podcast

In this episode both Ryn & Katja have things to share related to sleep. Katja leads off with a listener question about alcohol cravings at bedtime, then discusses some of her own strategies for coping with restless thoughts that interfere with rest. Ryn lays out the effects of caffeine in the body to help you…

This week, a case of histiocytoma on a dog’s paw leads Katja to talk about wound care for animal companions. What to do when a furry friend has a wound? Help it out with herbs! It’s not as hard as you might be thinking. Ryn received a helpful email this week that made him want…

The world’s on fire, no one wants to admit they’re occasionally catastrophic, and sometimes all you want to eat is ice cream. In this episode we’ll talk about herbs to support respiratory health in times of dryness and smoke inhalation. We’ve also got a dramatic* reading of Katja’s favorite blog post ever, You’re A Trainwreck.…

Introverts & extraverts, as patterns of personality, each have their strengths and weaknesses. In this episode we’ll discuss herbal allies to accommodate common discomforts experienced by those who identify with one or another pole of this spectrum. Introversion & extraversion don’t need to be “fixed”, but their extremes can be balanced and their weak points…

A listener asked us what would be our five favorite tinctures to have on hand, so this week we’re each going to share with you a list of herbs we just can’t live without! We talk a bit about each one’s virtues and the way we ourselves work with these herbs. Katja’s list: ghost pipe,…

Katja’s daughter Amber is off to summer camp this week, so she shares with you the list of things they packed into Amber’s herbal first aid kit. If you have kids headed off to camp – or are going to one yourself – you’ll want to listen in! Ryn muses on the capacity for receiving…

This week we share some practical first aid herbalism for burns and sprains. Whether you’re hiking far out in the woods or simply have an accident at home, these tips will help you take care of yourself effectively & naturally with herbs. A few resources for you: Dressing A Burn – this is the video…

Katja & Ryn discuss how these “exotic spices” came to be ubiquitous among Americans, and how we can learn from the history of plant trade, cultivation – including some bitter history and present affairs of colonization and slavery. We try to recognize and explore the chain of relationships between the farmers and ourselves, and give…

Ryn leads off this week with a discussion of herbal affinities – the ways in which herbs may be centered in their effects on a particular organ or type of tissue in the body – and how these can help you make good herbal choices or make more effective formulas. Katja shares some thoughts about…

This week Katja had a bit of back pain, and has some thoughts to share with you about how this can happen an what to do about it. From mindset management to gentle movements for the release of tension and improving alignment, of course with the support of herbs, here are a few quick tips…

Katja this week reflects on a bit of wisdom surrounding downtime, and on the ways in which stress management can sometimes be the most difficult of our fundamental pillars of health, or the one that gets sacrificed first. Ryn shares his love of jiaogulan (Gynostemma pentaphyllum), a particularly excellent adaptogen for the dry and tense…

Katja shares a hard-fought lesson: that health is not equivalent to merit, and that as herbalists it’s important for us to stay away from idea that there is A Right Way and We Know It. Instead our role should be to offer a wide variety of tools to try that can help build greater resilience,…