126 – The Herbalism, PTSD and Traumatic Stress course is open for enrolment!

Welcome to the Frontline Herbalism Podcast with your host, Nicole Rose, from the

Solidarity Apothecary.

This is your place for all things plants and

liberation.

Let's get started.

Hello.

Welcome back to the Frontline Herbalism

Podcast.

I hope the sound quality is okay.

My microphone is just randomly not working.

I'm in the car park as usual.

And,

yeah, I just.

I don't know if it's the USB ports on my

laptop or the mic.

Anyway, I'm.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

Like, I'm a bit of a sound nerd and I hate it

when podcasts have terrible sound quality because it just really affects, like,

accessibility stuff around listening and things like that.

So apologies if this isn't as good quality as usual,

but I'm just here for a brief moment to tell you that the Herbalism PTSD and Traumatic

Stress course is open for enrollment as we speak.

Hopefully you've heard me talk about it already, like, either on this podcast or on

the old Instagram or my newsletter.

But in case you haven't come across it, I'm going to talk about it briefly.

And the other thing I wanted to say is that the T shirts for the Mobile Herbal Clinic

Calais today is the last day to order.

Sales have absolutely tanked.

I literally want to cry because this project

means everything to me and it's normally super successful.

So maybe today we can turn the sales around and fundraise to keep the clinic going.

Yeah, the designs are ******* gorgeous, as always.

There's two awesome designs to choose from.

There's tea towels and patches as well as T

shirts.

But, yeah, please, please, please order one if you can.

If you've got some spare change.

If you don't, just share it around everywhere

would really, really appreciate it.

Okay, all right.

So, yeah, about the course.

I have recorded several different podcasts about the course in the past.

So I'll put links to those in the show notes and you can listen a bit more deeply if you're

it.

So, yeah, basically the course is like my kind of,

like, main body of work, I would say, in terms of herbal teaching.

So there's like eight different modules and we go from kind of like patterns to details.

So we look at, like, what is trauma like in terms of its political context?

Like, is there a thing called ptsd? Like, does the diagnosis stuff make sense?

Like, how do humans express distress?

How is this ******* different depending on, you know, where you're living in the world and

if you're going through a ******* genocide or not?

You know, like, how do.

Yeah, just like all the things around kind of

like the politics of trauma and linking to like loads of different practitioners and

teachers and writers and people who've been talking about this stuff for a really long

time.

Like, there's a very comprehensive resource library with the course.

And the course is kind of like,

you know, like I'm just sharing these different perspectives basically around what

is trauma and the politics of trauma.

And I think that's really, really important

for anyone has gone through a kind of life changing, distressing experience, which I

think is most humans,

just to kind of like place that for yourself in a different framework that doesn't

pathologize you, like there's something wrong with you.

But actually, you know, there's all sorts of ways that the body expresses distress.

So then we go like, hard on the geeky stuff.

We look at nervous system physiology, we go

into the science around the adrenals, around nerve cells, around, you know, how the brain

communicates with the body, like all of these things.

And we look at different nervous system states.

Like maybe you've heard people talk about like fight or flight or safe and social or freeze,

like looking at what these mean, like kind of what they look like in practice in our lives.

And then from that understanding we can start to work with plants to help us shift our own

states.

So we can work with nervines, which are herbs with an affinity for the nervous system.

So the plants, the course goes into 32 different plants in a lot of depth.

And I share a lot about how I've worked with them in my own body, in my own clinical

practice, in various herbal projects.

It's very like someone described it as embodied knowledge.

And I think that's probably the difference compared to lots of other things like books

where you're just reading this ******* list of plant actions.

Like here I'm really talking about,

oh, I think this herb helps with this, this and this.

And know in my experience,

and if someone has gone through this and blah, blah, blah.

And yeah, for a lot of people.

Well, I think for all humans that kind of

storytelling dynamic is very powerful.

But I also go quite hard on the science in

terms of referencing any clinical trials.

To be fair, I need to update the course and do kind of another literature review for the last

couple of years because things are coming out all the time.

But I talk about the limitations of research, but I also like to include it and I include

the original papers so that you can look at sample sizes and all that **** yourself.

But yeah, so I look at like nerve tonics and Relaxant nerve irons and stimulating nerve

irons and sedative nerve irons.

So all these different categories of plants

that can help shift the nervous system and support you to feel differently.

And if you're completely new to herbalism, then the course is ******* awesome.

I talk about this kind of plant ally practice and how to begin building relationships with

plants.

And then there's like a whole section on

medicine making.

And loads of people have like actually gone on to make medicine.

They haven't got overwhelmed and intimidated.

My instructions are very, very, very simple.

Go ******* Gemini Ascendant.

Do you know what I mean?

I love explaining **** and I love trying to make it accessible to people.

So yeah, I think it will help you actually put this stuff into practice, if that makes sense.

And then if you are already kind of hard in there with the herbalism, there's a whole

section around what does,

you know, what does kind of developing your herbal journey look like?

Like, what does reciprocity with plants look like?

You know, starting projects, finding your people,

all of this kind of thing.

So wherever you are on your herbal journey, I

think the course offers a lot of value.

And there's also a section about collective responses to traumatic stress.

So how together in groups, collectives, movements,

like families, like all the things like how do we address trauma and the root causes of

trauma.

Because,

you know, I can't ******* like go into this stuff without talking about that because it's

all very interconnected.

But yeah, so it's completely self paced.

You can work through, through it like in your

own timeline.

You know, it might not be.

You might not have time and space to look at it now, but you might have more time in the

summer, for example.

And if you enroll now, then you can just log in at a later date.

I have like an automated thing on my website, so it emails you every eight weeks with like a

gentle reminder with like how to access your login detail.

For people that like struggle with that accountability of like enrolling in an online

course and never completing it.

I would never do that.

I'm just joking.

So yeah, like, I think,

you know, it's designed to be as accessible as possible.

Some people work through it in just like a bang linear way, like lesson by lesson.

And other people like to like skip around off kind of like, you know, they're interested in

Hawthorne, so they watch the Hawthorne video or they're struggling with their sleep, so

they watch their sleep video.

Or, you know, they've got a friend who's really going through it like trauma wise.

So they watch one of the Nervous System States videos.

You know, like, you can bounce around basically and practice what I think is known

as, like, just in time learning of, like, you go to the thing that's,

like, most relevant for you in that moment.

That's personally how I learn.

Like, I'll have a client and they'll have a

certain health issue, and I'll be like, right, I'm gonna just go on a deep dive into

researching that.

And that for me, just makes it, like, tangible and practical and, you know, like, important

in that moment.

And I think in a world, like shitloads of

information,

that's really, really valuable.

So, yeah, it's kind of like a big resource library that you can dip in and out of.

And I think a lot of people studying herbalism because you can go in so many ways, right?

You can go plant chemistry and go horticulture and gardening, you can go health, you can go

nutrition, you can go foraging.

But, like, some people just really, really, really value that structure.

And, like, don't want to blow my own trumpet, but, like, I think I'm pretty good at, like,

structuring information,

making accessible, putting it together in this, like, super organized, accessible way.

And that's the feedback I've had from shitloads of learners is, like, it is really

accessible.

You know, I've even got ******* memes in the

lessons.

So, like, I try and make things funny and, you know, I can hear all my exes, like, rolling

their eyes like, nicole, you're not funny anyway.

But I'm just saying, like, it's.

Yeah, it's very different, I think, to lots of things on the old Internet.

So anyway, is open for enrolment as we speak.

Most importantly is no one turned away for

lack of funds.

So you can access the course with a code that takes the price down to zero.

And you can access it for free or you can put in whatever donation you can afford.

You can set up a monthly donation option where you put in three quid a month.

Or, you know, you can also pay the full whack, but do it on, like a payment plan.

Just like £10amonth or something.

Yeah, it's, you know, it's designed to be financially accessible for folks.

And the good ******* news is that it sustains the Solidarity pottery.

So, like, this is what pays for the postage of the books to prisoners or my herbal care

packages that go to people experiencing state repression and prisoner families.

You know, it funds loads of medicine making for Calais.

It funds, like, people obviously being able to access this course for free who need it.

IT funds at the moment, the Black Flag Herbal Clinics.

We haven't started doing like our autonomous fundraising yet, so I'm able to support people

like one to one through that.

So, yeah, so basically your contribution keeps all of that Solidarity infrastructure alive.

And that's like really, really.

Yeah, really important.

And anyway, okay, I'm gonna stop running and

raving.

Please check the course out.

Please check the merch out.

I'm gonna be back with an episode all about

nerve tonics very soon.

And yeah, please share it as well.

I really, really appreciate any shares.

Okay. All right, I'm going to stop now.

But yeah, please check it out.

Okay, thanks.

Thanks so much for listening to the Frontline Herbalism podcast.

You can find the transcript, the links, all the resources from the

show@solidarityapothecary.org podcast.