About this episode
Herbalism is experiential: you have to DO it to KNOW it. It’s like learning to play a musical instrument – you’re going to sound bad at first! That’s necessary. If you refuse to play anything that isn’t perfect, you’ll never play anything. In herbalism, if you wait until you know everything there is to know, or until you’re 100% sure “it’s going to work”, you’ll be waiting all your life! Learning herbalism is also a process similar to that of language acquisition. No one can absorb all the grammar and tone of a new language without speaking it. As a beginner you’ll stumble over words, conjugate wrongly, and need a lot of slow, patient repetition from native speakers. As a new herbalist, you’ll mix tea blends that don’t taste good, or try to make a tincture that just doesn’t come out strong enough. That’s ok! In fact, it’s necessary for you to make mistakes to learn well. A lot of hesitation and uncertainty is driven by negative self-talk, so identifying and quarantining those thoughts is an important skill to develop, too. And of course, throughout all this experimentation, we need to stay responsible. That means building the majority of your work around safe, gentle herbs – and learning your herbal energetics adds a helpful boost here, too. If you’re looking for experiments to try, why not check out our Herbal Medicine-Making course ? It’s full with more than a dozen different methods for going from plant matter to finished remedy. Try a new method today! As always, please subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen, so others can find it more easily. Thank you!! Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas. Support the show You can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!