Allopathic vs Holistic Plant Medicine

Welcome
 
Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Aromatic Medicine Garden. I am
Erika Galentin with the Northwest School of Aromatic Medicine and I’m
really excited to talk to you today about a really important and fundamental
aspect of the work that we're going to do together here in the Aromatic
Medicine Garden, and the learning process that we're going to go through
together.

I think it's really important to begin with this idea of having a framework for
our learning, or a perspective, or worldview even, surrounding the use and
the incorporation of aromatic plants into our lives.

And so what I'm hoping to do here in this chat is to describe to you a

potential shift in perspective that you may really benefit from in both your
learning about aromatic plants, but also in your skill set and in your capacity
to integrate them into your lives in a safe and effective way.

I'd like to start by saying that for as long as human beings have been using
plants for healing we have had to approach the plant kingdom in this kind
of mindset of I have a problem and I need a solution.

This makes a lot of sense, especially when it comes to our health and
well-being in the body, in the psyche, and even in the spirit if we are having
a problem or experiencing a problem, or suffering an ill - we want a
solution. Of course that makes perfect sense and so for a very long time the
plant kingdom itself, and aromatic plants included, have provided solutions
to problems, have provided solutions to ills, and so it makes a lot of sense
when we're learning about aromatic plants and incorporating them into our
lives that we would approach this learning from this problem/solution sort
of perspective. 

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One of the things that I really would like to attempt to shift for you is this
idea of zooming out a little bit more and thinking about the plant kingdom
not as the source of solutions to our problems, but as tools that we can use
and incorporate into our lives to participate in a healing process. This
requires a bit of a shift or a change in worldview. 

Making A Shift From An Allopathic Mindset

I can speak for myself thinking about how I was raised in this kind of
Western medical science perspective of something is wrong - I go to the
doctor. I tell the doctor what is wrong, the doctor gives me a pharmaceutical
or maybe a surgery or surgical procedure or maybe even a medical device.
That pharmaceutical, surgery, or medical device is the solution to my
problem, and that perception or that linearity of A plus B equals C works
beautifully for Western medical sciences in regards to pharmaceuticals,
surgeries, and medical devices, but when it comes to plants and the healing
that plants are able to provide for us, we have to really step away from this
A plus B equals C sort of perception because in my experience and over 17
years of clinical practice and over 25 years of actually studying medicinal
plants, what I have learned is that plants just don't work that way. They are
not necessarily solutions to our problems.

In fact, one of the things that I tend to tell my clients quite often is this: the
herbs aren't going to solve anything for you. The aromatic plants aren't
going to solve anything for you. But what they are going to do is they are
going to work with you as tools for you to become your own solution.

When we're looking at the larger worldview of herbalism and even

aromatherapy when it comes to incorporating these aromatic plants as tools
into our perceptions of things and into our healing process there are also
other pieces involved; for example nutritional changes or lifestyle changes,
hydration, drinking more water, body movement, stress management,
laughter - you name it. There are a bunch of other tools, I could even say
talk therapy and even Western medicine are all tools in this larger palette
that we have to help ourselves be as well as we possibly can. So when we
start to look at herbs and aromatic plants as tools for healing, rather than
solutions to our problems, we are able to open up an enormous amount of
space for their work, and for our work on ourselves and our work with our
clients.

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There's a lot of taking on responsibility that happens in this shift of
perspective as well. So for example I'm not going to go to a particular herb
to solve my problem. I'm going to recognize all of the aspects of that
problem that I could potentially alter with behavioral change, change in
nutrition, maybe talk therapy, whatever it may be. And I'm going to bring
the herb in as yet another tool to help support all of these other things that
I'm doing for myself and the herbs then become allies. They become allies to
the body. They become allies to the psyche. They become allies to the spirit
and they're no longer relied upon, or we no longer project responsibility
onto them to fix what it is that we must attend to in ourselves. This requires
a bit of a shift now.

What I will say is that this can be problematic when we're trying to learn
about aromatic plants and their virtues. It is so much easier for our brains to
go, okay, this is Calendula and Calendula is good for this problem, this
problem, this problem, this problem, and this problem. I could put it on a
note card and I could go through my note cards and memorizethem that
way and often the information that is presented to us in the form of
teachings and herbals and aromatherapy books is really very
problem-oriented. It is an easy way to organize information about these
plants and so it can be very difficult to zoom out and say, what are you
talking about here? 

We shouldn’t be memorizing what plants to use for what problems but

that's what everybody teaches. It is a very common approach to learning
about herbs, and aromatic plants in particular, which I honestly believe is
unfortunate. I feel like when we really look at how a plant can support the
body; when we look at the physiology or what is often considered to be an
impact on the structure or the function of the body, we have so much more
to work with with these plants instead of pigeonholing them into okay, you
use this herb for this problem, right?

This is something that has to be overcome when we're learning about plants
and plant medicine and aromatic medicine. We have to really remember
that these are not solutions to problems. Plants and aromatic medicine is
more about gaining tools to help ourselves in overcoming, helping our
bodies in overcoming, helping our emotional well-being in integrating, or
helping our spirit in integrating their tools. They're not solutions and I think
that this is definitely a perspective that we are going to weave throughout

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the teachings about the plant kingdom here in the Aromatic Medicine
Garden. 

In this regard, I believe that it's interesting to start thinking about how we
can learn to match plants with people. So instead of matching plants with
problems we're going to work on learning about how we can match plants
with people and there are a variety of different approaches that we're going
to explore here in the Aromatic Medicine Garden about how to get really
good at that matchmaking. For example, we're going to do a whole small
class on plant energetics and aromatic energetics and the human
constitution and looking at being able to recognize larger patterns in both
the plants and in a person to be able to then kind of connect that plant and
that person through the expression of those patterns. We're going to dive
into some of that and also look at traditional use and the language of
traditional use, the language of the folklore of the plants as well. There are
clues and all of this information about how we can actually match these
plants with people rather than matching plants with problems as I've
mentioned many times already.

Examples of A Holistic Approach to Healing

I have two good examples of what I mean about shifting away from this
perspective of using plants to treat problems and moving more into how we
use plants to support people, and people in their bodies, and people in their
spirits, and people in their emotional realm. How do we match plants with
people Erika? How do we do that?

One of the easiest examples, it's probably not the nicest example, but one of
the easiest examples is looking at something like the phenomenon of
constipation. We often think about constipation as a problem because it is
obviously for many people and the solution to that problem would be to use
something like a laxative. You can't have a bowel movement, and so you're
going to use a laxative so you can have a bowel movement, right? Problem
and solution. But when we're looking at this through the lens of holistic
herbalism or holistic aromatherapy for a lack of a better word, we're not
going to be necessarily focusing on using laxatives because laxatives aren't
necessarily a great long-term solution. They are a band-aid, but the real
solution, the real opportunity, is to help support the body back into a state
of physiology where constipation is no longer a part of what's going on.

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So of course we would approach something like constipation by looking at
nutrition, diet, lifestyle, stress and hydration - all kinds of things and of
course other possible pathologies or problems that might be going on in the
digestive tract, but when we're just looking at constipation we are going to
also zoom out and perhaps we would be looking at sourcing and utilizing
plants that stimulate digestive juices, help with the peristalsis or the pulsing
of the muscles in the gut, or maybe even help stimulate the cilia on the
mucous membrane layers of the gut. Or maybe we need to really support the
nervous system because constipation is something that is coming up for a
person because of stress and tension and holding on to things. So we
wouldn't be necessarily just going constipation equals laxatives in that
scene. We would be going okay, how do we support digestive juices? How do
we raise digestive fire? What other things can we do to attend to the
person's nutrition and fiber and hydration and maybe body movement and
then of course, what about the nervous system piece? How do we support
the nervous system and promote relaxation and more effective regulation?

This is just an example and we can pull plants in at each part of this journey
through constipation. We can bring the plants in and the aromatic medicine
in so we are able to open up our possibilities when we get out of fixating on
problems and we zoom out into supporting the body, supporting the
emotional well-being, supporting spirit. There's just a lot more opportunity
there to be bringing in the plants and matching those plants with people. 

Another example that I use sometimes is, maybe a less grotesque example,
would be looking at something like chest congestion. Someone has just had
a really bad chest infection and they're still working through it and they're
full of mucus and they're full of congestion and they're coughing and they’re
coughing and they're coughing so we wouldn't want to use necessarily an
antitussive. An antitussive is an herb that suppresses the cough. We would
want to be using herbs that help promote the movement of mucus out of
the lungs and also potentially help reduce irritation in the lungs and
produce healing in the lungs. We would be calling on different herbs and
aromatic plants and aromatic medicines. I would even think in some cases
with the respiratory tract we could tap into aromatherapy pretty beautifully
here again to help really support the natural function of the lungs to be able
to move that congestion out and rid itself of it.

So it's really about looking at aromatic plants as tools to support physiology

of the body and I always encourage people if you're interested in learning

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about incorporating herbs and aromatics into your life to spend some time
learning about the human body and how it functions in health because we
want to be able to promote healthy function with the tools that we're calling
upon from the plant kingdom. We want to support the physiology of the
body. We want to support emotional well-being. We want to support
connection with spirit for whatever that might mean to you or to the person
you're working with.

What Has Changed?

I can hear you saying “okay Erika, you've mentioned to us that throughout
human history in our engagement with the plant kingdom, we have
approached the plant kingdom from this problem/solution sort of mentality.
Well, what has changed that would make us need to learn about plants
differently?”

Well, first of all, I want to mention that human culture across time and
space is very diverse in regard to how it has viewed, approached, and
interacted with the plant kingdom and so only speaking here from sort of a
western worldview, one of the things that have happened significantly in
medicine is the development of tools that are very good at solving problems
and this includes pharmaceuticals as I've mentioned, surgical procedures as
well as medical devices. Those are solutions to problems. In most cases
that's the way that they're viewed, right?

So I often talk about the role of plants in a western person's life. If I could
just put us all in a box for a second and say the role of plants aromatic
plants in a westerner’s life has changed. It’s changed since the long-ago days
of us not having pharmaceuticals and not having surgical procedures and
not having medical devices. In fact, human lifespan, in general, I'll just again
speak for the West, has expanded exponentially. Life expectancy is much
longer than it used to be before the onset of modern medicine. And so as
human beings have evolved and as our lives have evolved and as our
technology and our medicine has evolved and as our lifespan has expanded,
the role of plants in our lives has also needed to change. I think that's a
really interesting way of looking at it.

The role of aromatic plants and our lives is no longer about something like I
just got bit by a snake and I need to pack the wound with something that I
have found in the forest. We are not there anymore. We are in a different

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place now. And so with that and also with how special plants are, how
special and limited a resource plants can be, and also I'll add the explosion
of the human population, we have to be a little bit more judicious about our
approach to plants and incorporating them into our lives as tools. It changes
the energy about how we go after plants for support. If we're trying to grab
at plants, aromatic plants in particular let's say, we're trying to grab at them
as if they are some sort of solution for us - we are desperate, we are
suffering, we are ill, and we need a solution - I'm going to grab at the plants.
That's a very different energy than for example saying, “okay, I have a
problem - I'm unwell and I need tools to help support myself”. It's a very
different sort of energy there and I think it opens up more of an opportunity
for us to engage with the plant kingdom in relationship, to instead of
looking at plants as commodities to fix our problems, these are allies or
tools that we can get to know and build relationship with and hopefully
build respect for. So, I think that's another piece of why I'm suggesting we
shift our perspectives about using plants as tools for healing rather than as
solutions to our problems. It’s really true too, I mean after 17 years of clinical
practice working one-on-one with clients I have definitely learned that
plants just don't work that way.
 
The most success my clients have had incorporating herbs and aromatics
into their lives
has really been based on the capacity for change that they have created in
their lives and their behaviors towards their bodies, in their managing of
stress and emotional well-being, and the work that they have done for
themselves rather than relying on the plants to do the work for them, so
that's another piece.
 

What About First Aid?

I think I can also hear you saying “okay well what about first aid Erika?
What about first aid opportunities for herbs and aromatics?” 

And yes, I will say this - there is a time and a place for all of this. So this idea
of the first aid approach to using herbs and aromatics, they can be amazing
for first aid situations. I think a really great example would be your cooking
in the kitchen and you burn your hand on the stove and you've got the
lavender oils to put there right on the burn (we'll talk about that in another
class) but it's a really great example of first aid. I've got a problem and I'm

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reaching for aromatic plants. This is a solution, and there are circumstances
where this is totally the case. When we have a cold or the flu, or we're
dealing with stomach upset or sleeplessness; the list could go on of first aid
approaches, wound healing things like this.

So it's not to say that aromatic plants can't fit into supporting us in those
acute situations. In that case they do in some capacity become sort of
solution-like but there's a difference between engaging with the plants and
aromatic medicine like that in first aid situations versus approaching
aromatic medicine like that and the plants all of the time. There's a time
and a place is what I'm trying to say for this idea of the first aid approach to
using herbs and aromatic medicine.

Conclusion

Hopefully with all of this, I have done a pretty clear job of giving you some
examples of how we can start to shift our perspectives away from
addressing plants as solutions to our problems and focusing more on plants
and aromatic plants and aromatic medicine as part of a larger toolset for
promoting health and well-being in the body, in the psyche, and in the spirit.

Thank you very much for listening and I look forward to sharing more about
this subject as we progress through our adventures here together in the
Aromatic Medicine Gardens.

© 2023 - All Rights Reserved - The Northwest School of Aromatic Medicine