Medicine from the Land: Bioregional Herbalism with Logan Keister

What happens when you grow up foraging mushrooms and picking wild berries in the forests of western Oregon?

In this episode, I chat with clinical herbalist Logan Keister of Noti Botanica about his journey into bioregional herbalism, growing up in timber country, and the powerful role nature plays in healing. We talk about wildcrafting, teaching kids to connect with plants, and how herbalism can transform lives—from outdoor classrooms to clinical care.

🌲 Highlights include:
00:42 – Logan’s Oregon roots & deep land connection
07:55 – Childhood foraging & mushroom memories
10:20 – Outdoor education for underserved kids
18:44 – Becoming an herbalist: from GED to clinic
30:12 – Energetics, intuition & pulse diagnosis
41:00 – What Logan offers through No Tai Botanica

Explore Logan’s offerings at notibotanica.com

🌿 Want to become the healer in your home? Learn more at theherbalistspath.com

Herb Camp is coming soon! If you've ever thought about frolicking through fields of calendula, laughing with fellow plant lovers, and learning from the best teachers & plants, this is your time!

Oshala Farm is hosting Herb Camp, and tickets are gone June 2nd.

Click here to get your tickets & let's laugh & frolic among the plants together!

There's no better medicine than the medicine you tend to with your loving hands.

If you're ready to grow beautiful medicine for you and your family, now is the time to grab my Medicinal Herb Garden Guide.

Just click here, and have fun planting, harvesting, and creating great medicine!  🌸

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to the Herbalist Path
• 4:46 Logan's Oregon Roots and Forest Connection
• 10:46 Public Lands and Learning from Succession
• 16:01 Kids and the Lost Connection to Nature
• 24:23 From Wildcrafter to Clinical Herbalist
• 32:33 Clinical Practice and Healthy Skepticism
• 40:31 Plant Intelligence and Intuitive Healing
• 46:16 Logan's Offerings and Notai Botanica

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:52

Welcome to the Herbalist Path, a podcast that's all about helping herbalism spread like wildflowers. I'm Mel, a clinical herbalist, environmental educator and a mama who's been walking this path for well over 20 years. I created this show to help you feel confident with herbal medicine. You're going to get a blend of how-to episodes, incredible guest experts sharing their wisdom and real talk about using herbs every day, all to help you care for your family naturally, take better care of our precious planet and maybe even become the trusted herbalist in your own community.

Speaker 1: 2:33

You see, this work isn't just about the herbs. It's about healing ourselves, it's about caring for each other and it's about living in deeper connection with the earth. So, whether you're blending your first tea, making your first tincture or feeling called to be the go-to herbalist in your community, welcome, you belong here, you are right on time and you are on the Herbalist Path. Hello, hello and welcome back to another episode on the Herbalist Path. I feel like it's been forever since I've done an episode, but I'm really, really excited about today's guest. His name is Logan Keister and he's somebody.

Speaker 2: 3:22

It's a Keister.

Speaker 1: 3:23

Oh, darn it, We'll start it all over. Sorry, I should have asked you that beforehand. People always ask me, and I never think to do that, so I apologize.

Speaker 2: 3:32

No worries.

Speaker 1: 3:35

So I'll start that again Hello, hello and welcome back to another episode on the Herbalist Path. I am really excited to dive into today's conversation because, honestly, I don't know where it's going to go, but I'm so excited to connect and get to know and introduce to you and myself our guest, logan Keister, who lives in Oregon very, very close to my mom, who's a fellow clinical herbalist, a major nature lover, from what I gather, a very brilliant and passionate person, really loving to connect other people with nature and plants. So I'm excited to have you, logan. I'm really grateful that you're here and I can't wait to get to know you more. So thanks for being here.

Speaker 2: 4:24

Yeah, thank you kindly. Well, that was a very wonderful introduction. I'm very humbled by that.

Speaker 1: 4:29

Well, I can't wait to like hear more of you so maybe if I ever get you on the show again I can have more distinct things to say and and know more about you. So I'm just excited to get to connect and and hear your story, because just before we hit record there were so many things I was like, oh, I could connect with this human. He sounds fabulous. So I know that you're in No-Tie Oregon and I just shared with you a little story how that was the first town that I accidentally moved to when I first moved to Oregon in 1999. But you're born and raised there, right?

Speaker 2: 5:06

Yeah, I am. It's kind of like the basis of where I come from and my whole herbal practice is very bioregional from this place. You know, I've obviously lived in some other places, but usually within close proximity to where I grew up, besides a short stint in Washington. But it's just like really for me, that's like my connection to place, really like informs my practice of herbalism. So yeah, it's why I named my company. No type botanica.

Speaker 1: 5:34

Yeah, I love that. I was always such a nomadic child growing up and my father was in the Air Force and I was born in Germany and lived all over the country. But when I finally came to Oregon I was like oh, roots. And then I moved to the Mount Hood area about almost 17 years ago and was like home and I had never felt that. So I kind of have a bit of envy for you in that, and I don't know if envy is the right word, but I love that for you and you know it's a beautiful area that you're around and I know, like out that triangle Lake Road there's so many cool houses and my partner and I will always drive around there and be like, oh, look at all that land.

Speaker 1: 6:15

You know it's just gorgeous so I would love to hear a little bit more from you. I also know no tie as a logging town because when I first moved there I lived right across the the road from a lumber mill and it hurt my little hippie earth loving heart to see it every day. But I know it's a part of Oregon's economy and all of that. But it just makes me curious how it was growing up in no tie and how you got such a deep connection to the plants and became the herbalist that you are today.

Speaker 2: 6:48

Yeah, so yeah, like you mentioned, there's a big timber industry in Oregon and especially in Notai. A lot of people I grew around worked in the timber industry and there's certain things. Obviously that's kind of hard to see what we think of as forest actually being more of a forest farm, because it's like lots of these replants of just douglas fir that's designed to grow back, but on the other hand, oregon has 65 percent public lands. Like that means that are just lands that anyone can go to, anyone can access. You can go out there, you can go foraging, you can go fishing, you can go hunting. You have this kind of freedom to really utilize these spaces where in places like texas I think it's like less than 10% of the lands are public and so you're kind of unless you have access to private land.

Speaker 2: 7:35

So I feel for me, you know, having parents who were thankfully really took advantage of that. You know we drive like a few minutes down the road or even walk in our backyard we had access to just thousands of acres of public land and you know we were very into mushroom foraging. You know, when I was growing up it's like just like a dorky family activity, and then later on I realized like, oh, actually people think mushroom foraging is cool. I thought just something, a lame activity you do with your parents. I mean I loved eating mushrooms but you know I learned a lot of the edibles at a very early age. You know, just picking wild berries, you know salal salmon berries, thimble berries, huckleberries, and just foraging like a quite a large variety of my mushrooms. My dad was pretty adventurous and the kind of species that we'd work with and so it kind of just started from there, just growing up in this area where you had lots of access to public lands.

Speaker 2: 8:24

And it's interesting too because you know you see different sides of how timber harvest affects an area. So, for instance, you know you see different sides of how timber harvest affects an area. So, for instance, you know, right after clear cut, it's like it's pretty desolated, there's not much going on, it's like whole areas. But you know you come back in like two, like ideally three to five years later the deer just go nuts, like it opens up the sunlight and it creates all this forage. And you know you'll just see tons of deer and elk tracks going through the forest there and start seeing all these different species and then you gotta watch the succession.

Speaker 2: 8:58

As you know, it starts out with like lots of blackberries and kind of these disturbance species and then kind of you can see its succession, as you know, because then we also have lots of old growth too and you can kind of see how the old growth forest at first, for sometimes you'll get really these dense forests that you can hardly throw a stick through. They're just so dense that the forest can hardly breathe and there's almost no ground cover. But then you get to see from bare ground to dense forest, to the big old growth where you get little patches of sunlight hitting the forest floor and you get this huge diversity wild calypso, orchids and trilliums. And so just kind of growing up in that just kind of really gave me an interesting and unique perspective on ecology and what it means to live with wild foods in your life.

Speaker 1: 9:46

I love all of those stories and like picturing the different variations of the forest here in Oregon and throughout the Pacific Northwest. I mean it's very similar forest at least when you're west of the Cascades for sure, seeing that clear cut and thinking about, oh gosh, there's nothing there and if you don't know much about it you could be very heartbroken. But then to see, yeah, when it does start growing it's very, very thick and you can't throw much about it. You could be very heartbroken. But then to see, yeah, when it does start growing, it's very, very thick and you can't throw anything through it. And I think about the old growth forest near me along Salmon River in the Mount Hood National Forest and the incredible plant life down below with that little glimpse of sunshine it's you just painted a beautiful picture, made me very happy. So thank you. It's really incredible. And then like hearing and learning about the stories of your parents and how blessed you were to have parents that did love to take you on those kinds of adventures. It took me back to when I first moved to Oregon and I lived with my sister and brother in law and my brother in law was taking mycology courses at the U of O and taught me a lot about mushroom hunting and it was so cool and I think, about a lot of the places we went out by where you live and some amazing mushrooms to forage for and the amazing.

Speaker 1: 11:07

My daughter is in love with salmon berry it's her favorite berry. I don't know why. I don't find them to be very flavorful, but she absolutely loves them and I just love to teach her about ruba spectabilis and how it's got these spectabilis, butterfly leaves on the leaves and all the fun ways that we can teach children about these plants and these amazing things that we do have readily available. And when we learn that connection and that love and that trust with the land it's. It's a connection that I feel that not a lot of people are fortunate to have and it is definitely a fortune right, it's a fortunate thing and I want to see more people have that.

Speaker 1: 11:55

And I know one thing as we were chatting about having you on this show, we talked about how you do outdoor school, also with kids around Oregon and that's kind of. My background is environmental and experiential ed and working with kids outdoors and I would love to just hear a little bit more about that from you. Like, kids are brilliant and they ask great questions and they're, you know, usually fairly fascinated within nature, and I'd just love to hear some more of your experience in working with kids outside and getting them to foster that connection a little bit more than maybe they would have without guidance.

Speaker 2: 12:39

Yeah. So a lot of people may not be familiar with the fact that Oregon is one of the few states that has part of our lottery funding go to fund outdoor education for every either fifth or sixth grader throughout the entire state of Oregon. So that's a really unique thing that Oregon has. So I've been working in the outdoor education with kids the past year or so so it's been something kind of new because I've always worked with adults and I kind of had to learn that teaching kids is totally different than adults and I kind of had to learn that teaching kids is totally different than adults. You know I can just do a three hour lecture on you know, like herbal formulation and have like adults attentively taking notes and looking at me and asking me questions With kids. It's you really got to be very hands off, like how can I talk as little as possible and get as much like action and engagement and activities as possible? And so for myself, I was very I guess what you say blessed, which honestly should have was normal Not that long ago.

Speaker 2: 13:38

You know I talked to my parents and even places that just you know you just let your kids run around in the woods and the back 40 wherever and just they just hang out outside all day and that's kind of something that's been kind of lost and it's been really interesting seeing Because with the program I work with, coil Outside is we go to lots of underserved communities that wouldn't have outdoor school because they don't have the funds or finances to put in their own program to hire their own educators. So we'll go out to a lot of rural schools and some other schools that may have a high Hispanic population, um, that may not have access to those kinds of resources. And I just have been really interesting because some, you know you meet these kids and some of them will be like your kid, you know, like oh my God, how'd you learn all these plant names? You know your kids are raising you, right, I mean we were talking a little bit off recording about that.

Speaker 2: 14:35

Um, yeah, but a lot of it. I'm just been like super like surprised like how little kids actually spend outdoors. Like it's been kind of shocking like wow, like these kids live in oregon and they don't own a raincoat. And you know, even the schools like I even talked to some of the school people like we provide free raincoats for any kid who wants them. They just the parents just won't go and accept them just due to pride and things like that, and so just really the parents aren't taking their kids outside a lot and it's just like you know how little knowledge there is of the plants and it's like. It's like you know it's surprising to me because I just kind of grew up doing wild foods and you give a kid and they're like you know, like even something like a plum tree growing in a park and you know you're like here kids.

Speaker 2: 15:17

Let's see some of these plums. They're like I had a kid tell me, like I didn't know you could eat, like food that grew outside, like things that came off a tree, like it was their first time eating like a piece of fruit off of a tree. And it's just like you know and I don't blame these kids it's really, uh, us as parents, as adults, we're really failing our kids and just like you know, and you see them they're getting pumped full of sugar. You know, when it comes to snack and lunchtime, the school lunch is just so packed full of just simple carbs and sugars and these kids are like, oh, you have add adhd, and kids are identifying with all these titles and they're given lots of medications and fed lots of sugar and spending no time outside.

Speaker 2: 15:56

So it's been interesting being able to get kids who are interested, because I teach a lot of outdoor skills. I teach a lot of foraging because that's a lot of my forte, but I'm also really into fishing and hunting, so I teach kids about how to tracking animals and it's really cool when you see this kid kids just all of a sudden like, oh, wow, this is something I can do, because none of these skills. They don't require any money. You don't have to have any special gear to be able to follow animal tracks or to pick wild plants or to even, like you know, design like your own traps and things like that, using sticks and carving your own traps out of uh with your knife and stuff. It's.

Speaker 2: 16:35

So it's been pretty cool just being able to allow kids access to this new knowledge they wouldn't otherwise have, and kind of just lets me see the state of the world and where we're at right now and where, you know, uh, I've been kind of inspired more, you know, with like all the political stuff going on in the world right now and speaking with my boss, uh, dan coyle, who's just an uh an awesome guy. He's just like man. We just need to be like stop focusing on ourselves. Like for a lot of us adults, it's like too late. For these kids it's not too late. Like they're really our future, and so when we're like thinking about where we're going to be allocating money, it's like we really need to be allocating a lot more resources to our kids and like how can we actually make these kids grow to be healthy and happy? And you know, but it also takes me. I believe it was Whitney Houston.

Speaker 1: 17:32

I believe the children are our future and teach them well and let them lead the way, show them all the beauty they possess inside. Thankfully I'm not singing it, but I love those lyrics and when I was a kid I lived in between a library and a church in the state of Nebraska and so I'd play in their big beautiful yards all of the time and I remember I would sing that song from the top of my lungs on the stairs of the church. And as I continued to grow and my connection to nature and my awe with nature continued to grow, I don't know that my parents ever really made the correlation that that was what was happening, like our family vacations were camping trips and whatnot. But then as I became an adult and I started to learn more like how I truly felt this literal sense of awe when I was in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and when I moved across the country to Oregon where I was just like, whoa, this is really really beautiful. And around a little bit later the book last child in the woods came out and I just remember saying, well, that can't happen, Like we really need to do what we can to get more of these kids outside and it's really the underserved populations that need it even more. Like we were talking about your childhood. You grew up with this gift. You have had it there for you all of the time. I think about my daughter. She's had it there for her all the time, and my daughter's in sixth grade. So she did do the Oregon outdoor school at the beginning of the year with coil and I remember the teachers there were like wow, these kids really get it. You know, and I live in a mountain community and most of the parents up here are very outdoorsy and really love to embrace the incredible beauty of nature that we have, and so, you know, the teachers were like this crew is great and listening to you talk about how you serve more of the underserved population there that doesn't have that gift and connection and understanding that food comes from plants, food comes from outdoors and we can just grab that, you know, and grab it in a sustainable fashion, one where we are thinking about how are those things going to come back for them next year and the next year and the next year it's. It's an amazing thing to try and connect and a challenging thing to try and connect Like how do we foster that for more of these children. You know like it also takes me to one of the children we were.

Speaker 1: 20:27

My daughter plays basketball and we were on our way to a basketball game over in hood river, which is an incredibly gorgeous drive to go over Mount hood, which is an incredibly gorgeous drive to go over Mount Hood. And as we were doing it we went by a very famous place on Mount Hood, like it's on TV screens it's White River Canyon. It's stunning, and the girl we were driving with was like I've never been there before. She's also born and raised in this community. Her mother was born and raised in this community. Her mother was born and raised in this community and to hear that she had never been to this incredibly gorgeous place and had those kinds of experiences was just kind of mind-blowing for me.

Speaker 1: 21:06

And you have me on a bit of a a rant and a ramble on on this topic, because I'm really really passionate about and it's kind of the roots of everything for me with my love for plant medicine, my desire to inspire more people to use plant medicine so that we can make this world a better place.

Speaker 1: 21:26

We can save this world, and I'm a firm believer that the more people we can connect, even those under underserved children, the more of them that can get outside and say, wow, I didn't know that about these plants. Wow, let me touch these things, let me feel these things, let me taste these things. Hopefully, what that can do is inspire their love for this land and want to do what they can to protect it, because we really, we really need that right now. Um, yeah, my heart gets mushy about that. But, all of that being said, I think you know all of this already that we just shared, so I'd love to hear a little bit more about your actual herbalism journey. I know you grew up with that connection to the plants and I look at your background and see all the good medicines sitting on your shelf there and I just want to hear a little bit more like how did that come to be? How did you recognize that these plants were not only food, they're medicine? Tell me about that journey.

Speaker 2: 22:36

Yeah, so my parents didn't necessarily, they weren't really into herbalism necessarily, and it was a lot of really wild food focus. I mean we always call like chamomile tummy tea because I knew it would be good for your tummy and stuff, and so we had some, you know, some mild understanding like that. But I say it, it really started. I've worked in every aspect in the herbal trade, so to speak, and at first my very first job was in high school and I was a commercial wildcrafter.

Speaker 2: 23:05

One of my friend's dad. He'd take us out in his van and he'd drive us around and we'd just go out and we'd go harvest chanterelles, but we'd also be harvesting things like Oregon grape and cascara and his uh, his name is bob and he was kind of like a character. You know he's like oh man, we got to get to the top of the hill before someone picks all those mushrooms before us. You know, he's kind of like almost like he wasn't a forger, he'd probably be a gambler or something, because it's always like a gamble. When you go out there, you know, get the early first mushrooms of the season, get the first morels, and they're like 32 a pound. Then by the time you get to the cellar. They've dropped down to like two bucks or something like that.

Speaker 2: 23:40

So, but he kind of showed me like we got to work with like a lot of these medicinal herbs and it was kind of interesting. I'm like, wow, like people want to pay money for organ grapefruit like this just grows everywhere, you know, it's just kind of coats, the forest floor, and we were just harvesting lots of it and it was kind of interesting getting to see that. And so after high school I graduated where I got my ged. Being honest, yeah, I got to get out of that as soon as possible I was not for the system.

Speaker 2: 24:12

I've got to go, thank you yeah, but then I started working at mountain rose herbs and I had the job as an herb cleaner. So they literally had me like sifting through hundreds of pounds of herbs a day, like, all right, there's like we're I think there might be some like little bits of like you know debris in this, like chamomile or this valerian or something like. Can you just like clean these bags out and make sure they're all good? And you, you know I was also doing some quality control there, so I kind of got to see this other side of it from being in the woods where it was like you know, you're out in the woods for like 12 hours a day getting rained on and just doing really hard work for less than minimum wage to like being in all of a sudden like wow, this massive warehouse, just like full of just walls, just tall shelves, which is like 1000s of pounds of herbs every herb that you could imagine, you know, just from all over the world, and it was just kind of like they had this like free shelf there, so things that got returned or they changed the lot number. It's like, all right, we're gonna put on the free shelf for employees to go pick through. And we also got severe discounts and so, you know, I was just kind of like, oh well, shatavari says a herb of a thousand husbands, like, oh, maybe I'll give that to my girlfriend or something like that. You know, I was just kind of playing around herbs like that way and just kind of like, see something on the shelf, google it Like is that have any interest to me? And you know, being a young guy, I was like, oh yeah, rodeola, cosmonauts deep into space, and it like gives you more endurance. So I'd be like taking like rhodiola and uh, ginseng and genema and just like or not genema, but uh, gynostemma, pentafilum, and just like doing lots of workouts and long runs and things like that. So I kind of was like, wow, these herbs, like you actually feel them? Um, and I was also totally, admittedly, like a little bit of a psychonaut.

Speaker 2: 25:55

I was really interested in the consciousness altering aspects of plants. So it was like something that was a really thing. I just loved researching and just realizing that plants could like alter your consciousness in like what seemed like an infinite number of ways, and just getting to experience like all these different ways that plants could alter and change your consciousness, from making you like really stimulated to really sleepy, to giving you visions, and it was just kind of to me that was just absolutely fascinating and actually getting this direct experience. So you're kind of like at first I had like this little apprehension to the idea that plants were like could heal you. I was kind of like at first I was a little skeptical, honestly. I was kind of like, yeah, this is probably something that, like you know, wealthy liberals do to. Like you know, they buy all these supplements and they poop them right out and they think they're doing something. But then once I like was like realized, like wow, okay, this can alter my consciousness in a multitude of ways and people are paying all this money, like this whole giant company.

Speaker 2: 26:50

Mountain rose herbs would not exist unless these herbs are actually doing something. So it kind of opened me up to thinking more in that way and I really got really cut my teeth into herbalism when I started going to the Columbine School of Botanical Studies and it was one of those things where I'd kept running into people who went to that school. I'd be at like a party and I'd be talking to someone and they'd be like just dumping all this plant knowledge on me. I'm like dang, like, like you're from California, why do you know more about my native plants than I do? Like, oh, I went to Columbines Just kind of was like I was like, all right, there's something to the school, cause I keep meeting amazing people who went there and they just have like a tremendous amount of plant knowledge. So when I finally decided to go, it was just kind of for my own usage, because it's really botany-heavy focus school. It's very field botany, like we're out in the forest, we're learning to key out and identify plants, we're learning about their ecology.

Speaker 2: 27:47

Then once we've kind of gained this like gotten to know the plant in that way, then occasionally we get the opportunity to make medicine with it, make tinctures with it, make tea, make herbal oils with them, and so we were having this very direct experience. So you know, my teachers at the time were Howie Brownstein, who's like just gone 40 years of teaching this, and Steven Yeager and Heron Bray were just amazing teachers. I mean someone like Howie, who's been he was literally walking these trails for over 30 years. So every step of the way is like he knew exact, had seen this like clear cut, go from like old growth tree to clear cuts and now, now these trees are towering over our heads Like that's how long he'd been doing this. So the amount of knowledge he gained from him and you know I honestly wasn't interested in clinical herbalism because you know how he was very realistic with us. He's like, yeah, it's pretty much, it was super hard.

Speaker 2: 28:43

He says, talk about, he was like he was just broke for a long, long time. So he says, like only recently is he kind of like finally making a livable wage? You know, doing herbalism. It took him like a long time, you know, especially starting out in the 80s when there's like not really anything going on, like that no one knows what an herbalist is, where today you can't throw a rock around eugene without hitting an herbalist. But yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 29:10

So I really started got into interesting clinical herbalism because I got into second year program and then he kind of had this option where like hey, if anyone wants to work in the clinic, like you can come and work in the clinic and I'll like supervise, I'll kind of lead the thing and you'll kind of work alongside me.

Speaker 2: 29:27

And so I was kind of like, oh, you know, I'll give that a try, I'll see what that's like.

Speaker 2: 29:30

You know, I've like spent so much like over two years just studying these plants, uh, in columbines, not to mention all the years before I was studying herbalism and it was kind of like I got to work one-on-one with him and I realized like, wow, this is a actually really love this clinical aspect and I'm like seeing like amazing results with the people I'm working with for all kinds of things.

Speaker 2: 29:51

Like you know how we specialize in things like seizures, I'm like what like herbs can work for seizures?

Speaker 2: 29:56

And he's like, yeah, I'm one of the few herbalists who's not afraid to work with seizures and it was just really incredible and lots of stuff with like pre-diabetes and just seeing people coming back, like even working with my own mother and seeing her go from pre-diabetic to normal blood sugar.

Speaker 2: 30:10

So I got kind of like bitten by the herbalist bug that way and just kind of showed me like, oh, actually, not only can these herbs like do all these like you know acute things for us you know whether that's for like a boo-boos and owies and you know, relieving pain or, you know giving us a little stimulation with our morning cup of coffee but you know they can also like deal with these long-term chronic health issues. They can also deal with these long-term chronic health issues. So I'd say that's what kind of got me into it and since then I've been practicing clinical herbalism since 2018 and have a nice clinical practice. I work with a lot of local folks, but I also do stuff on Zoom, so it's been kind of cool to go from there and kind of build up my clinical experience over the years.

Speaker 1: 30:58

I love hearing those stories and I love how he's such an educator, an entertaining educator, he's super funny. I've taken a few classes with them. I always wanted to go to Columbines but it never worked out for me because it was down in Eugene and I was up in Portland at the time and I was. I still got a lot of fieldwork. I did a lot of work at the Elderberry School of Botanical Medicine and have a lot of friends and colleagues that went to Columbines also.

Speaker 1: 31:24

And yeah, it's really amazing when you get that teacher that has been so deep and connected with the areas in the land that you're learning about, like it makes such a world of difference. And listening to you talk about your journey in this, where you start from like oh, plants are cool, like let me check these things out. You mean they do these things Great, I'm just going to take them which I think is where most people start, right, they get in, they like start learning. Oh my gosh, there's natural ways to do all of these different things and, and you know, you get into the clinical world and it is a different world. It's definitely more deep. And I love hearing you talk about how you helped your own mother with her. I think you said diabetes, or was it insulin?

Speaker 2: 32:13

resistant.

Speaker 1: 32:15

Yeah, it's beautiful to hear because my mom I've mentioned she lives a few miles away from you and, um, she's watched me on this journey over the last couple of decades. And some days she's like, yes, I believe in what you're doing. Or she'll try one of my old products and be like, you know, text me and be like, oh my gosh, this thing worked for this. And I'm like, yes, mom, I know.

Speaker 1: 32:42

I've been studying this for a very long time and that's why I put it together. But it brings me to that like skeptical piece and you you had talked about being skeptical in the beginning and I've got to ask you do you sometimes still feel that skepticism with herbs, like, oh, is it really going to work? Or or are you just like, nope, I know it's.

Speaker 2: 33:06

Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned that because sometimes I get like almost like I just like have this expectation. Like I had a coworker recently and it's like his like pointer finger like swelled up, like double the size. He just got some infection and I'm just like, oh yeah, I got some uh 50, 50 or Oregon gray back in Asia tincture here. Just put a little drop, a little bit on there as a liniment and then take a little bit internally and like you know, for him he's like whoa, you're like a witch doctor or something. It's like cleared up way faster than if I'd taken the antibiotics. That's amazing. And I was kind of, yeah, yeah, that's just what that herb does, you know. So there's part of me that has like almost this expectation. But every time you know it's like I come into the clinic and you just have, like this person, they have this like laundry list of like issues that are going on and you're just like where do I even begin with this person? And but then you're kind of like, well, if they have so much going on, like if I just throw something at it, it's like bound to like work with something and if you try to focus on, like what their main concern is, you know, and so I. There is a part of me that's kind of like like oh, can I actually help this person? They got so much going on. And then when they like come back and you're just like you know, come back for a uh, another consult, and they're just like, you're like, oh yeah, like this has been getting better and like you know, you have them do something like. Oh, wow, like they went from like things. You know, like having someone tell you something like oh, I thought I was like never going to have another kid again because I was always fatigued all the time and stuff. And now I'm thinking about having my second child and you hear something like that. You're like whoa, that's like pretty powerful. You know you don't always expect to hear those kinds of things. So I kind of oscillate between the two, where it's just like I've seen the herbs work enough time that I'm like yeah, yeah, you got a UTI here. Try some, uh, uva Ursi, you know just like, make some like Arctostaphylus into a tea. You know that should kick it right out. And just kind of like, just like have this expectation that they're going to work, because you've seen them work so many times. But then also still at the same time you're kind of amazed, like wow, like I really made a difference in this person's life, and kind of ways you don't expect.

Speaker 2: 35:01

Because sometimes you're just like, oh well, let's just give this protocol, because sometimes the first, the first thing you offer that person is almost like part of the assessment. You know, like you know, you give somebody like well, I think, like something's like telling me that agrimony is like coming up for me a lot now. Um, let's just give you some agrimony and see how that works. And then you know, sometimes it's like wow, like I love that agrimony. Other times you're like, no, it's all right. And you're like, no, it's all right. And you're like, okay, uh, let's try something different next time, you know, and he can kind of like fine-tune things that way. But, uh, yeah, I think, uh, I think that I mostly get more skepticism when, uh, it's a hard thing to do when you're a practitioner.

Speaker 2: 35:42

You hear what other practitioners are doing and you're like, how could they think that was going to work really? Or like you know, like how he wasn't into like eliminative diets and stuff and telling people you can't eat this, this or this, and they're like only eating like a few foods now, and he's kind of like, no, you should bolster up that person, build up their vitality so they can eat those things. You know that was kind of his perspective, the perspective I came with. So sometimes you hear other practitioners and you know it's kind of almost part of my own like spiritual practice to learn to work on those feelings of judgment and skepticism towards what other practitioners are doing, because you realize like herbalism is just so vast and sometimes it can be like that one client who came to see you and you did miracles for them. They went to see someone else and they they were just like yeah, that I can't work with that other person. And then vice versa, some people come to work with you and they're like I don't know, I'm skeptical, maybe I'll take the herbs for a couple days and if I don't feel anything immediately, then I'm just going to say it doesn't work and move on to the next practitioner.

Speaker 2: 36:39

So I tried to keep that open mind and acceptance of, try to hush the skeptical voice, because I've seen a lot of things that have kind of like totally blown my mind.

Speaker 2: 36:48

Like you know I got into, for instance, I got into doing a pulse diagnosis and I started doing some of the like. I saw Liz Wolf at the Good Medicine Confluence. I'd kind of followed some of her work with doing pulse testing and I would never think you could actually cause change by just putting the bottle of tincture in someone's hands without administering anything, and that to me was like. I was like whoa, okay, I can set a bottle of tincture in someone's hand, feel the change in the pulse and actually see their complexion change, see like moisture come into their mouth. Like you know, I'm always being like totally blown away by these new things I'm seeing, and I've always been kind of into esotericism too. So I kind of realized there's a lot more going on in the world than the dominant reductionist, atheistic, materialist paradigm likes us to think there is. So that's kind of my rant on that question.

Speaker 1: 37:38

I love that and it was a great rant. I love hearing about Liz Wolf and teaching you on the pulse diagnosis and the holding of an herb. Like I personally experience it on the regular with herbs that I have a very intimate relationship with and now I can think about that herb and feel the calm in my nervous system and that is amazing. And I remember when I first started recognizing that um, but that was a thing was when I was running mountain mel's, my product line, and I had a tea I called unfrazzle your dazzle, and it was all about helping you calm and chill out. You know it's a great name yeah, it was great I always

Speaker 1: 38:22

had fun with names when I ran that product line, um, and anyways, that particular tea was so amazing because people would come up to me at expos and events and and whatever I was at and just be like, oh, I don't like tea, or whatever. And I got to a point where I could just hold the tin of tea and show it to somebody and just I would feel more calm. Or I'd let them smell the tea and I would watch them like take this deep sigh of relaxation and watch their shoulders drop down and just see them instantly go into a state of calm and I'm like that ish is powerful, you know, gentle, yet powerful and amazing. And then I saw it with my own daughter. Like she is somebody who is prone to anxiety, which will definitely go to tummy aches for her and she'll. You know she doesn't do it so much anymore, but when she was younger she'd be like Mommy. You know she'd break down for whatever reason and like Mommy, my tummy hurts and I would say, okay, I'll make you a cup of tea. And you know she grew up like toddling around and she would pull the chamomile flowers out of my tea and just eat them all of the time and it got to a point where I'd make her a cup of tea and then, like it progressed, she would drink maybe a sip of the tea and be like, okay, everything's better. And now it's at that point where I can just say, hey, I'm gonna get the water hot for your tea and we'll be okay, and I don't even have to go get the water hot. She's just like, oh, okay, candle miles coming to me, I'm going to be okay and I love that that plant is going to address her anxiety as well as the tummy ache. All in one, so it's really cool.

Speaker 1: 40:14

But I think about the skepticism thing too, and I think this is something that a lot of people turn to and you know, of course, talking with you, you have a little bit more advanced perspective of it than most of the people that are going to be listening to this show.

Speaker 1: 40:26

But I think the skepticism lives strong and a lot of people that do listen to this show you know they've been dabbling with herbs here and there. And then they have those people in their family that are like, yeah, you're kind of crazy, you woo, woo, witchy, freak or whatever, and I still, to this day, will sometimes be like, no way that's gonna work, you know. But then it becomes intuitive after a while I think you were kind of alluding to that in in your chat as well where you just know what plants are going to work in a given situation and you go with that, even when there's this little bit of inner doubt. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. You just adjust the protocol. But I don't know. I just feel like the skepticism is big for a lot of people and a lot of people that listen to this show have to battle that.

Speaker 2: 41:19

Yeah, I think a lot of us identify as skeptics, because it's healthy to have some skepticism as things. But I think people misunderstand what skepticism really means. It's like really should bring out your critical thinking skills and sometimes be willing to say like, okay, like I heard this idea, I don't really know if it jives with me. And sometimes people think, oh, I'm skeptical, so it's gotta be BS, like I don't, I'm not going to buy that with a, with anything, so. But really it means like okay, well, do you have any experience in this? Have you experienced this for yourself? Do you know any people have experienced this? Or is this just something you're hearing and you think skepticism means like, well, if my ES meter is going off, then it's got to be that.

Speaker 2: 41:59

But for me, I think skepticism is saying like well, I'm not quite sure about that, but then again, I don't have as much experience, so if I'm going to really make a hard, fast call on it, I have to, like you know, talk to practitioners, like get some first-hand experience myself. So I think that's a big issue. I see because, uh, the health, the difference between healthy skepticism and just being like putting down what other people believe and what other people think on things that you literally have zero experience with is something that I'm seeing in this increasingly like polarized way that we've been trying to speak to one another. So I think skepticism is healthy, but also understand what true skepticism is. The theory to the test.

Speaker 1: 42:37

Yeah, that's an interesting perspective that I hadn't really like thought about in that way. I love it. That's great, just opening up the mind to checking out what's really going on and diving deeper, asking those bigger questions, not just like blocking it out and saying, oh yeah, that's, that's, that's against anything I know. So surely that can't work. So I think, where where I was coming from, it is like it's always fun to take those people that are questioning it and are like no way this could work or doubting it more would be the better perspective. And then you know, sharing something as simple as plantain and how it can help with drawing out a splinter, something that easy, right, and then watching them just be like completely mind blown and maybe opening their minds to the next time somebody comes at them with a plant friend to help them right, it's fun I nerd out on it entirely too many ways, that's for sure.

Speaker 1: 43:39

um gosh, I feel like it would be really fun to walk in the forest with you and learn what you know about plants and connect and all of those kinds of things, and I would love to hear more about what you do with your experience, with your knowledge, and how you help people and how anybody that maybe is listening could learn more about you.

Speaker 2: 44:07

Yeah, so I have. My company is Notai Botanica. Notai is spelled N-O-T-I, so N-O-T-I Botanica, and just from my website, notibotanicacom, I kind of offer that's where you can find out more about my clinical herbal consultations. I also have a selection of products. I even do some like my actual background. I also did a lot and worked for a lot of different herb farms. You know, reach a check with someone I worked with for years and have a degree in horticulture, morgan state university.

Speaker 2: 44:41

So I do also offer some landscape design kind of work. Permaculture design I got studied with Andrew Millicent, so I've gotten really into that work. I even do some astrology consultations as well, believe it or not. So I'm very into the hellenistic tradition of astrology, which kind of dates back to, uh, the fourth century bce, which is kind of like really the roots where we see modern horoscopic astrology develop. And for me, I'm kind of someone like I see like history as like a something that's all very alive and practicing, living traditions. History is not something that's like dead in the annals of time. So yeah, so those are some of the things I offer making products, clinical herbal consultations.

Speaker 2: 45:22

That's a big part, and education, I say, is a really big part of my practice. So I've been doing lots of work with the herbal academy recently, um, so we have some. I've been working on a permaculture gardening course that's gonna be coming out next year with them written portion in a bunch of video classes and I have a bunch of video herbal monographs so and I do some stuff with herb rally as well. So I kind of work with various uh educational platforms. Um, I also work with uh herb farm so many herbs to remember herbal academy rally, herb farm. So, yeah, so I work with a lot of different things and I offer a lot of education. So if anyone wants to see my upcoming classes or check out any other podcasts or youtube things I've been featured on or as interesting sketch and consultation, I just say go to my website. That's the best way to get ahold of me.

Speaker 1: 46:12

Awesome. I love that, yeah, and your website's beautiful. I love the upper view of the forest going on in your homepage. It's really beautiful, and I wanted to just mention quickly, before we kind of wrap this up, what are some of the things that are really special about the products that you do have available, because I think it's pretty darn cool. I believe you grow and forage most of the medicine that you share with people.

Speaker 2: 46:40

Is that right? Yeah, it's pretty much like 99% of everything I have is all either well crafted from you know this bioreach in the Pacific Northwest or was grown in our small little homestead which isn't certified organic. But trust me, we're more organic than most things that say they're organic. We don't use even spray, organic pesticides or anything like that. So make lots of small batch herbal formulas. We do some flower essences, we do some herbal oils and salves and things like that.

Speaker 2: 47:11

And I do actually do some work with astrological timing as well. So sometimes you'll notice on a lot of my bottles of herbs I'll usually have an astrological symbol, a little sigil, put on there to show kind of what archetype I'm trying to put into that medicine, into that medicine. So, for instance, for like a liver formula, you'll see like a symbol for Jupiter on there, because Jupiter deals with like excess and expansion and connects with the liver and the body and according to traditional medical astrology. So I kind of do that and I've been studying with Robert Alan Bartlett recently so I've been getting more into making spagyrics. I've always been interested in alchemy but I've been kind of going deeper down that path. Right now it's more for my own personal use, but I do work with certain alchemical principles like that. So Awesome.

Speaker 1: 48:00

I bet your medicine is amazing. I kind of want to connect my mother with you because she doesn't want to listen to me so much, but maybe she would listen to somebody outside of me. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for sharing your brilliance and your wisdom and your stories and your experience on the show. I really appreciate it and it's it's so good to hear about it all.

Speaker 2: 48:24

Thank you, I really appreciate you having me on.

Speaker 1: 48:26

Yeah, I'll be sure to link to your website. I believe you have a YouTube channel and Instagram as well, to make sure that anybody can connect with you. And then, um, I have a lot of people that reach out to me for consultations, but I'm currently not doing them, so maybe I'll send some referrals your way if there's particular ailments and people that you like to work with.

Speaker 2: 48:50

Um, yeah, yeah you can read on my website it kind of says my main specialties. So yeah, that'd be great.

Speaker 1: 48:57

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Logan.

Speaker 2: 49:00

Thank you.

Speaker 1: 49:01

Have a great day.

Speaker 2: 49:03

You as well.

Speaker 1: 49:03

Thanks, Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of the Herbalist Path. If you're loving this journey and learning all about the various aspects of herbal medicine, be sure to follow and review the show. It helps more people find their own path with herbal medicine, and if you have a friend or know a mama or another budding herbalist who could use this kind of support, please share this episode with them and that way we can keep making herbalism spread like wildflowers and a gentle reminder. Nothing shared on this podcast is intended to diagnose, treat or cure any disease. All the information is for educational purposes only and, yeah, we throw in some entertainment too, but what it is not is a substitute for personalized care from a qualified health practitioner. Always do your own research, listen to your body and, when needed, partner with a trusted professional who honors both your intuition and your health. Until next time, take care, stay curious and keep walking down the herbalist path.