95 – Herbal Support for Trauma

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.

Today's episode is all about herbal support for trauma.

So, yeah, I'm kind of trying to give a little bit of a flavor of what's in the Herbalism

PTSD and Traumatic stress course by giving a kind of framework of how I work with plants to

respond to trauma.

So I introduce a little bit about what is trauma, common trauma dynamics, collective

responses to traumatic stress.

And then, yeah, go into like, how can plant

medicines help us with trauma?

Looking at different sorts of nerve ions and herbs for the.

That have an affinity with the nervous system.

So it's kind of like, yeah, sneak peek of

things that I go into in much more depth in the course.

But I hope it is valuable for you.

The course, the Herbalism PTSD and Traumatic Stress course is still open for enrollment

until Sunday, the 13th of April.

So, yeah, I'm so overwhelmed by how many

people have been supportive.

I put an email out on my email list yesterday asking if folks could just share it on their

networks because I'm kind of struggling at the moment, if you didn't know.

The course is obviously like an amazing offering, but it is also like the main way I

generate funds for the Solidarity Apothecary.

So that means like, every course contribution

goes towards,

you know, paying for the costs involved in making herbal care packages that go out to

frontline organizers around the world, like protest sites, occupations,

you know, grassroots groups, like resisting oppression, like all over the place.

It pays for hundreds of prisoners herbal books to go out every single month again across the

world.

And it also covers my time in everything that

I do in terms of workshops and creating content and supporting people one to one,

which is something I'll be returning to.

And yeah, when I used to go to Calais would also kind of enable me to do that with the

mobile herbal clinic, for example.

So, yeah, I, yeah, want to keep doing this

work of supporting people experiencing state violence like with herbalism.

And yeah, just everyone's support is just amazing in helping keep this project going and

enabling me to focus on it full time.

So, yeah, thank you for all your support.

Yeah. Please check out the course page if you haven't heard about it.

Please share this episode with anyone who you think is curious about the roles that herbs

can play in.

Yeah, the kind of,

yeah.

The suffering and the life experiences and the

hardship that humans go through.

All over the world.

And I know that harm is definitely not evenly distributed in terms of who is experiencing

oppression.

But yeah, all humans.

All humans, like, suffer and go through, you

know, life experiences of distress and grief and loss and change.

And plants can accompany us.

Yeah.

Over a lifetime.

So that's why I love them so much.

Anyway, thank you for listening.

I will let you get on with the episode.

Okay, take care.

Bye.

Okay, so I'm gonna dive into herbal support for trauma.

And yeah, just a couple of content warnings that I do reference kind of traumatic things

as like little examples.

I don't go into loads of detail, but I might

be like, oh, for example, you can see this in an abusive relations or you can see this in

prison.

So, yeah, just a kind of heads up that that's in this episode.

If you want to skip forward to the herbal content, I totally understand and I'll do my

best to kind of keep the trauma related things at the beginning of the episode.

Okay, so, yeah, what is trauma? So there is no single definition.

It comes from the Greek word for wound or damage.

And one kind of framing that I really like is that trauma is a distressing, disturbing or

wounding experience or injury experienced in many ways over a lifetime.

Because I think lots of people will be like, oh, I haven't experienced trauma, but have you

ever experienced distress, for example? And I think most humans, or nearly all humans

will through their lifetime.

And also distress looks differently, Right? Like maybe that's losing a loved one or maybe

that's having a car accident.

It's like, yeah, I think distress is kind of

like, yeah, a kind of inclusive way of framing the huge spectrum of life experiences that

someone can go through over a lifetime.

But trauma is also starting to be recognized as like, the response to these experiences.

So the response in the body and the nervous system to a distressing, disturbing, or

wounding experience.

And yeah, that I explore that a lot more in the herbalism, PTSD and traumatic stress

course, you know, where I dive into all of this stuff in much more detail.

But just to kind of set the scene like we explore in the course, like common trauma

dynamics.

And I'm going to run through like a few of

these now.

So, yeah, often there is a threat to life.

So that means maybe our life is threatened or we are witnessing someone else's life be

threatened.

You know, in traditional PTSD literature that might be like, what, you know, seeing someone

in a car accident, for example, or being in a car accident yourself.

Maybe it's, you know, being in a ******* genocide and, you know, experiencing and

witnessing death, like, relentlessly.

Or, you know, it could also be feeling like your life is threatened.

So, for example,

growing up in a kind of violent household where you're regularly fearing for your

safety, that is a kind of common trauma dynamic that encapsulates like, threat to

life.

Trauma will commonly, like, alter or destroy our assumptions of safety.

And not everyone grows up with a feeling of safety by any means.

But oftentimes people might have, like, a baseline sense of the world as being kind of

safe, and then that's just, you know, completely altered by trauma.

So, for example, if someone has had, like a general, you know, okay, dynamic with other

humans and relating and different partners and things, and then experiences sexual assault,

for example, that might kind of alter or destroy their assumptions of safety, like

thereforward.

Trauma often also involves situations of abandonment and powerlessness.

So that can mean that we're rendered helpless by, like, an overwhelming force.

And that can be something like a, you know, like a tsunami or like a quote unquote,

natural disaster.

Because, you know, I know people challenge the concept of natural disasters because so many

of them are attributed to, like, human induced climate change or capitalism induced climate

change.

But, yeah, often it's like being rendered helpless by something more powerful than

ourselves.

Trauma often involves disconnection from others.

So, for example, that could be like social alienation,

you know, in an abusive relationship that disconnects you from other people or, you

know, an institution like prison or psychiatric hospital, for example.

And yeah, a common trauma dynamic is captivity.

So this,

you know, has like, a whole range of trauma dynamics, such as, like, an inability to

escape,

prolonged and repeated coercive control, threat of death or harm, isolation,

submission, violation of our own moral principles and dehumanisation.

And I kind of go into each of those in more depth in the course, but just to kind of give

you an overview.

And yeah, trauma generally instills fear, right?

And fear can look like moving forward.

That can look like intense anxiety or hyper

vigilance.

Vigilance or distress, nightmares, things like

this.

And it is worth naming that trauma is often not just like a standalone thing, like it

commonly compounds with other traumatic experiences.

So someone might have a very traumatic childhood with a lot of abuse and neglect, and

then, for example, end up in the prison system.

Or they might end up having an abusive relationship when they're older or experience

sexual trauma, something like this.

Or maybe someone has grown up with intense

racism and racial trauma, and they've experienced that with the birth of their child

and experienced birth trauma and medical trauma, all of these forms of Trauma commonly

kind of interact with each other and build.

And yeah, it's not just one.

This kind of compounding nature is very real.

So yeah, how can trauma affect the body? It is worth saying that there are patterns of

how the body expresses distress and that would lead to frameworks such as a PTSD diagnosis.

And the course has a whole lesson all about exploring the political consequences of using

language like diagnosis or tools of psychiatry and things as tools of oppression.

But I like to think that people will self identify what works for them and what's

empowering for them because diagnostic labels can be empowering for some people.

But yeah, there are common patterns of how the body expresses distress.

But we all kind of have our own fault lines.

So we all have our own ways.

Someone's anxiety might result in a lot of

kind of gut issues or diarrhea or you know, gut related anxiety and someone else's that

might result in like musculoskeletal pain, for example.

So yeah, I just want to say that, you know, we're intimately connected to our environments

and like everything we go through in our lives is shaping our body and our kind of

physiology, like all the time.

Okay. So yeah, these kind of patterns that I've put together in the course of how the

body expresses distress are like sleep disturbances,

changes in world memories, flashbacks and triggers, chronic disconnectedness, arousal

and reactivity.

And yeah, I go into kind of depth about what

they look like, but I'm just going to give like a kind of summary.

So starting I think with the most common which is this like arousal and reactivity.

And I don't mean arousal like a kind of sexual arousal, I mean arousal as in like you're like

on like high alert and you're activated.

So if you think about it, if you had been attacked by a bear, for example, it would make

sense that you were waiting to be attacked again, that every time you went for a walk in

the woods you'd be hyper vigilant that you're going to find a bear and it's going to happen

again.

So it is absolute survival part of the nervous system.

And yeah, this arousal and reactivity involves the sympathetic nervous system.

So again in the course I dive into nervous system physiology and that's why it's really

important to understand these kind of different aspects of the nervous system.

So yeah, hyper arousal looks like kind of the activation of the sympathetic nervous system.

So this is our like fight, flight, freeze response.

And I talk about that a lot more in the course when we do the nervous system deep dive.

But yeah, generally we're in sort of like this fight and flight kind of activated state.

There's often like a high emotional charge and often like after trauma, there's like an

increasing reactivity over time.

Hyper vigilance.

So for example, feeling constantly on edge,

scanning for danger, suspicion, muscle tension.

Like I said, like if you're walking into the woods where you've been attacked by a bear,

you're going to be on kind of high alert.

And yeah, there are often real expressions of anger and rage and on a kind of lower level,

like irritability,

there might be feelings of grief, there might be feelings and kind of desires for revenge

and like needing to kind of like fight this sort of injustice, if that makes sense.

Often this kind of reactive state comes with like, quote unquote, like impaired emotional

control.

So someone isn't necessarily capable of really

like regulating their emotions and kind of staying like quote unquote calm.

Like, you know, they feel a sense of aggression and hostility.

And often, you know, this kind of trauma response results in like destructive behavior,

for example, recklessness or.

Yeah, self harm or suicidality or kind of seeking respite from the distress with things

like drugs or alcohol or workaholism, for example.

And I know those are all like really complex areas.

You know, I've done workshops and trainings around supporting people who are suicidal, for

example.

So I don't.

Yeah, I just want to give a disclaimer that these are all really, really complicated

things that we go into more depth in the course.

But yeah, with this sort of arousal and reactivity response, like we have basically

like this heightened fear of the world and there's this altered baseline.

Right.

So there's a kind of reference to this like

fear of the ordinary.

So it's not like you're frightened and everything makes sense because you should be

frightened.

For example, living in like a literal

genocide, like in Gaza, for example, it's more like once something is over and you're still

experiencing that same level of fear, that is kind of what trauma looks like in the body.

Does that make sense? So, yeah, often there's feelings of overwhelm.

And you know, people can be completely paralyzed by a sense of overwhelm.

And you know, that can lead to things like difficulty concentrating, for example,

things like panic attacks, but also just like anxiety, just like generalized unfocused

anxiety, like this feeling of kind of dread and like innate despair.

Okay. And another aspect of how distress is kind of moving through the body is like sleep

disturbances.

Right.

So people will have trouble falling asleep or staying Asleep, they often commonly have

insomnia.

There'll be patterns of nightmares and distressing dreams.

And that's something the herbalism, PTSD and traumatic stress goes into a lot more depth

around things like nutritional deficiencies that affect your sleep and that can cause or

contribute to worsening nightmares,

you know, as well as things like,

you know, the amazing variety of plants that can help you sleep, but, you know, can also

worsen nightmares sometimes.

So I talk about all those nuances in depth.

Another aspect of trauma is chronic disconnectedness.

So, for example,

relationship challenges, you know, struggling to trust people, struggling to feel safe,

feeling fearful when, like, interacting with other people, potentially self isolating

altogether, feeling alienated, having kind of diminished interest in, like, socializing and

connection.

And there's also this like, self disconnection, you know, like sensations of

dissociation or feeling numb or feeling hopeless.

And then.

Yeah, changes in worldview are like a large

factor in trauma.

So there is often this like, moment of kind of rupture where, like, our assumptions of safety

about the world, about, you know, the meaning of life, about our purpose, you know, maybe we

have like a relationship with God that we lose.

For example, when, you know, going through something traumatic,

there's often a feeling of being kind of betrayed.

Yeah.

There's often a sensation of grief or guilt or

shame, feeling unlovable.

You know, generally trauma comes with negative

beliefs about ourselves and about the world, you know, that we come to expect the worst,

you know, and often that can lead to even just a feeling of like,

really not caring if we live or die, for example.

Example.

And yet there's often this kind of constant state of stress.

So feeling the strain and pressure and that, you know, we don't have the resources to meet

the demands of our lives.

And that life is like exceeding our ability to cope.

And that's because our nervous system is not just dealing with the here and now, it's also

dealing with like, everything we've been through, for example.

And, you know, there's loads of factors that contribute to what worsens these dynamics.

Things like uncertainty and lack of information and loss of.

Of control.

And. Yeah, I go into that stuff in much more depth in the course.

Yeah.

And then the other kind of category in this

common ways that the body expresses distress is memories, flashbacks and triggers.

And, you know, this is like a big section in an in and of itself.

But it's really common for people who've experienced trauma to experience like,

recurrent, involuntary and distressing memories.

On the other foot, people can also have a lot of amnesia and Memory loss and challenges and

kind of recall.

In the course, I talk more about what flashbacks are, you know, that they're sort of

unintegrated, unprocessed memories of, like, an overwhelming event.

And triggers are, like, emotional and physiological reactions to reminders of, you

know, and, like, warnings of what is safe and not safe.

And, you know, they're not just historical.

It's not just like, oh, this happened, so

therefore it's my trigger.

It's also like, this person's being, like,

racist right now, and that is, like a current trigger.

Does that make sense? Often there is, like, an avoidance of triggers

a lot, but people can also be drawn to their triggers and, you know, especially when trauma

has become a sort of source of meaning and aliveness.

And, you know, I've definitely seen this in people that do sort of, like, frontline kind

of organizing type work.

So, yeah, there's also,

you know, like, a whole plethora of emotional strategies to cope with trauma.

Like people minimizing things, saying everything is fine, or suppression, like,

refusing to discuss what's happened.

Whereas other people, it's this kind of dramatization, like, this feeling that they

can't stop talking about it.

And some people just constantly need to analyze what's happened.

And other people just have to kind of enter this, like, flight state of, you know,

completely changing, moving away, changing who they are, for example, to kind of cope with.

Yeah, that rupture.

So, yeah, I would just kind of ask you to

reflect on, like, how do you commonly express distress?

Like, is it kind of more anxiety or is it a sensation of grief?

Or are you someone whose sleep just goes off, like, as soon as you're experiencing something

stressful or distressing? You know, like, that's why I think the course

is important, because it introduces, like, this whole diversity of ways we can express

distress.

And that's, like, a key way of finding which plant medicines are gonna hopefully be allies

and work with us.

Because, yeah, we all kind of have unique ways

of expressing trauma and distress.

And therefore there's also plants that can help with those kind of corresponding.

Corresponding ways that we're expressing distress.

Okay, I hope that makes sense.

So now I'm just gonna give, like, a teeny,

teeny, teeny, teeny introduction to the nervous system before I dive into, like,

plants and their kind of.

Yeah. Offerings for people experiencing trauma.

Um, so I've just shared a couple of posts on my Instagram, actually, with, like, nice

graphics and things about explaining these nervous system states and, oh, my God, it is

so difficult to talk about them in like any brevity.

But you may have heard me mention before, the sympathetic nervous system.

So this is like a network of nerves through our body that enables the body to kind of act.

You know, it's like a state of mobilization.

It activates our fight or flight response.

You know, say we see a car like coming at us at 60 miles an hour.

Our body is going to communicate to us like right, we need to get the **** out of the way

and we're going to get adrenaline.

You know, there's going to be like a whole range of physiological effects like increased

heart rate, increased blood pressure, fast metabolism, like so many things, you know,

increased strength, like.

Yeah. Then that's going to just enable us to like achieve our safety or try and achieve our

safety.

So yeah, this is just such a brief introduction.

But yeah, the sympathetic nervous system has so many functions, but when it's in this state

kind of longer term or chronically, that's when we start to have like health issues.

I talk about these in like a binary, but I say in the course how they're definitely not a

binary and there's like much more complicated kind of things to do with these nervous system

states.

I don't know if you can hear the dog starring in the background, but he's really distracting

me.

So the parasympathetic nervous system is another, you know, network of nerves that

helps us to like rest and digest our food.

You know, the short acronym is like rest and

digest.

So in this state we are supported to have, you know, increased immunity.

We can feel a sense of calmness and connection and a sensation of safety and yeah, there's

like really this ability to like feel safe and social and to kind of relate to other people

and you know,

non humans.

But yeah, and in this state this is when the body like repairs itself.

Right.

It conserves the energy of the body and it

repairs tissues.

Which is why when you're in a really chronic

state of stress and you get a long term chronic illness, it's very difficult to kind

of.

Yeah. Enable the body's kind of natural inclination to move towards like self healing.

Because we need to be in this nervous system state to enable that to happen.

Which is why people that have experienced significant trauma, like it's a real

challenge, especially if you've grown up as a kid being in like a dominant sympathetic fight

or flight state.

And herbs are ******* amazing because they can be our biggest teachers in cultivating and

understanding of how we feel when we're in this more kind of calm parasympathetic state.

And this state is really essential for preparing us for sleep.

And, yeah, it triggers, like, a whole raft of physiological effects, like lowering our blood

pressure, for example.

So in the course, I do a real deep dive into the different nervous system states through

this framework of, like, the polyvagal theory.

And I'm not going to introduce that now because that's like a whole other podcast, but

you can Google it.

And the sort of different states that I

introduce in much more depth with examples.

And things are safe and social.

So this is our kind of parasympathetic state

where, you know, we're able to connect with people.

We feel socially engaged.

And that's very different, for example, to being in the fight response, which is when,

you know, we might feel, like, anger or hostility or irritability, like desire to

argue with people,

you know, like muscle tension, stuff like this.

Whereas flight often is more like we just need to get out of there, you know, and there's.

Yeah, again, it's so impossible to abbreviate these states.

But flight might look like bursting into tears, for example.

But, yeah, it's just this kind of desperate need to.

Yeah, to kind of.

Yeah. To distance ourselves from whatever's triggering us, if that makes sense.

Sorry, that's not the greatest explanation.

It's so hard to summarize these states.

But, yeah, generally, flight is us, like.

Yeah. Needing to kind of move away.

And then there's shutdown.

So this is when this is actually a type of

kind of parasympathetic state.

So it's not just kind of calm, but it's

actually like, if you think of a possum, it's like playing dead.

It's like when our system kind of shuts down.

And, yeah, I give various examples of that, of people that have experienced trauma and how

that can be a consequence for lots of people to be in, like, a really depressed,

dissociated shutdown state.

And then we have our, like, mixed states.

So this is when we might have a lot of

activation, but actually we're kind of frozen.

So the freeze state is like, the title of

that.

And play is like, when we feeling safe and social and engaged, but actually we're kind of

activated.

You know, that might be in sport or during sex

or intimacy, for example.

And then we have stillness.

So that's when we're in kind of the

parasympathetic state.

But, you know, we're also, again, feeling kind

of safe and social, but in a, like, still way.

So, yeah, I dive into those in so Much detail in the course.

But I'm going to move into talking about herbal support now.

And I just want to give the context of these so that, you know, this section, this section

makes sense.

Okay, so yeah, just before I dive into the herbal stuff, there is an entire module in the

course which includes a trauma response framework which is looking at collective

responses to stress.

And you can read about this a little bit on the course page.

But it's basically structured as rest and renew.

So that's basically after any kind of traumatic experience, like the body will need

to rest, for example.

I'm sure if people have lost someone they

love, they'll know that after a big kind of bereavement that there comes this kind of wave

of exhaustion and a desperate need for kind of hibernation and isolation and tourism past.

And I've got here renew.

So it's like we need to basically have

resources to recover from those experiences.

And herbs are like one part of that toolkit,

right, that can help us rest and can also help us renew in terms of repairing tissues.

But all of these, all of these, like frameworks demand, you know, are part of like

collective responses.

So in the course I talk about what are the

ways we can like connect with other people and rest with other people, for example.

And yeah, the next phase of the framework is reconnect.

So like, you know, unfortunately,

well, not unfortunately, but we need other people like humans need humans.

Like, no matter how much we think we don't, we really do.

And so it's all about how can we like, move towards, like social connection and

reconnection.

And plants are fantastic at helping us stretch that muscle and build those muscles in

connection because we can trust plants.

Like they're not humans.

You know, non humans are incredibly healing because they're very different to people,

especially for people who've experienced trauma.

And then there's also release, which actually I should have talked about first in this

framework.

But it's not a linear framework.

Like it is cyclical and non linear.

But release is like, generally if someone's

been through a kind of traumatic experience, like then we've got all that like embodied

energy,

you know, that rage, that anger, that irritability and frustration and that needs to

come out, you know, and maybe that comes out in like intense physical exercise or maybe

that comes out with screaming or singing or some sort of creative project.

But yet release is like a fundamental part of kind of trauma response.

And I've also included like resistance and revolution.

So we need to be addressing the causes of trauma.

You Know, and a lot of people that have gone through something traumatic have then gone on

to help other people that are experiencing that, Whether that's survivors of sexual

violence going on to support other survivors or ex prisoners going on to, you know,

organized prison solidarity and abolitionist stuff.

It's like, what is the point in recovering and healing and doing all of this work to try and.

Yeah.

Feel like a ****** human again?

If we can't, then, you know, kind of support other people and try and address the causes of

the trauma.

Which are, like, nearly all political, Right? Well, they are all political.

So, anyway, just disclaimer, before I get into the herbal things that.

Yeah.

That I include this kind of whole module about

collectivity and sort of structural change and how we can respond to trauma together.

Okay.

All right.

So, yeah, in terms of herbal support for

trauma, like, I'm sorry, I've got, like, a massive A module course all about this.

And I'm trying so hard to summarize it.

But, yeah, I am a real passionate, kind of relational herbalist in the sense of.

I think it is the act of herbalism that is healing.

So it's not just like, oh, took this tincture, and it helped me with this.

This and this symptom.

It's actually like, no, I am building

relationships with plants and practicing herbalism, you know, learning, like, herbal

skills, and that is what's really healing.

Because herbalism is really based on

relationships.

So, yeah, plant medicines can kind of transform your life by enabling this deeper

relationship with the land, which is, like, super restorative because of, you know,

all the things.

Colonialism, industrialism, like capitalism,

like, everything.

All the forces in the world that are trying to

separate us and sever us from the land are kind of traumatizing us in different ways.

And therefore,

reconnecting with the land and having a relationship with the world is, like, in my

opinion, like, intrinsically kind of healing in just, like, so many ways that so many

people have talked about and described and things.

Okay. So plant medicines can also really, actually help with kind of tangible health

challenges as well.

For example, improving our sleep and

digestion, preventing, you know, chronic disease and reducing inflammation that is

likely to be occurring because of this, like, chronic overactivation of the nervous system

and just.

Yeah. Aiding the nervous system to rest and recover while we're doing, like, challenging,

difficult work, like, you know, surviving in this world and resisting oppression.

So, yeah, I just.

Before I, you know, go into all of the plant

things, I just want to just cover my bases, that I encourage you to kind of research

herbal Safety.

And, you know, don't start working with a plant just because of something I've

recommended here.

You know, do further research, check any

contraindications if this herb is safe in pregnancy or safe with any, like, medication

or pharmaceuticals you're taking, etc.

Etc.

Okay, so what are nervines? So, just a loose definition.

They are herbs with an affinity for the nervous system.

And I'm just gonna briefly introduce the different kinds.

So I'm gonna talk about relaxant nervines, cardiac nervines, hypnotic nerve ends, nerve

tonics, and stimulating nervines.

All right, so the first category is relaxant

nervines.

And these help the body reduce that activation

of the sympathetic nervous system.

So that's why I try to introduce these kind of two nervous system states.

So these herbs can kind of like tone down that, like, fight or flight response.

And they can also support us to access a more parasympathetic.

Parasympathetic system states.

So they can help trigger feelings of

relaxation and rest and recovery.

Generally, they're kind of common actions is

they often help reduce anxiety and they can aid sleep.

Many of them have an action like that helps lower blood pressure.

And, yeah, we have this word in herbalism called a carminative, and it basically means

something that's kind of calming and antispasmodic on the guts.

And they can also help relieve tension, like, elsewhere in the body.

And they often have, like, a direct action on neurotransmitters,

which is something I talk about more in depth in the herbalism PTSD and traumatic stress

course, where I sort of go into common neurotransmitters.

And, yeah, different research around herbal medicine and that.

But, yeah, some of the common ones that I profile, like, in depth in the course include

lavender,

lemon balm, chamomile, catnip, and fever view.

And I like to think of relaxant irvines as, like, really fantastic for that kind of

background,

background anxiety, like that background activation where we don't feel good, if that

makes sense.

Like, we feel that underlying anxiety, like,

almost like you've got a browser open with, like, 50 tabs.

Like, that's what I think anxiety can feel like to lots of people.

So relaxant nervines just, like, help close the tabs.

Does that make any sense? I feel like that's such an Aquarian metaphor.

Okay, so, yeah, the other.

The kind of next category that I explore in

the course are cardiac nervines.

And I just want to say that these herbs can be

in like multiple categories.

Right.

Like many of these ones I'm going to talk

about now are also relaxant nervines.

But yeah, cardiac nervines can support the

nervous system through their affinity with the heart and the cardiovascular system.

And in the course I like do a kind of introduction to herbal energetics.

But we have these kind of this language of.

And you know, traditional medicine systems all

over the world have had this.

We have a language of, you know, is something cooling or warming or moistening or drying,

for example.

And our kind of cardiac nervines are commonly

cooling and they're often moistening as well,

but not always.

But yeah, they can also kind of support the emotional heart like especially around kind of

grief and everything like heart related, like heartbreak.

So yeah, the herbs that I profile in the course include yarrow, hawthorn, motherwort,

rose and linden flowers, or some people call them lime flowers.

But yeah, they have a ton of amazing actions.

You know, like I've said, a lot of them are

relaxants.

So they have this relaxant action through the

body helping relax muscles and blood vessels, which is really important when we're in sort

of fight or flight because that has such an impact on our sort of vasculature.

They can help reduce blood pressure.

They often contain flavonoids, which help kind

of protect the vasculature from, from oxidative of stress and damage.

And you know.

Yeah, there's like a whole load of stuff in

the course around how trauma relates to chronic illness.

So if we're thinking about things like inflammation in the cardiovascular system or

you know, having more kind of,

you know, glucose in the blood, for example, blood sugar issues, that's often because

people are in fight or flight a lot.

Right.

And if you know you're experiencing trauma or systemic oppression, that's putting you in

fight or flight more.

You're going to have more, more risk to things like type 2 diabetes, for example.

But yeah, Hawthorne can be very protective like with the arteries and blood vessels in

general.

And yeah, I mentioned about cholesterol and they, you know, some of these cardiac nerve

ions can also help with the kind of circulation in the heart itself.

Helping with things like angina.

Yeah. And you know, they can also help with like things like heart palpitations or heart

activity rhythm, for example, Mother walks.

That's, it's got like specific cardiotonic

properties and.

Yeah.

And things like, you know, say someone's experiencing a panic attack and is having like

a lot of heart palpitations.

We might, that might be an indication for

working with cardiac nervines.

And, yeah, they can also really support with sleep, like lime flowers, for example.

So, yeah, I dive into detail in the course about all of these plants in detail.

But, yeah, they're really just the most beautiful category of plants.

Plants.

Not that plants fit into neat categories by any means.

So another kind of area of herbalism that can support with trauma recovery is hypnotic or

like, sedative nervines.

So, like I mentioned, when I talk about how

trauma affects the body, sleep disturbances are really, you know, what is, like, extremely

common in terms of, you know, people having gone through trauma,

like being very affected commonly by insomnia or nightmares or struggling to get to sleep,

for example.

So, yeah, these herbs can really help with

those different areas.

They can also have a kind of, again, a strong,

like, antispasmodic action for pain and tension.

If you're someone who experiences stress a lot in terms of, like, musculoskeletal pain, then,

yeah, they can help trigger this sort of state of relaxation.

I think it's really important to talk about, like, the nuances of this and, like, of these

and lots of people who've experienced trauma, like, sometimes that is in a kind of sedated

state.

Just content warning here,

but say, for example, you've been sexually assaulted in your sleep, like many of us have,

then it makes complete sense that the body would not want to fall asleep or not want to,

like, be in that sedated state.

Just got ******* tired of being sexually assaulted when I was kind of drunk or in,

like, an altered state.

And so, yeah, like, I think working with herbs that can alter your state is kind of tricky

territory for people.

Might not be appropriate for people, for example, in recovery.

Yeah, so that's, you know, those are, like, the nuances that I talk about a lot in the

course.

And it's important to sort of say that.

But, yeah, examples of these herbs can include, like, mugwort, California poppy,

hops,

wild lettuce, passion flower, skullcap, valerian, and others.

Those are some of the babes that I profile in the course in more depth.

And yeah, I've just done a little series on Instagram about,

like, herbal support for nightmares.

And I actually talk about some of these and

people have been, like, sharing in the comments their experiences of, hey, mugwort

gave me nightmares.

Or, you know, I had much worse nightmares with

valerian.

I found it really stimulating.

And, yeah, it's just been really interesting

and fascinating to hear, like, Other people's experiences with these plants.

Okay, so nerve tonics are also like another.

I keep saying, like, the same ******

adjectives, like, amazing, incredible.

But just herbs are amazing and incredible,

FYI.

And if you do the course, you will be

completely hooked.

But, yeah, these nerve tonics are, like, the foundation of my practice as a herbalist.

So they're really kind of supporting to, like, tonify and strengthen and, like, restore the

kind of proper functioning and structure of the nervous system.

So, yeah, the plants that I explore in the course include milky oats, betony, licorice,

St. John's Wort, Tulsi, evening primrose,

elderberry, schisandra,

ashwagandha, vervain, and others.

And, yeah, they have.

You know, they're, like, hard to categorize because they have, like, such a diverse

spectrum of medicinal actions, like, across them.

But generally, we're working with nerve tonics to, you know, achieve things like addressing

nutritional deficiencies or, you know, literally helping with the.

Excuse me, like, repair of the nervous system.

So in the nervous system deep dive, I go through, you know, like, just like, very basic

stuff around, like, nerve cells and things.

And one part of this is explaining about the

myelin sheath, which is this kind of layer of fat that surrounds the nerves.

And often people have nervous system issues when they have, like, a deficiency of fat in

their diet.

Which is another reason why I make this, like,

super heavenly lavender oil, because it's, like, a really fantastic way of getting fat to

our cells without, you know, necessarily eating it.

But, yeah, and I'm talking about kind of like healthy, nourishing fats here, like olive oil

and avocados and things.

But, yeah, like, plants can sort of help with

the repair of that sheath, which means our nerves are communicating better, which means

our whole nervous system is functioning better.

Yeah. Nerve tonics can also support the.

What we call the HPA axis.

And again, I talk about the this in the course in detail, but it's short for the hypothalamic

pituitary adrenal axis.

So this is like the kind of brain to adrenal glands, which are glands that sit on top of

the kidneys that, like,

are activated when we're in our kind of fight and flight response.

And they communicate the body to.

Right, okay, let's go.

Go, go.

Like, release adrenaline,

release blood sugar to move all of this stuff.

So herbs can help this axis, like, to function

better or to function more kind of optimally.

It probably doesn't make any sense, but, yeah, it makes sense in the course because I go into

you know, research around plants like licorice for example, and the adrenals.

Nerve tonics can also like the other categories like help to address sleep

disturbances, like more of a kind of longer term nature.

They often have a lot of antioxidants which are really supportive to all our cells, but

especially the immune system.

They can help with the production of various neurotransmitters.

They often have an affinity with the liver, which is really important because the liver is

what sort of metabolizes and processes our stress hormones and the sort of environmental

demands that we're under, which is, you know, another,

not sneaky but another major cause of stress, especially in capitalism.

So yeah, our nerve tonics are just doing so many things.

They often help improve circulation to the brain central nervous system.

They've commonly got like a real like gut repair affinity as well.

So there's so much information these, these days around gut flora and the microbiome and

how that relates to inflammation and like the gut brain access and how like emotional health

is like massively influenced by the strains of bacteria we have.

Like this is just like a whole other world that's just like so fascinating.

And again it's something I explore in the course, in the course.

I would love to do like another module like focusing more on this specifically.

But yeah, these nerve tonics often have like an affinity with the GI tract.

They can also help with like nerve pain issues like sciatica or you know, address things like

blood sugar imbalances that contribute to anxiety.

So yeah, a whole plethora of actions that can really help.

I think nerve tonics are really fantastic at like preventing burnout but also sustaining

you in times when actually you really just need a rest but you can't, you know, for

example, someone you love died and you have to kind of keep going and organize the funeral

and do all the things like that's when nerve tonics really come into their own.

But they also are like formidable when we're like recovering from periods of chronic stress

and trauma and exhaustion.

Yeah, they're real, real, real allies.

And the last category I wanted to introduce are stimulating nervines.

So yeah, these are again herbs with an affinity for the nervous system, but they have

like a gentle stimulating action.

And when I talked about the nervous system states, I know it was a teeny tiny

introduction, but not everyone is in this like fight or flight, fierce aggression, kind of

hyper, anxious, hyper angry state.

Like lots of people are actually very shut down and have like a depression of function.

So they might, might feel depressed Emotionally, but they might also have a

depression of function in terms of more fatigue or, you know, like a kind of lack of

movement or like feelings of brain fog,

you know, like problems with their blood pressure, like, you know, like pots.

Like, things like this can often be when someone is in this, like, shutdown state.

And yeah, like, we don't necessarily want to work with like hardcore stimulants, like

coffee that can, you know, maybe tip someone over the edge.

Because sometimes in this state, it's still quite likely that there's like this fight or

flight kind of activation in the background, but it's kind of like trapped.

Does that make sense? It will, yeah, it will all make sense in the

course, like in the polyvagal lesson.

But yeah, like, our gentle stimulants can help with getting blood flow to the brain.

They can, yeah, help kind of people feel a bit more like, uplifted, like, recover some,

like, kind of vitality.

And they often have like, neuroprotective,

like, antioxidants, which makes them like, really fantastic for things like headaches and

migraines and concentration.

And, you know, they often also have an affinity with the gut.

They're often very warming and drying or antimicrobial.

Again, just this like, gut brain access is so interesting.

And they're often sort of relaxant as well, but not in a kind of like, sedating sense, but

in a kind of muscle tension, relaxing, like, antispasmodic way.

So some of the stimulating nerve ions I explore in the course include rosemary,

hyssop, sage and thyme.

So, yeah, so that is just like really brief introduction to how herbs can support with

trauma.

Like I mentioned earlier, it is the act of herbalism that is really, really healing.

It is the foraging, the gardening, the feeling less alone because you're like connected to

this web of life.

You know, like, that's the stuff that's really life changing.

But when we're kind of like dancing, so, so to speak with the world, like, we're experiencing

these different expressions of distress, whether that's nightmares or flashbacks or

feeling rage and anger.

Like hubs can play a massive role in supporting us.

They can help us like, you know, move those emotions through us, like express our grief,

express our feelings.

They can help help kind of calm us down and

they can also help stimulate us.

Right? So yeah, they are just really flexible.

And you know, the herbalism, PTSD and traumatic stress course is like, I'd like to

say it's a one of a kind course, but it really is like an in depth introduction to all of

these plants.

So, yeah, you know, and you also learn all the medicine making and how to prepare them and

where to start if you're overwhelmed.

Like, do you work with this plant or this

plant or this plant?

Yeah, I've kind of put all of that in a really structured way.

So, yeah, it's open until the 13th of April,

so please jump in there.

There's a whole episode about the sliding

scale and why no one is turned away for lack of funds.

But please, yeah, listen to that and don't hesitate to join it for free if you need.

I did put an email out recently asking people to share it on their network.

So I'm so, so grateful to everyone that's done that because it's just made a world of

difference sense in terms of who the course can reach and generating some funds and stuff,

because this course,

you know, funds, like all of this stuff,

you know, all of this work in the world.

So, yeah, I'm just so grateful for everyone's

interest.

And yeah, it will be open again for enrollment

at the end of October this year.

But if you want to kind of embrace the spring now and, yeah, start your journey with plants

or deepen it.

You know, maybe you're already a herbalist if

you're listening to this podcast, but, yeah, I think herbs are like the most, most amazing

allies in terms of accompanying us through a lifetime of,

you know, potential stressful and difficult and traumatic experiences.

And, you know, they can help us show up for others as well.

So, yeah, please check out the course.

And yeah, thank you for listening.

Okay, take care.

Thanks so much for listening to the Frontline

Herbalism Podcast.

You can find the transcript, the links, all

the resources from the show at Solidarity apothecary.

Org Podcast.