Here we have Nettle, flowered and going to seed, and if you look closely👀 you can also see the little spikes that sting you! I might not have gotten the focus quite right, but there's quite a bit going on in this pic.

We talk about exotic superfoods like they must come from far flung regions to be useful, when we ignore, poison, cut down, and don't even recognize the ones that are right under our noses!

As a food medicine, the all-around amazingness of Nettle is hard to match, let alone beat.

Nettle draws out the superhero in all of us too, by nourishing us to our max.

​Who's a Nettle person? We could all be Nettle people. Do you have a Nettle patch?

​Meet all the Herbs I've covered so far in my free Resources Hub

Chamomile has a quite personality, and it's the quiet ones you need to watch out for.

​She's gentle but inexorable, quieting our inner whine, easing tension you didn't know you had and some you did- she's particularly helpful with the lower abdomen, and I've used Chamomile tea to great effect when I had pelvic floor area cramping twice (NOT a pain I'd wish on most people!)

Chamomile people have a frozenness to them. Emotionally this can look like petulance- I don't KNOW what I want but it's NOT THIS😤 or physically it can be really stuck muscles that don't give and won't let anyone in to help.

Chamomile also changes her ways when you give her time- a sweet, fragrant tea becomes deep and bitter, encouraging movement in the digestive system. Plants, like people, aren't just one thing.

Chamomile remedies made gently, like a short-steeped tea, preserve the aromatics and work with more surface-level complaints like muscle tension or mental blocks (particularly around transitions.)

Deeper remedies like a long-steeped tea work deeper, easing transitions in that lower abdomen. You'll need to get to know your plants to know when and how to capture their moods!

There are all kinds of Herbal Medicine makers out there. Let's support them!

This is NOT an exhaustive list, and I will be adding to it. Please send your recommendations or drop them in the comments below.
​

High Garden Tea- their Memphis TN shop was completely destroyed by a tornado in early March 2020
The Botanical Bus- a bilingual mobile herb clinic in CA
Bay Herbalism- a free holistic and mobile health clinic in Sonoma County CA
Commonweath Herbs Free Clinic- in Brookline MA
Rootwork Herbals' People's Medicine Project- provides BIPOC a safe, experiential education in working with common plants to help heal themselves and their communities

But what if you want to combine remedies with different times or temperatures? For example, a great combo for an angry gut is Chamomile and Marshmallow, but you’d want a long steeped Chamomile and a cold steeped Marshmallow. What to do?
 
The answer is- staggering. No, I mean that as a verb, not an adjective!
 
Do this: make your Chamomile tea in a quart jar around dinner time in hot water. Before bed, when it’s cooled off, add the Marshmallow, and wait till morning. Just stagger *when* you add different herbs to create your different combos. 

Staggering is also a good solution for when you would like to include more gentle notes of strong flavors. Try stirring your tea with a Cinnamon stick, if you don't want an overpowering spice. Or add your Chamomile or Rose petals right before serving, if you want the aromatic bloom. 

There are so many ways to infuse your plants in just simple water! What are your favorite flavors or techniques?

Thirty years ago I would have said that Herbalism was taking capsules of dried plants, and a few teas and foul-tasting tinctures, so that I didn’t get sick. Today Herbalism is much more widely known than it was in the 1980’s, but perhaps it’s no better understood. Let’s look at this!

Yes, Herbalism is plants. You can quibble about mushrooms and resins and a few other not-exactly-plant items, but basically we’re talking “go out in the woods or the fields and gather” items here. Except, not really.

To really get a handle on what Herbal medicine is about, I need to ask you to try something: Set aside your understanding, your ideas about medicine and disease and wellness. They’re perfectly valid thoughts, but I want you to try to imagine an entirely different way.

People are complex- just check out the online reviews of restaurants or gyms or anything else. No one thing is for EVERYONE. And plants are just as complex as we are- did you know that the only chemical difference between our blood and chlorophyll is that where we have an Iron molecule, the plants have a Magnesium? We inhale what they exhale, they make the water cycle the entire planet depends on, and the exact same plant can vary widely in its growth habits and chemical makeup depending on where it’s grown. I’m the same- I’d be very different living in the far North, or on a tropical island, or in the middle of a city, based on the choices, opportunities, and resources available to me. 

So what is Herbalism? I nominate this idea: It’s The Act And Art Of Living With Plants As Food And Medicine To Maximize Your World.

​Herbalism definitely has a big knowledge component- you need to know your plants. How many plants is up to you, though. 

A dozen or two well-chosen plants could cover pretty much everything you’d need, and some herbalists work well with 6-10 individual and combination remedies handling almost all of their client’s complaints. On the other end of the spectrum, there are honestly thousands and thousands of plants to choose from. 

The “art” of herbalism is inseparable from the knowledge base. Facts, research, and “proof” inform us right alongside intuition, inspiration, and experimentation. 

Every single herbalist I know balances the science and the art that underpins the “knowing” of their plants differently, beautifully, and dynamically, allowing change to morph their practice over time. Practicing herbalism is a dance with all the information- known and unknown- out there.

Food and medicine the same thing! That tomato you grew is tasty, it fills your belly, and it provides you with vitamins, minerals, and other molecules like lycopene and beta carotene that support different functions in your body- they’re medicine. 

Often the difference between food and medicine is just the dose. A little mug of hot water with a Chamomile teabag is a nice beverage, but a jar of fresh flowers covered in cold water steeped overnight in the fridge makes a fragrant, uplifting apple-sweet drink that delivers all the muscle-relaxing and petulance-overcoming benefits of Chamomile’s volatile oils. And a mug of long-brewed Chamomile tea, dark and earthy and bitter, helps move full or constricted digestion along. 

Good food- whole, clean, organic, and consistent- seasoned and spiced with further good foods, becomes your medicine

Ok. You sat. You pondered. What did the plant say?
 
Here, I'll go first.

Do you think this challenge is a ridiculous waste of time? Or did you read it and think, Oh that seems a lovely notion!, and go on with your day? I was like both of you, once.

The first time I did this exercise, in my first year of Herbal studies, I went into my teacher’s garden and sat by this shrubby thing. It wasn't a tree, exactly- there was no trunk, just a collection of bendy stems maybe 8 feet tall. There had been flowers earlier, and berries too, but now it was just leaves and coolly green. I got comfortable on the lawn in front of it.

And I waited.
For anything.
I looked at its bark, the leaves, the ground it grew in.
I breathed, closed my eyes, opened them, lay down, sat straighter.

It felt absurd. I wasn’t having visions, or hearing voices. I was bored, and all I wanted to do was climb the silly thing. This flexible collection of overgrown branches looked so enticing I just wanted to crawl inside it and wrap myself around the stems. Which was of course unreasonable, it could never support me, so I trooped back inside with my classmates, annoyed.

And found out this shrub is Elderberry, literally the Elder of the garden, watching over everything. It has Grandmother energy, and I had wanted to give it a hug SO BAD that I almost cried. My own Grandmother had died tragically in a car accident only a few years before, my life was upside-down, and I had been feeling so alone and without the support that she would have given, in the form of a Dutch Apple cake and just saying nice things to me.

So when I challenge you to go sit with a plant, and you do it, don't "judge" or "assess" or "define" what happens. Because who knows what is happening?
 
This is how you begin forming connections, by not being in charge of the connecting. Let go, and see who or what introduces themselves, if you’re quiet enough to hear them.

Do you have plant connections? A favorite tree, or a culinary herb that always makes you smile, or a spring flower that reminds you of your childhood cat? Did you ever have connection, but have since lost it?
 
I had a rich inner-life as a child. No imaginary friends, but I spent long days playing in the woods, creek, fields, and grass on the 80 acres I grew up with. We didn’t have close neighbors, but there was plenty of “scope for imagination” on that land.
 
There was the stand of hemlock trees that became a whole pretend house, and the one spot where you could cross the creek on a fallen tree, and the white pine that I suddenly couldn’t climb anymore when I grew faster than it did.

I knew where the lawn changed to moss, back by tree line where the old swing set was, and where the mysterious hole was below the tiger lilies, behind the house.

I knew where the spring surfaced, and where it collected into a magical pool that was covered by watercress each spring.

And I always knew exactly where I was, and how to get back home.
 
After high school I went away to college and jobs and apartments and while I sometimes reflected on that time I spent “before”, it was background to my new reality of responsibilities and adulting. Until I went to an herbal conference back in some hills that echoed the hills I used to know. At the end of the day, driving back in the sunset, the landscape hit me so hard that I wept right there behind the steering wheel.
 
I suddenly felt the enormous reality that where I now lived wasn’t “home”, and that I desperately missed those hills I used to call home. But my life isn’t there anymore, and I needed to find ways to start recognizing my new home in that same deep way. I had to rediscover my ability to make friends with trees and rocks, and reconnect to my present world.

(And in this process of rediscovery and reconnection, I remembered my Herbalism. At its heart, my teaching of both Pilates and Herbal Medicine is driven by my passion to help you recognize and identify these small voices without words, that guide you to connect both inside and out.)
 
There are lots of ways to deepen your connection to plants, to learn to recognize them outside and to learn what they do inside you. There are classes, walks, talks, books, videos, apps, all sorts of ways to get more information.

But I challenge you to do this one thing:

• go outside
• find a plant you don't know- anything from a flower to a tree. Look around to see what calls to you, what catches your eye
• sit down by it
• look at it for a while, at least 15 minutes
• come back in and grab some paper, and jot down what you thought of while you were sitting there

Memories? Observations? Random, unconnected, meaningless thoughts? (Of course they're not! But we'll get to that.)

Really, get going. I'll wait.

Burdock root (Arctium lappa) is also known by the Japanese name Gobo, and that's usually how I get mine- 3 or 4 roots about the thickness of medium carrots that are at least 3 feet long, shrink wrapped together at the local Asian market as Gobo. (It's also sold dried, from Mountain Rose and Herbiary.) They are beige, darker than parsnips, with slightly darker cores. 

Usually I either cut them into rounds and simmer them in a stock pot of water for 24 hours or so, or I'll make ribbons with a potato peeler and stir fry them. Either way, I've found they oxidize and turn brown quickly once they're peeled, but this doesn't affect anything. 

The taste of Burdock was unexpected the first time I had it. Burdock is generally considered "a Liver herb", in that it helps your liver (a vague and squiffy description!) Most of the time "liver herbs" are bitters, a topic I discussed here. But not Burdock. 

Burdock is sweet, in the herbal tradition that refers not to sugary, syrupy, cloying sweetness, but to nourishing, grounding, and satisfying. Homemade chicken soup, freshly cooked rice, and nuts are other savory foods that fit this description, in my mind. 

This makes me think about the "Liver" attributes, and about its infamous burrs. 

If you've ever walked the forest's edge, you've probably met Burdock. It's a biennial, which means it grows low and leafy the first year, then huge and sprawling to send out seeds the second year. First year plants are the ones harvested for the roots, which grow large to help it survive winter. I've heard of people digging Burdock roots 10-14 feet long, and the accompanying pits they have to fill back in after! First year Burdock leaves are often quite huge too, and I've seen them tied on heads as makeshift hats- it's a great look. 

Second year plants grow UP. Last summer I saw one several feet taller than me (pics below don't really do it justice, I was holding my camera up high). This is when we get burrs. Little round globes of hooks that inspired Velcro, tangle everrrrrything that comes near, and apparently contain seeds that are also medicinal- though whoever puts themselves through the trouble of harvesting them might be a little, um, devoted. 

The fierce presentation of Burdock- massive leaves, aggressive burrs, long taproots- really belies its taste and energy. It puts me in mind of Mrs. Rachel Lynde. 

Have you read Anne of Green Gables? (If not, you are missing out!) Mrs. Rachel Lynde is big, outspoken, in everyone's business, and the first one to deliver a handmade blanket to a new baby or a meal to a sick family. 

The Liver has so many jobs and responsibilities, and sometimes its filtering duties get neglected. This leads to rashes, breakouts, and lots of other skin and joint issues as toxins and debris build up in the blood and are pushed out through the skin- think of Lucy in the chocolate factory, or water spilling over a levy. 

Rather than truly stimulating the Liver like other traditional bitter herbs, I think Burdock is in the blood doing the dishes and the laundry, so to speak. I feel like truly bitter herbs give the Liver a kick in the pants, which can be very helpful, whereas Burdock quietly comes over and mows your lawn when you've just got too much else on your plate. 

It's an excellent gentle tonic, a concept Western medicine is missing but which means to help the body mend, rebuild, and return to healthy normal functioning. Very often our Western baseline test is "Can I function?" Long term help from Burdock would help change that question to, "Am I at the top of my game?" which many people haven't felt in so long I wonder if they'd recognize it. 

Here's what it looks like: 
You + coffee = wired (from caffeine) + poop (from bitter)
This is what our Western expectations are. Fast, concrete results and damn the caffeine addiction!

You + Burdock= You
No noticeable change today, or tomorrow. But months from now someone will comment on your clear skin, your glowing vitality, and you'll think- It must be all the Burdock! You won't have noticed the gradual improvement in your skin, or stress management, or ability to digest rich foods or recover from excess sugar or alcohol. It's just gotten better.