Kimberly Gallagher:
You're listening to HerbMentor Radio by LearningHerbs. I'm Kimberly Gallagher.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
And I'm Mimi Prunella. We're continuing our journey through the world of herbalism, following a path outlined in National Geographic Herbal. This month we step into chapter four, topical herbalism. The thought of treating one's skin with the healing wonders of topical herbs might evoke an aura of self-pampering indulgence. Who wouldn't enjoy the luxurious feeling of a lavender scented calendula body butter? But as heavenly as topical herbs are, their story is also one of immediate practicality and downright messiness. A chewed up field poultice of mashed plantain, a slimy gob of aloe gel. Working with topical herbs fluctuates between elegance and messiness, but it's endlessly healing and empowering.
Kimberly Gallagher:
We are so excited to welcome Shereel Washington to guide us into this deeply sensual, ancestral, and practical aspect of herbalism. Shereel Washington is a clinical herbalist, educator, and the founder of Ixalted Natural Body Care & Botanicals, a restorative herbal business specializing in customized herbal formulations designed to support health, wellness, and relationship with the body through plants. Shereel teaches through courses, consultations, and community-centered herbal education, including her Folk Herbalism course featured on LearningHerbs. Her work honors bioregional herbalism, ancestral traditions, herbal craft, and the living continuity of black North American herbal knowledge. Shereel, welcome to HerbMentor Radio.
Shereel Washington:
Thank you so much for having me again. It's truly an honor and a privilege to be back. And Mimi, it's so nice to actually meet and see your face. So thank you so much. And Kimberly, it's always good to see you. Thank you so much for having me.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Oh, so great to have you here and wonderful to see you again as well.
Shereel Washington:
Yes, absolutely. It's wonderful to be here. Thank you all.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Yeah. And I love the name of your body care company, Ixalted Natural Body Care & Botanicals. It evokes such a feeling of lushness and radiance and really deep care for the body. And I'd love to just begin there with the question of what natural body care means to you personally and what vision guides the remedies and topical preparations you create through Ixalted.
Shereel Washington:
Wow. Well, natural body, meaning to really learn how to support and care for the bodies that we've come into this world in, to care for these bodies that were created for us to live and navigate through this time continuum called life. And so Ixalted Natural Body Care is really a call, to call people to return to understand these bodies that God made for us to live in. And so Ixalted is also that it denotes exalting the creator who made life and who sustains life and who gives us the privilege to live life. And so yes, we thank God for that. We praise God for that. And we praise God for our bodies. And we praise God for the plants! And so we're excited to be able to celebrate that through health and through wellness. And so we want our bodies and we want to use the created things to really help us be able to live well and to live with the way that I believe we were created to live by. So yes, that's what that means to us.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Beautiful. I love that whole idea of our being alive in a body is a privilege.
Shereel Washington:
It's a privilege. It's a privilege.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Yeah. We got to take care of this body.
Shereel Washington:
You have to take care. Yes. It's a privilege. It's a blessing and it's a gift. And so Ixalted Natural Body Care & Botanicals, we want to lift that up and we want to encourage people to do the same by way of example. And also pointing people to what's here, what's around you, and what things can you do even simply to be able to care for yourself without having to spend a fortune. But sometimes if you do, you also know how to look for quality products to also help support you as well.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
I love that so much. And I love your Folk Herbalism course on LearningHerbs, Shereel.
Shereel Washington:
Thank you.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
I have been so fortunate to be guiding a group of students through that. And for our listeners who don't know, it's a six episode Folk Herbalism course inside the HerbMentor area. I love how deeply rooted it feels in relationship with the plants. You guided us through what folk herbalism really means, everything from how we name the plants to working with what we have around us, the different bioregions, even if that bioregion is your kitchen and the bioregion is your pantry or your yard or the bigger bioregional community that we share with other herbalists and other folks in our community. I love this. I love your storytelling, how you weave that so beautifully into your teaching. I would love to hear some of the experiences that shaped your relationship with topical herbalism specifically. That's our theme today. I'm wondering if you have an early memory of soothing the skin with plants or making a remedy with family or gathering something for your skin. Just something that kind of puts us there in Shereel's world and helps us imagine what it's like when you discover plants for your skin.
Shereel Washington:
Well, a couple of memories that come alive immediately is of my mom putting cocoa butter on our skin as kids. And that's something that later on in my own research and understanding my own cultural traditions that oiling the skin in African families is really special. And so like for example, when children are born in some coastal regions, places like Ghana, they have a whole ritual around shea butter and around anointing children with giving them as much nourishment with the skin as possible. I think that's something that during the transatlantic slave trade, when African slaves were brought here to the colonized world, that was something that continued. And so my mom, as kids, keeping us nice and oiled and hydrated through cocoa butter, that was the oil of choice. And then of course when we didn't have that, when things got really tight, we would have just good old Vaseline. But cocoa butter definitely speaks to me in that way.
Then also my grandmother who really, when you listen to the course, I talk about her a lot, but she loved olive oil. So olive oil was her oil of choice for everything. And so she was putting it on our face and she would put it on our hair, on our scalp, and she would put it on us if we were too dirty or sometimes it would be like an oil pull on the skin. And so using those oils just directly was something that I remember doing. And then of course as I got more into formalized herbal training, I went back to some of those oils and began to infuse, use plants like chamomile, like calendula. I remember when I made my first calendula oil, I was so excited because it took almost... I think I had it macerating for like six months because I wanted to get that orangeness. I wanted to get that. It was a cold infusion I was doing. And so I was trying all these different methods to pull out all the oranginess of that plant and I finally got it and it was really like liquid sunshine.
And so that particular plant just really called to me because of all of its benefits for the skin and for the immune system and the lymphatic system and yada, yada. So that was something that I really leaned into in my adult years. But as kids, there really wasn't so much infusing herbs in oil as a kid. That was something that was more functional to do. And plus it was more immediately access, to either getting it in just raw form. But just the whole practice of just oiling the skin was something that was really critical for us as kids, and those memories come alive really, really well. But it was in my adult life, in my former herbal training that I began to really just explore infusing those very oils with plants.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
It has just such a nourishing feeling when you take us through that. I just feel like that nourishment on my skin and that warmth from like rubbing it in.
Shereel Washington:
Yes, absolutely.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
Thank you for sharing that.
Shereel Washington:
Oh, you're welcome. Yeah, it's true.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Yeah.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
I love cocoa butter too.
Shereel Washington:
Oh yeah, I love cocoa, even to this day, even to this day. I mean the smell of it and it just brings back such memories of how that was really the fatty oil, the fat that a lot of us use. And of course, again, years later when shea butter really circulated and made its way outside of Africa, of course that became something that many in our community, we really go to because there's a reminiscent picture there for us in relation to that plant. But yeah, that cacao or cocoa butter, that's something that we still use that a lot. That's our mode of oil is the butters.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
It's so good, you almost want to eat it.
Shereel Washington:
You always want to eat it.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
It's like I'm edible.
Shereel Washington:
That is true.
Kimberly Gallagher:
I really love just watching your face as you recount the memories because you just soften and there's like this bliss sort of feeling. I can really feel like the ritual of your mother putting this cocoa butter on your body.
Shereel Washington:
It was. It was her ritual.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Yeah. So sweet.
Shereel Washington:
Yeah. She did not let us go without being moisturized.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Yeah, yeah. And just soothing your skin like that, it feels so nourishing and comforting. And I'm curious, how do you think this topical herbalism can change people's relationships with their bodies?
Shereel Washington:
I think so. I think it's just another example of just how broad herbalism really is. When I was teaching last night, I had this wonderful conversation with one of the students who's a physician assistant. And so one of the things that she really enjoyed was knowing all the different things that herbs can do for us, not just in a formula, but even externally, topically, especially if you have a... I'm working with a client who's on a series of medications and maybe taking something internal is not available, but there's always the skin. There's always that. There's always the skin by way of bathing. There's always the skin by way of foot bath. There's always the skin by way of oilination. There's always that organ that we can also use to get as much available herbs into our body through that way. And so it's something that I love to talk about in my teaching and in my class so that we're not so linearized with our herbal way or life way, that there's lots of things that we can do with this practice that can still bring health and vitality.
And so topical herbalism is just an extension of kitchen herbalism. It's just an extension of spiritual or sensual. All of it has those components. And what's beautiful is that we can call and utilize those components at any time. So we're never limited. We're only limited when we stop looking for what's possible and what's next. And so this is just another example of just really taking care of the body by way of the skin and understanding the skin's mechanisms and how to deliver health is really important. It's like the gateway to our immunity. So if we just take care of our skin and we take care of our central nervous system as well, that's connected to that too. So yeah, our skin is like, that's that self-care. And in some cultures like in Ayurvedic cultures, they love their oils. They love it. They love... I mean, it's oil through the nose, oil on the scalp, oil in the eyes. I mean, we're going to get you. We're going to get you. And I love that approach because that's just really the power of the herbal practice in general.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
When you mentioned that it's the connection with immunity, the skin, it really brings me back to the gut-skin axis. I mean, I just was reading some research on atopic skin conditions and how early in life, babies, they sometimes have effects on their immune system and on their gut from exposure from their skin. So when you mention that tradition of really coating the skin with oils and with barriers, that is so wise. It's just really with that research brings me to think about how that really has a profound effect on the immune system from a young age-
Shereel Washington:
From a young age. Yeah.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
... just from topical. And because when our listeners think about topical herbalism, they're probably thinking about skincare or beauty products. We love our topicals for that fun, beautiful stuff, but you're talking more about also affecting our body internally through topical applications and that's eye-opening. I wonder if there's some specific remedies that you can share with us that actually you would apply topically to affect something internally.
Shereel Washington:
Oh, for sure. The thing that comes to my mind immediately is salt. And so infusing a salt with herbs and using that as a salt scrub is another way, because again, that's another [inaudible 00:14:58] because you're... If you're using fresh herbs, for example, you're getting those direct volatile oils in contact with your skin through salt medium. And what's good about it is that even volatile oils directly from plants, they can sometimes be a little irritating to the skin depending on the level of sensitivity of the person. And so if you use a medium like salt, that's going to help to break through some of those volatile oil barriers, going to make it a little bit more accessible and absorbable in the skin, that's another way. It's going to bring up heat. It's going to open up the pores. It's going to help to be able to allow you to absorb things transdermally and then work its way through your tissue and then work its way to the organ. I mean, it's a process, but it can be very effective for delicate systems, right? So that's one way.
Another way, of course, yes, is infusing your oils with herbs as a way again to help if you have medical complications that require you to be on a series of medications and maybe taking an internal, even a tea may not be as available, then you've got that skin as well. Essential oils also step into that play because essential oils get more directly into the bloodstream. Well, our infused oils and our butters can do the same. It takes a little longer than an essential oil, but it can be done through rubbing and through creating heat to bringing blood to the surface and to helping that absorb in the bloodstream in that way. So it's available. And memory, when my little brother was sick, my grandmother made a mustard pack and put it on his skin to help bring down the fever. So it worked. Just because he's a baby. And so for children, even especially putting oils or putting things like that under their feet through that way is a way to also help to administer herbs to help administer internal impact as well. So your aromatic herbs with those strong volatile oil content is another good way to also help to access the medicine from plants as well.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Yeah, so good.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
I hear Kim taking in those volatile herbs. We can almost smell.
Shereel Washington:
Yeah. You can almost feel it. Yeah.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
Like that stimulation from the mustard pack and that relaxation from, you mentioned chamomile earlier, just putting them on topically and getting that kind of energetic feeling from them.
Shereel Washington:
Even plants like mugwort, which I love making a mugwort oil. That's one of the favorite things I like to do as we transition from summer to fall. I'll go out in the local park, forest, and bring some, let it dry a couple of days. And it is the most fragrant oil I've made to date. Mugwort just has an in and down energy. So even if you put it on your body, it's going to go in, it's going to go down, it's going to go really deep into the muscle layers and it's going to make its way into your organs. Like even if you use castor oil, for example, castor oil has an affinity for the bones. So it's going to go in and down and going to go right to your bones to help relieve pain, to help break up scar tissue. So imagine infusing castor oil with mugwort too. You got those two similar energetic patterns. And I've seen that happen in my own body. It's pretty effective. So just also pairing it with oils that have a similar energetic match, it's also helpful too.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Yeah. I've often added the mugwort oil to like a cottonwood oil or something just to help the cottonwood even penetrate more deeply. Right.
Shereel Washington:
To penetrate more deeply. Yeah, for sure.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Take whatever oil you have infused and add some mugwort to it to help with that penetrating effect.
Shereel Washington:
Yeah. And then you can also add essential oils too, make more of a medicated oil. That can do the same thing. It's there. And there's even another practice in Ayurveda where they have getting medicine by way of clothing, by way of materials that you wear. They make certain clothes using certain herbal teas and dyes to get that on the skin and to help heal. Yeah. Yeah, this is not anything new.
Kimberly Gallagher:
New to me. A whole new idea. I love that.
Shereel Washington:
Yeah. It's pretty impressive. I forgot the name of it in Ayurveda, but it's a practice where the cloth is the solvent and so they soak... It's like what's that type of... Not bolus, but where in Western herbalism where you take like a cloth or muslin and then you soak it in a tea and then you put it on your skin.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
Like a fomentation?
Shereel Washington:
Fomentation.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
Is that what we're talking?
Shereel Washington:
Yeah, it's like that. It's like a fomentation.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
So you're using clothes as a fomentation. That's brilliant.
Shereel Washington:
Our clothes as a fomentation.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
Oh my gosh.
Shereel Washington:
So they soak the clothes in the herb in the form of a really strong infusion of tea and then it'll take on, it'll dye it, but then you wear those clothes as part of the medicine.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
Oh, yeah. We can tie-dye with herbal infusions. And just put them on wet? Do you put them on wet?
Shereel Washington:
No, no, no, no. It's regular clothes. But I think they use things like linen, natural fibers. Yeah, use natural fibers that's really going to help absorbing the skin in that way too. And so it's pretty spectacular.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
That is profound.
Shereel Washington:
That's very profound.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
That's very profound.
Shereel Washington:
Yes.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Whoa, yeah.
Shereel Washington:
Yeah, it's pretty profound.
Kimberly Gallagher:
We can get our medicine just through our clothes.
Shereel Washington:
Through our clothes. Yeah. Why not? Why not?
Kimberly Gallagher:
Wow. Mimi, I'm really enjoying this conversation with Shereel Washington and learning all about the topicals that she creates for people at her Ixalted Body Care company. I know you mentioned it in the podcast too. We have a course by Shereel on HerbMentor that you just took a bunch of people through. Yeah. So do you want to say a little bit about that course and maybe entice people to come join us on HerbMentor?
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
That's right. Yes. That course is available on the HerbMentor platform. It is Folk Herbalism where Shereel Washington is changing the narrative. She's talking, it's audio, so it's easy to get through all the episodes. There's six of them. They're each under an hour. She's really just guiding us through what it means to be a folk herbalist, how plants are named, how you can start making remedies. We've heard lots of tips from her. This is a great place to pull your family closer through foraging, through getting to know plants in the woods, through fun kitchen experiments and fun remedies you can make and use with your neighbors and with your community.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Sweet. She has some good recipes in there too, right? Yeah.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
Lots of recipes, rosemary syrup, lavender-infused sugar. Those are some that come to the top of mind. I'm definitely inspired. Yes.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Yeah. So if you want to get more of Shereel's wisdom and recipes, you can come join us on HerbMentor. This is our membership site that's part of LearningHerbs. It's a collaborative learning community and we are on there answering questions in the forum. So as you're going through a course like Shereel's, you can maybe get confused and you can just come onto the forum and ask a question and Mimi's often in there answering them. We also have another herbalist, Li Wong, who's on a lot answering your questions so that you never have to feel stuck.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
Full courses, there are resources built around passionate teachers, and just made for all of us who want to learn how to play with herbs.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Yeah. And as a podcast listener, you can get a special discount. So if you'd like to join us on our membership site, HerbMentor, you can just go to HerbMentorRadio.com and scroll down, put in your email. You will have access to that special discount for podcast listeners. We'd love to welcome you into the HerbMentor community.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
And now let's get back to Shereel Washington and this wonderful conversation we're having about topical herbalism.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Oh, yes. Yeah. So all of these topicals are such a sensory experience with the scents and the textures and the warmth and oils and softness. Oh my gosh. How do you think the senses guide your work when you're making the herbal preparations?
Shereel Washington:
Gosh, I definitely, as a woman of faith, I just had a session before this where I had a client come to me, they had some serious health things, and I have to be honest, it's like, wow, I don't have the immediate answer, but I know the one who does. And so for me, when I'm making formulas, I'm praying over my formulas in the way that my grandmother did. She would say, "God, make these plants do what you created and designed them to do." So that's how I move and I'm trying to listen. Because I know that sure, these beautiful plants that we make, they're imbued with God's presence. And so yeah, I'm listening for that. And to date, I'm grateful that I haven't gone wrong with that. And so with that then the plants then come immediately, they'll roll out.
Like one of the students, case in point, came to me and was like, "Well, I've got this thing going on." And I kind of said a little prayer in my head, but then I went to the cupboard. I'm like, "Okay, these herbs," burdock or catnip or some lemon peel, just things that just was coming to me to put together for this person and then they felt better instantly. And so yes, I have a formalized process of an intake that you learn in clinical training, which is good. You get all that information and I listen and then I sit with it. I look through it, I sit with it, and then I start to listen even deeply, and it's like, "Okay, this is what's coming forward." Or sometimes it'll show up immediately and then it'll keep repeating itself like that. I'm like, "Oh, okay. I need to work with this." Sometimes it'll come to me before I even do further research. So I'm learning how to trust that a little bit more.
So that's what's been really helpful in two ways. It keeps me connected to the creator and also keeps me connected to the created things that's utilized to help people heal. And that's also in reference to early African American healers, that's what they did too. And that's another reason why they were so effective because they knew how to listen, they knew how to hear, and that's what made their medicine and their approach so potent and so sure.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Yeah, that deep listening to the plants themselves too, right?
Shereel Washington:
Yeah. There's that call that you hear, there's that, "Oh, why does this keep showing up? Why is this coming forward?" So just learning how to engage with that is a very powerful experience. So that's what I try to do at least.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Yeah. And then we can connect with the sensory aspects of those plants and connect it with what the person is experiencing. If it's a dry condition, you're going to want to bring something moisturizing to that.
Shereel Washington:
Yeah, absolutely. Do the opposite.
Kimberly Gallagher:
The energetic balancing with our senses I think is the key to-
Shereel Washington:
Yeah. And the senses are powerful. The senses are powerful and they're there for a reason and they're there to really not just guide us, but then to also show us how to interact and how to move about with other people. Even smelling plants, they do so much for those, go through those olfactory glands and they just kind of light up in our brains and it's just like, I think it opens up a window for us too, like a portal that we can actually access to understand things or understand people better.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
We are going beyond the five senses with Shereel Washington with herbal topicals. I'm loving this. When you were talking about how your grandmother used to work with herbs, one herb that popped into my mind that I learned from my grandma was chamomile because she loved to use chamomile topically and she would infuse it in an oil and it just had this beautiful scent, like apples, like vanilla. And we used it for like mosquito bites. It was so immediately soothing. Then I was on your website and I saw a chamomile plant, chamomile flowers on one of your webpages, and I was like, "I have to ask Shereel what her connection is with chamomile." I'm so curious.
Shereel Washington:
Well, historically chamomile is also referred to as cammy-weed in black North American herbal traditions. And so chamomile was used as kind of like a immune modulator, meaning that it just was used to help keep you well. It was also used to help you sweat. And so it was used in that way. And I think in Western herbalism it's used, we see it as a calmative, we see it as a digestive, maybe a slightly bitter. We see it as that and it's cool, but in black North American herbal traditions, cammy-weed was that weed that you would take to help keep you from getting sick.
And so my first experience with that plant, one of my friends, he had a garden and his wife harvested it fresh from her garden. And man, I had one cup and I literally fell asleep on the couch, just out like a light. It was like very almost intoxicating because it was just soothing to my nervous system. And so I just really have a connection to fresh chamomile. I love dried, but fresh chamomile, that memory of that experience is embedded in my head more deeply, and so I feel more connected to chamomile in that way. But I didn't grow up drinking chamomile as a kid, but as I did my own research about black North American herbals traditions, that plant was mentioned in many of the workers project narratives of enslaved folks. So cammy-weed was a plant that continued to come out quite often.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
That's very fascinating, especially I am really drawn to what you said about cammy-weed influencing making you sweat.
Shereel Washington:
Making you sweat.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
So you're drinking it and so now we have an example of an herb that we're taking in and it's affecting the skin through its diaphoretic activity. When I think of that activity, that sweating, I almost feel like it's cleansing the skin in some way from the inside out.
Shereel Washington:
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
I haven't explored it that way. That's so cool.
Shereel Washington:
Chamomile was traditionally paired with catnip and sage, culinary sage. So culinary sage is also diaphoretic and even catnip has a little bit of that too. And so drinking that's going to help you to produce more internal heat, but it's also going to sweat out because sometimes you want to sweat out a virus, sweat out a cold. So it was that idea too, let's sweat it out. So it was consumed for that purpose as well.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
It's kind of another immune skin connection again. Yeah.
Shereel Washington:
Immune skin connection.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
Loving these connections here.
Shereel Washington:
Yeah.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Do you use chamomile in any of your topicals that you make?
Shereel Washington:
I do.
Kimberly Gallagher:
I can imagine a chamomile bath would be amazing, soothing.
Shereel Washington:
I love chamomile as... I like chamomile with witch hazel. Yeah. I take the witch hazel that's... In the store it's like 15% alcohol, which is fine. But I've made liniments with it, just chamomile. And it has like a nice kind of yellowish tone. And of course it's good for, witch hazel's good for so many things, but then to actually put it on the skin infused with chamomile, it's just really effective. I like to do that. I like to make a chamomile cream. Yes. It is just the best. It is the best to make a chamomile cream that you can also use as a moisturizer, as a makeup remover. If you've got some type of sunburn, you just put that cream on there to cool the skin because creams do that in general. And then I like to also do a balm for my scalp. If I make a hair balm. And then of course you can do it in animal fat like tallow or suet to just really get that deep moisturizing, especially as you get into colder months. So I've done chamomile in lots of different ways and just also just as a straight anointing oil. And so it's just so many versatile ways that I've been able to work with it and call it in when I have specific needs. Yes.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Very good.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
I have to get that in my garden somehow.
Shereel Washington:
I know.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
I've tried. It just hasn't germinated for me over here, but maybe I'll bring-
Kimberly Gallagher:
It doesn't want to grow for me either.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
Really? Maybe do you have the secret, Shereel?
Shereel Washington:
That's so funny.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
Maybe I'll bring in a baby plant.
Shereel Washington:
I feel like here in California it does grow really well, especially in warm, sunny. It likes a lot of sun. And so if it's kind of still too cold or too wet, it's going to have a hard time. But if it's in a place where it's warm, it's going to get direct sun, doesn't take long for it. Once a jump starts, it loves to be harvested and picked over and over again, it'll just keep popping up and growing. So it just needs that, it needs more direct sun and more warmth, that's all. Yeah.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
Good tips there.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Maybe it's just too wet here.
Shereel Washington:
Yeah. It's too wet or if it's too cold or too crisp, yeah, it'll have a hard time.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
Okay. Okay. So Shereel, a lot of people think that herbalism has to be complicated. And one of the take home messages I got from listening to your Folk Herbalism course is that herbalism can be gentle, it can be simple, it can be deeply practical, and it can be woven into day-to-day life. And I wonder if you have any tips for our listeners on how to take those first steps to... If they're overwhelmed thinking about learning about herbs, what are some first steps they can take to bring herbs into their routines?
Shereel Washington:
One of the things I shared with students recently is start with what's around you. What's in your kitchen? What you got growing on your patio? What you got growing in your yard? And like I told one student, I said, "Herbs are around you and you know more about herbs than you think." So what do you like to cook? And so just starting with the things that you normally do and then also zooming out and like, "Oh, wait a minute. There are plants all around me, even if they're store bought." And so I don't encourage people to even sleep on that. I had one client, she's like, "Oh, I need to... Do you know where I can get really good quality mint tea?" I'm like, "Yeah, in the produce section where they have fresh mint right there." That's where you can get really good quality mint because you can dry it or make it fresh yourself.
So I think that the container for herbalism is, we see it in the context of a certificated program, and that's not a bad thing. And it's actually a good thing that herbalism has gotten to this point that it gives herbalism the legitimacy that it deserves. But in addition to that, it's just also recognizing the herbs and the plants that are already here and that you don't need to know a whole lot in order to interact. I think people get confused that clinical practice when you're actually helping people with health issues, yes, that takes time, that takes years, that takes study, that takes repeatable processes so that you can be accountable and that you're able to be effective in helping people. That takes more time. I'm not talking about that at that level, but I'm talking about on a day-to-day level through cooking, through even the stuff that you put on your face, things that are around you that you can access without a whole lot of hassle.
So I think if we understand that it's already present and that we can engage in it in that level, by the time we decide to maybe get a more formalized education, we already have comfort with just working around plants. One of the things I also enjoyed in a recent workshop was having students touch plants and how there's still not enough touching of plants. There's still not enough touching. Even if it's store bought, like take the plants out of your spice jar and smell it and touch it. Does it smell-
Kimberly Gallagher:
Bring in those senses.
Shereel Washington:
Bring in those senses that we were talking about. Does it smell fresh? Your nose is not going to lie to you. Maybe you bought a stale batch of herbs that's been on that shelf for months, but you'll be able to know when you smell it how fresh it is. Go to that produce section and get those little packages of herbs and smell them. Are they fresh? Have they been sitting out too long? So those things really help you be able to test, to be able to engage, to be able to start that sensory process. Because again, if you're going to cook with it, you want your food to smell like the plants you're using. You want to smell that sage, that rosemary, that ginger, or turmeric. You want to smell those things in your food when you eat.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
Oh, yeah.
Shereel Washington:
Yeah, for sure. You want to smell that in your tea. You want to smell that on your body because smelling is also a part of the medicine. And so those are things around you. And then once you see that and you engage with that, then going to the more what I call upper level or higher level learning is more... You're able to do that with more ease and comfort because you have familiarity that you've already engaged with around. So it's just starting with open up your refrigerator. What you got in your refrigerator? What have you got in your cupboard? Go outside. What's around you?
So now people think I'm crazy. When I'm out in my neighborhood, I'm looking at everybody's garden. I'm looking at everybody's yard. I'm looking at everyone's tree and I'm touching stuff like, "Ooh, this smells so good." And I've done a whole bunch of videos of me just walking around the neighborhood just like, "Ooh, eating this. Oh, let me try." I love it because one, it gets me connected to my environment. My neighbors know me. But that being said, when I want to harvest something, I can ask and they engage with me in that way. And yeah, that's one less thing I have to buy too. It's present. These things are around us, and it's not just in the context of a certificated program.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Yeah. We live with the plants there. They're right here.
Shereel Washington:
They're there. They're right here.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Yeah. Friends in our little area.
Shereel Washington:
Yeah. So don't be afraid to do that. And so that's how you start. Open your eyes and see what's in front of you. And then yeah, when you take more formalized and studied classes, then you have more information in your arsenal that you can take with you just to build on that.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
I need to know because you are so passionate, what was the first herb that you fell in love with?
Shereel Washington:
Oh, mint. When I was a kid, that was the first herb my grandmother would have me harvest because she had different types of mint, spearmint, peppermint, and I forgot the other mint. But she had mint in the front yard and in the backyard. So she loved that plant. And when you're planting with it, it also deters certain types of bugs and insects away from your main crops. And so when she would make a tea, she would say, "Go out and gather some mint." So I was around mint a lot. And then my great-grandmother, she grew mint as well. And even my mom, she has a little green thumb too, and she had this beautiful pot of mint. So I definitely have this draw to mint just from my childhood and just having it in my hands and smelling it, especially in fresh form. It's just, ooh, that's something to me. It just brings me back to that time. And then it's just to me, even though it's such a lifting plant, it's to me a very grounding plant too. So mint is that plant for me.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
Lovely. Yeah. I always say mint will grow on you. I'm fighting to keep it back from, in my spiral garden from, the mint and the oregano are on each other right now.
Shereel Washington:
I know. Yeah. I actually took a step further and explored apple mint too, which I really enjoy. And apple mint was something that I had to cultivate a relationship with in more recent years, but it's been great. I'm like, "Oh, okay, this is beautiful." I can work with you through tea, through jams, through syrups, through just maybe like a sachet and just having that around. Yeah. So mint's that plant for me.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Oh my gosh.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
Around here my husband is growing pineapple mint. There's a mint for everything.
Shereel Washington:
Yeah. There's a mint for everything. Isn't that cool? That's awesome. That's awesome.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Oh my gosh. We've covered so many really great just practical things that you can do to bring these herbs into your life and it just feels so simple and we can use our senses and really enjoy this whole area of topical herbalism. I'm just feeling really grateful for you joining us today, Shereel. Just great to harvest your enthusiasm and your wisdom and share that with our listeners. So thank you so much. Yeah. Thanks for just sharing this whole approach that you have to topical herbalism and herbal self-care. And I hope you all out there are feeling inspired to maybe bring some of these topicals into your lives.
Shereel Washington:
Absolutely. And I hope that in our time today that people really feel inspired of how accessible these things really are. And that like Mimi, you pointed out that most people think of topicals in terms of self-care products, but it's beyond that. This is self-care. And so you've got the method of skin through steam, skin through oil, skin through salt, just different ways to really access skin and things topically. It invites you to be creative too and to be able to have like a desert isle moment. How many different topical forms can you make to support yourself? And so I hope that this was communicated to your audience today.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
Thank you. There is one thing I'd love to expand on there. I heard you mention tallow earlier. And I'm seeing more and more, it's almost like tallow is trending. But it's really original, it's really ancient, isn't it?
Shereel Washington:
It's really old. It's old.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
Can you just share, because I know our listeners are going to love this conversation about tallow?
Shereel Washington:
Oh, yes. I've taught many classes around the use of animal fats and I have to say sadly animal fats kind of still gets a bad rap even in the herbal space because it's misunderstood as being something that's clogging the pores, that's going to make you get zits or something like that. But actually animal fats is very highly absorbent and it's very effective. It's even more effective when you add herbs to it. And it's definitely going to help your skin really be girded up immune wise and even lymphatic wise, especially as we get into colder months. And so it's going to not only hydrate your skin, but it's going to provide certain nutrients like vitamin A and K and D to the skin that's important for immune health and function.
And so there's tallow, which is really the fat that's in the muscle of the animal, and then there's the suet, which is the fat that's in the kidneys. And that particular fat is seen as a superfood because it's mineral rich. And it's really white in color and it's hard, and so it pairs really well with like bees wax or cocoa butter to really get it soft. Then there's lard, which is softer, but it's also cheaper than tallow, but it also can be used. But if you don't mind the porkiness of it all, you can also use those strong aromatics like chaparral or rosemary or lavender to help counter the pork smell. And then there's also lamb fat. And then of course if you're maybe more plant-based, there's cacao butter, there's coconut oil. But those rich fats are just really, really nutritive for the skin.
And they're easy to infuse. You can do it two ways. You can add a oil to the fat, you can make a butter, you can whip it, or you can actually infuse those fats directly in with plants through I like to do a water bath method or a double boiler. And then you can just take your time and let the herbs infuse and they'll infuse really well. And some of them, they'll really pick up the colors really nicely. So that's just a really fun way to get those herbs into your skin. And then depending on the herbs, you can have a multi-use and have a portion set aside to cook with and a portion set aside for your skin.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
There you go. Kitchen herbalism right there.
Shereel Washington:
That's right.
Kimberly Gallagher:
There you go.
Shereel Washington:
You can divvy it up and do it like that. So yeah, I've taught many workshops in class on this very thing and people come away amazed at, wow, didn't know. Some were farmers and never knew that they can infuse their fat with herbs. Yeah. So it's pretty old across many cultures using animal fat.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Thanks for bringing that in.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
Sounds so deep.
Shereel Washington:
Please try it.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Bonus.
Shereel Washington:
Bonus, bonus material, bonus, bonus, yes. Oh my goodness, that's great. I love it.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
Well, tomorrow I am listening to Shereel's last episode, the bonus episode on how to use the animal fats in Folk Herbalism. So it just popped in my mind as like bonus content.
Shereel Washington:
Awesome. Awesome. Well, I hope that that's something that you guys could really enjoy and maybe people can try. And it's really easy to work with too. It's not like unforgiving or anything like that. So that's just another way. And then when you whip it, it's even nicer because it's more airy, it's more fluffy, and again, it also makes it a little bit more cooling. So definitely recommend trying that as well.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
Thank you.
Shereel Washington:
You're welcome. You're so welcome.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
Have to experiment.
Shereel Washington:
Yeah.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Well, if our listeners want to learn more from you, Shereel, where can they find your courses and consultations and offerings?
Shereel Washington:
Yes, you can go to my website at www.IxaltedNaturalBody, I-X-A-L-T-E-D, NaturalBody.com where you can join my mailing list or where you can see events or in real life events posted. I teach full-time at Berkeley Herbal Center in Berkeley, California, so I'm always doing events not only in their certificated programs, but also in the community as well. So you can definitely see when I'm teaching my next classes there on their website as well at www.BerkeleyHerbalCenter.org.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Wonderful. We'll make sure those are in the show notes for you too so you can check those out right there.
Shereel Washington:
Yes. Thank you all again for having me.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
Absolutely.
Shereel Washington:
And I really do hope that the things that were shared today was very helpful for people.
Kimberly Gallagher:
I'm sure, yes.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
Thanks, Shereel. I already feel like I'm coming away with lots of new wisdom and little inspirations to try new things. So I really appreciate you and I know our listeners are loving this.
Shereel Washington:
Oh, thank you so much again. Thank you for having me be a part of the LearningHerbs family. Thank you so much.
Mimi Prunella Hernandez:
And thank you to all our listeners for being here with us. Join us next month as we continue along the herbal path. Next month we will be talking about garden herbalism with gardener Brandon Ruiz from Charlotte.
Kimberly Gallagher:
Exciting. Yeah. Until next time, keep growing and keep cultivating your relationship with the plants. Thank you for joining us on HerbMentor Radio.
Rowan Gallagher:
HerbMentor Radio is a 100% sustainably wildcrafted podcast, written and performed by Mimi Prunella Hernandez and Kimberly Gallagher with production and editing by me, Rowan Gallagher. Visit HerbMentorRadio.com to subscribe on your favorite podcast app and find out how you can be a part of HerbMentor, a community hub for herbalists that you have to see to believe. HerbMentor Radio is a production of LearningHerbs.com LLC. Thank you so much for listening.
