Reviving the Art of Embodied Herbalism

There’s so much movement toward learning herbalism right now. It’s incredible! However, trying to download generations of knowledge in a short amount of time can be overwhelming. As you study herbs and develop your home apothecary, you might be feeling like you need to “know it all.” Learning from books and classes is great, but how does it all shake out in your everyday life? How can you practice an embodied herbalism that activates your senses and body memory?

Embodied Herbalism

Herbalism is an art. So much of it is about being able to pay attention in present time to not only the plants and the earth but also our body. What is it that awakens your body and activates that embodied real-time experience with the herbs? What will move your family and the culture forward?

I’ve interviewed hundreds of great herbalists who know how to do a lot, and yet almost all of them don’t feel satisfied. Even long-time herbalists often have a constant nagging feeling of, “I don’t know enough. I need to learn more.” You don’t have to be an expert of it all.

What if you can just focus on a few things that really bring herbalism into your family? In order to bring the kids along, herbalism has got to be something fun that you play with and use. You want the people around you to be like, “That’s really interesting! I want to try that. Let’s slap some herbs on ourselves.”

What’s a simple thing you can do to activate your senses and find your true north?

One way to get started is to consider how you and your family decompress your daily stressors. So many of us have that To Do List. We’re just go, go, go. I was taught to decompress by sitting in front of the TV, eating popcorn and pizza, smoking, drinking wine at the end of the day. That’s all fine, but what is the restorative and regenerative culture that you are infusing into your household?

The screen is not just on a TV in the living room anymore. It’s in our pocket. The loudspeaker is all around us telling us which way to go and what to do. We must fortify our home healing traditions from a trickle to a strong river of oral tradition because the pharmaceutical campaigns are not going away anytime soon.

Embodied herbalism techniques are about how you reawaken yourself and find true north. What is your healing home culture? What’s a simple thing that you can do to activate your senses and find your true north?

Two embodied herbalism practices that I love are herbal brushing and foot oiling.

Herbal Brushing

I love what I call herbal brushing, or herbal sweeping, with little bundles of fresh or dried herbs. The herbs can be from your garden, or perhaps a windfallen branch that you find on your morning walk. If you don’t have a garden, you can make bundles of dried herbs. You can use herbs such as eucalyptus, lavender, rosemary, sage, cedar, thyme, juniper, and cypress. If you don’t have those herbs, don’t worry, your intention is as important as the herb bundle you use.

You just take the herb bundle and sweep it over your body. Click here to see a video where I demonstrate herbal brushing.

You might be thinking, “I’ve never done that. I don’t know how to do it. That’s kind of weird,” but the body remembers. All of a sudden, you’ll find yourself sweeping a lot in one spot or thinking, “My gosh, I start to feel my heart again!” As you brush, you might start to feel like, “This part feels like it needs a little bit more. Wow, I need some more here.”

The process of herbal brushing is multilayered. First, you’re getting the herbs on your skin. This is about awakening the senses. We are sensory beings wired to perceive and communicate with our environment. For a lot of us, we’ve shut that part down. As you brush with the herbs, you’re activating those aromatic oils that enter your skin and change your blood chemistry right away.

In this sensory awakening, the herbs themselves are working on you, and you are awakening your memory of being a healer.

You’re also awakening your memory of being able to heal. I wasn’t raised with being taught that you can heal and that your hands are healing. As you’re brushing yourself or someone else, you start to just feel where you should go and what you should do. In this sensory awakening, the herbs themselves are working on you, and you are awakening your memory of being a healer.

A lot of embodied herbalism practices are not just about what the herbs can do for you, but what you can do to help the herbs and remember that you have the capacity to self-heal. When you mix your hands with the herbs together, you heal. You don’t have to be a yogini. You don’t have to be a massage therapist. You just have to start.

You know that you’re on the right path to embodied herbalism when the four-year-olds go, “I want to do it!” and they pick up and start sweeping and brushing. Hang out with some children and whenever you try to pick up, see if they pick it up and then you know you’re going toward embodiment.

I have a lavender and rosemary hedge in my garden. I go out and I pick my herb bundle and sweep while I’m on my morning walk. I feel better when I brush, a little bit lighter. It doesn’t solve everything that I’m stressing about. But it’s about having a simple thing that you can do with the herbs to just take that little layer off throughout the day.

Foot Oiling

I often say, “a family that oils together, stays together.” You’re studying herbalism, but are the people around you studying herbalism? Are they on board with you? Or is it just like, “Oh God, Mom!”

In our family, we do foot oiling if we’re going to watch a movie. We also have family “check-in” meetings at the end of the day, so I get out the oil and the towels and we rub each other’s feet. You don’t have to use an herbal oil, although an herbal infused oil takes it to the next level. You can just use sesame oil or olive oil.

There are so many nerve endings in the feet. By oiling the feet, you are accessing the entire body. It’s amazing what can happen in just five minutes of foot oiling. Suddenly, you notice the person that you’re oiling takes a deep breath. What’s that deep breath worth? A lot! If you just do five minutes of foot oiling, that embodied herbalism can change the whole stress conglomerate in your household.

We are in the process of waking a culture that honors our earth and listens to our body.

I had a student who studied with me for many years, so I got to watch her progression. She had difficult family gatherings, so one day after class, she said, “I am going to do foot oiling at the beginning of a family gathering like Thanksgiving and Christmas.” At first, only the six-year-olds would do it with her, and they had so much fun. The next gathering, some of her aunts joined. Finally, three or four years later, all the men, everybody was doing it! Now, it’s part of their family culture to de-stress, unwind and just take 5 or 10 minutes doing this simple technique.

I also have another student who is a clinical herbalist with a huge apothecary, but she realized, “My family is not learning this. Here I am doing all this stuff and there’s this huge gap.” No matter where you are, if you’re just beginning or you’re super advanced in your herbal studies, where is the home healing, nurturing art? Are you doing something that really brings it into your family?

That client started doing herbal foot scrubs and herbal oiling with her family and they are so much more literate about stress and herbs now. It’s so important to do this because it only takes one generation for herbalism to be thrown out the window. Just because you’re spending all this time now learning doesn’t mean that the next generation is going to pick it up in your family line. It is also your job to track how the people around you are picking it up.

Home Healing Traditions

We are in the process of waking a culture that honors our earth and listens to our body. Most of us have an experience of going to the doctor and being listened to for just 10 minutes. How do we instead create a healing, nurturing, loving, restorative culture that allows us to be able to receive the herbal medicine? We bring Mother Earth into our home and say, “Mother Earth, please heal me.” We hook up our heart, our emotions and our hands.

How do you use the herbs to come back to find your body? There are a million pathways home. You pick something that engages the people around you and then you start to hear yourself. With this simple act, you offer your attention, your intention, your love to your body and the plants. That’s what I think herbal medicine is all about — the harvesting of the plant, making something with our hands and a wish from our heart. This knowledge lives deep in our bones.

With embodied herbalism, you are reawakening your self-healing capacity and ability to heal in your home.

With embodied herbalism, you are reawakening your self-healing capacity and ability to heal in your home. Culture is created in the home, in the kitchen and the living room. This is the art of the hearth. It calls us back to the kitchen where we have an authentic experience of connection, of making something that’s rooted in the harvest around us.

Also consider what role herbs play in your family’s seasonal celebrations. When do you notice nature’s gifts and celebrate? Maybe it’s when the fir tips emerge or during blackberry season or the pumpkin harvest. That’s the medicine inspired by the abundance of the earth.

Again, this knowledge lives deep in our bones. The impulse to live closer to the earth has been awakened. Let us move from a culture that desecrates the earth to the one that is creating a sacred covenant with all that sustains us.

I would love to hear from you! Do you have a simple herbal practice that activates your senses? How do you bring herbalism into your home culture? Please share in the comments below.