Herbalism As Activism - Stories of healing, justice, resistance and change

I interview Stephen Buhner, herbalist, teacher and prolific author.  He been called an earth poet and a bardic naturalist.  It’s a particular honour for me because i’ve had some opportunity to study with Stephen and he’s had an enormous impact on me and my healing path.

We explore the age old question,

What do Donald Trump, Hurricane Katrina, the mortgage meltdown, antibiotic-resistant bacteria and lyme disease have in common? 

It turns out they’re symptoms of the end of the the Age of Reason & Rationality.

“Rationalist science is based on linearity and the belief of control.  But non-linearity is what really happens here and control is an illusion.  So, science itself is undergoing a metamorphosis.”

We also touch on:

• Emergence of a new Paradigm for Reality
• Ecological healing and medicine that’s sustainable
• The function of depression
• Our culture’s fear of death and our perspective of health
• Reflections on “old age” as a developmental stage of growth: dealing with grief and redefining hope

Stephen’s shares about his personal shift into “old age”,

“... exploring the grief and tragedy of the world, but still have this certain warmth of heart without having the hysteria of a younger time of life.”

I hope you enjoy this interview with Stephen Buhner as much as I did...

Check out the Show Notes on my site

I interview Missy Rohs of the Arctos School of Herbal and Botanical Studies in Portland Oregon.  With a background in labor solidarity and herbal street medicine with the former Black Cross Collective, Missy is very passionate about the intersection of herbal medicine and social justice.

In our discussion, we touch on a whole bunch of topics including

• herbal self care including her Top 3 "go to" herbs
• The importance of finding and foraging plants in a cityscape
• Developing relationships to the land
• herbal first aid stories
• And how your diet can change as you deepen your relationship with plants

We swap quite a few stories about how we’ve used a whole host of different plants to treat varies ailments even including some stories about using low dose herbs in higher doses.

Missy shares her personal approach to her own self care and gives her top 3 “go to” herbs, though admittedly she has a hard time narrowing it down.

It’s a very personal interview where Missy really shares a lot about her  personal relationship with herbs, healing and activism.

So, please enjoy this interview with Missy Rohs...

I interview my friend Yarrow Willard.  Yarrow is a co-founder of Harmonic Arts Botanical Dispensary based out of Courtenay, BC

He’s also a co-founder of the Vancouver Island Herb Gathering, now the largest herb gathering in Canada.

“yes , we need to get up and fight this.  We also can’t live in fear… that’s just going to put us into a shellshocked state.  If we’re going to see the change we want to see in the world, we need to be strategic about how we spend out energy and time… not get too frantic and overwhelmed by this stuff cuz that easily happens."

In the interview we start and end by talking about a very important issue for everyone who wants to be able to buy herbs in Canada.  In Sept. 2016 Health Canada proposed some changes to the regulations that cover which herbs are available on store shelves.

It may not seem like a terribly radical topic, but this legislation is the sign of things to come.  The Pharmaceutical and Nutraceutical industry is trying to limit our personal and collective health sovereignty.

The interview also bounces around a little.  We hit topics like the Dangers of high concentration single constituents extractions,  personal connection to the land, colonialism, and the global disease industry.

I hope you enjoy it…

I interview my friend Philippa Joly, a long time activist, organizer and herbalist living on Denman Island.

“Just the basic elemental thing of reconnecting a human with a plant can be revolutionary for people.  When people realize that not only is there a healing capacity in plants… but they realize there’s a sentience in the plants, there can be a new forging of relationship.

There’s this opening that happens for people where they feel less alone.  They feel less afraid.  And there’s an empowerment when there’s plants growing all around me that can be my allies.”

In this interview we talk a lot about decolonization and how herbs can change our relationship with the Land and how we defend it.  Philippa also shares some of her stories from working at a couple of pay what you can herb clinics in Vancouver and Victoria.  And we talk about some of the challenges we share in terms of  balancing accessibility to the medicine and the need to make a living as practitioners.  She shares some of the behind the scenes about the business models of the clinics that she’s worked at.

I hope you enjoy this interview with Philippa Joly.