John: Then when they went like, "We're going to call it catnip." Were the word they like, "We're calling it catnip because it's cararia nip or did they call it catnip because it has something to do with cats?"
Tara: Chicken or egg.
CoreyPine: Yeah. That's a good question. That I do not know. I think that it's because cats were actually nipy nip.
John: Uh-huh (affirmative).
CoreyPine: That's my take on it though. I'd have to ask Maud Grieve. , I have to get out the Ouija board and channel Maud Grieve here said-
John: Do you do,
Tara: Should we do that on the pod?
CoreyPine: Call in the spirit of Maud Grieve.
John: You are listening to HerbMentor Radio by LearningHerbs, I'm John Gallagher.
Tara: And I'm Tara Ruth. CoreyPine Shane is a holistic clinical herbalist who founded the Blue Ridge School of Herbal Medicine in 1999. He is the author of Southeast medicinal plants, 106 wild herbs for health and wellness available from timber press, and has taught at schools and conferences across the country and in Europe. He has written extensively on herbal medicine and is a professional member of the American Herbalists Guild. You can learn more at blueridgeschool.org as well as pinesherbals.com.
John: CoreyPine, welcome.
Tara: Welcome.
CoreyPine: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me Here.
John: Great to have you here.
Tara: Thanks for being here.
John: I'm thinking about the first time I met you at the rainbow gathering way out in Washington and you had some students there and, I had a seven song maybe hike 300 miles into the wilderness with my cameras and I was very tired by the time I got there. And-
CoreyPine: Yeah. Yeah.
Tara: 300.
John: I know it keeps getting longer, but it was really nice connecting with you there and getting to know you a bit. And I'm just so happy to get a copy of your new book Southeast Medicinal Plants. And in the beginning of this book, you say, "By learning how to find medicine and food in the wild, we change our relationship to forests and front yards alike." And I'm wondering about if you could talk about these relationships.
CoreyPine: Sure. I mean, for me it's a big part of the mission of the book, but it's really part of my mission as a human being, as well as the mission of the school itself. In some ways just learning, what plants are edible, what plants are medicinal, what they do. I mean, that's both tasty for the edibles and helpful when you have a headache, when you have joint pain, when you feel sick. It's great that there are plants all around that can help with that. But in some ways that's just the gateway for me to teach people a different way of connecting with the wild. And it's not like nature is something that's out there that's separate from us, even though we think that way, we're raised that way in our modern culture to think about, there's the inside of the house and then there's the outside, then there's nature out there.
CoreyPine: And then we forget that we are also animals, that we are also like... Our ancestors were part of... They lived in the woods, they lived with deer and bear and coyotes and foxes. And I think that as we learn these edible and medicinal plants, it becomes a way of remembering who we are in connection to what's around us. In connections, so that we feel at home and we feel supported and part of this network, that's out there in the woods, that's out there, not just in the woods, but also in our front yards and there's edible and medicinal plants and the cracks in sidewalks in the lower east side of Manhattan. There's amazing plants, amazing medicinal plants [inaudible 00:03:56] where now the cracks in the sidewalks. And you walk down University Avenue in Seattle and there's going to be medicinal plants just popping up from the grates and the sidewalks. It's everywhere. It's not just in wilderness. So I think medicinal plants are a great way to help us connect with the wildness of which we are apart with the bigger world.
John: And was this a realization you had early on in life? Or is this something, it hit you one day or a mentor inspired you? Or what was that story when first inspired you to have these realizations? That sounds that's where your passion's coming from. You realize that and you're just like, "Okay, why doesn't everybody know this?"
CoreyPine: Well, I think that actually doing it came first and that realization I'm talking about came afterwards. And I don't remember any one specific moment where a light bulb went off and it was like, "oh my God, this is..." When I was about 22, I decided that I'd been in school all my life and I packed up my car and I drove out to Seattle because it was the nineties and Seattle was so cool. Kurt Cobain was still alive, Starbucks wasn't a big thing, there was an espresso card in every corner, and Seattle was cool. Still is cool, but it was even cooler back then.
John: Not as cool.
CoreyPine: I know that all the cool people moved forward.
John: It's cooler now that Tara moved there.
CoreyPine: To bring your coolness with you. I like that.
Tara: Thanks John.
CoreyPine: And honestly, I never ended up actually living in any one particular place. I drifted. So I lived in the woods for a while and I was living really... I was living out of my car, I was living out of tents and I was living very cheap. I had one of Michael Moore's books, Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West. And I just was able to... Which is by the way, one of the things that inspired me to write my book was Michael's books.
John: Oh my gosh, same here. I mean, I don't know what I would've done earlier on without Michael's books. They're just so inspiring. And they just told you... He is talking deep about plants that you never would normally find anywhere else.
Tara: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
John: Yeah.
CoreyPine: Right. And so I had his book and it helped me to identify the plants and I harvest them. And then I was hanging out with people who were homeless and travelers and road dogs. Knowing these plants and having access to free medicine all around, I was able to make people tea and give people plants, that really helped people with real health conditions. And for me, that was a moment, that experience out there. That's when it went for me, from book herbalism of like, "Oh, this is theoretical." And that's really interesting that Burdock has these five different uses to like, "Oh wow, this medicine is free and it helps people get better." They don't have to spend money. They don't have to... It's free and available. It's the people's medicine. That was a real wake up call for me.
Tara: It makes me think about, in your book, just how you write it really brings the plants to life on the page for me. And you talk about getting to know a plant's personality, which I think before I'd studied herbalism, I wouldn't have really understood that. I was like, "How could a plant have a personality?" But can you talk a little bit about what you mean there? How plants have personalities and how it's important to get to know them and studying herbs.
CoreyPine: Sometimes I say that Western herbalism, our way of treatment is to figure out how to match the personality of the plant to the personality of the person or maybe the personality of the-
Tara: A matchmaker.
CoreyPine: Yeah, exactly. What's the word yenta?
Tara: Yeah, We are just talking about-
CoreyPine: Yeah, I don't know what the male version would be. It's that yento?
Tara: Yes, probably yento.
CoreyPine: Little rusty. No, but I really do, I think of myself literally as a matchmaker, I'm introducing... Cause I don't do the work, I'm not healing people. I'm not going in there and killing bacteria or healing someone's tendons or clearing out stuff. I'm figuring out what plant is going to help this person and then I'm introducing the two of them. And the plant is you can look at it two ways. You can look at it like, "Oh, the plant is the one who's actually doing the work. I'm just telling the people, the plant to do." Or you could even look at it as, the person is doing the work. And the plant is just giving their body the nudge or the stimulus in the direction.
John: Take you can hear the clanging. I'm in a 130 year old building and every once in a while the radiator goes off and so, big clanging in the background. But that's just part of the personality of the podcast here. Cause-
Tara: I think of it as applause, just the building, the personality of the building applauding.
John: And I consider the radiator... as the personality of the radiator wants to be part of...
Tara: Maybe it's Maud Grieve.
Speaker 4: It's Maud Grieve.
CoreyPine: Yes, Maud Grieve. And it's like, "Bang on the radiator once for yes and twice for no."
John: Let's see.
CoreyPine: Did I answer that story about the personality? Did I don't know if I... I did I cover that? I could talk more about that.
Tara: That was great. I mean, I would love to hear more. I love learning about plant's personalities. So if you have anything else to share, I'm game.
CoreyPine: When I think about plant's personality, I'm not really talking about the same thing as a person's personality. I'm talking about more like plants are... It's the way that I I can talk about the plants being complex. We can say, "Oh, this herb" We can use words like, "Oh, this herb is antiviral. It kills viruses." This herb is a diuretic. This herb is... We can use these Western medical terms that mean really specific things. But herbs aren't usually silver bullets. They're this complex of hundreds of different chemicals that are having effects throughout our body. And you could pick 20 different what are called antiviral herbs. And they're all going to act on the body a little bit differently. They're going to have Osha is different than Echinacea, it's different than lomatium, it's different than elderberry. Some of them are more gentle. Some of them are more strong. Some of them are more for a flu with muscle aches and some of them are more for help sweat out a fever.
CoreyPine: So rather than try to describe them in physiological terms, "Oh, this is what this plant does." It's kind of more matching the symptom picture like, "Oh, this plant is warming and it circulates things, and it pushes things out to the skin. So it can push out a viral infection." And I find that that almost allegorical way of talking about the plants, talking about that story of how the plant moves through the body, even though it might not be scientific, it really helps me better understand what plant to use with which person.
John: Okay.
Tara: That makes sense, we're complex people. So our medicine to be complex as well. And that might-
John: [crosstalk 00:11:38] and with a match, so... Okay. So you're talking, you have to also take into account, the person's personality as well, right?
CoreyPine: Right, yes.
John: What's aa simple example of matching a personality of a person to a plant?
CoreyPine: Right. And this might be a good time for me to bring in some energetics as well. And the word energetic, I mean, energy can mean a lot of things, right. It's like, "Oh, I've got a lot of energy." Like, "I'm going to save energy by turning off the lights." There's a lot of things that energy can mean. So when I say this, I mean in more the temperature energetics, in Chinese medicine, in Aveta, in Mayan medicine, a lot of them use this hot cold, damp, dry type Greek medicine to the traditional medicine that was spread through a lot of Europe. So I'm going to throw a little bit of that there. And as part of the personality of the plant, it's just a shortcut, it's just a shortcut to help understand more about the personality and group things together as human beings. We love to put things in categories and group things together. So let's talk about nausea, because that's always a fun topic after lunch.
Tara: Can't wait.
CoreyPine: Yeah. Nausea, fun.
Tara: My favorite.
CoreyPine: But do you have a favorite herb you use for nausea?
Tara: Peppermint or ginger. What about you, John?
John: Yeah. I was thinking ginger. I just think of nervines because for me it might be anxiety related. Some skullcap or catnip. Yeah, Or kava.
CoreyPine: Or Chamomile.
John: You don't think of kava for that. Or Chamomile, exactly. Yeah.
CoreyPine: Yeah, Chamomile might be nice. Chamomile is a nervine, but it also helps soothe digestion particularly. So yeah. No, those are great examples. And I mean, I could even just start off with ginger and peppermint, so Ginger's a great one for nausea. But if someone came to see me, at that first aid station, let's say, and it's been a really hot day and they've been out hiking around or they've been, been really active and they've got some heat exhaustion, and they're hot, they're sweat and they're nauseous. I'm not going to give them ginger. Because ginger is, it's stimulating it's warming, but I might give them peppermint pepper because peppermint is anti nausea, but it's cooling. Whereas for motion sickness, I might, well actually either peppermint or ginger would probably work, but I might lean a bit more towards ginger there. Yeah. So it's a good small example. But I like it because it's energetic, someone who has heat exhaustion, you don't want to give him a hot herb like ginger, you want to give him a cooling herb peppermint or Chamomile.
John: So I was wondering now maybe if we could start to connect some of this to the plants of the Southeast, because I feel CoreyPine, and maybe this is why you chose to write the book is that... I don't feel there's been a lot of books that really are focus in on that amazing biodiversity that you have in where you live. Was that the case?
CoreyPine: I think I first got the idea cause people were asking me like, "Hey, I want a book that helps me identify plants, but also tells me what the medicine of it is." And so I go, "I mean, there's Peterson's. There's a Peterson's guide, Medicinal guides of plants of the east, which is great book. Steven Foster, James Duke both great writers and..." But it covers a lot of territory and there's a lot of herbs in there with not much about each herb. It's just, "Oh this is medicinal and it could be good for a liverish kind of thing." And then you kind of go and do more research when you get back home. So I wanted to write something that was more specific, that covered fewer herbs and went into more depth with each herb. So you really understood, "Oh, someone has allergies. When would you use golden rod or when would you use nettles. And when would you use ragweed? Because ragweed leaf is a great anti allergy herb." And so that was another motivation in writing this book was to cover herbs that aren't commonly talked about. And some of the feedback I've got about the book is people are excited to learn about plants that are a little weird, that are a little that not in other herb books, not a lot of people write about Ragweed-
John: That's what Tara... Well, that's what Tara is really excited to ask you about. So Tara, why don't you kick it off with the one you've been wondering the most about?
Tara: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Well when John first mentioned that we were going to be interviewing you and then I got your book, I was flipping through the pages and I found a nice little mono graph on mimosa. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, I haven't been able to find a lot of information about this plant, learned about it in school and did as much research as I can and also take it. But I love this plant so much." And so it made me so excited to see it on the page. And I'd love to just hear more about your thought it's on mimosa. I can ask a specific question or we can just dive into talking about mimosa's personality.
CoreyPine: Yeah. I can just talk about mimosa, and then if you have specific questions, I'm happy to answer. Just-
Tara: Great. Yes, let's do it. I'm stocked.
John: Albizia. I just want to say Albizia.
CoreyPine: Albizia, Would you care for some Albizia?
John: Yeah, I want some Albizia.
CoreyPine: Which is an important point because it's interesting because mimosas is the common name, but Albizia perhaps is the botanical name. I'm pointing this out because there is a tree and there are trees in a mimosa genus and this is not a true mimosa. It's related, they're the same family, but everyone calls it mimosa, but it's a weed. It's considered a weed tree. I don't think it's a weed tree. I think it's a gorgeous tree, but it's native to Asia and it's kind of going to... Instead of thinking about plants as weeds. I to think of them as exuberant, successful. Hardy...
John: Spirited.
CoreyPine: Spirited. There you go. Spirited, persistent.
John: Well, that's how I would define my son. When people be like, "He's got so much energy. He's spirited."
CoreyPine: "Oh my God. Your kitten. It's crazy." Like, "No, no, no. My kitten is just spirited." Yes.
John: Spirited.
CoreyPine: Pretty spirited.
John: Here we go back to catnip again, but let's go back to mimosa.
CoreyPine: Yeah, Mimosa is a very spirited plant, it does like to pop up all over the place. So both the flowers and the bark are used in Chinese medicine. So I'm primarily trained as a Western herbalist, but I've also studied Chinese medicine, formally studied Chinese medicine. And I learned about... I was just fascinated about mimosa and I started doing research on it. Couldn't find anything in the Western literature. So I went to Chinese medicine and found it's actually a pretty big herb there. I don't know if it's one of the top 40 hits but it's it is up there. So at least in the top 100.
CoreyPine: And so the flowers and the bark are both used. And they're in the same category of herbs, believe it's herbs to calm them the spirit. I'm pretty sure it's the category, which means spirit meaning mind, herbs to calm the mind. But they're used a little bit differently. They're two different entries and the flowers are more uplifting. People will sometimes use the word antidepressant. I often don't defining something by what it isn't or by what it treats, because antiviral it's like, "Well what is it doing that's antiviral? Is it actually killing viruses? Or is it having some other effect in the body?" And it's kind of the same thing with antidepressant. There are a lot of herbs that treat depression, but what does it specifically do? And so I find the flowers, which by the way, if you don't know this plant, it looks little fairy paint brushes, looks really cool. I'm wondering about the origin... We talking about words before. Maybe the drink is named after the plant, I don't know. I'd have to look that one up. Didn't think about that when I read about it.
John: No champagne and orange juice has anything to do with this.
CoreyPine: But they got the name Mimosa from somewhere. So the flowers I find I would actually call them an exuberant. They're an exhilarant perhaps, they're... Maybe that's not the word because they're not stimulating, but they are very uplifting. I think if someone was at a place where they wanted to go to a party and they're not drinking alcohol, they're not smoking pot, they're not doing whatever people are doing at that party. And they wanted to have something that would make them feel good and party vibe, they could drink a tea of the mimosa flowers and give this feeling of like, "Yeah." kind of Happy and yeah, that's it just let go of it. Have a good time. It's a little bit heart opening as well. So for that I might combine mimosa with rose, mimosa and rose together, Mimosa flowers and rose will be just great to open up the heart and let go of old stuff, go of what's no longer serving you.
CoreyPine: So the flowers are more immediately uplifting, whereas the bark is said to penetrate more deeply and it breaks things up. It's actually said even used for physical trauma, bruises in Chinese medicines. It's thought to break up stagnation, and pain and bruises. Well specifically pain from physical injury is thought to be a stagnation. If you think about it as a black and blue mark, that's just literally stagnant blood. But even that feeling you're bruised, feeling bruised is often some type of blood stagnation and mimosa bark can be used both topically or internally to break that up. But in the same sense, it also breaks up emotional stagnation.
CoreyPine: So I've used it for people who have past trauma, whether it's PTSD. I always like to say, there's no herb for PTSD. It's just, "Okay. Where is the person in that journey?" But this is one tool in the toolbox to work with people with PTSD. Or for people with depression. And I would say depression is more stuck, maybe more of a melancholy, not so much like an anxious depression. Matter of fact, I've heard from... I believe it was Janet Kent and Dave Meesters, they're herbalists here around Asheville too. And they were talking about how they've seen it sometimes... People with bipolar, what used to be called manic depression, but bipolar type depression, sometimes mimosa can sometimes aggravate the manic phase because it's too uplifting. It's too warming and exuberant, it's too exuberant. You talk about plants for hours.
Tara: I'm wondering too, you mentioned making a tea of the flowers. Do you also do tinctures or glycerites or lineaments. What are all the preparations you like to do with mimosa?
CoreyPine: Yeah, I've never actually used topically, so I haven't used it as lineament, but normally I do make a tincture because it just seems to preserve better. It's hard to, to dry flowers well, it's a little challenging.
Tara: Yeah,
CoreyPine: And I also make, I don't sell it, but I've made an elixir for myself couple years ago, 2020 was having some hearty stuff, some emotional heart stuff, not physical. And I made this elixir that was juneberry, which is also called serviceberry, simmered that down into a syrup, put in mimosa bark and simmered that for a little bit, took it off the heat added in some Rose Flowers and that made this... And I never sold it. That was just for me, that was just my little heart elixir that I took in through... It's got to get me through 2020.
Tara: That sounds delicious. Wow.
CoreyPine: Yeah. A mimosa elixir.
John: There is more Southeastern herbs to come. I'm going to ask CoreyPine about sweet gum. So Tara.
Tara: Yes. John.
John: I love books like CoreyPine's. I mean most herbal folks usually snatch up all the local herbal books and guides they can find, right?
Tara: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
John: But did that you can actually make your own personal bioregional field guide to the botanical medicine of the area where you live?
Tara: Huh. And where could I do that?
John: Well, since you ask Rosalie and I created this really cool little training called learning your plants and it's really about all that botany stuff, a home herbalist needs to know.
Tara: Like kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species, type of stuff?
John: Very good that you just channeled your high school biology class, right there.
Tara: I tried.
John: You tried. Exactly, exactly, but it takes all that stuff, and in a really simple way shows you how to learn the plants and trees of your bioregion through learning 17 common botanical families and journaling, all the individual species that grow around you. So you're really making your own personal field guide. So you never forget the information. Cause you're researching it, you're drawing it, you're writing it down. And what this really ultimately does is helps you with your field identification and to increase your observation skills.
Tara: Yeah. Not a lot of people know that apples, Hawthorne, almonds and peaches are all related to Rose.
John: And lavender, lemon balm, motherwort, Sage thyme, are just a few members of the mint family.
Tara: That's right. And all the mints share the common trait of having a square stem and an opposite leaf patterns.
John: So it's really like a plant identification hack, so to speak, because people really all these hacks nowadays, right. To save time and to take shortcuts. So it's a hack, that's not a hack cause you really learn this stuff, but it is a hack.
Tara: I love a hack. I mean, it just makes it so simple to learn what grows around you.
John: And if you're an HerbMentor member, and that's our herbal learning community here at learning herbs, you can start watching, learning your plants anytime you want. It's one of dozen and skills trainings that you're going to find there.
Tara: And you'll also find detailed digital herb monographs, video podcasts, and a forum to ask questions on HerbMentor.
John: And a transcript to this very podcast. And HerbMentor costs less than half of one of those premium Netflix subscriptions. And all you have to do is just visit HerbMentorradio.com and while you're there, you can subscribe to this podcast, so you don't miss an episode and they're just might be a special HerbMentor offer for you listeners.
Tara: And that's on HerbMentorradio.com.
John: Thank you Tara. Wait, wait, what were we doing?
Tara: We were interviewing CoreyPine.
John: Right . How about, I'm thinking another tree, sweet gum?
CoreyPine: Sweet gum. Yeah
John: That's sweet gum. Cause that's a tree that... I'm from Jersey, but not on the pine Barron part, but we had a lot of these plants that are in here, are so familiar to me because we'd have them here and there. And I remember having a sweet gum tree in our yard, a really big one. So I'm wondering if me, you could talk a bit about that. Cause I was always fascinated by sweet gum.
CoreyPine: I know aren't they cool. They're... And I want to say too, cause I mean the range of sweet gum is very big, but you were talking about New Jersey. It's one of the questions I've had about the book and I am going to talk about sweet gum, but one of questions I heard about the book is like, "Oh I live this place. Does this book cover it?" And this was challenging, but I actually, my aim in writing the book is to go from the border of Pennsylvania and Maryland, which is the same latitude as Southern New Jersey and then take it all the way down through Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, all the way down to, I would say Central Florida and then go west. As far as, East Texas, Louisiana, all the Gulf states and then north, through Kentucky, Tennessee, even a little bit of Arkansas.
CoreyPine: I mean, Arkansas is officially part of the part of the book too. Ozarks a very similar to that Southern Appalachians anyhow. And sweet gum is in a lot of those places. Sweet gum is, oddly enough, it's not so common up here in the mountains where I live. But in, throughout the Piedmont coastal plane, it is a really abundant plant in some places. And if you're listening and you're not familiar with this, just think about when were young and walking barefoot and a really sharp baseball poked into your foot. That sweet gum.
John: Yes. That's what I remember the most.
CoreyPine: Yes.
John: It was the things we threw at each other as kids.
CoreyPine: Yes. You remember they looked like little maces and you would chuck them at each other. And they are not sharp enough to actually do damage, but I'm sure you could probably poke someone's eyes out if you really tried hard enough, but don't do that. Safety thing, kids don't try that at home.
John: But who knew you could make medicine with it?
CoreyPine: I know. And people say like, "Oh, what is it good for?"
John: So is it with a bark?
CoreyPine: No, it's actually the sweet gum balls. It's the unripe balls are the best, but you can probably use the ones that have fall on the ground too if that's what you had. And again, this comes... Okay. So I got this information from two completely different sources. I originally learned about it from Chinese medicine where they use a plant in the same genus. The genus is Liquid Amber, but it's pronounced Liquidambar. And they have something in the same genus in China, which is Lulutong, it's a Mandarin name, Lulutong. For those acupuncturists listening here or Chinese herbalists. And they use the balls and they use it for pain. Which is really funny when you're teaching a class, and I have this really spiny thing in my hand like, "This is for a pain." It's really a good visual there. I'm like, "No, really it. It actually is for pain." It is funny too like ragweed leaves-
John: Do you you squeeze them, use it right in the field. Is it kind of a medicine like a resin, right in those sweet gum balls that I could just... Can I access that resin and use it as field medicine? Or do I have to process it first? Or-
CoreyPine: Maybe. I think you'd probably have to process it first. I mean, there is a resin that's in the tree, but I feel that's used differently. In Chinese medicine, they actually used the balls, they would make a decoction, they would make they would simmer it for 20 minutes. And then have you drink that. Or make a lineament and apply it topically. So yeah. Good for pain. Good for injuries. It's a great one for that. It also seems to open up the diaphragm and help people breathe a bit more deeply. So in that sense, it could really help people let go of, not just physical trauma, it could help people with emotional trauma.
CoreyPine: If people are guarding their breath and they feel tight in their belly, it can open that up, help that move. So that's the more Chinese medicine version. Now throughout the south, sweet gum is a big medicine as well. And it was more the resin. You were asking about the resin before, the resin from the bark is more what is used. Although you could use the balls as well. I mean, the balls I think were used in Southern folk medicine and that was used more for coughs, colds, viral infections, congestion, maybe quatara.
CoreyPine: And that I learned about from, I think Tommy Bass talked about that. So I learned about that through Phyllis Light learned out that through, there was a book written about Tommy Bass. I'm looking at... There it is by Darryl Patton. That's who it was. He wrote a book about durable remedies of Tommy Bass. And so he used that as a reference as well. Just understand how did people traditionally use this plant? So it's kind of fun that here's this plant that is really at... This tree, it's really abundant throughout the Southeast, not even so much in the Northeast. I mean, it gets planted a bit Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and then it grows all the way down to... I think it grows as far down as the Bayou, Louisiana. So it grows throughout and it's super common and the sweet gum balls, the gum balls are just really easy because they just fall on the ground and you pick them up before they get out there for too long. And it's just a really abundant medicine. That's useful for a lot of things.
John: I wonder, so a lot of these plants growing in through the south in Appalachians obviously were used in folk medicine for a long time, stretching back to native American uses. And has it sort of in modern era of herbalism in these last couple decades, I mean, have more and more people putting these medicines to the test and trying them and doing any research, more in them because I know that a lot of the books before Michael Moores, we're always just like, "Folk uses say that it's good for blah, blah, blah." And you'd always be like, "But is it?" So have you found that we're entering an era where you can for sure say that, "Oh my God, I could see how this works. I've been using it for this" For medicines like sweet gum or mimosa.
CoreyPine: I think one of-
John: For Japanese knot weed, even.
CoreyPine: I think there is a lot more science about all these plants about Japanese knot weed and mimosa and all that. People are researching, trying to understand how they work on the body. I want to say too, as a clinician, I didn't mention this before, but I see clients, I help people with their health conditions. And I don't always find that understanding it from scientific perspective is it's not always helpful. Sometimes it's more helpful to know the personality of what it treats rather than if someone said like, "Oh this herb is good for dopamine deficiency." Okay, well what is someone with dopamine deficiency look like? What symptoms do they have? How do I identify that? Or like, "Oh, this herb stimulates interleukin-9." Okay, well how would I know that someone come... If I can't do a blood test to find out that they have excess interleukin-9 or deficient interleukin-9, how am I going to know?
CoreyPine: So sometimes I actually look to more clinical signs. It is interesting too to think about that, there's actually more talk these days in the scientific community. Even the scientific herbal community. You're like, "Well, what is evidence?" And looking at evidence as being, not just double blind placebo controlled trials, but also seeing folk uses as being evidence like, "Okay, how have people been using this?" What is the history of usage, to say, "Oh, people have been using this for 500 years to treat asthma and they've seen it work." We don't really know how it works scientifically, but that doesn't mean that it's not proven. It's just not proven scientifically. It's just, there's a different-
John: Right.
CoreyPine: ...So looking at that, and I think it's really fascinating to think about different types of evidence let's say. And I think that Robin Wall Kimmerer talks about this in Braiding Sweetgrass, this idea of... Which a great book, highly recommend, but this idea of, okay, we have this scientific understanding. And then there's also the direct understanding of what the plant is about. And neither one is wrong, but they both tell different parts the same story. And I think it's good to know the science, but it's not the end all be all.
Tara: It makes me think about what you were talking about earlier about relationship building with the plants and how this scientific methodology, and then also this traditional and continued folk knowledge are both beautiful ways of... And different ways of building relationships with the plants and getting to know them so we can match, make them with their people.
CoreyPine: Right. I want to say that I really respect that's. That's a really important part of herbal medicine is the folk medicine. I started studying herbal medicine when I was pretty young. 7Song is my first teacher, I met him, I was 19. So.
John: Oh, wow.
CoreyPine: And that was pretty young to start studying, start getting into it. It was a slow process to get into it. But then you talk to people who were like, "Oh, I started studying herbal medicine when I was two." People who learn herbal medicine from their grandparents and their aunts and uncles and sometimes their parents. But some... Herbal medicine-
John: Oh, they don't listen their parents.
CoreyPine: That's true. Yeah. Oh, that's why it's always the grandparents.
Tara: What was it that inspired you at that, at that early age to start seeking out, studying herbalism with 7Song and other folks?
CoreyPine: I didn't really seek it out. I mean, it's funny because I don't to talk to people who were just starting to study herbal medicine and it's not... For me, it was not at all a conscious decision to start. It was just what I was passionate about. I mean, I really love Joseph Campbell's admonition to Follow Your Bliss. Which is not just your joy. It's not just like, "Oh, what makes me happy?" Like, "Oh, I really love putting together jigsaw puzzles." It's like, "Okay, but that doesn't bring you bliss. That just brings you contentment" What really feeds your soul. And for some reason, for me, it was being in the woods, it was like connecting with nature. And so it started with that. And then I started learning these individual plants. And then I started learning at these plants had... Sometimes I don't always use the word uses, but they had offerings. They had things that they could offer me. Then like, "Oh, that's a really tasty plant. I love seeing that plant cause now..." And then it helped me start develop relationships with those individual plants. And then I just started... I mean 7Songs, is a very charismatic teacher. And I just started taking all the classes that he offered to the public. I like to say that 7Songs is my first teacher, but I think, I don't know if I was his very first student, but I was at least one of his first students, way back in the day, before he was really even teaching. It was just inspiring to be around a practicing herbalist who knew the plants and knew what they were for.
CoreyPine: And yeah, I mean, I was always into nature. I grew up in the suburbs, but there was woods down at the end of my street where I'd go. And I think I talked about that in the introduction of my book. I'd always go down to the end of my street and just go play in the woods and just felt really at home there rather than this human constructed world with all these rules and thoughts and how be, and just going out to the woods and just be myself and be by myself and be comfortable with that. So then herbal medicine came later... Although now that I'm talking about it, when I was growing up, I had really bad migraines, and so there was a piece of me that I actually was brought to study healing because I was trying to heal myself.
CoreyPine: I was trying to figure out, "Oh, why do I get headaches?" And then I go to the doctor and they say, "Oh, when you get headaches, take some Excedrin." I was like, "Okay, but why am I getting headaches? And how do I stop myself from getting headaches?" He was like, "We don't know, but if you're in pain-"
CoreyPine: Just take the Excedrin.
Tara: "...take this." Yes.
CoreyPine: Like he said-
Tara: "Listen kid." So I remember asking all these questions because I'm... And I'm bringing this up because I feel that a lot of people, I mean, I've taught at this point I've had been writing the school for a long time. I've had hundreds of students and I interview each one individually and I hear a lot of stories about how people started off growing up in a kind of more conventional medicine world, just the world that most of us in the US grow up in as far as medicine goes.
Tara: And at some point having some awakening and being like, "Oh, I had this thing and doctors couldn't forget what it was." Or, "My mom had cancer and the chemotherapy was just making her worse. And then she I decided to try to help her with her herbal medicine." And maybe it helped, maybe it didn't, but it's usually, oftentimes, it's something that happened within them. They had an illness themselves or thing that wasn't treatable or they had something happen to a close family member. And that's kind of what turned them on to herbal medicine. That's kind of what got them into the "alternative" medicine. So to speak. Quotes around alternative cause traditional really. And for me it was headaches.
John: Was there a... If I'm looking at your book and I see all these plants that are in this book, you had a hundred, some odd plants I think. And one jumps out as an aha moment that you discovered yourself from your own experience with the plant, I'm thinking one day I'm walking down a trail and of course I have positively identified this plant, but I'm thinking about salal, I'm looking at salal, which is often using flower arrangements all over, but it's a native plant here and it's everywhere it's related to blueberries and I wonder what this leaf tastes like. And I chew a little and, oh my gosh, I'd never tasted a more stringent thing that just took all of the moisture out of my mouth.
John: And then I'm like, "I don't see anything written about this anywhere." Except for Michael Moore. But it must be really good for tightening tissues, for first aid situations and everything. And it's kind of one of the first experiences where I went, "Oh I think I know what I could use this for. And I don't have to use these I other 10 things that are in the books because I can use this. It's all around me and I can get it any time of year. I can go out and harvest this leave." So was there a moment with something that, where you live, where you were just like, "Oh my gosh. I can use this for all kinds of things." And some... A plant that you've established a relationship with deeply.
CoreyPine: A few things come to mind. There're some things that I just saw and I was like, "I don't know what that is, but I think it's awesome. And I'm going to learn about it." I mean, there're some plants like Pipsissewa. Pipsissewa, we have striped Pipsissewa, out way around the Pacific Northwest, there's the, I don't know, regular Pipsissewa, non-striped. It's not a plant I actually use a whole lot for medicine, but I love seeing it. And I feel really... It is used, it's used for urinary tract infections, but I recommend unless you're picking it yourself, just use a Uva ursi because Uva ursi is much more common, much more available and it's just not nearly as much Pipsissewa in the woods, but I feel this deep connection to it. And I think it was the first plant that I met when I came to North Carolina.
CoreyPine: I moved down here in March and Pipsissewa is an evergreen plant around here, striped Pipsissewa. And I was like, "Oh my God, what is this planned? Who are you?" And then I researched it and I'm like, "Oh, it's good for medicine." Or I also think about Blue vervain. Blue vervain is when I discovered when I was living in upstate New York, when I was living in Ithaca, I remember tasting that plant, it really bitter. It's super bitter, but it's very relaxing at the same time.
CoreyPine: And I was... I don't remember how I came to this, but I was kind of like, "Maybe I could use this for headaches." And I started drinking Blue vervain and Skull Cap tea. And I still love that combination. I still love mixing Skull Cap with Blue vervain for migraine headaches. It's just a great blend. And I started drinking that. And I started off as a tea cause I didn't have any as a tincture. And it's bitter, it's a strong tasting tea, but it really helped. I still, I mean, Blue vervain, I grow in my garden, now up here in Barnardsville, cause we don't have it growing in North Carolina. It grows further north like Virginia, Kentucky up into Pennsylvania, New York.
Tara: It's a good one. One of my... I mean, I say this about every plant, but one of my favorites.
CoreyPine: I know. So hard to pick favorites, isn't it?
Tara: I know. I guess we're not supposed to probably. That's probably the point, right? We're just supposed to be in relationship with them.
John: That's a really good point, Tara. Really good one. We've been talking for a bit here and I was wondering CoreyPine, where would be the best place to pick up a copy of your book Southeast Medicinal Herbs?
CoreyPine: Yeah. I'm mean, I sell it on my website to pinesherbals.com, but you can also get it at indie bookstores. If you preferred buy it from your local bookstore, there's actually... I think it's called indie book sellers or something. You can go on there, find, "Who is my local store?" And you can order it online through them and they'll ship.
John: But I think it's always a great thing when you hear an interview with a herbalist, or you get to know them, you meet them in at a conference or a class it's, I always like to ask where you would to get the... Because a lot of folks, some people say, "I don't sell it on my site." But you do. So it's a great way to support the herbalist at pinesherbals.com. And you also have your formulas on there that you make. And you have a single herbal extracts. And check out the medicine that CoreyPine makes too at pinesherbals.com.
Tara: What programs are you currently offering at the Blue Ridge School?
CoreyPine: We have two main programs, one is one weekend a month, April through November. And then one meets two days a week. So the weekend program is the essentials of herbalism. It's more of a practical hands on verbal medicine approach, lots of plant walks and medicine making, and some talks about how to apply kitchen medicine, family medicine. And then the holistic herbalism program is more of an in depth herbalist training program. And that meets two full days a week for six months, April through October. And people move here, from all of over the country to come take this program. It's not-
John: I should mention that you're in the Asheville area, Asheville, North Carolina, which is a wonderful place to live and very biodiverse. And if you want to learn about plants, you can be out there identifying and harvesting plants all.
CoreyPine: Right. I mean, but I forgot to mention there was one other program. I do these wild medicine internships, which is four Saturdays in a row. I do it once in the spring and once in the fall. And that's kind of the in person version of what I do in the book. It's like, "Let's go out, learn how to identify plants. Identify them, talk about how to harvest them. And then we'll harvest a few and make some medicine together over the course of four weeks going to different places and seeing, oh yeah, what's it look like at high elevation, low elevation, wet, dry different places, different ecosystems." So that's fun too.
Tara: Very cool.
CoreyPine: I like teaching that.
Tara: Yeah. I have a few... I have a few friends-
John: I think Tara is going to be there soon.
Tara: I know. Well, I have a few friends who are wanting to move to Asheville and they were talking about that specific internship that you do. They're very excited about it. So
CoreyPine: Nice.
John: And that's at blueridgeschool.org and again, Southeast Medicinal Plants: Identify, Harvest, and Use 106 Wild Herbs for Health and Wellness available at pinesherbals.com, your independent bookstore, wherever fine books are sold. CoreyPine Shane, it's been an honor. And thank you so much for being with Tara and I at HerbMentor radio.
Tara: Yes. Thank you.
CoreyPine: Thank you, John. Thank you, Tara. It's been great talking with you. It's been really fun. Actually I really enjoyed this podcast.
Tara: Me too. It's so great to get to know you.
Speaker 4: HerbMentor radio is written and produced by John Gallagher and Tara Ruth. Visit herbmentorradio.com to subscribe on your favorite podcast app. And for information on how to be part of our HerbMentor online learning community. HerbMentor radio is production of the learningherbs.com, LLC, all rights reserved. Thank you so much for listening.
