
Cautionary, older/wiser, warning
Concern about/alert for potential harm

Serious:
It’s not about feeling good, it’s about feeling serious

Serious/engrossed in task at hand:
Unobservant outside of that single focus

Encouragement:
Observing others and encouraging with positive evaluations/comments

Weird nature stuff:
Talk of blue mushrooms, glow, eat them, prevents malaria in males, promotes lifetime fertility in females
Talk of 75 year old pregnant woman
Image of still birth (of mermaid baby)

Rings:
Wedding rings, talk of
Nuns marry Jesus
Lost rings, and found rings, stories about
This ring has become me

Nuns/sisterhood:
Hildegard von Bingen
Women cloistered together, to better do their work
Nuns are a sisterhood
Other groups, of women, tribal or even coven context – women embracing and sharing their own truth and power
This is what women are capable of, and what they’re capable of in groups
Concept of the medieval nun or virgin who is whole unto herself

Religious/Sacred places/areas/terms/phrases/practices:
Nuns marry Jesus
Like being in the confessional
Vestibule of a church
Caves of Chauvet
Agnus dei –Lamb of God
Celibacy
Kneeling…, pain in knees from kneeling to pray on ‘kneelers’ at church
Kneeling on grains – corporal punishment issued by some nuns

Color or black and white (gray):
Drawings (bright bug, bright doodles, gray stone, very dark doodle)
Black and white clothing; traditional nun’s habit
Purple clothing worn/purchased

Light and dark:
Too bright
Feeling really dark in the room – is it cloudier in here?

Too Much Stimulation:
Desire to‘check out’, be quiet, go away somewhere and be quiet

Lying Prostrate on the Floor:
Lying prostrate on the floor - face down, arms folded underneath forehead legs relaxed but big toes touching; desire to; feeling like “this is my job” to do this
Lying prostrate ameliorates both general and specific symptoms

Mystical/Religious Experience, Visions:
Lying prostrate on the floor, after some minutes passed, felt as if levitating and then this (forehead/third eye area) all opened up and everything, yes, everything went inside. It was like there was an opening and everything in-folded. Like an enveloping right through here (third eye area). And it’s beautiful, but it was scary. An enveloping of it all, of it ALL
The Holy Grail, talk of; then the idea – what if the Holy Grail is not a thing? Its knowledge, and each person holds some of this knowledge – each person contributing…
Lying prostrate on the floor, yet another prover has the floating/levitating sensation, and when in that position, again the third eye opened, and her general “heaviness”and feeling of darkness lifted. Then she had a vision of little fairy world, under the roots of a tree, all cool and moist and full of little passageways - very nice

Humming:
Involuntary, with (dental) pain

Female genitalia/Girly plant:
Drawing done is suddenly ‘seen’ as being of the female anatomy between the legs
It’s a ‘girly’plant

Quietness:
Stillness
Comfortable silence
Peaceful
Gentle murmurs (c.f. chattering of magpies)

Sadness/Grief:
Huge
grief over the inability to have any more children

Choosing to commit/dedicate/sacrifice ones self:
Saying “Yes” to a person of authority, from a physically prostrate position yet also committing from an inner position of competency; in this instance the commitment involved ones own death
Marrying Jesus– nuns
Vows of poverty, chastity and obedience

Further Symptoms:
At the end of the collation, a section is included with additional symptoms that, although they occurred outside of the formal trituration time period, are significant to a fuller understanding of this proving.

The Proving – Streptopus amplexifolius

Mind:
(Symptoms listed in order of occurrence)

3:C1
Wow, it’s like I can see through your arms [she’s addressing Prover 1 who has just begun the first 6 minutes of grinding], like a skeleton.

3:C1
I just need to draw these lines [squiggly lines around magazine cutout of the word “explore”;strong black type over magnified green image of a leaf with veins clearly visible] There are these blue mushrooms that grow under trees, light up like little blue lanterns. The whole thing is a company paid for research for a fertility drug. Men eat the mushroom, never get malaria; women eat it, and stay fertile all their life.

1:C1
I like the color of this paper – GREEN!

3:C1
Heart is racing– excited!

3:C1
And these blue mushrooms… [Prover 3 is discussing with some detail, aspects of a book she’s read; this as she is drawing her squiggly lines in her], …, Amazon, these trees and mushrooms, the ecosystem – it’s what we’ve been talking about.

4:C1
I feel [as if] I’m on drugs, all I heard was, “blah, blah, blah, blah, blah”. I can’t really hear or understand what Prover 3 was just saying.

1:C1
The only thing I heard was “Amazon”.

3:C1
[Prover 3 gets up to get some drinking water; to do so she has to stand on a chair to reach the high shelf where the extra jugs of water have been stored], and says: You have to climb for the water.

3:C1
I had to climb a mountain to get the water.
[She’s laughing at her own remark, implying that stepping on the chair was like climbing a ‘mountain’].

3:C1
I feel hilarious.

3:C1
Prover holds up her journal to display the page with the large word “explore” and her addition of fine black squiggly lines on it. She then moves the page forward and backwards, forward and backwards, forward and backwards from her chest – as if to ‘pulsate’ the page.

4:C1
I’m totally…,it’s like I’ve smoked hash.

3:C1
This is more like mushroom, more like psilocybin, than anything I’ve done. I’m so glad I didn’t have to throw up.

2:C1
We’re not done, yet…
[Prover 2 is speaking with a cautionary/warning/admonishing tone of voice; like someone who is older & wiser might speak to an inexperienced child or novice.]

4:C1
Be careful! Be careful!

1:C1
That’s what Prover 5 said on the trail [when we hiked uphill to collect the proving specimen],“Be careful”.

4:C1
Prover 2 said it, too, when Prover 3 was standing up on the chair to get the water, “be careful”.

3:C1
“Bee” careful, “bee” careful.
[As she repeats this phrase that the other provers have been commenting on, she’s again added a humorous twist to the comment; she’s saying ‘bee’ instead of ‘be’ because of a paper ‘pencil decoration’ she has on her writing implement. The design of this decoration is a pair of honey bees, slightly cartoon-ish expressions with
stylized proboscises. As she says this, “bee careful, bee careful”she again, ‘pulsates’ her pencil/with decoration
back and forth, back and forth, towards the person she’s speaking to. She doesn’t just hold it up to be seen;
she pulsates it.]
Picture
3:C1
Who’s calling?
[The timer has just rung, indicating a switch from grinding to the scraping down phase of trituration; Prover 3 makes a joke of it…, acting as if someone’s phone is ringing. Her tone is playful and silly.]

3:C1
I didn’t feel I needed to be careful on the trail. A playfully jesting comment since this prover 3 did not even go out to hike the trail this morning].

5:C1
I thought [while hiking the trail to collect the specimen earlier today], I’m going to blow my knees out! Oh my god, I’ll not be able to ski again, I’m not going to be able to drive home with my knees blown out!

1:C1
And when we got back, Prover 4, you were “You guys didn’t call me! I was worried. Did you get hurt? Did the cops get you…?” [Prover 1 is using an exaggerated and animated tone as she repeats the concerns her colleague used earlier].

2:C1
I don’t know if we have enough food.

4:C1
Munchies, munchies…, I love it. That snack food that’s been there for a week will look really good.

3:C1
I’m having a hallucination right now.

2:C1
I never did mushrooms.

5:C1
This is a really druggy feeling.

3:C1
It’s ‘re-ree, re-ree, re-ree’. It’s pulsating and there’s a color between it. [Prover 3 speaks while drawing/doodling in her journal – an activity she’s been pretty constantly ‘entertaining’ herself with].

1:C1
“Don’t be jealous of my boogie, don’t be jealous of my boogie”. [Prover 1 sings these lyrics aloud, and while singing she does a dance move, turning her butt to the group and jiggling her hips – what she’s done is a short dance routine with flirtatious/sexy overtones].

3:C1
[Prover 3 is laughing deeply; the ‘dance’ routine just performed by Prover 1 has added to her silly/fun/giddy mood], and she says: That’s too hilarious.

4:C1
Now my eyes are watering. [This comment is in reference to Prover 2’s experience of ‘watery eyes’ during the preparation of the medicating potency prior to the C1 trituration’s start].

1:C1
BE CAREFUL. I should put the mortar on the table – the trituration might slip from your hands!

1:C1
[Sings a little jingle]; “I love this little plant.” [Prover 1 is doing the triturating at this point].

Group:C1
There is a general lightness, jesting, playful interaction in the spoken exchanges and physical demonstrations of the group in general to this point.

3:C1
I had this image, when Prover 5 just said “and down my spine”, I had this image, it’s in this book [fiction], 74 year old lady…, don’t know how, but she got pregnant. She had a baby that died inside of her. The doctor had to do a C-section; the baby had died, and the baby that came out was a ‘mermaid baby’. You know that syndrome where your legs don’t split, you look like a mermaid, but you have your feet – that’s the baby that she had. When you guys were laughing, I flashed on that, with all of that she had a mermaid baby. She’s ovulating an egg that’s 75 years old! This woman who did the C-section, who pulled baby out, was her student.

Group:C1
[Laughter has stopped at the moment; general playfulness has toned down]

2:C1
[In response to hearing Prover 5 speak about her bridge coming loose in her mouth, prover 3 takes note, as if being awoken from a happy dream and suddenly needing to be aware]; she says: Oh! [a single word, but it conveyed clear emotion of being concerned and somewhat fearful about possible impending damage or harm, in this case with dental issues], Then: ....I have a bunch of them.

2:C1
This is 4thof July weekend, if you need dental care, you’d better call. [Prover 2’s warning reminder that service won’t be available is met with and “it will be ok” response; then Prover 2 changes her attitude to jesting.] Her next suggestion is: Prover 3’s got a glue stick! [Another prover chimes in] saying: Super Glue!

Group:C1
Chattering –the group falls into a chatter session about Super Glue.

3:C1
[Has continued to draw/doodle in her journal], and now says: How can we be doing this? I’ve got all these great toys…, look what I’ve got. But I’ve only got these few colors… [Prover 2 gets up; finds two more colors of pens for Prover 3, which adds a blue and pink to her color choices; previously she only had yellow highlighter and fine black felt tipped pen. Prover 3 receives the new colors with glee, laughing and sputtering], she says: I choked on my enthusiasm.
[Laughter]

1:C1
Prover 3’s new toy!!!
[Laughter].

3:C1
I’m sorry about your bridge [she’s addressing Prover 5 who’s just had her dental bridge fall out during the trituration] but, I have a new toy. [Hysterical laughter]. I feel totally out of control.

Prover 3’s own summation of this state (given after the trituration was over): I felt excessively giddy, silly and hysterically out of control with it, and I didn't care. I'm sure I looked that way to others. I tried to be serious or calm it down but I had no control over it. It was fun, free and poured out in this spontaneous way. I could not remember a time that I had this experience before. It reminded me of a 5 or 6 year old who gets worked about and gets really silly. During it, I knew that it was way over the top and I'd have a price to pay like I'd get really exhausted or emotionally crash. Later that evening I just got really tired.

Group:C1
With an initial comment or two on dental bridges and root canals, the group falls into another session of chattering on this topic; multiple simultaneous conversations. Information is exchanged, and ideas are bantered around.

3:C1
[Prover 3 is drawing in her journal – adding blue ‘mushrooms’ to her drawings of squiggly black lines].

4:C1
Explored…, are you making a ‘D’? Very nice, Prover 3! [Prover 3 has added the letter ‘d’ to the word ‘explore’ on her journal page]
[Laughter from group at this comment]

Picture
2:C1
I’m in a coma. I’m glad it’s not my turn to triturate.

3:C1
Prover 3 is telling a joke, she uses a low volume and somewhat hush-hush kind of voice.

4:C1
[Prover 4 is tearing up, from laughter]

3:C1
I have hebephrenia - Laughing to the point of insanity. [Prover 3 wipes her eyes with a tissue], then says: I’ve gotta pull it together.

2:C1
[Laughing] I thought you said, ‘Lack of Jews’ - Hebrephrenia.

5:C1
And then I thought you said something about “lack of juice”, not ‘lack of Jews’.

3:C1
[Prover 3 holds up her journal to show to the master prover. She’s pointing at her drawings/notations, notably the word, Explore which she has modified to now read as “Explored”… She is pulsating it, moving her journal back and forth, as if pulsating it].

Group:C1
The group is chattering together, again. The master prover, watching the group at these times, was reminded of a group of magpies, long tailed black and white crow family bird that utters a raucous chattering call. The similarity lies in that they are strikingly handsome birds and they are eager to talk/exchange messages when gathered in a group, and most definitely are not ordered or civilized (waiting turns, etc.) in their verbal exchanges.

3:C1
I feel like I climbed the mountain with you. [Prover 3 did not go up the trail to collect the specimen for the trituration; Master Prover, Prover 1 and Prover 5 did that task].

3:C1
[Prover 3 holds up her journal, to show the others a picture of the interior of a small grocery store; it’s an advertisement photo for the “Country Store” that she’s cut out from a magazine and pasted in her journal] Here’s where I…[she says pointing to the photo], here’s where I found the shallots.

5:C1
No you didn’t, you silly…you got the shallots at Shaw’s in Stowe. This [points to the photo Prover 3 is holding up] is the village store down here [at the Resort]. You didn’t get the shallots there. This is the first place we went to.

3:C1
In case we really forget, we are... [looking at a map], which is totally fucking me up because…, oh, this is terrible! [spoken in a tone of mock alarm]. I cut this map off and not put where we are.

2:C1
You didn’t put the legend with it.

3:C1
[Prover 3, still trying to orient where we are on the map she’s cut out and pasted in her journal] You and I are here. I cut it off! [Mocking outrage; jesting tone] It’s in that pile [of discarded trash].

4:C1
You’ve got your glue stick, Prover 3. Where’s your glue stick? [Continuing the jesting mood with a quip, suggesting a ‘fix’ to the problem]

3:C1
You guys, we are here! [Again, she’s pointing to her map]

4:C1
No, we’re up here. [Prover 4 corrects Prover3 and points to an area off her map.]

3:C1
Nnnh, nn, nnh!

3:C1
You spilled it! [Prover 3 points out to Prover 2, who is doing the trituration at this point.]

2:C1
Should I put it back in?

3:C1
We could snort it. [pause] Just an idea!

4:C1 and 3:C1
[both provers are laughing roundly]

3:C1
[Laughing, holding her ribs, uncontrolled laughter.] I almost can’t stand myself. [And, after a pause, to regroup from the effects of her own silliness] she says: I know there’s got to be a ‘down’ to this; it’s only been fifteen minutes[In fact, it’s been at least double that length of time].

Observed of Prover 3 by Prover 2 (comment post proving):
Her face was glowing during the proving; there was a lot of light in her eyes and an impish quality was evident.
Almost like it was hard for her to hold back the playfulness....you know that feeling of being in church and trying not to laugh out loud? Prover 3's notes post proving regarding this: I have been thinking about my uncontrolled laughing during the proving. It was a big question in my mind during the actual proving and continued to be since my return. It came to me in a meditation what the experience was about. I felt, for the first time in a very long time, FREE -free to express, to say and most importantly to feel joyful abandon. It was as if a door opened up and all my hidden/buried joy, hilarity, laughter and frivolity could pour out without guilt, shame, control and inhibition.

2:C1
When Master Prover was doing her thing [preparing the medicating potency], I was overcome with sadness.

4:C1
Me too. I felt an overwhelming sadness.

2:C1
I was trying to cry. Trying to go, uh huh, uh huh, but it wouldn’t come out.

4:C1
Prover 3, what are you drawing? [Prover 4 has been curious about what Prover 3 has been doing with her colored pens and journal – she’s asking again about what Prover 3 is drawing.]

3:C1
[Answers without looking up from her page]: A bug.
[She’s engrossed and appears to be entertaining herself in the act of drawing.]

3:C1
I wish I could see.

5:C1
[Prover 5 gets up from the table, and goes looking for eyeglasses. Prover 4 is giving her hints as to her closeness/or not by saying, “Warmer, warmer, oops, Cold, cold”. A game-like approach. Prover 5 finds Prover 1’s pinhole glasses; she puts them on and returns to the trituration area.]
This is my bug imitation. [She has the large black teardrop shaped pinhole glasses on, and she has her arms bent in front of her chest with her hands folded tightly near her mouth].

1:C1
Go ahead, be a bug for a minute! [The owner of the pinhole glasses encourages Prover 3 to try them out].

3:C1
[Prover 3 puts on the pinhole glasses]. After a few moments she queries: What’s the point?

3:C1
[Prover 4 has just declared that she’s having a hot flash (pre-existing state for her). Prover 3 takes this comment and ‘plays’ with it, in her giddy, silly, irreverent way.] She says: I am, too! I’m having a hot flash. I’m boiling! And, my eyes are vibrating….[she is still wearing the pinhole glasses].

Group:C1
The group falls into another ‘chatter session.’ Everyone chattering all at once.

4:C1
This is a very chatty remedy.

3:C1
It’s too bright in here.

4:C1
No wonder bugs act like they do, it’s because of their little dotty eyes.

3:C1
I want to share, I want to share bug glasses. [Like a child, excited by a new toy] [After a delay, she absorbs what Prover 4 has just said, and asks:] Do all bugs have dotty eyes?

3:C1
These are supposed to relax your eyes? [Questions ensue about the use of these therapeutic pinhole glasses to help improve eyesight.]

3:C1
[Prover 3 is still trying to experience how the pinhole glasses improve close vision. She pulls out her periodic table, holds it to her face, peers through the glasses. After a time, she gets it. She can read with them, and proclaims: This is a miracle - Bug glasses! [spoken with a tone of incredulousness]

1:C1
[Prover 1 is laughing; she’s finding Prover 3’s antics amusing]. She says: She’s a bug!

Group:C1
Other provers test out the pinhole glasses. All are curious but Prover 3 is the most moved by her experience.
While prover 5 is testing them she says: I’m going to the side. I can even read sideways.

3:C1
Somehow what was out here, that you could never see, because you were trying to focus on one thing, it becomes available! At the same time.

2:C1
I wonder if that’s how autistic kids see?

3:C1
[Prover 3 is now drawing large, black framed spectacles in her proving journal.]

2:C1
[Prover 2 is very quiet; she’s currently doing the actual trituration and has been notably quiet as she does so.]

Group: C1
More talk continues about the pinhole glasses and exercises to help retain far vision. Provers want to know more about this… Chatter ensues…

2:C1
[Has been standing while she triturates; she now sits down] and says: “My hips are killing me”.

4:C1
Oh, prover 3, this is beautiful! [She is looking at a drawing Prover 3 has made, in her journal; it’s a
bug with black framed eyeglasses and antennae that are fern-shaped and colored green.]
Picture
3:C1
[As she’s sketching] she says: The lily has to grow around these ferns that are sensitive, and ostrich ferns.

2:C1
[While actually triturating with the mortar and pestle, Prover 2 has a pain at the margin of her right shoulder blade. She wants to know more] and asks: Is that that the gall bladder meridian? [Prover 1 answers that it is the bladder. Prover 2 double checks]
asking: The bladder bladder, or the gall bladder? [Prover confirms that it is the bladder].

3:C1
Bladder, bladder, blahhhhder. BLAHHHHDER. [She is vocally playing with the sound of the word].

4:C1
Oh S, that’s gorgeous! [Admiration of Prover 3’s sketch; a bug with a thin body that’s a stem, like a plant, and she’s mixed her blue pen and her yellow pen to make green].

4:C1
All I can smell is Bounce, that fabric softener. [There is laundry being done nearby and this fragrance is dominant in the room].
It’s really bothering me.

3:C1
And it’s real Bounce, not a mystical thing. [Witty quip]

3:C1
I’ve never done this. [Novice, initiation.]

5:C1
You are grinding perfectly… [Experienced prover praises technique].

2:C1
Why didn’t you tell me that? I could have done it a different way. [Tone and attitude is as of a pouting child – envious for approval.]

Group:C1
Some more chatter; two people speaking at once, etc.

2:C1
There’s something about this…, talking over things, like two…, or ‘in tandem’.

3:C1
Complaints about things – do you hear it? It was going too smoothly, and then the road got really rough. [She’s now triturating; the roughness/rough road she is describing is also what she’s experiencing in working the mortar and pestle.]

5:C1
So, Prover 3, what’s your ring? The white one? [Prover 3 tells about her ring; the story of when she got it and a time when she lost it and then it was returned to her].

3:C1
The shape and everything, I never take it off, I think it’s become me. I wore it since the moment I put it on. [Referring to the ring Prover 5 asked her about].

5:C1
[Picks up the‘lost-ring-returned’ aspect of Prover 3’s story] and says: I took my wedding ring off to put on hand lotion…, forgot that I didn’t have it on as I stepped out of the car. It fell out, and this is my wedding ring that he bought on the Ponte Vecchio!
I’m devastated. We’re looking for it, looking for it…., can’t find it…, then the next morning as he’s about to give up looking, my husband finds it, he spotted a glint out of the corner of his eye. He comes home and says, “Will you marry me?”

3:C1
Scraping is boring. It’s really hard too, it’s really hard to scrape. I don’t mind the grinding, but the scraping...

3:C1
I don’t know…,getting close to it [doing the actual trituration work], makes kind of a downer. Not the fumes, the real thing.

2:C1
The chocolate bug dance!
[Another witty quip that plays on themes, the ‘bug’ from earlier, ‘dancing’ from even earlier, and now, the ‘desire for chocolate’, being delivered by prover 4 with a dance]

3:C1
I’m learning. [Prover 3 applies herself wholeheartedly to the job at hand, and while actually triturating has her working arm elbow out at a strong 90 degree angle. This position doesn’t look natural or comfortable, but it’s how she’s working the
mortar and pestle].

4:C1
I put ‘prover 4’on most pages, but on one page one I put ‘3’.

3:C1
Scraping is…,it’s a serious job, you could just do it…, but you gotta dig deep.

3:C1
[She has just been offered some chocolate – she wasn’t able to eat any while doing the manual trituration; however she declines the offer.] I don’t want to alter this silly state I’m in. I think if I eat this, I will vomit.

3:C2
Prover 1, can I have my tablet? [Prover 1 had been using Prover 3’s writing ‘tablet’/journal; Prover 1 now asking for it back]

4:C2
Whoa, look what you’ve done there! [She’s commenting on the drawing Prover 1 did in Prover 3’s journal]
Picture
4:C2
The trituration feels slippery. My left hand feels slippery like it has lots of hand cream/lotion on it.

2:C2
You know Hildegard [Hildegard von Bingen] came up; something about that right now is very strong for me.

4:C2
A woman philosopher and writer.

2:C2
No, she’s a nun, physician, and herbalist, and she got…, words from God, basically. And the Catholic Church…

4:C2
…killed her?

2:C2
No, she was given a ton of money from benefactors. They used to be in an Abbey with men and women, but she convinced the Pope so that the women could be separate from the men. She felt when living together they couldn’t do their work, too much distraction. A lot of what we know of herbal medicine is from Hildegard; she was a musician, she wrote these chants. But she was a mystic, more than anything. She was in love with the natural world, understood healing plants. A select group of women.

3:C2
Because if you didn’t want to get married, there was only one place for you to go. [Admonishing tone of voice.]

2:C2
Women back in those days went as young girls; Hildegard was 7 or 8 when she was given to the convent.

1:C2
I read this novel, Sacred Hearts, [author, Sarah Dunant] it’s about women in convents. In those times parents were having a very hard time doing dowry for girls, they’d marry one girl, and the less attractive one, would go to the convent. This is about the
convent, how women learned to make a living together, the politics and all…, but there is a healer there, grows the plants, makes the medicine, it is historical, the book takes you to the times…, and the politics of the church.

2:C2
I always wanted to be in a convent. I went to a Catholic school. I loved the nuns; I loved the energy of the convent. Well, I’m also, if you put on the song, “The Stripper”, it’s all I can do from jumping on the table and dancing, so there’s that aspect [to me],
too. [When some doubt is expressed about this, Prover 2 continues to explain.] Really! You’ve got to see the movie, Burlesque”, if you really want to know me. I love that move. My husband said while we were watching the movie, “Get up, go on, and get up” [and dance]. I love that movie, the costumes…, so those two aspects [nun and striptease dancer] But the nun piece is huge for me, from the time I was a little kid. In fact I used to make my costume, every year for Halloween, it was a nun costume, and every year it got getter and better. Finally one year one mother told on me, if I did it again she would tell the priest – that it was a sacrilege. From then on, I was a witch.

5:C2
You remember when I was treating the nuns? It’s been since the early 2000’s they fired me; too many nuns were leaving the convent. Somehow this family, the X’s, found out I treated the nuns in the Carmelites. That mom found out I had treated them, so she decided I was the person to be her family’s homeopath…I treated her, her five children, her best friend, and her best friend’s five children, I treated aunts and uncles, because I treated the Carmelites – she believes my ability is a ‘gift from
god’.

3:C2
[Prover 3 is now very quiet, drawing in her‘tablet’ but not speaking, and hasn’t been for some time – this is a notable
change of interaction level for her, very quiet, introspective.]

3:C2
Did the lights do something weird? [Prover 1 had just dimmed the overhead lights; Prover 3 had been engrossed in her drawing and didn’t observe Prover 1 getting up, but she noticed the lights “do something weird”.]

Group:C2
[Laughter, in response to Prover 3’s question about the lights; they’re still responding to her as if her intent is jest; they
haven’t noticed, yet, that Prover 3’s tone has shifted.]

5:C2
[After hearing Prover 3 speak of all the ‘twisting’ she’s feeling in her body, asks]: Aren’t you on a remedy for twisting…?
[before her current remedy, Prover 3 was on Dirca (Dirca palustris), which she confirmed]: “…is about twisting”.

2:C2
[Prover 2 gets out her computer, begins to work on it; she’s asked what she’s doing.] I need to know if Dirca has Thulium in it. I
think Thulium has element of twisting in it.

3:C2
I always wanted to live in hell. [She’s making a drawing in her journal that is only shades of black and grey – a rustic looking
shape.]

4:C2
It’s why she always gravitates towards grave yards. [Prover 4 did choose to visit the historic graveyard in the nearby town of Stowe just two days ago].

3:C2
Can you turn up the light? It’s getting tooo dark in here.

1:C2
[Gets up to turn up the lights. As she does so, she does a short dance, swinging her hips, singing]: “Move your Boogie Body”

Group:C2
Chatter, amongst the group. This time the chatter initiated with talk about the song Prover 1 has just sung “Jealous of My Boogie” (from RuPaul’s album Champion, 2009). Cameron Diaz does it on line. Sir Lancelot. Sir butt-a-lot. No, it’s Drew Barrymore. Where did you know it from? From jazzercise.

3:C2
Does it have Thulium in it? [prover 3 asks prover 2 who has been working at her computer since her question about Dirca and
Thulium].

2:C2
I don’t know…, I’m very slow.

3:C2
[Prover 3 has been drawing in her ‘tablet’.] She now starts a survey, asking: What is your favorite animal?

4:C2
[quickest reply:] Cheetah!

5:C2
No!

3:C2
You don’t believe her? The simplest answers…

4:C2
[Prover 4 notices what Prover 3 had been drawing until now; what she’d been so quietly drawing]. She comments: You thought you’d draw a rock and you would calm down? Jesus Christ, Prover 3!

Prover 3’s“rock” sketch:
Picture

5:C2
Prover 4, you have to pick a different animal.

5:C2
[admonishing tone] Prover 4, you’re using the back of the spoon!

4:C2
Am I? [surprised]

5:C2
Is that the way you always do it?

4:C2
No, [she pauses…, doubt enters in]; I don’t know.

3:C2
I told you…, scraping is a really hard job.

5:C2
Oh, I have to do it this way.
[she demonstrates]

3:C2
I had to think [while scraping], and it got really boring.

1:C2
It’s almost a twisting aspect.

3:C2
It got really boring, because I had to focus on the right way to do it.
[Adamant tone.]

5:C2
[Can’t let go of Prover 4’s choice of favorite animals]. She demands: Pick another animal.

4:C2
Giraffe. Not the right one, Prover 5 tells me.

5:C2
No, it’s a cat, but cheetah isn’t quite it.

3:C2
I’m making a list of everyone’s favorite animal.

5:C2
[Understands now that she misunderstood the question] Oh, I thought it was who you are as an animal.

3:C2
What’s your favorite animal?

Group:C2
A discussion ensues, about favorite animals.
I’d have to say dog.
Of all the animals in the world, I love all the animals in the world.
If you could have one living with you?
I would love to have a bird.
A macaw, perhaps?
Perhaps.
Prover 2, do you have a favorite animal?

4:C2
[through all this, Prover 4 is scraping down with her full attention].

3:C2
I’m twisting my hair right now. [Twisting it around my fingers].

Group:C2
[The animal discussion resumes]:
Buffalo…, it’s hard to say, I love large birds, herons, storks, anything that has the capacity for enduring flight, long flight,
I feel really connected with that. And that’s to do with buffalo, too, that feeling of endurance. I’m intrigued by other animals, I love watching them, but I don’t have a deep understanding, connection…, and elephants. I love cheetahs because they’re agile and they’re quiet.

1:C2
[Prover 1 initiates a change in the animal discussion] by saying: Cockroaches are horrible.

Group:C2
[Others join in with the opposite of their favorite animal].
The only thing that really creeps me out are those millipedes, even more than cockroaches, they have too many legs.
I don’t like things with arched backs that go like this, cornered rats, or hyenas, who take pleasure in suffering. Hyena – it’s not a clean kill.

5:C2
Did I ever tell you about killing rats?

2:C2
Shooting them?

5:C2
No, hitting them with shovels. A few years ago they were digging up Delaware Avenue, and there were rats – they were all over the place, for probably about a year. I’m not afraid of rats, but I would hear my next door neighbor’s scream, I’d go over, pick up the shovel, whack it, shovel it up, dump it out – for about a year, I was a rat killer.

4:C2
I find they’re too fast, darting in and out.

5:C2
I think when the neighbor, Pat, would scream at them, they’d go ahhh! [She ‘freezes’ her body, as if in response to a scream].

3:C1
I think I could kill a person easier than an animal. [Pause…] That’s probably not true.

1:C2
You kill mosquitoes, too? [So, now a discussion about killing or not killing animals ensues.]

5:C2
Spiders, I don’t kill spiders.

3:C2
I announce when I’m vacuuming, they can leave, or not. I don’t like to kill mosquitoes; they’re females, just trying to feed their
kids.

4:C2
Yeah, but they want to eat you to feed their kids.

3:C2
The ‘most generous person’ in the world and you’re begrudging them a little snack. [Jesting tone.]

4:C2
Bees, if they get on the window, I catch them in a glass, slide paper…

5:C2
I kill slugs. I drown them in cantaloupes. I put beer in cantaloupes.

2:C2
[Prover 2, is still immersed as she’s checking something out on her computer.]

3:C2
Have you noticed how time is now?

4:C2
Who? Tom. [She misheard; thought she heard ‘Tom’ when Prover 3 had said ‘time’.]

3:C2
No, time. I thought it was a short time. I was shocked, it was an hour. Time is not necessarily on our side, Prover 3.
[Mock warning/admonishing tone]

1:C2
It just feels really dark in here.

5:C2
Do you think it’s cloudier in here?

3:C2
Yeah, I looked it up on my i-phone… look. [Just a bit earlier she’d gotten up from the trituration table, and went to get her phone.] At the time she’d declared: I have to find out what the weather is going to be.

Group:C2
Chatter, and discussion about the weather.

3:C2
What’s a platitude?

4:C2
[Answers Prover 3]: It’s an idiom, but positive.

3:C2
[still looking at her i-phone.] My husband said, I speak in “complete idiom”. He said people of different cultures won’t know what you’re saying… I said, “they better learn, these are American idioms!”

Group:C2
“Time is on your side….” [Most of or all of the provers sing/join in to sing the first line of this song…]

2:C2
Thyme…, I’m looking up…[she’s still engrossed with searches on her computer].The reason Thuja is what it is because of thujone,which is high in Thulium. That’s why…

3:C2
Really? [Surprised/shocked tone]

4:C2
You know – Oxalic acid, Strawberry and Cowbird…

3:C2
Yes. I just didn’t know about Thulium and Thuja.

5:C2
So you know, guys, there’s this movie, I can’t remember, I can’t remember the name, with John Goodman and Denzel Washington, this evil sprit goes from person to person. The guy who’s been possessed sings, “Time is on my side” – that’s how Denzel Washington knows. He learns that it’s about touching another person…, Denzel decides he’s going to go out into the woods, the spirit follows him out into the middle of nowhere, he’s got this plan, he’s dying, at this point, he’s dying, and he thinks the sprit will come into him, and then when he dies it will die, too. But who shows up, is John Goodman, his best friend, then he realizes the spirit is in him. He’s singing the song, “Time is on my side…”. Denzel shoots his best friend… just before he himself dies, the [bad] sprit jumps into a cat.

4:C2
Nice picture, Prover 1. Looks like a fern. [Prover 4 has been observant, watchful of what other provers are doing in their journals, especially their drawings/sketches.]

5:C2
So this is funny, it’s not so much about family as I thought it would be.

3:C2
No it’s about being twisted, in whatever way that is.

5:C2
I think nuns are twisted.

1:C2
If you read that book, some are fine, and some are completely twisted. [Prover 1 is continuing to draw in her notebook]

4:C2
Catholic school…,all my friends told me how horrible it was to be taught by these nuns, they beat them.

1:C2
And they love to humiliate.

5:C2
And that thing they would do…, about kneeling on things…
[Prover 5 has had knee pain with this proving, and she’s been trying to recall this kneeling ‘thing’ some nuns would impose on disobedient students.]

2:C2
Not all nuns are like that.

1:C2
In the book, “Sacred Hearts”, there’s this nun, she was a healer, and there was this novice that came in, to escape from her
parents, and she had a lover. She had this plan…, and you see how, in the end, the healer-nun helps her to escape. It was an amazing twisted story, the convent, the politics with the church, and this thing going on; this nun got so abused, to break her into the thing.

5:C2
Hey, Prover 2, I think you need to come back.

2:C2
[Prover 2, who has been quietly absorbed in her computer searching, immediately sets aside her computer and gives up what she was doing – willingly obedient. The look on her face, at the moment she heard Prover 5 address her, is almost as if she’s been woken out of a spell – like she had gotten a bit ‘lost’ in her work with the computer.]

3:C2
Nuns are a sisterhood.
Picture
2:C2
I wrote that down here [in her proving journal], I wrote “sisterhood”.

3:C2
Da! [She’s been sketching what looks like a dark cloud.] Nuns have habits. Bad habits. [Laughs –thinking of drugged feeling, habits (addictions/costume of nuns)]

4:C2
[She looks at Prover 3’s journal] and exclaims: “Bad habits!”

1:C2
Whoopi Goldberg, that movie…?

Group:C2
“Sister Act”.

5:C2
It’s on Broadway right now.

3:C2
I’m going to write, ‘dark’. They have BAD habits.

2:C2
[Rests her head on the table] and says: I feel like checking out. This feels like all too much stimulation, I just want to be quiet.
I just want to go somewhere and be quiet.

3:C2
We’ll have a moment of silence.

5:C2
No, if it’s only a moment of silence, it’s a platitude.

2:C2
This is so nun-ny, it’s not even funny!

3:C2
Nutty?

2:C2
No, nun-ny.

5:C2
I thought it was family, but it’s not; it’s sisterhood.

1:C2
I was talking about my evil sister. [While on the hike to collect the trituration specimen earlier this morning].

4:C2
And Prover 3 was preparing dinner for us. [Example of individual contributions to a collective effort/goal].

3:C2
[Prover 3 is speaking; She’s using a low volume voice and it sounds hushed, too, as if meant only for certain ears.]

3:C2
[Prover 3 had made a jesting comment, it makes her laugh] and she says: I’ll be glad when this goes away soon. I’ll be sick from laughing so much. It’s really too much…!

2:C2
I so want to lie on the floor. I won’t go far; I’ll still be in the circle.

Group:C2
Sings the lyrics: “Will the circle be unbroken, bye and bye lord, bye and bye.”

3:C2
I filled two Kleenexes from laughing, not crying.

1:C2
It’s not about feeling good; it is about feeling serious.

5:C2
Prover 3, are you ok? [Prover 3 is standing up on a chair…]

3:C2
I have to climb up a mountain to get the water. [She’s standing on a chair to retrieve a new jug of water from a high shelf.]

5:C2
[Was humming for a while; she didn’t notice it herself, but others did and commented.]

3:C2
If I could juggle, I would juggle these. [She holds up the potatoes she’s working with in the kitchen as she preps dinner.]

5:C2
Look what I drew. [In her journal she has sketched a little female face with curly hair and sweeping bangs.]
Picture
4:C2
How are you feeling, Prover 2? [Prover 2 is still lying on the floor.]

2:C2
Ok. [pause], then says: You know what? This is stupid, but I sort of feel like this is my job. [she continues to lay, prostrate on the floor.]

3:C2
[Responds to Prover 2’s comment about her ‘job’], and says: …to be in the‘Zero Position’, that position you’re in [lying on the floor], in my meditation school, it’s called ‘Zero’.

2:C2
I’ve got to tell you something. I’m lying there like this [prostrate on the ground], listening to everything going on, and I feel like I’m levitating. And what happened was this all opened up, [indicates her forehead area at the middle eye]. And this is kind
of scary, it’s like everything, everything, went inside. [Pause], I can’t even describe this, it was like there was this opening, and everything just kind of in-folded, whoooo, I don’t know how to describe this. It’s like an enveloping – right through here [third eye area], it’s beautiful, but it was scary, an enveloping of it all, of it ALL. That’s all I can tell you. I think I had to do that.

1:C2
Prover 1 begins scraping now, after a timing instruction from Master Prover, “scraping now, Prover 1.”

Group:C2
The group sings the first line of a song, a song that involves Prover 1’s name, only the group switches out the verb of the line
in the lyric to be “scraping”. Prover 1 has just begun scraping down in the trituration process.

5:C2
Prover 5 now spends some time telling the other proving participants the etymology of/meaning behind their Christian/first
names. Warrior, sister of Adonis, island, royalty, princess, etc.

3:C2
Confides that her ‘real’ name; not the one she’s known by in this group.

5:C2
Tells that that name she goes by is actually shortened from a longer name. She said: “Actually my name is…”.

2:C2
I thought you said, “My first name is Ashley…” [Mishearing; happening again. In this example, Prover 2 thought she heard Ashley” when the actual word spoken was “actually”.]

4:C2
So did I. [Prover 4‘misheard’ the same world; perhaps the issue is clumsy enunciation.]

5:C2
[Continues with details about her given/Christian/first name], she explains: The reason I was named [female proper name] is
because my mom’s best friend had her baby before my mom, and they named her [female name with etymology of princess’],so they named me [another female name that is the nickname for the name given to the baby born before her].

4:C2
My head is really dull, spacey; woozy head.

2:C2
You should lie down on the floor. I feel so much better [after having lain on the floor].

3:C2
I feel it so much in my lower bowel; as if I could have diarrhea. I need to say things more than one time…

2:C2
“Tandem!”

2:C2
[Puts on the pinhole/“bug glasses”]. Oh, this is like being in confessional.

1:C2
It’s about convents and nuns, confessional.

2:C2
That’s just me.

1:C2
No, no, the whole thing about that book, nuns living in community, and the superior nun, she was planning the most amazing
political role to keep that convent intact and untouched. At that time they were coming down on everything not aligned with the
desires of the Catholic church, and they were still having some level of freedom in the convent – they could think, perform, grow things. The church was ‘eyeing’ them. And, then this liberation of the young one [nun] to be given to this boy, was politically motivated, it’s amazing.

5:C2
Did you ever read the book, The Eight? It’s about William the Conqueror, finding the Holy Grail, but it’s about ‘the knights tour’, a chess game, you take the knight, a particular mathematical formula, the knight moves only in L… The Holy Grail was hidden, was hidden in this chess set, the nuns were hiding it and William the Conqueror was trying to find it, or he had tried to in the past, it’s about trying to find the grail. It’s called “The Eight”.

2:C2
So the game, the game is exactly what the Holy Grail is. You’re telling me it’s a game?

5:C2
There’s a chess board, the Holy Grail is carried in that chess board.

2:C2
What if the Holy Grail, is not a thing, its knowledge, and each person holds some of this knowledge… one person holds
this, one person holds this…, another person holds this… Like X [female proper name] said the other day, “this is magic, each person contributing their two cents worth”. Maybe that’s what it is, certain moves, certain angles, sacred geometry, like a chess game.

5:C2
So the interesting thing is, it starts going through history, the knights tour, then it comes up to present day, I don’t know
if it is during the French Revolution, World War II,but its carried it out of Europe and it ends up in the Green Mountains of Vermont! [The Green Mountains of Vermont is where this trituration is being done.]

2:C2
I wondered if it was “smuggled” in?

5:C2
It gets lost, though. Its all about nuns, and priests, hiding the Holy Grail. I might not have described it well.

3:C3
It’s by the vestibule of the fish. [Prover 3 has had difficulty learning the term ‘vesica pisces’ and she has given the term her own nickname/play on words, ‘vestibule of the fish’.]

2:C3
Here we are with nun thing – vestibule of a church.

3:C3
So is the fish. If you are a nun, you marry Jesus. Who is DEAD!!! He’s dead. End of story. They say he got up and lived.
But he died then, or he lied.

4:C3
Some say He’s in the south of France.

2:C3
Who said this?

3:C3
My brother, and my sister and my mother.

5:C3
Look at my woodland nymph. [She shows the sketch she’s just drawn in her journal]
Picture
3:C3
Those people are not good [admonishing/warning tone to voice], with those ears.

5:C3
Prover 3 thinks this is a ‘bad man’; I think it is Gobi.

2:C3
Why are they not good? [Innocent, genuinely curious tone to this question.]

3:C3
They do mean things.

1:C3
He sacrificed for him, Gobi, in Harry Potter.

5:C3
Werner Herzog, Caves of Chauvet, documentary. [‘Cave of Forgotten Dreams’, by Werner Herzog] Amazing all the hoops he had to jump through…, and he could only go for 40 minutes. He had to build a special camera.

Group:C3
The group spins off into a session of chatter again. Chatter about movies, IMAX theatres, etc. Talking together, multiple conversations between the five participants.

3:C3
[Another prover asked her, “Do you feel out of ‘the field’ when cooking?” To be cooking she is working about 2 meters/6 feet away from the trituration table]. No, I feel in it, but I’ve calmed down. My silly thing went down. But I still want to make some of those silly remarks, they’re coming to me, but I feel a lot better not saying them. Not getting whipped up into that silliness, because it’s exhausting. It feels good, and not.

2:C3
[Participants are snacking on food – bread, cheese, apples bread, olives… we had some left-over roast lamb on hand,
too. Prover 3 is in the kitchen, preparing the food and she asks, “Who wants lamb?”]
Lamb of God - Christ who takes away the sins of the world and brings us peace. Agnus Dei - Latin, Lamb of God.

Group:C3
[Quiet for a time now, everyone is eating…]

3:C3
I was able to do that, in the middle of everything – prepare a meal.

2:C3
[Prover 2 (observed while doing the trituration process) – she’s grinding comparatively quickly.] About 2 minutes after this observation, she says: This is like a feat of endurance.

1:C3
I did it all at once, to 3C, by myself. [questions ensue from the group, about what she triturated, how she came to do it, etc…]

3:C3
[She is wearing the pinhole/bug glasses again and is asked, “Why?”], she answers: I think it will relax my back.

4:C3
Really? [Incredulous tone]

3:C3
Yes, everything is connected. Everything is connected.

3:C3
Prover 4 asks Prover 3: As soon as you sat down [from doing cooking chores in the kitchen], you started feeling giddy again, didn’t you? Yes. And my back hurts, it hurts, my low back.

3:C3
I have to ask another question of each of you, who is the person you admire the most?

4:C3
I feel like this is a Miss America pageant!

Group:C3
Provers name people they admire. Discussion ensues.

5:C3
That whole celibacy thing, to me its way out of balance.

3:C3
It’s not your thing, Prover 5; it’s a spiritual practice – that whole energy goes into something else.

2:C3
Prover 3, one of the first things we talked about this morning, I was thinking about you and your daughter, and I asked you if you
believed in karma and divine retribution. Then I said, when I lost the baby I always felt it was divine retribution for having had an abortion…,and in the context of what’s happening right now – the idea of celibacy and nuns, my god…, it takes on all this
significance! It’s really weird…, and the first part of this week I was feeling my knees, and as a kid I had severe knee pain that was so bad, and I think it was from kneeling on kneelers so much, we had to go to church, the time it would bother me most was in church.

5:C3
What is it…,the nuns making you kneel in the corner of the classroom, on sand…, or something, something you would think is
innocuous, but it really would kill their knees after a long time…?

5:C3
We thought for sure you guys would show up in some sort of purple. She has purple on, and she has purple on, and she has purple on. I have nothing purple, but I bought a purple bandana from my dog.

1:C3
[Who is lying on the floor, face down, head on folded hands, legs straight out behind her with big toes touching.] I’m having the same sensation of floating. There’s this fairyland, trees and moss and little creatures. But the heaviness lifts when I’m in this position. Third eye opens, darkness lifted and I have a vision, almost like you’re dreaming; there is this little fairy world,
being under the root of a tree, moss, little passages, wetness – it feels cool and nice.
Picture
3:C3
The blue berries are ‘fairy food’. I think those berries, are blue… (she’s referring to the flower buds of the specimen of Streptopus amplexifolius we used today for this trituration – the buds were tightly closed, and could easily be thought of as ‘berries’), when you showed it to me…, I went, I think they’re hallucinogenic. The fairies take them to be high!

2:C3
Oh my god, this is female anatomy between the legs, my drawing! [She holds up her sketch]. It is gynecological exam time.
That is so strange. Wow!!

Picture
1:C3
It’s a “girly” plant.

1:C3
[She is still laying face down, on the floor]. I’m having palpitations in my heart. I had some of that sensation of the third eye opening and the darkness lifted, and it seemed the headache got freed by that; it was a sensation of something coming from the outside in.

2:C3
I think this is kind of a mystical thing; there’s a story here about what women are capable of. And what they’re capable of in groups. And I think this substance, the lily, we waited for something to reveal itself to us. We were all on the walk. But we couldn’t do it then. We had to go through the week here together before we could do it. Something about the purity of the
group. Bringing pure intention, transpiration, whatever…, this thing comes in through your third eye.

1:C3
As soon as I laid down (prostrate on the floor), and then got back up, the light is back.

3:C3
In my mediation school, that position (laying face down on the floor, head on folded hands) is called the ‘zero position’. Make sure your toes touch – that completes the circle.

3:C3
That sounds like a bird, a crow. [She’s triturating now, and scraping down, noisily; the sound of her scraping is quite noisy at this
point] The sound of scarping [porcelain spoon on mortar], it’s like a bird. It reminds me about something…

2:C3
It’s like on bone.

3:C3
It is. It’s kind of tribal. It shouldn’t be this rough in here, I keep thinking, this is a rough road, it’s a rough road.

2:C3
It has to be, or things wouldn’t grind.

1:C3, 4:C3 and 5:C3
[Provers 1, 4 and 5 are all notably quiet at this point. The atmosphere has changed, it is more ‘still’ and almost peaceful; Prover 2 and 3 are having a quiet conversation, just the two of them. And, the change of ‘tone’ of the proving at this point is as if there’s a comfortable space been made to include silence and stillness.]

3:C3
I wonder what the derivative of sister is.

2:C3
I’d look it up on the computer, but I’m afraid I wouldn’t come back. Last time, I was so slow, sitting there, looking...

3:C3
Now instead of silly, I feel stoned. I feel heavy, but it isn’t over me, its coming from the inside, in my head.

5:C3
This is what I just wrote. I went to the bathroom, for the third time. I was nauseated. When I peed I thought I saw [menstrual] blood on toilet paper… I wiped again, and there wasn’t. Right now… I’m feeling sad – sad that I’ve gone through menopause and I’ll never have children again. That is not me! I’m so glad I’m going through menopause.

3:C3
I’m sooo tired. [She has just finished her 2nd set of trituration grinding and scraping.]

2:C3
[Suggests to Prover 3], Try lying on the floor.

3:C3
[Gets up do follow Prover 2’s suggestion], and says; I’m going to.

Group:C3
[All provers are watching Prover 3 who has lain on the floor, face down, prostrate in the‘zero position’.]

2:C3
I wasn’t going to say anything about this, but I will now. I had one of those occurrences/dream/visions. I’m dressed all in black and white, and I can feel my cheek, my head is on my hand, turned to one side, and I can feel cold marble floor on my face, and there’s a person on a throne, or some place of authority, across the room. And I’ve just said, “Yes”, to something. I had a choice, but I’ve just said, yes, to whatever this is. Then everything goes black. So, it’s the idea of black and white, prostration, saying “yes” to something, but not from a place of weakness, from a place of competency.

5:C3
But also that person (on the throne/position of authority) killed you.

2:C3
Yes, that’s the sensation I get.

5:C3
So, you’re saying, “Yes”, and you need to die. You’re saying, “Yes”, because you know you need to do this. You say, “Yes”, and everything goes black.

5:C3
It’s so strange because I changed from my jeans and t-shirt to black and white [clothing].

2:C3
[Is wearing black and white clothing, too.]

3:C3
[In response to hearing Prover 2 also suffer some dental pain], Prover 3 says: Maybe it’s about breaking out of constriction -
like bridges and crowns.

2:C3
When you take a vow of silence, there are all these things you never articulate. Vows, poverty, chastity and obedience.

3:C3
And the big one is you marry Jesus.

2:C3
[Upon seeing Prover 5 get up from the trituration table to lie down on the floor, while Prover 3 is already down on the floor]
says: We should have pictures of this, all these prostrate women. It’s unbelievable.

2:C3
[Gets up and takes photos of Prover 3 and Prover 5 who are now both lying face down on the floor.]

3:C3
[Another prover has asked her if she’s ok] and she answers: Yeah, it’s like I can’t get enough air, though. I need air. I need air.
[Prover 3 walks out towards the balcony, opens the door]. I feel constricted. I feel very constricted right here (indicates region of her diaphragm), my liver and spleen battling it out - diaphragmatic constriction.

2:C3
That’s where the nuns bind their breasts to flatten them out.

5:C3
How do you spell “shoulder”? I had this stabbing pain at the beginning, and both times I spelled it “sholder”.

4:C3
The ‘illiterate nun’ remedy. [Witty quip.]

4:C3
[Notices that Prover 3 is gone from the room], and says: Hey, this isn’t right.

Group:C3
Where did Prover 3 go?
She’s outside in the air.
Or is she in the bathroom?

4:C3
She threw herself off [Laughs].
[Prover 3 had last been noted heading towards the balcony].

1:C3
I thought the same thing.

2:C3
I thought you said parapet. What a riot!

Group:C3
She’s actually the flying nun, she’s out there…[flying] She uses that (the balcony) as her take off point. [More laughter].

1:C3
Sally Fields, come into the field! Sally Fields, come back into the field!

4:C3
The Flying Nun! [Laughter]

Group:C3
[Prover 3 returns and the group gives her an accounting of what she missed] saying:
I thought you threw yourself off the balcony. And laughed.
I thought she said ‘parapet’.
I said, Sally Fields, come back to the field!

End.

Physicals

Generalities

1:C1
Right side feels uneasy; I want to sway my body.

1:C1
I want to stretch.

1:C1
I feel shaky.
Picture
3:C1
How come we’re not dying to have food?

2:C1
Chocolate! [Spoken with lusty/desirous tone]

4:C1
Chocolate! [Prover 4 seconds that sentiment, and gets up to get some chocolate from
a nearby shelf; she brings the packages of chocolate back to the group, and does
a little dance along the way].

3:C1
I wish I had some of that coffee form Milan, not from America, that real coffee from Milan, and then with milk, just to make it a little light and fluffy.

2:C2
Chocolate tastes especially good – salty.

4:C2
[Talking about food; about enjoying salt, the taste of salt in the Salt & Pepper Chocolate].
Ooooh, caramels [lusty tone], those French ones, oh my god! Made with Normandy butter, and they’re softer, not harder, chewy and kind of soft, and they put really nice salt on them.

3:C2
I feel sick. Twisting inside. Everything, I feel my left ovary, my head, my low back hurts; everything is twisting and then I have to untwist it. My head feels ‘twirly’ and I want to move my head to untwist it. There’s twisting…,and untwisting won’t give relief.

3:C2
Now it’s all twisting. It all has the centre, [the left side of her neck], this is where it is, heavy…, it’s trying to open up to let other people in.

2:C2
I so want to lie on the floor. I won’t go far; I’ll still be in the circle. [Prover 2 is lying on her stomach, arms up and folded, head resting atop hands]

2:C2
I have to lie like this. On stomach, face down, hands under forehead.]

2:C2
Master Prover, I feel I’m levitating, I feel I’m not even on the ground. [This reported after lying face down on the floor for about only 5 minutes.]

1:C2
Prover 5 was humming, and I think it was out of pain [pain in teeth].

4:C2
My eyes & I are tired.

2:C2
You should lie down on the floor [Prover 2 advises Prover 4 as she complains that her head feels really dull and spacey]. I feel so much better [after having lain on the floor – face down, prostrate position].

4:C3
[Is lying on the floor, on her back], she says: Oh, stretching…,this feels good.
[Her position: lying on her back, right leg bent at knee. Left leg draped over the right leg and hip curled towards the right,
too. Observing her doing this stretch, her body looks quite twisted/contorted.]

4:C3
I’m enjoying lying on the floor. It’s very calming. It doesn’t seem as stimulating as sitting at the table.

5:C3
You know what the flavor is that’s really, really good? It’s salt. I tasted the salt more in the salt and pepper flavored chocolate, and the salt on this focaccia bread is so good.

5:C3
I think everything is from here… [gestures to indicate her neck area], no, maybe from here, [gestures to indicate the area
from her upper arm, right near the attachment of deltoids, and upwards to the top of her head], up. Mainly from my shoulders, and all of this, [hands sweeping up her neck], jaws, teeth, eyes - headache. Tension.

5:C3
It’s all better for pressure. Doing this feels really good. Shoulders, neck, over eyes. Stiff neck ameliorated by pressure. But, not at the joint of jaw.

1:C3
[Who is lying on the floor, face down, head on folded hands, legs straight out behind her with big toes touching.]
I’m having the same sensation of floating. There’s this fairyland, trees and moss and little creatures. But the heaviness lifts when I’m in this position. And vision, almost like you’re dreaming; then there is this little fairy world, being under root of tree, moss, little passages, wetness; it feels cool and nice.

3:C3
I feel exhausted.

5:C3
I think in every trituration I’ve done there’s exhaustion.

3:C3
I was slow to come to the physicals. [Getting up out of her chair, and standing] she reports:
Oh I feel very stiff now. Stiff everywhere, stiff, stiff, all my joints are stiff.

Vertigo
No symptoms.

Head

1:C1
Tingly feeling in right side of head and right side of face – almost crawling in my cranium.

5:C1
Headache, frontal, it’s like right behind my eyes, radiating out from my head, [gestures to the sides of her head], also
travelling down here, turns and gestures down her spine, to the shoulder blade region of the dorsal back.

1:C1
Funny thing, you were talking about eyes, and now I have a headache. Headache at the area of the eyes.

5:C1
Head pain [drawing indicates pain is felt in the top third of the head, from the temples up].

3:C2
I feel sick. Twisting inside. Everything, I feel my left ovary, my head, my low back hurts; everything is twisting and then I have to untwist it. My head feels ‘twirly’ and I want to move my head to untwist it. There’s twisting…,and untwisting won’t give relief.

5:C2
I have this blazing headache, from temple to temple right behind my eyes. It’s blazing. Really, really blazing headache.

1:C2
I had this headache. I started to do this [making a drawing in her notebook]… it got better.

5:C2
I think that’s why my headache started to get bad, I can’t drink [she’s currently doing the trituration so her hands are occupied].

1:C2
Dehydration will cause severe headaches.

1:C2
I still have a headache.

4:C2
Head/sinus pain.

4:C2
Still headache– sinus.

4:C2
Dull frontal headache continues.

1:C2
What I have, is a background headache. As soon as I get off [take my concentration off of] my little doodling thing, I feel the headache. [Her doodle is shown below].
Picture
4:C2
My head is really dull, spacey. Woozy head.

5:C2
Prover 1, when she looks at this drawing [shown above], it takes her headache away!

1:C2
It is also, this is very dark, I drew it in this very dark way, and it relived the head ache in some way.

5:C3
I think everything is from here… [gestures to indicate her neck area], no, maybe from here, [gestures to indicate the area
from her upper arm, right near the attachment of deltoids, and upwards to the top of her head], up. Mainly from my shoulders, and all of this, [hands sweeping up her neck], jaws, teeth, eyes - headache. Tension.

1:C3
I have a background heaviness in the head. I have a headache, like something is over me, and includes the shoulder.

5:C3
For me it’s almost like carrying a collar, heavy, right on your shoulders.
[Prover 2 pipes up] and asks: A yoke?
[Prover 5 agrees] Yeah, a yoke.

5:C3
Headache ameliorated by rubbing forehead.

1:C3
[She is still laying, face down, on the floor].
I had some of that sensation of the third eye opening, the darkness lifted and it seemed the headache got freed by that; it
was a sensation of something coming from the outside in.

4:C3
Head, like a heavy hat on your head.

4:C3
Spaced out, heavy.

5:C3
[Lays down on the floor on her back, not face-down as others have done] and reports: Laying on my back made my headache
worse.

5:C3
[Prover 5 gets up from her prostrate position on the floor] and reports: Yeah, the lying down in that position on my back,
my headache got worse; then rolling onto my front, (forehead on hands, toes touching), my headache got better.

5:C3
The headache, it’s this crazy pressure. Right across here, it comes down, right across the eyes, and across here (temple to temple and forehead). And it’s at the same time as all of this, the tension in my neck and shoulders. Laying on the floor on
my back, the pain was worse.
Picture
2:C3
I’ve got a headache, now, right behind my eyes.

Eyes

5:C1
Tingling behind eyes, simultaneous with dry eyes.

4:C1
Eyes watering.

5:C2
Eyes very tired.

4:C2
My eyes & I are tired.

Vision
No symptoms.

Ears
No symptoms.

Hearing

2:C3
Hearing acute.

Nose
No symptoms.

Smell
No symptoms.

Face

1:C1
Tightness; jaw; right side.

1:C1
Tingly feeling in right side of head and right side of face – almost crawling in my cranium.

1:C1
Feeling heat on my face.

1:C2
My jaw hurts, from here to here [TMJ forward], right side.

5:C3
Totally, sense of TMJ, right there [touches the joint], both sides, right at the joint.

1:C3
Yes, right at the joint. Pain in the TMJ when touching it and when opening my mouth. Worse left side.

2:C3
For me it’s right at the angle of my jaw.

5:C3
Especially if you press on it, if you press while moving [the TMJ joint] it’s really painful.

5:C3
Pain is bad on left, [where dental bridge came out].

3:C3
Right now, I feel sweat is pouring off my face, and it’s not particularly hot in here, well, the oven is on at 425 degrees F., so.

Mouth

1:C1
My mouth is watering.

5:C1
My tongue is tingly; tingling in tongue.

5:C1
Mouth dry, simultaneous with tingling behind eyes.

1:C1
Salivation continues.
[She drew a“guy drooling” in her journal, too. The“guy” had black dots for eyes, rounded crescents for eyebrows, a protruding tongue stuck out like that of a panting dog, drops falling from the tongue into a pool/puddle below.]
Picture
5:C1
My tongue feels like its numb, numbing, not like its numb, it’s numbing.

2:C1
My throat hurts. And my glands are really sore [said as she’s touching both sides of her neck at the parotid/salivary gland
area].

2:C2
My parotid glands, right now are singing; they’re strung out from here to here [indicates an area extended beyond both sides of
her head by about a fist width], its not sound, it’s a feeling, a very tight vibration, both sides here.

5:C3
Salivation.

Teeth

5:C1
Oh, so this is really weird…, I have a bridge here [points to lower left jaw], in my car accident [many years previous] some
teeth got knocked out. I had a bridge put in. My [dental] bridge has just come out! Oh, that feels really weird, it’s loose.

5:C1
It’s completely off. I can completely take it [her dental bridge] out. It’s completely come off of the tooth.

5:C1
Guys, look at [this]. [She holds up her dental bridge for all to see. The expression on her face is one of surprise mixed with a bit of shock].

5:C2
And a lot of teeth pain. Up in there [indicates area of her molars, upper jaw, right side]. And the right side more. These teeth feel they have ice cubes on them; they have that kind of pain. Bad teeth pain.

5:C2
Humming, with pain [in teeth].

3:C2
My tooth hurts, that has a cap on it.

5:C3
So Master Prover, I have this [dental] crown on this side [upper right side] and when I just chewed on it, it was like this
shooting pain. The crown is fine, but it’s really kind of tender. And the really weird thing is it’s an apple, it’s not even a nut
[something hard to chew].

2:C3
Oh, my tooth! Oh my god. Back left, upper molar, sharp pain. Now it’s gone – came and went.

Taste
No Symptoms.

Throat

2:C1
My throat hurts. And my glands are really sore [said as she’s touching both sides of her neck at the parotid/salivary gland area].

4:C2
Clearing throat.

4:C2
Clearing throat some more.

4:C3
I constantly am clearing my throat. A lot of clearing my throat.

Neck

3:C2
Now it’s all twisting. It all has the centre, [the left side of her neck], this is where it is, heavy…, it’s trying to open up…, to let others in.

3:C3
Yeah, I have it, too, I feel this, I feel it in the ‘vestibule’ [she’s still using her‘nickname’ term for the area which is the
left side of her neck, behind and below the ear], right in that. [She sees this as similar to the head/shoulder symptoms Prover 5 and Prover 1 are experiencing and describing as being like a heavy collar or yoke.]

3:C3
[In response to Prover 2 reminding her that the vestibule is part of her uvula she says:
Yeah, it’s exactly in-between, and for me here it’s with emphasis on left hand side, as if the left part of the door won’t open
all the way. As if the doors could open out, and the left part of the door is stuck, and I keep trying to get it open. Before the proving, I felt it in my dura; now, it’s up there; its like a door – can’t quite get open.

4:C3
Back of neck tight; bowing head down, chin towards chest, is a good stretch.

4:C3
Stretching neck from side to side feels great.

5:C3
Prover 5 is stretching; she’s supporting her neck with her hand and leaning her head backwards.

5:C3
Stiff neck ameliorated by pressure.

Stomach

5:C1
I am like crazy thirsty, [she pours herself a glass of water].

5:C1
Belching.

5:C1
I have not been this thirsty in a very long time. [Spoken as she’s pouring herself another glass of water].

5:C1
This has to have been my twelfth glass of water. [Said as she pours another glass for herself; she exaggerates, it’s actually been more like four or five glasses of water that she’s had this far, just over 60 minutes into the trituration].

1:C1
Thirst. [Prover 1 is pouring herself a glass of water; she offers more to Prover 5.]

5:C1
[Prover 5 has another glass of water.]

3:C1
[She has just been offered some chocolate – she wasn’t able to eat any while doing the manual trituration; however she declines the offer.] I don’t want to alter this silly state I’m in. I think if I eat this, I will vomit.

4:C1
Burping.

4:C1
Drinking lots of water.

3:C2
I have that stomach thing.

4:C2
Appetite! Can’t wait to eat.
Prover 3 is preparing chicken to roast – salivating in anticipation.

4:C2
All right I’m bringing (you some) grapes. [She finds a snack to serve as a substitute to tide her over until the full meal is ready.]

4:C2
I want to eat that food now. I can’t wait for that food to be done. I’m hungry, but for that
[prover 3 is prepared roasted lemon chicken with shallots and potatoes]. I’m so, I’m so into what she’s making. I want it done
now.

4:C3
This is beautiful! [Very appreciative of the food; Prover 3 has just placed a platter of snack food – sliced focaccia bread, cheese, apples, olives…, on the table.]

4:C3
I’m having to stop myself. I could eat it all.

1:C3
The whole thing is you want to keep eating.

5:C3
Nausea.

3:C3
I’m having heartburn, from something it feels like I ate two days ago.

3:C3
My stomach is upset. I was slow to come to the physicals.

3:C3
I feel really dehydrated right now.

1:C3
I do too.

Abdomen

1:C1
Gassy lower abdomen; I hope I don’t get diarrhea.

3:C2
I feel it so much in my lower bowel; as if I could have diarrhea.

2:C3
Pain in my left lower abdomen, very sharp, going from outside in, one stab, that’s all.

2:C3
Another twinge! [About 5 minutes after the first]. Feels more like my left ovary, rather than bowel.

Rectum

3:C3
I had to poop [pass stool]. But I feel I could poop even more and more. But it doesn’t quite come yet.

Stool
No symptoms

Bladder

5:C2
[Has just returned from the toilet], and says: Master prover, there’s definitely sudden urging! I almost couldn’t hold it long enough, to pee.

4:C2
Peed, again. [This is the second time since start of trituration].

5:C3
I went to the bathroom, for the third time!

5:C3
Drank and peed, it feels like I peed five or six times.

Kidneys, Urethra, Urine
No Symptoms.

Male
No Symptoms (no male provers participated).

Female

3:C2
I feel sick. Twisting inside. Everything, I feel my left ovary, my head, my low back hurts; everything is twisting and then I have to untwist it. My head feels ‘twirly’ and I want to move my head to untwist it. There’s twisting…,and untwisting won’t give relief.

2:C3
Pain in my left lower abdomen, very sharp, going from outside in, one stab, that’s all.

2:C3
Another twinge! Feels more like my left ovary, rather than bowel.

2:C3
Oh my god, this is female anatomy between the legs, my drawing! [She holds up her sketch]. It is gynecological exam time.
That is so strange. Wow!!
Picture
1:C3
It’s a “girly” plant.

5:C3
[In response to Prover 3’s comment about “the fairies eating the ‘blue berries’ to be high.] And they take them to become
fertile.

5:C3
I also think it’s this whole tonic for female reproduction. The same thing, nuns, like Conium for nuns that get sick – don’t use female parts, darkness in the womb.

3:C3
I’m having a lot of pain in my left ovary, and I never have pain in my left ovary. I’m getting that away from there!
[She is currently triturating, and until now, has had the mortar on her lap. She lifts the mortar away from her lap and puts it back on the table].

5:C3
I went to the bathroom, for the third time. I’d felt nauseated. I peed and then when I wiped myself I thought there was blood on the toilet paper. I had to wipe again to make sure I wasn’t menstruating. I’m feeling sad that I’ve gone through menopause and will not have any more children.

3:C3
It feels as if my uterus needs support.

5:C3
Yes, I feel that downward pressure, too. A downward pressure with a sharp pain in my left ovary.

2:C3
It’s not exactly a party; you can feel it in your hips. That’s what ‘back labor’ is.

5:C3
I feel this huge heaviness, right here, at my uterus, a push, bearing downwards. This is definitely a girly remedy; I don’t think
I’ve ever done a remedy that had this much female stuff in it.

Respiration

3:C1
Prover 3 is panting, panting like a dog.

2:C3
I just had another palpitation, and I feel kind of short of breath.
[Prover felt this symptom while “scraping down” the trituration in the mortar.]

Cough &
Expectoration
No Symptoms.

Larynx & Trachea
No Symptoms.

Speech & Voice
No Symptoms.

Chest

2:C3
Pain; I have a pain going up from the bottom of my right breast, to top of my sternum on my right side.
[This symptom experienced Prover 2 was “grinding” the trituration in the mortar.]

3:C3
[Another prover has asked her if she’s ok] and she answers: Yeah, it’s like I can’t get enough air, though. I need air. I need air.
[Prover 3 walks out towards the balcony, opens the door].
I feel constricted. I feel very constricted right here (indicates region of her diaphragm), my liver and spleen battling it out - diaphramatic constriction.

Heart

3:C1
Heart is racing– excited.

5:C1
That crazy [heart] palpitation thing just whacked me. Palpitation, left side, heart.

2:C1
I know, it’s not little.
[Prover 2 experienced heart palpitation while the master prover was trituration the medicating potency; before the group commenced the C1 trituration process. She is speaking of this experience when she responds to Prover 5’s comment above].

2:C3
I just had another palpitation, and I feel kind of short of breath.
[Prover felt this symptom while “scraping down” the trituration in the mortar.]

1:C3
[She is still laying; face down, on the floor]. I’m having palpitations in my heart.

Blood
No Symptoms.

Back

2:C1
Really bad pain in my right shoulder blade, underneath my right shoulder blade. [This is experienced while she is triturating].
It’s the margin of my right shoulder blade.

5:C1
Pain right shoulder blade, what I wrote, first thing.

3:C3
My back hurts, my low back.

3:C3
Now I’m having S/I [sacroiliac] pain right in my right S/I.

Extremities

1:C1
Tightness in my hips.

1:C1
Right shoulder achiness.

5:C1
Pain, right shoulder.

2:C1
I can’t stand it…, the nerve that goes on underside of my arm, from my shoulder to my elbow, ouch! [Experienced while doing the actual trituration]

2:C1
My right hand is totally numb. I can’t feel anything. [Prover 2 clenches and unclenches the fingers of her right hand as she’s
experiencing this.]

3:C1
My shoulder is sore.

4:C1
My foot/heel is better [previously existing problem].

5:C1
Master Prover, didn’t you say that your knees usually bother, you? Yes? Yeah, and they’re not bothering her at all now.

4:C1
My hip is much better. [Previously exiting problem – temporary amelioration of chronic hip pain which has her back and hips twisted (scoliosis) in positions painful for body movement]

3:C1
[Prover 3 applies herself wholeheartedly to the job at hand, and while actually triturating has her working arm elbow out at a
strong 90 degree angle. This position doesn’t look natural, nor comfortable, but it’s how she’s working the mortar and pestle].

5:C1
Knee, left, still feels weak and hurts. Pain felt in a specific area, just below the patella, centre and front of lower leg.

4:C2
Goosebumps on thighs.

4:C2
Left leg tingly all the way down.

4:C2
Left heel, pain gone.

5:C3
[When describing face/jaw pain she is experiencing], she adds: But my knees are fine!
[Earlier, in the day, and while collecting the trituration specimen, Prover 5’s knees had been very painful, so much so that
she made comments such as, “ my knees are killing me”. After collecting the plant, Prover 5’s knee trouble went from the right knee to the left. Pain was experienced at a specific spot on the lower leg just below the patella, centre front. She’d been feeling it on the right knee since the day we first hiked the trail and saw the lily. The pain moved from the right knee to the left, right after we’d collected the specimen for the trituration this morning].

1:C3
My knees are fine, and my hip is fine too.
[At the C1 level, Prover 1’s hips were feeling “tight”. Her knees had been bothering her on the hike to collect the trituration specimen. Onthe hike uphill she was feeling discomfort in her left knee; coming down, after collection of the plant, her knees ‘iffy’,not necessarily strong, and that if she bent them a bit too much it would hurt.]

4:C3
[Has left her lying on the floor position and is seated up at the table again], she reports a change:
My heel is back– hurting. And my hip is back to where it was, my left hip hurts, not as intense as before, but its back.
[Amelioration of chronic hip/scoliosis pain has abated].

5:C3
My (left)knee got worse again, now.

5:C3
That pain I had in my knee is now going down my shin. In the bone, a bone pain, like shin splints. It starts just under the knee.

5:C3
I put my toes together (while lying face down on the floor), that made my knees feel better.

4:C3
Leg better, hip really better; tingly leg – doesn’t feel tight.

3:C3
I was slow to come to the physicals. [Getting up out of her chair, and standing] she reports:
Oh I feel very stiff now. Stiff everywhere, stiff, stiff, all my joints are stiff.

5:C3
I’m completely having sharp pains in my right shoulder, again – the same pain as I had when we started, stabbing.

2:C3
My right shoulder really hurts, like a tooth ache.

Sleep

2:C1
Yawning; and stretching as she does.

4:C1
Yawning.

4:C1
Oh, I’m yawning…Yawning like crazy.

4:C1
Tons of yawning, I can’t stop.

1:C1
Yawns.

5:C1
Yawning.

1:C1
Yawning.

4:C1
Yawing, again and again and again!

4:C2
Yawing.

4:C2
Yawning lots, but not tired.

4:C2
Yawning.

1:C3
Yawning.

4:C3
When lying down on the floor, tired – falling asleep.

4:C3
[Yawning], says: When I get close to it [the trituration], I yawn, and yawn.

1:C3
[In response to being asked, “how are you?” by Prover 4 after she has gotten up from lying prostrate on the floor], she
answers: A little sleepy. Not the heaviness now, but I want to go take a nap.

1:C3
Yawing.

Chill & Fever
No Symptoms.

Perspiration
No Symptoms.

Skin

4:C2
Goosebumps on thighs.

Symptoms Outside of the formal trituration time
(before, during and after)

Generalities:
Post Proving: I felt like a “silly lily” – it was exhausting.

Mind:

Before Proving: Twisted, misunderstood, hidden twist – from the day of the first hike, several of the group thought that the“twist” in streptopus amplexifoliuswas the zigzag formation of the stem of the plant. Early on the ‘collection hike’ a plant
was found lower on the mountain trail. It was thought to be our “twisted lily”. The Master Prover pointed out the key
identification features, and we all realized that most of our group had not understood that our lily had to have clasping leaves and that the “twist” of our lily was not only zigzag stems but a strong kink or bend in the stalk of each delicate flower that hangs beneath the leaves. The “twist” was not fully grasped, and the identity has the potential to be mistaken or “twisted”.

During collection of specimen:
Fear about potential for injury, especially to the knee. Prover 5 implored the two other collectors to “be careful!” As we hiked she kept watching out for the others, and repeated her “be careful” warning a few times. At one point she felt compelled to stop the others to say, “I’m just saying this, be careful, we don’t want anything twisted, watch your knees, don’t slip. I think this remedy has the potential to have serious knee problems, for twisting things…”

During collection of specimen:
Thoughts of my sister, who does not accept what I do and who completely denies how homeopathy helped her own daughter with cancer. I thought maybe she is my “twisted sister”. After collecting our lily plant, I felt an incredible sense of passion
for her and with it a sense of forgiveness – it has a lot to do with my heart.

During collection of specimen:
While part of the group was out collecting the specimen, other participants had stayed behind. When the collectors were gone, Prover 4 experienced a lot of concern. She told the others when they returned: “I was worried. I kept thinking they haven’t called; boy, they’ve been gone for a while! I got worried, and I never get worried, I don’t get worried. I thought, are they ok? Are they hurt? What if they fell?”

During Medicating Potency trituration: Felt David Warkentin’s presence; grief, but tears don't flow.

During Medicating Potency trituration: Tandem –two shadows, two buds.

During Medicating Potency trituration: Nobody should feel alone.

During Medicating Potency trituration: Sisterhood – heart connection.

During Medicating Potency trituration: spelling error, wrote “Eveyes” for “eyes” – note the “eve” prefix.

During Medicating Potency trituration: giggling over Prover 2’s misspelling of eyes, the ‘eve’ prefix.

During Medicating Potency trituration: I am feeling sad and reflective. Thinking about the young boy that knocked on the door seven days ago.

During Medicating Potency trituration: Restless; have to move; up a couple of times and pacing.

During Medicating Potency trituration: Master prover asks “when is it done?” She decides it is done when she feels compelled to get off of her knees (she’d been doing the trituration in a kneeling position).

During Medicating Potency trituration: Purple color; 3 participants chose to wear purple tops today; one participant bought a purple bandana for her dog (this was after our first encounter with the twisted lily but before our trip to collect the specimen and do the trituration).

Just before 1C trituration began: thinking of beautiful light, light green walls. Talking about gardens and houses.

Just before 1C trituration began: Prover 3 is setting up her place, paper, pens…, she complains “I don’t have the right pen.” I wonder, “Is she putting glue stick on her lips?”

Immediately Post Proving: It’s freeing to be out of the field (of the trituration proving). Until I stepped away I didn’t realize to
what degree I felt really restricted, constricted. Now I feel free– I can surf the web, I can do this, do that…, I have more
possibilities, so,“free”, that’s the word I’d use.

Post Proving: The weekend following the proving, while helping her youngest son move to his new home in a distant city, Prover 5 was overwhelmed with grief that he would no longer be living at home. Sobbing and sobbing while feeling such
huge separation grief is not characteristic for her. She linked the experience to when, during the proving itself, she was wiping herself after using the toilet and believed she saw menstrual blood on the tissue. This in itself was odd, since her periods had ceased with menopause. Even more notable is the emotion that arose when she realized she wasn’t bleeding – huge grief was felt over not being able to have any more children.

Post Proving: Grief over not being able to have more children, and seeing that they were my creations. Your children are
such a fundamental creation. These boys of mine were going to carry on me. I felt as if it was a bad decision to only have had two, that I should have had a bunch, to ensure my creativity would go on. The feeling was that my children would ensure my legacy.

Post Proving: Heaviness, felt as a compression of the heart accompanies grief. Grief over the thought that we (humans) disrupt’ so much. Sobbing, weeping, prolonged outpouring of tears, and finally the grief lifts and the prover felt ‘as if one’ with nature around her – as if she was that plant, that nearby trees, the grass. She realized this must be the ecstasy of religious experience, of unity. She grieved that the potential for purity in the being as a human, is so ‘disrupted’ by the fact we don’t see we can just be that connected.

Post Proving: The dichotomy in me – the nun and the prostitute, those two are no longer at odds. The desire to be alone, to live the contemplative life, to step back, to be a nun –with this proving I felt I was being given permission to be that nun. And it wasn’t what I thought it would be, not at all. I am showing up in the world, in a worldly way, not wanting to step back
from it.

Post Proving: I realize I’ve been holding out and withholding love. Before the proving my love was given in an attempt to heal an injured part of myself. Now I can connect with people, and I don’t have to pull out to recharge myself. I can offer love just as this generative thing the heart is for, keep it circulating.

Post Proving: The need to lie prostrate on the floor is still felt every once in a while, but now I do it with my arms spread out
(not folded under head) and then you’re hugging the world.

Post Proving: Sobbing and sobbing, like a baby. I was feeling the need that I had to be able to completely be myself and to connect (with others) at that level. I felt my need of needing people and then I felt anxious; extreme anxiety that I’d had this and
that it was going to be taken away. I’d lose it. It would be ripped away. It never existed. It was a mirage. I realized that I was prepared to be profoundly disappointed, again. It was clear that I’d lived my whole life being able to avoid disappointment, but it was minus people. Without humans you can avoid disappointment, but you live a very cloistered life. From this proving I see that it is about connection with humanity, but in specific it’s about sisterhood or about friends.

Post Proving: I’ve gone back to dressing in black and white.

Generalities:

Prior to proving: Sides, first right then moved to left; seen in Prover 5’s striking knee pain.

During Medicating Potency trituration: Sensation of being uplifted by the shoulders.

Eyes:

During Medicating Potency trituration: Eyes watering, worse right side.

During Medicating Potency trituration: burning right eye.

Post Proving: Sty on lower lid of right eye.

Nose:

During Medicating Potency trituration: Sinus frontal pain, opens nose, slight throbbing.

Smell:

During Medicating Potency trituration: Smells green. Smells green, with heat from mortar.

Mouth:

Post Proving: Canker sore, gum of lower left jaw. Haven’t had one since I was a kid.

Post proving: Small lump/swelling on gum, left side, above a tooth that had a root canal and then was capped.
There was no pain in the gum or tooth, but it felt like a diffuse pressure that could push the cap off the tooth.

Teeth:
Post Proving: Tooth pain continued, for several days, until Prover re-took her constitutional remedy.

Post Proving: A tooth thing came up. Right side, lower jaw, feels like something moving. I’ve got a cap in that area.
Dentist’s exam revealed it was a cavity – first one in 6 or 7 years.

Rectum:
During collection of specimen: About two minutes after the individuals left to collect the lily I started getting cramping. It was so weird; it wasn’t pressure or gas, it was just cramping. I didn’t have diarrhea, I just had a really soft bowel movement. It was
my second (bowel movement) of the morning, and I never have that – ever, ever.

Bladder:
Post Proving: I’ve been peeing non-stop, and been thirsty, for weeks after the proving. Really thirsty and peeing a lot.

Female:
Post Proving: For two weeks after, intermittently, just once every day or two, I’d feel this ache in my left ovary. It would last a while and then go away. As a young woman I had polycystic ovaries and debilitating pain in my left ovary.

Post Proving: Ovarian pain (in another prover).

Chest:

During Medicating Potency trituration: Pressure on chest.

Heart:

During Medicating Potency trituration: Heart palpitation.

Extremities:

Prior to proving: Knee pain; pain felt in a specific spot of the centre front of the lower leg, at the area immediately below the
patella. Painful right knee was experienced since the hike and first identification of the clasping twisted-stalk plant. This hike
was four days prior to the proving date/collection of proving specimen. This same pain was notably bad when she did a gentle bike ride two days later. As soon as the proving specimen was collected, this participant’s knee pain shifted from the right knee to the left. The left knee remained painful through the trituration.

Prior to proving: Debilitating knee pain (in other participants) after initial hike in clasping twisted-stalk habitat.

Prior to proving: Discomfort hiking uphill, left knee; after collecting the lily proving specimen, this same prover’s knees felt‘iffy’,
not strong, that her knees would be painful if she bent them too much.

During Medicating Potency trituration: Pain between the shoulder blades.

During Medicating Potency trituration: My left hip is less tight and I am moving better from sitting & standing –scoliosis better?

During Medicating Potency trituration: My knees are killing me!

Skin:

Post Proving: Area of old tic bite (from 2 years previous) between 2nd and 3rd toe, a little bit of neuroma, acting out like crazy – hurting, itchy.

End

This remedy is available at Helios pharmacy. www.helios.co.uk

Cynthia Shepard
cashepard@pacificcoast.net