Dara Saville
Vol VII #V March 22, 2017 Subscriptions: $0.00!
Issues feature abridged reprints from the quarterly, Contents along with many other articles by our herbal tribe. p2 Announcements Be sure of receiving every issue of Herbaria Monthly p5 Matthew Wood: Growing & Evolving Herbalism by subscribing for free on the left side of the page at: p24 Dara Saville: Herbalism in The Southwest www.PlantHealer.org p32 Resources for Herbalists Reach tens of thousands of herb lovers with p39 Herbalist Interview #1: Angie True inexpensive advertising space in our publications: p48 Juliet Blankespoor: The Medicine of Yellowroot Advertising Info PDF p52 Herbalist Interview #2: Katherine MacKinnon ______Subscribe to Plant Healer Magazine, $59 for 1200 pages per year of herbal info, at: Welcome www.PlantHealerMagazine.com
...to Herbaria, an over 30 pages-long monthly We love hearing what you like. Write anytime... and enjoy! addition to the nearly 300 pages-long quarterly Plant –Jesse Wolf Hardin (editor) Healer Magazines, providing content even to those [email protected] unable to afford needed educational materials! –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
1 Plant Healer News & Announcements
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Kiva’s 1st Book in Progress CHANGELINGS Mythopoetic Plant Medicine
Kiva is hard at work on what will be the first published book of her own writings. She teaches and evokes what I coined “Mythopoetic Plant Medicine,” with emphasis on the plant/human relationship, ecopsychological understanding, traditional and new uses for herbs, plant mythos and lore. And you’re invited to offer a class or activity for The release date for Changelings is expected to be the kids And we will even give a free ticket to sometime between the first of June and first of someone willing to teach a kid class on each of September, with preorders hopefully going on the 3 days. Email Village director Liz Foster at: sale a month before. [email protected] ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Help Post or Distribute Find or Offer a Ride to Good Medicine Confluence Good Medicine Confluence Posters & Cards There are wonderful folks who could really use a We have a couple hundred 8x11 color event ride to the event in June, and you may be posters remaining, please write us if you can seeking a ride yourself, start posting now on the: post or distribute any in appropriate places in RideShare Forum your region: [email protected] ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Get Your Discounted Meal Tickets Soon ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– for the 2017 Good Medicine Confluence Bring Your Kids to the Good Medicine Confluence The Ft. Lewis kitchen is planning special meals Youth Village using local whole foods, specially for attendees of June’s Confluence in Durango. To reserve With this coming year’s gathering being held in yours, we recommend you call and reserve June instead of September, kid’s will be out of ASAP. Click through to the Meals page of the school and better available to attend. Tickets are website from: only $60 for ages 10 through 16, and totally free PlantHealer.org/intro.html for kids 9 and under. Parents, bring the young’ns! –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
2 ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– provided. There is minimal social interaction Sponsor & Advertising Help Welcomed offered due to the many busy projects, and Receive a 20% Cash Commission herbal instruction cannot be provided unless a person or couple were to end up integral Helpful Betsy Costilo-Miller, Colin McGee and participants over time. If interested, email Kiva Liz Foster are already spreading this mission and for an application with “Caretaking” in the movement, but we could still use your help with subject line:
3 4 Return To The Green: The Evolution, Growth, & Resurgence of Contemporary Herbalism by Matthew Wood
Matt Wood is one of the most appreciated elders of the herbal movement, in large part due to his foundational books, especially the groundbreaking volume The Practice of Traditional Western Herbalism which had a big impact on my partner Kiva Rose’s understanding and practice. The following assessment of contemporary herbalism’s history and future first appeared in the quarterly Plant Healer Magazine, available from www.PlantHealerMagazine.com To learn more about Matt’s work, see our extensive interview with him in the Plant Healer book 21st Century Herbalist, available by clicking on the Bookstore Page at: www.PlantHealer.org. And check out his website for news and products, at: WoodHerbs.com
Measuring Our Growth Rings modern “herbal renaissance” in the West. I like history, but I am recounting these rings only so that When we look at the rings of a tree we of course see we can have a perspective on the resurgence of sap history in the widths of the rings. I want to go back a that will mark the growth rings of our future. mere thirty or thirty-five rings in the history of the
5 When I was young I aspired to be an herbalist. In properties by the scientific establishment. There was those days the closest practicing herbalists were in no Internet full of opinions about uses and toxicity Nebraska and North Dakota – a days’ journey from put out by people who never used an herb in their my home – and there were only a handful of serious life. Also, there wasn’t a lot of interference from students of herbalism. My highest aspiration was marketers of herbs introducing all sorts of exotic simply to be an herbalist, a calling that seemed foreign herbs while ignoring the old standbys of our almost impossible from the legal and social tradition. I was apprenticed to herbal medicine when standpoint. It was an isolated situation to be in but the pharmacopeia was still almost entirely Western that fit me perfectly – as a tenth generation Quaker herbs and I appreciate that. I understood that I was on my father’s side I was used the idea of being an walking on sacred ground – following in the iconoclast or heretic. It was like being in one of those footsteps of the great American Indian contribution old wizarding families in Harry Potter that didn’t get of wood lore and herb lore, as well as ancient how muggle society worked. As if I were European and Mediterranean traditions. I think like contemplating the worst crime in the world I began those herbs; but in those days their thoughts were my practice and, strange to say, I became an herbalist. still hidden from me.
Herbalism grew a lot during my first decade at the I first began to experience the wider community of herb store (1982-92). One thing I appreciate about herbal medicine in the early 90s, with trips to those years was the lack of opinion about herbal Herbfest at Frontier Herbs in Iowa, then by invitation
6 to speak at Green Nations in New York. At the understood how to practice or apply herbs because former conference one met alternative agriculture the old medical system was dead. The first people and back-to-the-landers with kids – a real generation of herbalists usually adopted a model Midwestern and Mid-American group. At Green from some other tradition: Chinese medicine, Nations I met a maturing hippie, iconoclast, and free- traditional women’s medicine, biomedicine, plant thinker group. I felt common ground with both attunement, or homeopathy (Dorothy Hall and communities, but especially the latter. And, I met myself). And there were those who learned an Rosemary Gladstar, the guardian angel of our intuitive, empirical practice from their grandmothers profession. (Rosemary Gladstar and Phyllis Light), or father (David Christopher) or somebody else’s When I first taught at Green Nations in 1994 I grandmother. remember how few people really practiced herbal medicine and I made it a point to give case histories But still, when all is said and done, Western and specific indications and to address people’s self- herbalism still remained, in my opinion, an unknown confidence about practicing and about the power of and un-practicable darkness. There was something herbal medicine. And I met a truly great practitioner, artificial about applying all these foreign systems to the late William LeSassier. Western herbs. I got as close as I could with homeopathy, which had a rich Western (and Eastern) It is hard for younger students to realize how slowly tradition, but that still was not herbal medicine. It we learned in those days. Most of us didn’t have was like having the names, but not the culture, the teachers. Herbal medicine had been part of Western experience, the tradition, the living history. It was as medicine until about 1950 and biomedicine had if we had no legitimate standing of our own – a changed the playing field so thoroughly that nobody typical Western experience.
7 Plant Healer’s Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference, launched at a time when all the focus was on Eastern modalities.
Then it all began to change. I grant myself a lot of An Herbal Resurgence credit in reintroducing the basic doctrines of traditional Western herbalism – specific indications and the six tissue states – which were the foundation The second generation of herbalists appeared about of 19th and early 20th Century practice, and helping 2000. I noticed a change in the younger students, us reconnect to our roots and the inherent logic of though at the time I was pretty unconscious of the our own system. I also want to point out that David change. These young kids (to my middle-aged eyes) Winston and Paul Bergner have done a lot of work took for granted that one could learn herbal medicine revitalizing the eclectic and physiomedical traditions, or “become an herbalist.” They learned quicker. It is and Jim McDonald, Kathleen Maeier, and others have still hard to be a practitioner in an unfriendly society, done a lot to popularize it in their teachings but not as hard. However, there was also a difference in their whole approach to herbalism. It was as if herbalism became not only a practice but part of a TWHC 2010 social movement. In the beginning it was just one item in the wide alternative agenda including agriculture, food, energy, building, etc, of the “hippie renaissance.” Now it seemed that herbal medicine was leading the way in some underground way. It was inspiring a community.
I became aware of this when I attended the first annual Plant Healer conference organized by Jesse Wolf Hardin and Kiva Rose in New Mexico, and I credit the two of them both as communicators, recognizing the importance and power of herbal medicine as a potent social mover, and catalyzing the community that has grown up around herbalism.
8 This new herbalism has more of a political bent than In short, I feel that herbal medicine is a part of the the older. We never set up free clinics in the old days. sacred new Earth that is trying to come to birth right we were just struggling to learn and practice in now, despite the opposition of material greed and relative isolation and dangerous legal waters. Our political power that is now so awfully apparent. So battles are not over, but the new generation brought this is not about the rings to be laid down, but about in a new orientation. the nature of the sap itself.
For me, Nature is a living being. I have talked about this aplenty in my books and talks so I won’t go over my initial experience in depth – when I was eleven and the knowledge came to me internally that “Nature is Alive” – intelligent, ensouled, a situation indigenous peoples may feel more intensely but from which modern culture has strayed.
But “you can’t fool Mother Nature,” you can’t stand outside the Living Nature and survive for very long. We are being tugged back because we are incomplete and disquiet without that living connection.
The animals have always been associated with the “Lord of the Hunt,” the plants with the “Green Lady.” The animals represent the active forces of Nature, which are within us and without us, while the green world represents more of the passive forces of Nature. This includes the undifferentiated life force of the vegetative/cellular world within us – for which the plants are such natural medicines. But also, the green world (even in the desert) is our Jesse Wolf calling for a home. From the Green Woman, therefore, we get our radically empowered medicine, food, home, and resources. herbal resurgence Certainly there are some old “gender stereotypes” at Return To The Green work here, but if one is going to go tramping around in the inner world one is going to meet the Lord and But all of this I recount only to establish context. the Lady – and trying to make them genderless is What I want to write about is not really the future of ridiculous. I spent my first years on a remote herbal medicine, but its transformative power. I feel reservation where there was still a “two soul” and I it churning in the depths of the American and don’t agree with the modern idea of white society Canadian soul right now. I feel it has a tremendous, that wants to abolish gender. Some people just have transformative spiritual and social power that goes two genders. In the Native world that is a special beyond the emerging social movement that has medicine power. On that reservation the two soul coalesced around it in what I call the “second was the marriage counselor, because he supposedly generation.” Maybe it will take three generation, like understood both sides. But as he told my father, “it’s three trimesters, to bring itself to birth. Or maybe I not a lot of fun.” am just imagining something.
9 The Lord and the Lady have their own departments warm-blooded animals form partnerships, stable in the inner world and we have to respect that. We relationships, care for their young, and operate in a are a lot closer to the Green Woman because the community. Also, the warm-blooded animals dream, animal forces are a lot harder to deal with than the unlike any other creatures. Therefore, it is from them plants. The cold-blooded animals are almost that we, the two-legged animals, get dreamtime – that completely, ruthlessly dedicated to survival and means the spirit world – and also the seed of our heart reproduction – the biological imperatives – but the warmth and soul. That’s right: the animals invented
10 the spirit world, they invented the heart. All we important that we deal with the juggernaut of inner invented was self-consciousness and alienation. and outer crises coming upon us. And this is where That’s why all the old legends and stories about the herbalism comes in. animal world sound like dreams and faery-tales. Continuing on The Path We can’t get anywhere without a positive relationship to Mother Nature and she comes first for Our increasing relationship with the plants, through us, because of that alienation. Our outer chaos and green medicine, is not only curing a lot of people in a environmental destruction exactly mirrors our inner deep, profoundly transformative way that is slowly state of being and both are now coming to an gaining its own momentum, but we are learning to absolute climax. tune into them and they are speaking to us more and more. They are leading us into the Heart of Nature. It is only in the green world of the Goddess that our There is a force and power to this that is leading us soul feels at home and it is only here, within our and working through us as herbalists. The animals natural residences and resources, that we can are also drawing closer to us. At a class I taught with develop the gifts of the warm-blooded animal spirit Vanessa Chakour at the Wolf Center in NY last year a world within us. That’s because Nature is our home, falcon flew down and walked along the path not on the inner and the outer level. And we have to be thirty feet from us. A falcon! It took me a year to at peace with Mother Nature, inwardly and understand: the animals are drawing closer to us to outwardly, to do that work. That is why it is so teach us too.
11 I see some glamorization of herbalism, usurping of authority to teach (which is easier than practicing, even poorly), and of course, money-making. A division of people is taking place right now, between those who want power and resources, and want to provide it for themselves (rather than request it), and those who want to handle inner and outer resources with respect. However, over all, the feeling I get is a good one.
I think we all feel this, even those addicted to power, egotism, and greed, but I find that is our herbal friends and students that sense this most acutely: that there is spiritual power coming into us through herbal medicine, to be handled respectfully. The spirits are saying: “New path, new path under your feet. Don’t worry. Don’t look to the left or the right. Walk the path.”
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23 Practicing Herbalism in the Crossroads of the Southwest
by Dara Saville
Dara (pronounced Dare-ah) is Plant Healer Magazine’s bioregional, sense of place, plant conservation columnist, whose writings appear near the beginning of every issue. The following piece from the magazine describes her work with Southwestern plants, and paints an enticing picture of Southwestern landscapes and plantscapes. Like Kiva and myself, she has given herself totally to the magical state of New Mexico, and will be teaching for us at the Good Medicine Confluence just over the border in Colorado, the Animas Valley at the base of the San Juan Mountains. Check out her Yerba Mansa restoration project and seasonal courses at Albuquerque Herbalism, and click here to read about her teaching at The Good Medicine Confluence in Durango in June.
The practice of herbalism has a certain familiarity our own bodies, tree branches spreading out toward about it. That is to say, it follows a universal pattern the sky, or a river system carving its way into the that repeats itself infinitely within our selves, in the earth. Depending on your perspective, you might wider world, and beyond. The pattern is like so say it starts out small, something that flows within many common things: the vascular system within yourself. I noticed it one day when I was out wild
24 crafting Chaparral (Larrea tridentata) in the desert The pungent odor of this plant on a hot desert south of Albuquerque. Standing in the open plain afternoon penetrates me all the way down into the along the Rio Grande, I could see the mesa top across branching bronchial pathways of my lungs, filling me the river that holds the obscured remains of an with awareness of that same infinitely repeating ancient Piro Pueblo village and their many pattern that connects all living things throughout astounding rock paintings and petroglyphs that still time and space. I am brought into balance by my burst forth with hidden vitality. At once I feel time with Chaparral and go home feeling centered connected to all people in my search for wild and content. medicine. Then I realize the strongest energy is right in front of me, all around me, as far as the eye can From there, the practice of herbalism continues along see: nothing but Chaparral. This plant is so this familiar life pattern by widening out to others, tenacious, so resilient, so persistent, and even more like the branches of a tree. I noticed this part of the ancient than the Piro people. Many Chaparral plants pattern one day when I was teaching an herb class. I live to be thousands of years old, surviving in the always show lots of photos of plants during classes harshest of environments, overtaking everything to help people connect with them as living beings including the most rugged of companions, Mesquite. and get a better feel for their individual personalities.
25 I showed my class a scene from my garden that community. It contributes to a foundation of included a colorful array of blooming red Poppies creativity, productivity, contentedness, and a greater (Papaver spp.), purple Bee Balm (Monarda menthafolia), sense of well being on a larger scale. As I walk with yellow and white Chamomile (Matricaria recutita), my children through the mountain wilderness and and bright orange California Poppies (Eschscholzia desert canyons, I see the seeds sprouting and californica). At once I could see that all of the students growing, the pattern expanding even more. Their in the room were affected by it. Simultaneous smiles awareness of plant beings and their knowledge about spread across their faces and any rigidity or tension plant medicine is something they will carry with held in their postures seemed to soften away. The them into the future and wherever they go in life. feeling in the room changed as the healing energy of The respect that they show for plants assures me that those plants penetrated everyone. The gift of the patterns inherent in the practice of herbalism restoration came from simply seeing a photo of connect us both back to the source and onward into medicinal plants, some of which were no longer even infinity. alive, and this time a whole room of people felt it.
As momentum builds, the pattern continues Knowing the Plants: spreading and the roots of folk herbalism deepen throughout the community. When people find At the center of any herbalism practice are the living something that makes them feel good, they talk plants themselves. They are the source from which about it and share it with others. Creating the knowledge, the medicine, and the restorative relationships with plants and learning how to take effects all flow. My herbal practice is, therefore, charge of your own base health is empowering. This based on the plants that grow around me, here in results in an increasingly energized and vitalized New Mexico.
26 San Juan Mountain foliage outside of Durango, Colorado, site of the 2017 Good Medicine Confluence
I live in the geographic center of three distinct including one of my favorites, Bee Balm (Monarda physiographic provinces: The Rocky Mountains, The menthafolia). This plant has a striking purple flower Great Plains, and The Desert Basin and Range. Of with purple and green striped sepals, unlike any course the wondrous Colorado Plateau and all the other. When I see a patch in full bloom, covered in other western regions beyond are only a road trip butterflies, I am reminded of the continuing cycle of away. As an herbalist, I am fortunate to live in a life and the critical role that plants play in the world. place where I have easy access to a wide range of I feel energized seeing one of life’s most beautiful botanical wilderness from desert canyon to mountain expressions of the interconnection between all things. slope and a long sunny growing season, in which to Continuing on along the mountain trail, I enter the grow many medical herbs right in my own backyard rich mixed conifer stands that are fortified by the garden. It is these plants of the American West, both Usnea (Usnea barbata) that hangs from assorted tree wild and easily cultivated, that make up the heart of branches all around me. There is a certain comfort, my herbalism practice and they are the focus of my like that of a thick warm blanket, that comes from work. walking through this medicine-rich forest and then I find a physical representation of this feeling: an Stepping into the high desert mountain ranges to the Usnea birds’ nest. The birds that grew up in this east of Albuquerque, you will find changing home were given extra protection by the mother who ecosystems as the elevation rises from the desert knew to build her nest out of the soft, comforting, plain to over 10,000 feet. These varied environments antimicrobial power of Usnea. Before long, the trail are home to a long list of wild medicinal plants brings me into a mountain meadow with a large
27 stand of mature Gentian (Frasera speciosa). The and other remains tell us that many different people monumental beauty of these enormous plants is have been walking the land: Archaic hunter and impressive on its own and I feel as though I have gather societies, Pueblo People, Hispanics, Anglos, to entered a gathering of elders standing in the clearing. name a few. Check dams for channeling rainwater, On and on the path goes, winding in and out of terrace gardens built into rocky slopes, and plant intermixed plant communities, I visit with Yarrow petroglyphs of Corn and Yucca, tell me about the (Achillea millefolium), Mullein (Verbascum thapsus), Pueblo Peoples’ connection to both wild and Figwort (Scrophularia lanceolata), Potentilla (Potentilla cultivated plants. The numerous grinding slicks, spp.), and many others before I return to the valley deeply and smoothly worn into rugged basalt, below. invoke the imagination. What might it have been like to sit here looking at that mountain across the These reminders about our interrelation with other river, grinding Corn (Zea spp.), Salt Bush (Atriplex living beings and the rewarding sense of canescens), or Spectacle Pod (Dimorphocarpa wislizeni) peacefulness that emanates from it can be found in perhaps? Then I stumble upon a set of concentric all the other bioregions of the West as well. Even the circle petroglyphs that, from my perspective, line up rockiest, seemingly barren, landscapes hold their exactly with Bosque Peak across the Rio Grande own secret gifts. In fact, it is in these places, where Valley. With my feet on the earth and my spirit in the the wild nature of life is most striking and heart of the circles, I am at once both on the mesa and impressive. Exploring the dry rocky desert on foot also on the mountain peak. I am reminded of the gives me the opportunity to see surprises that open bond that people share with the landscape and the my mind to all the possibilities that exist. Fish interconnection of all things, no matter how distant. swimming in isolated desert springs, wild fruiting grape vines, flowering Grindelia (Grindelia squarrosa), Added onto this cultural layer is that of the Hispanic and even lovely Yerba Mansa (Anemopsis californica) and Anglo settlers that entered the scene more can flourish in this unlikely place. In my state of recently. Early Hispanic immigrants brought with wonder, I notice that there is a row of ancient them their own plant medicines, but also grinding holes created in the exposed bedrock by incorporated the longstanding traditions of the many generations of people coming to this sacred Pueblo People in to their practice of herbalism. space to grind up plant food and medicine. I feel Medicinal plants including many of the aromatic honored to have been drawn into such a rugged and kitchen herbs as well as Lavender (Lavandula spp.), powerful place to experience that which connects me Feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium), Anise (Pimpinella to all living beings, past, present, and future. anisum), Borage (Borago officinalis), and Chamomile (Matricaria recutita), came with this new plant Embracing a Way of Life: medicine tradition. Yucca (Yucca spp.), Snakeweed (Gutierrezia sarothrae), Cota (Thelesperma gracile), Osha This sort of experience with wild medicine plants is a (Ligusticum porteri), Prickly Pear (Opuntia spp.), and quest that humans have pursued for millennia as a many other plants have held a continued place of way of sustaining both the body and the spirit. In importance throughout both the Pueblo and Hispanic ancient times, forging relationships with plants was herbal traditions. Anglo migrants coming across the vital and making plant medicine was common continent via wagon trails, stagecoach routes, and knowledge. It was a way of life that made sense on railway also brought their own herbal products as a both a practical and spiritual level. Stepping out into staple of their healthcare practices. These included the desert on the edge of town, I discover abundant Castor oil, Camphor and Cayenne liniments, Senna reminders of the prehistoric and historic connections and Clove syrup, and above all else Essence of that people have made with plants in their Peppermint. surrounding landscape. Arrowheads, petroglyphs,
28 More recently, however, much of this everyday can develop a relationship with them as living beings understanding of the natural world has died away in and receive the true gift of herbs. That is the favor of modern medicines created by scientists in a strength, beauty, and unconditional support that laboratory. While this type of medicine has an come through friendship. important role to play in a variety of health situations, there is an obvious downside. Modern The practice of herbalism, no matter where you live, medicine often comes with unwanted side effects, a is part of something much bigger than any words can high environmental and economic cost, as well as a describe. Of course it is a practical means of sense of disempowerment for many people. While nourishing and healing ourselves and it also gives unbalanced medicine made from isolated plant new meaning to our hobbies of hiking and constituents remedies one problem, it often creates gardening. However, the benefits of working with new ones in other areas of the body. The plants are more profound than that and can only be development of pharmaceuticals involves the discovered through our personal plant journeys. production of chemicals, creates environmental Our herbal practice invites us to look more deeply contaminants, uses animal testing, and other into ourselves, bonds us more closely with our loved practices of questionable ethics. Many visits with ones, and connects us with the larger community. It medical providers leave people feeling as though also unites us with the past, makes us mindful of the they don’t understand their own bodies and have no present, and gives us hope for the future. control over their own healthcare. For many of us, a return to the lost connection with plants is the remedy that we are seeking.
We are now bringing back this way of life by growing and harvesting our own plants and making our own herbal remedies at home. Through our herbal practice, we are communing with our heritage, connecting with our wild landscapes, and empowering ourselves to take charge of our own physical and spiritual wellbeing. Here in the Southwest, that means working with the herbs used by our ancestors and given to us by the mountains, deserts, and river valleys: Cayenne (Capsicum annuum), Figwort, Bee Balm, Globemallow (Sphaeralcea angustifolia and S. coccinea), Prickly Pear, Mullein, Usnea, Chaparral, and Yerba Mansa to name just a few. In most cases, the urban weeds, the commonest of wild plants, and our garden herbs are all that we need for a healthy way of life. Obtaining herbs locally also provides us with the freshest ingredients that are full of color, aroma, and vitality thereby making stronger medicine that is customized for ourselves and imbibed with our intention. The plants from our mesas, canyons, meadows, riverbanks, parks, roadsides, and backyards are the plants that are offering themselves to us. In my experience, they will be most effective because we
29 We encourage you to avail yourself of the wisdom in these 4 Good Medicine Confluence classes, June 14-18th, by: Dara Saville
Drought & The Future of Medicinal Plants (3 hrs) Drought has long been a part of life in the West. It is implicated in the downfall of ancient civilizations and the migration of people across the Southwest from the Ancestral Puebloans to the Dust Bowl. Current and future droughts, however, are unlike those of the past millennia. This class will discuss why drought is expected to bring dramatic changes for plant communities and how it could remake expansive regions in the West during the next century. While we will be focusing on environmental issues as they relate to medicinal plant populations we will also discuss selected native plants in each of these landscapes and how their interactions with the land reveal their personalities and workings as medicines.
Pedicularis: Community Coordinator & Facilitator of Change (1.5 hrs) Pedicularis' infiltrating personality, ecological importance, and medicinal magic have given it a beloved place in many herbalists’ hearts. Ranging across the Northern Hemisphere, numerous species can be found growing in undisturbed mountain and prairie plant communities. Pedicularis is intriguing to many plant lovers who recognize its unique medicinal attributes, its important role in ecosystem coordination, or are simply seduced by its unusual beauty. In this class we will explore medicinal applications and herbal preparations, delve into the personalities of various species of this plant, and see what we can learn about its medicine.
River Restoration & Hope For Medicinal Plants (1.5 hrs) Riparian habitats cover a relatively small area of land in our country but are disproportionally important in terms of providing critical resources for all forms of life. Rivers and their floodplains are hotspots of biodiversity around the world and most especially in arid regions such as the desert southwest. This class will discuss why rivers are important to medicinal plants, the various threats that these ecosystems face, and what people are doing to revive rivers and their associated habitats. In doing so, we will explore the Rio Grande and the Colorado River systems, including the Animas, and find out what has happened along these and many other rivers during the last 150 years. Our discussions will include the various ways we have damaged and degraded these systems, the multitude of restoration projects and their associated successes and failures, and how we can continue reinvigorating these important native plant habitats.
Topics in Wildcrafting CoTaught with Shana Lipner Grover – (1.5 hrs) Wildcrafting stands at the heart of herbal practice for many of us. Most often we endeavor to collect wild herbs not only as a matter of practicality to harvest needed ingredients but also as a way of connecting more deeply with the plants that grow around us. As we go about our work of wild harvesting, we also want to be aware of ways that we may be helping or harming native plant populations. As herbalists, it is part of our practice to look after wild plant communities and we can do that whenever we head into our local wild lands in search of particular plants. For more information or to register, click on the event page from: PlantHealer.org
30 31 Reach tens of thousands of herb lovers with inexpensive advertising space in our publications. For full details, specs, and insertion form, please download the:
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32 33 mountainroseherbs.com 34 35 36 37 38 A Plant Healer Interview with Herbalist & Instructor Angie True
Angie is an ecopsychologist, herbalist and writer, dwelling in the Zuni Mountains of New Mexico in a 1974 camper- turned-tiny-cabin. As a kid she got teased for eating leaves in the neighbors' yards and telling stories to herself in the woods, and not much has changed since! In the years since, she earned and then rejected a normative career as a psychotherapist, instead developing a theory of ecological trauma, a cultural mental illness specific to our times. She now teaches classes on classical and wild flower essences, as well as an introduction to botanical dreaming, at Dara Saville’s awesome school Albuquerque Herbalism, and is putting together some eco-art therapy, consciousness and dreaming workshops through The Calyx Pearl Center, also in Albuquerque... as well as teaching at The Good Medicine Confluence in Durango.
Jesse Wolf Hardin: A warm welcome to you, Angie. Angie: I’m a writer, ecopsychologist/psychotherapist Thank you for all your involvement and and herbalist. Developing an ecology of contributions, including consciousness would be one sharing your story with us way to describe the kinds of here. And for all you have work I do. My main clinical experienced and suffered in specialty is around your life, everything that ecocultural trauma, which is has gone into forging your exploring how personal perspective, passion and trauma interacts with the gifts. the multi-leveled trauma that we all hold to one Angie True: Thanks for degree or another as a result having me! Nearly every of living within an abusive year since inception I’ve culture that largely views been lucky enough to itself as separate from place, attend the Plant Healer planet and the more-than- conferences, and I’m human. These types of terribly honored to have trauma can of course been confirmed as an manifest emotionally, but instructor there this year. also physically and at the Plant Healer actively soul and species level, thus encourages we weirdos! It’s perpetuating the abuse. wonderful. So many of us are so grateful for your work. We share that My work supports people as they reconnect to inner commitment to encouraging culturo-biodiversity in and outer worlds. Tools I use include Western all its forms. herbology in the Vitalist tradition, food medicine, conventional psychotherapy, flower essences, Wolf: Please begin by describing your life purpose dreamwork, ecotherapy, herbal hypnotherapy and and the work you are involved in. other weird things. Some come to me for help in getting off of psychiatric drugs.
39 Wolf: Can you recall a moment when the world of explained in rather graphic terms where the root to a the green first drew you to it? family member’s mystery chronic illness lay – which 32 specialists over six years had not been able to do. Angie: When I was about six years old, I remember I’d not used the plant medicinally up to that point, curling up in a patch of tall meadow grass in the sun but was instructed in playful but demanding terms at the top of my street. There and in the woods exactly when to gather it for a tincture, which was, beyond was where I knew I was safe. I could try to inconveniently, during the full moon in the middle of put more words on this experience, but I’m guessing the night. So I made a big batch as instructed. The most of your readers know exactly what I mean here. family member faithfully took the tincture daily and it seemed helpful and it was all very nice and spooky. Wolf: Have there been certain kinds of plants that you have been especially connected to, been healed The full import of the gift Sweet Clover had brought by, or used in your practice? What is your experience did not become apparent for another two years. One of them, and relationship with them? night the person had a heart attack. It was not the first time this had happened – heart attacks are a Angie: Oh, yes. I’ll choose Sweet Clover, Melilotis fairly common but little known side effect of the officinalis. One spring it popped up wild all over the chronic illness. This was the first time a hospital was garden when I lived in Colorado. Long story short, not nearby, though. I was able to successfully use the Sweet Clover brought forth a medicine dream which Sweet Clover tincture – from that original batch. The
40 heart attack was resolved in about 45 minutes, full Angie: I’ve lived in several places before and since, recovery within a week. (I also used Cayenne ala Dr. but when I first moved to the high desert of rural Christopher and a side of DMSO, by the way, 1 oz northern New Mexico as a young adult, that was per cup of water. I gave the two tinctures plus the when my life really began. At the time I had mostly DMSO mixture every 10 minutes until the infarction only read herbals, done some dabbling here and passed, then about every two hours for 12 hours, there. Like many others, I come from no healing then back to a twice daily maintenance dose of Sweet tradition whatsoever, barely anything that might be Clover. Keeping these medicines together in an called culture outside of mongrel, blue collar and emergency heart attack and stroke kit -- especially if industrial, broken matrilineal lines, hidden ethnic you live or travel out in the boonies -- can be a and racial heritages, etc. My oldest living family lifesaver. Bonus: Cognitive aftereffects are reduced gardened, at least, but with military grade pesticides. considerably.) Besides some traditional southern and German food that I am very thankful to have experienced and But wait, there’s more! About a year after the heart learned to cook early on, I grew up on Pringles and attack, which was three years after the medicine Kool-Aid like everybody else. Actually, Pringles were dream about what was causing the chronic illness, kind of expensive. Grippo’s was more like it. lab tests finally confirmed that root cause. So I had no idea how to work with the harsh, So my relationship with Sweet Clover is one of fantastical New Mexican desert plants, not in any profound gratitude. When people sneer at it as an conventional sense. Where to even begin to find a invasive, I feel this shivery echo of its laughter. Sweet teacher? I could not afford any books. Most recently Clover as I’ve experienced it has a very funny and I’d come out of inner city St. Louis, out of series of mischievous spirit. I would not want to fuck with various types of assaults. I was one ragged young Sweet Clover. woman, running around in combat boots held together with safety pins, burning part of the Wolf: The Southwest is both enchanting and landlady’s chicken coop to stay warm. And yet I’d challenging for plant healers and new arrivals. New never felt so nurtured, not since being a little girl in Mexico in particular has a special effect and hold on the woods. What it feels like to be held within old you as well as Kiva and myself. adobe walls can’t really be explained. The river ran
41 out back beyond the pasture, the Cholla groves stood Angie: Yeah. Originally trained as a therapist/social eight feet tall and there was a door to the roof to worker, thinking in terms of the bio-psycho-social- watch the freakishly starry stars. I healed in spiritual comes pretty naturally to me. For years I remarkably little time. practiced in different kinds of settings, including addiction, HIV, child welfare and with people with That experience taught me in a very fundamental disabilities. It’s possible but not especially easy to way how the collective beings of a place hold keep holding onto privileged American assumptions enormous power. Not everyone has access to a place about individual motivation and bootstrapiness like that, but all places do hold power, even in the when exposed -- on a daily basis – to the devastating suburbs and city. So now I strive to help clients effects of larger systems such as income inequality, access their own inner and outer places for depth intergenerational abuse, racism, environmental healing. degradation and on and on. Certainly it brought out the activist in me. Wolf: Are there certain people who have been inspirational or instrumental to your healing work? So thinking, living and practicing in terms of exclusively individual, brain-based healing doesn’t Angie: Yes! So very many over the years! My brother, add up. This is one of the most vomitous aspects of oddly, for helping reintroduce me to plant medicine our current mental health model, for instance, and post-adolescence. My first mother-in-law, for why I enjoy subverting it wherever possible. kindness, recognition and precognition in gifting me my first official herbal right alongside an academic It’s also what led me to develop the concept of treatise on the history of witch-burnings. My four ecocultural trauma, which is nothing new, but didn’t children, for providing me a seemingly endless really have a firm name or concept before, not in our amount of clinical experience right off the bat, culture. The Japanese have one. Their term for those especially when we lived too far away from clinics. who physically survived the atomic bombs is the hibakusha, or explosion-affected. Since then hibakusha Susun Weed, Michael Moore, Rosemary Gladstar. has been broadened to refer to all tamed modern The Plant Healer tribe, especially Charles Garcia, populations, exposed as we are to the constant and Sean Donahue, Paul Bergner, Asia Suler and both of increasing threats of our era, from nuclear you Hardins. Erin Smith and Rachel Farinelli at the catastrophe to never ending war and the smaller Center for Integrative Botanical Studies. Wendy Petty violences in-between. and Erica Marciniec’s classes and writings on wild foods. I’m a shameless Stephen Harrod Buhner Wolf: What ticks you off the most about what goes fangirl. Dara Saville of Albuquerque Herbalism – on with people and herbalism, and what can you and what a fantastic community herbalist. My several others of us do to address or evolve it? mycelial teachers. Lisa Ganora, Lyn Romero, Sheri Hupfner, and Matthew Becker from CSCH, as well as Angie: Personal flakiness. There is a difference Lisa’s snake, Rosy, who helped me find the mountain between being able to access childlike wonder and land where I now live. acting like a child or adolescent in terms of honoring commitments, being responsive and communicating Wolf: Your approach to your practice is aligned with in a clear and developmentally mature manner. This that of Plant Healer Magazine and events, predicated happens with artists, too, and of course there is a on the conviction that a healthy life requires the great deal of overlap between the two fields. I’m mending of social and environmental imbalances as both, and married to an artist… I get it. Also our well as bodily ailments. culture does not teach adult skills anymore beyond consumptive skills. So evolving personal flakiness
42 takes personal evolution at the mundane level. It can start with something as simple as washing the dishes, every day, and thoroughly. It’s a practice like yoga or anything else.
Wolf: What are some of your favorite powerful herbs to work with, and why?
Angie: I tend to work with a lot of herbs that cause overt textural changes in consciousness, but I also find myself turning often to Pulsatilla. It’s funny because it has this reputation for being a delicate little thing, but that’s not my experience at all. Well, I take that back. That is my experience with the tincture. It can be so soothing in cases of overstimulation, for instance. Yet in microdoses, or as a flower essence, I’ve found it to be very powerful, especially wildcrafted Pulsatilla. In fact, I only give it to clients who seem ready to shed some serious layers.
Wolf: Talk about your approach to assessment and treatment
Angie: People’s emotional state is what brings them through my door, so that’s the largest and most basic frame of reference I use. Sometimes loss or reduction of meaning is the main symptom, while other times it’s a combination of physical, emotional and soul- level malaise that they have conflated with a merely mental and/or experiential one. Whatever the case, determining the constitution of the dis-ease is essential.
Next we very carefully assess medications, diet, movement practice, nature-connection, support systems and both personal and ecocultural trauma history. Pharmaceuticals, especially, affect all aspects of a person, just as an herb will, but in a one- dimensional and often brute force kind of way. Nature-connection can counteract and even transcend that, in some cases.
How a person eats is how they absorb the experience of being alive in this world. If there’s an issue there – and there always is, more or less, for all of us,
43 because none of us is separate from depleted soils, or older they get. Beyond potential interactions, which polluted water and air, etc. – it might be unethical to are of course vitally important, is there a point to start adding in a bunch of herbs. On the other hand, giving someone a sleep tea if they’re on Ambien? that might be all they’re able or willing to change in Perhaps, but the Ambien should be discussed. Not the moment, so it depends. doing so can become an ethical issue.
These help in determining an overall treatment Discussing medications in a way that avoids approach. Within that I use the Vitalist energetic judgment and potential litigation can be an art, but it model, and within that I might choose root, flower, can be done. Simply asking questions, fruit, leaf or stem correlated to elemental constitution compassionately, might be a good way to begin. Why (air, water, earth, etc.). Within all of that I make a lot are you on this medication? Are there any side effects of room for intuition, because a plant I’m not that could be causing some of the symptoms you’re expecting may come forward. having? Shall we look it up together?
Wolf: What do you feel are the most important Wolf: What do you hope most for herbalism and the considerations when giving herbal counsel? herbal community?
Angie: I cannot stress enough learning basic classes Angie: Part of me hopes we stay under the radar, of pharmaceuticals and their wide-ranging effects. quietly increasing culturo-biodiversity in There are very few people out there who are not on at innumerable small ways. Another part of me hopes least one and usually more like 7-8, especially the we reach critical mass in the next few generations.
44 Angie: People are really beginning to talk about thyroid disorders, which are ridiculously common throughout the world, moreso every year. What sometimes gets overlooked are the cognitive, mental health and ecospiritual implications of thyroid disease. I’m so excited to share these and hopefully help mitigate the tidal wave of the misdiagnosed out there in the world.
Speaking of, the numbers of people, including toddlers, on psychiatric medications has reached tragic proportions. I’m thrilled to spread the news about practical and effective ways to support those who wish to come off of such medications, as it is quite the taboo topic in a lot of mainstream circles.
Wolf: Any parting advice for our wonderful readers?
Angie: Come to the Good Medicine Confluence! It might be one of the most meaningful things you do all year. It’s going to be a blast!
Wolf: It is great to host new and compelling voices at our annual gatherings, which is partly why there are twice as many teachers and classes this year. And it is’s great we were able to make space to host your teaching for the first time. What do you find most exciting about the classes you will be teaching at the Confluence in June?
45 Join Angie True for her 2 moving Good Medicine Confluence classes, June 14-18th:
Waking Up From Psychiatric Drugs (1.5 hrs) Seeking medicine is a normal response to emotional pain. That is how 79 million Americans have quietly marched into the strange land of psychiatric medication. Here even drugging babies ages 0-5 – over one million annually per most recent statistics – seems to make perfect sense. While we as herbalists live amongst our funky friends and families, our closest neighbors – often the most vulnerable, but also our leaders – inhabit an increasingly detached inner landscape. What if some want out? What can we do to help them? Conventional wisdom dictates we should send them to their doctors, as well we should, given the danger in coming off these drugs. But most standardly-trained doctors have little idea these drugs are addictive, much less how to support truly safe tapering. To make matters worse, when people seek emotional support from therapists, they are told they need to be on these drugs “for [their] health.” Many from the conventional mental and physical health spheres would chuckle at the idea that diet, herbs and holistic interventions can ease drug withdrawal, or even correct the foundational problems that may have caused or contributed to the emotional pain in the first place. Are you ready to begin exploring this taboo realm, which holds some of the most urgent issues of our times? We will take a look around the inside of the mental healthcare system. We will cover the least-biased – and most difficult to find – research on various classes of psychiatric drugs, as well as the latest findings on other conditions and deficiencies that mirror mental illness symptoms. We will learn about about vital lab tests to recommend, common withdrawal patterns and when to refer to other types of practitioners. Above all we will explore gentle but radical interventions, support and further resources for those brave souls withdrawing from psychiatric drugs. In doing so, we help to protect the biodiversity of experience at all levels.
Thyroid: At the Juncture Between Self and World (1.5 hrs) Many traditions regard the body's organs as sacred, living creatures, each with their own story. What tale does the thyroid tell about self and world? Like a starfish it pulses in the dark, an exquisitely sensory being, a self- regulating, intelligent source of life energy, intermediary between the world's skies and oceans and the private, watery depths of self. What does it mean, then, when a tidal wave of 20 million Americans now have some form of thyroid disease, over 60% of whom are unaware of it? How many people believe their weight fluctuations are due to willpower deficit? Lack of motivation or focus the result of laziness or failure to visualize correctly? Irritability due to character flaws? How often are thyroid problems misdiagnosed as age-related brain diseases such as dementia, or mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, paranoid schizophrenia and more? Quite often. But listen carefully to Stella Maris, the Star of the Sea, the brain of the neck, for she holds the sacred power of restoring wounds. Like starfish and liver, the thyroid tells the story of tissue regeneration, perhaps even the story-within-the-story of world regeneration as well. Join us to explore the many ways this rarefied, hybrid gland speaks through story, case study and lab values. We will cover the many, many situations that warrant first ruling out thyroid issues, the six tests needed to diagnose thyroid disease, with optimum values and other helpful lab tests, thyroid dietary and herbal treatment and more. For more information or to register, click on the event page from: PlantHealer.org
46 47 The Medicine of Yellowroot
by Juliet Blankespoor
Juliet’s Chestnut School of Herbalism is one of the fine online herbal courses that we suggest when asked for Kiva’s and my personal recommendations for a well rounded practitioner or grower education. Her truly amazing plant photographs grace our publications, and we are honored to feature her inspiring articles whenever possible. Health challenges have prevented her from teaching at the Good Medicine Confluence this year, but we will continue to look forward to when we can feature her again!
Yellowroot’s elegant, subtle maroon flowers are just separated) populations up into Maine, south into emerging in March in the mountains of North Florida, and west into Texas. Many medicinal herbs Carolina. This native shrub in the buttercup family growing far from their core populations have been prefers the dappled sunlight and silty soils of the carried by Native people and planted; perhaps this is streamside and floodplain, but will tolerate drier soil the origin of these yellowroot outliers. Yellowroot in cultivation. Yellowroot grows abundantly in reproduces by seeds and spreads clonally through its central and southern Appalachia near forest streams rhizomes, which are the primary medicinal part that are wide enough to allow a moderate amount of used. sunlight. Interestingly, it has disjunct (geographically
48 Yellowroot (Xanthorhiza simplicissima, Ranunculaceae) and ulcerated stomachs, as well as a tonic for the is the only member of its genus, and one of the few liver and a remedy for jaundice. woody members of the buttercup family. Its scientific name is quite descriptive, with the genus meaning The European settlers quickly caught on to the yellowroot (xantho= yellow, rhiza=root), and the usefulness of yellowroot, and used it in similar ways species name referring to the simple, unbranched to the Native peoples who taught them. Tommie stem. If you say the species name with certain flair, Bass, who was an Alabama herbalist, wildcrafter, and generous gesticulations, it takes on the feel of an herb broker, and one of my personal herbal heroes, Italian expletive. shared his sentiments on yellowroot in A Reference Now, for the juicy medicinal Guide to Medicinal Plants, information you have Herbal Medicine Past and patiently been waiting for Present (Crellin and Philpott). while we laboriously set the Bass is quoted as saying “ It is botanical and habitat stage. I one of the finest remedies we have been gathering and have. It’s been used ever since using yellowroot for almost time for sore mouth, sore eyes, twenty years; it is one of the and stomach trouble. Another top twenty herbs used in my name for it is scurvy root. practice. I use it more often in More people is taking it now tincture form, as its flavor is for ulcers than for any other quite intense for most non- thing we know of. It’s herbalists’ palettes. The tea is absolutely real stuff. We’ve got yellow and bitter, but quite so many people smiling after serviceable and very taking that, that ain’t no joke.” appropriate for topical use as It’s hard to follow this a strong wash or compress. enthusiastic accolade, but I Yellowroot has the following will attempt to add to properties: bitter, cholagogue, yellowroot’s praises. I use hepatic, astringent, anti- yellowroot in a similar vein as inflammatory, and anti- how I use oregon grape root microbial (anti-bacterial, anti- (Berberis spp., Berberidaceae) protozoan, anti-fungal, anti- or goldenseal (Hydrastis viral). canadensis, Ranunculaceae). I wouldn’t say they are interchangeable, just as I The Cherokee used it as a topical remedy for wouldn’t confuse any long- haired, gray -bearded, hemorrhoids and sore eyes, and chewed it for sore barefoot man on the street for my husband. throats and mouth. They put it in a formula with Yellowroot, like the other aforementioned herbs, wild ginger (Asarum canadense, Aristolochiaceae), alder contains the alkaloid berberine. It is helpful to (Alnus serrulata, Betulaceae), wild cherry (Prunus recognize shared biochemistry, and even more serotina, Roasaceae), and rattlesnake plantain (Goodyera helpful to combine this information with history of pubescens, Orchidaceae), and used the combination traditional use. Attributing all of a plant’s medicinal both as a blood tonic and appetite stimulant. It qualities to the presence of one constituent is quite continues to be an important dye plant, rendering a reductionistic, when one considers that each plant yellow dye used to color fabric and basket materials. can possess hundreds, if not thousands, of medicinal The Catawba used the roots in a decoction for colds compounds.
49 Yellowroot, as compared to goldenseal or oregon I use yellowroot internally and topically as a grape root, is much more astringent. This helps to treatment for bacterial skin infections, including explain its historical use for hemorrhoids, sore eyes, Staphylococcus aureus. It is sometimes taken with and peptic ulcers. Its alkaloid content differs from antibiotic treatment, and afterwards to help prevent goldenseal: yellowroot has considerably more recurring infection. When taken without an berberine than goldenseal and unlike goldenseal, it antibiotic (I respect the client’s wish here, while contains no hydrastine. explaining the inherent risk of virulent infection), I usually add other immunostimulatory and anti- Berberine gives these plants their characteristic microbial herbs to their internal formula, such as yellow color and bitter flavor and has demonstrated Echinacea purpurea, Usnea spp., Ligusticum porteri, and antimicrobial activity against bacteria, fungi, Spilanthes acmella. The internal dosage of the formula protozoans, viruses, and helminths (roundworm, is usually 5 -6 mls (droppers-full) six times a day. It is pinworm, and other larger intestinal parasites). important to note here that every case is unique, and Berberine has gained recent attention in the media supervised medical attention is advised in such and medical community as a promising adjunct infections. I have worked with healthy young adults, therapy to antibiotics in the treatment of MRSA whose infections weren’t spreading or systemic, and (Methicillin-resistant Staphyloccus aureus). Berberine were not immunocompromised or hospitalized for is anti-inflammatory (partly through inhibiting serious health conditions (nosocomial or community- inflammatory cytokine production) and has acquired MRSA is very common). I have seen it kick demonstrated hypotensive activity (lowering blood such infections a little more than half the time, but pressure). often the appropriate and effective treatment involves the concurrent use of antibiotics. The I have been recommending yellowroot as a strong working knowledge of herbal and essential oil aqueous douche and internal treatment, in tincture treatment of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections is form, for bacterial vaginosis, trichomoniasis, and paramount as many people are dying needlessly vaginal yeast infection, with good success. When I because of ignorance in the field of combined had my tincture business, I formulated a general pharmaceutical and botanical strategies. immunostimulant and anti-microbial combination Yellowroot’s lore and use is still alive in Appalachia; called EchImmunity, which contained Echinacea sometimes in the flea market I see someone selling a purpurea, Spilanthes acmella, Usnea spp., Xanthorhiza bundle of thin long yellow roots tied together with simplicissima, and Commiphora myrrha. string. Many people remember gathering it as a child with their grandmas, and some still carry on the Yellowroot is also one of the primary herbs I tradition, or at the very least, chew on a root when recommend for infectious intestinal distress, with they are hiking or camping. Even so, it is not readily symptoms presenting acutely and rapidly. I have also available in commerce, and not especially known used it as one of the primary herbs in treatment of a outside its range. To my knowledge it is not being young man with multiple food sensitivities and cultivated on a commercial scale as the demand is peptic ulcers, with good results. It is interesting to low and currently supplied by wildcrafting. Should it note that bitters can sometimes aggravate peptic ever become wildly popular, it would be easy to ulcers, in part by increasing hydrochloric acid. decimate our local populations. Luckily, it is easy to Yellowroot’s traditional and contemporary use in the grow in a wide variety of habitats, should the treatment of peptic ulcers can perhaps be explained demand for yellowroot increase. through its astringent and anti-inflammatory effect on eroded mucosa, and its antibacterial properties. I give thanks for the beauty and healing yellowroot Berberine has a deleterious affect on Helicobacter has provided for countless generations. pylori, the bacteria associated with peptic ulcers.
50 51 A Plant Healer Interview with Herbalist & Instructor Katherine MacKinnon
Kat MacKinnon is valued faculty of the excellent Colorado School of Clinical Herbalism, a certified clinical herbalist, nutritionist, a Bach essences practitioner certified through the North American Institute of Medical Herbalism, and she is one of Paul Bergner’s many exceptional students. She has her own small clinical practice and runs a small endeavor, Meet the Green, through which she teaches classes on herbalism and primitive skills, and she also presents classes regularly at Plant Healer’s annual Good Medicine Confluence. Her approach to both teaching and working with clients comes from a vitalist perspective, constantly looking to cultivate all levels of an individual’s being. The plants, animals, and incredible harsh beauty of the Southwest are some of the great loves of Kat’s life.
Jesse Wolf Hardin: Kat, we appreciate your attitude Katherine MacKinnon: I’m a core faculty member and expertise, and have been pleased to host your and Student Services coordinator, as well as recently classes at our annual event for two years now. How taking on the role of botany program director. This all would you describe your work at the Colorado translates into really just being a Jill of all trades, School of Clinical Herbalism, and what would you from grading to curriculum development, to scouting consider your deeper purpose? class sites, to the teaching itself, and generally
52 serving as the main mother hen for our first-year towards working with plants in whatever way I programs. I also work privately seeing clients in an could. herbal practice. But really the main part of work that I do is teaching. Both in a classroom setting, as well Wolf: You have planted roots in Southern Colorado, as in my client sessions, this seems to be what I come not all that far from Durango where we are hosting back to most often. the Good Medicine Confluence.
As far as my main purpose, it’s always felt like Kat: I’ve spent the better part of the past 10 years in connecting folks with the plants. I just love plants, it’s the Southwest, and the diversity, delicacy and sheer as simple as that! I want to help folks better tenacity of the plant life here still blows my mind. understand them, be excited about them, protect The deserts and mountains seem to demand a certain them, love them! Whatever I do, that is always in the attention, an even more care-full way of interacting background. It’s taken the form of teaching people with the environment than most other places. For me about growing, working with primitive skills, and this translates into the drive to create a greater now herbal healing is in the forefront. As far as what awareness around not only the plant life, but the way makes how I teach unique, think it’s my emphasis on I move on the landscape as a human, on all levels. cultivating personal experience. Bringing all of your life practices to what you learn and do. Place has had a huge influence on the way I practice herbalism. I grew up passing woodlands planted by my great grandfather and collecting Sweetfern the same way my great-great grandmother taught everyone how to. My family has been living on and farming the same land for the past 10 generations, so I’ve seen the effect that that kind of time and relationship can have on both the landscape, and the people. That ability to craft a relationship, a partnership with the world, creates not only healthy landscapes, but healthy people. Just helps us be more human.
Wolf: Who have been Kat’s inspiriteurs?
Kat: In no particular order: Tom Brown, Jr., both his guidebooks and classes. Linda Runyon’s lectures and Wolf: What first drew you to healing, and to plants in book Crabgrass Muffins and Pine Needle Tea. Paul particular? Bergner, through his insanely well-developed classes. Richard Bach’s books, especially Illusions and Kat: Well, I’ve always been just plain fascinated with Jonathan Livingston Seagull, as well as the work of plants in general. Got it through the women in my Shunryo Suzuki and Alan Watts... perhaps not family. But I suppose my first conscious steps terribly herbal, but by golly has had a sizable towards herbal medicine were through the avenue of influence on how I move about as a human. Michael primitive living skills. Beginning in my late teens I Moore-all of his work. Lisa Ganora, and her studied with Tom Brown, Jr., in New Jersey, and ridiculous passion for phytochemistry (her book on became fascinated with the idea of healing through phytochemistry is constantly inspiring). Loads of nature and plants, and the power of connection in others, but these are the ones that come readily to our surroundings. After that I just felt a constant pull mind.
53 Wolf: What sorts of things do you consider most to the above lack of understanding regarding what important for someone to learn, who wants to we do. become a practicing herbalist? From within: Well, lack of an organized way to meet Kat: Compassion and Awareness. Critical thinking. those issues around regulation and lack of How to learn for yourself. Those are all top of the list, understanding. Especially the licensure bit. It’s like and for myself have been both the most useful and asking mycelium to all come together and make a take the most time to cultivate. I certainly circle back Buick. While perhaps not impossible, it’s just not round to them regularly. They very much in our nature as a are all part of a balance. community to create that Compassion and awareness p a r t i c u l a r t y p e o f are necessary both to temper organization. The very thing and nurture critical thinking. that makes us uniquely And the ability to teach powerful-diversity, subversity, yourself-ahh, this is so huge. etc.-makes it more difficult to At some point, we all need to resist things like constrictive draw a bucket ‘o’ inspiration regulations. So something to and guidance from the deep work on:) well of experienced herbal minds. But we are living at a Wolf: What weakness in time where finding the witch herbalism would you most in the woods to learn from is like to see addressed? tricky and rare, and herbal schools, while amazing, will Kat: The lack of critical only take you so far. The thinking. While I find myself ability to learn for yourself, less and less having to explain cultivating that passion and what a tincture is, there is a drive, is crucial. huge increase in the type of misinformation brought about Those are the biggies-hmm, by folks looking to make a and perhaps cultivating not giving a hoot what the buck with hip insta-herbalism. Just add water and a general populace might think of what you do :) few mice studies, or the unexplored hearsay of traditional medicine out of context, and you’ve got Wolf: What do you consider the biggest threats to yourself a product or ‘special herb’ that folks will herbalism, from without and within? cling to tenaciously until they hear otherwise.
Kat: From without: Lack of understanding around As far as how to address this, educating yourself, herbalism. Who we are, what we do, how we do it. your students, clients, and community members as Of course, this is bound to be an issue since herbalists best you can, coming from a grounded place of all practice so differently. But this is also about a lack experience. of openness, a fear of anything different by most folks (part of even greater societal imbalances). Wolf: How do you deal with competing desires to Another big one is the threat of licensure. Specifically, make living from your craft and knowledge, and to licensure that would prohibit anyone but the wealthy share and spread it, or make it available to those who or lucky from practicing something as ancient and can least afford herbal counsel? fundamental as healing with plants. Hugely related
54 Kat: Boy, when I figure this one out completely I’ll let herbalism. Conferences like Plant Healer’s Good you know. I think most of us as herbalists end up Medicine Confluence are fantastic, and hold a great having multiple jobs to make ends meet. We walk an deal of inspiration, yet the space to practice day to edge to be able to practice something that has been day with guidance from peers and elders can be an fringe profession for more than a century. I feel harder to find. extremely fortunate in having my work be entirely related to herbalism at the moment, but this hasn’t To a certain extent you need to become your own always been the case, and may not be in the future. I witch in the woods. Part of why I think knowing how offer a sliding scale for my clients, in the hopes that to learn is such an important skill. But also actively those who can pay more offset those who pay less. I searching for teachers, and being willing go to great try to create material that is available as a free lengths to put yourself in an environment where you educational resource, and for my personal classes I are surrounded by people you can learn from. offer a similar sliding scale to Whether it’s a job, an my client sessions. In most apprenticeship, volunteering, folks that I know who work or simply seeking out the with herbalism full time, elders of your community. there is a certain element of just jumping for it, of Wolf: What would you say to completely committing that someone who expresses fear craft, as well as to the ethos and doubt about their ability of making care available for or opportunities to learn and as many as possible. But that practice herbalism? can be, admittedly, scary as hell, and for most requires a Kat: This is one of the running start for leaping into beauties of practicing the void. So we go about our herbalism-there are no day jobs and slowly cultivate limitations for who can work courage and experience with herbs. It’s part of the necessary to walk the rather basic package that comes thin line of herbal practice. with being a human, the What I’ve seen be effective is same way a car comes with practitioners coming wheels and doors. And as far together, sharing resources, as opportunities, I think the and making a community where even folks with a more you focus on it, the more you devout your time little bit of resource can share with others without and energy to practicing, the more chances to work bankrupting themselves. with herbs and people present themselves. You can do it pretty much anywhere, anytime. I know folks Wolf: Talk about the ways in which we advance and who are full time musicians in NYC who practice, practice outside of an educational system. with herbs spilling over their window sills.
Kat: Recently I’ve found myself coming up against In Buddhism, they talk about how to cultivate a the wall of advanced education in Western herbalism. healthy practice in a busy modern world. They talk If you want to be an ND or an acupuncturist, there about the importance of practicing in the gaps. Same are hundreds of schools out there. But herbal elders thing applies for working with herbs. Taking just a with the passion and energy to teach with depth are moment between work, raising kiddos, etc., to comparatively few when it comes to Western cultivate awareness and wonder around plants and
55 healing. This is especially important for folks who surroundings. Every connection we make with our don’t have work that is necessarily directly related to medicine, creates another golden thread, another web herbs, as that can be discouraging quite quickly. that tugs on our understanding. Whether it’s making Every time you drink a cup of tea, taste a wild leaf, our own tea, harvesting wild plants, or even growing each moment you spend sitting in an open and our own herbs. A long while ago, I had a teacher say caring way with someone is a chance to practice. “making the medicine, is the medicine”. I’ve found that to be true so many times over. I had the chance Concerning doubt – well, that’s a healthy and natural for a little while to have my clients pick their own reaction to taking on a new challenge, and is an medicine, dry, and then make their teas from the important part of keeping you honest and practicing herbs. It changes people. It empowers them. And with integrity. I recently read a bit by Rilke, where he engenders a depth of love and understanding that is says “…your doubt can become a good quality if you difficult to cultivate in any other way. train it.” Why having a mentor or peers, even if they are on Wolf: When helping a client the end of a phone, or in the or friend, what constitutional pages of an article can be so systems, diagnostic models or handy to cultivate. They give means do you use to evaluate you perspective. So many their condition and needs? times when I’ve felt doubt about my abilities in Kat: I’m a Western herbalist something, I go back to and a Vitalist, so I use a bit of teachers and check in. a hodge podge. I look at Sometimes that’s a book. constitution and herbs mainly Sometimes that’s a person. through the lens of Sometimes it’s the plants Physiomedicalist concepts, themselves. That grounding influenced by the Four in reality, rather than in Humors model. I use a good dreadful fantasies of self- bit of western anatomy and depreciation, is always helpful. physiology in understanding disease processes, and will Wolf: Name a plant you integrate a bit of the Chinese particularly like to work with, body system patterns when I what first comes to mind? find ones that make sense to me. I look at diet and lifestyle Kat: Pine – because it’s just a huge amount, so things like fucking awesome. A diet and sleep diaries, respiratory and digestive herb that’s also rad symptom charts, etc., are a big part of my practice. topically, and that grows everywhere! Hugely I’m also a bit woo-woo, and use various tools for sustainable, circumboreal, and tough as nails. I perceiving the less tangible aspects of a clients would happily bleed resin if I could. condition-feeling their spirit, for lack of a better word. I feel like the word spiritual has kind of been Wolf: When and why is it important to process our bogarted by the pop-culture side of the alternative own medicines, created formulas, etc.? world to mean yoga pants and candles, so always hesitate to use it. But use whatever term you like, Kat: Whenever possible! It comes back to really just always trying to feel into the ‘ness’ and understanding, to creating relationship with our lifeforce of an individual.
56 Wolf: What do you feel are the most important long way ‘round when it comes to showing you considerations when giving herbal counsel? certain patterns. And it’s in the understanding of these natural patterns that we can begin to tinker and Kat: Encouraging clients to become aware of their nurture from the human end. bodies, and convince them to take an active role in Also, helping folks broaden their awareness about their own healing is so crucial. Really if you can get plants in general. Think that’s a big part of why I’m folks to get to a point where they are inside their so jazzed about teaching-you get people excited bodies and really looking at what they are about the beauty and utter amazing world of herbs, experiencing, so much of your work becomes easier. and suddenly you begin to have a seed of caring. Something that has a chance to germinate, grow, and Creating space for it to be a collaborative experience. produce its own fruit, its own seeds. The Your client may know little to nothing about herbal dissemination of giving a shit! medicine, but they are experts when it comes to Wolf: Yes indeed! Adroitly experiencing their bodies put. and what they are feeling. Do you feel that you have Wolf: What kinds of things an emotional, spiritual, or do you enjoy most about magical sense of or your work with herbs? relationship with plants, and can you tell a story Kat: Everything! Medicine about that if so? making, harvesting, growing, creating Kat: There was a moment formulas, just plain last year. I was driving spending time with them. through Arkansas with my Herbs tend to be pretty mother. I had just left my cool people. home and husband, and my mum was there to Wolf: Ecologies are make sure my wings held systems of reciprocity and up. I think that dawn I had mutual benefits. The woken her with wracking plants provide so much, sobs, feeling pain and utter what can we give them or fear about what exactly the do for them in exchange? future would hold in this new chapter of things. Having never shown this Kat: Well for a start, we can work towards must sadness and mess of myself to my mother in understanding them. And that begins simply by my adult life, I think we were both a bit fragile. For going out and sitting your ass down with as many my part, I decided that one devastating crying jag places and plants near you as you possibly can. And was enough to worry her with for one day (wrongly not just understanding the plants, but everyone and it turns out-later I realized like many women with everything that grows and lives with them. Get to children, she’s made of warm, loving steel). So know the birds, coyotes, fish, bugs, wind, water, and despite my feelings, I kept things a bit closer to my soil. Creating relationships that are real, rather than chest for the rest of the day. But the thing about theoretical. This can give you the tools to know how emotions is that like all living things, they are just to help. But it takes time. Natures tends to take the bursting to express themselves.
57 My moment with this plant happened at a rather Kat: A student recently was describing herself, and I immense and cave-like restaurant, complete with realized it fit perfectly for a great many herbalists. sudden strange coolness, huge blinds drawn to keep She mentioned feeling shy, and her classmates out the heat of the tarmac filled afternoon outside. immediately reacted with “but you ask so many We had finished ordering, and I had finished being questions in class! You’re not shy then!”. To which able to hold back my very demanding feelings of she replied “well, I’m curious. Weird and shy, but sadness. I escaped to the emptiness of the restroom, curious”. I think that speaks to many of us practicing feeling very grateful that we had come at the dead this rather edgy profession. hours between lunch and dinner. I’d heard folks describe being brought to their knees, by joy, rage, It seems that many herbal folks are internally rather etc.-but had always thought it more a turn of phrase. timid woodland creatures, who would prefer to be Instead I found it to be the physiological state of your out roaming the wilds with a friend or two (With few body being unable to cope with the feelings before it. notable choleric and sanguine exceptions of course :) The turmoil of emotions, the whirlwind of doubt and But our drive for learning, and for creating positive fear about whether I was making the right decisions, change are such that we are willing to move outside the utter lostness of that moment made taking small our comfort zone. steps, small breathes increasingly difficult. Wolf: Any parting advice? Until finally there I was, on my knees with clenched teeth and fists and eyes and soul, on the dark Kat: Don’t underestimate where kindness and gentle bathroom floor. It was into this place that suddenly I curiosity can lead you. It feels like one of the most felt pine. Utterly wrapped in my self-absorbed misery important things we’ve got as herbalists, healers, at the time, I hadn’t even thought of asking for help. humans. Doesn’t mean you can’t do it fiercely. Just But there she was. A pine I had spent time with. look at chickadees. Always at the top of this hill, I would walk by this tree. Say hello, smell her sweet bark, taste her Wolf: Thank you so much for sharing yourself here, needles. Sometimes sit and just say thank you, I love and then with the Good Medicine Confluence you, I’m glad you’re here. But I hadn’t thought of attendees this Summer. this pine in years. And with the force of an utterly piercing hallucination, she was there with me. The Kat: Thanks buckets for putting this on, folks – I’ll feeling and image. Eyes open next to an Arkansas see you all in June! toilet, I was also on the hillside with this pine. Wind, scent, everything. And she held me there. I didn’t hear these exact words, but the gist was-“It’s alright, I’m here-feel this clearness. Feel this calm place. It’s also inside you. Always this place is here to hold you.” I was shocked. I stopped crying. I had no idea how long it lasted. Perhaps only moments. Maybe a minute or two. But I could stand again. I could breathe. So grateful for that. It sticks with me.
Wolf: Thank you for that... further evidence that Plant Healer publications and events attract unusually deep feeling folks, ill-fitted to boring norms and limitations.
58 Kat Mackinnon invites your attendance at her 3 upcoming Good Medicine Confluence classes, June 14-18th:
Plant Identification Walk: Medicinal Plants of The Southwest’s Mountains & Mesas (2.5 hrs) The deserts and mountains of the Southwest are home to some of the most diverse plant communities in North America. The combination of intense weather and highly varied terrain makes for an utterly unique ecology. Come explore the plants of Southwest Colorado and the Colorado Plateau in this interactive plant walk, and get to know a few of the local plant people. With loads of organoleptic exploration, soulful gazing at herbs, botany and folklore, plus a good dose of discussion on the medicinal and utilitarian uses of the plants, this is sure to a be a good time for those looking to tune into this harsh and lovely landscape. This class is rain or shine, so please come prepared to be outside... it’s June in Colorado, so really just about anything could happen – see you there!.
Weaving the Wild: Coil Basketry in The Southwest (3 hrs) Every herbalist needs a good gathering basket. It’s just one of those things, along with a sturdy cauldron, mortar and pestle, and some quality tempered glass jars. In this hands-on class, we’ll focus on using those materials found in the Southwest that work best for coiling. We’ll work with pine needles, yucca, dogbane, and milkweed fibers, as well numerous varieties of true grasses, cattail, and rushes.
Coil basketry as a method has been found throughout the world. From the bee skeps and mats of ancient Europe, to the pine needle baskets of the American West, to the sweetgrass containers of Africa. This global and cultural diversity mirrors the diversity of containers that can be made with this method. We’ll go into materials collection, processing, as well as several styles of weave using coil basketry techniques. Along with your own hand made basket, you’ll go away with the principles to make everything from water tight rock boil baskets to tough as nails gathering containers. Did we mention this class is hands-on? Designed for the beginner to intermediate basket maker, come prepared to dive into some seriously fun and useful primitive technology!
From Seed to Seed: The Science & Spirit of Tending Your Own Medicine (1.5 hrs) In facing the at times despairing world of corporate based everything culture, one of our most potent forms of positive activism is to grow our own food and medicine. Cultivating and preserving a variety of adaptable herbs is a way to not only better connect with your medicine, but to create resilient herbal communities. In this hands-on class, we’ll go through the steps of growth in herbs, and the beauty and challenges of following a plant from seed to seed. We’ll be practicing basic propagation techniques, soil cultivation, as well as seed collection and basic seed banking. Both the scientific principles, as well the earthy green thumb basics behind how to tend a plant from tiny seed to full grown medicine will be discussed (and put right into practice!). Come ready to get at least a little dirty!
For more information or to register, click on the event page from: PlantHealer.org
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