Nature Speaks Project

TALKING WITH TREES AND NATURAL INTUITIVE

                  DESDA ZUCKERMAN

Written / Edited by:  Claire Blotter

From transcripts from an interview with Linda Milks, 2/5/07

Desda Zuckerman is a natural intuitive with a special sensitivity to trees. She teaches energetic healing and subtle anatomy in Novato, California.

Although she has focused on healing human beings for the past few years, her greatest heart work and love is with the earth.

Desda’s experiences with trees have been life long. She views their spirits as “amazing, phenomenally powerful beings.”  Even as a child she communicated with trees and experienced them as her wise big brothers or sisters.  She feels that the information they communicate is soul effecting and provides profound insights into the natural order of life.

Desda grew up on a small hill made of quartz crystal in Southern California in a little town called Poway.  On her family property her father planted six acres of avocado trees which she helped to plant and tend. As a child she once lay down with the crown of her head against one of these tiny trees and discovered that it talked to her not in words, but through a deep knowingness or primal wisdom.

The avocado trees regularly transmitted information to her through images revealing such messages as, “I need more water,” or, “I don’t like them putting the fence in so close to me.” When she communicated this to her father, he usually didn’t take her seriously attributing it to her wild imagination. Sometimes, however, he did follow her “tree advice” and was surprised to see that her suggestions actually helped.

EACH TREE SPECIES HAS A UNIQUE PURPOSE

REDWOODS

Desda explains that all trees species are unique and, subsequently, have diverse purposes. The redwoods see themselves as watchful, guardians of the earth.  She is especially drawn to them because of their significance to traditional Native Americans who honored them. Desda feels that redwoods carry wisdom about the history of a place and have an organic knowledge. 

She asked them questions regarding their gifts such as: “What should I do with your bark? What should I do with your wood? What should I do with the leaves you give me?”  She learned that redwood leaves make a delicious tea, and the bark can be used as a natural astringent which pulls out bee stings when used as a poultice.  The leaves and droppings of the redwood make for a very acidic soil for growing certain species of plants that can’t be grown elsewhere. 

YEWS- OUTSIDE AND IN

Desda is also drawn to yew trees which are different organisms all together with a unique kind of knowledge. Yew roots go down deeply into the earth while redwoods have shallower root systems. Whereas the redwood is a guardian tree, Desda has learned that the stately yew has a very healing essence, often interceding for humanity.   As the source of tomaxifin, yews have cancer curing properties and have recently been harvested in the Northwest for healing purposes.

She says that the ancient people, the Celts and the Pics, once buried their great warriors on the boughs of yew trees. Eventually they began making their bows and arrows out of yew wood. Thus, the great warriors became known as yew men – or yeomen.

She once had an exceptional experience with a huge yew tree which is said to be as old as 2000 years and grows in a little churchyard in Nutley, England.

She explains that some yews grow to a 40 feet circumference so that 25 people literally cannot stretch their arms around some of the old yew trees. This particular tree originated from an ancient bough that was brought to Nutley and placed in the ground from another sacred grove.

As Desda walked through the grove one day with a small group which had heard that fairies lived there, the tree dropped a piece of yew bark at her feet. Drawing closer to the yew she crawled inside and sat there and was later joined by the others who had also come to see the tree. They stayed for hours feeling the inside connection to the tree which is a different form of connection than sitting outside of it. When you sit outside of a tree and lean against it, Desda says, there can be a profound connection, but nothing as deep as putting your whole body “inside of this big organism -and being surrounded completely by the atmosphere of the tree.” 

She experiences sitting inside the tree as a consciousness altering event.  When she puts her head against a tree, she feels she is distinct from the tree.  But when she climbs inside the tree, it seems to swallow her up, take her into it, as if it were absorbing her into its womb. 

Desda feels a tremendous energy structure around trees, a huge force-field that surrounds them. They seem to literally spread chi energy like electro-magnetic fields.  When she is inside a tree, the field is actually being generated outside of her.  So she is not in the field of the tree as much as she is in the actual organism of the tree.  If she is outside with her head on the tree, she is really in the electro-magnetic field of the tree.

Spiritually, Desda experiences “going home” with trees.  For her there is nothing more satisfying than being inside a large tree. She says, “I get a chance to relax!  I love it!  It’s like I’m an infant being held by my mother.  I go right into the most sacred, protected, sanctuary space within me; within my psychological memory, within my emotional memory, within my physical memory and very deeply within my spiritual memory.  So I have an experience of dropping in that is absolutely unparallel in my life.”

OAKS AND THE ELECTROMAGNETIC GRID

According to Desda the oak, another stately and very spiritual tree, is a teacher with the sacred duty to educate. She notes, that though the oak and other trees have different jobs, all of them do healing work and all of them do guardian work and all of them do teaching work.  But particular varieties are called to be stronger in different areas. 

So if Desda has difficulty physically she goes to a yew tree and gets inside of it.  If she can’t find a yew tree, she crawls inside a redwood tree, because, the redwood tree can talk to the yew tree in England. 

“We all speak to each other.  Everything alive on this planet speaks to each other,” Desda says, “And we do it through a magnetic force field- an electromagnetic grid in the planet which is about 18 inches down in the surface of the earth.  So every time you cut the earth, you break into this communications network.” 

She feels everyone on the planet is affected by such alterations of the natural world, even if it’s digging a simple little hole for a rose bush in a garden.  Furthermore, we affect everything everywhere since we live on a single organism, the earth, where everything is vital and important and communicates with everything else.  Likewise, she says that human beings talk to each other through this same electro-magnetic grid, but at a slightly different level.

CEDARS

Desda says that cedars, very interesting wise trees, are a bit quixotic in nature. They don’t really like to talk to people, and are “very cagey”. However, once they establish a relationship, they harbor and protect nature spirits. So where there are many cedars you’ll find lots of fairies and earth energy spirits, earth spirits and nature spirits.  “And all of these trees have souls,” she adds, “All of these trees have divine light at the core just like human beings do. All are alive, awake, conscious entities.” 

BAY TREES

The job of bay trees is to anchor.  They represent the changeable nature of the planet, because they only anchor for a period of time, and then they uproot.  Desda explains that during major storms many bay trees uproot, and the energy in the space changes dramatically.  “People don’t know what’s happening; they don’t know where they’re going. Well, it’s the uprooting of the bay trees,” she says, “Their roots will come up, but they’ll still keep growing flipped over on their side with three fourths of their trunk and all of their roots exposed!” This is particularly upsetting as the bay trees ground the energy for the whole area.

FRUIT TREES

According to Desda, fruit trees also do a job: they provide nourishment.  They’re mothering trees with fruit and flowers, quite graceful, feminine. An example of this is the motherly nurturing that an old apple tree might provide. So while the divine feminine manifests in these ancient flowering trees, the divine masculine exists in the tall redwoods and the cedars. 

 Interviewee:    Interview  Date:    Topic:

1. Beurkens, Beth;  3.31.05;

Shamanic journey to the world tree.

2. Blotter, Claire;  6.22.07;

Relationship with trees changes her path.

3. Breytenbach, Anna;  7.28.06; 

Logging, recently cut trees in the Sierra.

4. Chen, Viviane;  3.1.07;

Oak tree communication, stories.

5. Ferguson, Theo;  3.4.05;

Shamanic journey to trees.

6. Gilbert Walking Bull;  11.17.04; 

Lakota Elder viewpoint.

7. Haner, Jean; 4.3.07;

Divergent views offered, stories, work with energy patterns.

8. Kitts, David;  4.27.07; 

Tree talk experiences, energy work commentary.

9. Milks, Linda; 6.12.07;

Tree teaches a child who wants to cut it down.

10. Priester, Tommy;  6.20.07;

Deep relationship with trees.

11. Pudom, Pat; 4.10.07;

Relationship/interaction stories with trees.

12. Rhyon-Berry, Gizelle; 4.21.07;

Stories / relationship with spirit, shamanic journeying.

13. Toledo, Charlie; 1.18.05;

Suggestions / etiquette / explanations of spirit communication by a Native Indian.

14. Tuttle, Will;  5.29.07; 

Direct inspiration for songs & poetry.

15.  Williams, Ani;   8.13.07

Stories, tree communication from a sound healer.

16. Zuckerman, Desda; 2.5.07; 

Tree communications, stories, energy / spirit work commentary.

17. Zuckerman, Desda;  3.8.07;

Direct translation from trees.