Plants that heal and strings that soothe: Meet Jamie Golledge

Every week, I will be profiling an extraordinary human being who lives in our community. If you know someone who is doing something interesting with their life, I want to hear about it. Send me an email at [email protected].

Some people will let nothing stand in the way of them following their dreams. Even if those dreams are as deeply rooted as an old-growth tree or as big as the highest mountain. They are simply driven by their heart to accomplish great things. Jamie Golledge is one of those people.

Combine a thirst for knowledge, an understanding of plants, astrology and ancient medieval manuscripts and then weave in a love for music, and you’ve got a young man who’s devised a new paradigm of plant healing. For the past two years, he’s been travelling back and forth to Switzerland, his home away from home, where he teaches his healing system at a school of herbal medicine and alchemy. He shares his knowledge of plants with a list of clients and teaches students how to utilize this revolutionary system of natural medicine.

And let’s not forget about the violin. Like the plants it’s made from, the violin also has a unique ability to heal. Jamie is preparing to do something that’s never been done in the history of the stringed instrument. He’s in the midst of creating a workshop to produce violins that are treated with specific plant extracts that can enhance the healing properties of their tone. It sounds complex, and it is.

He’s got a lot on the go. He’s currently working on his first book which will highlight his findings from his discoveries that certain plants have the power to heal – anything as minor as a common cold to more serious ailments that modern medicine doesn’t have answers to. He has a lot on the go but he doesn’t seem to mind having a full plate.

“I’m simply following my passion – music and plants – and they always have been,” says the 32-year-old, who spent some of his school years at Spruce Glen and Huntsville High School. Now, he resides in a farm house that is split with another family in Huntsville. “With my dad being an artist and my mom a homeopath and a fantasy writer, me becoming a healer seemed to come natural out of that environment.”

Within mere moments of talking to Jamie you will immediately pick up on his intelligence. He’s beyond his years; an old soul, if you will. He’s got an eccentric vibe and there’s an air of centredness to him. He admits it right off the bat: he thrives off being able to heal people. It gives him a sense of purpose and satisfaction. It’s what he was meant to do.

His interest in plants stems from his early years. He grew up on a large, organic farm near Windermere and recalls a childhood spent immersed in nature and music. He was playing the drums by the time he was five, the piano at seven, so it seemed a natural progression that he would go on to teach himself how to sing, play the guitar and the bass, and in the last four years he’s developed an affinity for the violin. With a brain like a sponge and never one to shy away from learning something new, Jamie has always been the kind of guy who goes after what he wants.

“The best part of being homeschooled was the ability to have everything at my fingerprints and go after what I was passionate about and, I guess, it continued on later in my life. It also gave more time to play music and be creative in general. Basically it allowed me to focus on all the stuff I liked the best, which shaped who I am and now I’m able to incorporate all of it.”

By the time he was 11, Jamie was taking correspondence college courses in herbal medicine. The only problem was that he needed to be 16 in order to graduate so he soaked up the knowledge, applied what he learned by concocting his own natural remedies and simply waited to obtain his diploma.

Plants are incredibly powerful. I see plants as teachers that can pass their knowledge onto us. They’re like elders really.

Throughout most of his 20s, Jamie “did the band thing” and toured all across North America and Europe. By the time he was 27, he was ready and willing to take plant matters more seriously. He took it upon himself to get some intensive training under his belt and attended herbal medicine schools in Vancouver and California. He apprenticed with a lady by the name of Julia Graves, who authored a book on plant medicine that deals with plants having signs that indicate their healing properties. Jamie also followed a guy by the name of Matthew Wood all the way to Minnesota where he learned all about plants being energetic entities. And then things got really serious when he started studying medieval manuscripts.

He uses all kinds of plants including local ones, many of which, he says, originally grew in Europe, having been brought over by the early settlers. St. John’s Wort, yarrow, wild raspberry – there are so many plants that are overlooked for their medicinal value. Take, for example, plantain. It grows everywhere we walk but many of us wouldn’t give it a second look. It has an extreme power to draw out poison.

“What I found was that around the time chemistry was invented they discarded knowledge that had been proven over thousands of years regarding plants and the things they could heal. This was quickly replaced by things like arsenic and Mercury, the basis for modern pharmacology. I started going back into the medieval manuscripts and pulled out a great deal of this lost knowledge. I learned that there is system of energetics underlying all this plant knowledge based on eight elements with astrological indications that moves with the lunar cycles as well as the Celtic and Druidic festivals of the sun.”

A close-up of plantain, which grows rampant and wild around the area, and has exceptional healing properties.

This new-found knowledge he had acquired really pushed Jamie into action. It was too important not to share. He taught himself French, got rid a lot of all of his things – his Toronto apartment as well as some other personal belongings he could live without – and bought a one-way ticket to Switzerland. He brought all of the necessary documents with him, ready to share all that he had learned. Jamie simply took a chance – a leap of faith – and grabbed life by the horns. He had nothing to lose. See that’s the thing about Jamie. He’s not afraid to follow his dream. He tracked down the right people, pitched the theory of his healing system. And they loved it. His idea was well-received; in fact, it was embraced. Years of research with a lot of heart and soul and hard work had paid off. Jamie became a teacher.

It feels like home to me. The mountain energy is strengthening. The light falls in a certain way that is very special to that area. The air is really something, everything about it speaks to me. I think there’s parallels between here [Muskoka] and Switzerland for sure. They are both forested places, full of nature and plants. There’s a grounding energy so there’s an ability, in both places, to access that place of inspiration, of possibility, and weave that into whatever you can make that into.

Jamie is hoping to have his book wrapped up by next spring, and he’s certainly been faced with his fair share of challenges like staying focused and not becoming distracted by the many other ideas he has popping into his brain. He has to prepare course material to have a full three-year curriculum, and in between that he continues to formulate his plans to have a violin workshop, with the intention of manufacturing them each by hand. It’s a big goal, but as usual, Jamie will not shy away from the challenge.

I just wanted to take this opportunity to briefly share how I met Jamie. I was asked to pick him up on the way out to two of my favourite cousins’ house and we hit it off famously. I asked him what his story was and when he summed up what he’s been doing with his life these days, I couldn’t help but be inspired. He left me with an interesting fact about the area I wanted to share with Doppler readers:

“The energy in this area helps a lot of people get a solid foundation, it keeps us grounded. The fact that we’re in the Canadian Shield… there’s a strength and a grounding and I think that sets people up well for life.”

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