Podcast 270: The Herbal Year In Review, 2025

What kind of year has it been for you, as far as herbs & health go? On today’s episode of the Holistic Herbalism Podcast, we’re taking a look at the herbal year in review for 2025!

Everyone’s doing their year-end best-of lists, their ‘top 10 takeaways’, and the like – and we want to join in on the fun. As you’re considering your 2025 and looking forward to your 2026, don’t forget to take some time to think about the progress you’ve made as an herbalist! Give these questions some thought and reflect on your

Did you work with any new herbs this year? If so, what kind of shift have they created in your health and habits?

For Katja, this year’s herbal stars included sassafras leaf, skullcap/betony, blue vervain, mugwort, rooibos, & boneset. Ryn’s herbal focii for 2025 included plantain (Plantago spp.), blackseed (Nigella sativa), camphor (Cinnamomum camphora). Both of us gained a new appreciation for tea (Camellia sinensis) this year! We’ve also both been chewing mastic resin droplets as a natural chewing gum / jaw workout.

Did you get some new insight about your own health, and how you can support yourself (or others around you)?

This year, Katja devoted a lot of attention and energy to sleep hygiene. The handy helpful device/app Brick has been a big help with that effort. Ryn helped, too – because sleep is a whole-house affair, actually, even if everyone isn’t going to bed at the same time! For his self-care, Ryn focused on the mind this year: challenging it by taking up taiko drumming despite no prior musical experience, and recommitting to a study of philosophy.

Did you implement any holistic strategies – like shifting your diet or adding in more movement? (Even if these didn’t stick, they still represent progress, and that counts!)

It felt more like a year of preparation than execution, in this regard, for Katja. She first had to recover from a bout of mono early in 2025. Since then, she’s been consistently trying to be consistent! That’s not an oxymoron and it’s worth some thinking – consistency is a skill like others; it can be practiced; it can be learned. Ryn’s year included a return to regular breathwork / breath-holding practices, as well as good long walks.

What about your herbal education over the past year?

Katja’s year was all about tuberculosis! This is part of a larger study she’s engaged in, looking at infectious illnesses which used to be ubiquitous, were reduced to rarity by public health interventions, and are now resurgent as those public health services are being destroyed in the US. Meanwhile, Ryn found particular pleasure in reading the works of Christopher Hedley & Non Shaw, and in some new explorations of phytochemistry.

This turned into a wide-ranging conversation! Here are the things we mentioned:

• Rakkasan Tea Company – Our favorite tea company, the Rakkasan folks cultivate partnerships with growers in countries impacted by war.
• Brick – Way better than ‘Screen Time’, this app & device combo removes distractions from your phone so you can focus on what matters. A truly helpful tool!
• History of Africana Philosophy – This podcast series traces the philosophical threads from Ancient Egypt through Black Lives Matter.
• Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, Cedric J. Robinson
• Greco Gum – Droplets of resin from the mastic tree (Pistacia lentiscus) have been chewed by humans for thousands of years. This is an excellent jaw workout, not to mention the benefits of the resin’s chemistry.
• Breath, James Nestor – A good review of breathing techniques and the health impacts of poor vs efficient breathing.
• Everything is Tuberculosis, John Green – A clear presentation of the way our understanding of and response to tuberculosis has changed over the ages, and the implications this has for the disease in our time.
• The Remedy, Thomas Goetz – What does Sherlock Holmes have to do with the cure for tuberculosis? Read this and find out.
• Black Angels, Maria Smilios – In 1929, black nurses at the Sea View sanatorium in New York were critical contributors to the work of finding a cure for TB. This tells thier story.
• Plant Medicine, Christopher Hedley & Non Shaw (Guy Waddell, ed.) – Chris and Non didn’t publish much text during their long collaborative career, and it was never easy to find. Wiht the publication of this book, that has finally changed!
• Phytosapiens Membership – From Lisa Ganora & team come this monthly deep-dive into key herbal constituent groups. Great for those who’ve learned Basic Phytochemistry already and are looking to go futher!

If you’re checking this out before the year ticks over to 2026, our sale is still on!

The code for this year’s sale is CALENDULA – use it during checkout to get 20% off everything we offer – all the courses, all the programs, anything on a payment plan, anything at all!

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Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Episode Transcript

Katja (00:00:14):
Hi, I’m Katja.

Ryn (00:00:15):
And I’m Ryn.

Katja (00:00:16):
And we’re here at Commonwealth Holistic Herbalism in Boston, Massachusetts.

Ryn (00:00:19):
And on the internet everywhere thanks to the power of the podcast.

Katja (00:00:22):
Woohoo.

Ryn (00:00:24):
For one more time in 2025.

Katja (00:00:26):
Yeah.

Ryn (00:00:29):
Like everybody, we’re wondering how your year has been. But you know, we’re herby around here, so we’re wondering what kind of herby year it has been for you, our listeners, our friends. Yeah.

Katja (00:00:42):
And I think it’s really important, and I am certainly not alone, because whenever I look at social media, or newsletters, or whatever, everybody is doing their countdowns of the year, or their journal prompts about how the year has been, and all that stuff. So, you know, whatever, it’s a New Year’s tradition. But as we go through all these, and as you’re also seeing all these prompts and thinking about how to be better, and do more, and whatever. And no. I think it’s really good to look back and think about the progress that you’ve made specifically as an herbalist because you have made progress. And you might be like I don’t really think I did very much this year. Or I don’t really know if I learned very much this year. Or whatever, but I think you probably did. And so it’s really good to just sit, and think about those things, and then give yourself credit for them.

Ryn (00:01:45):
Yeah. It’s a really big subject. It’s many subjects that all kind of mush together and get a label sort of smashed onto them. And it’s something that you learn gradually, you know, whether that’s reading a few pages a day, or doing some taste experiments each day, or whatever. It takes time. And so like anything that occurs gradually, it’s easy to miss your progress because each day is just a little bit forward, and so it doesn’t feel like that much change. So, a little bit of a look-back can be helpful for you to see where you’ve been.

Katja (00:02:13):
On one hand, that’s actually great because yes, this is a huge subject. It can be intimidating. Lots of students express intimidation about how am I going to learn it all? I am whatever age I am. Do I have time to still learn it all? You know, like all these different things. And you know, so on one hand the fact that you are learning just a little bit every day, it removes all that intimidation. It’s like no, you don’t have to learn it all in one moment. You just learn a little bit a day. But while it removes the intimidation, it also can obscure the sense of accomplishment. Because you have to be intentional about recognizing your milestones and taking the time to say wow. When you add up the little bit that I’ve been working each day, it actually comes out to a lot. But if you don’t take the time to do that, to add up everything that you’ve done and look at it cumulatively, then you might be like, did I even do anything? I don’t know.

Ryn (00:03:18):
Yeah. So, we’ve got some questions for you to ponder that will help you to realize these things about your own experience and work. And we’re going to share our own answers to them also for comparison. But first we want to just remind you as always that we’re not doctors. We’re herbalists and holistic health educators.

Katja (00:03:37):
The ideas discussed in this podcast do not constitute medical advice. No state or federal authority licenses herbalists in the United States. So, these discussions are for educational purposes only.

Ryn (00:03:49):
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 own individual needs, experiences, and goals. So, please keep in mind we’re not attempting to present a single dogmatic right way that you should adhere to. And if we say this was my favorite herb for the year, it doesn’t have to be yours.

Katja (00:04:08):
You could be like oh, I really don’t love that herb at all. And that would be completely valid. Yeah. Everybody’s body is different. That’s why it would be completely valid. So, the things that we’re talking about may or may not apply directly to you. But we hope that they’ll give you some new ideas to think about further and some stuff to research and experiment with.

Ryn (00:04:30):
Finding your way to better health is both your right and your own personal responsibility. That doesn’t mean that 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 that was discussed on the internet or prescribed by a physician, that’s always your choice to make. Yeah. All right. So, let’s get into some ponderations about the year 2025.

Katja (00:04:57):
Your herbal. Your herbal 2025. Yeah.

New Herbs (or Parts) Worked With This Year: Sassafras

Ryn (00:05:01):
So, a good place to start here is did you work with any new herbs this year, right? Was there an herb that maybe… And maybe it’s not like a hundred percent new. I think for us they weren’t. But it’s like well, I never really gave this one the credit or the attention that it might deserve. Yeah.

Katja (00:05:17):
And it really doesn’t matter how long you’ve been an herbalist, there will always be a list of these herbs that you just didn’t get around to it yet. It just didn’t click for you yet. So if you’re thinking that at some point you’re going to achieve a state where you know all the herbs and whatever, and there’s no new herbs for you to work with, that’s never going to happen.

Ryn (00:05:47):
If you ever think that happened, then travel.

Katja (00:05:51):
Yeah.

Ryn (00:05:52):
And you’ll be cured of this illusion.

Katja (00:05:54):
Yeah, for sure. For sure. So, for me this year, sassafras leaf has been a huge influence, like new influence.

Ryn (00:06:05):
It’s become a new favorite.

Katja (00:06:06):
Yeah.

Ryn (00:06:07):
It’s become one of the plants on the list. Like oh, I should put X in there because then she’ll like it more. Yeah.

Katja (00:06:14):
True. Sassafras root has always been a favorite or especially flavor-wise, something that I really, really enjoy. But I never really worked with the leaf. Honestly, for a long time I probably didn’t even think about the leaf, and I think that’s super common. When we think about the herbs that we work with as roots, think about have you ever considered working with goldenseal leaf? Now, okay, goldenseal is not a fantastic example because it’s at risk. And so it’s great to just not work with it at all if you can avoid it. But on the other hand, it’s a perfect example because it’s one that so many people know, and they know it as the root. And have you even ever thought about the leaf? It turns out that the leaf is very important and has different properties that are synergistic with the root. And so that is fascinating and also not always true, I want to be clear. Kava, for example, Solomon’s seal, these are roots that we work with where it would not be safe to work with the leaf.

Ryn (00:07:26):
Yeah. But it remains a question. It remains something to learn about that particular herb. And sometimes you find something surprising like yeah, people work with ashwagandha leaf all the time. In some countries that’s the primary part that they focus on, you know?

Katja (00:07:41):
Yeah, or like angelica leaf. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, for this year it was sassafras leaf and wow, I love it. It tastes amazing. It is a moistening herb that feels good in my body. If you are listening and not watching, then you know that I am really, really a damp person. I’m on the damp side of the damp-dry energetic spectrum. And so I don’t usually like a lot of moistening herbs. Like do not come at me with marshmallow root or pure slippery elm. I do not want them. But sassafras leaf is perfect.

Ryn (00:08:28):
When you take it on its own it has the velvety, demulcent feeling to what you drink. But it has a touch of a stringency as well.

Katja (00:08:36):
Yeah. There’s some kind of I’m not going to let this get out of control, don’t worry. And I find that very comforting. Even emotionally I’m a person that cries really, really easy and at completely inopportune moments. I cannot tell you how many hours I have just taught through tears because something got me emotionally, and I just started crying. And I’m like well, we’re just going to do this anyway. Everybody please just ignore this. Like this is not a great feature of my emotional anatomy. But sassafras is like don’t worry. We’ve got a little moisture. We’re keeping it under control. It’s all staying where it should be. It’s not going to leak out in weird places. Don’t worry. Yeah, it feels great. And I think that kind of an herb is really important. Because the reality is that you can be a super damp person and still have areas of dryness in your body. And still have dryness that needs to be attended to in your body. But you’ve got to do that in a way that feels comfortable. And it’s not really very practical to be like I’m going to have some slippery elm and some uva-ursi and put them together. You should try that actually. It’s not going to work very well. Yeah. So, having an herb that has those constituents or those actions really in a balance is excellent. Really comforting for a person who’s already way out of balance on the damp side. Yeah. Plus, I tend to like really drying tea, and that’s not very comfortable for Ryn. So, if I’m making the tea… When we make, like one of us makes the tea whatever day. And we usually are like do you have any requests? But whatever, one of us will make the tea. And so if I make the tea, and I’ve got all these astringents and lymphatic draining herbs, whatever, which usually that’s the tea that I want to make. And I’m like oh, this is going to be so uncomfortable for Ryn. So, then I can put sassafras in there, and that’s going to make this tea much more comfortable for him without making it uncomfortable for me.

Ryn (00:11:09):
Yeah. And it works out really well.

Betony, Skullcap, & Vervain in the Foreground

Katja (00:11:15):
All right. A couple others towards the ends of the year, betony and skullcap and vervain have really come to the foreground. And I wish that that had happened much earlier in the year.

Ryn (00:11:30):
Yeah. You came to me one day, and you were like I need to have skullcap all the time for a while. It’s like okay, you bet. Every day, here we go.

Katja (00:11:40):
Yeah. I wish that that had happened for me in January of last year or before that even. Because I think that emotionally I would’ve been a lot more stable over the course of this year. But I feel like this year was a very emotional rollercoaster kind of a year, not just in the world but also in myself. Like, yeah, perimenopause is a ride. And a lot of thinking about things until you thought you couldn’t think about them anymore and then thinking about them some more. Like wearing tracks in my brain about thoughts, and that’s not healthy. It is not healthy to cycle through the same thoughts, especially when they’re negative, over and over and over again. You’ve got to do something to break that cycle, and it’s not easy. If it were easy, then we’d never work ourselves up.

Ryn (00:12:49):
Yeah. It’s not automatic. And a cup of skullcap tea also doesn’t make it happen automatically either, right? But having skullcap daily, having betony frequently, having three or four different vervain tinctures scattered around the house so you can grab one at an opportune moment and take that down. That helps.

Katja (00:13:08):
It helps a lot.

Ryn (00:13:09):
It makes the work you’re already doing easier.

Katja (00:13:11):
Yeah. And when you just say I’ve got to stop. I’ve got to stop thinking about this. This is killing me. I’ve got to stop doing this. That doesn’t really… Like just try it. It doesn’t really work. And then you can try to distract yourself but very quickly it comes back. And meditation is normally a place I would turn to for this. And I have struggled with that so much this year. But all of this stuff that I’m talking about is a tension. Like anytime that you’re spinning, that’s a tension. And it’s a tension that you’re winding up. And so all of these herbs are really relaxant and specifically relaxing in the head and in the upper neck. So, I feel like that’s a big part of why. It’s not like magical that they magically just like we don’t know why, but it just helps you stop ruminating. No, it’s like that rumination is a tension, and these are relaxed and herbs. And that’s where that action is coming from.

Ryn (00:14:18):
Yeah. As is often the case when you’re working with herbs this way, part of what happens here is that the remedy, the tea, the tincture, whatever it is it, it accumulates what’s usually called placebo effect as you work with it, right? It accumulates that association of I take this when I feel this way, and it helps me. And the more you do it, the stronger that association gets.

Katja (00:14:43):
We could call it Pavlovian effect. Because it’s not exactly placebo. It is based on an initial actual result. But then just you’re wearing the track of that result into you instead of wearing the track of the negative thing.

Ryn (00:15:01):
Yeah. This is friendly. This helps. This is what I take in the moment when I feel like this, and then I feel differently. And it kind of all lines up for you, and then you move through it.

Katja (00:15:11):
I take this, and I have the expectation of relaxing a little. And I have that expectation because it has happened consistently in the past. And so this expectation is reasonable, and then it happens, which confirms the expectation over and over and over again.

Ryn (00:15:27):
It’s a virtuous cycle. R

Katja (00:15:28):
Right, right. So, the action starts to happen sooner. The first time maybe you have to kind of wait. And you’re like well, that helps a little. And the second time it helps a little more. But eventually it kicks in a lot faster because your body knows what’s going to happen now. And you can use that for the power of good is what I’m trying to say.

Ryn (00:15:54):
Right, right. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, the thing is though, that really started a couple of months ago maybe, and there’s this whole year. And I’ve been struggling with this myself trying to think of what herbs did I work with over the year, and I’m stuck in the past few months. But you had a few others that were like stars, and they were like every day in the mix.

Gin Tea & Boneset

Katja (00:16:18):
For a while, especially at the beginning of the year and into the spring, I was having mugwort every day until I was like you’ve got to be so sick of this. And it was always mugwort, heather, pine, juniper, and some goldenrod. It was always some variation of that kind of blend and some orange peel.

Ryn (00:16:41):
Gin tea.

Katja (00:16:42):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a flavor that I love, but also the mugwort in that particular blend is doing mental work, emotional work. It is kind of like engaging your rational center. And for me, my emotional center gets very out of balance. It is very easy for my emotions to get too big for my rational mind to bring back into balance, to wind it back in. And so, okay. Yeah. The betony, the skullcap, the vervain are about unwinding that bigness. But mugwort is kind of the opposite. It’s about growing the rational side. It’s like, I’m trying to think of some cartoon where the hero gets bigger when there’s trouble, so that it can overwhelm the trouble. I don’t know, Voltron or something. Some… yeah. Maybe the Incredible Hulk.

Ryn (00:17:51):
Mugwort for when you need to Hulk out? I’m not sure about that, but…

Katja (00:17:54):
Well rationally, to rationally Hulk out. Yeah. But yeah, so mugwort in the first part of the year was really around keeping me stable. But then yeah, I was like if I make gin tea one more time…

Ryn (00:18:16):
The thing is it’s a tough one to be like I will post preparation add my own demulcents to it. There’s a lot of blends you make where I’m like I’m going to put some licorice slices in here. Or I’m going to add fennel, or marshmallow infusion, or something else to it. But gin tea plus marshmallow, slime doesn’t work.

Katja (00:18:35):
No.

Ryn (00:18:36):
It doesn’t work at all. So yeah, I’m really haven’t found a good option for that one yet.

Katja (00:18:43):
Yeah. And then also this year at the beginning of the year I had mono. Which was cool I guess when I was in high school or college. Whatever age I was when I got it the first time, and everybody was getting it. And it was the trendy thing to do I guess. But it’s not so cool to get mono when you’re 51 years old. It’s pretty dumb, actually.

Ryn (00:19:13):
Yeah. You didn’t love it.

Katja (00:19:14):
I did not love that at all. And I also think that that was part of a bigger theme for me this year. If you’ve had mono before, it can reactivate at any time. And there’s a lot of intertwining between mono and MS or Epstein-Barr and MS. And so, it was my time to explore those connections and to reactivate some of those aspects that stay in the body forever. Epstein-Barr virus stays in your body forever, even after you get it under control when you have the initial infection. And anyway, so yeah, that will come up as a theme many times throughout this year. I didn’t like any of it.

Ryn (00:20:09):
Mono months.

Katja (00:20:10):
Yeah. Not any of it at all.

Ryn (00:20:12):
Not the best months.

Katja (00:20:13):
But during that time, boneset was definitely my most frequent herb by frequency.

Ryn (00:20:20):
Tiny doses.

Katja (00:20:21):
Not by dose. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tiny, tiny doses but very frequently. Because in my body specifically, that is a very helpful herb for getting that Epstein-Barr – I don’t know – flare-up or whatever. This was more than just a flare-up but to bring that back under control. And I would not necessarily say universally that would be true for all people who have chronic illnesses that tie back to Epstein-Barr like MS or varying forms of ME/CFS or whatever. But it is one worth considering and looking at if that is a valid choice for your situation. For me it definitely was very, very helpful.

Grains of Paradise, Rooibos, & Camellia sinensis

Ryn (00:21:19):
All right. So, when I was thinking about this question of any herbs that I worked with this year newly, or renewedly, or something like that, grains of paradise did come to mind. But that’s more of a recent thing though. And what happened was we ran out of dried ginger.

Katja (00:21:37):
Yeah. you know, back when you had your cocktail bitters era, you were really into grains of paradise. That was when you got into grains of paradise the first time.

Ryn (00:21:48):
Yeah.

Katja (00:21:49):
And then you made so many batches of cocktail bitters, and then we had so many cocktail bitters. And you haven’t really… like we’ve got to finish them all.

Ryn (00:22:02):
I’ve got to use them up and make some new ones, right?

Katja (00:22:03):
I feel like we’re getting close. I feel like we’re almost to the end of them, so it’s just about time to think about making more. But that was a few years ago. And sort of the grains of paradise kind of like…

Ryn (00:22:14):
They were waiting.

Katja (00:22:15):
They were waiting, yeah.

Ryn (00:22:17):
So this one, if you don’t know this one, it’s Aframomum melegueta. And it’s sometimes called melegueta in some places. It has few other names too. But it’s a ginger family plant and in this case, the commonest part to work with is actually the seeds rather than the rhizome or something like that. So, it’s kind of fun. And it is what you’d expect from a ginger relative. Between ginger, and turmeric, and galangal, and all of that you have this one. And it’s carminative, and warming, and tasty, and pungent, and good.

Katja (00:22:47):
It kind of reminds me of cardamom.

Ryn (00:22:52):
Right, yeah. It’s very, very similar. Cardamom is also in the family.

Katja (00:22:55):
But different, but really similar. Also in appearance it looks quite similar to the cardamom, the seeds themselves.

Ryn (00:23:03):
Yeah. There was just a span of time where we kept failing to order chopped, dried ginger from the herb suppliers and then didn’t think to get fresh ginger at the store. Eventually we figured it out. But it’s like all right, well, cardamom instead of ginger. Because there’s a lot of times when ginger is in the tea. There’s a lot of tea blends that have at least a little bit of ginger mixed in.

Katja (00:23:25):
Yeah, especially in our house.

Ryn (00:23:27):
In our house, yeah. So, cardamom, galangal. Turmeric doesn’t really work for you, but if it’s just my tea, then I can throw some in there. So, ginger family explorations have been pretty good.

Katja (00:23:38):
I feel like that kind of goes along with the fact that we’ve had way more rooibos this year than in previous years. We had to reorder rooibos a few times this year. We really had a rooibos kick. And it goes great with grains of paradise. It goes great with cardamom, ginger, sassafras leaf. Those two together, just rooibos and sassafras leaf, are really great. Yeah.

Ryn (00:24:04):
Really good. So, that’s been fun to come to. I feel like this year if we look back to the whole span of it, one herb that we both drank a lot more of this year than previous years is Camellia sinensis tea. The green/black/white/oolong/et cetera tea plant has become much more common for both of us. And I have to say that this is all down to Rakkasan.

Katja (00:24:27):
It is. It is. Rakkasan is a tea company. And they’re phenomenal. It was started by a bunch of ex special forces guys, and they have these skills, right? They have these skills where they can go to very dangerous places. And so they go into areas that are post-conflict or even active conflict, like the edges of active conflict, and build lasting relationships with farmers to grow tea because that stabilizes the region. And so in some places they’re going intentionally specifically to places where the United States has been a driver of conflict.

Ryn (00:25:17):
Or other imperial powers, you know?

Katja (00:25:19):
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or a participant in the conflict or whatever. And so a lot of their tea comes from Vietnam, and Laos, and Cambodia. But also some comes from Egypt and different places. And I’m pretty sure there are some from Afghanistan as well. But just that they have these skills, and they decided that what they want to do with them is help stabilize these regions. And I mean, on one hand it’s small. It’s not like they’re stabilizing a whole region. They’re stabilizing a community or whatever. But on the other hand, that impact ripples out. And so just like the impact of conflict ripples out over time and creates so much damage. It’s cool that now they are forces of trying to ripple out a healing and rebuilding kind of effect. So, we love buying tea from them.

Ryn (00:26:24):
We do. If you’ve listened to the pod for a while, you’ve heard us sing their praises before. And yeah, the Earl Grey is amazing. The winter blend is what I have right here right now. Fantastic, very nice. A very nice chai sort of influence sort of formula. But they’re really good at this stuff.

Katja (00:26:43):
They’re really good, yeah.

Ryn (00:26:44):
The quality’s amazing, stuff’s organic, et cetera. We’re really happy with that. So yeah, more black and green tea this year for certain.

Katja (00:26:52):
Which does also mean that we’ve been having a lot more caffeine this year. But I don’t know. It’s been okay. It’s been okay. It has stayed in the early parts of the day for the most part. It has kind of stayed in balance. It hasn’t gotten out of control.

Ryn (00:27:11):
Not too much.

Katja (00:27:12):
So, yeah. We’re both… I should caveat that I suppose. We are both people who have a history of caffeine excess, maybe. And both for a long time just avoided all caffeine entirely because of that. And I feel like yes, we have had black tea multiple times a week this whole year. But we have really been so much more balanced about our relationship with the caffeine. Yeah. So, that’s pretty exciting.

Seeing Plantago Anew, Black Seed, Camphor, & Mastic Resin

Ryn (00:27:49):
I had a few others that came to mind when I was thinking about this idea of the last year and herbs. And some of them are plants that I’ve worked with forever and some in big quantity like Plantago, plantain. But I feel like this year I’ve been paying a lot more attention to it as a lung herb as opposed to an enhancer of digestive tea blends, or of course a wound care herb, or other things like that. But when you look at the research on Plantago, a lot of it is really focused on respiratory health and on improving the function of the goblet cells that secrete mucus, and keep that at the right consistency, and everything. So yeah, I’ll say a little more about breathing and related things later on. But I feel like of the herbs that I’ve been choosing when I’m like let’s take care of the lungs today. And of course mullein gets in there and lungwort. But I’ve been giving new priority to Plantago in those cases.

Katja (00:28:45):
That I think is a really good example because this is not a new plant in any way. This is a plant that you have worked with all of the time forever. But it’s a new aspect of emphasis and pushing the relationship in a different direction or in a new direction. And so many herbs in our minds or in our practice, we kind of like have them oh, this is my herb for this purpose. We put them in a box when there’s actually so much more that they could do. And so it’s always really fun to look at an herb that you maybe work with a lot. And then say where else could I go with this? What other directions are actually available to me here that I just have not explored yet? Yeah.

Ryn (00:29:40):
Yeah. In the range of the lungs, I have been doing some work with black seed recently. And that’s one that I had kind of been like ah, what’s with this faddy herb, faddy, faddish, right, like a fad? Why is it suddenly everywhere? Why is everybody in the functional medicine world trying to tell me that this is the best herb for all the problems? It’s the new turmeric, okay? And so that’s been how I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I still kind of mostly do. But at the same time, again, looking at some of the influences on lung health. And with black seed there’s like a ton of other systems and areas of the body that it seems to work well on. I was like all right, fine. I’ll give it a try. I’m placing an order from Gaia anyway. I’ll pop that one in there. And so I’ve been taking them for a while now. And I’ve got to say, one of the things that makes me like it a lot is that sometimes I get a little black seed burp. And it’s just very like I drank a quart of thyme, or oregano, or monarda. It’s in that range of aromatics that are coming up out of it. So, maybe this isn’t super appealing to you as I describe it that way. But I’m just saying, it’s something I noticed. And I’m like ah, this is actually making me believe that there’s activity in here. Let’s do it.

Katja (00:30:58):
I think that’s actually really important because when you work with a seed, okay. When you work with a capsule… And sometimes that is the most efficient way to work with something, so I’m not knocking it. I take capsules most days especially if you’re busy, or if you’re not always home. Okay, that’s not my excuse. But like you know, whatever. It can just be practical, so there’s nothing wrong with it. But it’s hard to know a plant that you’re working with in a capsule because you are not tasting it. You’re not smelling it. You are not coming into sensorial contact with the constituents. So, you don’t really have any data about the phytochemistry that’s going on. Whereas if you take something as tea, you do. You have the flavors. And you may or may not be trained to make phytochemical conclusions about what you’re tasting, but you could be. And so that is a thing that is accessible that is removed when you take a capsule. But when you work with a seed, it’s in a little package. Okay, fennel maybe not so much. But if you think about even caraway or cumin, they’re not as intense until you start cooking them or start chewing them. They’re kind of in their protected little package. I’m not saying they don’t have no smell. They’re just protected in there. And their phytochemical constituents are protected inside the hull, the shell. And I feel for black seed, like on one end we have fennel, which is not very protected. Fennel is a really aromatic seed. But I feel like black seeded is kind of at the other end. Were if you just open a jar of black seed, I’m not saying there’s no smell, but it is really protected in its little shell. And so you might not unless you eat them. You didn’t cook with it. You just are eating it itself and chewing them individually so that they’re breaking open in your mouth. You might not realize the flavor and what that means about the phytochemistry of the plant, of the seed in this case.

Ryn (00:33:30):
Yeah. In this case that pungency, the aromatic elements. We’re thinking about movement, circulation, activation, that kind of thing.

Katja (00:33:37):
So, even though it’s weird to be like oh yeah, and then I burped after I took it. That’s like a weird thing to say. But also it’s kind of an important thing to say because that is a point of data. Don’t discount that.

Ryn (00:33:52):
Yeah, totally. All right. A couple of others real quick. I have been paying new attention to camphor this year. Topical applications. Camphor is a plant, okay. It’s Cinnamomum camphora. It’s in the cinnamon family. It’s like the Lauraceae family, but it’s closely related to cinnamon. It’s a plant. It’s not just some weird jar that your grandma had in the cabinet.

Katja (00:34:15):
It’s not just Tiger Balm.

Ryn (00:34:16):
Yeah, right? So, but of course it’s a plant that people have paid a lot of attention to and work with because of the intensity of that aromaticity, that resin that you can extract from there and work with. So, in our house this has just been like – I don’t know – more irritated joints, and knees, and backs, and hips, and elbows, and everything else.

Katja (00:34:36):
We’re getting old, y’all.

Ryn (00:34:38):
And yeah. So, there’s a really nice Battle Balm, it’s called, that we work with. It’s like a Tiger Balm kind of thing, but that’s very camphoracious. And then we’ve got a couple other preparations. Some from Plum Dragon have some camphor in there. And then there’s a couple of things I picked up from some herbalist friends of ours just for applying to the joints, the wrist or whatever, when they hurt. And yeah, it’s really good stuff. It’s really good. A rubefacient, right?

Katja (00:35:11):
Yeah.

Ryn (00:35:12):
And then last one for me, and this was a late entry because you picked this up just a little while ago, but it’s mastic resin, which is where we get the word mastication. And that’s chewing, and that’s what we’ve been doing with this. So, you found this brand of these very clean, perfect, little resin droplets, like beautiful, right? And you can just kind of chew on them. And first they’re hard, and so you have to wait. And they warm, and they soften. And then you can chew them like gum for just hours.

Katja (00:35:41):
Yeah. And there’s a long, long history of chewing gum.

Ryn (00:35:48):
Literal gums, plant gums.

Katja (00:35:50):
Yeah. Plant resin gums. And, you know, so when I was whatever age in high school, I guess, it was like stop chewing gum. Take your gum out of your mouth because you’re a teenager walking around smacking your gum, whatever. Plus, I don’t know if the kids are so much about blowing bubbles these days with their gum. But that was the era of Hubba Bubba, and Bubblelicious, and the big chunks of gum that then you would blow bubbles with. And a child of the eighties, I don’t know. So yeah. So, my relationship to chewing gum has always been a really negative connotation, even when I liked it when I was young. But here it’s totally changing thoughts about chewing gum, because chewing the resin is how you’re releasing the phytochemicals to actually get the medicinal action. So, I am really excited about the oral activity of mastic gum. But then that happens the full length of the digestive tract.

Ryn (00:37:08):
Yeah. You can feel your gums getting some astringency, like a little tighter. Your teeth are firmer in place, you know? It’s pretty good.

Katja (00:37:14):
Yeah. And it has a lot of anti-inflammatory action, a lot of like reparative action for the membranes of the digestive tract. So, so yeah, it’s really interesting to think about healthy gum, right? Or like, you know,

Ryn (00:37:30):
And for me, my attention has been on the jaw and the muscles in the jaw, and the throat, and the mouth. And the way that the chewing action maintains an open airway, and an efficient airway, and an efficient breathing process. So yeah, it’s actually very helpful. And people’s transition to softer food that doesn’t require very much chewing has been a long path, right, from the development of agriculture on forward, basically. But it’s pretty extreme. And there are lots of people who probably developed sleep apnea and other difficulties with breathing efficiency in their late teens and their adult years because of just never really getting a jaw workout, not chewing on resistant stuff and fibrous things for some amount of time every single day the way our ancestors did. So, this has been feeding into or connected to some of the thoughts I’ve had around breathing and that kind of thing over the last year.

Katja (00:38:38):
I think this is especially relevant if you were bottle-fed when you were a baby, which both of us were. Because a lot of that jaw development happens during breastfeeding. And not to open a can of worms because breastfeeding does not work for all people. Breastfeeding is not idyllic. It is an option. If you can’t or choose not to breastfeed, that does not mean that your child will be broken forever. But it does mean that the mechanism of sucking on the bottle does not have the same alignment, and structure, and muscle development as the mechanism of sucking on a breast. So, we need to look for other mechanisms to help with that. And that is giving your kids lots of really hard stuff to chew on. So okay, don’t give a tiny kid gum because they could swallow it. But give them hard carrots. Kids used to teeth on chicken bones. Which okay, that’s a little less practical these days. Because they’re going to put it down in your living room somewhere, and it’s not going to be great.

Ryn (00:39:50):
But you know, as a form of development, as necessary as walking, we’ve got to develop the jaw, the mouth, all the structures and muscles in there. Yeah, it matters. All right. Okay. So, that was all question one about any…

Katja (00:40:05):
Uh, sorry.

Insights About Health: Sleep & the Brick

Ryn (00:40:06):
Did you work with any new herbs this year? So, how about did you find any new insights about your own health and how you can support yourself or maybe how you can support other people around you?

Katja (00:40:17):
Yeah. So, for me one thing this year that I have really kind of dialed in has been sleep. Cycles of not great sleep have been less not great than in the past and shorter in duration. Sleep is something that I struggle with a lot. But this year I feel like I’ve really found ways to bring that under control, like new ways that are more dialed in for me. And I think this is a really important time to have a word from our sponsor. Which is that sleep is not effortless. It’s not easy. It’s not something that you do naturally.

Ryn (00:41:15):
It’s not your brain turning off. It’s totally not. It’s as far opposite from that as you can get.

Katja (00:41:20):
Right. And if you are a person who struggles to sleep effectively. And you see somebody, maybe it is your spouse, who falls asleep the instant they hit the pillow. That’s also not healthy. That’s also disordered sleep, actually. And I mean, it might be very convenient for them, but it is not a – I don’t know – ideal sleep pattern or whatever. Okay. You can see the quotes that I’m making there, right, because okay. Obviously this is a much larger topic. But in the past I have really leaned hard into herbs to help me sleep. And that has helped tremendously. And this year I have really been leaning much harder on sleep hygiene, which is boring, and not exciting, and really effective.

Ryn (00:42:24):
Everybody’s favorite.

Katja (00:42:26):
Yeah. So, one is that I have developed an extremely consistent, we might even say rigidly consistent bedtime routine. But I also think that has played a critical role for me in having success. And Ryn has helped a lot with this. And again, a word from whatever sponsor it is that is sponsoring this segment here. In order to sleep well, your house has to be a culture of supporting sleep. And so whether it is you that struggles with sleep, your children that struggle to sleep, your whatever, you need your whole house to support your sleep. If you are just trying to do the sleep thing, but the rest of the house is not supportive in that cycle – like they’re watching a loud movie, they’re whatever – then it’s not going to work. So, that doesn’t mean everybody goes to sleep at exactly the same time. The house must be completely quiet. But it does mean that you have to experiment and negotiate with what do we need to do to make sleep happen? Because it does not just happen by itself. You don’t just get into bed, and wait until you fall asleep, and sit there quietly, and whatever. You do have to construct it, so that is one. And really building that whole bedtime routine has made me, like that programming has really kicked in. Even though it’s not fun. I don’t like it. And it took time. But now even if I’m not tired, when it’s time to go to bed, by the time I get through the little routine we have going on, I’m like actually, I’m really tired. So, that’s good.

Katja (00:44:38):
The other, I think… Well, maybe two other things that have been really big is that I have been intentionally spending more time outside early in the day to get more sunlight, even when it’s cold. That’s also not super fun. But I have absolutely been doing it, and it helps a ton. And it’s funny because we have a whole course about sleep, and these things are in there. And I have had bedtime routines in the past but not as structured as I do now. And I have had oh yeah, I should get some sunlight today but not as consistent as I do now. It’s really been super consistent, like rigidly consistent. Even though I’m not a fan of rigidity, in this case it has been super helpful. And then the other thing that has been super helpful is my brick. And I don’t mean like a building material here. Brick is a thing. Like you know if you work in an office, and you have to beep a card to get access to get a door to unlock? You know what I’m talking about, that magnetic thing that unlocks the door? Okay. Brick is one of those, and it interacts with your phone. And so you set it up to say these apps are accessible on my phone, and these apps are not accessible when my phone is bricked. Then you beep your phone on this little thing. It’s a little magnet thing. We put it on our refrigerator. You can put it wherever you want. And there is no way to override it. So, it’s not like the screen time app or a whole bunch of other apps where you always can be like do you want to override this? And you just click on button, and then you can.

Ryn (00:46:37):
But not on like a countdown timer. Like you cannot use any of those apps for the next three hours period. It’s you have to stand up. You have walk to the brick and touch it again. And so that’s not just the little inconvenience of getting up from wherever you happen to be sitting down, or laying down if you’re in bed, or wherever. It’s also the I’m not just grabbing this and starting to scroll. It’s I am deciding to go over here, and now I’m going to scroll for a while, right? It’s amazing.

Katja (00:47:10):
It’s a process. It works really, really good. This is like using the power of inertia for good. Yeah. So, wherever I am, if I’m like oh, I could just grab my phone, especially if I am in bed. I do take my phone to bed, partially because audio books are a big part of helping me stay asleep. Or helping me get back to sleep quickly without allowing my emotional cycle to start, and to start worrying about things, or whatever. So, on one hand the phone is very helpful for that because of the audiobook or sometimes a meditation. But on the other hand it’s right there with all the other things on it, and that is not helpful. So, this really makes it such that okay, I can still have my audio book. I can still send a text message if I really needed to or something like that.

Ryn (00:48:16):
Yeah. When I had mine set up, it’s like the app for audio books, the app for meditations, the app for breath holding practices, the text files app, and the weather.

Katja (00:48:26):
Right, yeah. And the camera. But so if you need to write a note, you are not just like I’ll just open my email and send myself a message so I don’t forget this. Oh look, there’s all these other emails in here. Oh, now I’m worrying about work. It’s like well, okay, if I really need to write something down, I can put it in a text file, and I can get it out in the morning. It’s not like I will forget the thing, but it’s also not very exciting. So yeah. What happens is that you open your phone to turn on your… You woke up. You’re agitated. You want to turn on the audiobook. You open your phone. You think I’ll just scroll for a minute before I put the story on. But you can’t unless you get out of the bed, go down the stairs, and beep the thing on the refrigerator. And so you’re just like oh well, there’s nothing to do. So, I guess I’ll just put on my story and go back to sleep. I guess I’ll just put on my meditation and go back to sleep. There is nothing to do. It is pretty amazing.

Ryn (00:49:33):
Very helpful. And it’s been improving your sleep.

Katja (00:49:35):
It really has. It really, really has. And I leave my phone bricked all the time unless I need… Like we post to social media. So, if I am going to post something, I unbrick my phone. I post it. I re-brick my phone. If my phone is not bricked, it’s because I decided right in this moment I want to do something on my phone. So, I will unbrick it. And as soon as I’m finished, I will re-brick it. And so what that means is when it’s time to go to bed, there is no I’ll just scroll. I’m comfy on the couch. I’ll just scroll for like 10 minutes. I’ll just check the news before I go to bed. It’s just not available. There’s nothing to do. The only thing left to do is go to bed, you know?

Ryn (00:50:21):
That works. That’s super handy.

Katja (00:50:23):
I love it.

Supporting Different Sleep Schedules

Ryn (00:50:25):
So in this question on new insights about your health and how you can support yourself or others, I have one for others, and you’re the other. And it’s around sleep, and it’s rub the feet.

Katja (00:50:35):
That’s true. That has really made a big difference.

Ryn (00:50:38):
Because she goes to bed a little while before I do or sometimes a longer while. But part of this whole bedtime routine is tuck in the ladybird, right? So, get you all situated, and the blankets are right. And you’ve got the drinking water and the humidifier water, and you’re all good.

Katja (00:50:56):
And we write in our journals,

Ryn (00:50:57):
We chat together for a while.

Katja (00:50:59):
And we share our journals with each other, and talk about our day, and whatever. Yeah, there’s this whole little…

Ryn (00:51:04):
Yeah. And we cuddle and everything, and it’s great. And then sometime in the last while it was like wait. Before I go I can rub your knees a little bit because they’ve been hurting you, and I can rub your feet.

Katja (00:51:15):
I think that’s what started it because my knee was bothering me. And I think that’s how it started. And then, yeah, now you just do it every night to rub my feet. And it’s like by the time that that’s done, sometimes I don’t even put the story on because I’m just like wow, I’m so tired. And okay, listen, that is an extremely specific aspect. Because that only works if you have a household with split bedtimes. Like I am early to bed, earlier… Not early to rise but earlier to rise. And he is still of the belief that humans can be night owls and doesn’t love to go to bed early.

Ryn (00:51:58):
Maybe I’ll work on that next year. Maybe not.

Katja (00:52:01):
That’s okay, y’all. Not everything has to be optimal the way a human should be to be healthy. Like whatever. And also this works really great for me because I get a foot massage every night.

Ryn (00:52:13):
That’s pretty good.

Katja (00:52:14):
But the thing is that you don’t need to have a foot massage so that you can go to bed. But thinking through what would support you getting to bed. And then what needs to change in your household routine or whatever else. Like how we manage the lights, how we all that kind of stuff.

Ryn (00:52:31):
But I mean, this also goes along with work that we’ve been doing together this year. Which has also been work we’ve been doing together for 16 or however many years.

Katja (00:52:40):
However many years now.

Ryn (00:52:42):
We’ve been together. Which is how do we relate to each other? How do we take care of each other? How do we show love? And earlier this year we were talking about we need to be physically affectionate in the right ways for each of us to feel good. And we’ve got to give that some priority. And I think this is one expression of that, you know?

Katja (00:53:01):
Yeah. It’s normal in a relationship for needs not to be matched. That is completely normal. Some needs will be very well-aligned, and some needs will not be because it’s impossible to align every single thing in two people. And so looking at the places where you are not aligned and not trying to change them. Like you don’t need to become a different person. You just need to figure out what do we do during those points of mismatch? How do we handle that in a way that will support one another?

Ryn (00:53:38):
Yeah. And the whole kind of like tucking the ladybird bedtime routine thing emerged out of that idea. This was years ago now. But it was just like don’t just like okay, go to bed. Goodnight, and now I’m leaving. But like okay, let’s like hang out for a while. Let’s cuddle, and decompress, and all of that kind of thing. And it makes a big difference.

Katja (00:53:55):
It makes a big difference. Yeah.

Ryn (00:53:58):
So, that’s been something pretty good recently.

Katja (00:54:01):
And it’s like I don’t need you to go to sleep at the same time that I go to sleep to still receive that connection time.

Ryn (00:54:11):
Yeah. I’ve seen a lot of articles on social media things in the last while, I guess. I don’t know if I’m paying more attention than looking for it. It’s that phenomenon or whatever. But just it’s terrible news if you and your spouse don’t sleep in the same bed. It’s the end of your relationship if you don’t go to bed at the same time, and wake up at the same time, and all of that. And I think people are getting a little ahead of themselves on that one, you know? But also it would be a problem if it was just like oh yeah, you go to bed, bye. Like that wouldn’t be good either. And if that’s what’s happening, then yeah, that’s a problem.

Katja (00:54:44):
I mean, unless it’s not a problem. Like if that’s what works for you because you get your connection time at different times of the day, that’s also fine. But really investigating those things from the perspective of my valid preferences do not align with your valid preferences in this aspect. And so how do we just address both of our preferences? Your preferences are not wrong just because they’re not mine. And this is just another facet of every body is different. If every body is different, and therefore people need different herbs maybe for the same problem. The problem is not exactly the same, but it might look the same externally. Well, if that’s true physiologically, then it is also true emotionally, psychologically in terms of connection style or all those other things. And so if it’s completely reasonable that I like astringent herbs and he likes moistening herbs. Then it is also reasonable and valid that I like this thing and he likes that thing. And they don’t need to change to accommodate one another. And even if you’re not married, this is still a good set of things to think about because humans exist in relationship. t’s not just married relationships that we’re talking about here. We are all in relationship with our friends, with our families, with our communities, with whatever. And this work needs to be bilateral or multilateral. You can’t just be the only one doing the work saying your preferences are valid. How can I accommodate them? While the other person is like I refuse to accommodate anything that you need. Okay, no, not that. But yeah,

Taiko, History Podcasts, & Audiobooks

Ryn (00:56:40):
I like that. Yeah. And I mean, you’re my most important community. And this is kind of in that realm, right? We often talk about the four pillars, but it’s really five, right? It’s food, and sleep, and movement, and stress. And then the fifth pillar is community, right? And I feel like for me thinking about ways to support my health this year, some of those have been around community, like this way of being closer and better with you. But another one has been I kind of reminded myself that it’s good for me to go somewhere once a week or so and do something that’s structured, and organized, and physical, and educational. And so I’m so happy because I’ve been able to take taiko classes this year. Taiko drumming, right, like the Japanese style. It’s really Japanese American actually, but we can get into that later.

Katja (00:57:31):
If you want to nerd out about taiko. Yeah.

Ryn (00:57:35):
So yeah, I had to take a little break because some things happened, but I’m going to go back to the group in January. And it’s been really nice to go there. And it has like a familiar structure from martial arts days that I’ve done in the past. And that’s just been really good for me on several levels. And I’m feeling very good about that.

Katja (00:57:57):
I also think that taiko is really well-suited to you too because music is very important to you. But the way that you access music is through rhythm and not through melody. And that is true in every aspect of your relationship with music. And so I think this is such a good match. It’s like the perfect herb, you know, except it’s taiko drumming. Yeah.

Ryn (00:58:30):
Yeah. So, shout out to Mountain River Taiko. Y’all are fantastic, and I’m going to see you again soon. Another thing which I guess is more in the realm of – I don’t know – mental health for me has been another kind of a return, right? So, when I was in college I studied literature, and I studied philosophy. And I’ve sublimated a lot of my interest in philosophy into herbalism over the years because there’s a ton of philosophy in it, actually.

Katja (00:58:57):
Yeah.

Ryn (00:58:58):
Or several philosophies altogether. But I’ve been over this past year looking at some more – I don’t know – strictly or labeled-ly philosophical stuff. So, a couple things I want to mention are first off, it’s currently listed as the history of philosophy in China if you go searching for it. But in the past…

Katja (00:59:22):
Podcast.

Ryn (00:59:23):
Yeah. Yeah. But in the past it has been the history of Africana philosophy and then the history of philosophy in India, or maybe the other version around. But I first got into the middle of their thread, and I listened to the series on history of Africana philosophy, which was really, really fascinating. It starts in ancient Egypt and then proceeds all the way through there up to basically Black Lives Matter. So, it’s really, really cool stuff. And that made a big impression on me, completed that sequence, and now I’m digging into their history of philosophy in India stuff. But one of the episodes in the Africana series that caught my attention the most was one about this book called Black Marxism by Cedric J. Robinson. And I bought a copy of it. And then I also got myself the audio book because I’ve been having a little easier time of clocking the hours of reading if they’re in my ears, you know?

Katja (01:00:20):
Yeah. It is sometimes hard to make time to sit and read a book because oh, I should be working if I’m sitting. But you can take a walk and listen to a podcast.

Ryn (01:00:33):
And sometimes our reading time is decompression at the end of the day, and I just want some light, entertaining, and slightly philosophical fiction. You know, like the stuff Max Gladstone writes is right on the money or Cixin Liu, you know. But anyway, so I’ve been digging into that book. The physical copy is handy because you can read the footnotes there. And some of those are really good. But, you know, I was thinking about it, and this has also been kind of a longer project too. Getting some audiobooks that the physical copy is a couple hundred pages or 500 pages. Like I listened to…

Katja (01:01:11):
Or The Dawn of Everything, which is probably a thousand pages.

Ryn (01:01:14):
Dawn of Everything, Behave from Sapolsky, yeah. So, I feel like this has been really good for me to get my mind working in different ways and force me not to ruminate in the exact same sequence of thoughts.

Katja (01:01:28):
Yeah. I think that, among all things, has been a huge theme over the past year in our health. Redirecting brain energy away from rumination on upsetting things. And recognizing that we control that. It’s not always easy to control what you’re thinking about, but distraction is a valid tool. And distract yourself with something important to you. Distract yourself with an area in which you want to grow. Distract yourself with something that is uplifting. But you are allowed to drive your brain. You don’t have to go where your brain wants to go. And so if you find yourself ruminating, drink the skullcap, drink the betony, whatever. But grab control. Take the reins of your brain and put an audiobook in there. Put a podcast in there. Put a whatever, but something that is uplifting. Something that is moving you in a direction that you also want to end up in. Yeah.

Ryn (01:02:42):
Yeah. All right.

Trying Holistic Strategies Until They Stick & Revisiting/Refining Old Interests

Katja (01:02:46):
Oh, it’s funny because the next question… I was going to say that has been one of the most important holistic strategies that we have been working on this year. And that’s the next question, which is, did you implement any holistic strategies: shifting your diet, adding in more movement, directing your brain, whatever. Even if these things did not stick, they still represent progress, and that counts. So, it is worth thinking about them. And not thinking about them like oh yeah, I tried a Whole30, and I only got to day 18. I’m bad. I have no willpower. I can’t do it. No, 18 days of data is amazing. Three days of data is amazing. And so you can look at that, and you can say well, what do I learn from that? I learned actually that I did feel better that way. But it was hard to maintain because I didn’t have the support I needed. I learned that three days was not enough to really make any kind of decision. I learned whatever. Just because the attempt was not a hundred percent successful the first time. If we required that, then we would never walk because babies are not successful the first time they try to walk. It takes a really long time of trying the same thing over and over again until you get… Not exactly the same thing. This isn’t about that quote of doing the same thing and expecting a different result. It’s not that one. But you’ve got to practice. You’ve got to refine. You gotta… yeah.

Ryn (01:04:18):
And sometimes it takes a while to get where you’re trying to get to, right? There’s preliminary work that you’re going to do because of the thing that you’re planning or your visioning. And sometimes it takes a while, and that’s okay. There’s still an internal movement before the external movement shows up.

Katja (01:04:34):
And sometimes you don’t know. You are like I’m just going to do this thing. And you don’t realize that doing the thing requires a whole bunch of preliminary steps. And so that’s what all those stutter starts actually are. They are recognizing I tried to do the thing without doing the setup, and I failed it. Okay, well, let me think about why that failed. Oh, I didn’t have this support in place. Oh, I didn’t have this structure that I needed. Oh, I didn’t make time on my calendar. Oh, this and that. And then realize oh, okay, well I’ll put that in place. Try again. Oh, also didn’t work this time. Okay, well, oh, that’s because I need this thing. And so even if you don’t realize oh, there’s planning, there’s preparation that needs to be done before I actually start the thing that I want to do. Just trying it will help you realize that if you don’t tell yourself you’re bad, that’s the really important key. If when it starts to fall apart, you immediately say well, that didn’t help me, or whatever else. And instead say okay, I got this far. What did I learn? What do I need to shift to make this more successful next time? And just approach it with curiosity and not self-hatred and not self-punishment. Then that’s all I have to say.

Ryn (01:06:05):
That’s what you want.

Katja (01:06:06):
That’s what you want. Yeah.

Ryn (01:06:12):
Well, I can start on this one. So, for me holistic strategy stuff that I focused on, like I said, the structured movement class time. The trying to make sure I’m using my degree time has been helpful. And then also a few months ago – maybe more, I don’t know – I listened to this book, which is not new. But it’s the book Breath by James Nestor. And I had been meaning to for a while. But I gave it a listen, and it was bringing back my attention to the breath. And I’ve spent a lot of time in a lot of different ways over the years doing breathing exercises, and practices like that, and breath holding, and a variety of different things.

Katja (01:06:58):
And breath as meditation and structured aspects of… yeah.

Ryn (01:07:02):
Yeah. So, this was a good read. And it reawakened the interest, and it helped me revive my practice in different ways. Like okay, I’m going to take a walk, and I’m going to practice a breath hold for the next 20 steps or things like that. And then also the ones where you lie down, and you breathe in a specific way for x amount of time or things like that. So, I found that really helpful. And it was also something that made me think okay, I need to do this on purpose. I need to remember what my interests are, and find a book that’s about them, and use that as a way to spur that interest forward into a new iteration you know? Yeah. So, I found that very helpful for me. The other thing that I came to here, which was once again kind of a return or a revival for me, was long walks. So, since I went to college, I’ve had a habit of going out walking for hours at a time. I lived in Paris for four months. I went to museums, and I went to fancy places, and the cool churches, and whatever. But in free time I pretty much just walked around the city, and that was fantastic. There’s so much to see in Paris. It’s beautiful. Every neighborhood is different. I don’t know. It was fantastic. But you know, we live in a different place now. It’s not exactly the same. It’s not like right in the city.

Katja (01:08:27):
You like to walk at night. And that’s less… It’s not impossible here, but it is a very different kind of experience.

Ryn (01:08:38):
And I was sort of stuck in my mind about it, right? Like okay, we’ll take a walk. We’ll walk the dog, all right, whatever. Like get back to work. It’s daytime. And this has been something between us. Being like no, it’s important in the morning to have some physical movement and all of that before we just jump into the computer and grind out however many hours we’re going to do that day. So, you’ve been really supportive of this for me. But often what we’ll do is we’ll take a walk together with Elsie, and then I’ll kind of peel off and keep on going.

Katja (01:09:05):
Elsie is in her senior years. She’s our wonderful old lady dog now. And most days she can go about a mile, some days maybe half a mile. And she’ll get a half a mile out, and then she’s like I’ve got to go home now. And so she and I will do the short walk. And there’s a specific place, there’s a bridge with a creek that goes under it. And there’s also a heron that lives there in the summer. And it’s very pretty. And so we’ll get to that bridge, and then we’ll have a little minute of admiring the pretty. And then we’ll chat for a few minutes. And then I’ll turn around and go home with Elsie, and he’ll keep going for however many more miles. And yeah, that has worked out really well.

Ryn (01:09:56):
And it stacks functions, right? It’s time outdoors. You’re breathing, well, for us it’s like all the evergreen scents you could ever want. And it’s physical movement, of course. And it’s also audiobook time, or philosophy podcast time, or herbal podcast time, right, or like herbal lecture series recorded audio time. And so that’s also been helpful in that sense of keep learning stuff. Don’t just coast on what you already have.

Katja (01:10:22):
When we’re walking together, we just talk to each other, and also we talk to Elsie. And then when we separate, then that’s when you listen to a thing. And I keep talking to Elsie so that we get all the way home.

Ryn (01:10:37):
Yeah. So, that’s been very, very helpful for me. And I feel like it’s a nice refinement to habits.

Katja (01:10:43):
Yeah. Well, that is a big role for me too. Because for me this year, more movement has been a huge thing. Really since COVID, my movement just took a complete nosedive, which I think that’s true for a lot of people.

Ryn (01:11:04):
Yeah. I mean, there was the whole epidemic of people buying Pelotons. And now many of them are just rusting away, I hear, you know?

Katja (01:11:12):
Yeah, yeah. Before COVID we walked to our physical school space, which was a three-mile walk. And we did that almost every day. And then we walked home again, so that’s like a lot of miles every day already. Plus, I would go kayaking, and you would go whatever. And sometimes we did various martial arts, or we would go dancing, or we would like whatever else. Or we would walk somewhere else because now it’s time to walk somewhere else. And so a lot of movement was really baked in. And then when COVID happened, we closed our physical space because we really didn’t know what was the timeline, what was the whatever. And financially that was the smart thing to do. But we really didn’t, I think like so many people, we really didn’t know what was going to be on the other end of that. And so one thing that was on the end of that was although a lot of people during the stay-at-home part of COVID were baking bread and whatever, a lot of people didn’t get to stay home. And they were keeping the grocery stores going or whatever else. For us we did stay home, but also we started working like three times as much as we had before because there were more students, and there was more need. And there was just so many people needed so much more education, or assistance, or whatever else that that pattern started. And really, we got into a habit with that. And we got into a habit of get up in the morning, and sit immediately at the desk, and basically stay there til it’s bedtime.

Ryn (01:12:55):
That’s true. And that isn’t healthy for anyone. And it came at the cost of physical movement, which also that wasn’t normal for either one of us. So, that had a lot of health impacts. And then the other thing is that getting out of it, like once you build a habit, it’s so hard to shift it. And it’s especially hard to shift it when it is entwined with your work.

Ryn (01:13:29):
Yeah. And you get to the point where you’re like I’m only making barely enough money to keep everything running because I’m grinding so hard. It’s easy to tell yourself that, right?

Katja (01:13:39):
Right. Or whatever the thing is that you’re saying. Like I have to keep grinding so that I can keep paying this bill or whatever. And oh yeah, paying the bill is real. And there is a mismatch in our society with every aspect of paying the bills. But on the other hand, there comes a point where you can’t sit there and still produce quality. And that’s true even if you have a job where you don’t have a lot of choices. Like at some point if you are doing physical work all day, at some point mistakes happen more often, accidents happen more often because you just get tired. So yeah, but especially in a situation where we do have some control over our schedule, the thing that is harder to control is our emotions about our schedule. And oh, I have been doing this level of work for so long that if I stop, or if I take a break to take a walk, then I’m bad. And that might not be true for you in your job necessarily, but I think it is a very common pattern that keeps us locked in habits that are not serving us. So, really I think for both of us, our work has been around shifting that habit of doing good work but not doing that at the cost of our bodies. For me that was kind of catastrophic this year, I guess, in its implementation because of starting the year off with mono. I had to sleep a lot, and I hated every second of it. It was awful. Except that now I kind of look back at it, and I’m like oh, remember when I just took naps a lot? I don’t want to have mono again. I didn’t enjoy it at the time. But in retrospect I’m like I see where that was helpful. And so actually the thing that I really want to say that I was able to implement this year was more movement. But more movement started off with sleeping for like the first eight or 10 weeks of this year. And those two things were really connected.

Katja (01:16:24):
And then throughout the whole year, working at building a habit of more movement and not quite finding exactly the right method, or exactly the right time, or exactly the right frequency, or whatever else. And it really took me through the whole year to finally land on something that stuck or is sticking. And I think it’s good to say is sticking. Because if it were to stop sticking, then that’s not a sign that I am a failure. That is a sign that I need to make some adjustments so that it can stick again. And yeah. So, that is like a whole year journey to finally get to ah, okay. I think I’m finally here now, and I did not realize. And I think that has actually been the thing that was holding me in this habit to begin with, is that I was never doing the preparatory work to support. I was just like why aren’t you getting more exercise? Okay, well, because you get up, and you sit at your desk, and you don’t get up from your desk until it’s time for bed. You have to change that if you want to get some exercise. Oh. But you’re averse to changing that. Well okay, then I guess you’re not going to get any exercise, are you? And so moving from that place where I was holding myself in this pattern of not being able to make a shift. And then also telling myself I was bad because I wasn’t making a shift. I had to break the pattern and then slowly build up the shift. So, thanks, mono, I guess.

Ryn (01:18:09):
And I mean, congratulations to you for being consistent about trying to be consistent. Like I’m going to consistently attempt to build consistency. And if I fail, that’s okay. I’m just going to keep at it.

Katja (01:18:24):
Yeah.

Ryn (01:18:26):
It sounds weird, right? But it is actually effective.

Katja (01:18:29):
Yeah. And so much right now in social media you see so much like how to be consistent in 2026. I think that’s all… I was going to say crap. But I don’t exactly think that. And I certainly don’t think it if it’s helpful for you. Whatever is helpful for you, it doesn’t matter what I think about it. If it’s helpful for you, do it. Bu I think that there is no single way to achieve consistency other than to keep trying to find the way to fit the thing you want into your life in a way that has the least amount of friction. Yeah.

Never Stop Your Herbal Learning: Books & More

Ryn (01:19:16):
Yeah. All right. One more question for everybody. And this one is what about your herbal education over the past year? So, separate from I’ve been attracted to this herb. I’ve been working in this strategy to improve my health. I’ve found this way to think about and understand my health, and my body, and my habits. But what about education in particular? And we have some stuff to share in this regard. You know, for me when I think about learning herbalism over the past year, the thing that sticks out the most is the book Plant Medicine. Which is about the work, which is the work of Christopher Hedley and Non Shaw. And it was edited and put together by their I don’t know if acolyte is the word, but a human named Guy Waddell.

Katja (01:20:03):
Yeah. Like a student and friend. Yeah.

Ryn (01:20:08):
I’ve really enjoyed that book in part because every herbalist has a different style, right? And most of, most of the way that Chris and Non practice is really in line with the way that we practice and the way that we think about things. Not a hundred percent but very, very aligned. And especially I think what’s attracted me to that book again and again has been moments of just real clear simplicity. Just like this doesn’t have to get super complicated. You don’t need the most powerful herb you can find in the entire world. Do this. Work with it consistently. See what you get. That’s a recurrent theme in the way that Chris and Non write and speak about herbs. And I really jive with that a lot.

Katja (01:20:54):
One really beautiful thing about Christopher Hedley is that I am on a mailing list, a small mailing list that he was also on. It has fairly high traffic. And Christopher Hedley, I mean, you might not know because maybe you’re new to herbalism, or maybe you just didn’t ever hear this name. But this man was a giant of herbalism. Just the impact that Christopher Hedley had on herbalism in general was enormous. And he was British. And so, but that did not diminish his impact on American herbalism, on United States herbalism. But I just want to be clear. This guy is, or was the guy, his entire life spent on this. And here he was at age whatever still submitting cases and asking for input. Hey, I have this case. I have this client. I have this whatever. And this is the situation. And this is the direction I’m going in, but I wonder if anyone is seeing something that I missed. And that is what an herbalist is. If you think an herbalist is a person who knows how to make tea or whatever, no. Never, never aging out of hey, do you have any insight here that I might have missed? Because somebody might. And just a completely egoless person. And I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to get to know him in that way, even though we only met in person a couple of times. But if I could give anyone advice about how to be a better herbalist, honestly it would be that. It would be don’t ever stop asking for input . Don’t ever think that you know so much that somebody couldn’t catch something that you missed. And he was just right up to the very end always just so beautifully asking, curious. Is there something I still have to learn here, you know? It’s so amazing.

Ryn (01:23:41):
Yeah. And it’s also nice because there was one or two books that were published in small runs and hard to get from Chris and Non for decades. And not a ton of their writings were just like floating around out there in the world. And so this was nice when it finally appeared, and now there’s this whole compendium. And it’s just fun to kind of dip into their minds a little bit. In a similar way there’s a book put together by…

Katja (01:24:09):
Elliot. Elliot Geller, and it is a collection of teachings of Cascade Anderson Geller, who was a mentor of mine. Also of Paul Bergner’s at very different points in time. She was Paul Bergner’s first mentor. And I think maybe for me, one of my most recent mentors. And yeah, wow, what a beautiful, amazing person whose practice style is actually in a lot of ways quite different than ours. In some way, philosophically very similar, but practically often quite different. And it’s really good to work with that to see the beauty in other styles of practice than yours.

Ryn (01:25:08):
Another thing that I’ve been enjoying this year is kind of a community or a subscription thing that Lisa Ganora and some cohort put together called Phytosapiens. This is really focused on phytochemistry. This is like every month they’re going to choose a particular group of plant constituents, like sesquiterpene lactones, or steroidal saponins, or something like that. And really dig in and have some content about those chemicals, and what they do, and how they influence the way that the herbs act, key herbs that feature them, and things like that. And then some research and some studies to dig in and explore a bit more. So, that’s been fun. If you’re interested in going beyond basic phytochemistry, the course that we have in that regard. Then this would be a great place to go in and get a little bit of a continual drip, a continual feed of some new and exciting insights.

Katja (01:26:06):
Yeah. If you did the basic phytochemistry course, and you were like wow. That was the most fun I’ve ever had. Then this is your next step right here. Yeah.

Ryn (01:26:17):
Yeah. Really good stuff.

Investigating Diseases We Don’t See Anymore

Katja (01:26:20):
For me, educationally this year it has been let’s investigate diseases we don’t see anymore. Because well, measles is making a comeback. And dengue fever is becoming more common, and diptheria, and whooping cough, and all these diseases that kind of skipped a few generations due to high vaccination rates and other factors also. But now these are coming back. And so for me this is an area that I really want to do a lot of work in. Because it used to be very common to just see somebody with the chickenpox versus seeing somebody with the measles and just knowing which it was by the kind of outbreak it was. But do you have confidence that you would know that today? Have you ever seen somebody have measles and seen somebody have chickenpox? You might not have. It is entirely possible to be an adult in society today and to have never seen these things. And so to not have the information that you need kind of built in to be able to also know what you’re looking at. There are specific signs for a lot of these diseases that make it really obvious fairly early in oh, this is diptheria, versus this is whooping cough, versus this is whatever, you know? And because we don’t get to see these diseases today very often, it’s hard. It’s hard to know, right? Whereas I feel like today it’s much more common for people to be conversant in oh, my one friend has EDS, and my other friend has Crohn’s, and my other friend has rheumatoid arthritis. And to be very familiar with those different things. But we’re not as familiar with these infectious diseases that used to be a part of our lives and now are not, except that now they’re coming back. And so at the beginning of the year, I started with tuberculosis and tuberculosis is all of the everything. I, I feel like it overwhelmed my entire year, which is pretty appropriate for tuberculosis, tuberculosis you know, you can’t herb your way out of that. Herbs can help manage, but tuberculosis killed like 30% of all people until, honestly, pretty recently, like, like in the 19 hundreds. So it, it, it, it was like everybody knew people with tuberculosis. Everybody knew people who died of tuberculosis because it was so, so, so common. And you maybe have never thought about tuberculosis in your whole life because now it is not common except that now it is happening again. It’s coming.

Ryn (01:29:27):
Around again. Yeah.

Katja (01:29:27):
And I also need to be clear that it is not common in the United States, and it is not common in Western Europe, but it is still extremely common in Africa. And that is something that we could fix, but we choose not to.

Ryn (01:29:41):
Yeah. Basically the thesis of this book, everything is tuberculosis from John Green.

Katja (01:29:48):
John Green, yeah.

Ryn (01:29:49):
Which is essentially like the reason that everything is tuberculosis or is like tuberculosis is that we could actually solve that problem worldwide. We know how. We know what to do. We know what it would take. But the will and political capital to get it done is lacking.

Katja (01:30:07):
Like the money exists. It’s not that we can’t afford it. It’s just that we don’t choose to allocate the money in those places. And racism absolutely does play a role.

Ryn (01:30:15):
The main reason for why. Yeah, totally. And of course, this is only exacerbated with the destruction of USAID, and other related actions, and so on. So, this is why it’s kind of on the mind.

Katja (01:30:28):
Yeah, yeah. And also because in the past couple years there are growing outbreaks happening across the country. And one of the most important mechanisms for controlling tuberculosis is contact tracing. And of course, people didn’t like that very much during COVID. And also with changes in the CDC and other administrative faculties. And also healthcare changes like rural hospitals are underfunded, and closing, and whatever else. And so kind of the infrastructure for doing that tracing and also the will to do it are both kind of crumbling. And so the tuberculosis outbreaks right now are alarming but kind of small. But they’re increasing steadily. And so it is definitely something that we need to be thinking about out.

Ryn (01:31:29):
Yeah.

Katja (01:31:30):
So my favorite books on this was, like you said, Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green. A book called The Remedy, and I cannot remember the author’s name.

Ryn (01:31:41):
Goetz?

Katja (01:31:42):
Oh, that’s right. Thomas Goetz. Yeah. G-O-E-T-Z. And that book is super fun because you might not know that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote Sherlock Holmes, played a pivotal role in the discovery of managing tuberculosis, in that whole story of coming up with a cure and a management plan for tuberculosis. The dude who wrote Sherlock Holmes basically Sherlock Holmesed his way into the story of developing that.

Ryn (01:32:26):
Yeah, pretty cool.

Katja (01:32:27):
Yeah. So, that’s wicked cool. And the third book, I also can’t remember the author. The book is called Black Angels. And the subtitle is like The Untold Story of the Black Nurses Who… hmm… Cured Tuberculosis. That isn’t quite right. But don’t worry because Ryn will put a link to it in the show notes. Wow. Anybody who wants to be an herbalist should read this book, even if you’re not obsessed with tuberculosis like I am. Because there is so much information about nursing, and convalescence, and mechanisms of long-term care for a chronic disease. And also if that wasn’t enough, it is the story of black nurses who were working in a hospital in New York City who were working there because white nurses didn’t want to. Because you know, if you work in a tuberculosis hospital, you’ll get tuberculosis, right? But these nurses were extremely well-educated, some of the best trained in managing tuberculosis, and ended up being absolutely crucial again, in finding the cure and management techniques that ultimately were successful. And in order to get to that point, they also were crucial in many attempts before that, all the clinical trials before that of trying the different things that they tried until they actually got to the thing that worked.

Ryn (01:34:21):
It’s an important story even if just to ingrain into you this understanding that our development, our capacity to develop a cure for an illness, a disease, an infectious illness like this in particular, it’s not just a matter of we create the right molecule. And now suddenly we’re done, right? We have to get that to people. We have to figure out what’s the right dose, what’s the right regimen, what supportive work is going to be required for that to work most effectively. There’s a ton of extra elements involved. And the people who are on the ground day-to-day actually delivering these things to people are where that development is going to take place.

Katja (01:34:54):
Yeah. And it’s fascinating to see all the things we tried before we got to the thing that worked, and some of them are kind of horrifying. But it’s also fascinating in, I guess, kind of a morbid way to see how extreme this disease is by looking at how extreme their attempts to manage it were. And then to realize that this disease impacted every single person’s life. And I have never known somebody with tuberculosis. Okay. Again, that is not a mechanism of my age. It is a mechanism of my privilege because there are plenty of people today in other countries who do know people who actively have tuberculosis and are suffering. But we don’t see it except that it is now starting to come back. So yes, it is true. Herbs cannot cure tuberculosis. But herbs can assist in the management process. And so, I want to have a solid plan of what would I do? How would I be an assistant? Obviously, if you get tuberculosis, please go to the hospital. Let them know. And then do the treatment that they have, which is uncomfortable. It is long. It is grueling. It is hard. And that is a place where we can provide support as herbalists to make that regimen more manageable. Much like how we can help somebody in chemotherapy to better survive through that process. And yeah, so I just feel so fascinated about this. And the things that I learned drive that fascination even deeper.

Ryn (01:36:54):
I don’t want to be repetitive, but I do want to emphasize that again. That the interest in this isn’t I’m going to find the herbal cure for tuberculosis, right?

Katja (01:37:02):
It is not there.

Ryn (01:37:04):
The lost secret of the people who were met, whatever, that’s not what we’re aiming at. We want to understand the problem. We want to understand our place in a team that’s going to work on this effectively. And that’s so frequently the approach we’re going to be taking to herbalism, whether it’s cancer, or something like this, or whatever else comes around.

Katja (01:37:23):
And also because this is such a clear case that there was never a cure. There was never a natural way to manage this disease. It has always been one of the biggest causes of death for humans. Yeah.

Ryn (01:37:40):
And one of the elements here is simply that it’s just a very slow-moving, slow-developing problem. And also sometimes people will have an acute phase of it, and then they’ll basically recover and be fine. And so that is a set of conditions where it’s very easy for somebody to be like well, I’ve cured tuberculosis right and left. And I just ignore the cases where it didn’t work out. And we don’t talk about those, right?

Katja (01:38:03):
Yeah.

Ryn (01:38:03):
That makes it tough.

Katja (01:38:05):
But I think it’s also really good to get knee deep in an understanding of a disease that we never succeeded with naturally, right? Because it is very trendy to have this sort of binary where it’s like oh no, I only manage things naturally. Or you could be on the other side. I only trust conventional medicine or whatever. And the reality is that that’s not actually practical. There are some things that cannot be managed naturally. Or they can maybe be managed, but there’s no way to manage tuberculosis well. You’re still going to die a terrible, terrible death. But okay.

Ryn (01:38:55):
And I mean, anyway that framework is false from the get-go. There’s nobody out there who’s like yeah, I only consume caffeine in the form of tablets. I don’t know. Maybe there’s some kind of Silicon Valley hacker who’s like, I only consume soylent packets and whatever, and they don’t actually eat any vegetables.

Katja (01:39:16):
Probably there is that person somewhere. Yeah.

Ryn (01:39:18):
But that’s crazy talk. Come on.

Katja (01:39:19):
Yeah. But the reality is that yeah, just really seeing a case where all of human history was really dominated by this disease. And nothing was able to stop it until a point at which something was able to stop it. And all of the people, so many people who had to go into that process of finding the thing that worked. And all of the attempts, and all of the everything, and really recognizing how challenging this is. And also that we do not have to have the answer to everything. We just have to play our part. Even with stuff that does require conventional medicine, pharmaceutical medicine, whatever, that doesn’t lock us out. That doesn’t mean we don’t have a role to play, or that we’re somehow the losers in that particular aspect because we are the natural ones or whatever. No, there isn’t a winner or a loser here. There is how do we support the people in our community who need our support? And if it’s a person with tuberculosis, that support is going to be or it needs to be from all sides. And so our question is how do we best serve this person with the tools that we have while they are also using whatever other tools are available to them to ultimately kill that thing? Yeah.

Appreciating (& Sharing) What You Did Learn This Year

Ryn (01:40:54):
All right. So, again, the question at hand here was what about your herbal education over the year 2025? And so these are some of the things we’ve been thinking about and finding ways to incorporate into what we do. So, if you were thinking about that question, like what have I learned herbally over this year? Maybe your first reaction was oh no, I didn’t study as much as I meant to. Don’t get hooked on that, right? First off, I bet you probably did more than you think, you know? And if we could tally it up for you, you’d be kind of impressed. But also when we’re learning something, especially something new, we can discount how much we’ve learned so far. Because the more you learn, the more you recognize what there remains to be learned. And you can be like I’m not making any progress, you know, zero. Like what’s going on? And there’s always more to do. That’s true. But that’s good news, not bad news.

Katja (01:41:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It does not take away from everything that you’ve already done. And it’s important, even if there’s still a mountain of things that you could explore. You don’t have to. But also yay, you won’t get bored. But regardless, it is so important to stop staring at the mountain of stuff you didn’t learn yet. And take a little while to be like hey, look at the stuff that actually I feel pretty confident in right now. And I get that this is not everywhere. This is not the whole thing that I want to learn. Like yeah, I understand that. But for right now I just want to feel really excited because look at all this stuff. These are places I feel confident that I didn’t feel confident in the year before. So yeah, give yourself some time to think over this past year. Maybe even grab your journal, do some writing. It is worth it. It’s worth the time. It’s important. It’s important to just celebrate that. And also to recognize I have done something. Maybe I haven’t done everything that I want yet, but I’ve done something,

Ryn (01:42:57):
I have begun to eat the elephant.

Katja (01:42:59):
The whale, the whatever.

Ryn (01:43:02):
You know that one, right? Like how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Yes, okay. Cool. So yeah, appreciate the progress you’ve made. We’ll celebrate with you. We’ll do it right now.

Katja (01:43:15):
Yes, especially if you log in to our student community, and you’ll see a post there about your herbal year in review. And pop a comment in there. Share it. Let everybody else celebrate what you’ve done. And also it’s just nice to sort of publicly be like look. These are the things that I actually did do this year, and I feel great about that. Yeah.

Ryn (01:43:39):
So, somehow if you’ve listened to our nearly two-hour podcast, and you’re not part of the student community already. Then come on, you really should be.

Katja (01:43:46):
Yeah, you’re going to like it.

Ryn (01:43:47):
These are people like you. These are people who are into stuff that you’re going to going to be intrigued by, and want to hang out with, and chat to. So, get on in there. How do you do it? You take any of the courses that we offer, any of the free ones, any of the short courses. The entire extended Family, Community, Clinical Herbalist program set. Sure, why not

Katja (01:44:06):
Yes.

Ryn (01:44:07):
All of that gets you access to twice weekly live Q&A sessions with us, the student community, the discussion threads in every single lesson of every course where you can just pop your question right in there.

Katja (01:44:20):
Like right while you’re watching a video, or doing an exercise, or whatever. You can just be typing in questions. We answer them every day.

Ryn (01:44:27):
You get lifetime access to the course material. When we add stuff to that course later, which we always do, you get that for free automagically. Courses have study guides. There’s quizzes and tests. There’s capstone assignments that we review personally for you.

Katja (01:44:44):
And then we email you back and forth and say ah, this is where you’re really strong. And here are some places where you can strengthen your skill in this, or that, or the other thing. And let’s talk about it, and let’s email back and forth. Yeah. And then at the end of all the big programs, we have a video meeting with you and talk about where your strengths are, how do we get you more support for the places where you need it. all that kind of stuff. Basically it’s super fun. And if you are still listening right now, you should go on over to online.commonwealthherbs.com. Especially if it is not yet 2026, then get in on the 20% off sale. The code is CALENDULA. You don’t really need me to tell you that because it’s on a big banner on the top of the webpage online.commonwealthherbs.com. And grab anything you want. Grab everything you want. You can use that code over and over again. Unfortunately, it doesn’t let you stack up a ton of stuff in your cart and buy it all at one time. You’ve got to do them individually. I don’t really know why. But whatever. You can use the coupon code every single time. It won’t time out on you.

Ryn (01:45:52):
Yes. And if you would like to give a belated gift. Or maybe it’s an on-time gift because look, sometimes people are born on December 31st. It’s allowed. Then you can give your friends our courses as well. There’s an option for buying it as a gift.

Katja (01:46:06):
Yeah. You just check the box that says this is a gift. And then things will pop up for you to put in their email address, and your gift message, and all that good stuff. Yeah.

Ryn (01:46:16):
All right. Whew. This was a long one. Thanks for sticking with us if you’re still here. And we love you. That’s what We do. We do. We hope you have a good year. We’ll be with you. We’ll be doing Holistic Herbalism podcasts all the way along.

Katja (01:46:31):
I’m pretty excited because I feel like I have a queue built up of a bunch of really good pods for January. And I think there’s so many that it’ll probably go into February. But I’m quite excited.

Ryn (01:46:44):
The one on AI is coming soon.

Katja (01:46:48):
Yeah.

Ryn (01:46:49):
We have some thoughts.

Katja (01:46:50):
We have some thoughts. Yeah. And of course we’ll have to do top 10 herbs I can’t live without in 2026. That one’s going to be fun. And then there was a student who wrote something really interesting in the community about realizing am I a hypochondriac, or do I just need to rebuild my whole body? And the whole question was so good, and the thought process behind it was so good. I was like ooh, this needs to be a podcast. So, there’s that one coming up too. Yeah.

Ryn (01:47:27):
Yeah. It’s going to be a good year all else being equal.

Katja (01:47:32):
It’s going to be a really great year for herbalism.

Ryn (01:47:35):
That’s what. All right, everybody. That’s it for this one. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Drink some tea. And Happy new year.

Katja (01:47:42):
And Happy New Year.

Ryn (01:47:43):
Bye.

Katja (01:47:44):
Bye.