The Holistic Herbalism Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Can Seaweeds Fix Everything? Jun 17, 2021

Show notes

Seaweeds are really talented. Like, really talented! They can help out with such a wide array of problems that you might feel a little skeptical at first. “Come on, how could seaweeds fix everything on that list?? I mean… what do high blood pressure, osteoporosis, and leaky gut syndrome even have in common, anyway?”

We understand the skepticism! But the truth is, seaweeds really can help out with a ton of different troubles. How? They’re addressing core deficiencies and needs of the body, that’s how. Complex, sea-balanced mineral nutrition gives your body the opportunity to resolve much more than low calcium levels. Immune-modulating polysaccharides improve not only your defense against pathogens, but also your gut flora microbiome composition, and your levels of systemic inflammation. These core-level supports explain why seaweed can help out with such a wide array of issues.

So while it’s not literally true that seaweeds fix everything that might go wrong in a human body, they sure can help with a lot! Listen to our discussion to learn more and get some ideas about how to start incorporating seaweed in your life.

Mentioned in this episode:

Atlantic Holdfast – our favorite seaweed supplier: better-than-organic quality, great price!

Seaweeds are among the 90 herbs we profile in-depth in our Holistic Herbalism Materia Medica course. It’s the foundation of our herbalist training program and a great way to get started if you’re new to herbalism. Course enrollment includes access to twice-weekly live Q&A sessions with Ryn & Katja!

As always, please subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen, so others can find it more easily. Thank you!!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

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You can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!

Breathing Exercises & Herbs for Breath Work Jun 04, 2021

Show notes

“Take a breath, it’ll help!” You’ve heard it before. But what if breathing is difficult or constrained? Breathwork is the answer.

Breathing is like any other movement: there are ways to build efficiency and resilience through practice. Simple exercises can get you breathing deeper, and give you a visceral massage or “inside yoga”. And there are herbs for breath work, too! They can remove the obstacles to deep breathing and help to enhance your practice.

In this episode we’ll share some simple breathwork practices for you to explore. Then we’ll highlight three favorite herbs we turn to for help enhancing our breathing exercises: lobelia (Lobelia inflata), New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae), & elecampane (Inula helenium).

Mentioned in this episode:

New England aster monograph, jim mcdonald
Breathing Easy Much Faster With New England Aster, Kristine Brown

Our Respiratory Health course includes more discussion of the importance of breathing, as well as key herbs to work with and methods for targeting herbal remedies to the sinuses & lungs. Asthma, cold/flu/corona, COPD, and other troubles are covered in detail. Your purchase also gives you access to our twice-weekly live Q&A sessions, so you can connect with Ryn & Katja directly; as well as student communities, discussion threads, printable guides, and plenty more!

PS: Make sure to listen to the end of the episode for a discount code worth $50 off any of our courses!!

As always, please subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen, so others can find it more easily. Thank you!!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

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You can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!

Top 3 Herbs for Seasonal Allergies May 29, 2021

Show notes

Whenever we choose herbs for health issues, we work to match the qualities of the herbs to the state of the body. These three plants we work with as herbs for seasonal allergies are each drying in nature. So, if you run dry or have dry symptoms, then make sure to pair them with something moistening like marshmallow or violet. But if you’re on the watery side, these will be a great help!

Nettle (Urtica dioica) is a superstar plant with a variety of beneficial effects. Not all of them are available in every format – but the good news for allergy sufferers is, any preparation of nettle will do the trick! Tincture, tea, capsules, powders – any way you get nettle into you will reduce histamine expressions and reduce symptom severity.

Eyebright (Euphrasia off.) is another powerful “antihistaminic” herb, and is famously helpful when the eyes are red, itchy, and watery. Tincture’s a great way to work with eyebright, and supplements of this herb are also quite good.

Ground ivy (Glechoma hederacea) is another of our favorite herbs for seasonal allergies, even though it’s not super common in herbal commerce. Ground ivy is an excellent herb when the ears and sinuses are stuck up with fluids. It thins them, drains them, and by doing so relieves pressure and pain. (Did you hear our episode all about ground ivy, not too long ago? Check it out here: Ground Ivy – Sometimes It’s Hard To Hear.)

Mentioned in this episode:

Statement from Mountain Rose Herbs on re-evaluating supplier relationships
Nettle extract (Urtica dioica) affects key receptors and enzymes associated with allergic rhinitis, Phytother Res. 2009 Jul;23(7):920-6. doi: 10.1002/ptr.2763 – a nice study on some identified molecule/receptor actions of nettle to reduce allergic symptoms

Our course on Seasonal & Environmental Allergies goes into much more detail about these three herbs – and a couple dozen others, too! Learn why allergic reactions happen, how your body responds, and the role herbs can play in reducing symptoms. The course includes over 9 hours of videos, plus downloadable audio files so you can listen on the go if you prefer. You’ll also get printable quick guides, a materia medica for allergies, and specific guides on the most effective actions you can take (including low-cost options).

This course is only $25, and you also get access to our live Q&A sessions too – connect directly with Ryn & Katja as you learn. Your course access never expires, and whenever we add new material, that’s added to your account automatically at no extra charge!

As always, please subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen, so others can find it more easily. Thank you!!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

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You can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!

Herbal Tattoo Care May 15, 2021

Show notes

Herbal tattoo care starts a while before your appointment. You’ve got to prepare the skin in advance, get hydrated, and ideally do a little work to keep inflammation down in the lead-up time. You want that skin to be in the best possible shape before you get work done. You might even want to get some test spots done, if you have very reactive skin.

We don’t actually like to throw a ton of different plants together in our herbal tattoo care preparations. Instead there are just a few excellent, simple preparations we turn to again and again. Rosewater is a beautiful light astringent & refrigerant, toning and cooling the skin. A honey salve or other light, simple salve is protective & soothing. We might try a chamomile compress as well. But we’re not going to come at the tattoo with strong vulnerary herbs or lymph-moving plants, because these might actually interfere with the healing process and the settling-in of the ink. So let’s keep it simple!

Mentioned in this episode:

Physio-Medical Therapeutics, Materia Medica and Pharmacy, by T. J. Lyle (1897) – search the text for “tattoo” to find the reference to oak galls.
Medicine Mama’s Sweet Bee Magic – a honey salve we like for pre- & aftercare.

Herbs discussed include: oak, comfrey, rose, chamomile, sage.

Many of our listeners would describe themselves as budding herbalists. They already know some herbs, and they’ve been making teas, tinctures, and salves for themselves and their loved ones for a while. Is that you? If you’d like to take the next steps to develop the herbal skills you need to support your community, then our Community Herbalist Program is for you! You’ll expand your knowledge and build your confidence to work with a broad array of topics, including energetics, formulation, basic phytochemistry, and systematic support with holistic herbal practices. Join us in weekly live Q&A sessions, and connect directly with Ryn & Katja. Your courses never expire, and whenever we add new material, that’s added to your account automatically at no extra charge. Get the full details here and keep your herbal education moving forward!

As always, please subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen, so others can find it more easily. Thank you!!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

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Support the show

You can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!

Listen-Along Plant Sit Meditation May 02, 2021

Show notes

Today’s episode is a little different from our usual. We’re sharing a listen-along plant sit meditation! You can take this episode with you to sit outside with a plant, and we’ll guide you through the meditation practice.

Plant sit meditations are an excellent way to develop your powers of observation and your awareness skills. Plants have a lot to teach us, and this is one way to learn directly from the plants themselves. When we slow down, take time, and devote our attention to a single plant, we can gain a much deeper appreciation for that plant and its medicines.

Many people experience this connection as a communication direct from the plants. Others find it helpful to “get in the plant’s skin” and imagine what it would be like to live as that plant. However you experience it, nature-based meditations like this one are a great way to expand your understanding of an herb and its place in the ecosystem. And you just might gain some insights into your own place in that ecosystem, while you’re at it.

Plant sit meditation practices like this one are a great way to get to know an herb in detail. Our Holistic Herbalism Materia Medica course is another great way! In the course, we profile 90 of our most important medicinal herbs in detail. Your purchase also gives you access to our twice-weekly live Q&A sessions, so you can connect with Ryn & Katja directly; as well as student communities, discussion threads, printable herb profiles, and plenty more!

As always, please subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen, so others can find it more easily. Thank you!!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

This episode was sponsored by Mountain Rose Herbs. We thank them for their support!

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

You can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!

Saw Palmetto Doesn't Discriminate On Gender Apr 19, 2021

Show notes

Have you heard that black cohosh is “for menopause”? Or that red clover is a “natural estrogen replacement”? Or that saw palmetto (Serenoa repens) is “for men” or “for BPH”?

Herbs are not gendered, and they’re not “for” conditions. They have qualities and actions, and they act in context – the context of each individual body. Herbs act on particular types of tissue, and it turns out that in the reproductive system, the various forms and functions mask a deeper similarity, a more fundamental identity. Saw palmetto doesn’t check your chromosomes or your estrogen/testosterone ratio before it goes to work in your system: it acts on the pelvic floor organs, regardless of their shape.

In this episode we deconstruct saw palmetto’s famous ability to help out with BPH, widening our scope to consider other patterns of pelvic stagnation and atrophy this herb can help us correct. We even look outside the reproductive system entirely, noting historical precedent for this herb as a digestive tonic and respiratory expectorant. Historical traditions, contemporary science, and our own direct experiences with the herb all provide helpful points of contact which help us draw a much fuller picture of the herb than “good for BPH”.

Saw palmetto is a complex herb, with actions that can seem – at first glance – contradictory. Taking this in-the-round view of the herb helps us see it more clearly and resolve some confusion. This lesson goes beyond this one herb, though – we always need to be aware of our culture’s tendency for reductionism and putting herbs in neat boxes.

Mentioned in this episode:

Sabal in The History of the Vegetable Drugs of the U.S.P. by John Uri Lloyd (1911)
Serenoa – Saw Palmetto in King’s American Dispensatory by Harvey Wickes Felter & John Uri Lloyd (1898)
Serenoa in The Eclectic Materia Medica, Pharmacology and Therapeutics by Harvey Wickes Felter (1922)
Serenoa: Eclectic materia medica for Saw Palmetto – this includes text from Willam Bloyer (writing in the Eclectic Medical Journal, 1896), with commentary from Paul Bergner at the North American Institute of Medical Herbalism (1997)
Saw Palmetto in A Modern Herbal by M. Grieve (1931)
Use of saw palmetto (Serenoa repens) extract for benign prostatic hyperplasia. Kwon, Y. Food Sci Biotechnol. 2019 Apr 17;28(6):1599-1606. doi: 10.1007/s10068-019-00605-9.
Saw Palmetto (Serenoa repens) by the Association for the Advancement of Restorative Medicine
Competent Care for Transgender, GenderQueer and non-Binary Folks by Larken Bunce & Vilde Chaya Fenster-Ehrlich
The Energetics of Western Herbs by Peter Holmes
The Botanical Safety Handbook, 2nd ed. – editors Zoe Gardner, Michael McGuffin

As always, please subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen, so others can find it more easily. Thank you!!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

This episode was sponsored by Mountain Rose Herbs. We thank them for their support!

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

You can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!

Ground Ivy: Sometimes It's Hard To Hear Apr 04, 2021

Show notes

Ground ivy (Glechoma hederacea), also known as alehoof, creeping charlie, and gill-over-the-ground, is one of our favorite herbs to gather in early spring. We like to prepare a tincture of it in brandy, and we work with it for troubles in the ear-nose-throat. It helps a lot with tinnitus and with difficulty hearing that comes from stagnant fluid in the ears.

Here are just a few comments on this ability of ground ivy, over a 300-year span:

Botanologia, or The English Herbal, written by William Salmon in 1710, says about ground ivy that “It is bitter, cleansing and opening the Obstructions of the Viscera: put into the Ears, it helps the Noise in them, as also their Ringing and Deafness.”
Health from British Wild Herbs, written by Richard Lawrence Hool in 1918, noted that “The expressed juice of Ground Ivy is a specific for deafness.”
Writing in 2012, Henriette Kress in her post Herb of the Week: Ground Ivy writes that “It’s one of the few herbs that can touch noise-induced tinnitus. A lot of people read my first book […] grabbed the ground ivy, and could start working again … they’d been on disability for their tinnitus for years. I know because quite a few told me.”

But we also observe an effect of ground ivy on ‘hearing’ issues that have more to do with mental & emotional blocks to communication. When we avoid hearing something because it’s painful, because we’re not prepared to accept it, because we’ve built up a habitual reaction to a topic and can no longer hear the nuances… ground ivy can be helpful. We’ve seen this over and over in our clients & students, and it’s a direct extension of the physical work of the herb. All plants are this way! They work on the whole human, not “just” the body or “just” the mind.

Herbs discussed in this episdoe include: ground ivy, nettle, garlic mustard, violet, henbit, deadnettle.

Ground ivy is one of 90 herbs we profile in-depth in our Holistic Herbalism Materia Medica course. It’s the foundation of our herbalist training program and a great way to get started if you’re new to herbalism. Course enrollment includes access to twice-weekly live Q&A sessions with Ryn & Katja!

As always, please subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen, so others can find it more easily. Thank you!!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

This episode was sponsored by Mountain Rose Herbs. We thank them for their support!

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

You can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!

Herb of the Month - An Essential Herbalism Learning Method Mar 28, 2021

Show notes

Herb of the Month is one of our most powerful learning methods for students of herbalism – and honestly, it’s great for experienced practitioners too! It’s deceptively simple: just choose an herb and work with it extensively every day for a month, in as many ways as you can come up with. At the same time, research the herb as far and wide as you can. In this way you can foreground your own direct experience with the plant, while also exploring the variety of possibilities the herb presents to you.

Some of our most important herbal allies are developed through an Herb of the Month practice! Very frequently, there are aspects of an herb’s qualities, actions, and nuances that can only be appreciated through visceral exposure. Just reading the words on paper, or hearing them in a recording (or classroom), doesn’t set up the same kind of sense-memory. Herbalism starts, after all, with the plants – not with their names, or lists of their chemicals, or their precise categorization according to an ancient schema. Herbalism began with people, and with plants – and for each one of us, it’s important to go back to that direct contact to make the deepest connections possible.

Mentioned in this episode:

Our Recommended Resources, with links to many sites for herbal research
A Modern Herbal by M. Grieve, a classic herbal materia medica book from 1931
Classic Herbal Texts hosted at Henriette’s Herbal Homepage, a variety of texts from the 1800s and early 1900s

Herbs discussed include: chamomile, dandelion, burdock, chicory, schisandra, centaury, catnip, tarragon, anise hyssop.

Our Holistic Herbalism Materia Medica course is an exploration of 90 of the safest, most accessible, and most effective herbs we know. Any one of them would make a fantastic Herb of the Month! It’s a great way to learn the key features of important herbs and to see them in their fullness, rather than pigeon-holed into a “what’s that herb good for” category. The course comes with access to our twice-weekly live Q&A sessions, discussion threads in every lesson, and plenty more goodies in our online learning community.

As always, please subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen, so others can find it more easily. Thank you!!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

This episode was sponsored by Mountain Rose Herbs. We thank them for their support!

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

You can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!

Equinox Thoughts On Balance & Amphoteric Herbs Mar 20, 2021

Show notes

We’re discussing the notion of amphoteric herbs today, because it’s the Spring equinox and we’re thinking about balance. The term amphoteric is orginally a chemistry term meaning “having characteristics of both an acid and a base”. Herbalists use the word to mean an herb that has a balancing activity, one that is capable of acting in ways that seem opposite, depending on the context in which it’s taken.

But to understand how amphoteric herbs could be balancers in this way, first we need to investigate the concept of balance a little bit. What does it mean to find balance, or stay balanced? What does it mean that we’re all seeking balance? How can the experience of building physical balance skills teach us about finding mental & emotional balance? And of course: how can herbs help us find it, and maintain it?

Herbs discussed include: tulsi, bladderwrack, nettle, chamomile, solomon’s seal, ashwagandha, licorice, calamus, hawthorn.

We’ve been thinking about balance a lot lately – not just because of equinox, but also because we’ve been working on our Musculoskeletal Health course. If pain, tension, or stiffness are inhibiting your balance, herbs can help! This course covers our favorite herbal musculoskeletal remedies and strategies for combining herbalism and movement practices to get results. You also get access to our twice-weekly live Q&A sessions, so you can connect with us (Ryn & Katja) directly!

As always, please subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen, so others can find it more easily. Thank you!!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

This episode was sponsored by Mountain Rose Herbs. We thank them for their support!

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

You can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!

Enhancing Herbal Salves with Tinctures Mar 13, 2021

Show notes

In this episode we share a simple technique for enhancing herbal salves with tinctures. Lots of herbalists like to put essential oils in their salves, and we’re no exception – but we also want to have other methods for increasing potency. Essential oils can be costly, and they have sustainability issues in a lot of cases.

Combining alcohol extracts (herbal tinctures) with oil extracts is a great way to maximize constituent availability in your finished product. We have two methods for you today. One method involves combining pre-made salves & tinctures to bring their powers together. The other method is a two-step extraction process to make sure you get the full range of constituents from a given herb. Both are easy and can be done right at home!

You’ll find a mini crockpot super helpful for this work. They’re handy and not too expensive.

Herbs discussed include: cayenne, solomon’s seal, kava, st john’s wort.

Not feeling confident about your basic herbal salve-making abilities, let alone powered-up salves like these? Our Herbal Medicine-Making course has dozens of methods for you to explore! Learn to make teas, tinctures, poultices, salves, liniments, spice blends, and much more. This self-paced online video course includes access to twice-weekly live Q&A sessions so you can connect with us directly!

As always, please subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen, so others can find it more easily. Thank you!!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

This episode was sponsored by Mountain Rose Herbs. We thank them for their support!

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

You can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!