Tara Ruth:
You're listening to Herb Mentor Radio by LearningHerbs.com. I'm Tara Ruth. Okay all, I am so excited to chat with our guest today. When I met her, I had one of those moments when it feels like you're exhaling with relief, like you didn't realise you were waiting to meet this person and then it happened. Has that ever happened to you? Okay, just me?
Anyways, today I'm sitting down to chat with the iconic herbalist and homeopath, Seraphina Capranos. She is one of Canada's leading herbalists. And Rosemary Gladstar has lauded her as a young elder, which is pretty much one of the best titles one can ever receive. She's been in clinical practise for over 20 years and is an international teacher, speaker, and mentor who has taught thousands of students. And she is also an incredibly generous and wise person, and I'm so grateful to get to chat with her today. Without further ado, welcome to Herb Mentor Radio, Seraphina.
Seraphina Capranos:
Thank you so much. My goodness. What an introduction.
Tara Ruth:
I made a well-deserved introduction. I just gave a brief bio about you for our listeners, but I know the story about how you started down the herbal path is a lot more rich and textured, and I'd love for you to share with our listeners what brought you to the plant path originally.
Seraphina Capranos:
Yeah. It goes way back three generations, probably even further back, really, when I think about it. But I was raised by my mom and dad, and my maternal grandparents were very involved in my life, in our lives. My mom was born in Germany, and her parents are from a very small village. And back then, they didn't have a town doctor or village doctor, you had to know the way of plants. And the person they went to, if they had to go to somebody, was the village midwife who delivered both my grandmother and my mom in the same house. I have lots of stories about how my grandparents grew up, which was remote, and to get to a medical doctor to get medical care in the 1930s at that time, or '20s, you had to trek. It was like a long day or even more.
Like many people around the world, in fact, every continent, every traditional culture, every heritage, we have a lineage of herbalists. I don't think I'm particularly unique in that way; we all have those ancestors. And it just so happened that when my mom immigrated, her parents brought that traditional knowledge with them and raised my mom that way, and then in turn, my mother raised me and my siblings that way. I had seen a doctor maybe once or twice. I was bit by a chipmunk when I was nine.
Tara Ruth:
What?
Seraphina Capranos:
And I had to be taken to the doctor because I was feeding it too many peanuts.
Tara Ruth:
That happens.
Seraphina Capranos:
Yeah, it totally happens when you're a nature kid. But other than that, I'm in my 40s, I've never had an antibiotic yet in my life. And I don't say that as a flex, because I would take one if I needed one. I want to just say that. But it was more the culture of the home I grew up in, we turned to herbs. It wasn't anti-establishment, it wasn't because my parents or grandparents were hippies. We used herbs for our coughs and colds and everything you can imagine. However, when I had a spinal injury as a teen and at the same time my father was dying... He died at 46, very young, so as a teen in our family home, I was caring for my dad as he was ill, and then I had a spinal injury. And it was a very dark time, my teenage years. I was not exploring and developing in all the other ways my peers were, which I grieved for many years. I didn't have a lot of those pivotal experiences my peers did. I was at home tending to a man who was dying, my own father, who I loved and was very close to, and then had my own chronic pain.
And so two things happened. One, I dove even further into herbal knowledge. I wanted to read every book. It was what I trusted, it was what I knew. My mother, of course, was bringing in all kinds of different herbs for both my father and myself. And then at the same time, I'd always had... This comes from my grandfather, my mom's father. I've always had extra sensory awareness. My grandfather was the kind of man who would know a wolf was out in the field even though the drapes were closed on the windows. He was that kind of man.
Tara Ruth:
Wow.
Seraphina Capranos:
He knew the phone was going to ring before it did. He never allowed a Bible in the home. Nature was his God. That was another layer to our family culture is this reverence for nature and spirit. The creator, the God was in nature, animals, and plants.
I remember going to school once, and my friend put her hand on her chest, and I said, "You had pneumonia." And I don't remember thinking that, the words just came out of my mouth. And two days later, she was diagnosed with pneumonia. And she was so scared, she didn't talk to me again for about a month, which was really hard.
In that, my mother knew of my sensitivity and my ability to just see, sense, and feel things like her father. I began working with shamans that we came to know in Ontario, which is where I'm from and grew up. My teen years, I'm diving into herbal books, I'm trying to take care of my father and myself, and then I'm also working with these incredible healers. And then at 17, I apprenticed with a medical medium for two years. That was my initiation into all of this.
And I will say that nowadays, I can talk about it and people find it interesting and inspiring, but back then I was hiding all this. This was the era of my friends are... It was partying, it was drugs, it was alcohol, it was music, it was fun, it was playfulness. I only learned how to have fun when I was in my 30s because my life was so... It was a rite of passage for so many years.
Tara Ruth:
Yeah, with so much responsibility too. Yeah.
Seraphina Capranos:
Yeah, so much responsibility. Just to close that chapter, I ended up graduating high school, and I went right into university to pursue pre-med at University of Toronto. And then I also enrolled in Emerson College of Herbology in the late '90s. That school was operated by Michael Vertolli, who still teaches in Ontario. He's an amazing herbalist. I just dove head in. It's like I wanted to get high school out of the way and just dive into what is healing? I was obsessed with that question is how do people heal? How do we move the needle in healing? What does it really mean to heal? Health is not just the absence of disease. And how is it that one person can completely have their health turned around by whatever modality and another person doesn't? I was on this mission, and I was reading old texts and all kinds of wild books to have that question answered.
Tara Ruth:
Thank you for sharing. I feel like even your story is such medicine too. It's such a gift to get to hear it and receive it. And I'm sure so many people listening will just feel little pieces resonate with them, and also inspired by your drive too to pursue this path amidst so many challenges as well.
Seraphina Capranos:
Yeah. Yeah, it was a wild time. And then through my 20s, I had a dream, actually. I've written about this quite a bit, so I'll keep it short. But I had this dream just before my father died that I was in the desert working with a woman. You know this story. And I phoned a friend who lived in upstate New York, and she said, "Oh, that sounds like this woman, Blade. I'll find her phone number for you." And I ended up phoning her. And just this is before the internet and Zoom and Skype and all of those things. And I just said, "This sounds strange, but I think I had a dream about you, and I'm meant to work with you." And she said, "I'll see you in six months." And in my mind, I was like, no way. By that time, I was already in my first or second year of university. My father was still alive. I was like, "I cannot leave." And she just said, "I'll see you in six months."
And it was five months later that my father passed, and then six months later I was there in New Mexico working with her. And I studied Toltec shamanism with her, which then led me to embarking with other teachers, a 10-year Toltec apprenticeship. I spent my 20s braiding mysticism and magic. There's more to the story. I was initiated in a priestess tradition as well and again drew on this drive to understand healing because I knew it was more than what herb you give or what acupuncture needle or point that you treat, it was engaging this invisible energy, this principle that is alive and living and learning how to harness it.
And in many respects, the modality itself doesn't matter. It does matter, but it doesn't matter as much as can the practitioner or the modality itself cultivate and harness and work with that flow, that spirit of health? And that's what mattered. And that's ultimately what I learnt in all those, let's say 15 years of apprenticeship. Because that's really what it was is it matters less on the modality, but more about what and how can we engage that principle?
Tara Ruth:
This is making me think about, in your work, I notice how you so seamlessly blend talking about the physical body with the emotional and energetic body and how I've noticed in my studies it can be tempting to just separate those between the physical and emotional and spiritual. And I feel like you blend those so well together in your work and really show how they all are interrelated and affect each other. I'm curious, in your childhood growing up in this house that was using herbs and with your grandfather who was extrasensory, was there this understanding with the herbs and the emotional and spiritual body too, or did that come more later as you were getting more into your shamanistic training, et cetera?
Seraphina Capranos:
Yeah, it was all blended together and this way of thinking. And it's influenced by our language, the English language and modern language to separate the mind, the body, and the spirit when they're not separate. How can you say, "In my finger, is there no spirit here?" Can you say that? Yeah, that was all woven together as one, not in perhaps this sophisticated or even poetic way in which it's spoken about today. But yeah, in our family home, there's an absolute culture around the mind, the body, and the spirit is one. And when you're taking a medicine, when you're taking herbs, they are liberating the emotional entanglement that can lead to a physical pain. And as you're relieving physical pain, it's liberating your heart's joy. It's all a feedback loop. Yeah.
Tara Ruth:
Even you just saying that, I was like, "Oh." I took a deeper breath into my chest. It felt so nice. I'm also curious about, for so many folks whose families have immigrated to the US or to Canada, there can be a lot of pressure to assimilate. And one of the ways that assimilation happens is the type of medicines that people use or the types of foods they cook. And yeah, I'm curious, in your family, why do you think that y'all were able to hold on to these traditions? It sounds like it was so wrapped up in spirituality too. But yeah, I'm curious about that.
Seraphina Capranos:
Yeah, I think I've thought about that a lot, and I don't have a straightforward answer. My grandmother is still alive. She's 92 now. And she's never had... Actually a month ago, for the first time in her life at 92, she tried a medication, high blood pressure pills, which made her sick and vomit and have diarrhoea for three days. She called it poison and said, "Get this out of my house." And she said, "I'd rather die of high blood pressure than live with the symptomology."
I think if you met my grandmother, she still eats the way that her... She eats the same recipes, the same foods that her mother cooked. My grandmother eats turnips and cabbage and rutabaga and potatoes. She doesn't eat modern food. And I think part of it is it's her way of remaining connected to her motherland.
And my grandparents also went through incredible trauma, of course. They lived through World War II. She was taken from her home at age 11 and didn't see... It was horrible. They suffered through quite a bit of, obviously, a lot of trauma, and they survived. And I've seen this with a lot of people who have lived through war and have had to immigrate, some, not all, they do, in a way, they keep their way with them. Like my grandmother's house, you look like you're going into a museum of somebody. The drapes and the furniture, it's from the '30s. And I think it's a way to... It's a safety mechanism. It's also their personalities. That's who they are. It's hard to explain, but I do know that I've spoken to others who have relatives who are like that. My grandparents certainly did not evolve with the times. She still doesn't have an answering machine.
Tara Ruth:
Yeah. This reminds me, when I was speaking to Rosemary Gladstar a few weeks ago about her new book that it was inspired by this notebook she found from her grandmother, a collection of quotes, and she was talking about how her grandmother, who was a survivor of the Armenian Genocide, credited her faith and also the plants for her survival. And so these were a survival mechanism that she carried with her when she immigrated to the US. There's a survival mechanism to pass that down to your children and grandchildren.
Seraphina Capranos:
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's actually a huge part of it. And thanks for sharing that. Because when I think about my grandmother, it's her recipes. When she makes her potato pie, she usually tells me about, as if it's for the first time telling me about her mother and how her grandmother made this potato pie, which is bacon and potatoes. And when she makes her linden flower tea or her sage tea or she drinks this... And anyone in Germany or Switzerland or France might know this, but it's this lemon balm digestive bitter that's been around since the 1800s. And she still drinks that every night after dinner.
There are certain things that she held onto as a way... I think it's like a way to remember who you are and to remember where you come from. And I think that's a response. It's a trauma response, but in many respects, I think it's a healthy, reasonable, understandable trauma response where those of us... And then, of course, there's the trauma response to move on, immigrate, and leave everything behind, and that's another way to do it. But for her, I see at 92, every time she takes those things or cooks that recipe, there's a story attached to it, that I'm observing her, I'm witnessing her remember who she is.
Tara Ruth:
It's so powerful. It's making me think about, too in my own herbal journey, how there's a break in the lineage in my family with working with herbal medicines where my parents both worked with them, but my grandparents weren't. But then, through the process of connecting more with the herbs myself and then talking about it with my parents, I'd actually see that there were those threads still there, whether it was making something with cardamom, and my mom would suddenly have the sense memory of her grandma using cardamom in her cooking, or making something with fennel and my dad talking about how his grandma used to have him and his brother collect tonnes of wild fennel in California and send it to her on the East Coast so she can make the liqueur that her grandmother made. One of my favourite parts about just learning about the herbs is the way that it becomes this vehicle for time travelling into the past and being in conversation with our ancestors and how they worked with the plants. Yeah.
Seraphina Capranos:
And I think that's really deep medicine. And Rosemary Gladstar, you mentioned her name, I know that so many reasons we all love her is because she was so good at weaving the stories. Plants are telling stories and food tells stories, and they carry memory for us. Recipes, herbs, food, they tell stories of the land, they tell stories of our histories. Humans, that's how we share culture is through story. That's also how we best learn, and it's an important piece of who we are.
Tara Ruth:
Yeah, it's huge. And even just looking at the common names of plants, those common names show you where that plant has been used and the ways it's been worked with too, and even some of the things you might want to avoid about it or whatever it may be. There's so much story medicine on every plant. It's incredible.
Seraphina Capranos:
Yeah, I love that.
Tara Ruth:
One of the many things I appreciate about learning with Seraphina is that she grounds so much of the learning process in the body, whether it's making an herbal remedy with your hands or taking a moment to pause and really feel how that nettle tea or that rose infusion felt in your body. She encourages us to go slow, experiment, have fun, and trust ourselves, all of which are some of the principles that Shereel Washington explores in her course on HerbMentor, Folk Medicine. Folk Medicine asks the question what if you could make all the remedies you need with ingredients you already have in your kitchen? Shereel offers a practical and no-nonsense approach to folk medicine that offers the core principles and practises so that you can make medicine with your own hands in your own kitchen. Shereel invites us to step into our own ancestral traditions of herbalism and also embrace bioregional herbalism, learning about the herbs that grow near us and how to work with them in respectful ways.
If you're ready to take your herbal learning journey to the next level with a simply wonderful class, Folk Medicine is the class for you. To check out the Folk Medicine series, all you have to do is sign up for HerbMentor. HerbMentor is an online herbal learning platform that has so many resources in addition to Folk Medicine. We have other courses that teach you about botany, wildcrafting, herbal gardening, herbal energetics, so many things. There's an incredible course with Rosemary Gladstar. We also have a forum where you can ask questions. And we teach bi-weekly live classes. HerbMentor is an incredible resource to have along with you on your herbal path. And right now, you can sign up for HerbMentor with a discount. Just go to HerbMentorRadio.com. That's HerbMentorRadio.com.
Okay. Let's get back into this interview with Seraphina. We've been talking a lot about these traditional ways of working with the herbs and this spiritual aspect of herbalism. And something I really appreciate about you too is the way you marry the science and spirit of herbalism, both honouring these traditional ways of knowing, and then also the scientific approach. And I'd love to hear more about how you bridge these two modes and why you choose to do so.
Seraphina Capranos:
Yeah, I think I do so because it's part of my nature and part of the culture I came from, meaning my family culture. And I also remember I also went to a Waldorf high school, so if anyone knows Waldorf education, I went to a... They're not all the same, all the Waldorf schools, but I went to, I would say, a very good one with very progressive, brilliant teachers in Toronto. And that helped me. It braided science and humanity together in such a beautiful way.
But my memory, when you asked that question, where I go is my very first science class in university. I went to U of T, as I mentioned, University of Toronto, and I was in this auditorium with probably, I don't know, 500 other students. And the professor, on the large screen, was putting up cells, and I think it was mitosis, a cellular division. And I remember having... It was like a spiritual experience watching this on the screen, cellular division and the evolution of the cells and all the organelles in the cell. And it was so profound and so impactful. And I remember just sitting there, and I softened my gaze and I slowed my breath and I was taking in all this information. And because remember, by this age, I was already on this incredible quest of what is healing? And how do we heal? And I was sitting back in my seat, and I was taking it all in. And I had this incredibly spiritual awakening, thinking, feeling, knowing that life is magic. There is this greater intelligence that is weaving everything together. There is a natural cosmic intelligence. And I was witnessing that in cellular division. And it was in that moment where I embraced science as a kind of spirituality, although unfortunately how it's taught today, the spirit and the magic has been taken out of it.
But to answer your question, the reason I braid the two together is because I can't really see it any other way. I think we are suffering from this intellectual monoculture where there's just one way to see and one way to study and one way to know things. And science has become this kind of dogmatism. But when we step back, I think with... I love how Robin Wall Kimmerer, she talks about the corn and the bean and how the spirit, the Indigenous way of knowing, which is the earth's language is the corn and the bean, which is science, can grow upon that stalk of corn. And I resonate with that deeply because science is this hyper focus on materialism. But I think everyone can admit that's just one tiny thread of understanding the universe.
And when it comes to herbs, I love the science of herbalism, but that does not answer how herbs really work. They are far more than their alkaloids and saponins and all the other constituents therein. That is a part of them when we hyper focus and we try to break the materialism and understand through that intellectual process how herbs are working. However, anyone who's ever taken an herb, let's just say a tea, can experience so much more moving through their being and their emotional experience. And I would say also, if you are working with herbs in a focused, intentional way, you can see and experience the consciousness, the shift in your consciousness. And that's certainly what I've seen being a teacher of herbalism for more than 20 years now is I see students' consciousness expand.
Tara Ruth:
I remember being in herb school, and a few times during our teachings, myself and other students pausing to be like, "But how is it working?" Wanting so badly for it to make sense on a constituent chemical level. And we would get that information, and it was super helpful. I was also really grateful, I had a pharmacist in my class, and so he was great at asking these questions from this scientific approach.
And I found too the more I learned about herbs, the more I actually really enjoyed learning about science in general. I was like, "Wow, this is so magical and cool that we can see how the plants work in this specific way." But then also over time, I found myself like, "Okay, this is part of my medicine bag or my toolkit." And there's all these other aspects too, like I can't use science to explain how when I put a tobacco flower essence over my head that I suddenly started sobbing, had this huge emotional release, or that... Whatever it may be. When I took mimosa tincture with my best friend for the first time, that we just were cascading in giggles for hours. There's this spiritual aspect of working with the plants that is so beautiful married with that science too.
Seraphina Capranos:
Yeah. And I think this is also where my homeopath comes in because I'm classically trained as a homeopath. I went to school for four years and then did a two years master's in homeopathy up here in Canada. I wish herbalism and homeopathy were actually taught together because I think they each have so much to offer one another. And I feel like they're two branches of a core central system. Like you were saying in class, "But how? How does that actually work? How do those alkaloids do the thing that they do? How does that astringency do that? And why?"
I think it comes down to, and this is what homeopathy studies in great depth, is the vital force. You can call it chi, you can call it prana. We are the descendants of plants. Plants are our ancestors. We are born from them, we are made of them, so our body, our physiology understands the language of plants. They are speaking a language. They are singing a song into our body and into ourselves.
And the constituents are one way of understanding that language because science, the science of herbalism is one language. It's one language. When we take those plants into our being, they are nudging our body into self-correction. And another way to say that is they're reminding our body of what it's designed to do, which is heal; it's to come back together. If you are overly excited, you're pumping your adrenaline and your sympathetic nervous system is going crazy, you can take a nervine. Yes, we can explain the cascade of what's happening scientifically, but beyond that, our body is remembering something, that catnip or lemon balm can sing into ourselves.
And furthermore, every plant has its own personality. And this is, again, where I think classical homeopathy is brilliant at diving into this in incredible detail like nothing else. And I'm not talking about flower essences, which are wonderful in a tiny branch of that, but classical homeopathy is understanding the profound personality of every single plant, but also other substances. For example, lemon balm and catnip, each of them have their own unique personality. And I'm not just using poetic licence here, they actually do. And I think any of us herbalists can understand this and know exactly what I'm talking about here.
As you get to know the song and the language of each of those herbs and then you understand how to match that person, you might need catnip when you're overstimulated, I might need lemon balm, as we understand our client and our patient with that level of acuity as well and we match the two, then we have coherence. And when we have coherence, the plant and the person are meeting, and the plant is nudging that person to remember who they are, which is to come into that equilibrium or that homeostasis. And that's my simplistic way of explaining how I understand plants to be working. And yes, all the science is happening too there as well, but that's just one way to understand this larger conversation that's happening that is millions of years old.
Tara Ruth:
When you're working with clients and you're giving them their herbs or their homeopathic remedies, how are you talking about it with them? Are you talking about it in this way? Or how do you bridge that gap for folks who they're excited to see you, but maybe they're not as familiar with herbs or whatever it may be?
Seraphina Capranos:
Yeah, it's interesting, very rarely do I get into this level of conversation with somebody unless they are curious and asking questions. And I meet people where they're at in a similar way as I do with the medicine. Some people need really high potency, homeopathic remedies that are working on the level of our ancestral burdens and traumas and intergenerational burdens. Some people just need a salve and some very material dose, my medical herbalist side, so I am going as far or as wide as somebody needs.
But to answer your question, people come to me for... I work mainly with very complex chronic diseases, so they're coming to me with a very real problem. And in the session, which is two hours, I spend about two and a half hours with a first patient, I'm going into everything. Obviously they're there for the physical, so I'm very focused on that, but then stress. How do you sleep? What dreams do you have? What are your fears? What are your anxieties? And I ask that specifically. The homeopath in me is asking that to understand that person's constitution. What's their nature? What are their proclivities or what are their habits? Shall we say. Some people are nervous system driven, others, everything is processed through their digestion, it's all digestion. Other people, they're stagnant and heavy. Other people, they're more Vata, they can't sit still. I'm getting to know their nature.
And when I prescribe for them, it's usually both homeopathy and herbs. Rarely, maybe 10% it's one or the other. I don't go into a lot of detail about why, because I don't want them to have that prejudice. I actually don't want people to hear everything I've just said and leave and go wax poetic about whatever herb I gave them at their next follow-up session, I want them to have their own experience. It's usually in the second appointment or third or as we develop a relationship where they'll begin to say, "How is this working? Because I'm not only sleeping better, but I feel like I've had a shift in how I'm seeing my life," or, "I'm having these realisations about my relationship," or, "Suddenly I've been processing my childhood. That's really strange. Why is all that coming up? What do you think?" And it's usually when they bring that to me that I begin to open up. And I'll say, "I gave you this formula," or, "I gave you this homeopathic remedy because it works on this level." And that lands for them, even the biggest sceptic, because I'm not telling them, they've been able to be shown how it works.
Tara Ruth:
Yeah, they've already experienced it, and then they're coming back to you rather than being told how it's going to work.
Seraphina Capranos:
Exactly.
Tara Ruth:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense in terms of establishing trust with patients too.
Seraphina Capranos:
Yeah. And I don't want to overwhelm someone with all my philosophy or worldview when they're in pain. They don't need my big philosophy or my thesis or something. It's like we want to take care of why the person's there and focus on them.
Tara Ruth:
Wow. When did you go to school to become a homeopath? I'm like, okay, you did this, you did that.
Seraphina Capranos:
Yeah. Graduated high school at 17, I guess, or 17 and a half, and then went right into Emerson College of Herbology and my university studies from 18 to 20 or 21. And then my father died, so I didn't actually finish my fourth year of university. And then I went right into homeopathy school, which I finished at 25 or 26, which is 20 years ago.
Tara Ruth:
Wow. Thank you for sharing. I'm thinking about for folks who might be listening and maybe they're just in the beginning of their herbal journey, and I remember that for myself and how it could feel intimidating sometimes. And I was constantly listening to podcasts, trying to figure out how am I going to learn more and feeling a little anxiety too of, oh, I'm behind, or whatever it may be. And I'm curious if you have any advice for folks who are just getting started and might feel a little overwhelmed of how to blossom on this path.
Seraphina Capranos:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I work with a lot of people in that situation. I always use this quote that was given to me by a homeopath named Ian Watson. And he always said, "Go fast slowly." And that is go fast, meaning we're all enthusiastic, especially as a young herbalist, you want to be taking it all in and exposed to everything, but do it slowly, meaning in bite sizes. Take something in and go and mull on it for weeks if you can. Follow your inner guidance system. Where does your mind or your eye keep going to? You're always following that golden thread. Maybe it's mental health or maybe it's one particular teacher, the way in which they speak. By all means dive into it, but at the same time, I think it's really important to give yourself time to digest it all. I think we need to take everything in, but you're not actually absorbing most of what you're stuffing into your brain, so I do think bite sized.
And then something that's very practical is take notes right after you hear something. Right after you hear a podcast or a lecture, quickly write down what spoke to you and then walk away from it and revisit it later. But I think there's so much time. I felt like a beginner for 10 years, and that's normal. I'm 20 years in, and I actually said to a colleague recently, I said, "I think I actually know something. 20 years later, I finally feel like I really know something." Yeah, I think it takes that long.
Tara Ruth:
Yeah. Yeah. I feel like especially in the age of social media and just personal branding, et cetera, there can be so much pressure to perform that you have expertise in something or to turn every hobby or whatever it may be, that you're learning into something that can be monetized and shown, performed on a platform. And so I remember when I was learning herbalism, it felt like this really sweet opportunity to actually slow down. And I constantly have to work with those two forces inside of me that want to go so fast, but also to slow down. And this process of remembering and being on plant time really allows you to deepen and go at a different pace.
Seraphina Capranos:
Yeah, I think growing at the pace of nature is really important and moving at the speed of trust. Let yourself move in a way of I will find my vocatio, I will find my soul's calling. Your unique way in engaging with the plants, Tara, no one else can do. And I agree.
And I think that's something else I would say to all the new students or intermediate, even graduating students who might be listening to this is that this culture, Tara, that you're speaking to of turning around right away when you learn something and positioning yourself as an expert or branding yourself or putting it out there as an offering, that is a trend. It's a weird, strange trend that I actually think is in the process of dying because it's false. When I was a student, I never thought, oh, I can't wait to turn around and teach all this. I remember thinking one day when I'm grown up, I'd love to maybe teach this once I know a thing or two.
But previous generations previous to this one, the last 10 years of social media, it was... I would say the way to be was you go to school, and then you do the thing for at least a good 10 years until you have your own way of relating to the art or the practise or the science. You find your own way and the way in which it moves through you and your own voice. And then when you feel like you have a world view or something to offer, then we bring it out into the world. And maybe nowadays that we don't have to wait 10 years, maybe it's five. But I always say to my students, "Take what you've learned and let it marinate in you. Let it speak to your heart song and let it speak to your heart, and then go out for at least five years and work with it and see what happens." That's the alchemy. We want that.
Tara Ruth:
I think that word you said, relating, is so key. Through herbalism, I've learned so much about relationships. The relating with each plant is so different. As I get to know a plant more, it's like getting to know a new friend. Of course, I'm not going to understand all of the amazing gifts and quirks of a friend on the first day I meet them; it's going to take a while for that relationship to build. And same with the entire study of herbalism, like how I relate to it, learning so much as each year goes by and building that relationship. And you can't speed up experience. You could try to... I'll go to... Even if I studied herbalism 10 hours a day for a week or whatever it may be, it still takes time to digest.
Seraphina Capranos:
Yeah. Seasons, the world operates in seasons. And I think of the wheel of the year, and it's the time that allows things to change us.
Tara Ruth:
You said that term, wheel of the year, and I know this is a concept you work with a lot. Can you describe what the wheel of the year is for folks and locate us in this specific moment in time?
Seraphina Capranos:
Yeah. The wheel of the year, I think neo-paganism popularised it. I do identify as a pagan. I think I mentioned I've been in a priestess tradition for 25 or 30 years, so it's something I do work with, which is very simple, and I think any earth-based tradition does. We acknowledge the solstices. We have two a year six months apart. They're directly across. We have 12 months in a year, and the solstices right across from each other six months apart. We have winter solstice in December and we have summer solstice in June. And then we have the equinoxes, which are the fall equinox in September in the Northern Hemisphere, and then March is our spring equinox. If you imagine a wheel cut four ways, there's our four seasons, between the solstices and the equinoxes.
And in July, we are between summer solstice in June and gearing up to Lammas, which is a cross quarter, August 1st and 2nd. Right now, we are in the ripening of summer, the rich ripening. And if you are in the Northern Hemisphere, particularly in a place that has four seasons, it's the time where everything is flowering or has just flowered. And if you're further north, maybe you're preparing to put in your winter garden at Lammas, which will then ripen at the fall equinox.
And practically speaking, as poetic as it is, as beautiful as it is, there's a real practicality to it. And that's how I use it. I live in southwestern Canada, and I live in an area that even if you didn't look at the wheel of the year, the plants are change at every single one of the cross quarters and the solstices and equinoxes. It's very profound. In July, right now, my calendula is still blooming and my motherwort is flowering and the vitex is blooming. And I'm preparing for one of the final harvests, which will be around Lammas. And then August is hot and all the squashes are beginning to ripen. And fall equinox in September is when I'm going to be out harvesting my Hawthorn berries and my elderberries.
It's very practical is how I use it as an herbalist. And I always give all my students a wheel of the year handout as a way to plan. Essentially, they're planting in their harvesting season. I love it. I think it's beautiful. And it's an easier way to visualise and map out your year as an herbalist rather than the calendar year.
Tara Ruth:
Yeah, yeah. Because then you're actually in tune with the seasons and the life cycle of the plants. And then you get to see that reflected in your own constitution too, when the plants are blooming or when the plants are dying back what's happening in your own body.
Seraphina Capranos:
And it's so apparent, it's so obvious. And again, I love it because it is poetic when you think about it, how we are direct... Nature's happening in our body because we are nature, we're not just connected to nature. These seasons, and that's also where you can use the wheel of the year, it's happening in you. You don't have to think too hard or pay too close attention to notice the changes.
Tara Ruth:
Yeah. It can be such a good way to start to understand energetics too, whether it's in your constitution or the herbs. Like it's summer right now; it's really hot out. Oh, I probably want a cold drink or something that's going to help cool me down. It can be as simple as starting to think about bringing balance to our bodies during each season.
Seraphina Capranos:
Exactly. And then using that, because I teach that way as well. I'll show the wheel of the year, and then we put our herbal energetics in each of those quadrants, is the herbs that are blooming right now in summer... Again, I'm looking out my window right now. It's the calendula flowers, it's the wood betony. The skullcap has just finished. The mugwort is blooming. They all are highly aromatic or they have a lot of resin, because aromatics and resins have an affinity to the sun and the heat. We're in the hottest time of the year. But those are going to help us in the exact opposite time of year as well when we're cold and when we're damp and maybe our lymph needs some help with the calendula to move the lymph if we have swollen glands. We're going to be using those aromatics that are going to warm us up in the winter and soothe that stressed nervous system when we're around winter solstice and all those family gatherings. That's another way I like to use the wheel of the year.
Tara Ruth:
Thank you for sharing. It feels so magical too when you start to talk about it and really think about how everything feels so planned out perfectly.
Seraphina Capranos:
Yeah, nature's the best artist.
Tara Ruth:
Yes. You mentioned mugwort, and we're going to wrap up in a little bit, but I was thinking it could be nice to focus on one herb from all these different perspectives you're bringing in. And I'd just love to hear how you work with mugwort for emotional and spiritual and physical healing.
Seraphina Capranos:
Yeah. Gosh, mugwort, I love mugwort so much. It's one of my seven sacred herbs that I teach in this programme called Rose and Root. And the reason I do is because mugwort, it has all the benefits that we might know. It helps the digestive system and stagnation. It's wonderful for an overactive nervous system. But in particular, I find mugwort can be a really profound teacher for illuminating those parts of our shadow that are not always... They're hidden from us. That's what shadow means; it's hidden, it's in the shadows. But it helps illuminate those places when we're ready to do that work.
It's interesting you're asking about it because it's sort of top of mind. Some students who were recently working with it in this programme I'm teaching, many of them were sharing how it doesn't just help with dreaming... I think in pop culture, we know it as a dreaming herb, but it's very specific for... It can be disturbing dreams because it's pulling and drawing out that which is in our shadow. Some of my students in our recent check-in were just explaining how they actually needed it out of their bedroom. It was just too activating. It was bringing in too many difficult dreams to face. However, when you're coupling it with... I like to couple it with hawthorn and rose to soften the effects. The hawthorn and rose can prepare us to meet those edges. That's one way I like to use it.
The other way is I love to smoke it and inhale it as a smoke. I have a bowl with my students. We'll light some, we'll allow it to smoke. Dried mugwort, of course. Don't inhale smoke from wet plants. And it's very soft and ease-filled on the respiratory system. It completely relaxes the nervous system taken in that way. And then we can use it as a means to clear our auric field of any attachments. We can clear our subtle body by using that smoke both in the body, taken in the respiratory system, and then also wafting it around our body. And as a protective ally, I think mugwort is a very powerful protective ally; all anti-parasitic herbs are. We can use them spiritually. If you feel like you do have attachments in your auric field. With someone very experienced, you can do de-possessions with these herbs, and mugwort is one of the ones that I work with.
Tara Ruth:
You were saying you pair mugwort with rose and hawthorn. What form do you administer those in together?
Seraphina Capranos:
Yeah. In my apprenticeship, what I like to do is I'll have my students... And I offer this to anyone listening, is take hawthorn in your body for about a week. It could be the decoctions from the berries, it could be a tincture. But work with hawthorn as a way to... Hawthorn fills us up. It feeds our being. It helps to ground us. It's very grounding, but helps us occupy our selfhood, and so it's good to do that for at least a week. And then that lays the ground. If you're suffering from acute heartbreak or real sadness, be dosing yourself with rose petal elixir or flower essence or tincture as well, and then you bring the mugwort in. And you could drop dose. I do a lot of drop dose, a fresh plant tincture. Or as I say, you can smoke it or use the smoke to clear your auric field. Yeah, just taking it in and listening.
A key part of this practise is slowing your nervous system down to listen, because the plants are always talking to us. They talk to us through our body in that instance, and they're not necessarily using words, they're coming into our being. And watch your visions, your memories, the impression you have. Pay close attention to synchronicities, omens. This is how our ancestors and the spirit world talks to us. It's not always going to be loud and dramatic.
Tara Ruth:
I had a teacher in herb school who was quelling our anxiety when so many of us were like, "The plants aren't talking to me," trying so hard to kind of muscle our way through it. And he just calmly said to us, "If you're here, look around you. The plants have already been talking to you." And no matter where you are, if you're listening to this right now, you're listening to an herbal podcast. Some plants have been speaking to you and wanting to share with you.
Seraphina Capranos:
Yeah, and that speaks to where we began today, which is we're so used to being hit over the head with materialism, but the rest of the world, the whole world since the beginning of time has been speaking through a slower, more subtle operating system. And so part of our path as herbalists, I think, and especially those of us working with both parts of our brain and more of a wholism, it is about returning to that pace of nature so that we can listen.
And again, just to ease anyone who might think, well, I'm not intuitive and I don't get all these profound messages, it's going to come through. For example, I had a student who's like, "I don't know. I don't know. Plants aren't talking to me." But when she was tasting mugwort, for instance, she kept hearing the line of a song. And then when she shared the line of the song, everyone was weeping because it was completely applicable to the shadow work that we were doing. Plants may speak to you through a line of a song, a hum, a memory. Suddenly you're thinking of your ex-boyfriend from 10 years ago. Suddenly you're thinking of a soup your grandmother made. That is the plant speaking to you through you. Yeah, just to remember to pay attention to everything.
Tara Ruth:
Yes. Seraphina, for people who want to learn more from you, do you have any offerings you want to share about?
Seraphina Capranos:
Yeah, I do teach an online apprenticeship called Rose and Root Apprenticeship. It's usually a three-month container that we meet. You can check out all the info on my website, SeraphinaCapranos.com. I'm on Instagram, @SeraphinaCapranos. And yeah, and then I also teach the Alchemy of Herbal Medicine, which is a longer programme; six months. And we go into bridging both the art and the science of herbalism. That's online. I also teach, of course, in person. But the easiest way, if you don't live where I live, it's online.
Tara Ruth:
Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us on Herb Mentor Radio. It was such a treat to get to chat with you.
Seraphina Capranos:
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Tara Ruth:
Yes. And thank you everyone for listening to Herb Mentor Radio. And please stick around for an Herb Note. Welcome to Herb Notes. I'm Tara Ruth. Comfrey, symphytum officinale, has a mixed reputation as a healing herb and potentially risky herbal ally. Let's dive into the key benefits and contraindications of comfrey.
One, comfrey for broken bones. Topical applications of comfrey, like a poultice or salve on a properly set broken bone can help heal the bones. Comfrey is a cell proliferant that increases cell growth and can support bone repair. Two, comfrey for sprains and strains. Comfrey can also support tissue repair for ligaments and muscles. A topical application of comfrey can help reduce swelling and pain and promote healing. Three, comfrey for your garden. Comfrey can help your other plants grow too. Make a strong fermented comfrey leaf tea and spray it on your plants to promote their growth.
And here are some key notes of caution when working with comfrey. When working with comfrey topically, avoid applying it to dirty, infected, or puncture wounds. Also avoid applying comfrey to a broken bone that hasn't been properly set. And finally, comfrey contains pyrrolizidine alkaloids, which can potentially cause serious damage to the liver when taken internally so it's especially important to avoid internal usage of comfrey for small children, pregnant folks, and people who are lactating. Many herbalists recommend limiting or avoiding internal usage of comfrey entirely. You can check out the comfrey monograph on the LearningHerbs blog to learn more.
Want to learn more about the benefits of other common herbs? Visit HerbNotes.cards to grab a deck of our top twelve Herb Notes. You'll learn all about herbs like elderberry, chamomile, and more. This has been Herb Notes with me, Tara Ruth. Catch you next time.
