This video was shot in Polson MT in June 2018 when Mali Klein came to visit us at Blue Moon Herbs. Mali has been involved with Essiac since November 1993. Her full final analysis of the subject is in the pages of the Essiac Essentials Handbook. Mali shares her insights into the big picture of Essiac's journey from when it came into the greater world from the wilderness in the early 1890s and how it progressed over time to its present place in herbal medicine. Enjoy!
This is the only Essiac master class offered anywhere. It happens only once per year, and 2014 marks our final gathering in Missoula, Montana. This is a one-of-a-kind experience. It will not be recorded, in keeping with the idea behind such gatherings, so that the experience will be intimate, candid and completely unique. The theme will be about Essiac and its role in healing in the context of our personal lives as well as how that can best compliment the world we live in. Participants will directly experience some of the healing protocols Mali Klein has developed over the past twenty years. All are welcome, including those with serious illness, as well as those in the profession of providing health care. It is for anyone who sees the importance of keeping the knowledge and use of this and other herbal medicines alive and would like to be part of a dialogue about how we as individuals, professionals and businesspersons can help to facilitate this.
Essiac and herbal medicine can have an amazing role to play in the emerging healing paradigms of the 21st century. Master class attendees will be introduced to a perspective not shared quite so freely in the written word as it will be in this session. Each class has been a stand-alone experience and prior attendance is not required.
The 2014 Master Class will focus on the original 8-herb formula handed down from an old Native American medicine man in Northern Ontario in the 1890s. But more than that, it will be from the perspective of the Medicine man that brought this formula to us in the 1890s. Before the days of Essiac. (The formula was later reduced to a four herb formula by Rene Caisse and those four herbs - Burdock, Sheep sorrel, Slippery elm and Turkey rhubarb, make up most of what is sold as Essiac today.)
This original eight herb formula is what Rene began working with when she first started her work with the herbs in the 1920s, and the results were impressive. Mali Klein's work now focuses almost completely on this original eight-herb formula, which has been shelved since the 1920s, and which Rene Caisse only revealed in writing once. Virtually all of the 8-herb Essiac formulas on the market today do not contain the herbs originally used.
Mali will be sharing her findings about this indigenous formula and what happened to it in her newest book Black Root Medicine, the Original Native American Essiac Formula, to be released September 1, 2014. Mali will share some insights and evidence that will forever change your assumptions about what Essiac is and how the politics and confusion about the correct formula following Rene's death resulted in so much misinformation about Essiac in the years to follow.
Included in the tuition will be signed copies of the new book!
Mali will go deep into the subject of healing and living a quality life, with or without serious health challenges, and will be sharing a unique approach to health and healing using a combination drawing from Native American, Buddhist and other spiritual traditions. Mali will also be available for private consultations from October 1 - 24.
Ever wonder what it must have been like to have a breast cancer diagnosis 120 years ago? Enter Black Root Medicine - The Original Native American Essiac Formula (softcover, 2014, 54 pages). This easy-to-read companion volume to The Complete Essiac Essentials book takes a uniquely inclusive look at the early history of the Native American formula that was the basis for Canadian nurse Rene Caisse's Essiac. The book is available as of September 1, 2014 on Amazon and here at ReneCaisseTea.com, for $12, or $30 for both Black Root Medicineand The Complete Essiac Essentials.
Mali Klein and her late writing partner Sheila Snow have documented the history of Rene Caisse and Essiac extensively in a series of Essiac books: Essiac Essentials (1999), Essiac the Secrets of Rene Caisse's Herbal Pharmacy (2001), The Essiac Book (2006). and The Complete Essiac Essentials (2010). Sheila co-authored the Canadian Homemaker's Magazine article that brought Essiac back from obscurity in June 1977: Could Essiac Halt Cancer?The final installment, Black Root Medicine - The Original Native American Essiac Formula, takes a step further back in time, to the days before the herbal remedy became known as Essiac.
In the 1920s when Rene Caisse was working at a hospital in Haileybury Northern Ontario, she met the woman who had originally gotten the formula from a Medicine man some 30 years earlier. The woman had recovered from breast cancer using the remedy. "Mrs. Johnson" is the only scrap of this woman's name not lost to history - "or it might have been Johnston." "A mining camp in northern Ontario" is as specific as it gets for the town she lived in. "A very old Native American medicine man" is as specific as the tribal affiliation gets - Ojibwa is just a guess.
Piecing together the details with such little hard evidence and a long-cold trail is a challenge Mali has met in good form. She has taken a step into the mists to reconstruct life in those days for us and in doing so has penned one of those books you can't put down. It is a quick read and a worthy bedside companion for ending each day on the final section!
If you are familiar with the Snow/Klein work, well, you'll be checking your preconceived notions at the door to Chapter 1. This amazing little book draws from the written history found in the Essiac archives while shining the light on the most recent research findings about the properties of the original herbs. Black Root Medicine adds another dimension, bringing late 19th century culture, traditions and worldview in the wilds of Northern Ontario to life in a way that makes perfect sense and symmetry. Through the pages of this book, Mali continually sheds very compelling light on how this original 8-herb formula may hold important clues for the 21st century.
‘Time is comin’ when all us on Mother Earth will be part of the army to save her.’ - Little Bill Penn (Uncle Yum), Twilight on the Thunderbird.
The book resonates with a feeling set by the illustrations as well as the pure prose of the writing. While the earlier Snow/Klein books have been outstandingly informative, this book takes things to a new level, with a view to sorting out another time and conjuring up images as they might have been seen through the old medicine man's eyes. The intimate connection with nature and the power of the animals and plants comes alive in a palpable way in the pages of this book.
In Part 2 of the Essiac Master Class, author and researcher Mali Klein will discuss the importance of the original Native American eight-herb formula that Canadian Nurse Rene Caisse used to develop her Essiac therapy made famous in the Bracebridge Cancer Clinic in the 1930’s. She will describe her experiences working with cancer patients over the past two decades and consider the relevance of the Essiac remedy in treatment programs today.
After writing four books on Essiac, Mali Klein now looks back to the time before Rene Caisse and before this tea became known as Essiac. The earliest records begin with an English woman in a mining camp in northern Ontario in the late 1800s. She received a gift from a medicine man that she passed on to Rene Caisse twenty-some years later. Mali has some practical and insightful perspective to share about the original eight-herb formula and its relevance in today's world. She has been researching and writing about Essiac since 1993 and is also curator of the world’s largest body of Essiac history, the Sheila Snow Fraser Essiac Archive collection.
Black Root Medicine, the Original Native American Essiac Formula breaks new ground and will be a complete departure from the earlier books on Rene Caisse and Essiac.
This master class is designed for professionals and laypersons, patients and doctors alike. It’s for anyone who wishes to learn more about this remedy from the last living link to Rene Caisse, a well-liked and widely-respected source of Essiac knowledge, Mali Klein.
Mali teaches one master class per year, and true to the intended meaning of ‘master class’, no videotaping will be allowed in order that she may speak candidly.
Growing and Harvesting the Essiac Herbs, for ourselves, our communities and for the future
Mali Klein founded Clouds Trust in the UK and has been growing and harvesting the Essiac herbs continually for the past nineteen years. Debbie Jakovac is the owner and operator of ReneCaisseTea.com and has been involved with wild-harvesting and growing the Essiac herbs since 2007. She has been involved in all aspects of running a small business geared towards making the Essiac herbs available commercially. She is currently researching a model for local and regional production of the herbs that will facilitate a marriage of the best of medium-scale commercial organic farming and smaller-scale production utilizing permaculture principles.
The model anticipates creating a bioregional Essiac Growers Guild network that will ultimately build community, create a niche for small-time entrepreneurs and help keep quality Essiac and other herbal remedies widely available.
Hugelkultur raised bed - Permaculture design
Open to all, attendance at Essiac Master Class Part 1 is not required.
"Thank you for a wonderful class. There is such a feeling of getting back to the roots. ha ha. That tea spirit was swimming around inside and I realized how this modern life (caffeine, thousands of supplements, encapsulated "herbal' products etc etc) override the power of the plant. I myself barely take the time.?Thank you for providing all of that." S.L., 2012 Master Class attendant
We're so pleased to announce that we finally have found a source for organically grown whole herb Sheep sorrel! Historically, there has been virtually no commercial source for whole herb Sheep sorrel. Even the wildcrafted root is not for sale anywhere. The arial parts of the plant are fairly readily available, but neither sheep sorrel roots nor the whole herb, including roots, has basically ever been commercially available anywhere. It's labor-intensive to harvest commercially, and since harvest wipes out the crop, it has to be re-planted, and can effectively only be harvested once a year at best. It really doesn't pencil out for commercial farms to grow it.
With much gratitude we wish to send a BigThankYou! to Read More →
Its the first day of November. The Essiac master class has come and gone. We had a great group - a real cross-section of folks including naturopaths and other healing arts practitioners, growers, people on their journeys with cancer, nurses, folks from Canada as well as the U.S., both original inhabitants and us 'imports.'
The master class was not recorded or videotaped so that the discussion could be candid. In this time of webinars and info going 'viral' on the internet, we decided to go 'back to the source' - a sharing amongst those there, just like the beginning of this tea, person to person. From there it grows, naturally. Read More →
