5 Ways Vitalism Transformed My Life

When I think about my journey as an herbalist, learning about the vitalist model of healing stands out in my mind as a turning point. I can honestly say that it not only transformed my life as an herbalist, but also as a person. 

Throughout my learning career, I always felt that certain aspects were missing. Whether it was through my experimentation with dietary practices or sitting in anatomy and physiology during my time at Bastyr, there was an element that I was seeking. Once I came across vitalism, all the information I had been looking for came together, crystallized, and formed a new, comprehensive picture that encompassed all the facets of being:: spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical. 

The concepts and principles behind the vitalism model have led me to develop a deeper understanding of myself. As I gained this understanding, I grew more confident personally and as an herbalist. Furthermore, the more I learned about what I needed to experience vitality, the more I was able to make everyday choices that rapidly improved my quality of life. If you want to feel more vibrant and alive, here are five ways vitalism can transform your life.

I Began to Understand My Body on a Deeper Level

I loved studying anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, and other sciences at university. However, once I learned about the vitalist traditions, I realized it was the missing key I had been searching for. 

While the body contains organs, systems, and tissues that follow physiological patterns common to all (for the most part), vitalism taught me that there’s another component to the body—one that science often fails to acknowledge. That component is our overall constitution, as well as the unique constitution of each organ, system, and tissue, which differs from person to person. 

So while we all have a heart and lungs and kidneys, for some, their respiratory system is constitutionally weak and requires extra support. For others, this may be their digestive system. In essence, we all have our unique physical strengths and weaknesses, and when I came to understand these within myself, it clicked so many pieces into place regarding my health. Suddenly, those recurring issues started to make sense, and I had a clear path to resolution, not only with herbs, but with my overall lifestyle. This was a game-changer. 

I always ask people, “Where do you feel your symptoms most when stressed?” Some experience frequent headaches, while others face respiratory problems. This physiological response grants you tremendous insight into someone’s unique constitution and clarifies how you can use herbs to best support it. One of the many powers of herbal medicine is that you can use it as a preventative measure to keep someone healthy instead of waiting until someone is sick to offer help. 

This is a key element of vitalist herbalism, that we can use herbs to strengthen our constitutional weaknesses and temper our excesses. This leads us to a rejuvenative model of herbal medicine that helps us to prevent the roots of disease from sprouting in the first place. 

Through the vitalist lens of herbalism, you can begin to understand how every body is a unique ecosystem of its own, and how to construct holistic protocols to help people not only be symptom-free, but reach new levels of health and vitality. 

Discovering How Nature Influences Our Health

Although people often attribute health issues to genetics, bad luck, or something otherwise outside of their control, vitalism teaches that you and your body are nature. The environment outside impacts your environment inside, and the environment you live in can lead to imbalances, which give rise to symptoms and disease. 

How do we experience nature? In the larger pattern, there are three layers: the seasons, the weather, and the habitat where we live. As a young 20-something-year-old herbalist, the concept that the changing of the seasons, weather patterns, and where I lived would influence my body and health was an explosion of insight in my mind! I always wondered why I could never sleep when it was really windy outside. Then I learned it’s because it aggravated vāta dosha and would make me tense, anxious, and wound up. It became clear why I don’t handle hot environments very well, because it would aggravate my tendencies towards heat. 

Of course, you can’t control the weather or your habitat, but you can control how you live every day, the foods you eat, and the herbs you take. Buy that I mean, you can control your inner environment. When you start to understand how the outer environment influences your inner environment, you have a key to how to adjust your lifestyle to temper your excesses and deficiencies so you’re better able to tolerate and be in balance with the nature outside yourself.  

This also applies to your clinical practice. For example, if someone has arthritis, and in your consultation, you discover that it tends to flare up during the autumn transition, when the weather gets cold and damp. This is gold for clarifying the underlying tissue state of their joints (cold and damp). I’m from the Northwest, where it is perpetually damp. When I travel down to Arizona, where it’s really hot and dry, my pitta and fiery hot constitution become exacerbated. During the hot summers, I tended to feel increasingly irritable and experienced health issues related to excess heat and dryness I had never experienced before. Marshmallow became my best friend while traveling through the southwest. 

Vitalism grants you perception and a level of awareness of how the outside influences the inside, and gives you simple practices and tools you can use to live in accordance with the vital force of your body and nature. Although I had always intuitively sensed that I felt different in different environments, vitalism granted me the confirmation and systematic approach I needed to make real-life changes.

I Learned Herbs Beyond “Use This for That”

Although it may sound vague to say that vitalism taught me how to use herbs holistically, it gave me several strategies I now use daily when considering and administering herbs. Overall, the vitalist system of herbal medicine has helped me understand how to use herbs to help people strengthen and balance their constitutions, how to listen to and follow the vital force, and how to use herbs to support the body’s natural processes instead of suppressing them. 

Before I learned about the vitalist model for healing, my approach to herbs was a bit arbitrary. Like many herbalists, I would categorize herbs by their herbal actions and suggest them to people based on their symptoms, regardless of their constitution and energetic pattern. I fell into the allopathic trap of understanding herbs based only on which symptoms they’re “good for.” This ultimately led to very inconsistent results. 

Sometimes the herbs would work, and sometimes not at all. Over time, this impacted my confidence as an herbalist and led to self-doubt. I felt like something was missing; how could it be that there are a dozen herbs for insomnia, and how do you know which ones to administer? Do you try each one until you find the one that works, or is there a more strategic approach? 

Vitalism taught me a better way to address herbal formulation and administration. By considering the herbal energetics within a plant and how this will interact with the constitution of your client, you will be able to formulate herbal remedies that are specific and highly effective. Once I began to address herbalism with this approach, I started seeing better results, and I finally became more confident.

Confidence is huge. I can’t tell you how many herbalists I’ve met who struggle with being confident in themselves and the medicines they use. The only way to build that confidence is to get results. If you get stuck in the “this herb for that issue” approach, both getting the results you’re looking for and building your confidence will be hit or miss. 

Learning how to use herbs to balance the constitution is only one aspect I learned from the vitalist tradition. Another is how to support the body’s natural processes with plants instead of suppressing them. While the allopathic medical model views symptoms as enemies that need to be eliminated, the holistic model recognizes that symptoms are the language your body uses to communicate. Instead of trying to suppress them, the vitalist practitioner uses herbs to support the body’s natural processes. For example, taking nervines in the evening when the vital force calms down for sleep, or bitters before meals to prime your digestive system. These modes of perception have radically shifted how I use and administer herbs, leading to greater success than ever before. 

I Learned How to Eat for Vitality

The concept that the digestive system is essential to health and vitality is central to cultures and healing traditions worldwide. Although the common saying is “you are what you eat,” this should be changed to “you are what you assimilate,” since it is the nutrients you absorb that influence your health. Depending on the health of your digestive system, you may or may not be breaking down your food properly and absorbing the nutrients adequately. If your digestion is impaired, you can eat the healthiest food in the world and still struggle to assimilate and utilize the nutrients.

When I was younger, I transitioned from vegetarianism and veganism to an entirely raw vegan diet. For two years, all I ate was cold and dry plant foods. Can you imagine how that impacted me when I was living in the chilly Pacific Northwest? Instead of warm cooked vegetable soup, I was drinking frigid berry smoothies when there was a few feet of snow outside. Needless to say, I was not eating in a way that was aligned with the vitalist philosophy, especially when considering the concept I mentioned earlier about seasons, weather, and habitat influencing our inner environment. Yikes! Today, my diet has shifted to one that includes meat and is more flexible, particularly in the sense of eating seasonally, locally, and shifting what, how, and when I eat as the seasons change. However, looking back, I can see how all of those different diets affected the quality of my body and mind, some having a really positive impact and others not so much.  

When I discovered vitalism, I learned that if you think of the body like a tree, the digestive system is like the roots of that tree (your intestines actually resemble roots with their millions of twists, turns, and folds). The food you eat is like the soil used to nourish it. It is difficult to feel energized and have vitality if you are not eating well. However, even if you are eating well, it is paramount that the digestive system is healthy so your body can absorb and use the nutrients in the food. Once I corrected my dietary practices to balance my constitution, I began to feel much better.

Learning to eat for your body type, environment, and constitution is nothing short of life-changing. By noticing how you feel after eating various foods, you can learn to eat in a way that best supports your body and mind. As a vitalist practitioner, you can help your clients in this process of finding a dietary practice that brings them joy, health, and vitality, without getting stuck in any dietary structure other than what works for each individual. 

My Appreciation of Nature Deepened

As a mode of perception, vitalism helps you to see the interconnectedness of everything in nature. Everything is a microcosm of the macrocosm, and you can find the energetic roots behind every pathology reflected in a pattern of nature. While vitalist herbalism is usually discussed in terms of the energetics of plants, constitutional patterns of people, etc., when we zoom out and look at the core principles of vitalism, it starts to edge into a spiritual way of seeing the world around us and nature as a whole. This was profoundly impactful for me, as I have always felt a deeper connection to nature as a spiritual experience. My connection to God, or the source, or the creator, or whatever word you prefer, was felt most strongly while I was in the natural world. To find an approach to natural medicine that incorporated that understanding into its heart was nothing short of mind-blowing for me. 

We are not separate from the world in which we live, and a change as simple as the weather can affect our physiology. Water, Earth, Air, and Fire exist in nature and within our bodies. Through the vitalist mode of perception, you can train yourself to experience this knowledge firsthand. The vitalist approach to healing has taught me that plants are sentient, conscious, and intelligent. There is a spirit within the plants that you can communicate with and work with as an herbalist. 

To me, one of the most profound gifts of being an herbalist is being able to experience this feeling of connectedness with nature. From this perspective, you are never alone, and you are as much a part of nature as it is a part of you. You need only open your heart and mind to experience it.

The Revolutionary Role of Vitalist Herbalism

These are just a few examples of how vitalism profoundly changed my life and my approach to herbalism. I hope it sheds some light on how it can transform yours, too! Your role as an herbalist is to act as the bridge that unites the plant and human kingdoms. As a community, we need to examine modern approaches to wellness and integrate them with traditional vitalist models of healing. 

In doing so, we honor the past while paving a brighter future. Like Paul Bergner says, “If you’re gonna reinvent the wheel, it’s probably gonna be round.” The vitalist model has a lot to offer, and through this mode of perception, you can achieve healing in ways that are deeply needed today.