The case for herbs as the ultimate medicine
questioning polarity in the health world, a home grown salad and an exciting new offering for paid subscribers.
Hello and happy Sunday! Welcome to The Beautiful Chaos - my personal journal of smallholding and renovating adventures with my unschooling family of six. I write about things that are important to me - Nature, Naturopathy, self-sustained living, health and homes, organic gardening and raising animals. Plus other things that make me who I am, and are a part of my story. This publication is for paid subscribers, but the first part is free to read for everyone. Paid subscribers can read the whole post plus access accompanying images in addition to the full archive of publications, my back story plus all additional resources available here (which you can read more of on the about page). For less than the cost of a fancy collagen latte every month you will have access to so much extra content not to mention you’ll be supporting my work so I can keep creating MORE of this for you. Thank you x
I noticed something recently.
Within the healing space there’s a been a little stating of authority of certain modalities over others and the suggestion that herbs are somehow not an energetic medicine.
It’s quite funny to think that, although here in the natural health and healing world we all know that an individual expression of voice and health is completely unique and that it is up to each sovereign being to make their own choices, there still seems to float about an idea that one system is somehow better, more effective, more ‘energetic’ than another.
Have we not learnt through the covid-era that the feeding into polarity over health choices further drives our separation from each other, ourselves and Nature? German New Medicine, Reiki, Homeopathy, Naturopathy… nothing is more superior than another. Surely our alignment with natural and sovereign healing knows that we are our own healers, can use our own discernment and make our own choices.
Did you know that it was with Homeopathy that I first learnt about the body’s ability to heal? And for this reason, Homeopathy will always hold a special place in mine and my family’s hearts being where I first turned to when my eldest was a baby and suffered an anaphylactic reaction to his two-month vaccination. Our first homeopath, a wonderful wise woman in Hampton, Surrey whose home I stepped into almost twenty years ago, was the first person who told me about my own power as a woman and a mother. She gently reminded me that I was my own authority and advocate for my child and that my son and I only, knew what was best for us. She awakened me to what would be a deep journey back to my own inner knowing about health and self, and the truth about profit and corruption at big Pharma, big food, big corp etc. Homeopathy held my beautiful boy through a gentle yet powerful withdrawal of the toxins he had been injected with and his vitality returned to him. Homeopathy also held me through my following three homebirths and the years beyond as our primary healthcare. When the boys were at school and I had to supply my GP contact number, I wrote my homeopath’s number instead. My love for homeopathy and awe at its capacity for helping us on so many levels is not in any way inferior to herbs. It’s different and I use both, as well as flower remedies, supplements, frequencies, tissue salts and the insights I get from Iridology, TCM and Ayurveda. To suggest any is superior to any other just does not ever enter my mind.
I adore herbs because they ARE energetic. They are today my choice of primary healthcare because I have grown and evolved to feel more aligned to the whole process of growing and using herbs for my medicine. To suggest herbs help primarily on a superficial level is to suggest herbalists only use herbs in an allopathic manner, ie substituting a drug for a herb. Of course this can be useful in an acute situation such as using astringent herbs like yarrow or peppermint to draw up a fever or dressing a wound with vulneraries such as plantain or comfrey. Medical herbalists may work in such a way but for Naturopathic herbalists we know herbs carry so much more wisdom and simply using them as drug swaps is missing a vital piece of the healing puzzle.
Personally I see herbs as the bridge between Earth and human, harnessing the energetics of the soil and transforming it into living carriers as our medicine. Of course we can process herbs, extract out the properties, make balms, oils and tinctures - but for the most part, and the easiest and most accessible way to use herbs is to simply pick them, hold them, rub them in your hands, give them a sniff and infuse them in hot water allowing their properties to flow though and drench the body. We don't need any machinery, we don’t need any additional carriers or sugar pills to hold their frequency - they are simply there, with all their incredible gifts of healing potential and ancestral wisdom. We have been using herbs for as long as we have needed to heal. Herbal medicine is quite simply the oldest form of medicine, the one that modern medicine sneaks its origins from - hello berberine and salycilates! - yet bizarrely choses to distance itself from at any given moment. Maybe afraid of its power and maybe to minimise the depth of its healing capacity? If the worse were to happen and all our natural healing modalities and supplements were to be taken away from us - we could still go out there and find herbs and the chances are they would be exactly what we need.
Because herbs are a bit funny like that. Have you heard of quantum entanglement? If you have heard me talk about healy and frequencies the chances are you probably have. Herbs work in a way that goes beyond explaining their value in a medicinal sense. They work on an energetic level and are carriers of the natural frequency of the planet. They can’t help but bring us back to balance. They speak to us, they call us and let us know we need them. When we arrived on our land last year and tackled the bindweed, thorny brambles and stubborn nettles that had stubbornly implanted after years of neglect, it was the plantain, bitter dock and comfrey growing in just those spots that we most needed to help heal all the cuts, stings and grazes that we endured at that time. The dandelion and meadowsweet, yarrow and cleavers let me know there’s some sluggishness I need clearing. The hawthorn trees literally groaning with blooms and soon berries whispering every time I walk past them, that I need to tend to my heart. Herbs tell us so much if we chose to listen. They want us to slow down and sit with them. They want us to get to know them and build a relationship with them. They invite us to connect deeply with our sensory and cognitive bodies, and offer us messages from the Earth. They know what we need and when. And, as so often happens in clinic when a herb we want to prescribe is out of stock or unavailable - another will jump out and say ‘me, chose me, I’m here and I can help’… It quite simply does not fail.