Holistic Herbal Therapeutics and Influenza
The other day I did one of our quarterly live Q&A sessions for all of the Evolutionary Herbalism students and someone asked a question about how we go about holistically treating influenza. It’s January of 2020, and as I’m sure you know, this tends to be the season where people are coming down with the…
Ayurvedic Herbal Oil Massage for Balancing Your Dosha
Let’s face it, we all could probably be doing more to tend to our health. But sometimes self care can seem like another thing added to your already overflowing list of things you’ve got to take care of in your daily life. When you add up all the things you’ve read up on that you…
Working with Plant Intelligence with Scott Kloos
In this special episode of The Plant Path, I got a chance to interview a fellow PNW herbalist, Scott Kloos, founder of Cascadia Folk Medicine, The School of Forest Medicine and author of Pacific Northwest Medicinal Plants: Identify, Harvest, and Use 120 Wild Herbs for Health and Wellness. Scott and I have known each other…
How to Heal and Not Harm with Medicinal Plants
As herbalists, our #1 goal in our work is to provide healing and alleviate the suffering in the people we serve. But that typically leads into our #1 fear as herbalists, which is that we might inflict harm or hurt someone with the medicinal plants we give them. This is a totally valid concern, for…
Legal Concerns of Practicing Herbalism
A major concern of folks on the path of becoming a practicing herbalist is that they’ll get sued for practicing medicine without a license. Being an herbalist in the United States is a little bit of a grey area, as there are thousands of practitioners out there helping people with plants that aren’t necessarily licensed…
“How much of an herb do I give?” A discussion on dosage of medicinal plants
From a single drop to 5 mL of tincture or 1 tsp to 5 grams for a cup of tea, the range of how much of a medicinal plant to give someone is as vast and numerous as there are herbalists. Strong opinions exist on both ends of the spectrum; whether to give small…
An Herbal Formula for an Embarrassing Condition
I always like to say that every client you see is a chapter in your experiential book of learning herbal medicine. And that is the very best book you can get to learn about how to use plants effectively. Recently, I was blessed with the opportunity to treat a condition I’d never treated before… hemorrhoids.…
Herbs to Support the Heart in Times of Grief
“Grief expressed out loud, whether in or out of character, un-choreographed and honest, for someone we have lost, or a country or home we have lost, is in itself the greatest praise we could ever give them. Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses.” -Martine Prechtel Grief is…
The Herbal Equation: Plants AND People
I know how it goes when you first start studying herbalism, you get SO excited about learning about all of these beautiful amazing plants. I mean after all, isn’t that what usually gets us into herbal medicine to begin with, an absolute love for plants? But they are just one half of the “herbal equation.” It’s…
The Human Body: Machine or Ecosystem?
Modern biomedicine tends to view the human body like a machine made up of multiple “gears.” When something goes wrong, we simply need to fix the broken part (or replace it in some instances). This mechanistic view of the body is significantly different from more traditional perspectives on our anatomy and physiology. Central to the…
