Can Herbs "Heal"?

What does it mean to heal? When are we “healed”? Are there some wounds that can’t be healed? If we can’t heal – in the sense of achieving “perfect health” – are we failures, as people or as herbalists? In this episode, Katja shares her thoughts on the words and ideas “healing” carries in our culture, offering a critique of their common (and commercialized!) semantic and emotional baggage.

Transcript

Lately, in conversations with several different people from different realms of my life, the word “heal” – healing, healer – has come up a lot, and specifically, what we mean when we talk about “healing”.

I have some strong feelings about this word that might resonate with you. I think that it’s an important discussion about how we understand health and care, how we understand our bodies, and how we understand the journey of being a human.

Lots of people call herbalists “healers” – but we’re not doing any healing, you, the people we help, are! I don’t like to call myself a healer because it means that i’m taking credit for work that the people i help are doing; it’s disempowering. Sure, i motivate, i educate, i use my education to build a plan together with my clients – but in the end, they’re the ones that are doing the real work!

And what even is healing? If we’re talking about a topical wound, i suppose it means “the process of the skin growing back” – but what about scars? Is there such a thing as “healed”, even in the simple sense of a wound?

What does it mean to “heal” internally – let’s say, cardiovascular damage? Maybe you do a lot of work on your cardiovascular health and get your blood pressure down – that’s really good! Herbs and holistic strategies are really good at this kind of work.

But is that healing? The problem can always come back, if you have to deal with a lot of stress over a period of time, for example. If it comes back, is that a failure on your part? Did you “do a bad job at healing”?

I don’t think so.

I think that if you improve your health by working on it, that’s awesome, and if life gets stressful and you have a flareup, that’s just the reality of being a creature of fluctuation. We’re not permanent, we’re not static – we’re always reacting to our environment, and compensating for factors that are out of our control.

What about things that can’t be healed? ...

To read the rest of the transcript, click here!

Transcript

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Hi, I'm Katya here at Commonwealth Holistic Herbalism in Boston, Massachusetts, and I have like a little mini episode for you today. Just some thoughts that I wanted to share lately in conversations with several different people from different realms in my life, the word heal or healing or healer has come up a lot. And specifically what we mean when we talk about healing. And I have some strong feelings about this word that might resonate with you. I think it's an important discussion about how we understand health and care, how we understand our bodies , how we understand the journey of being human. So I wanted to share that Lots of people call herbalists healers, but we are not actually doing any healing. You, the people that we help are doing the healing. I don't like to call myself a healer because it means that I'm taking credit for work that the people I help are doing. It's disempowering. I mean, okay, I motivate, I educate, I use my education to build a plan together with my clients, but in the end, they're the ones who are doing the real work. Whatever that plan is, they're the ones who are enacting it. I don't wanna take that credit that belongs to them. But then, so , okay, so I don't, I don't say I'm a healer, but then what even is healing like, like really to think about what we mean when we say healing. If we're talking about a topical wound, I suppose that means the process of the skin growing back. But then what about scars? Like is, is is something that is scarred, healed? It's not the same as it was before. So like even in the simple sense of just a wound, is there such a thing as healed? Like what does it what ? What does healed mean? Even in this most simple term, it certainly doesn't mean exactly how it was before, as if nothing had happened. And then what does it mean to say heal when we're thinking internally in the body? So let's say that there's cardiovascular damage. Um, maybe you do a lot of work on your cardiovascular health and you get your, your blood pressure down. Your blood pressure was really high and you got it down. That's fantastic. Herbs and holistic strategies are really good at this kind of work. But is that healing? Did you heal your high blood pressure? The problem can always come back and if you have to deal with a lot of stress over a period of time, it's likely to come back. If it comes back. Is that a failure on your part? Like did you do a bad job at healing? I don't think so. I think that if you improve your health by working on it, that's awesome. And if life gets stressful and then you have a flare up of whatever that issue, that health issue is, that's just the reality of being a creature of fluctuation. We are not permanent, we are not static. We humans, we are always reacting to our environment and compensating for factors that often are out of our control. I think it's really important that we remember that when we think about what we mean when we say heal, we can also think about things that can't be healed. So as an example, I've had varicose veins literally since high school, honestly I say since high school. It's possible that I've had them since junior high, but I didn't become concerned enough with my appearance until high school to notice like that's entirely possible. At any rate, what I'm saying is that I have had these varicose veins for most of my life and like big ones for most of my life. Um, everyone in my family who is older than me, I'm 51 right now. Every person in my family older than me has had their veins stripped. Okay, well, I'm a really good herbalist if I do say so myself, but I still have varicose veins. There's a limit to how much improvement I can make to a problem that's been with me for not only my entire life or like almost my entire life , but also for generations before me. Like I'm not just dealing with my varicose veins, I'm dealing with on both sides of my family, like a genetic history of varicose veins. So if I don't manage to heal my varicose veins, am I a failure? Like did do I need to feel bad because I didn't succeed at healing? And then, okay, well if I think about it that way, how would I even define that success? Like what is successfully healing varicose veins? Is it to have totally smooth legs and totally invisible blood vessels? Like that's a completely unreasonable and unattainable goal. I did not even have that when I was 16 years old. How can I expect to have that at 51? But the wellness industry so often has us chasing after exactly that some unrealistic form of healed that isn't even actually attainable. But just like those beauty magazines, they tell you that you should be able to achieve their impossible ideas of beauty or health so that you will keep buying the next issue of the magazine and so that you will keep buying the products that are advertised in it. My veins are not pretty, but they are much more stable than my mother's were when she was my age, and I haven't had to seek medical intervention. So to me that seems like a way better metric than some kind of cosmetic beauty contest definition of healed, even though the veins are still there and still visible and still kind of big and ugly, and I mean they're stable. So I don't love the word heal I, I don't think that it is accurate. I don't think that it is precise enough to encompass the complexity of human health. Health is not a switch that we can turn on or off. It's not a yes, no question in an exam. It is not a binary state that you either are or you aren't. Health is a constant adjustment in relation to our lives and all of the factors that we deal with every day . There is no such thing as perfect health. It does not exist, and health is not even always in our control. Some things are, but many health issues that we deal with as adults started in childhood and many of those were even before we had any kind of autonomy to change the situation that we were in. Some of the health issues that we have today as adults started before we were even born. Some are the result of generational malnutrition, generational damage, health damage of varying kinds, environmental or stress or different factors. Some are the result of generational trauma, some are the result of environmental factors from the places that we live, and sometimes we aren't even notified that those factors exist. So the problem here is that pervasive in our culture is this idea that if we are unhealthy, we did something wrong. If we are unhealthy, we are personally a failure. And then right beside that idea is the idea that if we are doing everything right, we will be healthy. That's a trap because sometimes you can't be in control of, like you can't be in control if you live next to a paper mill that is spewing out like gross chemicals every day and your asthma flares up all the time, that that's not something that you can necessarily be in control of. And even of the things that you can be in control of, sometimes the best you can do is stabilize. And I think that's okay. Sometimes you can do all the right things and you'll still be a little extra sensitive to whatever triggers your particular flareups, your particular allergies or inflammation or whatever else. Sometimes you get 75% improvement and that's it. But I don't think that's bad. I think that being able to reliably stabilize and restabilize your situation is great. Even if you're still prone to some flareups, if you can say, oh, I'm having a flare up . This is not awesome, but I know what to do to get myself back to a stable place and then reliably do that, that's fantastic. You aren't healed because you never have a flare up Again, you are empowered because you can reliably stabilize yourself when you flare up because of environmental conditions, because of stress in your life, because of whatever. Because you don't have total control over every single factor. I think that a 75% improvement in whatever health problem it is, I think that's fantastic. Honestly, I think even a 50% improvement is really great. And I think that our culture tells us a lot. Like don't settle for anything less than a hundred percent, 110%, right? But think about this. If today right now you could magically be 50% healthier, what would that mean for you? I would take it, I think that would be awesome if I had 50% more energy boom right off the bat. Yeah, I'd love that. If I had 50% more capacity to pick up heavy things or go for a run or go , you know, all those stuff, automatic overnight, 50% improvement. Awesome. I'm not saying that herbs or conventional strategies can do a 50% or any percent improvement overnight. Automatic like, okay, I, I'm exaggerating to make a point here, but the point still stands that improvement is improvement and improvement does not have to be entire, it doesn't have to be a hundred percent improved to be valuable. So I'd like to normalize that. I'd like for people who work in the care of health, whether that's conventional healthcare or holistic healthcare , I would like, especially for people in the wellness industry to acknowledge that health is a daily journey. It is impossible to be forever 21. Aging is a part of life and making it through the day in reasonable physical comfort is awesome, right? We don't have to be perfect. We shouldn't expect to be constantly pushing ourselves without any maintenance days. Bodies just don't work like that. I think it's okay if you have a few extra pounds. I think it's okay if you could use a few extra pounds. Who's the judge of that? Anyway, throughout history, our concept of the ideal weight has changed drastically based on fashion. So who's to judge how many pounds you should really have? I think it's okay if your weight's not perfect, whatever that is. I think it's okay if you need a little extra rest. Sometimes if you go through a stressful time and then you have a down period where you're not super productive and you're just getting some rest, I think that's fine. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think it's not actually bad if you're bum knee that you hurt back in whenever, when you were playing whatever sport acts up on you once in a while. I don't think that you need to be healed to a point where you never experience any knee pain again, I think a little bit of pain now and then residual from some old injury might just be an indication that you need to rest today. I don't necessarily think that's bad. I think all of these things are part of life and making peace with them means accepting ourselves, accepting our bodies, accepting that life is not perfect. Obviously that doesn't mean that we don't try to make things better. And obviously we respond to acute situations and infections, and of course we continue to work to help people recover and build and grow and live vibrantly. But maybe these thoughts can change our definitions of what those things are. Exactly. What is it to recover? What is it to live vibrantly? Maybe we change our definitions of that a little bit. Maybe we change our ideas about who can have those things and how we get them. And to answer the original question, just because I don't like the word heal, doesn't mean that herbs aren't amazing. They are. They can do amazing things. Herbs and holistic strategies are exactly what has allowed me to stabilize the varicose vein situation. They are what allows me to keep MS symptoms more or less under control. They're what have allowed me to live my life this far without medical intervention for those issues. And that's amazing. As I age, that might not always remain true. I may need to add more tools to my toolkit beyond what herbs and holistic interventions can do. And if that happens, it won't mean that I am a failure at health or a failure as an herbalist. It just means that every day we are all making adjustments and getting through this life in our imperfect bodies. So if you're an herbalist who works with your community or with clients, I really think this is an essential message to be sending you. Don't lose nature points if you have to, or if you choose to blend conventional medicine with herbal and holistic strategies. Nobody's gonna come and take away your herbalism Club card just because you combined various tools to find your best health right now, your best health right now, you might not get there the same way that you did a year ago or that you might a year from now. That's okay. Use the tools that work for you in this moment, and there's no problem with that. It's okay if the health issues that you're working on are a life work. It's not wrong to have to take care of the health of your body every day. Or in other words, you are not broken because you can't do it all. Nobody actually can. You might see people and be like, oh, but that person is so healthy and but that person is so whatever. Yeah, there's probably things they're not telling you, right? They might be constipated all the time. They're not telling you that, right? Just like there's stuff about your health that you're not telling people what we look like on the outside. It's not always the whole story anyway, okay? I know these are pretty nitpicky thoughts about a fairly simple word, but human health isn't actually that simple. So I think it's worth thinking about that complexity. I think it's worth thinking about how we approach it. Now, if you like the word heal or healing or healer, there's nothing wrong with that. Of course. Obviously there's nothing wrong with that. But I do think that it's useful to redefine the word to include fluctuation and allow that to be normal and redefine it to include the reality that things are not one and done . Humans go through cycles and there's nothing wrong with that. And above all, I think it's important to allow ourselves to let go of the pressure of expectations that are on us to be healed, and to allow ourselves to just be on the journey of being human and living in a body that can't be perfect because it's human. So I hope that that was helpful. I hope that it inspires you to think about yourself and your own health with more compassion. I hope that if you work in your community or if you work with clients as an herbalist, that it inspires you about how you work with your clients and how you help them see their own health journeys. That's it for now. Uh, we'll be back later with more of the Holistic Urbanism Podcast. Bye .