The Holistic Herbalism Podcast

• Herbal First Aid Kit Maintenance

  Just like checking your stock of remedies in the apothecary, herbal first aid kit maintenance is one of those things you need to carve out time for – at least once a year! It’s June, which is the kick-off to summer adventure and here on the east coast, also hurricane season. In other regions, wildfire season is already started, and even without a disaster, summer means more bumps & bruises – so it’s the perfect time for us to be focusing on first aid and updating your kit.Your kit might need updates if your health needs change, or if different people enter your circle of care. Sometimes old remedies need replacing, or you find a better system to organize everything. Your first aid kit is like a garden – it needs tending to be at its best.This month we’ll be sharing lots of first aid information on the podcast. Let’s start off with your first aid kit. If you have one, it needs maintenance. If you don’t have one, this is the time to build one! This episode has everything you need to do both.Use the discount code FIRSTAID during checkout for $25 off of our Herbal First Aid course for the month of June (2025)!Our Herbal First Aid course teaches you all the fundamentals of working with herbs for acute care. Wounds, burns, sprains, bites & stings, and emotional first aid needs can all be addressed with herbs!Like all our offerings, this self-paced online video course comes with free access to twice-weekly live Q&A sessions with us, lifetime access to current & future course material, open discussion threads integrated in each lesson, an active student community, study guides, quizzes & capstone assignments, and more!If you have a moment, it would help us a lot if you could subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen. This helps others find us more easily. Thank you!!Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.Support the showYou can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!

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• Disaster-Proofing Herbal Business Part 2: Offerings & Audience

  This is the second half of the Disaster-Proofing your Herbal Business theme.Economic uncertainty is part of business – but there’s so much you can do to make sure your business stays strong throughout the ups and downs.In the previous episode, we covered the first three steps in the work of diversifying your revenue streams and your product/service offerings to make sure that your herbal business keeps growing!In this episode, we’re talking about expanding both your offerings and your target audience so that you can broaden your reach into more markets. This takes some creativity and some market research, but don’t worry! It’s not hard to do and this episode has plenty of tips. The most important take-away is that if you stay flexible and try several different ideas at a small scale to see what gets traction, shifting your business with the economic conditions becomes a lot less challenging.Most importantly though: you don’t have to do all this alone! Join our Herbal Business Program and let’s do it together! Not only will i personally help you, but you’ll also have access to our private community of herbal business folks – so that you get a nurturing peer support group as well!The Herbal Business Program covers every aspect of GMP compliance, as well as every other part of running your business, from getting registered, paying taxes, and getting insurance to building your website and marketing without selling out – even hiring employees!All of our courses include twice weekly live Q&A sessions and you can ask questions in the discussion thread attached to every lesson – we answer them ever day! Plus we have a student community where you can get support from other business herbies too!If you have a moment, it would help us a lot if you could subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen. This helps others find us more easily. Thank you!!Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.Support the showYou can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!

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  29:12
• Disaster-Proofing Your Herbal Business

  Economic uncertainty is part of business – but there’s so much you can do to disaster-proof your herbal business and make sure it stays strong throughout the ups and downs.This episode is the first three steps in the work of diversifying your revenue streams and also your product/service offerings to make sure that your herbal business keeps growing!We’re focusing here on how to shift your marketing so that your products/services remain essential as people tighten their budgets, as well as shifting which products or services you offer to make sure that you really do remain essential! In order to do that, you’ve got to really know your customers, and so we’ll talk about exercises for how to do that, too. Taking the time to gather some data will help you to stay relevant and survive the budget cuts!And if your business is still in the planning stages, that’s great – that means that you can be structuring your business to be economically resilient right from the start.Most importantly though: you don’t have to do all this alone! Join our Herbal Business Program and let’s do it together! Not only will i personally help you, but you’ll also have access to our private community of herbal business folks – so that you get a nurturing peer support group as well!The Herbal Business Program covers every aspect of GMP compliance, as well as every other part of running your business, from getting registered, paying taxes, and getting insurance to building your website and marketing without selling out – even hiring employees!All of our courses include twice weekly live Q&A sessions and you can ask questions in the discussion thread attached to every lesson – we answer them ever day! Plus we have a student community where you can get support from other business herbies too!If you have a moment, it would help us a lot if you could subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen. This helps others find us more easily. Thank you!!Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.Support the showYou can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!

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  35:14
• Herbalists' Views on the Top-Selling Herbs (Part 5): Ginkgo, Guarana, Maca

  In our fifth installment in this series, we address the facts & fictions about ginkgo, guarana, and maca supplements in commerce! These were #13, 14, and 15 on the top-selling herbs list for 2023 (the most recent data).This series is all about sharing an herbalist’s understanding of herbs very popular as commercial supplements and other mass-market products. We want to share perspectives of both traditional and contemporary herbal practice, so people can understand these are “good for” more than just what’s on their labels.It’s too easy for herbs to be boxed in to smaller and smaller ranges of application when they’re commercialized. This is an antidote to that movement!For practicing herbalists & clinicians, it’s very important to know well those herbs which are most commonly consumed. Your clients will ask you about them, or be taking them before they even visit you – so you’ve got to know what they do! You might be able to give advice about a better remedy, or a compensation for some effect of the plant. This can help your clients just as much as a new recommendation, so don’t neglect it.If you’re new to herbalism, this can also serve as an inoculation against “herban legends” and misinformation – which is rampant on today’s internet.13. Ginkgo – Ginkgo bilobaHHP 139: Six Herbs for Cognitive Decline PreventionHHP 047: Tinnitus & Headaches14. Guarana – Paullinia cupanaGuarana at Examine.comGuarana in King’s American Dispensatory (1898)15. Maca – Lepidium meyeniiMaca at Examine.comMaca at Herbal RealityFind the previous episode of this series here:(Part 1): Psyllium, Elderberry, Turmeric, Ashwagandha(Part 2): Apple Cider Vinegar, Cranberry(Part 3): Wheatgrass, Beet Root, & Ginger(Part 4): Green Tea, Fenugreek, Ivy LeafWhether you’re a brand-new beginner or an herbalist with experience, it’s always helpful to study the herbs in depth! Our comprehensive presentation of herbal allies is in our Holistic Herbalism Materia Medica course. It includes detailed profiles of 100 medicinal herbs!This self-paced online video course comes with access to twice-weekly live Q&A sessions with us, lifetime access to current & future course material, open discussion threads integrated in each lesson, an active student community, study guides, quizzes & capstone assignments, and more!Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.Support the showYou can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!

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  46:38
• Can Herbs "Heal"?

  What does it mean to heal? When are we “healed”? Are there some wounds that can’t be healed? If we can’t heal – in the sense of achieving “perfect health” – are we failures, as people or as herbalists? In this episode, Katja shares her thoughts on the words and ideas “healing” carries in our culture, offering a critique of their common (and commercialized!) semantic and emotional baggage.TranscriptLately, in conversations with several different people from different realms of my life, the word “heal” – healing, healer – has come up a lot, and specifically, what we mean when we talk about “healing”.I have some strong feelings about this word that might resonate with you. I think that it’s an important discussion about how we understand health and care, how we understand our bodies, and how we understand the journey of being a human.​Lots of people call herbalists “healers” – but we’re not doing any healing, you, the people we help, are! I don’t like to call myself a healer because it means that i’m taking credit for work that the people i help are doing; it’s disempowering. Sure, i motivate, i educate, i use my education to build a plan together with my clients – but in the end, they’re the ones that are doing the real work!And what even is healing? If we’re talking about a topical wound, i suppose it means “the process of the skin growing back” – but what about scars? Is there such a thing as “healed”, even in the simple sense of a wound?What does it mean to “heal” internally – let’s say, cardiovascular damage? Maybe you do a lot of work on your cardiovascular health and get your blood pressure down – that’s really good! Herbs and holistic strategies are really good at this kind of work.But is that healing? The problem can always come back, if you have to deal with a lot of stress over a period of time, for example. If it comes back, is that a failure on your part? Did you “do a bad job at healing”?I don’t think so.I think that if you improve your health by working on it, that’s awesome, and if life gets stressful and you have a flareup, that’s just the reality of being a creature of fluctuation. We’re not permanent, we’re not static – we’re always reacting to our environment, and compensating for factors that are out of our control.What about things that can’t be healed? ...To read the rest of the transcript, click here!Support the showYou can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!

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