From HerbMentor.com, this is Herb Mentor Radio.
You are listening to Herb Mentor Radio on HerbMentor.com. I'm John Gallagher.
I am here today live at the Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference in New Mexico at the Ghost Ranch, and it's an amazing place because there's incredible herbalists that are here. And it's always an awesome opportunity when I can, you know, come come to you live here in person, not on the phone with with some great herbalists. And I happen to be with today with herbalist, Paul Bergner and doctor Tania Neubauer.
Paul has, who you all may know from my previous interview under mentor dot com or seen his video there, has studied and practiced natural medicine since nineteen seventy three, author of seven books on the faculty of lots of schools, founder of the North American Institute of Medical Herbalism, started the Medical Herbalism Journal, and you can visit him at N A I M H dot com and MedHerb.com.
And Tanya has been studying herbs since nineteen ninety four, and she studied with Karen Sanders, Michael Moore, Adam Seller has worked as a naturopathic physician, for quite a while and, has done so as well in Nicaragua with Natural Doctors International and was the medical coordinator at the Berkeley Free Clinic.
And in the in December of two thousand twelve, Paul and Tanya alone sorry, thousand eleven. December two thousand eleven. Right? Thank you, Paul.
This is live.
Paul and Tanya, along with seven song, will be, leading a trip to Nicaragua with folks and it's called medical herbalism in global health. And we'll be talking about that in detail a little later in the interview. But first, because we have not yet met Tanya.
Hi, Tanya.
Hi.
I want to hear your story. And you've been in Nicaragua and, you know, you've been working with herbs and as a as a doctor. And I just wanna hear your story and how it unfolded and also how that led you to Nicaragua and your work there.
Okay. Well, herbalism is really the way that I got started in the field of health care and my path has really come a long way since then, but, I consider herbal medicine really my first love. It completely changed my life to learn that we're surrounded by healing plants wherever we are.
Sometimes to the up to the weeds pushing through the sidewalk. And also early, early on after I started studying herbal medicine, I began to work as a community health worker at the Berkeley Free Clinic, and that was also very formative in my life. It really inspired me to want to make medicine and health care and natural medicine accessible to all of people, which it really isn't necessarily in our society. And, the people I worked with there really inspired me to want to go farther and to become a physician.
So naturopathic medicine was really an ideal way to blend those two interests and become a doctor but still be able able to really practice my first love which was herbal medicine and nutrition, body work, I'm also a massage therapist.
So about halfway through my natural my naturopathic training, I went on a delegation that was organized by a classmate of mine to go work in Nicaragua.
And that delegation had a very unexpected effect on me about, a week into the to the work there, which we were working on the island of Ometepe, where we're gonna be going on this trip, I just felt completely, overtaken, inspired, felt like I was falling in love and knew that I had to continue this work.
The that delegation really had a huge effect on a lot of people who were there. A lot of people really got unexpectedly bit by the bug of working internationally.
And three of the people who were on that delegation, besides myself, ended up founding an organization called Natural Doctors International, which works to bring natural medicine into global health. And they were very inspired by doing this work in a public hospital, in community clinics around Nicaragua, but also felt that the model which is used on a lot kind of international health organizations, which is what you might call parachuting in or medical tourism, and that's people show up and set up a makeshift clinic, parcel out a lot of whatever it is, whether it's, you know, pills, or healthcare, or even surgery, and then they go back to their home country. And there isn't follow-up or any kind of knowledge of what happens to the people that you see afterwards. That this model is not the best model. That we can do better than that.
Right.
And so that there needs to be a long term permanent collaboration and presence in the communities that you're serving.
Right. So because you're going to a place and it doesn't have a regular medical clinic and for a lot of people, is it that you might be one of the only practitioners that they'll see?
That's definitely true, although it's not entirely true. So the place that we work does have a public health system, and we work in collaboration with that public health system.
So when you go there, you're gonna be working with herbalists and naturopathic physicians, but you're also gonna be working with people who are really enmeshed in the culture and in the have a great knowledge of the resources that are available after you leave. And it's it's very ideal. It's amazing.
I'm trying to understand, like, you know, it's interesting because your your your passion here with working with the free clinic in Berkeley, and that's Berkeley, California. Mhmm. Okay.
Yeah.
Just making sure. Uh-huh. And also you're down near Carragher working with the natural the the the with the health care system.
Is it that in because I imagine, you know, Berkeley, a liberal city is a free clinic. You're gonna have doctors that are willing work with herbalists. Right? And they and there's is that is you have MDs at that did you have MDs at that free clinic too? Or was it just a because I know the one with seven song that works with those MDs there and there's other folks.
So is it just herbal folks and naturopath naturopaths or there are no naturopaths there.
At the time I decided to become a naturopathic physician, I had never met a naturopathic physician. It just sounded like a great idea in theory.
But the Berkeley Free Clinic is unique in that all the healthcare is provided by community health workers who are trained in the free clinic. Okay. And so there are, MDs and PAs and nurse practitioners who are there, but they're they're available to consult with the community health workers. They they don't actually directly provide health care into the area.
But but in Nicaragua, and you're working with the the public health system there, there you you are, like, how how is the attitude towards working with herbalists and and these and folks like that? Like, is it a little different than this country?
It's very different. It is amazing. So there's such, welcoming and such an intense gratitude and happiness that people can get access to natural medicine in their own hospital and in their own community clinic.
The vast very prevalent in the United States towards natural medicine.
It's normal there to know a few plants around you and how to use them as medicine. That's just a regular part of life. It's not a strange, it's not a thing. It's not alternative. Yeah.
So they're really welcome. They're like, wow, there's herbalists here.
People are so happy at all levels. Like, we have a collaboration with the the national, basically the, it's called the Ministry of Health, basically the national health service there. And at the highest level people are completely thrilled. In fact, the Nicaraguan government actually just signed a resolution to make natural med to encourage the use of natural medicine within the public health system at all levels whenever possible.
So so you get kids to combine your, I mean, like you say, you fell in love with the place, your passion for helping people, your passion for herbs in a area that's very hospitable and welcoming to you being there.
Mhmm.
So I can see what were why there's like, well, this is amazing. This is quite a a draw. And that and that then, if if I'm right here in saying that encourages and feeds and gives you that feeds your passion and gives you like, wow, you know, I'm really on the right path here because I'm making a difference.
Yeah. You really do feel it it to be there, this is an island of about forty two thousand people is the last estimate I heard, and there are less than fifteen doctors.
So any kind of health care that is provided there, you really have a sense immediately upon arrival that you are doing something very vital, very necessary is gonna be making a huge difference in the lives of your lives.
Because you get to to help folks and and and it's your passion and and and all those things that you're into and also they're getting health care.
Yeah. I I learned an incredible amount. I ended up going and once I by the time I had graduated from naturopathic school, this organization, Natural Doctors International, was well established and had established a permanent presence there and was bringing doctors there for long term placements of fourteen months at a time. Amazing. And so I ended up working there and seeing thousands of people.
So so what what what I wanna talk a little bit about now is that, you know, something that, you know, as folks who wonder why are we talking about all this today is, is that I took a class with Paul yesterday. Hi, Paul. Hi.
And, and, it was on, you titled it how to become a master herbalist in thirty years or more. Exactly.
And and a little tongue in cheek title. Yes. And we'll talk a little bit why that's so. But what really I just had this, you know, how cool that was that because I met Tanya here for the first time and talking of on her passions about all this and where her life led her and all the things in her past that led her to her work in Nicaragua.
And they're able you know, and then meets you, and then now you're able to take folks there and help others learn about herbs and help others, not just the folks in Nicaragua, but to help them learn to be clinical herbalists and practitioners. And it's just how it all just happens in our lives and our paths and and, and I guess that's what I wanted to ask you is just you hear her Tanya's story and how does your story fit into that and and your passions? And I guess I'm really inspired by this whole thing about, you know, people finding their path in life and their calling and and everything.
So I'm gonna shut up and just let you just talk.
Yeah. Well, the talk had to become a master herbalist in thirty years or more. I mean, that's that's tongue in cheek because, you know there's some places you can study for a short time and somebody puts the title master herbalist after their name and that's generally not highly regarded in our profession and it's rather pretentious to say I'm a master of anything after a hundred hours of study or three hundred hours of study or something like like that. So, what just my story. I started doing this in the nineteen seventies.
When there really wasn't anything in North America that they that we would call an herbal movement, where herbalists in one part of the country were connected or communicating with herbalists in another part of the country. There were very few books, this was before the internet, you there used to be a hardbound, and they may have this online now, but there used to be a hardbound book. It was called Books in Print and it it was a list of all the books in print. It's like a telephone book and, you could look under different topics and in nineteen seventy eight you could look in books in print and there were five books on the topic of herbalism, in books in print.
And I get an idea. I looked recently. There were tens of thousands now on Amazon dot com if you just look herb or herbs or something like that. And in, but, herbalism was arising and and communities were arising in different parts of the country.
So, New England, there was a, you know, an herbal herbalists and herbal communities were arising in New England, in the Pacific Northwest, in California.
There have always been a lot of, herbalists, folk herbalists, lay herbalists in the south and in the Appalachians and and so on. But just for a a point of reference in in getting into answering your question, in nineteen eighty six, I went to an herbal conference at a place in Oregon called Breighton Bush Hot Springs and, at the time, this was the only herbal conference in the country, and it happened once a year in September. Right? And you'll notice, just for context, we're at a conference here that probably has three or four hundred people at it. Right? That conference had eighty people in nineteen eighty six. And, people had that was people had flown from the East Coast and come up from California and were there from the Pacific Northwest, and, it was this group, but I walked into that room and I went into an altered state.
Mhmm.
It was just like I was stepped out of time or something and kind of this little question of what's going on here. There's something going on here. What's going on here? And, I, because, I had already been an herbalist for seven years at that point and had studied natural medicine by that point for thirteen years. And, but I, here was a collection of herbalists.
All of them practicing in their own locale off the grid in some way, you know, without recognition, all totally unconventional, you know. And but we were all in one room together and it was like the only thing I can think of is like, when you put the fuel rods in a nuclear reactor close together, the water starts to boil And, but it was like this, spiritual thing was was happening, you know, that this and, subsequently, but by the way, by the last day of the convention, I figured out what was going on there. It's that I was in a room with eighty people, all of whom talked to plants and the plants talked back.
Or in other words, I like to say for herbalism for some people the herbalism, the herb, the plant, maybe it's the cup of tea, but maybe it's the plant itself, becomes a doorway into a sacred world, and it's how a person opens up a sacred world and finds their own sacred soul in that context. And these were people where that was their path and, I can see now that time there were three small one medium sized school and two very, very small schools of herbalism in the country that year. That's all there were. And, last I looked, there are now this year, it isn't, you know, twenty five years later, there are at least a dozen herbal conferences. I mean, probably a total of two thousand people go to herbal conferences this year. I looked on, a website, there are more than fifty schools of herbal medicine of one sort or another.
In those days, none of the schools actually had clinics. You weren't actually trained to use herbs to heal people, you were trained about herbs and how to use them, you know, and and what they, you know, for yourself or what they were quote good for, but there was none of the aspects of herbalism where you sit with somebody and hear their story and take their case and you get some idea of what's going on and you think of what herbal allies might help them, you know, with their situation. So and subsequently today there are at least six schools that all have teaching clinics and, and teach people.
Today I did a rough count talking to some different school owners. There are probably approximately five hundred people who are practicing, who have had, five hundred people who have graduated from one of those clinical schools and gotten clinical training and clinical herbalism and, you see, so the change in my lifetime over twenty five years, that's that's an amazing expansion.
Right? And, herbalism still isn't quite on the grid, even if some medical doctors use herbs, right? The actual paradigm of herbalism and natural medicine isn't so much on the grid. I will say in that same time, the naturopathic medical profession, those are, they're like trained primary care, physicians who also use net who use, natural, therapies.
There were in, nineteen eighty seven, they used to get two hundred NDs used to come to their annual convention, and, they estimated there were about six hundred in the country. And, there are now I don't know what they're they're graduating two or three hundred a year from ancient Catholic colleges. They're graduating as many a year now, every year as used to come to their national conference in, you know, nineteen eighty seven, so this is an amazing explosion.
It's estimated there, I think, between three and five thousand practicing NDs now in North America.
Yeah.
So the question is why did that happen, you know? Was it history changed and it's an idea whose time has come? And what my because I was involved actually with the naturopathic profession from eighty seven to ninety four, and I sat on the board in the room with the people who took the steps that made the rest of all that happen, that growth happen. These were the people they got, they got licensing in new states, they got board exams, they started a national political organization, they got accreditation for the schools.
Right. You know, and, so I think in when I go back to those years, I think of those two rooms. The room with the eighty herbalists in it and the room with the dozen nature leaders of the naturopathic profession who are bringing it to what it is today. And there was one thing that you see, a friend of mine said it, he said, I'll look in this was actually Herbal Ed Smith, the founder of the Herb Farm Company, which was a small company at the time.
And, he said, I see see somebody and you can just see there's a fire in their eyes and I know that person's an herbalist. Right? And, it was the same thing with the nature paths and what I've come to understand it wasn't like a new idea is that people have a calling. Yeah.
You know, everyone's born with a calling and no two callings are alike. Right? But if and, like, in my one line, not one liner, but a short definition of a calling. A calling is that thing that whenever you're doing it, right, the universe conspires to help you succeed and whenever you're not doing it the universe conspires to make you miserable.
Right.
Usually anyone I talk to when I say it that way, people, oh yeah.
Yeah. Like no one is called to work in McDonald's. And, calling doesn't always manifest as a profession. It doesn't always manifest as you're an initiator of social change. Right?
Mhmm.
Somebody's calling could be to work in sales and raise a family. Mhmm.
And but when that person's doing that, the universe conspires to help them succeed.
And they're and with that calling, you're connected to everything, no matter what it is. And this, master herbalist, some people are going to master four hundred herbs and they're gonna start a school. Somebody else is gonna learn thirty or forty herbs, learn them very well, and they're gonna become a caretaker or a health ally in their community or in their family or in their circle of friends, and they're equally valid as a calling. So it isn't the size like this in India, they talk about the elephant and the ant.
They're both doing their job, you know, and just because one's bigger than the other doesn't mean that one's more important than the other, that they're doing what they're doing. So, I saw this force for social change came from, I would say probably about in both those professions combined, about thirty biological individuals who who they got struck by lightning. They they got a hit that says, this is what I was born to do. I'm gonna do this.
I'm gonna do this. Whether I get rich or whether I have to do it as a hobby, I'm gonna do it. Alright. Right?
And they I like the the term from Texas hold them poker. They put themselves all in and did it and their lives became incredibly meaningful in that and they have manifested this for this generation and for future generations and, a lot of what we see here today is the result of their work and their sacrifice and their passion and their calling.
One of the reasons I'm interested in this is I've been trained in clinical herbalists since nineteen ninety six Mhmm.
And, someone who's their calling is actually to you are in this weird, unregulated field called herbalism.
Right? There aren't any board exams. There aren't any standards. There aren't any licenses. There aren't any anything, you know.
And some people are called to do this, to master this, to teach this, and to use this to help people with their health. And, as training clinical herbalists, I over the years, I've kinda said, what is the most important thing that determines whether my students succeed or fail, whether they make it through the program or not, whether they come through the program at a high level of confidence when they get out, or whether they just kinda punch the clock and coming through is is the the same thing, the calling, whether they have a calling. And, this is what I see for somebody who's actually practicing sitting with patients, the idea of having a calling is is critical.
It's a critical piece of the picture there Right.
For healing. Because we're in healing It isn't like you get this list of remedies over here and there's a list of diseases on the other side and people come up and you see where they match on the list and you give them this thing. It's like in actual healing you're engaging the person, you're engaging their life, you're hearing their story, and you're seeing the patterns of their life. Right. You come to them. I could say one thing, one year, some students, they were naturopathic students but they were herbalists primarily and they were going to naturopathic school in order to have a license so they could practice legally and expand their skills to practice as herbalists and they were from one of the naturopathic colleges in the naturopathic colleges in the Pacific Northwest and a group of them, there were six of them and they decided in the summer after their first year they were gonna travel across the country and visit different famous herbalists and get advice for their careers.
Nice. And, they came and said, can we talk to you? You know, they talked to me and said what they were doing, but before they, just before they came to my school in Colorado, they had stopped by the Lakota reservation in South Dakota, and, they wanted to ask, an elder, Native American healer shaman herbalist, you know, advice. And so they were, led to the guy, and I told him their question.
They said the guy was quiet for about five minutes. I'm saying it took about five minutes to set there. And he said, well, you should go up on the mountain and do a vision quest. And, find out whether the excuse me.
Find out whether the creator wants you to be an herbalist. Right? Because if the creator doesn't want you to be an herbalist and you do it anyway, you're just gonna hurt people.
He's talking the same thing, that's his version of calling, and it's very important that a healer be called to do that, not do that because oh well I can make a good income here, have a good retirement plan. Right. You know, or you know, I mean, well okay people can do what they do, but this is very critical for actual healing, authentic healing. And when I see people who have, they'll get this little bug for herbalism, right, and they'll say, I'm well, yeah, I I want to learn this and maybe at first it's a curiosity, at first it's a lifestyle, but it can be for some, for those who are called, it can be their connection with what's sacred in themselves and what's sacred in their connection to everything else.
And for me often the doorway for that is the plants or the herbs or because they are connected to nature. We're in this modern urban world there's pavement and we wear shoes. Right. Many of us have never set a barefoot on the earth in a decade.
Right. You know, or sat on the earth, heaven forbid, we're afraid we'll get hypothermia.
I came with a friend one day and he says you don't have a ground pad? You're gonna get really, really sick.
So, then we have we have this idea idea of calling.
So maybe that brings us around to the trip to Nicaragua.
Right. Because right. Because I think maybe that's what what struck me when you were talking.
Because when I hear you talk about, you know, the work that you do, when I hear Tanya's story about, oh, yeah. We just started this free clinic and we well, I went to Nicaragua. I just yeah. I just went down there.
We just started doing it, you know. And then and I've interviewed seven song and he's talked about his work in Beothika Free Clinic and his work that where he has been going to the rainbow gatherings for over thirty years offering a free clinic and protests and things that he does. And and it's this, like, they just use light up and you do it because it's just what you wanna do with it. And and I like that you're talking speaking to everybody, Pablo, because, you know, it really because because some folks may you know, we speak to the difference here.
I'm I'm trying to get to this. A lot of people go, well, that's it seems so awesome in this romantic thing, and they they could see themselves doing it. But there's often a difference between that and a person's calling too, isn't it?
Yes. Exactly.
Because I mean because because a lot of us or most people listening will be like, well, I am, you know, I'm learning about herbs and using with my family and that's my calling and that's what I'm doing with my family. But there's some listening going like, I gotta get I gotta do this. You know? I gotta this is what I wanna do. When they hear all of your stories, they go, that's me.
That's what I Yes.
So do you see this sometimes confusions between people's actual callings and what they're doing versus do you wanna speak to that?
Or I would just say, your calling would be what keeps you doing it when the romance wears off.
The romance might be the thing that gets you to take the initial step, but, you know, inevitably when you're doing this work, you know, even even when you're helping people who are sick, you're gonna be confronting some difficult stories and, you know, that that's magnified when you're going to a place like Nicaragua, where there's very little access to resources for healthcare, you know, you're going to be sitting with some tough stories and sitting with problems that are some of the most difficult problems that people have confronted throughout history.
Can you give us an example of a situation or have a, you know, a case?
I just I I just went to Nicaragua just very recently and worked with the delegation, and, we had people coming in from so far away to come to our clinic. It was amazing.
It's the word is really getting out there. And I had, a number of people come in.
I had one father come in with his son who, was born with a congenital heart malformation and a number of different, you know, different congenital malformations of his head and all sorts of other and then we had someone else who brought in her two blind children that they were adult children. One was, one was actually going to college on the mainland, was studying to be a psychologist, it was quite amazing and the other one, she, as best as we could determine, might be having an onset of schizophrenia. But there was so, there's no mental health resources on that island.
There's no way to really get that person assessed for that when they're in some kind of subtle onset stage Right.
Beyond what we could do. And so, you will confront situations where, you know, it's like, these are people I'd really love to be able to wave a wand for you and, make up for the inequities in world health access that are out there. But instead, you know, I can be there and witness your story and do what I can to make the wheels of justice turn in the small way that I can.
Right. So just being there for people is huge.
It's huge, you know, most of the people, part of the consequence, right, of being in a place where there are so few doctors and health care providers, most people when they do get in to see someone, because we're not in the middle of the jungle, there is a, you know, there is a public health system, but they'll be seen by someone usually for maybe like three to five minutes.
And so even the amount of time that we have to sit with people, you know sometimes fifteen minutes, sometimes much more, that people have never been listened to and have their story heard that much in their lives, right, by any healthcare practitioner.
And so for us, you know in this country, you know a lot of times in the holistic health field, we'll sit with people for an hour and a half, two hours, that was the standard in my naturopathic training.
There's a big trade off, right? And if you were to do that, you're gonna see very few people of the many people who want to be seen. But even if you give, you know, fifteen minutes of really being there and really listening, it's it's huge. Something that people have never had in our lives.
And that is huge.
Yeah. Alright. With herbs there, are you using many of their local herbs so then they can say they can kinda take it from there when you leave? And or are you relying heavily on ones you take with you? How does this work?
Either of you.
We are using some local plants. I would say not as many as I would like, and it's a long process of being able to really adapt local plants for use there, right?
There are actually two natural medicine foundations in Nicaragua that make their own, they grow their own plants and make their own medicines and publish books on Nicaragua medicinal plants and train community health workers all over the place. And they're amazing and we do buy some medicines from them and some of them have become real mainstays of the things that we see there.
Like one example is using guava for infectious diarrhea and parasites.
But there's also we have a pretty tremendous, donated medicinary from companies in North America that have supported us.
And you give people bottles of Yes.
So we give out a lot of medicines that, we we formulate. We'll, you know, mix our own tincture blends right there when people are there or mix our own teas or salves or other things like that.
Oh, nice. Okay.
Medicated salves, all those things, and we'll just give them to people.
And again, you know, the the idea of this clinic is it's a permanent presence in the community. So people can come back and follow-up with the naturopathic physician after we see them on this delegation and refill as needed or adjust their plan.
Are there people with that group there right now?
There's two people that, founder and executive director of the organization, doctor Tabitha Parker, she's there permanently, and then also, doctor Kylie Hunt who's this year's Oh, I see.
And a resident physician.
And so we're gonna be working with both of them.
So you're getting to to so so you're getting to go to a place where there's an established presence in natural medicine in a community that welcomes it and get hands on experience in in in that. That's that's awesome.
It's a remarkable experience. It's really if you, that was part of the the the impetus for founding this non profit was, you know, there's if you wanna go and do international work with natural medicine, a lot of the groups that do it are you know, they're kind of mission groups that go for very short periods of time and this model is, you know, if I may say so, it's so much better and so much more appropriate.
Now, if someone's to join you on this trip, the first question I'm wondering is just people listening going, wow, I'd like to go have some hands on clinical experience and using, you know, because and you told me, Paul, yesterday that you saw, like, you're, you know, two or three days, you can see up to seventy five, eighty.
Well, I I think we saw seventy five.
Our initial, run was seventy five patients in four and a half days. Four and a half.
And what what it's like Who can go though?
Like like I mean like some people are listening like oh what what experience?
Anyone can go. Absolutely. With any or no clinical experience. Wow.
It's What level of herbalism though experience?
Like, what should someone feel like they can do anything?
If the people has the bug, they wanna go.
Mhmm. It's I'd like to what I witnessed there, I went there in, in in February, and there was a group of, naturopathic students from one of the Canadian naturopathic colleges there, and some of them were in their senior year and they were getting ready to practice and their impetus was they could come down there, practice physical exam skills, really get a lot of primary care experience right there. And there were also some of the students there had never seen a client, they hadn't even had a class in naturopathic school yet, but they wanted to come there and see what it was like and get inspired to see what it looks like to use herbs in a primary care setting and would they also use, of course, nutrition in in a third world country, nutrition is very important.
There are nutritional supplements, there may be homeopathy, and they may do body work, people may do acupuncture there, and, but the thing is the participant can participate at the level of their training. So, let's just say someone comes by who's a nurse or a physician's assistant or something, they can come, they can practice their physical exam skills on those. If a person comes by a student who's had training and physical exam they can practice the physical exam part.
Because there's a lot of people like I know at least listening to this that are nurses and you know, and they have these skills and they not realize if they can just bring there then.
There we the way, the clinics are done is collaborative. So if you come down there as part of this delegation, you're gonna be there, at a station seeing patients with a naturopathic physician and with an herbalist. And each group is going to have someone who has really practiced their long term and is very linguistically and culturally fluent, right. So, and everything is done collaboratively.
You'll be invited to participate in taking the history, in coming up with the plan, coming up with the treatment plan and, figuring out what to do. But there'll also be someone there who will keep you from, you know, if your treatment plan is something that is gonna really clash with local ideas about health or with what, you know, what is gonna be able to explain, okay, when the person tells you this, not only, we translate everything simultaneously so you don't have to have any Spanish to go there, right? But, we don't only translate the Spanish literally, we translate what people are really saying. So when they say, you know, I'm tired, it's actually an expression there for shortness of breath and they're probably actually talking about asthma for example.
Right? And so, it'll keep you from going off the rails, right? You know, when someone, even if you're completely fluent in Spanish and a, you know, fantastic experienced health practitioner, you'll be in a team and you'll get to really use all your abilities to their fullest to provide the very best health care for the people there.
Like, I can say some health care practitioners go down there and they go, boom, you know, this is what I originally got.
Into Why I originally got into this field that I can help somebody and make a difference. Yes. Simply without seventeen years of insurance and medical bureaucracy between you and the patient.
It's typically very, very inspiring for everyone who participates. From people who, you know, it's a really inspiring way to begin your clinical experience. Like Paul was saying, if you've never seen a client, it's a really inspiring way to see everything that's possible.
And it's really re inspiring for people who've been practicing a long time. There's typically intense gratitude on the part of the people you see for being for you being there.
To people It's very rewarding. But when people come back, how have they, you know, get coming back into this country where there are all these diff these restrictive regulations for all various things that Have people found ways to be creative and and win their inspirations there and bring back to their work here?
Yeah. I'd like to say a visit there is like pouring gasoline on the fire of your calling. Yeah. You come back here and do it. Beautiful. Do do it. That was my experience.
Right.
That one is like, it it was amazing. I the time you said the for the participants, it's collaborative. Right. Collaborative means if if we're sitting there, we're gonna come up with a treatment plan, we'll say, do you Right.
These four students who are sitting with us four attendees who are sitting with our station, do you have something to add? Do you have a suggestion for this? Do you have a recommendation for this? This?
And say we're thinking of giving this formula, right, and let's say the patient has a kidney infection, right, and I'm I'm have some experience with that, I always put plantain in my formulas for kidney infection. The student can say, oh, why do you put plantain in that? That, you know, that in other words, you're not just observing like through a glass wall or something, you're there and you can interact and participate and ask questions of the expert local naturopathic physician and the expert herbalist. You could ask direct they're sitting right there.
You can ask them a question. Wow.
Or you can put in your suggestion for, you know, what should be in person's treatment plan or what question should we ask in history or what, you know, further things should we explore.
That's Yeah.
Let's say let's say the person's a massage therapist. Right. Let's do it and we'll be, working up a treatment plan for somebody and we'll give them the treatment plan, but there's a massage table over there. Right?
And a lot of these people are in physical pain and in physical tense and things. And this is what I witnessed in February. There were people there who were pretty good at bodywork, and we'd say, okay. Well, here's your medicine.
And and the the student the body workers back there said, oh my goodness. You know, I'd like to offer that person some bodywork and so they go, they get a massage after their visit and the massage therapist gets to practice, you know, in that setting, and seeing massage integrated with everything else.
Yeah. Most of the people we see are farmers, and so they typically have a whole lot of musculoskeletal concerns. So body work is very, very appreciated. People love getting body work.
And also there's, you know, a fair amount of mental emotional concerns that come up also that are really well addressed by bodywork. And then also, yeah, the current naturopathic resident there is, also does acupuncture. So if you do acupuncture she does a ton of acupuncture. It's really, really popular there.
Grossest guy. Yeah. Really?
They love to get acupuncture and so you can if you're an acupuncturist, you can work with her and provide acupuncture there.
But but if I was gonna go see Paul or Tanya and Monica talk to this, my main concern is, man, there's gotta be poisonous snakes and tons of things that could hurt me there.
So I know that's going through people's eyes listening to this, and please address some of those things and how you deal with, people's safety concerns, which are probably pretty valid.
Right. Well, we're on an island.
There there are no poisonous snakes that I've ever heard of on an island.
They're scorpions but they're not dangerous they just hurt. So you know you gotta be careful about They're friendly scorpions.
What joint?
Then when I put my clothes on the floor and I went and put them in the laundry and got them out of the dryer and I opened up my underwear and there was a dead scorpion. Oh. My underwear.
What about, like, maybe more, like, probably people's concern, probably more, like, maybe, like, drinking water, parasites, parasites, that kind of so if you go there, we work with an organization of families that are trained to provide lodging to foreigners who come and volunteer and so we provide them with a water filter.
It's actually a really amazing appropriate technology water filter.
And so they mix all your drinks and, wash all your vegetables and everything else in filtered water. And so if you just eat with your family that you stay with, you'll be very safe as far as that. If you go and you know go to restaurants on the island, you're taking your chances, right?
Because those ice cubes may not be unfiltered.
There are a lot of, you will see a lot of, clients with parasites in the clinic and there's a lot of parasitic infections, so you know if you if you already know you have a stomach a a fruit drink in a restaurant.
But if not, you stay with your family and you just eat what they prepare and just drink the water. We always have filtered water in the clinics then you'll be safe as far as that. Many people do get just a little kind of like traveler's gastroenteritis when they come there, just from different microbes, that's really common, but it's typically nothing dangerous and then we have the full clinic there to help you to treat you and everything else.
Nobody uses any shots or anything before they go or we do require a tetanus shot Okay.
Because the, there's a lot of kind of old rusty barbed wire, things like that around because you're in a rural area. And then you should just know that, you know, we're on an island in a very rural area.
There's a hospital on the island, but it doesn't fit anyone's definition of a hospital in North America. And so if you if something very, very serious goes on, you're either talking about being medevaced or you know, on a minimum one hour ride to the mainland. So you know knock on wood nothing very serious has ever happened to any participant of our delegations but you should just know that that's the situation. So we do require require you to have, travel insurance when you come along.
And and a passport.
And a passport. Yes. Sure.
And yeah. So the tetanus, the the emergency, tetanus immune globulin is not available on the island.
And so we recommend that you get vaccinated before you come, just to make sure that Right.
You're already your booster in there.
Yeah. Exactly.
I probably haven't had that since I was a kid probably. Exactly.
But there's no other there's no other shots.
Yeah. Okay. So far, we've talked about, that our trip actually has has two sections to it and you can sign up for for one or both. And the one we're talking about the visit to the clinic in the island of Ometepe and working there and getting specialized classes.
For people who want, we have an, an extra week at the beginning. And in that, when we go to one of the towns in Northern Nicaragua and, called Esteli. And, in, that town, you can take, there's a Spanish language school that's been, been, training medical delegations.
A they can teach any level of Spanish, but they've been training medical delegations, like, from Yale Medical School or, their nursing schools. We'll send people down there or whatever, and it's a a Spanish language intensive. It's, four hours every morning from Monday through Friday. And, people in, you'll sit you'll have, it's either one or two people per teacher.
So you engage with the teacher, the teacher evaluates and you you can get trained from where you are in Spanish. I see. Either from zero or up to improving the Spanish you have or learning the names of the different parts of the body for a medical interview or, you know, things like that.
Will you, cover some folks any classes and, like, excuse me. Ask very close to the microphone. Any classes or things in, in local plants there at all?
Tanya, I'm not Tanya is a you're a botany person at the at the school.
Yeah. That part of the trip to Esteli, that's where the two Nicaraguan medicinal plant foundations are. And so part of that, you know, in the morning is your medical Spanish intensive and then in the afternoon are field trips And so we're gonna visit both of those foundations and get to talk to them about the plants they do use and the the medicines they make, the research that they do, the practice that they do. We're also gonna visit, Nicaraguan midwife and herbalist named Mamalicha.
Wow.
Yeah. So you'll get to really have much more of a cultural experience if you go on that part of it as well.
What what what website did you set up where folks can visit, like, right now and go, sign up or read more about it?
Well, you can read more about it, and, the the site is med herb dot com.
M e d h e r b dot com.
And then slash nicaragua dot html.
Okay. So medherb dot com slash nicaragua dot html.
All lowercase.
All lowercase. If you're going to own Nicaragua, Google it.
If you just if you just visit the Medherb site, you'll see it there on the front page.
Oh, the link on the front page. Yes.
So it's like, you know, I I should, you know, back up a bit too and just, you know, in I personally it's like, well, why why why are we talking about all this in this interview? And, well, you know, just to recap a few things again is that hearing Paul's class, yesterday on, on herbalism and how to become the best herbalist in thirty years or more, which will be posted eventually on herbventure dot com. Great class. You'll enjoy it.
You know, I I was just really, you know, put back in remembering that that for all of us in learning about nature and our connections to nature and herbs that it's a very individual thing and it's also something that's really connected to our gifts and what we wanna do in the world. And when I hear Paul talk about that and I met Tanya, telling about her experience in Nicaragua and this trip that they're doing, And also that it's like, hey. You know, it's tough to get folks to I mean, gosh, to to get on a trip like this because there's a lot of questions. I mean, in Spanish, am I gonna get hurt, or what's this like? And it sounds exciting, and there's an edge to it. And and, I was just, like, thinking about, wow, you know, the more folks who get to go there, the more people get to be helped in Nicaragua.
And the more folks who go there get to learn cool stuff and bring back here and really make changes in our own communities and countries. And so it's this awesome, you know, thing that wraps all that stuff together. And I was so inspired by all that being in an event like here, like the traditions in Western Herbalism conference and the whole vibe here and all the great work that I I guess I just wanted to share the experience that I'm having here at this conference and the people that I'm meeting and the cool things that are going on with everyone out here listening to events or radio. And so that's why we're here and why we're doing this. And, I wanted to share why I was doing that, but also, you know, what a great story and amazing work that you both are doing, and thank you.
It's really true that that I've participated now in eleven of these delegations in Seneca, Iowa as well as, you know, living there for a couple years And every single one, there's just this process that happens like clockwork and people's lives really get transformed and it really does light people's fires to do what they love. It it happens every time. It's very inspiring to be part of.
And that's business that I'm in and I've been in since I started with Wilderness Awareness School in nineteen ninety is lighting that fire that spark those transformations and making it happen.
Let me talk a little bit about Sevensong, you know, I Yes. Faculty member is Sevensong. First of all, Sevensong is a remarkable, herbalist, I would say of the herbal teachers in North America. He probably knows more about acute care like first aid and acute care, than any other herbalist I know in North America and also separate from us, not having anything to do with Tanya Raspek, he also found his way down to that clinic and, he worked in that clinic for a month last year.
Wow. And made friends with the director there and so he's, he's been there before, he knows the scene there, he has an idea of what's there, and he, he, like I say, gasoline on your calling, he was very much inspired to, he realizes that it's hard to get clinical experience for an herbalist in North America. Right. And, you know, he told me, he says this is just such an opportunity and that there there's almost no opportunity in North America to see people who are acutely ill in a primary care, a setting, for an herbalist, you know, to do that.
So, he's gonna be there. The what a day would look like while you're working in the clinic Yes. If you get up in the morning and we'll have, like, a a half an hour case review and we'll talk about the cases we saw. After coffee.
After coffee. And after after a make a breakfast.
And, After your family feeds you.
Yeah. Yes. And, but we'll do a case review of the cases we saw the the day before, and we'll say, okay, well, you know, we've we're seeing, Antimibe Histolytica infection and this is the way, this is the way it's treated conventionally and this is the way we can, help treat it, herbally also with the stuff we have in our pharmacy here. Right?
And, over the week, that changes because, like, maybe you run out of stuff in the pharmacy, so we can discuss substitutions, you know, alternate treatments and things. Okay. And then a person will spend about seven and a half hours, with a break for lunch, see see in the collaborative, seeing clients. And then in the evenings and in some of the afternoons, you it's a ten day trip.
You're not the everyday in the clinic every day, but there are classes. And, Tanya and Seventh son and I are gonna teach specialized classes for things that are relevant to to primary care, that the common things seen on the island there, and especially things that would have an overlap to things that would be seen back in North America also.
And, there are also, NDI has put together this, they call them classes in global health, and just remarkable. You know, you you go there and you're you're in the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere after Haiti, you know, just for reference. Right? Right.
And, there are a lot of questions like, well, why is Nicaragua the second poorest country after Haiti? You know, you're encountering the human beings on the other side of the net, and you're saying, well, why are things here the way they are? You know, what is the global economic thing that produces a depressed economy like this? What what are the social forces on the planet, you know, that that caused that?
And, it's very important, I for me, because you you encounter it's kind of strange. You go there. You can be somebody you you could be somebody living on the fringes of society, barely making a living in the in the United States and go down there and you could hire servants with the disparity in. Things.
So you'll go through when you go down there and you encounter the society and you start encountering clients, patients intimately and hear their stories and things, Things happen inside, you get questions and I took because this big turmoil inside, psychological and spiritual turmoil inside, and they have these these glasses that sort of help you process that. Mhmm. You know, you're encountering poverty like you've never seen in your life or suffering, and you're also encountering brilliant, heart centered people, you know. Right.
And, right, and, full human beings. Now I'm not gonna romanticize, You know, it isn't like, oh, visit exotic countries and see quaint people. You know?
That that's one of the Right.
One of the pitfalls of of medical tourism. Right? I do not point people. They're like us, you know? And, so there are classes in classes in helping you process that and understand that and very transformative. So so that's the whole track of the ten day part is you get the clinical work, the classes in medical herbalism, the classes in global health.
And I think I would like to emphasize that, the people you see are people that are, you're really going to be struck by you know how much people are the same and how you know a lot of people wonder well okay are the things that I'm gonna be seeing here, is this really relevant to my clinical practice in North America if I'm not planning to just work in global health?
And you know that the answer is a definite yes. You know people people get sick in the same ways all around the world. Right? And so all the sorts of things you're going to be seeing while you're there are the same sorts of concerns that you're going to be seeing here in North America. You're just going to see so many people in such a short time that you're going to see all sorts of things that it might take twenty years to cross your office door here in North America.
Wow, that's so good. You get a real concentrated you know.
The only thing that I would say is really different is you're going to see tons and tons of people with infectious diarrhea and parasites right. And so unless you're one of the alternative medicine people who believes that everyone has parasites, you're not going to see so many people with that here in this country. But other than that, you know it's still a useful thing to know how to treat, right? But also everything else is you know, they're they are health concerns that you're gonna see over and over again in North America as well. And we do I also wanna if you you you learn to treat a lot of acute conditions, but there are a lot of people with chronic conditions too that are really common in the states or in North America. So like there's a lot of people with diabetes, a lot of people with hypertension, you know, there's a there's a lot of chronic illness there too. So it's not like we're taking you to go do surgery in a war zone, you know.
It's Yeah.
Really different.
An image that may come up and Right.
It's not like that.
Oh, that this, you know, I I I read over I have read over the website you put together for this before and, I don't think, all that you shared with me in the last hour is incredible and gives me paints a completely different picture for me personally, and I hope it does for everyone else. It's one thing to read see some things and you make a lot of your own conclusions when you're just reading something on a page, but to hear your own voices. So, I do want to thank the Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference, if you ever want to go there, happens every year down here in Mexico, traditionsinwesternherbalism dot com. And again, to find out about this amazing event to Nicaragua, the Goindell delegation, the meta globalism and global health with Paul Bergner and Doctor Tanya Neubauer and Seventh Song and other folks. Just go to med, m e d, medherb dot com, or if you're from Canada or England, that would be medherb dot com.
And, but once again, thank you very much Paul Bergner. And and yes, yes, Tanya. You have one more thing you wanna add?
I would like to say, if you're thinking you might wanna do this, we hope to offer this again in the future, but we're Good point. We're not sure that we're gonna be able to do this on a regular basis. This might be your only chance and, you know, especially the idea of myself and Paul's and Seven Sons schedule all lining up to be able to offer this twice.
That is rare. I mean, Sevensong is actually taking off a year from his school, and he probably won't do that again.
So even though it was really hard to find a time that we could all do this together.
So this may be your only opportunity.
And I witnessed Sevensong in the field at the rainbow gathering for a week, and he has something else to watch and how he's how professional he is in making it all happen in acute situations. So, a rare event indeed.
So So come with us.
Please.
I also say we didn't mention the dates.
The dates You know, just those little details.
The short version is ten days ending December thirteenth. The Right.
A longer version is, would be seventeen days ending December seventeenth. That's soon.
Mhmm.
If, people hear this and you think you might wanna go, you you should apply soon.
And and all the details as far as you need to know about applications and all the costs and things are all listed on the site, and that's where you wanna go. Let's leave that there and then folks can go.
Yeah. There's a tremendous amount of detail. There's some documents that you can download there and there's a tremendous amount of detail detail there, but there's also information to contact us if you have any further questions. We're really, really happy to talk to you about it.
Thank you.
Well, Tania and Paul, thanks so much for spending this hour with me. It's been an honor, and it's it's a blast.
Thank you.
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