The Plant Path: Herbalism, Medical Astrology & Spagyric Alchemy

One of the primary elements of understanding the energetics or constitution of a person is temperature—whether someone runs really hot or runs really cold. Sometimes it can be a little confusing in terms of how you actually assess that. What are the core determining factors that you're looking at in a person to be able to tell whether they're hot or cold, either constitutionally or in their curren...

One of the primary elements of understanding the energetics or constitution of a person is temperature—whether someone runs really hot or runs really cold. Sometimes it can be a little confusing in terms of how you actually assess that. What are the core determining factors that you're looking at in a person to be able to tell whether they're hot or cold, either constitutionally or in their curren...

This week, we have a very interesting question that comes up from time to time in regard to whether an herb can actually work like an antibiotic and the possible benefits and risks in terms of using herbs to treat pathogenic infections. This is a pretty relevant topic these days as we are in the midst of the COVID 19 situation. I'm seeing more and more people reaching out to plants as a way of str...

In this special issue of The Plant Path, Whitney interviews Lucy Jones, author of Self-Sufficient Herbalism. This book couldn't be coming out at a more important time, when as herbalists we really need to take a step back and look at how sustainable and self-sufficient we are (or aren't). Do we really take responsibility for the herbs we use to help people and work with them directly? Or are we ov...

In this special episode of The Plant Path, I interviewed naturopath, herbalist, nutritionist, and medical astrologer Kira Sutherland. Kira's been a clinical practitioner for over 20 years and the use of her client's birth chart has been one of her primary tools for holistic assessment and providing insights into how to best navigate her cases.  This conversation was really exciting, as Kira lays o...

Having a connection to the herbal allies you work with is essential to truly accessing the deepest levels of healing offered by plant medicines. But how do you develop a relationship with these botanical beings? In this episode, Asia Suler shares a guide for connecting to the primordial language of nature where we can learn from our plant allies. This connection to the natural world weaves us back...

In this podcast you'll learn some preventative measures for keeping your immune system healthy and strong, along with herbal remedies for respiratory viral infections.   ———————————— CONNECT WITH SAJAH AND WHITNEY ———————————— To get free in depth mini-courses and videos, visit our blog at: http://www.evolutionaryherbalism.com Get daily inspiration and plant wisdom on our Facebook and Instagram ch...

The other day I did one of our quarterly live Q&A sessions for all of the Evolutionary Herbalism students and someone asked a question about how do we go about holistically treating influenza. It's December of 2019, and as I'm sure you know, this tends to be the season where people are coming down with the flu or people are getting colds. They've got compromised immune systems. There's all sorts o...

One of the most important skills for the modern clinical herbalist is having the ability to successfully treat the digestive system. I'm sure you're aware about what a big topic gut health is these days. In my opinion, this is one of the most important organ systems to understand how to treat holistically from the vitalist perspective of herbalism.  We need to really look at traditions of herbalis...

In the Alchemical tradition, there is a teaching that speaks towards the Three Kingdoms of Life: the mineral, vegetable, and animal. Yet for some reason the fungal kingdom has consistently been overlooked, or lumped together with plants, and they're discussed little. Luckily for us, as mushrooms have entered more deeply into human awareness as powerful medicines not only for ourselves, but the Ear...

What differentiates an okay herbalist from an excellent one? I would argue it isn't necessarily how many facts we know about the plants... It's rooted in our experiential understanding of them.    In this special episode, I interviewed clinical herbalist Rosalee de la Forêt on how we can balance our intellectual studies of medicinal plants with direct experience, and how the best way to do that is...

When most people study herbalism, it's easy to get stuck in a strictly intellectual orientation to learn about plants: reading books, attending conferences, workshops, or online programs. While gathering intellectual knowledge about the plants is essential, it really only gets you so far. Let's face it, memorizing facts can be difficult and tedious (and usually not that fun). The best herbalists b...

The revolution begins at the hearth and in the kitchen through reclaiming ancestral healing arts & making medicine together to take care of our families and communities.  In this episode, herbalist Kami McBride shares how we can participate in reviving and inspiring an Earth-based culture that lives in reciprocity & sustainability. Kami shares "the Herbalist's best kept secret" - herbal infused oi...

In this special episode of The Plant Path, I got a chance to interview a fellow PNW herbalist, Scott Kloos, founder of Cascadia Folk Medicine, The School of Forest Medicine and author of  Pacific Northwest Medicinal Plants: Identify, Harvest, and Use 120 Wild Herbs for Health and Wellness. This was a really fun conversation, as Scott and I discuss a wide range of methods of working with the medici...

In a similar way that the astrological pattern enables us to see the relationship between the human body, psyche, and soul, so too does it allow us to understand the connection between a plant's physical, energetic and spiritual properties. It's common in modern day herbalism to have one particular system for understanding the medicinal properties of a plant and how it acts upon the body, and a to...

As a holistic herbalist, our goal is to work with the WHOLE person. From many traditional perspectives, there are three primary organizational layers of the human being. In Alchemy these are referred to as Salt, Mercury and Sulfur. In Ayurveda it is vata, pitta, and kapha, or prana, tejas, and ojas. The Chinese refer to Jing, Shen, and Chi. From the most simplest orientation, we can say that we ha...

A major concern of folks on the path of becoming a practicing herbalist is that they'll get sued for practicing medicine without a license. Being an herbalist in the United States is a little bit of a grey area, as there are thousands of practitioners out there helping people with plants that aren't necessarily licensed physicians. This is in certain ways a blessing because there is no governmenta...

Herbal dosage is a common question amongst people on the path to becoming a practicing herbalist. Unfortunately, there isn't a straightforward answer the works across the board. Some use very low doses, some use very high doses. The one thing that's clear, is that both approaches to how much of an herb to give WORKS, and gets healing results from their clients, which is the #1 most important thing...

Central to traditional systems of medicine is the understanding that the human organism is a reflection of Nature- that our bodies are not machines or composed merely of "biochemical gears," but rather that we are composed of natural forces that exist all around us. That we are a part of the ecological context of the Earth. This perceptual orientation switches not only how we understand a human be...

A new year brings a lot of us to a place of reflection, introspection, and a desire to vision forward into our lives with greater clarity and direction. This is always a critical thing to do in all areas of our lives, and as herbalists, it's good to take a look down our plant path and see what direction we want to move into. This episode is all about creating a strategy to optimize your herbal stu...

I always like to say that every client you see is a chapter in your experiential book of learning herbal medicine. And that is the very best book you can get to learn about how to use plants effectively. Recently, I was blessed with the opportunity to treat a condition I'd never treated before… hemorrhoids. This can be a bit of an embarrassing condition for people, and they might dance around what...

I get asked a lot about whether our programs certify you to become an herbalist. This is a big question in the herbal education world, and it can be a little confusing as there is no singular "herbal certification" out there- the best is really becoming a Registered Herbalist (RH) by the American Herbalist Guild (AHG). Most schools will offer a "certificate of completion" after going through a cou...

This special issue of the Plant Path explores the tradition and practice of Herbal Alchemy and Spagyrics with world renowned expert on the subject Robert Bartlett. This episode explores the tradition of Alchemy, it's applications in modern herbal pharmacy, the therapeutic effects of spagyrics, and the overall practice of REAL Alchemy. Robert Bartlett is the author of two critically important books...

People commonly confuse the term essential oil with infused oils, not realizing they are in fact two different types of extraction. We also have the term herbal oils or aromatic oils, which also contributes to the confusion, as these terms have all been used interchangeable and applied to both essential oils and infused oils. In the modern era of the essential oil craze, many forget to traditional...