Herbal tonics with CoreyPine Shane

Tonics with CoreyPine Shane
CoreyPine: Herbalists can have the language to talk to medical doctors and say St John's wort does work on specific liver enzymes that might stimulate breakdown of these drugs. So maybe we shouldn't use this herb with this drug. Or herbalists can talk to more holistic practitioners and say, St. John's wort blooms on St. John's day, which is one of the longest days of the year. The most sunlight. It has this beautiful yellow color and St. John's wort is like the plant of the sun. It really brings the sunshine in when people have like seasonal affective disorder or going through dark times. I love how herbalists can talk both of those worlds.
A modern epidemic is loneliness. And I feel that that loneliness is not just isolation from each other, that we're not living in communities and villages as much anymore. But it's also a separation from the world around us. And so when people connect with the plants in a really like visceral way, by smelling them, by tasting them, by drinking them as tea or taking them as tincture, they start to go walk in the woods or even a park or even their front yard and start seeing with different eyes and realizing that we are not just alone in the world. We're not just these individual encapsulated, separate beings that we're all connected.
Lana: You're listening to Plant Love Radio episode number 78.
Hello Friends! I hope you're doing well. In today's interview I am speaking with a North Carolina herbalist CoreyPine Shane. CoreyPine is a director of the Blue Ridge school of herbal medicine in Asheville, North Carolina. He spent over 25 years teaching and helping clients by artfully blending, Chinese and Western herbal traditions.
While he does this he focuses on local plans. As a seasonal wildcrafter he has extensive knowledge of wild plants as well as medicine making, which he has put into his forthcoming book Southeast Medicinal Plants. And we will talk a little bit about it during our conversation. He's also the author of an ebook Herbs for Pain. CoreyPine has taught at many national herb conferences and is a professional member of the American herbalist Guild.
During today's conversation, we are discussing how to bridge worlds, people, cultures, and plants to help each one of us to become stronger, more connected and healthy. I'm excited to talk about CoreyPine's three categories of tonics and five of his favorite plants for you to try.
As a gift for you I have created a summary of five of CoreyPine favorite tonics. You can find the summary as well as all the links and resources mentioned in today's episodes in the show notes at https://plantloveradio.com/78.
This episode is brought to you by mountain rose herbs. Think a candy store for an herbalist. And also one of my favorite herbal companies, whether you are a budding herbalist or an established practitioner, Mountain Rose Herbs offers the highest quality organically grown herbs, spices teas, essential oils and botanical goods. To learn more about the company and explore their amazing collection please head over to https://plantloveradio.com/mountainroseherbs
And now let's get to our conversation.
Hello CoreyPine, how are you doing?
CoreyPine: I'm doing well doing well. How are you doing today?
Lana: I am. Well, thank you. I'm excited to connect with you today to learn more about you, your herbal path. We connected about a year and a half ago and time does fly by. But as we begin this conversation, I wanted to ask you to talk a little bit about yourself, to share with our audience, how you got started, why herbal medicine, and why it had such a pull on you early on in your life.CoreyPine's early days in herbal medicine
CoreyPine: I often joke that I got into herbal medicine because I met an herbalist. But the truth is I grew up in kind of suburbs slash country, where as a kid I spent a lot of time in the woods. I just really felt at home in the woods. I really enjoyed exploring and playing. And then I learned that by learning the plants, I could snack. So you might say that low blood sugar was the cause of my desire to learn about plants.
Lana: I understand.
CoreyPine: Oh, there's things out here I can eat. And so I started learning those things and what plants I could eat. And then I kind of forgot about it in high school. But yeah, when I was about 19, I met this herbalist named 7Song.
I was going to school in Ithaca, New York at Ithaca college. And I just kind of randomly met this guy. Growing up in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia it's just so different than anybody I'd ever met before.
And I was very intrigued and I started going out to his cabin in the woods and visiting him out there. And, and I wasn't really intending to study herbal medicine. I would come over and he'd be like doing stuff. What are you doing? He's like, Oh, I'm chopping some burdock root. Do you want to help? Like, sure.
And so I'd sit there and just start chopping roots with him. And I'd say so what is this good for? And we'd started talking about the plants or we go for a walk and he pointed out plants to me. And I just started getting more and more curious. So he ended up becoming my herb teacher. I ended up going to his school years later.
But I kind of studied herbalism as a hobby and, it's like my cute hobby. But then I graduated from college and I decided to go explore around the West.
Lana: What did you study by the way?
CoreyPine: I was an English major, writing minor and religion minor.
Lana: Okay.
CoreyPine: So I graduated college and I spent like six months traveling around the Northwest. Originally I was just going to move to Seattle cause it was the early nineties and Seattle was really hip and cool. Kurt Cobain was still alive. Grunge was really cool and Seattle was hip.
But I ended up just kind of traveling around and kind of being houseless for a while, like living in the woods or like sleeping on porches and just kind of roaming around being a bit of a road dog.
And I found that in that place where I was hanging out with people who were homeless, sometimes not by choice like I kind of was, and people who are poor people who didn't have access to medicine, that all of a sudden this, what I was thinking of is like this cute hobby of plant medicine became almost like a life and death thing, right. where I could like really be camped out in the woods and someone would have a bad infection. And I could go and dig up some Oregon, grape root, boil up some tea over the fire and like give it to them. and I would see them get better.
Or put some Mullen leaves and throw that in there. And it would help with some of their congestion in their lungs. And at that point, that's where the rubber really hit the road for me. It was less theoretical and more like, wow, this stuff is actually free. It's accessible. And it really makes changes in people. Before then it was kinda more like this fancy alternative medicine and then it became this really applied medicine. Oh, this is something that people need and easily make if they had the knowledge to just do it.
So when I moved back to Ithaca, this would have been 1993. I started taking every class at 7Song offered to the public. And then in 94, he opened up an herb school and I signed up, I was in his first class and yeah. I really did not expect to start an herb school, I didn't even expect, like really start a practice. I was just halfway through herb school and someone said, so what are you going to do when you graduate?
And I thought, I don't know. I guess I'll help people. I'll see clients. So I graduated and I just started seeing clients and helping out my friends and my community. And I just felt more and more like, wow, this is something that's really important. This is something that people need to know. This medicine is all around us that's easy to access and has this powerful ability to heal us. And so eventually I started an herb school.
Lana: We'll talk more about your herb school because I definitely want our audience to hear more about it, about your offerings and things of that type. But before we do, I want to talk about a couple of other subjects. So when we were preparing for this conversation, many of the topics that came up were somehow connected to bridging different worlds. So how herbalists bridge mainstream and holistic medicine from your perspective?Bridging different worlds
CoreyPine: Right because the holistic medicine is such a blanket term. I don't really know any better term, right? There is alternative medicine, complementary medicine, holistic medicine. Until we come up with a better term, I just use holistic medicine as a placeholder because it covers everything from Reiki to energy medicine, to Mayan abdominal massage, to spiritual bathing...
and herbal medicine has this connection to all those things. It can be energetic, it can be deep, it can be spiritual, but we can also talk about the plants in a chemical way. We can talk about what chemicals are in them. We can talk about the physiology of how those plants affect our body.
And in that way, I think we really bridge what people often like call like more woo type stuff with the more mainstream medicine way of looking at the body. What's fascinating is that mainstream medicine is actually validating some of these herbal and or holistic principles, for example, the gut biome, the bacteria in our gut, which herbalists and holistic practitioners were saying, Oh, this is really important. We should pay attention to this for years. All of a sudden in the past five years, mainstream medicine is like, Oh yeah, it really is important. And it's actually even more important than you herbalists were even saying, cause look, it does all this too.
So maybe that's what I find so fascinating. The way you can talk about plants and so many different languages, you can talk about the chemistry of the plant and the pharmacy of the plant. And that is a really valid language but it is only one language. Let's say American ginseng Panax quinqefolious has ginsenosides, which are adaptogens.
They seem to work on the limbic system of the brain to help reduce our stress response so we can experience more external stress with having less of an internal reaction. But we could also say that is a qi tonic. And because it's qi tonic doesn't mean that it's also not an adaptogen. Both things can be true. We could use language like anti-inflammatory, or we could use language like cooling, or we could use language like Pitta reducing and like Aryuveda terms.
And all those are true, they're just different maps of the same terrain. The map is not the territory as one of my teachers, Michael Moore would always say but the map is an interpretation. Each interpretation gives you something about what's going on.
I think herbalists can have the language to talk to medical doctors and say like, Oh yeah, this St John's wort does work on specific liver enzymes that might stimulate breakdown of these drugs. So maybe we shouldn't use this herb with this drug.
Or herbalists can talk to more holistic practitioners and say, Oh, St. John's wort blooms on St. John's day, which is one of the longest days of the year. The most sunlight. It has this beautiful yellow color and St. John's wort is like the plant of the sun. It really brings the sunshine in when people have like seasonal affective disorder. Or even just like in a dark place, this plant that blooms on St. John's day, like pretty much summer solstice, it's a few days off of summer solstice and captures that beautiful sunlight can bring the sunlight in when we're going through dark times.
I love how herbalists can talk both of those worlds. And that's one of the things that's really fascinating for me.
Lana: It truly is. I like that multifaceted approach to herbal medicine. And you mentioned just a couple of minutes ago ginseng and how it's a qi tonic made me think about the other bridge we discussed earlier, so bridging different cultures, right?
So if you have a practitioner that is working with plants, who has understanding of Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine and perhaps Western herbalism, that plants also allow them to bridge these different cultures. Can you talk a little bit more about that?Bridging cultures
CoreyPine: And it's fun too. Cause I was just listening to your podcast with Phyllis Light talking about bridging the folk tradition of Southern medicine with modern medicine. But in a lot of ways, medicine is a reflection of the culture that it comes out of. Just like Western medicine, which we can bust on it all we want, but there's a lot of really amazing things about Western medicine.
And there's a lot of failures of Western medicine, which we can acknowledge and address with herbal medicine, but there's a lot of things Western medicine can do that herbalists can't necessarily. And that's kind of an outgrowth of this whole Western mindset in the words of Descartes, take apart the universe like a clock and look at the individual pieces has led to some fantastic scientific achievements. But that way of looking at medicine is a product of our culture. Just like Chinese medicine is a product of the Chinese culture. And so learning these different types of medicine, we actually kind of understand what's going on in the culture and we can communicate with people from that culture. But I feel like it widens my mind.
I haven't studied Mayan medicine with Mayan people. I've read a little bit about how the modern Maya practice. And just studying that and looking at that, it opens my mind to how those people really like see and perceive the world. And it fascinates me that in some ways it's actually very similar to Chinese medicine that the modern Maya talk about disease in terms of hot diseases and cold diseases, just like Chinese medicine and just like Greek medicine, which was the medicine of all of Western and central Europe for centuries.
Sometimes it's the differences, which reflect that particular culture. But it's also really heartwarming for me to see the similarities. The Maya also use a species of basil that grows there. I don't know the Maya name for it, but the Spanish names umpak.
There was a species of basil used by the modern Maya, in this very spiritual way. It's used for spiritual cleansing. And it's not the same way as Ayurveda uses Holy basil, which is also a different species of basil. And the species the Maya use is not the Italian basil that we use for making pesto. And even though it's not the exact same thing, how did these Maya people figure out with no contact with the people of India, they're both using almost the same plant, like related species of plants for very similar things, for like uplifting and cleansing.
And I think that's what I mean about like bridging the different cultures, understanding the culture better. It's about being the difference and then seeing the similarities. It makes me realize we are just one big human family.
Lana: Right. Very true. Very true. I had a conversation with a colleague of yours and we were talking about the communications between plants and humans. And so perhaps, some of these plans are inspiring us in one way or another to look at things from a similar perspective. So perhaps that particular species of basil and maybe the Holy basil and maybe the Italian basil, there is a communication that goes on between someone who is able to interpret this communication and sharing it with others. I don't know. Bridging plants and people
All right. So the next place where there is definitely a bridge is between the plants themselves and the human beings or the plants and the people. How have you experienced this in your own life? Can you share with us your own philosophy or maybe some examples of this?
CoreyPine: When I talk about being a bridge between the people and the plants, it's not like we're really two separate beings. I mean, we are, it's not two separate worlds. Really what I'm doing is connecting people to the world they already live in. It really opens people's eyes to see like, wow, there are plants all around us. Some are edible, some are medicinal, some will help me heal this problem that I've been having. But the engender is this connection between people and the natural world around them.
It opens up their empathy for the natural world. And it creates this feeling of connection. I think a modern epidemic. It's a strange times to use the word epidemic, but a modern epidemic is loneliness. And I feel that that loneliness is not just isolation from each other, that we're not living in communities and villages as much anymore.
But it's also a separation from the world around us. And so when people connect with the plants in a really like visceral way, by smelling them, by tasting them, by drinking them as tea or taking them as tincture, they start to go walk in the woods or even a park or even their front yard and start seeing with different eyes and realizing that we are not just alone in the world. We're not just these individual encapsulated, separate beings that we're all connected.
But really is as much as we talk about self-sufficiency no one can do it all alone. I mean, we depend at the very least on all of our ancestors who brought us here, we depend on all the things that we eat and take in and all the farmers and suppliers who got it to us and all the generations before us who grew it and selected a specific species of plant to become broccoli or brussel sprouts which is the same species, just people have grown it in different ways.
But I think it engender is the connection that is so much more healing to our body and our spirit then just taking something to heal a specific illness. And to me, I feel like that is the deepest medicine of herbal medicine. That is the deepest healing of herbal medicine is this feeling of connection of a feeling of part of something that's more than us.
Lana: So as a clinician and as a teacher, you have one category of plants that is very near and dear to your heart, and this is tonics. so I want to talk a little bit about that. What are tonics? How do they work? Why are they even important? What are their unique characteristics? And maybe you can give us a few examples of some of your favorites.What are tonics?
CoreyPine: Yeah. Good. So a tonic is an herb, any herbs that's safe enough to take for long periods of time Taking it, it engenders balance or nourishes the body or some part of the body in some way.
Sometimes people mix up the word tonic and tincture, and the tincture is an alcohol extract and a tonic is a name for a category of herbs. It's a thing that an herb does.
Lana: sure.Three categories of herbs
CoreyPine: There is a way of categorizing herbs into three different strengths. And I believe this comes from Chinese medicine and then the words have been adopted by Western practitioners. But there are tonics, acute herbs and then heroic herbs. These are the Western terms.
It's kind of funny because the words are a little bit different in Chinese medicine, but the words more directly translated the tonics, they would call the superior category of herbs because they are life promoting and life engendering. They're not just waiting till you're sick.
And the acute herbs are called the inferior herbs because there's things like, well, if you actually don't take care of yourself and therefore you do get sick, then you can take these things and they'll fix ya.
And the herbs that in Western herbalism we call heroics, in Chinese medicine they're called poisons. But they're still medicine. They're just really strong things that are almost guaranteed to have side effects. But when someone is really out of balance, they will save someone from dying, but they're going to be hard on the body, hard on the system.
Most of Western medicine would fall into the category of poisons. And I'm not saying Western medicine is poison. I'm saying that it's this category of heroic herbs that are extremely strong medicines that do have side effects on the body. And don't really bring it about balance, but they stop death. They stop disease.
That's their purpose at least is to stop the disease process, stop people from dying. And some of them do that very well. But all traditional cultures, no matter what culture you go back to since is not just Chinese medicine, this could be Ayurveda, this could be the ancient medicine of a Choctaw or Scottish people or people from Cote d'Ivoire.
People all over the world traditional medicine is mostly about promoting health and nourishing and balancing and preventing people from getting sick. And that's what tonics really do. There's actually a saying in Chinese medicine that I love, which is waiting until you're sick to start taking medicine it's like digging a well, when you're thirsty.
Lana: Mm.
CoreyPine: I know isn't that powerful.
Lana: Yes, definitely. So talk to us about some of their unique characteristics.Unique characteristics
CoreyPine: Yeah, so tonics can be all around tonics like I talked about ginseng being an adaptogen or ashwagandha. I tend to use ashwagandha for my clients actually more than I do ginseng. It's easier to grow. It's more common. It's less expensive. But also ashwagandha is a great one because it's it's both somewhat calming as well as energizing.
And so many of us modern people, we need that calming as, as much as we need to be energizing. So that's why ashwagandha is actually one of my favorite adaptogens.
Lana: CoreyPine, can you tell us what adaptogens is?Defining adaptogens
CoreyPine: Oh, sure. So adaptogen is a type of tonic. It's a great type of of tonic. And adaptogen has three basic characteristics. First off it is gentle enough to be taken long-term for most people with no side effects. Second off it brings balance into the body. So it helps the body Create better balance probably by reducing our stress response, reducing stress hormone.
That's not part of the definition. That's how a lot of modern herbalists think that adoptions seem to be working. There's some new theories coming up. We'll see how they play out. And thirdly, the third thing is that they work in a nonspecific way. So if someone is hungry and then they're really tired because they're hungry and they eat a peanut butter sandwich and they have more energy because they're no longer hungry.
Well, that's not an adaptogen because that's working in a specific way. Adaptogens help the whole body, not just one small part of the body, they help us maintain our homeostasis, meaning the overall balance of the body.
Lana: Okay. Quick break
Just a quick pause here to remind you that I've created a summary of five of CoreyPine's favorite tonics, we will discuss them in a minute and you can find them in the show notes at https://plantloveradio.com/78. And now back to our conversation.
So all tonics adaptogens and all adaptogens tonics?Tonics vs adaptogens
CoreyPine: No and Yes. So all adaptogens are tonics, but tonics are actually much more broad than just adaptogens. Get us talking we'll just talk about adaptogens all day. But you can also have tonics for specific areas of the body.
For example, milk thistle. Milk thistle is a great tonic for the liver. Tonics can mean a lot of different things. It's not like, Oh, I have liver problems. I should take Milk thistle cause it's a liver tonic. It's tough to figure out which tonic is best for what's going on for each individual person. But take milk thistle, it's not that it's not that powerful that cleansing toxins out of the liver, it's not stimulating the liver and getting it to move more. It actually protects the structure of the liver. So it protects the physical liver from damage, and it also helps repair the liver that's already been damaged.
So it's been used for things like cirrhosis or fatty liver to help repair some of that damage. But it's also been used for people who have been exposed to toxic substances to help protect the liver from the damage from those toxic substances, whether they're like. Organic chemicals or tear gas or nasty petroleum things.
And so that's really different than taking an herb like Oregon grape, which is more of an acute herb. It could be used tonically that's a little bit confusing because I'm saying that tonic is a gentle herb safe to take for long term. But sometimes we can take stronger herbs if they're indicated for a longer period of time to help deal with chronic conditions.
So Oregon grape is more of a liver stimulant, it's actually not related to the grape plant. Like the grapes that we eat, or make grape jelly out of. Totally different plant, but it has fruits that look like grapes. Sometimes it's called Rocky mountain grape Mahonia berberis.
The roof, of that plant is used as an antimicrobial, kind of an antibiotic, if you will. But it stimulates the liver. So it'll help stimulate the liver to clear more toxins. It will stimulate bile flow, help the liver do all the things the liver needs to do more efficiently, but it's more of a liver stimulant then like a liver protector. And so I think milk thistle is more of a true liver tonic, where Oregon grape would be more of a liver stimulant.CoreyPine's favorite tonics
Lana: That's great. Thank you. So give us list of three to five of your favorite tonics, something that perhaps you recommend frequently, or perhaps you just absolutely love.
CoreyPine: Oh, yeah, really tempted to put coffee in here, but I don't think I should do coffee. Okay. Some of my favorite herbal tonics. I really do like milk thistle because so many people have liver issues.
Ashwagandha that I mentioned before, it's a great adaptogen, probably my favorite adaptogens for people living the modern American lifestyle. That doesn't necessarily mean someone who's wearing a business suit and going to an office, but just most of us in the U S are like probably working too hard and getting too little and not taking enough time off. And ashwagandha is great because ashwagandha is great for the wired and tired thing. You know, It's good for the wired because it helps calm us down, but it's also good for the tired and helps nourish us. So that's probably my favorite adaptogens to recommend.
Astragalus - Astragalus membranaceus is the botanical name. Huang qi is the Chinese name, Astragalus root, it's an herb that comes from China. We have some native species that are not able to be used the same way, they're actually somewhat toxic. But that species of astragalus, the root is an immuno modulator. We could call it an immune tonic, but the great thing about it is I like Astragalus for people who have a weak immune system. I've used it in formulas for people with cancer. And I've used it in people who just tend to catch a lot of colds and I want to help them boost up their immune system. But what's fascinating is it's also a bit of an immunomodulator. You can also use it if someone has an excess immune reactions, such as allergies or an autoimmune condition.
And which brings up another one of my favorites, which is reishi, reishi mushroom. So I live in North Carolina, Southeastern United States, and we have a lot of reishi growing here right now. The mushroom that we have growing here is not the official reishi that comes from China and Japan Ganoderma lucidum, but it is a species that grows specifically on hemlock trees.
But my experience and the experience of other herbalists around here is that it could be used as a substitute. It's not an exact substitute for the traditional Chinese reishi. Reishi is the Japanese name, lingzhi is that Chinese name. But I find that it's an amazing immunomodulator, like astragalus. Astragalus is also a qi tonic so it can be combined with ginseng, for example, for people who are really like worn out and tired. Reishi, not so much, less of a qi tonic, more of a blood tonic, it's more nourishing and it's more calming. I've used reishi also for clients who have cancer and even more than astragalus for people who have auto immune conditions, where their immune system is overactive and attacking their own body's cells.
But reishi is also great for the heart. And I think about this more as the emotional or a spiritual heart. It actually does have some effect on the physical heart as well, mildly helped balance blood sugar and is somewhat cardio protective. But here, I really mean kind of the more emotional aspect of heart.
So I've used reishi mushroom for people who have insomnia from PTSD. It's great for post-traumatic stress disorder for almost anyone, but especially for people who are so trivial that just can't even like relax their mind to sleep at night. It's traditionally used in Chinese medicine for people who do fall asleep, but then they wake up because their dreams are so active that their mind doesn't really rest when they sleep. So that's one thing I love about reishi is that it both is balancing for that immune response, but also balances the mind. It's very like nourishing for the mind.
in Aryuveda an herb or a substance of food, is described as satvic if it's something that helps us be more present, literally it means helps us perceive the true nature of reality, but it's easier for me to understand is something that helps us be calm, centered, and balanced, even when there's a lot of stuff going on around us.
I have one more tonic herb I it's a tonic or that most people have studied herbalism to know about, but, but there might be some people listening to the show who don't know about stinging nettles, or they know about Stinging nettles, but only for that stupid thing that makes their legs hurt when they walk around in shorts, that's their association.
But nettles are one of my favorite tonic herbs, and many herbalists. So I use the leaves, the root and the seed, but the leaves are mostly what are used. And the leaves dried, make it a fantastic tea that is very nourishing. It's very blood building. So it's used a lot often combined with oatstraw for women who are pregnant.
So they might do like half nettles, half oat straw, because oat straw is also very nourishing, but nettles is kind of dry. And so oats straw is a little bit moistening. So nettles and old straw, 50:50 half and half make a really nice combination for that nourishing aspect. But what I love about nettles is it's one of the highest plant sources of protein. It's got magnesium, vitamin C manganese Could probably keep going, but iron got a good amount of iron and but it's building, but it's also somewhat cleansing. It's also a diuretic. So good idea. Not to drink a pint of nettles before setting out in a long car drive.
Lana: That's a great tip. Thank you. Some of the tonics that you have discussed, perhaps nettles and few other ones, you can see growing in the wild. Right. And I know that this is one area that you really love personally. You are a wild crafter and also a bio regionalist. Can you talk to us about the importance of knowing plants that grow around you and how and when it is okay to harvest them, and what do you need to be mindful off?Wildcrafting and bioregionalism
CoreyPine: this is a very good question because I think wildcrafting has gotten a bad rap lately. But. It's not so much if wildcrafting is good or bad. I think it's asking that question that you just asked, when is it appropriate to Wildcraft and when does it not, and which plant and where?
I personally love wildcrafting, but it needs to be done right. And it needs to be done knowledgeably. There are resources available for people to learn how to wild crafts. I love wildcrafting for a few reasons. First off, I feel so much more connected to nature when I'm wildcrafting I also feel much more connected to the individual plant.
For people who have never wild harvested before this might be a strange concept because some people think like, well, you're killing the plant, you're harvesting it. How does that make you have more compassion for the plant? But by taking the time, when I go into the woods to Really look at the plant and how much of it there is and what are the circumstances around it, what does the environment around the plant and making those choices about whether I can harvest or not, and then really connecting with the plant to make sure I'm harvesting the right plant in the right place at the right time, makes me feel so much more connected to that specific plant. And it makes me feel much more connected to the medicine when I give the medicine to clients. It also enables me to use a lot of plants that I might not be able to buy off the shelf.
I think the main thing for me as someone who's a little bit anti authoritarian is just this feeling of being able to get the medicine directly from nature. I can go out and I can harvest this thing myself without having to go to a doctor or a pharmacist or even a health food store. It gives me that more direct relationship to my medicine. And so that's what I love about wildcrafting and what I love about bio regionalism is using the plants to grow right around me.
As you can tell from my list, not all of those plants are bio regional, so I'm primarily bioregional, but if there's a great plant that grows in South Africa, then I'll use it. But I prefer to use a local plant. I think there's a bias against local and abundant plants. And I think it's really important to notice that
Lana: Can you talk a little bit more about that? Why is there a bias?Noticing a bias against local and abundant plants
CoreyPine: People like to hear about things that are new or newly discovered, or did you hear that this new medicine can cure cancer? And if it's an herb or a food, it's not a new medicine. Traditional people have probably been using it for thousands of years. It's just new to us.
So being that, that health-related field for 30 years, I've seen a lot of fads come and go, and there's nothing wrong with Noni or goji berries or Maca, or I don't know what the current fad is now. Maybe cacao and there's definitely nothing wrong with cacao.
So it's not a matter of good and bad I think that we need to temper our desire for the shiny new thing. And remember that there's a lot of stuff that's very common and abundant and growing around us that can be really amazing. That people have a resistance to just going out in their yard and digging up their dandelion or their burdock because those are just weeds. They can't be good for anything. They're just weeds, but there's a reason why these weeds came over with us.
People actually intentionally brought dandelion with them to the new world from Europe because they wanted to use it for medicine. They wanted to use it for food. So you think things like dandelion and Japanese knot weed and even weeds like, like mimosa tree is fantastic because that way there's less competition for the native plants, but also we're not going to harm the ecosystem by harvesting dandelion and Shepherd's purse and Japanese knotweed. And they're really powerful medicines.
Yeah, I think we just need to retune ourselves from this idea of like the new thing, being something out there that we need to reach out and get from some other part of the world or some other culture and turn around and look really at us and where we're at and what grows here and realize that a lot of our medicine is already right here that we already had it in our yards in our fields. And that's powerful medicine right there.
Lana: That's awesome. Thank you for that wonderful reminder.
Ethical wildcrafting
CoreyPine: I think it's important for people to learn about ethical wildcrafting. People need to learn how to Wildcraft before they go out harvesting, because a lot of people come with a more colonial mindset, meaning that the plants are there so therefore they're mine.
But the plants don't belong to us. They belong to nature and it's a partnership. So I think before we go harvest from the wild, we need to establish a connection with the wild. We need to understand where that plant is, what this piece of land is about, where we're harvesting from. And what's the right way to go about doing that.
Robin Wall Kimmerer wrote a great book called Braiding Sweetgrass. There's a whole chapter in there about wildcrafting when she talks about is having right relationship. And anybody who does wildcrafting I totally recommend them read that book and then learn about each individual plant you want to harvest. Is it abundant in your area? Is it abundant everywhere? Is it abundant just where you live?
Really good wildcrafting it's about being aware. I go out in the woods and before I harvest a single plant, I do a stand count and make sure there's enough of that plant where I'm at to harvest it.
Usually at this point, I know my area pretty well, and I know what's abundant and what's notso abundant. So if I find 20 wild yam, which is not a super abundant plant here, I might still make sure there's even more of that before I go harvest. Where I've have found 20 black cohosh, I would think like, Oh yeah, that's a pretty good amount I can start harvesting a little bit of that.
A rule of thumb is don't harvest more than one out of every four plants, but even that is a very general rule. You should really get to know each individual plant to know which ones you can harvest more of, which you can harvest more moderately, but a great idea is to start with weeds.
They're not as flashy. They're not as exciting, but start with your yard. Start with the dandelion, the burdock, yellow dock, red clover, plantain. There's so many amazing medicinal plants that is growing wild all around us. Start with those before going into the Backwoods to dig up black cohosh roots, leave that for a little bit later.
Lana: that's a great advice. Thank you.
CoreyPine: Oh yeah. You're welcome.
Lana: So we talk about a lot of different subjects today, and I wanted to ask you a question about your favorite resources. So it might be resources on wild crafting or bio regionalism. It might be something on tonics, the connection between different cultures or different plants and humans. If you have any suggestions of books, conferences, herbalists, anything that comes to mind, any of your favorites.Favorite resources
CoreyPine: Oh, yeah. Yeah. If you have a conference near you, I highly recommend going to an herb conference. Not only do you get to meet other herbalists and feel like you're part of a community, but you get to hear from the people who are writing the books and you get to hear not just the linear stuff they might write in books, but what is their clinical experience? Sometimes I go to classes, not to hear what the subject of the class is, but I go almost to hear the tangents and their stories and their personal experience. And also you just get to meet and interact with a lot of people. So if you start getting serious about herbal medicine, go to one of these conferences.
My favorites right now... I love the American herbalist Guild symposium, where we met. Also right here in my backyard, just outside of Asheville is the medicines from the earth symposium, which happens every year in June. This year, of course is going to be online. Then the international herbs symposium, hadn't been in a long time. But that's always a great one up in Massachusetts for folks who are up in the Northeast. I'm sorry. I don't have a lot of West coast ones for people who are listening to the West coast. I just I'm an East coaster. So I tend to go to East coast conferences.
As far as books, how much time do we have left?
Lana: That's a good question. Just a couple of your favorites, maybe something to start with on any of these topics.
CoreyPine: Let's see. Okay, I'm going to give you a list and this, list might be different if you asked me the same question tomorrow. I recommend Thomas Easley and Steven Horne wrote two books, one called modern herbal medicine, it's an encyclopedia of a lot of different diseases and then holistic approaches to them, and then herbs and formulas that fit those approach.
They also wrote a book called the modern herbal dispensatory, which is great medicine making book. So those are two books. If you want to get deeper with Chinese medicine. I tend to blend Chinese medicine and Western herbalism. I tend to be use bioregional Western plants. I use wild plants of the Southeast, whether they're native or invasive, but through the lens of Chinese medicine, that tends to be my philosophy. The philosophy that I resonate with as far as looking at health and disease. And for that, I really love Thomas Avery Garran's books. He has two books, one called Western herbs, according to traditional Chinese medicine. And the other is just called Western herbs in Chinese medicine. Those are two great books I could recommend.
And you'll learn more about Chinese medicine as you read them. As far as let's see, wild edibles, I would recommend Samuel Thayer's books. Samuel Thayer has three, four, four books now about wild plants, the foragers harvest, incredible wild edibles are two of them. Really goes in depth about how to Wildcraft wild plants for food. Then for wildcrafting for medicine, if you live anywhere in the Western third of the country, I highly recommend Michael Moore's books.
Michael Moore, the herbalist, not the filmmaker, but he wrote a book for the desert and Canyon West, the Pacific West, and then also one for the Rocky mountain West. And Timber Press also is a bioregional series out there. The Mountain States, Pacific Northwest, Midwest. And soon to be one of the Southeast.
Lana: Okay. And you tell us about soon to be.
CoreyPine: yes. I'm not just recommending this series because I'm the author.
Lana: but it's a great accomplishment. So tell us about the book that is going to come out in a few months.
CoreyPine: So this June, June of 2021 Southeast medicinal plants will be arriving on bookshelves all over the country. This is my first major book that I've written. It covers 106 plants that you will find growing wild in the Southeast. Some native, some introduced, most of them, fairly abundant. How to identify them, how to harvest them, literally how would you dig this root versus this root? And then how do you practically use that plant for medicine? And most abundant species to harvest?
We don't have a lot of, let's say blue vervain, love blue vervain , Verbena hastata. We don't have a lot of it in the Southeast. So I talk about other species you could use instead, like Verbena braziliensis. It's the Brazilian species of vervain or possibly white vervain, Verbena urticafolia, but it's a little bit different.
So talk about the actual species that grow in the Southeast. And then because I'm a clinician I really enjoy talking about when do you use this? So instead of thinking about things, it's like, Oh, I need a liver. Or let me look through this list of liver herbs. It's like, when would you use this liver herb? When would you use yellow root versus fringe tree versus burdock and dandelion or Oregon grape root or milk thistle as we talked about before. My hope is that there's some good clinical gems in there for you.
Lana: That's wonderful. And I hope that you will come back to Plant Love Radio so we can do an interview discussing the book and all the pearls of wisdom you are sharing . So thank you for that but I also want to talk a little bit about what you do other than writing.
You mentioned earlier in this conversation that you run a school, so there is Blue Ridge school of herbal medicine. Can you tell us a little bit about the programs that you offer and just in general, what is the mission of the school? What type of students you attract? What happens when someone signs up for your programs?Blue Ridge School of Herbal Medicine
CoreyPine: Sure. So I started the blue Ridge school of herbal medicine in 1999. So it's been running for 22 years now and it teaches a blend of Chinese medicine and Western herbalism. And our mission is to connect people with the plants, coming back to that idea of being a bridge, getting people connected with the plants, but also creating connection and community in the classroom as a big focus of ours.
So we spend time outdoors learning how to identify the plants. So seeing the plants themselves, but also learning how to identify the plants. Both myself and Marc Williams teach a lot of that piece of the class. And then we also talk about the materia Medica. Like, how do we how do we actually use the plants?
We cover anatomy, physiology, Chinese medicine, understand how the body works. But a big thing for me is getting people out the woods and you get to actually meet the plants. It's good to learn the intellectual stuff, but I really like the body centered approach to herbalism.
When we learn about burdock root, I think it's important for us to try burdock root. Not just like, what is the plant look like, but, okay. What is the root tastes like in my mouth? What does the tea tastes like? What is that the alcohol extract? What does the tincture tastes like? And then feeling that, how does that move in my body? And that way people don't need to ask me, Oh, which one is stronger? Burdock or dandelion or Oregon grape root. I could say. Okay, well, which one tastes stronger?
We have three main programs. We run an essentials of herbalism program, which is one weekend a month. It's kinda more like a kitchen medicine piece. It's very practical. Hands-on plant walks, medicine making... Because it's one weekend a month we get people from all over the Southeast coming to that class.
We also have a holistic herbalism program, which is two days a week for six months. And that's more like an herbalist training program, that's more of the anatomy and the physiology the Chinese medicine, we even cover some Ayurveda as well. But just a chance for people to kind of go a lot deeper with learning the plants and how they work in the body and what they do.
Then for people who want to take the next step and really be a clinician, really start seeing clients we have an advanced clinical program. So that'd be an addition to the holistic herbalism program. It's a two-year program, teaching people more how to work with disease, how to assess different organs of the body and health and disease. What are the pathologies that affect those systems? What are the energetic patterns that you'll tend to see in those systems?
We spent a lot of time talking about, well, how do you interact with people? How does a practitioner interact with clients? How do you ask questions? How do you hold good boundaries. Once you ask these questions, how do you put together the answers? So we spent a lot of time in that whole client practitioner interaction. Cause I feel that like that's just as important, maybe even more important than figuring out what herb to give someone. Maybe like being a good herbal clinician you're like 40% herbalist, 60% life coach. So we teach people some of those skills as well.
And then I've also started doing this thing called a wild medicine internship because so many people have been wanting to do plant walks - we meet one day a week for six weeks. There's a spring session and a fall session. They're two different classes. But we go out to six different locations over six weeks and spend a whole day outside talking about the botany and identification of oh, yeah like what does it look like on a high Ridge? What plants grow here? What are the plant communities up at 5,000 feet near the blue Ridge Parkway? What are the plant communities and plants and medicine of like 1500 feet, 1200 feet down by a river.
In some ways it's kind of like in real life version of my book, Kind of like go out and talk about the plants and how to identify them, harvest them and use them.
Lana: That sounds like so much fun. CoreyPine, you've spent Quite a bit of time talking about different topics and I'm so grateful to you. I have a couple of more questions as we're coming to an end of this. One is if someone wants to connect with you and learn more about your school or learn more about you, how would they be able to do that? That's question number one. And question number two will be, do you have any parting thoughts for us?Getting in touch with CoreyPine
CoreyPine: Well, yes. So if someone wants to get in touch, they could check out our website, https://blueridgeschool.org, blueridgeschool.org. I also have a small tincture business, my tincture business is called Pine's herbals. And the the web address is pinesherbals.com.
Lana: Beautiful. Thank you.
CoreyPine: You can also look us up on Facebook or Instagram. Instagram... I couldn't fit blue Ridge school of herbal medicine. So I cut the of out -it's just blue Ridge school herbal medicine,
Lana: Okay. Okay.
CoreyPine: and then Pine's Herbals also on Instagram. The links to Facebook and Instagram are on the webpage as well.
Lana: Great. Thank you. And so any parting thoughts for us?Parting thoughts
CoreyPine: Yeah. I encourage folks to go into herbal medicine with a sense of wonder. It's more than just chemicals and plants that change our physiological processes. It's about connecting to the world in a different way. It's about connecting to our own body in a different way. I find that holistic medicine and holistic herbalism has really changed the way I look at my own body. It's changed the way I look at health. And for me, that's the most powerful piece of herbal medicine. The deeper we go, we really learn how to see the world in a new way. And that's the gift I hope people can get from herbal medicine.
Lana: Thank you, CoreyPine. Thank you so much. Thank you for the wisdom, for your time and for sharing it with us.
CoreyPine: for having me here today. I really enjoyed it and I love your podcast. Thank you.
Thank you for listening!
Lana: Thank you so much for joining us today for this conversation with CoreyPine Shane. I hope you've enjoyed it. To get to all the resources and links mentioned in today's episode please head over to https://plantloveradio.com/78.
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