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Herbalist and natural healing mamas!

2K views 56 replies 19 participants last post by  ian'smommaya 
#1 ·
Hi all!

I thought I would start a thread to find all the other natural healing mamas and herbalist mamas.

I am a Master Herbalist with a small stay at home business, a three year old dd and a wonderful sustainable electrician husband.

I finished my school about 2 years ago. I am what is called a herbal compounder, I custom blend organic or sustainabley wildcrafted, biodynamically prepared teas, tinctures and essential oil products. I also do consults with iridology, kinesiology, reflexology and chinese pulse and tongue diagnosis. Most recently I have been taking a homeopathic path in my education.

I would love a daily chat about life with other healing mamas, I look forward to getting to know you all!

Take care!
 
#2 ·
Hi mountain mom,

I am very interested in natural healing methods and herbs. I do this within my own family to a certain degree. I just started experiementing with herbal products this summer, mostly using ideas from Rosemary Gladstar.

I am especially fond of the herbalist Juliette de Bairacli Levy. Are you familier with her? I adsolutely love her book Nature's Children.

How do you biodynamically prepare something? I am familiar with biodynamic gardening, but not preparing teas or tinctures biodynamically.

I do remember (I think!) posting with you many moons ago about eating a raw diet? Are you still on that path? I meander along as best I can, but this colder weather makes me want warm veggie soups!
 
#3 ·
Hi Joyfulheart,

I do remember posting with you on the rawfoods thread. That was such an inspiring thread. I still eat mostly raw, about 65%, very into fermentation and sprouting still too. Most recently I started having more broth for minerals in my diet too. Like you said now that it is winter and chilly here I am craving veggie stew and soup like crazy. I try to include raw juices and sprouts in the final soup but its tough!

I am not familiar with Levy but I absolutely love Rosemary. She is such a medicine woman. My good friend went and did her practicum on her herbfarm in Vermont this summer. Quite amazing and incredible!

The way I biodynamically prepare my medicines (mostly tinctures) is to start the tincture at a certain time in the moon and astrological cycles and then decant the tinctures again at a certain time in the celestial realm. It adds a certain amount of spiritual energy to the medicines.

Take care, Joyfulheart, its good to 'run' into you again.
 
#4 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by mountain mom
The way I biodynamically prepare my medicines (mostly tinctures) is to start the tincture at a certain time in the moon and astrological cycles and then decant the tinctures again at a certain time in the celestial realm. It adds a certain amount of spiritual energy to the medicines.
Yes, that makes sense! Thank you for explaining!
 
#5 ·
hi! glad I could give this thread a bump. I am an amateur herbalist/ natural healer. I generally do not use any medicine for myself or family, and if I do, I always try herbal or water therapy first. I have had to use ibuprofin quite a bit this past year due to pain issue I've had with recurrent mastitis. Natural pain relievers are illegal LOL. I avoid doctors like the plague but I do go to the dentist somewhat regularly.
 
#6 ·
I want to learn more about herbs and their uses. Any book recommendations? Did you find it necessary to take a class in order to truly undestand the subject or do the books explain the treatments, dosage issues, etc.

Thanks for any recommendations you can swing my way.

Peace,
Shelbi
 
#7 ·
Hi Shelbi!

I think it really depends on what you plan to do with your herbal info. If its for yourself and you want to just improve your health and your families health then following a book that is written by a reputable herbalist then thats cool.

But if you plan to offer assistance furthur than this, such as to other families or for more serious situations with your own family then I recommend you take a course not only in herbs and their properties of healing but also in the pysiology of the human body.

A great book for families is Rosemary Gladstar's The Family Herbal. You can get this book online at www.mountainroseherbs.com. Click on the MDC icon to support mothering.

Anyone can print out a business card and call themselves a herbalist. Make sure you get the background of any healer that is helping you out.
 
#8 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by hippiemom2
I want to learn more about herbs and their uses. Any book recommendations? Did you find it necessary to take a class in order to truly undestand the subject or do the books explain the treatments, dosage issues, etc.
Depends on your learning style, many herbalists are self taught or use to be in recent years. There is also the apprenticeship and local teacher route. Who do you plan to treat or what do you what to know about? You actually live in a fairly rich region Western Washington has quite a few herbalist and others into natural healing. Go on an herb walk or 2 to get your bearings. Do you know the names of any plants in your area?Like blackberries,raspberries, strawberries, dandelions, roses, plantain? I like for women's info Rosemary Gladstar, for knowing regional plants Michael Moore he has a book out called Plants of the Pacific West that would be excellent for your region. Ryan Drum is up in the vicinity if you want a referral I know that there are other accomplished herbalist up there but he is a start.
 
#9 ·
i plan on taking a course from a homeopathic doctor in town pretty soon, as soon as i can afford it. until then, i am floundering along as an amateur with the help of the net and several books. i am discontinuing the routine use of all allopathic drugs for me and my daughter (dh likes his chemicals
: ) i have found this board to be a wonderful source of information on homeopathics and herbs!
 
#10 ·
I have pondered trying some of the online courses that I have found but am not sure if I can afford the stiff prices plus it is difficult to know if they really know what they are talking about. I am currently finishing up my prereqs. for the nursing program and have completed both sections of anatomy/physiology and am now studying microbiology. My ultimate goal is to be a midwife and I would like to be able to incorporate the use of herbs into my practice. I am not going to school next quarter and thought I would try studying the use of herbs and such to fill in the gap between quarters. Maybe I will see if there are any local herbiologists who teach somewhere. I will try and check out that book though. Thanks for the suggestion.

Peace,
Shelbi
 
#11 ·
Try to take a course on Pharmacognosy relating to herbals.

This way you will recieve the appropriate herbal knowledge in terms of having the right info for birthing, post and prenatal and women's health.

Some courses are just about wildcrafting, or just about botany, or chemical consituents, or herbal preparation, herbal research etc. etc.

Find one that contains information about interactions with pharmaceuticals, healing properties of herbs based on chemical costituent information.

I truly believe in the folklore of medicine. I put my faith in the old texts alot. I did an apprenticeship with an elceltic herbalist. I make all my own medicines and I wildcraft or grow my own herbs. And still...when I am helping a woman with pregnancy related issues with herbals, or helping a woman's menstrual cycle become more efficient and smooth I am glad I also have the science background as well.

Birth and Midwifery and Herbals go so well together! Good luck!
 
#13 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by hippiemom2
My ultimate goal is to be a midwife and I would like to be able to incorporate the use of herbs into my practice. Maybe I will see if there are any local herbiologists who teach somewhere. I will try and check out that book though. Thanks for the suggestion
For midwifery herbs it is a bit trickier, because there is quite a bit of crap out there on women's health and herbs. Rosemary Gladstar for overall women's health "HERBAL HEALING FOR WOMEN". Others on women's health, WOMEN, HORMONES AND THE MENSTRUAL CYCLE revised edition by Ruth Trickey, THE COMPLETE WOMAN'S HERBAL by Anne McIntyre. Specifically for pregnancy "THE NATURAL PREGNANCY BOOK" by Aviva Jill Romm. there is a book by Susun Weed - "HERBAL FOR THE CHILDBEARING YEAR", although this is considered to be "the handbook" it is not well researched and somethings are not as accurate as they could be, she put this book out when there was little on the market for women The others on the list are more recent also Aviva Romm is a midwife as well as an herbalist. There is a recent Saunders publication-"A MIDWIFE'S HANDBOOK" by Constance Sinclair CNM MSN it has several protocols that include herbal, vitamin acupressure and acupuncture, for a conventional midwifery book it has some good info. If you are wanting to gather your own plants, herb walks can be the best. But when I was learning I just had what I knew from growing up, so I took the plants I knew then found the latin names, and then used the keys and a dictionary call "HOW TO IDENTIFY PLANTS" then figured out what the terms meant and what they looked like on the plants I knew. After that I met a neighbor who also wanted to know more so we put our babies in strollers and went up and down the allies and to the parks and named plants for each other. If we found something we didn't know we each researched it and then compared notes. It was great but I have to say I started with a pretty big base of plant knowledge and wild gathering from my grandparents and parents. A plant I mentioned before and have the greatest admiration for is plantain- it is a home medicine box. I have used it for yellow jacket stings, mosquito bites, yeast infections- put the fresh bruised leaves into baby's diapers and clear up yeast or most rashes, stops bleeding topically, brings down hemorrhoids, works on infected eyes when breastmilk didn't work. It is related to psyllium and the seeds can be used the same way. besides being antifungal it is also antiseptic... sorry to go on so long but it was a plant I had shown my older kids when they were very young and they always knew to grab a green bandage if needed. A different form grows here in AZ and isn't too abundant except for certain years,when the rainfall is just right but then it is only around in the last part of winter early spring. Our green bandage down here is cactus or aloe.
 
#16 ·
I have three very busy kids, ds 41/2, dd 2, and ds 5mos. BUT besides my deep investment in nurturing their lives I have two major passions Homebirth (all three of mine were with an awesome, super knowledgable midwife) and Natural healing. I have been daydreaming(while nursing and cooking and doing art projects) about being a doula and/or a midwife's apprentice. I am very concerned about the chemicals most of us are putting into our bodies daily in many different ways. Organic foods are a priority to me as well as natural herbal, food, massage and homeopathic healing. I haven't been able to find many professionals in my new area(just moved in July) so I'm mostly doing my best from books.

I loved reading your posts and will look forward to popping in again. Actually I wonder if any of you have suggestions for a simple medicinal herb garden. My ds and I are planning a picking garden ie: cherry tomatoes, beans, berries, anything we can pick and pop into our mouthes. We had a small one at the last house and my ds loved it, plus I loved the life force we got from the just picked food. We did have mint and camomile, but I'd love to grow other herbs. I'd also love any info on how to preserve/process them for storage and use medicinally.

peace, love and joy my sisiters,
Kate
 
#17 ·
I am not a herbalist, but my DH is one of the planet's leading experts in vibrational healing, he also has some knowledge of herbs and homeopathy (he used to manufacture a line of homeopathics many years ago). We tend to use nutritional healing first. We are into the Aajonus Vonderplanitz Primal Diet which we have found to offer the most profound physical healing. We obviously do use DH's vibrational remedies and have also found that inert gas therapies to be very powerful too. DH is a pioneer in this new form of healing, btw.
 
#18 ·
I'm starting my herbal education as well.

For now I'd like to be able to better care for my family instead of panicking every time they have a fever or earache. What a liberating feeling to care for my baby's ear infection on my own!

Looking forward to more great info here.
 
#19 ·
The more I learn about antibiotics and penicilins in my microbiology class, the more I don't want to use them unless absolutely necessary. There are so many drug resistant bacterium floating out there due to our overuse of antibiotics not just as medicine but in the meat and dairy products that we consume which help the bacteria develop the resistance they need.
When will we learn that there needs to be a balance in our medical system? Perhaps some day.

Peace,
Shelbi
 
#20 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by hippiemom2
The more I learn about antibiotics and penicilins in my microbiology class, the more I don't want to use them unless absolutely necessary. There are so many drug resistant bacterium floating out there due to our overuse of antibiotics not just as medicine but in the meat and dairy products that we consume which help the bacteria develop the resistance they need.
When will we learn that there needs to be a balance in our medical system? Perhaps some day.

Pathogens are not the enemy they are our friends. I like to think of them as firemen who have come to put out the fire. Why would you want to kill them? Inflammation is the body's way of detoxing. If you stop a detox with antibiotics all you will do is push the toxins deeper into the body and they will only surface again somewhere else.
 
#21 ·
Hi and welcome to all the new people who posted since my last visit.

uccomamma, I would love to hear more of your husband's life work and his new project. Sounds so very interesting.

I really have been formulating alot of personal scent for people lately. I have been loving how the e.o's are melding to create the personality scent of the person in front of me. I combined oils last night that I have never combined before and created the most enchanting blend!

 
#22 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by mountain mom

uccomamma, I would love to hear more of your husband's life work and his new project. Sounds so very interesting.


It's hard to know where to begin, he has his own company that manufacturers and sells over 1500 different vibrational remedies (flower essences, gem elixirs and startlight elixirs). As I mentioned in my post, he is also developing, in conjunction with a friend, wearable inert gasses which are extremely powerful on both a physical and non-physical level. He is working on a book on inert gasses at the moment.

His company's products are based on the "bible" of flower essences "Flower Essences and Vibrational Healing" by Gurudas and he is the co-author of a book "Starlight Elixirs and Cosmic Vibrational Healing". He is currently teaching in LA this weekend!

He is trying to find ways to make essences easier for people to comprehend and therefore take, so he has developed a line of personal care products that include vibrational remedies.

I hope this isn't considered spam.
 
#23 ·
wow, I googled the name of the book he coauthored and it looks very interesting. So does his line of essences! Particulairly the mineral and herbal ones!

I don't think its spam, I think that it gives our conversation a great information about the type of healing that is happening in your corner of the world!

How many of us are members of the united plant savers? I think their work is very important.
 
#24 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by mountain mom
wow, I googled the name of the book he coauthored and it looks very interesting. So does his line of essences! Particulairly the mineral and herbal ones!

I don't think its spam, I think that it gives our conversation a great information about the type of healing that is happening in your corner of the world!

Thanks! I think he is pretty amazing, but then I am biased!
 
#25 ·
great thread!


I have been on the herbal path since being introduced to aromatherapy by a native american healer & friend in 1994. it really changed my life. I have been studying since and our native az plants for 4 years now with various local teachers. I also did a home study course that was really in depth and became an LMT/shiatsu practitioner (though am currently a SAHM) and got into chinese herbs as well. I have studied flower essences and make & use my own but I love desert alchemy's essences too. I am really interested in botanical art though and want to do something with that one day. though not sure exactly what :LOL I am just good at drawing plants. I think that's one of the easiest ways to learn to identify them too.

so what are everyone's favorite herbals?!?!
(I have too many to count.lol) but love Rosemary Gladstar's Family Herbal and Michael Moore's books.
 
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