Herbalism & Holistic Health in Salt Lake City

There’s a question I love to ask budding herbalism students: are herbs enough?

It may seem like a strange question coming from a very passionate and dedicated herbalist like yours truly, but it’s an important question because the correct answer is no!

Maybe not the answer you expected, but the correct one nonetheless. Herbs, while profound and even powerful in their healing support, cannot overcome the effects of other more powerful things we might be doing each day to negatively impact our overall wellness. I think about Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the hill- doing one thing hoping it will counteract the strength of many other things. So, with this in mind, how can we work with herbal medicine in a way that creates true and lasting transformation in our health leading to whole-person wellness? Let’s explore.

Sisyphus pushing his boulder up a mountain is like herbs trying to combat a life of unhealthy influences

What Is Whole Person Health?

Before we get too far into this article on holistic healing with herbs, we should clarify what whole-person health really is. The term holistic gets thrown around so much that I am hesitant to use it in my own practice even though it is a great word with an accurate definition. I’ve come to prefer whole-person wellness because it really unpacks what it is we’re really addressing here.

Whole person wellness means that the health we seek and the wellness we nourish is all of us. Every level of being, every expression of life within us, and every way in which we exist in the world. There are many ways we can categorize this, but I’ve consolidated it into six areas of self that I think cover it all.

The six core areas of self we focus on in holistic healing

BODY
Our physical bodies and all physical processes. This includes everything from the skin inwards and all functions that happen on a cellular level.

MIND
Our thoughts, beliefs, and responsive patterns; most of which we have a great deal of control over, some of which happen very quietly under the radar.

EMOTIONS
Our feelings, reactions, and the ways in which we store emotions in the body and the ways emotions influence physical actions.

ENERGY
The flow of life energy, vital force, and life’s intelligence through us- the animating principle of being.

STORY
Our lived experiences, past, goals, dreams, successes, failures, narratives, and social connections; everything from our personal history to our jobs, education, and relationships.

SPIRIT
Our concept of self as a whole, greater than the sum of its parts. A non-dogmatic and non-specific intuited glimpse at the part of us that is connect to otherness.

In my work, holistic health means that all of these levels of being are honored and nourished in the process. We don’t just focus on one aspect of self nor do we only communicate with one aspect of self- they’re all relevant and connected in a truly ecological way.

Reality is an interdependent web of relationships and connections- this includes your own self!

The Ecology of Holistic Health

One thing we need to have firmly in place before getting to what true holistic health looks like is this: all parts of us are interdependent on all other parts. No aspect of you can be truly compartmentalized or isolated from the rest. What happens to your physical body will impact your mental health, emotional wellness, sleep, daily stress levels, and spirituality. What happens in your life will impact your physical health and all other levels of being. While we tend to think that physical issues are limited to the body, this simply is not the case. An immersive fantasizing of eating a fresh-cut lemon with all it’s sour juice will show how the body physical responds to a mental construct.

In traditional herbalism, then, we can’t simply throw an herbal remedy at a problem and expect it to be fixed. Each person is a unique ecology of aspects and each aspect must be honored through assessment in order to arrive at a goal that’s really holistic in the truest sense of the term.

When I work with a client who’s struggling with digestive health, for example, we won’t just chat about their digestive experiences and put together herbs that are ‘good for’ the gut. We will instead explore all levels of their being as they relate to digestion, look for patterns, and address the whole person rather than suppressing uncomfortable symptoms. This leads to a medicine that goes to the root of a pattern rather than just knocking the pattern out in one way so that it manifests some other way later on.

The six areas I focus on as a clinical herbalist in Salt Lake City, Utah

Six Areas of Holistic Healing

Here are the six areas that I like to focus on in my work with clients. Each of these areas opens up to many other sub-areas of focus, and depending on what we find during assessment we may hone in on some more than others. Sometimes we even focus on the way two of these areas relate to each other as they create a third category! While it may seem complicated, if you look at these six categories you’ll find they are the essentials to good health- things we know intuitively and from ancestral wisdom. It’s all about putting them together and finding a way to nourish and protect each of them with the help of herbs and adjunct therapies.

DIET

No matter how intensive our herbal protocols may be, we take in far more food on an average day than we do herbs. When the body is struggling to maintain wellness due to lack of essential nutrients, when we’re eating foods that don’t resonate well with our unique constitutions, or when we’re in a chronic state of dehydration, all systems will suffer. Diet is something that each person must explore for themselves- there’s no best diet or one-size-fits-all. That being said, the language of herbalism gives us profound insight into how we can look at food as medicine and cultivate a diet that’s vibrant in foods that nourish all levels of being.

In my practice of holistic nutrition in Salt Lake City, I focus on whole foods, as close to their natural state as possible, combined and prepared in ways that align to one’s unique constitution and healing goals.

MOVEMENT

Like diet, movement needs to be formatted in a way that’s specific to each individual. We each have different needs and abilities when it comes to moving our bodies- not everyone can do strength training or distance running. Here, we’re invited to dialogue with our bodies and explore what kinds of mindful, consistent movement we can bring in. In my work I generally encourage people to connect to their patterns of movement or lack thereof, and then refer them to experts who can help them learn new, healthier ways of getting active.

One things I always remind my clients is that there are several systems in the body including lymphatics and immunity that rely on intentional movement to function properly!

MENTAL ATMOSPHERE

We are the only thinkers in our minds, and what we think has a profound effect on how we feel and how we function. Exploring the kinds of inner dialogues, beliefs, and thought patterns we have can be a very enlightening experience when it comes to holistic health. If we’re eating great and exercising well but thinking negative and catastrophic things all day long, there is no way for us to thrive.

I love working with clients who are actively engaged in mental health therapy with a qualified practitioner, and I also believe in the power of many modalities of mindful meditation, positive affirmation, and positive psychology techniques that we can employ every day for better overall health.

REST & STRESS

Sleep is our opportunity to repair, rebuild, and replenish. When we aren’t spending enough time in deep, restorative sleep cycles, the whole being never has the chance to grow and heal. When clients are struggling with sleep, that’s where I begin our work together. Sometimes just helping people get the sleep they actually need (versus the sleep they’re willing to afford themselves) will lead to profound transformations!

I also consider everyday stress, anxiety, and worry. When we’re spending most of our time in depleting stress (and not enough time in inspiring eustress states), we’re in fight, flight, freeze more than we could be. If we’re always in the mode of fighting, running, and freezing up, many of our wellness functions slow down or stop- namely digestion, mental acuity, immunity, and endocrine function, not to mention the constant strain on the heart, circulation, and blood. F clients who experience a great deal of everyday, chronic stress, this is a crucial thing to address before we can nourish other parts of the being.

Herbs for stress and anxiety can be exceptionally helpful on many levels and support us in feeling more centered and empowered as we navigate everyday life.

CONNECTIONS & SPIRITUALITY

In a completely non-dogmatic and non-specific way, it’s important that we explore our other than human connections to the world, to nature, and to ourselves. Spiritual connections engage the part of us that is greater than the sum of all our parts, and it’s the aspect of self that engages deeply with the world and with nature.

By exploring spiritual herbalism, we can work with the plants to help us feel more at home in the world while nourishing our innate connections and sense of belonging.

STORY

Last but not least in our constellation of being, we have story. Here, we explore how our lived experiences influence healing and wellness. Story includes all of our past, what’s manifesting in our present, and where the pages turn into our future. Story is an important aspect of holistic health because it’s our experiences that help reflect and define who we are to ourselves and the world. By exploring how circumstances, experiences, goals, and future plans influence overall health we can step into positions of power.

Even with negative influences, radiant whole-person approaches can keep us healthy.

But What If…

One point I’d like to make as we wrap up here is that for most of us, one of the challenging issues from the graph above is present and active- plus a whole host of other possibilities including trauma and grief. Even when these thing are present, the whole person is capable of vibrant wellness but following the inspiration from our previous section as best as possible. An immune system that’s empowered and strong will easily manage invading pathogens without taxing the body much. Navigating environmental pollutants day after day can be negated when our movement is good.

Check Out This Herbal Class

If you enjoyed this article, I invite you to watch the free class below which covers these same topics in more detail…