A chat with Geeta Stilwell

Geeta Stilwell never gets stung when she touches nettles. Leather fingers? Gloves? No. It’s because before doing so, she always asks the plant’s permission. She checks in as to which leaves she might harvest for her tea. The plants always abide and Geeta goes about her harvest, happily free from the stinging and irritation we associate globally with nettles.

I had the pleasure of chatting with Geeta recently. She is from Portugal and is a certified Forest Therapy guide and trainer with the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy (ANFT). I had the good fortune to meet Geeta when I signed up for the ANFT Meadow Pipit Guide training cohort that started last September 2020. I emerged in March as a certified Forest Therapy guide, enriched by the training experience and by the care and love that Geeta, Vix and Liz, my three trainers, brought to the training. I wanted to share something of this story, so I asked Geeta if she’d be up for a podcast chat. She was and I’m delighted to share the conversation with you below.

It’s strange to me that we didn’t touch on the matter of nettles. When Geeta first mentioned her relationship with the natural world and shared her experience of harvesting nettles, sting-free, I was amazed. As a young lad, I’d so often been stung by nettles introduced by the Brits to unaccustomed Australia so long ago. Wandering barelegged through fields on my way to visit forests was often a painful, annoying experience. More than once, I am ashamed to admit, the nettles got thrashed with a stick.

Now, having completed my training, I took the chance to see if I too could find a better relationship with our nettle friends. Nettle tea, nettle soup, they’re so good for you and there are many other ways we can use nettles to support our health and well-being. How great would it be to have that reciprocal relationship with such a healing presence?

The first time I came to the verdant, vigorously growing nettle patch I so often passed from a good distance on my morning walk, childhood memories of ‘ouching’ and jumping through fields filled with long grass, nettles and blackberries flooded my mind.

“It’s OK,” I reassured myself, “this time will be different.” I spoke gently to the plant and mentioned that I’d feel it a great privilege if I could touch it without being stung. I asked which leaf I might caress. The nettle before me didn’t seem to mind which leaf I might choose, but I focused in on a large leaf near the top of the plant. Slowly, I reached down and absolutely without fear, I took the leaf between my fingers and gently moved my fingers back and forth in a caress of deep respect. I made certain not to grip too hard, to not ‘grasp the nettle’ as they say, to be sure that I avoided the old story that grasping it firmly would prevent being stung. No, honestly, I touched it ever so gently.

And voila! No sting! Just connection. I moved to another leaf and another plant; nettles seldom grow alone. I didn’t get down and roll in them but after touching maybe 10 or more leaves, sting-free, feeling quite amazed and indeed deeply privileged, I smiled at all the plants before me and thanked them for their kindness. I sent a little mental message to Geeta, “Thank you, Geeta.”

Only later, on another walk, did I ask the nettle if I might remove a leaf or two and again, no sting. I thanked the plant for its sharing and made a very fine nettle tea on my return home.

I’ve long had a deep relationship with dogs and insects that has seen me rarely stung and only ever once bitten when an Australian Cattle dog bolted into its house and, surprised to find me inside, dug its choppers deep into my knee.

How often do we watch in amazement as beekeepers, pick up bare handfuls of bees without being stung?

There is much to wonder at here and from my perspective, it’s best left at that, just wonder. There’s no doubt a perfectly valid scientific explanation for why young Scott got stung but older, calmer Scott didn’t but I don’t care to know. I’m just happy to have experienced that magical sense of relationship with a previously feared being.

My thanks go to Geeta once more. In our podcast, Geeta shares her journey to Forest Therapy and quite a lot about what it involves. It’s a beautiful discussion with a beautiful person who lives life deeply connected to the beings around her.

I hope you enjoy it. Best of all, I hope you might find your own chance to experience the magic of touching nettles, free from pain and suffering, to feel that deep sense of relationship this creates.

I touch nettles every day now and it always reminds me that I’m not separate from nature, that I need not be a force of destruction in this most amazing of places. If we can have this relationship with nettles, what magical, reciprocal relationships might we have with other beings? With the planet herself?