Truly Ethical Wildcrafting: Creating Reciprocity & Relationship with Wild Plants & Places
On this week’s episode of The Plant Path, Whitney is joined by herbalist Rosalee de la Forêt. They have a discussion around wildcrafting practices; how to build relationships with the plants that grow around you by learning how to honorably harvest, tend, and care for land in your bioregion; how to work with the wild plants around you for food, medicine, and healing; and much more.
Finding Replacements for Endangered Plants
Ethical Herbalism I want to discuss a topic that feels pretty important as it often comes up in practice. I think it is essential for all herbalists to know what herbs are ethical and what ones are not so we can be true stewards and protectors of Mother Nature and have the ability to replace…
Using Herbs to Heal the Mind
A number of medicinal plants directly influence our nervous system and can have an influence on healing our mind and our psychological state.
Using Comfrey Safely
Comfrey is an important plant in traditional Western herbalism, as well as in modern herbalism, but there’s a stigma around it too. People seem to be a bit scared of comfrey because of some research showing some of the constituents are potentially dangerous.
But this is an herb that has been used in Western herbalism both topically and, yes—believe it or not—internally as well for a really long time. Few people talk about the possible internal usage of comfrey.
But if you know more about its uses and characteristics, you can use it with greater confidence and competence.
Determining Interchangeable Species
Oftentimes with medicinal plants, there will be other species in a particular genus that can be used in the exact same way as the standardly accepted species that we typically use in herbal medicine.
The Role of Alcohol in Herbalism
As herbalists, we tend to rely pretty heavily on alcohol as one of our main ways for extracting and preserving the medicinal properties of plants. Herbal tinctures are one of the most commonly used forms of herbal medicine by herbalists. So what’s the deal with alcohol? What’s the best type of alcohol to use? Is…
The Benefits and Dangers of Bitters
Bitter herbs have been gaining a lot of popularity over the years within herbalism, and they’re sometimes seen as a magical cure, especially for the digestive system. Some people say that everyone should be on bitters because they’re so amazing for digestion. Many people these days have a lot of issues with the digestive system,…
Adverse Reactions to Herbs – What they are and how to avoid them
One of the biggest fears that we have as herbalists and as practitioners is that not only will our remedies potentially not work or heal the person that we’re working with, but that they might actually do harm, that we might give someone a plant and it creates an issue for them in their body,…
Allergies and Asthma
In this week’s post, I wanted to share with you some of the overarching categories of herbal actions and energetics and properties that are used to treat upper respiratory allergies and asthma. Upper respiratory allergies can sometimes be especially tricky to work with as an herbalist. Oftentimes it’s because what we see in a lot…
Understanding Herbs Astrologically
Today, I want to talk a little bit more about the holistic model that I’ve been sharing over the last few weeks in regards to medical astrology and its connection to herbal medicine. Last week, I talked about the way that we can use astrology to look at a person and see the connection between…
