Herbs Are Not Pharmaceuticals | Featuring Dr. Christopher Hobbs
This podcast episode comes from Dr. Christopher Hobbs’ presentation for the Fall 2022 Free Herbalism Project. This was a virtual event that took place over Zoom on October 14, 2022. Dr. Hobbs discusses why herbs and herbal medicine is fundamentally different than drugs. Since the pandemic, the popularity of herbal medicine in households has continued to grow rapidly. Dr. Hobbs help us to look closely and practically at how herbal medicine can transform your health and wellness while helping to relieve symptoms and chronic ailments. His presentation also details why choosing herbal medicine as our first line of prevention and treatment in most ailments can not only benefit us—side benefits rather than side effects—while being completely sustainable and beneficial for our beautiful planet and all the inhabitants. Dr. Christopher Hobbs occasionally references slides throughout his presentation. You can find his slides by watching the presentation on our YouTube channel.
DIY Shower Steamer Recipes (Calming & Uplifting Variations)
Treat yourself or someone you love to a spa-scented shower experience with easy-to-create “Shower Steamer” tablets. Shower steamers use all-natural salts (typically baking soda) and essential oils. These little aromatherapy pucks can turn your shower into a spa-like experience. It is a simple product made up of just a few household ingredients and your favorite essential oils. The tablets dissolve slowly as you shower to create a lasting aromatherapy experience and the warm steam helps diffuse the scent. You can select scents that will energize, relax, or help with seasonal congestion.
Body Into Balance, With Maria Noël Groves | Tea Talks With Jiling
Jiling and Maria discuss favorite easy-to-grow herbs for a medicinal herb garden, “remedy gardens,” favorite herbs for delicious teas, increasing access for herbal classes within a for-profit business model, and more. We hope this conversation inspires your spring planting, growing, learning, and harvesting projects!
An Integrative Wellness Approach | Featuring 7Song
In 2006, esteemed herbalist 7Song (@7Songsevensong ) reluctantly attended a planning meeting for a new clinic in his hometown of Ithaca, New York. He was surprised to learn that there were plans to provide an herbalism practice alongside other alternative therapies and conventional healing modalities–an approach in which our mainstream healthcare system often falls short. Not only was this multi-faceted approach fresh and exciting, but all services would be offered to the community for free. Seventeen years later, the Ithaca Free Clinic is still serving Tompkins County with 100% free integrative medical services.
Ashwagandha: Uses And Benefits + Tasty Recipes
Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera) a plant highly praised in the Ayurvedic tradition, is in the Solanaceae, or nightshade, family. It’s been said that the herb may give both energy and calmness to those plagued with physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion. The species name somnifera means sleep-inducing, whereas ashwagandha comes from the Sanskrit words “ashva” and “gandha,” meaning “horse smell” since some think the roots of this calming plant smell like a horse. To each their own in the smell department; however, being a trophorestorative herb, it can bring “horselike” strength and vitality when used consistently over time. Ashwagandha has also been known to have a positive effect on cortisol levels due to real and perceived stress triggers and their subsequent physical and emotional symptoms. With stress being a way of life for many, the release of stress may also result in increased vigor and energy.
Nourishing Herbal Infusion Recipe—A Tea With Purpose
When it comes to nutritive plants like these four treasured herbal allies, opting for the infusion method will impart your water-based brew with the full strength of the plant material. Certainly, you could steep these herbs in a tea bag for 10-15 minutes. However, you’ll receive exponentially more of the nutritive and tonifying benefits with the infusion method, which employs a hefty volume of herbs steeped for hours. This allows more of the minerals, chlorophyll, and other nutrients to be pulled into the solution.
Think of it this way: Infusions pull more of the power-packed punch out of your dried herbs. Brewing your herbs this way gives you a strong, nourishing brew—deep and rich in color, flavor, and constituents. Just the way you like it.
Healthy Breakfast Recipes: Chia Pudding for Energy
Trying to get everyone in the family out the door with everything they need on a busy morning can be challenging. It’s hard, when you’re trying to juggle so many balls at once, to make time for a healthy breakfast. Happily, our friend Jiling Lin has some great ideas that you can make ahead so you and the ones you love can start your day with something substantial to feed your body and mind. It all begins with an oat or chia blend that you can customize to your tastes—add nutritious herbal powders, nuts, seeds, and more. Create your favorite blends in bulk and store them in jars for a super easy, delicious get-up-and-go breakfast!
Healthy Breakfast Recipes: Power Powder Blends
Trying to get everyone in the family out the door with everything they need on a busy morning can be challenging. It’s hard, when you’re trying to juggle so many balls at once, to make time for a healthy breakfast. Happily, our friend Jiling Lin has some great ideas that you can make ahead so you and the ones you love can start your day with something substantial to feed your body and mind. Jiling Lin has created 3 Power Powder blends to add to your food and beverage creations. These powder blends are delicious and easy ways to incorporate herbalism into your daily life. Feel free to mix and match herbal powders according to your seasonal needs and individual constitution. Have fun, create something delicious in bulk, and store it in a big jar to easily satisfy your daily breakfast needs!
Herbal Tea Blend Recipe For Meditation
We know that meditation is good for our minds, our hearts, and our bodies, but for some of us, sitting still for more than five minutes is a real challenge, which puts a damper on the whole meditative process. That’s when we turn to our favorite supportive herbs that can help us slow down, take a breath, and stop the circular thinking that distracts us. Our Meditation Tea Blend Recipe checks all the right boxes to get us in the right headspace with a layered balance of nutritious base herbs, supporting nervine herbs, and delicious accent herbs. Take a minute, have a cup of tea, and give your body the gift of sitting still.
New Year Reflections & Journal Prompts of an Herbalist
Our botanical sanctuary and primitive homestead in the mountains of New Mexico runs on solar power, and during these shortest days of the year, solar can be in short supply. While this can make keeping up with online work more challenging, it also means we’re more likely to take advantage of the quiet and dark to reflect and reset. As I write this, our usually calf-deep river is raging through the narrow mountain canyon, too deep and fast to cross even in a kayak, much less on foot. The clouds are thick overhead and freezing rain pelts the gray skeletons of the cottonwoods.
I can neither leave our property for supplies nor even turn on most of our LED lights in the cabin, but candlelight and storms certainly make for a cozy atmosphere to consider the year past, and the years yet to come. We are at the cusp of change, a liminal space between the growing dark returning to the growing light, although it will be some time before we’re able to really see that shift. Likewise, internal shifts we choose to make this time of year may take a while to show up in the visible world, but that doesn’t make those changes any less real or profound.
