Podcast 287: Take Care of Each Other

We like to sign off our show by saying, “Take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and drink some tea.” It’s our favorite little motto and it’s a great reminder that herbalism and self-care go right alongside mutual aid!

In our episode 283: Vetting Your Herbalism Sources: Red Flags & Green Flags, we talked about how it isn’t actually bucking the system to ignore the FDA and FTC laws about “telling & selling”. Neither is it a cool rebellious act to turn away from scientific knowledge, modern medical technologies, or even conventional treatments. They each have their place, and herbalism isn’t an ‘alternative’ to them in the sense of a dichotomous choice – either herbs or science, either herbalism or medicine. We can fit together, and we get better results when we do.

But it’s certainly true that conventional medicine has problems, and that the system needs some bucking! A system reliant on consumerism – buying your way to better health – always leaves people out. A lot of people. They need help, and we can help them.

The best way to do that is a little surprising: take care of each other. Extend our circle of care outside ourselves, outside our family and housemates, and further out into the world. We are all here together, and we can all support one another. And since we’re all herbalists here, let’s do it with herbs!

Three ways to get started:

1. FREE Emergency Preparedness course – Concise and targeted lessons teach you how to prepare for emergencies ranging from hurricanes to wildfires to heatwaves. Learn to construct a modular, no-frills herbal first aid kit, food reserve, and go-bag (or shelter-in-place bag). Understand herbal wound care and all the steps to take for cuts and burns. Anticipate and prepare for the effects of climate disasters in your community, not only to help yourself, but to help others too.
2. SLIDING SCALE Herbal Community Care Toolkit – This 20-hour video course teaches you safe, inexpensive, and accessible herbs which can make a difference in the most common health concerns in our society today. High blood pressure, diabetes, edema, pain, poor sleep – there are herbs to support people facing all of these challenges and more. They don’t need to be expensive, exotic, or risky. They don’t need to be “maximum strength” or “100x concentrated”. Gentle, simple, safe herbs can help people you know and love.
3. SLIDING SCALE Accessible Herbalism course – We consider this essential training for clinical herbalists, but you don’t have to be one to want this information! Providing care to everyone is challenging, and involves a lot of creativity and skill to find the right resources and get them to the right people – and to do it all without burning out. To do it, we teach strategies to work around resource constraints, addressing the realities of time and energy involved in herbal work. We share our methods for finding funding, improving access to care, and building community support networks: mutual aid for herbalists and the communities they serve.

You can go deeper, of course! These are starting points to get you helpful and empowered as soon as possible, while keeping safety first. And don’t forget…

Everything’s on sale in July!

All our offerings are self-paced online video courses. They all come with free access to twice-weekly live Q&A sessions with us, lifetime access to current & future course material, open discussion threads integrated in each lesson, an active student community, study guides, quizzes & capstone assignments, and more!

Use code CATNIP at checkout to get 20% off!

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Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.