Podcast 234: On Discomfort, Evasion, & Challenge

Discomfort and evasion are natural responses to our world. Our ancestors, from a single-celled organism up to Mitochondrial Eve, all survived only because they had strong drives to avoid uncomfortable and dangerous situations. But in our modern world, avoiding all discomforts can stunt our growth, or make us seem more fragile than we really are.

This is not about “grinding through” difficulty, or hurting ourselves in an effort to be “good”. After accounting for one’s own personal state of ability/mobility/resilience, and after accommodating one’s needs, and after receiving adequate nourishment and rest – then it is good to challenge ourselves, to face some discomfort and move through it.

Here are the key principles:

• Each step forward makes the next one easier.
• Choose your battles.
• Do this work from a place of strength.

And of course, herbs can help us along the way! Herbs can boost our endurance, settle our anxious minds, fortify our nerve[s], or help us enter and maintain the state of flow. Adaptogens, evergreens, yarrow, st john’s wort, solomon’s seal, kava, and calamus are some of our allies for this, and may serve you as well.

Mentioned in this episode:

• 190: Herbs A-Z: Glycyrrhiza & Gynostemma
• 014: Alternatives to Adaptogens for Burnout
• 072: Rooted & Ready Alterative/Adaptogen Herbal Formula for Endurance, Resilience, & Detox
• EVRY DAY YEAH: Herbal Tea for Workouts & Recovery

Ready to do some evasion-evaporating work, but want to line up some herbs for backup? Check out our Neurological & Emotional Health course. This course is a user’s guide to your nerves & your emotions – including the difficult and dark ones. We discuss holistic herbalism strategies for addressing both neurological & psychological health issues. It includes a lengthy discussion of herbal pain management strategies, too!

Like all our offerings, this is a self-paced online video course, which comes with free access to twice-weekly live Q&A sessions, lifetime access to current & future course material, twice-weekly live Q&A sessions with us, open discussion threads integrated in each lesson, an active student community, study guides, quizzes & capstone assignments, and more!

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Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Episode Transcript

Ryn (00:00):
Hi, I’m Ryn. And I’m here at Commonwealth Holistic Herbalism in Boston, Massachusetts, and on the internet everywhere, thanks to the power of the podcast and the YouTube. So, this episode is called On Discomfort and Evasion. And what brought this up actually started because Katja and I had a big working weekend this past few days. We read and responded to 61 student capstones in three days. So, if you’re not one of our students then maybe you should be. But most of our courses include a capstone assignment at the end, which is sort of a case study or a real-world situation scenario for which the students will propose a protocol with herbs and holistic interventions. Responding to that scenario as if it were real, what would you do? What would you do with the knowledge that you’ve gained in the course?

Ryn (01:09):
So, several of the capstones that we reviewed this weekend were from our course Energetics and Holistic Practice. And that particular capstone involves a fairly extensive self-assessment as part of the protocol. So, the idea is you’re going to determine your own constitution. You’re going to identify energetic qualities and herbal actions that would best support you specifically. And then you’re going to go and develop a formula or a whole protocol that features those herbs. And then you go, and you live it. You do it. You do the thing. You drink the tea. You take the tincture. You do the foot bath. Whatever was in your plan, you go, and you do it for at least a week in order to observe the results. And by the way, this is a really fantastic way to learn energetics. Or to make energetics into body knowledge or living knowledge, and not just head knowledge or abstract knowledge. So, I really do encourage you to try that, whether you’re a student of ours or not. If you understand these concepts, living them, putting them into practice like that is a really, really good way to refine your abilities there. So, part of that self-assessment process involves this question: where are your points of discomfort, especially those that lead to evasion behaviors? And the reason we include it is that this is always a really revealing question to ask yourself, to ponder for yourself, to try to find some answers. It can help you to identify areas where you struggle and also lead you to herbs who are best able to help you.

Ryn (02:46):
So, one of the students in their response to this prompt or this part of the overall assignment there, they said that they had been struggling a lot with that specific issue, that aspect, that idea about evasion of discomforts. And that they weren’t really sure how to shift that pattern of reactions is what it really is. Your response, your reaction to what’s occurring around you. So, they’re definitely not alone in that at all. And here today, I want to share with you some of the things that I said to this student. So, that’s what we’re going to do. But first, the reclaimer. That’s where I remind you that we are not doctors. We are herbalist and holistic health educators. The ideas discussed in this podcast do not constitute medical advice. No state or federal authority licenses herbalists in the US. So, these discussions are for educational purposes only. We want to remind you that good health doesn’t mean the same thing for everyone. Good health doesn’t exist as an objective standard. It’s influenced by your individual needs, experiences, and goals. So, keep in mind that we’re not attempting to present a single dogmatic right way that you must adhere to.

Ryn (03:59):
Everyone’s body is different. So, the things we’re talking about may or may not apply directly to you, but we hope that they’re going to give you some new information to think about and some ideas to research and experiment with further. Finding your way to better health is both your right and your own personal responsibility. This doesn’t mean you’re alone on the journey. And it doesn’t mean that you’re to blame for your current state of health. But it does mean that the final decision, when you’re considering any course of action, whether it was discussed on the internet or prescribed by a physician, that’s always your choice to make. Okay.

Facing Up to Physical Discomfort

Ryn (04:30):
Now, let me say clearly at the outset here, this is not a discussion about grinding it out, or manning up, or biting the bullet. This is not an opportunity for self-abuse or shame. The goal here isn’t to say you need to just grind it out or grit your teeth. You need to just push through it. You need to be harder on yourself, to force yourself to do that difficult thing, that thing that you turn away from instinctively because that’ll make you strong. That’ll make you moral. That’ll make you good in some way, right? That’s not what we’re trying to do here. You are not bad because you avoid discomforts. That is literally the most natural thing in the world. When there was a single celled organism, that was the first one. And it was moving through the ancient oceans. And it was gravitating towards the chemical gradients in the soup that made it feel good. And it was moving away from the chemical gradients in the soup that made it feel bad. That’s still with us. That original response that shaped development of life on earth, that shaped the evolution of organisms, that’s still within us. That’s still within every one of our cells,, right? So, avoidance is normal.

Ryn (05:40):
But you, me, all of us are living in a time when there are some discomforts, which used to be natural and used to be unavoidable. And your species developed in that context, was shaped by it. And as a result, your body has an expectation of a sort to face those sorts of discomfort with some regularity. And when you don’t, there can be some negative consequences, right? So, the easiest examples to understand in this regard are muscular. We know that working out, especially if it’s intense and demanding, is uncomfortable. But we also know that it makes us stronger. Some discomforts are like that. They’re what we call a hormetic stressor, right? A hormetic stressor is one where it does put stress on your body, on your system. But you can recover from it, and then you can face that same stress and even more next time you get faced with it, right?

Ryn (06:36):
So, exercise is the clearest and simplest example of that. You work out. You lift the heavy things. You stress your muscles. You tear them. You even cause some damage. Your body responds with inflammation. Those muscles grow back not just to where they were before, but even stronger. And now you’re able to lift up that heavy thing a little easier, lift up a heavier thing next time, right? So, progressive adaptation is what we’re talking about with that. But the key always, when we’re talking about hormetic stressors like this, is that you have to get the appropriate dose because if you drive yourself too hard, you cause excessive damage that your body can’t readily recover from. Or too long, or too fast, or too whatever it is in terms of the movement, right? So, appropriate dose is a big piece here. And then sufficient recovery, or even better, abundant recovery is the other critical piece of that, right? If those pieces aren’t in play, then the stressor that should be hormetic, that should make you stronger, can actually damage you or drain your energy, your reserves, your resources, your resilience. And so appropriate dose and sufficient or even abundant recovery. Those are critical when it comes to any kind of a stressor. And that includes facing up to discomfort, facing up to things that you would normally turn away from or not choose to do, right?

Ryn (07:53):
So, with all of that as kind of the baseline, we can dig in here. So, okay. How do we get better at facing up to a discomfort? How do we wind down from patterns of evasion? Let’s start here with a few principles. So, the first thing is that this is an ongoing journey without an end. You’re never going to get to the point where you have now reached maximum comfort with all troubles in the world, or maximum resilience to stand there, and not evade things, and not turn away. This is always something that you’re going to need to work on and continue to develop as you go through your life and through time. So, I’m going to share some examples from my own life, right? For the past many years, maybe more than a decade, this has been something that’s moving around in my mind and shaping some of my behaviors, right? And I’ve been working through that period in different ways on coping with physical discomforts. Like exposure to various temperatures, like going out barefoot and running, and jumping, and playing, and climbing in the city, in parks, in the forest, right? Things like that. Getting rained on, all of that kind of stuff. And this is like mainly a physical practice. I’m going to just talk about it that way for now, right? But it builds on work that I’ve done, and things I’ve learned at primitive skills courses or survival skills classes and things like that, that I’ve taken.

Ryn (09:18):
And when I go out and I do this. Recently, the most current example is going out every day with my dog and taking a walk for a mile or so in the woods, barefoot, on the uneven ground, on the stones, and the twigs, and the muck, and the watery bits. And jumping in the creek and all that kind of stuff. There’s a tree that I go out, and I climb. And my focus recently has been I’ve got to get my feet back because through the winter I didn’t go barefoot anywhere. My feet got all soft. And so yeah, this warm season, especially now in the summer, I’ve been like all right, feet. We’re going to strengthen you up again. And it’s not always super comfortable. You know, you get poked by a twig. You get a bit of a blackberry thorn in your foot, whatever. So, there’s that to deal with but you can develop the calluses. You can develop the muscular strength in order to be able to navigate that uneven terrain. That’s kind of what I’m focusing on in this moment and working on building it up, right? But as I’m doing another round of this… Because again, you don’t just do it once and you’re done forever. As I’m coming back into another cycle of that work, I am thinking back and feeling back to previous lessons like this. Previous times when I strengthened my feet for barefoot walking. Or when I was just like well, I’m going to go out. And there’s going to be bugs, and maybe I’ll even get some poison ivy. And I do have some right now honestly, but that’s okay. Those are discomforts that I’m willing to accept because I know that this is a beneficial practice for me, right?

Ryn (10:46):
But that’s the thing, right? You can feel the effect of previous efforts in getting you back into the groove with this kind of thing. It makes it a little easier each time than it was the last time or than it was the first time. And that’s how it goes, right? So, a critical key here is that each step forward makes the next one easier. Even if it doesn’t actually lessen the discomfort of that step, it lessens your mental resistance., It lessens your evasion habit, and that’s the real work here that we’re focusing on. So, that’s the first thing.

Ryn (11:17):
Second, there are many kinds of discomfort, right? And they don’t all feel the same. And you might be experiencing several of them at the same time or in sequence, right? So, sometimes you’re actually really good at facing discomfort in one area of your life and not so good at doing it in another, right? An example from my own life. I am really good at facing up to the discomforts of exercising, and moving, and that kind of thing. And carving out time to do it is something that I’m willing to do and able to do pretty regularly. Sleep is one that I struggle with more, right? The discomfort here is a little different. It’s not like okay, you have to sweat, and push, and breathe hard, and all of that. It’s like you have to lay down on time. You have to go to bed. You have to not stay up late, and play the games, or read the thing, or whatever it was. Watch the movie, right? You’ve got to go. There’s a discomfort there. There’s a feeling of evasion. Like I choose to just avoid that right now. I’m going to just keep doing what I’m doing. And maybe I’ll be tired tomorrow, but whatever.

Ryn (12:21):
So, for me, that kind of thing, it’s easier for me to face movement-based discomforts and challenges than ones that are oriented around sleep. Or an example from herbs, right? For me, it’s much easier to drink bitter tea once, or regularly, or daily, than it is for me to put on an oily lotion. And these are both two things that would be good for my body, for my constitution, for my needs, right? What matches my system well. But I’m way more likely to drink that tea, even if it’s bitter. Even if it’s more bitter than I usually enjoy, I’ll still do it more readily than I will be like all right. Put me that oily lotion. Leave the greasy feeling on my fingers. Ah, you know, I can hardly even talk about it. So anyway, you might feel differently about those preparations or about other things that you might need to do. One of them could be easier for you than another, right? So, there’s that. And then sometimes you’re actively working to push your boundaries with one thing. And as a kind of compensation, you let yourself rest in an easy groove with another aspect. That’s okay. And in fact, that might even be necessary. So, you don’t want to beat yourself up if you’re not improving all the things all the time. The key here is to choose your battles, right? Choose your areas of focus.

Ryn (13:37):
All right, third thing. This kind of work is best done from a place of strength, from a place of fullness, from a place of readiness. When you’re overwhelmed, when you’re hurting, when you’re shaken, it’s not wrong to step back from your self-challenge work then. It’s intelligent resource application or allocation, right? This is a reasonable, intelligent, smart, and loving, and caring thing to do for yourself, right? A fairly long while back on our Instagram feed I had posted a photo of this staircase at Porter Square Station. So, this is over in Cambridge, Massachusetts connected to Boston, for those of you not familiar. And this particular station has a whole series of staircases, 199 steps total. And one of them is just this very long, all the way up. It’s basically like a tunnel or like the entryway to an underground tomb in the pyramids or something like that. So, it’s this long, long, long staircase. And so I was there one day, and I was thinking in this kind of direction. I snapped a photo of the endless staircase. And I put the caption on there: take the stairs every time. And I got a little pushback on that.

Ryn (14:57):
Some positive comments. People were like yeah, I do that too. And then some people pushing me back, right, with some good thoughts. They were folks with chronic fatigue primarily, who rightly pointed out to me that for some people that exertion might make things worse or set them back. And so I was chewing on that and thinking about it. And again, this is years ago now, so I’ve had some time. And it’s hard to find a concise way to say this, but I want to say something like this. Encouragements to face challenge like this one are meant for you who feels ready. You who feels strong enough. You who needs a push, right? When you know that’s not you today, and maybe tomorrow, and maybe for a while. Anyway, it’s not you right now. Then there’s no shame at all in passing on that challenge, right? It’s the wise thing to do, in fact, okay? So, when we talk about these kinds of challenges, we want you to face up to them when you’re ready. When you’re feeling strong. When you’ve got a little bit extra that you can devote to this kind of work. Not when you’re worn out. Not when you’re burnt out. Not when you’re all used up. Not when you don’t have anything left. That’s not a time to face challenges.

Ryn (16:10):
And the same thing goes for intense exercise. The same thing goes for challenges. Like there’s one that I often recommend for my students to try, which is 45 seconds of cold water at the end of your shower. It’s a bit of a challenge, right? It’s a little uncomfortable. You might want to evade that, like literally step out of the way of the falling water, right? What is the purpose of this? It’s a little bit of a stimulation, and again, a challenging one to your circulatory system. There’s some benefit to immune function, again, in response to that cold exposure or even the cold shock if you go really hard with it. And that can support you. That can help you. But this is something that I say: don’t do this on a day when you are feeling sick. Don’t do this on a day when you wake up, and you’re dragging yourself through it, right? Maybe a lighter version of it, if it’s been your habit. But when you’re worn out. When you’re tired. When you’re ill. When you’re catching something. Then that’s the time to nourish. That’s the time to rest and recover and focus on that aspect of things, rather than saying all right. Now I’m going to go ahead and take a real strong challenge. While you’re already depleted? No, that doesn’t make sense, right? So, we’re working from a place of strength, picking our battles. Recognizing that each step may be difficult, but it makes the next step easier. That this is a progressive element, and that we’re going to go along in that way.

Approaching Emotional Discomfort is Similar

Ryn (17:35):
So, one more time for people in the back, okay? Everything I’m saying here in the context of physical challenge also applies in parallel to mental challenge and to emotional challenge. So, as an example here, maybe you need to have a difficult discussion with a friend, or a partner, a roommate, something like that, about a longstanding sort of element of emotional tension. Some kind of an ongoing problem. And maybe this is something like chores, right? Like you don’t do the chores that you should be doing. I’m having emotional burden. I’m having emotional labor. I’m having physical labor to do to make up for that. because you’re not doing your side of things, right? So, let’s go ahead and apply those principles to this kind of problem. So, first, let’s say that we begin with a small and self-contained aspect of the larger problem, to break it down, to make it smaller, easier to handle. And so maybe that sounds something like hey, would you please just make sure to wipe down the counters after you’re done using the sink? That would make it a lot more comfortable for me when I have to step up and do some of my own dishes, or when I am going to do the next thing at the sink, right?

Ryn (18:50):
It’s a quick gesture. It takes one moment. I guarantee you can train yourself to do it. Would you do that for me? So, something small rather than the entire picture of every chore in the entire house, and through the week, and all of that. So, there’s that one. Point 2 would be if there’s some subset of the larger issue that’s most troubling, focus on that first. So, maybe that sounds like hey, what I really need to know most is just to know that if I ask you to do a chore, it’ll be okay. And I’m only going to really know that, or feel that, or perceive that from you, if you give me kind of an encouraging response instead of a grumpy acknowledgement. Like okay, fine, I’ll do it. And I know that you’re obviously not always going to be excited to clean out the bathroom drains with the hair, and the gunk, and the whatever, right? But then again, I also know that you do want to help. And it’s just the grossness of the chore that’s the problem. It’s not my asking that’s the problem. So look, let’s agree on something. Let’s agree that you don’t have to talk. You can just mutely give a double thumbs up. And that means that you’re on board. You’re ready to go. You are taking up your part of the work of the household, even if you’re not cheerful about it. Can we agree on that? Does that sound okay? So, you’re negotiating. You’re making some space. And you’re also setting out with some clarity what it is you’re looking for, and what they can do to match that. Okay.

Ryn (20:10):
And then point 3, the best time to have that kind of difficult discussion that you know is needful is when you are feeling emotionally stable and ready for a little bit of discomfort. And that’s easiest when you’re already kind of in a place of some ease and maybe even some happiness or some cheerfulness, right? So, what could this sound like? Hey, you seem like you’re in a pretty good mood at the moment. Me too. So listen, let’s just take a minute and chat about this thing. It’s not a crisis. It’s not a big scary looming cloud. We don’t have to get serious here, right? This is just something that I think we could talk about together. So, here’s what’s been going on for me. And then you go in, and you lay it out simply and as evenly as you can. So again, this is applying those same basic principles about knowing that small pieces can make the progress forward and can help you to get to the bigger end goal. That you want to start from a place of strength. And that you want to pick your battles. So, we’re applying those in that same realm. And any kind of challenge, any kind of difficult task that must be done, can be faced up in that same way with those same perspectives.

Herbs Can Help: Choosing Adaptogens

Ryn (21:17):
And oh yeah, how about secret point 4, which is that herbs can help. And here we are on an herbal podcast, and so let’s talk about some herbs that can help with this kind of work. All right, so you may already have been thinking about adaptogens, especially in the context of facing up to a challenge, which does mean facing up to a stressor. Adaptogens are what they are because they help us to adapt to stressors. So, they do match this work very well. It’s true, right? But the keys here are to be selective about your choice of adaptogens and to match them to your body appropriately. A lot of times when people are thinking about this – and especially when they’re thinking about it in the context of facing challenge – there’s this urge to say well, give me the strongest one you’ve got, right? Give me the thing that’s going to make me superpowered. Give me the hundred x concentrate of the red ginseng extract. Give me the combination of rhodiola and eleuthero that’s again, high potency. And it’s really going to build me that fire and just push me through it, right? I can see the attraction of that kind of thing. And there’s context where that does make sense. If you’re going to go and be like all right. Well, today the challenge to myself isn’t just do my workout. It’s I’m going to hit a personal record. I’m going to push myself as hard as I can. That’s a time when it does make sense to go ahead and take those strong stimulating adaptogens to give your body that push.

Ryn (22:43):
This is a great time to have your caffeine, especially if you’re intermittent about your caffeine intake, right? That can make sense. But if this is not so much that kind of thing. It’s more of a consistent challenge for you. It’s something that you kind of need to not just do the one time and go, but you need to meet it over and over again with some consistency. Then there I would actually consider it best to look at the less stimulating adaptogens. Things like licorice, things like jiaogulan. Even things like tulsi. Because they’re really more on that level of endurance, persistence, and helping your body to do the most important element of these challenges, which is the adaptation phase, right? In that recovery element, these can help. So, those would be some that I encourage you to check out. And I’ll put a link in the show notes to the episode where we talked specifically about licorice and about jiaogulan. This was in our herbs A-to-Z series. We were kind of going by Latin name. But Glycyrrhiza and Gynostemma, the botanical names for those plants, they were right next to each other in sequence. So, that’s a nice episode to give you an in-depth look at a nice pair of less stimulating adaptogens.

Ryn (23:56):
And I’m also going to put a link to one of our very earliest episodes, number 14, where we talked about alternatives to adaptogens. Now, this was specifically looking at them in the context of burnout. And that is a little bit different from what I’m talking today of challenge. But of course, when you feel more burnt out, you’re not really ready to face up to challenges then. So, working with some adaptogens, and some nervines, and some alternatives to help you to get to a place where you’re not feeling burnt out anymore. Well, that could be what enables you to face up to a challenge. So, I’ll put that episode in there. Again, it is one of our earlier ones. Production may not be quite what it is these days, but the data is still in there. The info is still in there.

Ryn (24:35):
All right. Another thought I would give you around adaptogens to try to work with them in the context of challenge and things that are discomfortable to you or uncomfortable to you would be to blend your adaptogens, right? And put them together with nervines and some other categories of herbs that can enhance, or direct, or complement the activity of those. So, again, some links will be in the show notes here for you for a deeper dive, right? One of them is to a prior episode, number 72, where we talked about a particular adaptogen blend that I really, really love. I call it Rooted & Ready, and it’s kind of a root beer flavor combo. And so that one includes some adaptogens, and you’ve got a lot of freedom for which ones you choose to put into the mix. But then the alterative aspects of the formula, those are really supportive to the work adaptogens do. Particularly in the context of your endocrine system, your hormones, alteratives are very helpful with the circulation and elimination of those hormones. Whereas the adaptogens are a little bit more on the generation side, right? Helping the organs that produce them to do that. So anyway, these actions, these herbal actions fit together really, really well into a formula like this, and especially for long-term intake. This is something that you can build a habit of, make it a daily drink and it can be very, very sustaining in that regard. So, that’s one.

Ryn (26:07):
And then another formula I’ve put out there, I call it Every Day Yeah. And that one is, again, about resilience, right? So, the choice of adaptogens I put into that blend is about the ones that support resilience most directly. And then I paired that together with some fortifying evergreen herbs, things like pine or cedar. Because those in particular, when we’re talking about facing up to something difficult, I’ve always found the evergreen herbs to be really, really supportive and helpful. To give you that kind of stand-tall energy, that kind of face up to the winds of winter, right? You think of evergreen pine trees and the arboreal forests of the north. They’re covered in ice, but they’re still fine. They’ve got that inner heat in their core. Yeah, you can come in, and you can harvest the needles and draw on that. You can get the resin out of there, and feel that and work with that circulatory movement, that fire from the inside. So, I’ve always found evergreens to be really, really helpful in that regard. And you can see where they would make sense with this kind of work too.

Ryn (27:14):
In that blend for myself, I found it necessary to include some stabilizing digestive herbs as well, like fennel or ginger. Just because well, for me, my digestion is a weak point. And if that’s true for you as well, then you can make it just in the same way. If you have a different kind of a weak point, like say maybe heart palpitations is a thing, you could swap that whole segment of digestives out, put in some cardiovascular support herbs like hawthorn or linden, and have that, again, more tailored to your specific needs. But for me, you know, it was like well, look. If I’m going to be facing up something difficult, pushing my body, it’s going to end up with a little bit of stomach jitters. So, I get a little bit of digestive support every day at the same time, and then things go a lot better for me. Yeah. And in this one, for as well in other formulas you put together like this, you can put in some caffeine also. I’ve said this on the pod before. If you’re a new listener, you’ll hear me say this again in the future. Don’t worry, right? But caffeine is most effective for us when we don’t have it every single day. If you can get your caffeine consumption down to like three to four days out of the week, ideally with breaks in between those days, then you’re going to experience caffeine quite differently. Because there are aspects of its effect on our body in regard to our sort of reward hormones, serotonin and dopamine, which you get when caffeine isn’t an everyday thing. But which get less and less pronounced when you have it more and more frequently or more and more consistently.

Ryn (28:40):
The effects of caffeine on adenosine binding in the brain and that wakefulness sustaining aspect of caffeine, that tends to stick with people. But when you don’t have it every day, or when you’re naive to caffeine, then there’s this pronounced lifting of your mood. This pronounced generation of more free energy in your body. Not just through the direct stimulation of the caffeine, and it’s action on your nerves, but through this hormonal impact as well. Anyway, this is just a little hobby horse of mine about caffeine. You’re going to enjoy it more if you don’t have it every single day, right? I know that’s a big transition for a lot of people. But it can be a very helpful one to make, especially if you want to build in maybe a kind of intermittent challenge into your week, right? Two days a week I’m going to go and take my barefoot walk. Two days a week I’m going to have my cold showers. Two days a week I’m going to drink that bitter tea. And I don’t love it, but I know it’s so good for my body, and it makes my stomach feel great. Yes, I’m thinking about centaury again, okay? That that kind of thing. You can give yourself some space and some energy to do that.

Fortifying & Flow-State Nervines

Ryn (29:46):
Okay. Now, there’s a broader category of what I consider fortifying nervine herbs. Maybe some of these are in that root group that we’d call nervous trophorestoratives. Some of these are also on the range of what we’d call a nervine stimulant. And I’m not talking about caffeine only when I say nervine stimulant. Some things like the evergreens already mentioned here are plants that do stimulate and wake up your nervous system, including your brain but not at all in the way that caffeine does it. It’s more about kind of cutting through the fog a little bit, you know? So, I would put all of the evergreen herbs: pine, and hemlock, and fur, and spruce when you work with those into this kind of a group here. And then other fortifying, nervines that I’ve called on a lot through the years have been yarrow and St. John’s wort. Yarrow in particular for when the way you experience your discomfort is maybe at the skin level. And that could be your literal skin or that your feeling of physical touch. But it could also be kind of like the skin of your perceptions, the outer layer of your sensorium. Yarrow thickens your skin. Yarrow gives you a bit of armor, a bit of protection, a layer between you and the world. And that can be very helpful. I find that helpful when I have to go and do something gross like muck out the compost, right? I might go and grab my yarrow tincture and take a squirt of it before I go outside and do that. Not so much for the physical effects of yarrow, right, on blood or on my mucous membrane barriers. Although there’s always an echo of physical into emotional patterns. But focusing here specifically on that aspect of yarrow for thickening your skin, giving you a little armor. And if I know I’m going to have to touch something that feels gross to me or smell something that feels gross to me, then yarrow helps. It gives me a little bit of a barrier for that.

Ryn (31:44):
Yeah. And then St. John’s wort is kind of similar. But for me, the image of St. John’s wort is less about armor, and it’s more about a kind of cone of light shining down on you. Maybe that light is a little bit purifying. Maybe that light is a little protective. Again, this is very kind of abstract or symbolic sort of language here. You might want to start with the physical aspects of St. John’s wort, and the way that it enhances our processing of you could call them toxins, or waste materials, or that sort of thing in your body. St. John’s wort is an herb that enables better processing on that physical level, also on an emotional level, right? And so, St. John’s wort can be helpful when you need to do something that’s uncomfortable to you. And you can feel yourself processing your discomfort and trying to cope as you go along. And you’re trying to cope is not quite keeping up with the amount of cope you need to do, right? St. John’s wort can accelerate your cope-a-meter a little bit for you and make it easier to take moment to moment.

Ryn (32:51):
All right. So, those are some that I feel are kind of fortifying in that sense. And then there is another category of nervines that I think of more as helping you get into flow state or to maintain flow state, right? So, flow is one of those things where a lot of people have experienced this. Maybe I feel like the runners have a really good vocabulary for talking about this. Because what happens is you start out, and you’re not there yet, right? Maybe you’re just warming up. If you think of a run, you go for a while. You’re trying to find your pace. You’re trying to match your breathing. Your body’s adapting to the fact oh, we’re going to keep doing running for a while. Okay. I’ve got to get some things in line here so we can do this. right? So, there’s a while where that happens. And then you get to a state where you’re like all right, I’m pounding it out. Nah, it doesn’t feel great yet, but I’m just going to keep going. I can do this. And then after a little while longer, you get into this state where your endorphins are kicking in, or at least that’s what we used to say. Maybe nowadays it’s more like oh, your endocannabinoid system has activated itself. You can debate about what, chemically is happening in your body, but there’s a shift. There’s a shift in your physiology. There’s a shift in your mentality. Where it’s just like I’ve got this. I’ve got stability. I can keep on going. I have the stamina for this. I’m steady, I’m in my mode. I’ve got my rhythm. I can sustain, right?

Ryn (34:07):
So, getting into that state and then staying there is very, very helpful, very valuable, right? It doesn’t mean that all the discomfort went away. It doesn’t mean that no new discomforts arise. But it just means that you’re in a state where you’re moving through it, and you’ve got some momentum happening for you. Right? So, my very favorite flow state nervine herb is Solomon’s seal. Which we think of primarily as this herb for the connective tissue, for moving fluidity and fluid itself into your joints and your connective tissues. Aiding with flexibility, aiding with resilience of those tissues, especially when they’re under repeated stress. And so you can transfer all of that from that physical right over into the emotional. Solomon’s seal is an excellent remedy for tense, and constricted, and tightened, and dried out, and hardened – because dryness and hardness come together – dried out and hardened emotional patterns, right? For when you’re feeling stubborn. For when you’re feeling stuck. For when you’re feeling like well, I know that I have this emotional tension here. And if I could just release it, I would be a little more comfortable. But I can’t let go of it yet, right? So, Solomon’s seal helps you to do that. And then kava, similar kind of an impact: a relaxant, a release of that kind of tension. Kava has more warmth than Solomon’s seal. More of that kind of inner heat to stir things up and move them along on you.

Ryn (35:30):
And for this purpose, especially if we’re thinking about something that’s physical, and emotional, and psychological all at the same time, then you may not need or even want large doses of kava. We’re not trying to turn you into a puddle of loose skeletal muscle on the floor, right? Just a little bit to soften things up enough that your degree of tension isn’t interfering with your movement efficiency, right? Again, whether that’s physical or whether it’s emotional. Physical tension can often really interfere with your capacity to work smoothly or efficiently with something. You know, I’ve felt this a lot. I struggle with tension as a primary element to my own constitution. And I can remember being in circus classes in particular there. Because with circus arts, things like the aerial silks, or the aerial hoop, or whatever, they demand strength. But they also demand flexibility. And it’s always about having strength and adequate tension in these parts of your body or these muscles while still maintaining appropriate level of relaxation in this other part of your body. And sometimes it’s difficult to strike the balance, especially where you’re prone to tension. Or where there’s a particular movement area that you have extra tension in that you carry around with you.

Ryn (36:42):
So, a little touch of kava can start to loosen that up on all these layers of your being. One other flow-state nervine… And all of these are kind of root or rhizome remedies here I’m noticing. But this one is calamus. And calamus is really intriguing here because it introduces a bitter element as well. Bitter flavors in herbs can often be very helpful for getting us out of repetitive thought patterns or stuck thought patterns and getting us into the moment, getting us into our body. They can be grounding in that sense. And calamus, maybe even more than other bitters, is very, very helpful for this. Calamus is one of these bitter nervine herbs that has a strong impact on our nervous system state, in addition to the kind of classic bitter influence of aiding in digestion. Which is transformation, and again, is both physical and also emotional. So, sometimes we have people who are chewing on a problem, or they’re emotionally digesting an experience and will support that with bitters and especially with calamus. So, that’s one that’s very worth considering as well. Okay.

Supporting Your Weak Points

Ryn (37:49):
So, and look, we could broaden this out. And we could say again, start with your own self, with your own patterns, with your own spots of difficulty or spots of struggle. And if you support those spots, that kind of frees up resource. It enables you to have more space, more breathing room to face up to some challenges that you’re trying to work on or work through. And so that does mean that anything that supports you in your trouble spots… Maybe that’s again, with the heart, maybe that’s with digestion, maybe that’s with your breathing, right? You could need a lot of support there. I’ve had plenty of clients who have found an enormous shift, not just in say, their breathing capacity or their oxygen uptake, but in their emotional patterns when they work with something like lobelia, right? Small drop doses of lobelia can really open up your lungs. They can bronchodilate. Enable you to take in that air a little more easily. And the impact of being able to take a deep, full breath on your emotions, on your mind is quite profound. It’s something that can be best appreciated by experiencing it, but it’s strong. It’s powerful. And it accounts for a lot.

Ryn (39:00):
So, just to kind of leave some open space here to say that identifying and supporting your weak points, your places of tension, or constriction, or stagnation or whatever pattern it is. Supporting those can, again, free up your resources to do this other work where you’re like there’s an area that I’m trying to change. There’s a habit that I’m trying to shift. There’s a new habit I’m trying to introduce, but it’s hard. It’s difficult for me. This is a piece of the work that you can do toward that goal. Okay. So, you see that a lot of what I’ve discussed here in terms of herbs so far has been around nervous system support. It’s been around stress support, right? And so if you want to dig in further into those particular areas, then I would encourage you to check out our Neurological and Emotional Health course. This is a fairly extensive course, one of the longer ones we’ve put out so far. Because boy did we ever have a lot to say on this subject. But it’s a kind of a user’s guide to your nerves and to your emotions, including the ones that are difficult or challenging or even dark.

Ryn (40:06):
And so we’ve got herbal strategies and holistic approaches to dealing with a whole range of both very physical neurological issues, and then mental or emotional, psychological issues as well. And this course does include a pretty extensive discussion of pain while we’re at it. Which is one of the more intense discomforts that we may face. So, there’s a lot of support there for managing pain and understanding that too. So, this is just like all of our other video courses. It comes with primarily video instruction. Free access to twice weekly live Q&A sessions with me and Katja. Lifetime access to the course material. Your access doesn’t go away after two weeks, or two months, or whatever. And when we make updates in the future, you get those too. There are discussion threads in every lesson. There’s an active student community that you get to join as well. Study guides, quizzes. Oh yeah, and those capstone assignments that I mentioned at the beginning of this one. We got those in this course and our other courses as well. So, I do hope that you’ll check it out a bit and learn from us.

Ryn (41:13):
If you’re listening to this podcast when it airs that’ll be on July 22nd, and that means that it’s still July. And that means that our sale is still ongoing. So, if you use the code LAVENDER at checkout. Don’t forget to enter the code, okay? But if you use the code LAVENDER at checkout, you can get 20% off the Neurological and Emotional Health course, or our Community Herbalist program, or any of the many things that we’ve got to offer for you at online.commonwealthherbs.com. Okay. So, that’s it for this episode of the Holistic Herbalism Podcast. Thanks for listening. Thanks for being with us. We’ll be back soon with another one. But until then, take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Drink some tea. And when you’re ready, challenge yourself.