“When you know that trees experience pain and have memories and that tree parents live together with their children, then you can no longer just chop them down and disrupt their lives with large machines.”
– Peter Wohlleben

From “The Imagination of Plants” by Matthew Hall, we learn that legends of talking trees have been passed down to us from many cultures. In the Persian epic poem the ‘Shahnama’, a tree warns Alexander the Great, on his journey to the East, of impending disaster. A similar legend has been passed down by the Yaqui people of North America. In this tale, the people who lived on the land before the Yaqui received a warning from a talking tree. A young girl translated the tree’s message which foretold of the arrival of white men with armor and deadly weapons.

Scientists Say, “Sort of .....”

According to Dr. Suzanne Simard, a professor of forest ecology, who has been studying the forest for more than thirty years, trees can talk to one another.

Research in British Columbia has indicated that trees in old growth forests have created something underground similar to a neural network. Scientist’s call it the ‘wood wide web’. Using a web of fungi that connects them together, trees have created a network that they can use to communicate with one another. Communication of this sort is instrumental in helping trees adapt to changing weather and climactic conditions.

Scientists have also learned that trees use the network to ward off insect attacks when necessary and to share resources, such as water and sugars, when they are in short supply. Distributing resources is the specialty of ‘Mother Trees’, mature trees that convey information to other trees in the network including seedlings.

According to the Smithsonian, the fungi in the web form a partnership with the trees. The microscopic fungal filaments join together with the fine ends of roots to form the network. In exchange for services, the fungi consume about 30 percent of the sugar that trees photosynthesize from sunlight. The sugar supports the fungi – which in turn share the nitrogen, phosphorus and other mineral nutrients which they absorb from the soil.

Trees within the network communicate with one another by sending chemical, hormonal and slow-pulsing electrical signals. According to Edward Farmer at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, the voltage-based system appears strikingly similar, at least in function, to the nervous system in animals.

How Far Does Plant Communication Go

By now, some of you may be wondering whether trees can communicate with other species, including animals and human beings. I believe the answer is yes – and that they do it in unexpected ways.

In a recently published book, “Blinded by Science”, Matthew Silverstone explains that the scientific data has revealed that trees communicate with people and that the interaction has a beneficial effect – at least on humans. Trees’ ability to interact with people can improve a host of psychosomatic and mental health issues including migraines, ADHD and depression. Concentration and reaction time can also be enhanced by interacting with trees. This validates what tree huggers have known all along – that trees, especially mother trees, provide human beings with vast amounts of subtle energy in the form of jing.

Maybe You Need More Jing

According to Taoist adepts, jing is the essence of chi (energy with universal qualities). They go on to explain that jing promotes growth, development and reproduction as well as providing the medium through which humans can express themselves. Humans receive jing from two sources: A fixed amount is provided by one’s parents. This is known as ancestral jing, and it determines basic constitution. Ancestral jing can’t be altered, but it can be enhanced by acquired jing.

The sources of acquired jing include foods such as seeds, nuts (particularly walnuts), beans and peas, mussels, oatmeal, dried fruit, hot soups and cooked root vegetables. Life-affirming relationships are excellent sources of jing; so are environments that radiate vast amounts of jing such as old growth forests.

Unfortunately, jing can be wasted; and a lack of this life-affirming energy can disrupt vitality and sexual performance. An inability to feel and-or express authentic feelings and emotions or express one’s desires and will can be caused by a lack of jing. A person can also experience excessive fear and become more susceptible to energetic and physical traumas when they lack jing.

It’s the acquired jing that mature trees provide in abundance which benefits people who interact with them and whose jing has been depleted.

Trees are Interdimensional Beings

Scientific research has provided clear evidence that trees communicate with each other and can enhance the well-being of a human being by sharing jing with them. But to anyone who has spent time in an old growth forest, it’s abundantly clear that trees can do more than just share energy.

Trees, like all other life forms on Earth, exist on both the physical-material and subtle dimensions of energy and consciousness. This makes them interdimensional beings that are deeply imbedded in the forest floor as well as the subtle field that supports Gaia and the creatures that call Gaia home. Their dual nature means that trees – particularly mother trees, some of which are more than a thousand years old – can serve as channels for information and intuitive knowledge that they have acquired from Gaia and from the Akasha, the storehouse of knowledge. This information and knowledge in the form of impressions can provide emotional support as well as insight into problems that both the trees and humans struggle with. Trees may not have thoughts and emotions that we can recognize, but they do radiate jing in a wide spectrum of frequencies. What’s more – trees have the ability to modify the frequencies of jing that they radiate. This means they can share the precise frequencies that a person needs, including jing that resonates sympathetically with feelings such as reassurance, satisfaction, empathy and joy.

When you add discernment to the equation, it becomes possible for a human to receive specific information from trees that can be deciphered and put into words by the three essential parts of the human mind, the brain and central nervous system, the subtle field of energy and consciousness, and the network, the part of the mind that makes contact with living beings and things outside itself. Think of the Magic 8 Ball, but with enough intelligence to recognize a theme or issue and enough intuitive knowledge to offer a solution.

Some of you skeptics may not believe that communication with trees is possible. As a New Yorker, I learned to be a doubting Thomas, too – and not to believe anything I heard and only half of what I saw. So if you remain unconvinced, this is what I suggest. Take a walk through an old growth forest – find the biggest tree you can. Then give it a hug. Take your time (at least ten minutes), and while you’re hugging the tree, lean your head against it and tell it about something that has been weighing on your heart or mind. Then see what happens. You may be pleasantly surprised.