The Four Medicines
These are the fast, simple practices you can reach for when your thoughts are loud, your chest is tight, or you just need to get through the next few minutes. Each Medicine is small on purpose, so you can use it at a bus stop, in a staff bathroom, in a parked car, or on the land outside your door.
BREATHE
Medicine One
Frog Medicine is about breath and voice when you feel flooded, frozen, or tempted to go silent and pretend you are fine. It offers short, repeatable ways to slow your breathing, loosen your chest, and say one honest sentence about what is really going on.
GROUND
Medicine Two
Tree Medicine is about grounding when you feel wired, floaty, or on the edge of bolting. It brings your attention back to your feet, your senses, and the land or floor holding you up, so your body can remember that you are here, now, in this moment.
SPIRIT
Medicine Three
Eagle Medicine is about perspective when one painful story fills the whole sky. It gives you simple questions to help you step back, notice Trickster Mind, and see the difference between what your thoughts are saying and what is actually in front of you.
MOVE
Medicine Four
Buffalo Medicine is about movement when you feel stuck, numb, or too tired to take the next step. It helps you find one small, concrete action, walking to the mailbox, drinking water, sending a text, that lets your body move through the weather instead of freezing in it.
Why the Four Medicines?
The Four Medicines give you an emergency kit for real life, not just for calm days or quiet retreats. Each one offers a small, concrete practice you can use when your thoughts are loud, your body is lit up, or you are just trying to make it to the next hour.
You do not have to remember everything at once. You can start with the Medicine that matches what you need most right now...breath, grounding, a wider view, or a tiny next step, and let the others wait until you are ready.
There is no wrong way to use them. One honest breath with Frog, one grounded minute with Tree, one clearer question with Eagle, or one small move with Buffalo is enough to count as real medicine.
Walking the Four Medicines
Walking the Four Medicines means treating these practices as companions, not as another set of rules to get right. You bring them into bus stops, meetings, kitchens, and long nights, testing what actually helps your nervous system settle instead of trying to force yourself to “be okay.”
Over time, the Medicines start to weave together. A few breaths with Frog make it easier to feel your feet with Tree; grounding with Tree makes it easier to see your thoughts with Eagle; that wider view can free you up to take one Buffalo step you could not imagine before.
You are not expected to carry them alone or perfectly. You can share them with people you trust, compare notes on what worked and what did not, and let these small practices become part of how you and your communities move through rough weather together.