As a green herbalist, I got excited by every new herbal book I come across. The first thing I would do was flip to the index and start looking up every disease, condition, or symptom that I or someone I loved had so I could get those herbs. I had no idea that was a terrible way to practice herbalism.
I mean, the process seemed straight forward enough. This herb for that. Right?
Well, it turns out that this approach led me down some roads of ineffective herbalism. Choosing herbs this way meant that I was skipping over how the herb worked. Let’s say I looked up coughing and found that wild cherry bark is good for coughing. Whip up a wild cherry bark syrup and voilá, cough fixed. But then my friend would say that it didn’t work.
A few things happened here. First, I didn’t learn until much later that wild cherry bark is most effective when made as a cold extraction with vinegar and honey, which is because a lot of books don’t mention this. Second, I didn’t know that wild cherry bark is best for a hot damp cough.
Another example is trying to figure out digestive herbs. Over time I learned that there are many approaches to dealing with a common but occasionally dangerous condition: diarrhea. Most people complain after one or two episodes of loose stool. Diarrhea defined as having three daily loose stools for three or more days. Most often the body is dealing with a food intolerance or an infection of some kind. So treating a single episode is probably not necessary, the body already treated itself. Persistent soft stool then signals a deeper problem, either the food is being ingested too frequently or there is an infection. Identifying which is important. Either way, the body needs to get rid of the problem, so stopping up the gut right away with a drying herb like blackberry root could potentially cause harm.
Here are some options: marshmallow root, blackberry root, white flour with black pepper. What do these have in common? They can all help with diarrhea. That’s it. If I look up herbs for diarrhea, that’s what I get, a list that isn’t very helpful.
Here’s why.
Marshmallow root is a moistening (demulcent) herb that helps the body overcome microbial infection by feeding good bacteria.
Blackberry root is a cooling and drying (astringent) herb that helps tone the tissues so that microbes can’t stick around.
White flour and black pepper is something I learned through a friend who learned through a Shoshone medicine man. The white flour stops the fluid loss while the black pepper is a hot irritating aromatic herb that acts as an anti-microbial. Just make sure you don’t try this with someone who is allergic to wheat or gluten-intolerant.
And still, learning all this leaves out the most dangerous aspect of diarrhea, dehydration.
All of this is to say that learning a system or framework for choosing herbs is vital for herbal safety and effectiveness.
Becoming a master herbalist is a lifelong process, it is not something that can be accomplished in a year. I am 20+ years into this journey and the more I learn, the more I understand what I don’t know. Herbalism is wildly diverse and dynamic. It is both safe and dangerous.
I find that many herbalists often don’t have a framework for how they choose herbs and are using herbs by matching the herbs to diseases or symptoms. The problem with this is that it mimics the contemporary medical system, therefore putting that herbalist at risk of practicing medicine without a license, and increasing the likelihood of harming the client.
This page was originally started in 2016 because I kept finding myself in front of people calling themselves master herbalists after studying for a year or so (formally or not). I would ask them simple questions about how to work with herbs and found that they didn’t have a full grasp on how to differentiate and assess. And so I questioned my own approach and realized that it simply takes a lot of time and experience to truly master herbalism. I began studying herbalism in my 20s and now, 20 years later, I understand more of what it means to approach the feeling of mastering herbalism. Because it bears repeating, the best herbalists are those who know what they don’t know.
More words of wisdom from elder herbalists (note elder among herbalists is often a term of deep respect that is given to true elders, not just olders):
Paul Bergner, How to Become a Master Herbalist in Thirty Years or More
https://theherbarium.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/how-to-become-a-master-herbalist-in-thirty-years-or-more/
Gail Faith Edwards, The Ten-Fold Path to Becoming a Community Herbalist
https://theherbarium.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/ten-fold-path-to-becoming-a-community-herbalist/
Stick Medicine 