From therapeutic principles of holistic herbalism and how to address specific conditions, to tips and tricks for assessment, formulation, and other nuggets of clinical gold, these posts are all about supporting your work with people.
Often when we consider herbs that work on the heart, we think of high blood pressure, predispositions for heart disease, and things like that. But thereโs another level of working with the heart for herbalists who want to use plants not just for helping the body but helping the whole person,
If you are studying Western herbalism, it’s helpful to understand your plants in terms of their medicinal actions, their energetics, their organ system affinities, and so on. So where do you start? How do you figure that stuff out?
With thousands of options out there for herbal medicines, do you ever find yourself wondering which plant to work with? Do you ever get confused about which herb is right for you?
Well, watch this video to get the full scoop on some simple tips and tools to help you make those decisions.
โDetoxificationโ is a term that gets used a lot in alternative medicine. Perhaps itโs become a bit of a fad to cleanse or detox, trying to purge the body of toxins that shouldnโt be there by using specific herbal medicines to assist the process.
The urinary system is one of the main eliminatory pathways of the body. When it becomes blocked, detoxification is inhibited, and infections and kidney stones
Although the conventional approach to lowering cholesterol often includes medication, adopting a holistic perspective and taking a multifaceted approach can help you absolve the root
When I was studying herbal medicine in university at Bastyr, my teachers taught me that in traditional western herbalism, the human organism is likened to a tree whose roots are the digestive system.
In this way, the health of the entire organism is utterly dependent on the health of the digestive apparatus- from the mouth all the way down to the colon. In our modern world of genetically modified, processed, artificial, pesticide ridden foods, along with the overuse of antibiotics, over the counter antacids and anti-inflammatories, as well as the serious impacts of food intolerances and allergies, that the state of human digestive health is to say the least, not so great.
Although everyone experiences social anxiety differently, the symptoms of discomfort are often the same; an increased sense of tension, nervousness, and distress when in social
I talk a lot about the importance of energetics and constitutions in clinical herbalism. This is one of the attributes of traditional systems of medicine across the world that are at their root and are fundamental to their way of understanding the uniqueness of a person and the specific properties of medicinal plants.
Most herbalists begin with books, teachers, and tradition, but genuine clinical mastery comes from organizing what you know into something you can actually use. In
One of the reasons why I think this is particularly important is because itโs really conventional for people when they get the flu, and especially with the accompanying fever, to reach for something like aspirin to get that fever down. Unfortunately, when we suppress a fever, we actually end up prolonging the sickness.
All herbalists have one fear in common, and thatโs accidentally causing harm to someone using herbs. However, the likelihood of this occurring is lower than