Herbal confidence takes some work to develop. The whole point of learning herbalism is to help people – but when you’re still a student, that’s a little bit tricky! You don’t always know the answer. It might be something you just didn’t learn about yet. Or maybe you know part of it, but you’re not confident about the whole story. Maybe the question was just really intimidating! So you feel hesitant and unsure about how to help.

As you learn more, your confidence will grow. It’s ok to wait – you don’t have to start giving out advice the moment you begin learning about herbs! That pressure isn’t helping you, and setting it aside is completely appropriate.

But the flip side is this: you do have to get some practice, right? Especially as you develop your knowledge beyond the basics. Otherwise it’s going to feel too hard forever. It needs to be real-world practice, too, not just theory. You need ways to put your skills to work, even as you’re in the process of developing them.

Fear not, friends: we’ve got solutions for this. Today’s episode of the Holistic Herbalism Podcast is all about a game you can play to get that practice in a way that is totally safe! It’s simple, free, and guaranteed to boost your confidence & capability for making accurate assessments and giving good advice.

Any questions? You can contact us anytime: info@commonwealthherbs.com is our email address, and the best way to reach us.

Interested in a clinical consultation with us? Find all of our clinic options right here. By the way, you don’t have to be a student with us to get a clinic session – it’s open to everyone!

Learn all about the 4 pillars and a holistic approach to herbalism with this free course: 4 Keys to Holistic Herbalism

Once you’re a student, you can get a Quick Help session at any time. Just grab any free course (or paid course!) and you’ll have access to free sessions with katja on Thursdays – the link is right on your student dashboard. Students also get access to our live Q&A sessions, our private student community, and more!

Everything’s on sale in July!

All our offerings are self-paced online video courses. They all come with free access to twice-weekly live Q&A sessions with us, lifetime access to current & future course material, open discussion threads integrated in each lesson, an active student community, study guides, quizzes & capstone assignments, and more!

Use code CATNIP at checkout to get 20% off!

If you have a moment, it would help us a lot if you could subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen. This helps others find us 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!

Today we’re sharing some thoughts about uncertainty versus imposter syndrome, and learning herbalism. Recently, we did a 20 Questions video for the folks at HerbRally – it ran nearly four hours long! Two of the questions we were asked wove a theme together, and we wanted to share them here.

The first question was “how do you deal with uncertainty as an herbalist?” The person asking this may have been expecting some kind of study trick that would help them to feel confident enough in their skills that they didn’t feel uncertainty in their practice – like an antidote to imposter syndrome!

But we have this sign in our apothecary that says “there’s only the hard way” (and if you know, you know!) and that applies here: the way of herbalism is uncertain. Accepting the presence of uncertainty is the first step toward navigating it confidently.

Now, we’re not talking about under-training: the first thing to do is to get trained, of course. But once you have trained for years and years, and even once you’ve been in practice for years, you are still on a journey with uncertainty. Which sounds a little zen, perhaps – and actually, a little bit, it is! Training the mind to accept uncertainty, while still finding the truth of the moment, is as important a skill for an herbalist as it is for a monk.

Next, someone asked us about mistakes new herbalists make, and how long it takes to “feel like you know what you’re doing.” (Do you see a theme here?) They want to know if it’s going to take years to feel confident, or if there’s some way to accelerate the development of that confidence. Yes.

These questions come up for lots of herbalists. Especially because a lot of us are practicing alone in our communities. Sure, there are herbal friends online, but maybe you’re the only herbalist in your town, and you’re feeling the weight of that solitude. A lot of folks don’t have elders or mentors available, and that makes it harder to practice.

One solution to that problem is online clinical herbalism mentorship – and we’ve got that for you!

Did you know that you can book a one-on-one Zoom session with Katja to talk through your goals, your challenges, and how to get you where you want to be in your herbal practice? You can! It’s open to anyone, and the easiest way to book one is to go to enroll in any free course – they’re at the top of the list. (They’re truly free: you don’t even need a credit card.) That will set up a student dashboard for you, and right there on the menu on the left you’ll see, about halfway down, Quick Help Sessions – click that link and it’ll take you right to the scheduling calendar!

If this episode caught your attention, then our Clinical Skills course is for you! Learn to practice legally, safely, collaboratively, and effectively. Get all your client forms & scheduling systems sorted. Cultivate consultation interview skills, and explore methods for planning personalized protocols. Everything you need to be a top-notch herbalist!

Like all our offerings, this self-paced online video course comes with free access to twice-weekly live Q&A sessions with us, lifetime access to current & future course material, open discussion threads integrated in each lesson, an active student community, study guides, quizzes & capstone assignments, and more!

If you enjoyed the episode, it helps us a lot if you subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen. This helps others find us more easily. Thank you!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Support the show

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

Accessibility in herbalism is not something extra or something nice-if-possible, it’s a critical part of our work. The prices of the remedies we recommend can sometimes be a determining factor in whether our clients take them, or take them long enough to get results. In many cases we can identify less expensive herbs, or formulae of herbs, which can do the job of more costly ones. In order to make an effective substitution, we first need to clarify the qualities, actions, affinities, and other aspects of the herb for which we seek alternatives. Only then can we identify a good substitute.

This episode includes thoughts and examples of potential substitutes for solomon’s seal (Polygonatum biflorum), kava (Piper methysticum), Asian ginseng (Panax ginseng), dong quai (Angelica sinensis), teasel (Dipsacus fullonum), arnica (Arnica montana), chaga (Inonotus obliquus), goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis), and schisandra (Schisandra chinensis).

This is material we dig into deeply in our Accessible Herbalism course. That course is full of strategies and skills which enable herbalists to offer top-quality care to people who have constraints on their finances, time, energy, or community of support. It helps you understand the truth behind some of hte most common money-saving suggestions about herbalism and nutrition, so you can offer realistic suggestions which actually help people who need it most.

Like everything we offer, it’s a self-paced online video course. It comes with lifetime access to current & future course material, the twice-weekly live Q&A sessions with us, open discussion threads integrated in each lesson, an active student community, study guides, quizzes & capstone assignments, and more!

If you enjoyed the episode, it helps us a lot if you subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen. This helps others find us more easily. Thank you!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Support the show

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

When we’re choosing herbs to help someone, knowing their medical diagnosis isn’t enough: we don’t choose herbs for a diagnosis. As herbalists, we actually need more information! A medical diagnosis is a specialized vocabulary which creates a shorthand so that people who already know what it means, how it happens, and how to fix it, can speak more efficiently about (whatever it is). It’s not an objective truth, though: it’s a descriptive label that is useful in a specialized context. Herbalism is a different context.

That’s why it’s not very practical to try to look up something like “herbs for neuropathy caused by a herniated cervical disc” – because we can’t actually make that list without leaving gaps large enough to drive a truck through. The name of the problem isn’t enough information for us to choose herbs, we still have to get more data! We need to understand what the diagnostic term means in absolute terms, and we need to know what the person’s experience of that diagnosis is (because not everyone with a certain label has the same experience), and then we need to figure out what herbs or what series of herbs have the actions we need to work toward a resolution.

So here’s how we think that through – taking this example, and asking: what does “neuropathy caused by a herniated cervical disc” mean for an herbalist? Where exactly can we dig into that to make an impact? What other information do we need to allow us to pick the right herbs to support this person?

This process for thinking everything through will work for any problem! It’s all in this episode.

This example came up in one of our live Q&A sessions last week. Those are a perk enjoyed by every one of our students – whether they’re enrolled in a full program like Family Herbalist or Community Herbalist, a single course like Neurological & Emotional Health, or even one of our free short courses such as Herbal Study Tips. Anyone who’s learning from us can ask us questions directly at these sessions, twice a week. And if you can’t make it live, we keep an archive – there are more than 500 archived Q&A sessions for you to look through! (Don’t worry, there’s a searchable index so you can find what you’re interested in.)

Everything we offer is presented in self-paced online video courses, which come with lifetime access to current & future course material, the twice-weekly live Q&A sessions with us, open discussion threads integrated in each lesson, an active student community, study guides, quizzes & capstone assignments, and more!

If you enjoyed the episode, it helps us a lot if you subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen. This helps others find us more easily. Thank you!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Support the show

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

Plant ID apps are helpful (when they’re accurate), but there is one drawback – they make it harder to learn plant ID for yourself. But there are ways to combat that so that you get good at plant ID – without having to memorize a ton of stuff.

It’s summer! Now is the time to be out there practicing with your plants. Yes, there are lots of apps that will try to identify plants for you, but this is about skill development – because when you know, you know. Working through the process of observation and identification isn’t just a one-time thing, like sending a photo through a plant ID app – it builds and strengthens the pathways in your brain that you use to do the job. So let’s get out there and be really looking at plants!

In the Olden Times, when you wanted to identify a plant, you’d need a guide book. Each one is a little bit different, but usually there’s a “key” to help you sort through all the possibilities and narrow in on a target. These start with distinct patterns, like opposite vs alternate leaf arrangement. Then you might look at the leaf edges, to see if they’re serrated, smooth, or something else. At some point you’ll look at the flowers, too: are they symmetrical? How many petals, and what color? All these details will help you to exclude some plants (or groups of them), so the set of plant descriptions & pictures you need to look at gets smaller and smaller, until you have a manageable number to work with.

So that’s how you’d use a plant ID guide, but notice something here: it all starts with observation. Even if you don’t know what “pinnate” or “glabrous” means, you can observe features of your plant and recognize its patterns.

In this episode, we’ll demonstrate the observation process for you, and you can play along! We go outside and describe a plant we know and love, starting with its leaves, stems, flowers, and other clear features. But we won’t show it to you until the very end. Can you figure out who we’re talking about, before we show it to you? Notice the timestamp when you have a guess.

Even if you don’t recognize it until we show it to you – or even after we do – it’s the process, the attention, and the habit of close looking that we really want to instill in you today. The more you practice observation, the better you’ll get at plant ID.

Wanna learn more techniques to help you with plant identification, as well as with learning herbalism in general and retaining the stuff you’re studying? Grab the free Herbal Study Tips course! This fun course is designed to make all your learning – whether that’s with us, from other teachers, from books, or from the plants themselves – more exciting and effective.

Like all our offerings, this is a self-paced online video course, which comes with free access to twice-weekly live Q&A sessions, lifetime access to current & future course material, twice-weekly live Q&A sessions with us, open discussion threads integrated in each lesson, an active student community, study guides, quizzes & capstone assignments, and more!

If you enjoyed the episode, it helps us a lot if you subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen. This helps others find us more easily. Thank you!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Support the show

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

Life is pretty overwhelming right now, and it’s affecting the way our brains function. When we can’t focus or can’t remember things, we typically blame it on things like perimenopause or ADHD – but the literal firehose of data that comes at us every day is an even bigger cause: it’s a LOT for our brains to process!
Tulsi can help!

Truly one of the most versatile and multifaceted herbs on the planet, tulsi is a must-know plant for any herbalist. Its capacity as a nervine is immediately palpable, as it helps us release tension and anxiety without causing any sedation. When taken over the long term, tulsi expresses itself as an adaptogen – helping us to move more easily out of a stress response, back to a comfortable and calm baseline. Tulsi is also very flexible, and can be formulated with lots of other nervines and mental health herbs to create a perfectly personalized formula.

Some of our favorite herbs to pair with tulsi include:

• Ground ivy – for moving the lymph in your head (ear/nose/throat) – and maybe even the glymph in your brain!
• Elderflower – for draining stuck fluids from the head, and for releasing tense heat
• Ginkgo – for increasing blood flow to the brain and protecting the health of nerves
• Rosemary – for cutting through the fog and sharpening the mind
• Peppermint – for a breath of cool air moving through your mind, and for releasing tension held in the belly

Still feeling stressed? Check out our new Stress Management course! Learn all about adaptogens, nervines, restoratives, and herbs to lift your spirits in this inexpensive, focused course. It covers everything you need to get through stressful times – and to help the ones you love, too!

Like all our offerings, this is a self-paced online video course, which comes with free access to twice-weekly live Q&A sessions, lifetime access to current & future course material, twice-weekly live Q&A sessions with us, open discussion threads integrated in each lesson, an active student community, study guides, quizzes & capstone assignments, and more!

PS: If you’re in the Boston area, check out Herbstalk on June 6th & 7th! Ryn will be teaching a class there on Affordable Analogues for Expensive Herbs, and the conference as a whole is very much worth visiting. It’s the last Herbstalk ever, so don’t miss it!

If you have a moment, it would help us a lot if you could subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen. This helps others find us more easily. Thank you!!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Support the show

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

We’ve come to the end of the “mainstream” top-40 best-selling herbs list! Dandelion, rhubarb, and ginseng take the last three spots.

Dandelion is an herbal workhorse. It’s inexpensive because it’s ubiquitous, and its resilience is legendary – dandelion coming up through the concrete is one of the herbalist’s favorite symbols of resistance and the power of nature. Much more than a simple “detox” herb, dandelion root and leaf improve the functions of our liver and kidneys, feed both us and our gut flora, and eliminate excess fluids from the system. Its bright yellow flowers can even lift our spirits when taken in tincture or wine – this is one of Ryn’s indispensable herbal remedies for the winter doldrums.

Rhubarb root used to be much more of an herbal mainstay than it is in contemporary herbalism. The Eclectics of the 19th century worked with it extensively, largely for its “cathartic” – stimulant laxative – properties. It is a key ingredient in the famous “neutralizing cordial”, a formula developed in that era and designed to be a nearly-universal remedy for digestive upsets of all sorts. This remedy is still prepared by herbalists today, though often with some variations in the ingredient list.

Ginseng needs no introduction. It is one of the most famous medicinal herbs in the world, and it is “the original adaptogen” – the category which has spawned millions of dollars in product sales in our stressed-out, depleted, fatigued society. Ginseng products can be extremely helpful, but you absolutely cannot simply buy the first one you find: these remedies are very prone to adulteration. That, too, is an old problem: historical texts are littered with descriptions of adulteration and falsification of supposedly mature, supposedly Panax roots which were nothing of the kind. Some things never change…

CLICK HERE FOR FULL SHOW NOTES & REFERENCES

“Detox” came up in this episode (again), and we hinted at the issues rampant in this category of supplement products. For the full story, you’ll want to dig in to our course Elements of Detoxification. This course takes a fresh look at the concepts of “toxicity” and “detoxification”, a holistic perspective that goes beyond “cleanses” and products. Learn a memorable, practical model for understanding how the body’s detox functions work, along with the roles herbs can play in supporting them.

Like all our offerings, this is a self-paced online video course, which comes with free access to twice-weekly live Q&A sessions, lifetime access to current & future course material, twice-weekly live Q&A sessions with us, open discussion threads integrated in each lesson, an active student community, study guides, quizzes & capstone assignments, and more!

If you have a moment, it would help us a lot if you could subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen. This helps others find us more easily. Thank you!!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Support the show

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