Herbal Womb Wisdom

We are truly in the wake of the most liminal, in-between realms, time of the year.   And what would nearly all of our lineages have done at this time we have lost connection to?  Honor the dead. Our ancestors. Those that came before us. Those recently passed, those remembered, those long forgotten. These practices of ancestral honoring are not new. Yes, they are trendy, but they are far from novel...

Shame. It's one of those things we almost never talk about. Because what does shame do? It makes us want to hide, walk away, sometimes even disappear. It is not the kind of thing most of us lean into (myself included), but HOLY MAMA is naming our shame a powerful practice.  Naming it helps us to unshame it. Unshaming it helps us to liberate ourselves. Recently I've been experimenting wit...

Edges... The most fertile, biodiverse, abundant places of possibility in the landscape. And also where so much of our medicinal plant allies live. So what does it mean to be a "reverent edgewalker" as today's guest herbalist Emily French describes it? And how does that translate to our work with plant medicine, as herbalists, as people of the earth? She shares her perspectives on th...

One of the most amazing things about the womb is that it always, ever changing. Especially during our cycling years. It naturally expands larger than other organ in the body when it is carrying a child, and then contracts to its pre-pregnancy size. It grows an internal layer of tissue every month, and sheds it if no pregnancy occurs. It contracts, relaxes, produces cervical fluid, responds to horm...

A couple weeks ago I received a DM asking for the "cooling chai" recipe because she had just listened to an episode where I mentioned it, so I sent it along and then posted it in my stories and got a reflection from a longtime listener that it should be a yearly thing to share it because it is such a great recipe. So today I decided to brew some of that chai up for myself and sit with yo...

How many of us have journeyed through this life without some form of disordered eating patterns or an eating disorder?  My guess is, if we were honest, the answer is very few.  We live in a world constantly feeding us images of bodies that are desirable, even when trends change, they are often not realistic bodies that most of us live in. It is SO easy to fall into patterns or either restricting a...

I'm honestly not even sure what people find "sexy" anymore.  Trends come and go. I think maybe we're back to ultra-thin being a desirable look. Thankfully we do have more body positivity movements, and finding our individual paths to self-acceptance and self-love is a beautiful, empowering thing. But whether it's ultra-thin, over-exercising or overweight, it's SO comm...

What is late summer, actually? Like beyond the light on the horizon becoming more golden and the leaves starting to turn... How can we apply what we understand from the Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurvedic lenses to our own bodies, and our cycles.  In this week's episode, I explore all of this and more, including some insights I personally have on what late summer might physiologically...

When we talk about menstrual, hormonal or even mental health, how often do we think of the thyroid? Actually for me, I'm always curious about it, I love when clients have had their thyroid levels checked so we can look at those as part of the picture - but I know in  many cases it is entirely overlooked. We think about ovaries, maybe even adrenals, blood sugar, minerals. But we don't alw...

Grief can be such a profound teacher if we allow ourselves to "apprentice to it" as this week's guest, Siobhan Asgharzadeh says. So many of us move through our lives barely touching our grief. Or if we do, we keep it quiet, hidden, placed on a shelf where others cannot see if because we live in such a grief-illiterate culture that asks us to fix or get over things. But the truth is,...

When people hear the word "womb" it is more common than not to associate it with pregnancy, birth or postpartum.  And of course, that makes sense - it is where babes grow alongside the miraculous placenta in the ocean of amniotic fluid til birth. It expands in size far beyond any other organ in the body, and contracts to its pre-pregnancy size. No wonder the uterus is called a "curi...

It can be easy to overlook the importance of our digestion on our hormonal, menstrual or cyclical health... but actually it is foundational. Literally, the foundations of our organs, tissues and hormones are nourished via our process of digestion, and our "digestive fire" -- referred to as Agni in Ayurveda or Spleen yang in TCM -- is the internal warmth that helps us to actually absorb w...

Every culture has some relationship with bees, some stories, mythology, even deep reverence. There are goddess traditions centered around bees. Ancient Egypt considered bees to be keepers of the liminal space between life and death. In these ways, honeybees could be considered healers in their own right. We so often center humans when we think of "healers" but what if we include other-th...

I think we forget sometimes that heart and cardiovascular disease is actually the leading cause of death for women and folks with wombs. Like, for real. And the thing about it is, there are some very simple things we can do that make a huge difference, and it's been shown that only between 3-12% of us are even doing those. Not to mention adding our herbal allies in.  In this weeks episode I c...

It's common for us to orient more to the parts of ourselves we love, feel proud of, or see as lighter or brighter. But what about the parts that are messier, less easy-to-love, more challenging? We ALL have them, btw. Most of us hide those parts where we can, we've learned how to move through the  world without outwardly expressing them a lot of the time, unless something comes up that t...

A couple months ago my childhood bestie told me she was hosting a period party for her daughter, and I knew immediately I wanted to reach out to the facilitators to have them on the podcast. Turns out, these two are the real deal.  Erica Evans and Darcie Black are both Fertility Awareness Educators that work in the reproductive health field in different niches. Together, they host these "Body...

Summer is often characterized by buoyancy, expansion, joy, creativity, vitality. But there are times in our lives when we are feeling this life-giving energy of warmth around us and simultaneously navigating a deep season of grief. This is what I speak to in today's episode. Some ways we might caretake our tender hearts in the peak of summertime, herbal allies for the journey, and more. Resou...

One of the core pillars hormonal health - the dynamic healthy dance of our hormones - is a resilient nervous system. I don't love using the word regulated, because that sounds like we're trying to neutralize or dampen our nervous system response, when what we really want is to grow our capacity to feel all the things fully, and complete the waves. So what can we do yo cool and calm our f...

It can be so common to feel the quickening of summertime and forget to slow down to truly savor the season. Sometimes it feels almost impossible to find the quiet in all the expansive blossoming energy. But if we don't slow down to pause, we miss the opportunity to more fully receive the gifts of the season. And we may end up more imbalanced during the peak and late summertime. Too hot, too d...

So often we think of essential oils as the primary form of distillation from aromatic plants. But there is another form of water-based extraction through distillation that is commonly overlooked, and that's hydrosols. Hydrosols are aromatic waters that capture both volatile oils and the water from the steaming process. According to today's guest Emma Prescher, they really are a bridge be...

(audio fixed! sorry y'all) The Ayurvedic concept of "ojas" can feel elusive, especially because it's a unique perspective on something that we might refer to as our deep inner well of resilience or the nourishment we can call upon when we are in a time of stress or strain.  There's no real physical component we can point to from a western anatomy lens. But it's an ess...

Traditional intact cultures, and systems like Ayurveda and TCM, all include not only physical and emotional healing but also speak to how the energetic layers of our beings impact our healing, too. Whether it's tuning into the medicine of the wheel of the year like Summer Solstice (the expansive, invigorating sunlight) or the harmonious dance of Yin and Yang or the subtle energies from the Ve...

Iron deficiency is incredibly common, and even more common during pregnancy where there is some level of physiologic anemia with all that blood dilution but it can definitely become too much.  But what is really happening? Today's guest, Samantha Chandler, speaks to what minerals are doing in our bodies, and why she sees copper as a key ally to support our overall mineral balance, including i...

When cycle alchemist, Tere Marie Martini, first proposed speaking to the 4 P's (plants, planets, pussy & personal agency), I was already ALL IN. By themselves, each of these topics is compelling, but when we combine them to explore how they can support us to become "whole ass human beings" it gets even more interesting. What brings each of these seemingly divergent topics togeth...

Fascia is an extraordinary substance in our bodies that supports both structural integrity *and* fluidity. And it is a web that weaves throughout our entire form. It has more nerve endings than our skin, responds to our hormones, tenses and relaxes, hydrates and dehydrates and can be a root of chronic pain and/or stuck energy. It lines all of our organs and muscles and bones! And our endopelvic fa...