Spirit in Action

Plants & Well-being

Erin LaFaive is passionate about plants and the vital role they play in our health and will-being, and she shares her passion and knowledge in several ways, including through Full Circle Herbals. She also works days as horticultural educator with Eau Claire County UW Extension. Combining science nerd inclinations with Earth-based spirituality, Erin delivers the best of both worlds.

Duration:: 55m
Broadcast on:: 27 Dec 2015
Audio Format:: other

[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world alone ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeat. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world alone ♪ We've got a great guest here today for Spirit in Action. Erin Lefave spends her days working as a horticulture educator with Eau Claire County's University Extension. But then she slips into a phone booth. Do they even have those anymore? To change into the wise and rooted woman behind full circle herbals. As you'll learn in just a moment, she brings in-depth knowledge and much-needed gentle healing to the world. Erin Lefave joins me in person here today. Erin, I'm so very excited to have you here today for Spirit in Action. Thank you for having me. This is going to be an enjoyable conversation. I know it. You were recommended to me by one of our board members, Sandy McKenny, who's a pastor at Unity Christ Center here in town. You gave a talk there just recently. What were you talking about? I did a workshop called "Nourishing Infusions" and I had people come and actually learn what an infusion is and how to make it. And then we actually made it there that day. And we tried different infusions. They also took home the four different herbs, the ones that we made as nourishing infusion so they could do it at home too. So a nourishing infusion is an herb that you take an ounce of, dried weight, and then you add a quart of boiling water and you let it set for anywhere from two to eight hours. The idea behind it is it's more than a cup of tea, which most people think, okay, medicinal herbals, you drink it as a cup of tea, but nourishing infusions, the idea is to drink more of it and have it more concentrated. So letting it sit for two to eight or more hours really extracts a lot of the nutrients, minerals, therapeutic qualities out of the herb, and then you have around a quart of nourishing infusions to drink. It's a kind of a step above drinking tea. And the idea is to nourish your body with these herbs. Kind of get away from the idea of pill popping, you know, lots of people say, well, what herb can I take for X, Y, and Z, and can I just take it in pill form? And nourishing infusions makes you get into the process of nourishing your body with herbs. And so it takes some time to put it together, not a lot of time, but enough so that you actually have to think about what you're doing and decide which nourishing infusion you're going to pick for the day. And the idea with the nourishing infusions, too, is it's kind of like a vitamin. It's the vitamin for your day, and throughout the day, it's nothing that you have to drink right away. You don't drink a quart of this nourishing infusions right away. And so the question comes, and again, this is coming from the way our society thinks about things, which is not really the way I think about it. I've stepped back from the mainline thinking about this some time ago. A few decades ago, our society teaches us, for the most part, that you can fix things by taking a vitamin supplement or by having your Wonder Bread with extra vitamins and such added. Why isn't that good enough? Aren't there scientists controlling all of that? My philosophy with herbs is that you get closest to the plant as possible. Once in a while, I would, as an herbalist, suggest maybe a tablet form in very few instances, where we have found that taking a tablet gets the medicinal qualities of the plant in your system quicker. But for the most part, I encourage people to stay as close to the plant as possible, so doing the least amount to the plant as you possibly can, so maybe eating it, putting it in your cooking. You know, a lot of the cooking herbs are very high in antioxidants and other medicinal properties. And I think that surprises people sometimes when they say, "I'm going to take to help with this certain issue that I'm having, and I'm giving them recipes," and they're just kind of like, "What? You mean I don't just go find it in a tablet?" That is the whole new idea to them that they have more power over their health than they once believed. And that the things that are just growing outside every day are actually very medicinal, so my hope with doing things with herbalism is to get people more connected to nature and to the world around them. We don't have to look into a store to find it. We can actually make it in our own kitchen. And that is just a beautiful thing to me that we actually have that much power over our own health to be able to do that. And it's just amazing loving thing you can do for your family and your community around you is to learn how to use herbs in your own food. And sometimes we think, "Oh, if I just sprinkle a little bit of this spice or herb in my food, that's not going to be enough." Well, add a little bit more and use it more frequently in your cooking. And then maybe we don't need to enrich our food as much. I think enriching our food with vitamins and minerals helped us at one time in history. But it's kind of, it's a little bit outdated in some ways. We have improved human health through enriching food and adding things to food. But now we have to swing back the other way a little bit. We swung the pendulum too far out to synthetic kind of additional things that we're adding to our food. And if we go the opposite of what we're doing now, that would be to only live off the land. And to tell you the truth, that's pretty hard to do too. To find enough calorie intake for our daily needs just by foraging in a forest or only hunting our food. That's a lot of time. That's a lot of input. And then to store that food. And that's what we would be doing all the time. So we kind of went kind of the opposite way and made food very, very convenient for us. Which was fun too because then you free up your time to be able to do arts and crafts and all sorts of other things. But like I said, we need to swing that pendulum back a little bit more in balance with adding real plants and food into our diet. Of course I think my friend Sam Thayer would probably have a different opinion about the foraging. I think he probably believes that a large percentage of the population could nurse themselves essentially by foraging. Now I know the downsides because we have so much lawn planted where we're not growing things that you can eat. I mean that not only is grass not edible for humans, but of course we put all the poisons on it. It couldn't be a food. What do you consider to be food? I'm speaking here. You know I read the omnivores dilemma and I talked to Taroni Lowdog. And so I have a lot of different people's opinions about these things. But it seems that our food has become less foody particularly over the last sixty years I think there's been a dramatic change in what we call food. I've read Sam Thayer's books and he actually talks about how hard it is to forage. Just to forage and live off the land. And that's where I've learned about how hard it is to get enough caloric intake into a daily diet to just continuously forage. But having said that it's extremely important to learn how to forage. And it feels so nourishing and empowering to do that. To actually go out and collect something to the level where you can actually store it and use it throughout the year. And you also learn how to value food a little bit more because you learn oh my goodness this takes a lot of time and a lot of processing to do that. For me when I partake in berry picking and what have you I appreciate that so much more. I appreciate what I can get in the store. And I appreciate what my ancestors did to get human civilization to where we're at. So I don't discourage foraging. But my message is that I'm not poo pooing what's going on in the grocery store either. That you know we need a balance of both. So going back to the discussion of lawns. Our lawns could be food. My lawn is food. My lawn is medicine. I have what people think of as weeds in my lawn. I have dandelions and wood violets and chickweed and creeping charlie. And all those things are actually food. And all those things can be even tailored in a way to make them medicine. Medicine and food are thought of as different things. Separate in our society right now in the mainstream society but they're actually the one in the same. So food is medicine and medicine is food. And we eat in an American society. We eat for taste. We are not necessarily eating for nutrients. And if you just do that for one meal think okay what can I eat that's going to give me the highest amount of minerals and nutrients and vitamins that I need in a day. You're going to eat something completely different than what you want to eat because what do I feel like eating? Well feeling like what you want to eat is going to be different than what your body really needs. I would really love to eat sugar and pasta all the time. That's actually what my body you know I think would taste really good but I also then think what does my body really need? And how do I want to feel at the end of the day? Do I want to feel like I have a lot of energy or do I want to feel kind of depleted? And that dialogue that I have in my head helps me make choices throughout the day. And I'm not sure that a lot of people think in those terms. And so that's why as an herbalist that's some of the things I talk about with people as I'm doing a consultation with them. It's not just about the herbs it's kind of about okay you know what are you drinking in a day and what are you eating? It's not about like oh what can I take? It's like what can you stop taking that might make you feel even better and in particular one example would be soda. You know I enjoy a soda once in a while too but I know that some people drink two, three, four, five cans of it a day. If I could get somebody just to think about what they could maybe take out of their diet first. That can be almost more empowering than what herb I can go purchase at a store. I'm interested in a little bit of the background of how you got to what you described as your philosophy. Where did this come from? Because even though I overlap heavily in terms of my ideas about these things. I'm not sure how much that's not just an idiosyncrasy of the subculture of this American culture that I belong to. I mean I became a member of a food co-op back in 1976 shortly after I became a vegetarian which is already takes me far from the beaten path in this country and I'm influenced by diet for a small planet and all of those kind of ideas. Still I think that the major current of our society for the last 400 years has been in the direction of science. Science can tell you what you should eat. A doctor tells you what is going to be good for you. It's that source of authority that we've depended on as opposed to the herbalists who used to be part of our society. So there's some kind of a struggle here or a potential struggle. I don't think it has to be a real struggle between science and maybe tradition or native ideas. Here's what I think versus here's what the studies say. Yeah the science versus the almost art is kind of how I think of it and I'm a real science geek. My background is bachelor of science with geography and natural resource management and a master's degree in environmental studies. So I love the science of it. I also know that science you know it has its issues with it too. Scientific research has problems with it. That's why they do something called peer reviewed research where they actually will do research and then have peers of various different backgrounds take a look at it and then they'll say okay you forgot about X, Y and Z. You forgot to narrow this out of your scientific research and so they all look at it together. I love science. I love knowing what the chemical properties of plants are and things like that. But I also dislike science and the fact that it thinks it's the only answer. It's the only answer to everything. In my day job I'm all science. I can only provide research based information with extension. That is what extension does and it's very helpful. And then I do full circle herbals because I also want to incorporate more of an intuitive spiritual aspect to using plants. And that's where I get that outlet from with full circle herbals. One thing science does wrong with researching herbalism is that they try to take apart plant like it's a machine and they want to know what part of that plant makes it tick. Like what aspect and what cog of that plant is making that herb work for our body. What they are keeping in mind is a word and the word is holistic. That there could be five pieces of that plant that are working together to make something happen. And in science that's really difficult because science wants to deduce it down to that one thing and you want to know okay how can we extract that one chemical out of the plant. How do we manufacture it in a lab so that we can make a lot of it in a tablet form and get it out to people. And that's a nice sentiment to get something to people in really easy format quickly but it's losing. It's losing so much of the plant. And some of the parts of the plant will counteract another ingredient. So for example there's some plants that have been deduced down into a pill format and used for cancer let's say and that makes somebody nauseous. But if you give it to them in plant form like a real part of the plant like a tea or a tincture they don't get sick because there's probably another chemical in there that actually works to counteract that nausea. That's the sad part to me of science it's like oh science I love you but you're getting it wrong a little bit so that's what I love about getting as close to the herb as possible. One of the things that I think has been ill considered that way and I think we're only slowly getting back from the misconceptions and that is eggs and cholesterol. We know that cholesterol in our system and there's different kinds of cholesterol are correlated with ill health in some ways heart disease particularly issues arterial sclerosis that kind of thing. And so science or some scientific folks kind of simply want to say well see arterial sclerosis cholesterol eggs have cholesterol you better limit how many eggs you have. And yet when they've done the actual experiments the actual comparisons here eat 10 eggs instead of the two or three a week that was originally recommended back in the 60s 70s. They find out oh your health is just as good as fine what is it well one of the other ingredients that I understand is included in eggs is less than which means that the body can handle the cholesterol in a different way. So yes if you talk about one ingredient versus all of the ingredients you may get a very different reaction I think that the ecological movement had a lot to do with that holistic is another way of thinking about that but ecology everything is a piece. It's like if a clock you say well you know the battery is the important part of an electric clock so that's all we need is a battery it's like no you need all these cogs, gears, hands you need all of the things for the whole thing to work. Still scientifically I think that there's the kind of measure that we could do say compare people who are getting infusions and herbal nourishment if you will versus those who are taking a vitamin pill. You could study the health outcomes overall for those two groups is the science out there for that kind of thing. There is a lot of science done on herbs right now people will say all the science doesn't prove it oh yes it does I read scientific articles and studies on how what they're doing with herbs and a lot of it's coming out of like China and Europe. They're doing their studies a little bit different they do kind of keep a holistic mind and play a little bit it tends to some of those researchers seem to be out to get herbs see I told you it doesn't work I told you it doesn't work. And then other researchers are truly interested in trying to see what works and what doesn't and I wish some researchers would consult with an herbalist before they do their research because they're using dosages and they're using the herbs in a way that an herbalist wouldn't use it as for example this tablets they're always trying to give people tablet form of the herb in the research it's like no no no that's not the way an herbalist would use it either. So the research is all over the place on some of this stuff and I actually haven't seen a lot of research done to take into account all the parts of an herb you know like I've been saying they're not using the herb is close to the plant form as possible they're really breaking it down. Having said that I like to see that there's research being done I just hope that they kind of evolve in their process with it and there like I said I have not read all the research out there there is thousands and hundreds of thousands of articles and stuff out there on herbs. The problem is it's really hard stuff to read and so just anybody going out there to read an article it's hard I mean I have a master's degree and I struggle to read those things and I have to read them sometimes ten times to just to really get a thorough understanding of how the research was done. So I love reading them and I also love learning herbalism from people who just literally do it right in their backyard to who are not necessarily reading the research on it too. So there's a wide spectrum of how herbalists are doing things and I incorporate as much science as possible and I also realize there's a lot of folk wisdom out there things that have been done for thousands of thousands of years that they've been handed down from word of mouth from herbalists to herbalist and that is also so important for the scientific community to realize is that there are other ways of knowing and it doesn't just come from research. It can come from personal experience that people have literally been doing for thousands and thousands of years. Chinese medicine is a really old medicine that's been done for a long time for example and that is a valuable set of information. Sometimes it's called traditional ecological knowledge or native knowledge or organic knowledge. I mean there's all these different types of knowledge that science tends to say oh you can't use that because they don't have a rigorous process of deducing what works and what doesn't and I'm here to say they're all valid. As somebody who's been trained in science I think it's all valid and to bring it all together and to use everybody's way of knowing and way of knowledge and put it together that is powerful. Rather than fighting each other you know we should never have any grocery stores or we should only have grocery stores. It's like no we can have it all but we need to be informed about the full spectrum of things from the whole gamut of that pendulum I keep talking about on the spectrum of things. It's all valid and if we just listen to each other we would learn so much from each other and that's another part of herbalism is community. Because as you said before Mark about doctors and unfortunately a lot of doctors don't have a lot of time with patients and in herbalism in general I would say most herbalists are spending a lot of time with clients an hour or even more just to ask them what their whole history is. And then to figure out which herb is best suited for them and to follow up with them and say hey how is that working for you. And if the person is not really getting the results they want then you kind of gear them towards okay let's move to this other herb or other technique or other therapeutic modality to use and people say oh that that's a proof that herbalism doesn't work. And it's like no that's proof that we are working with our client to figure out what works for them because here's another thing about herbalism versus maybe the medical community right now is that they think that if you have a certain ailment then you can only use five different medications might work for you. And they'll even do a little bit of experimenting okay let's try that medicine. Oh you're having too many side effects let's try this medicine and they'll try that and herbalists will do that a little bit too except our side effects aren't nearly as terrible. And in fact the only kind of side effect you might get is like oh I have a stomach ache from taking that herb and you know just we want to know how that certain individuals body works. There's different ways our bodies work and we can tailor those herbs to work for you know there's so many options out there for herbs to use. And that's one thing that's different from somebody walking into a medical establishment is they want to know what they can take right now can I walk out the door and for me personally as an herbalist I'm going to be spending more time with you and following up with you and really caring about how things are affecting you and just keeping the words holistic in mind community and individual. Depending on when you tuned in you may or may not know that we're speaking with Erin LaFave she is the owner and force behind full circle herbals and website is fullcircleurbles.com. She's also a horticulture educator with Eau Claire County University Extension and I want to explain what that is. In fact I want to engage Erin in a little bit of scientific reductionism break down your expertise because you know people might think that herbalism is all that you do and of course with the county extension you do something very different. Would you first explain what county extensions are because not everyone has them throughout this nation and this program's going north to south and east west across the United States and beyond our borders as well. And then talk about how that interfaces or is different than what you do with full circle herbals. So university extension offices are nationwide there in every state they just look a little different in each state for Wisconsin we have a county extension office in every county at this point. Some states have it region based. What extension offices are doing is bringing research out to the public and extending all the research that is being done on a university level into people's lives so that they can actually utilize it. And in general what you're looking at is youth development educators who run 4-H programs. There are horticultural educators who like myself are answering questions from the public about you know this is going on with a tree or my vegetables or something you know what can I do. Because when I walk into a store to buy something I don't always know if I'm getting honest feedback or if they're just trying to sell me something to put on my garden. Then sometimes they're just using us as a sounding board of okay okay that's right. They did give me the proper advice or things like that. The other programs that are represented are agriculture so mostly you know farming at a larger scale but certainly a lot of agricultural agents and educators are working with organic farmers too. And that's a growing field that agricultural educators are working with and I also work with you know hobby farms and smaller kind of a smaller scale you know vegetable growing and things like that that people are using to go. Another program area would be like a family living or home consumer program area and they're doing things with family and even trying to address problems in the community for example addiction problems too so that's a wide range. Community natural resource economic development might be another program area that it's out there that's being represented in and also the nutrition educators that are federally funded but are housed in county offices too. So trying to teach people with limited resources or limited income how to eat nutritious meals and snacks too and how to stretch their food dollars. So that's extension in a nutshell. There's certainly many aspects to extension but I encourage people to look into what is offered at their local extension services because there's some really valuable resources in there. Now in my horticulture education role I do teach people about herb gardening I teach them more so the culinary aspects of it. You know what they can grow and use in their kitchen the nutrients and vitamins and minerals that are in herbs there's a lot of nutrients and vitamins and minerals in herbs and I can talk about that as an extension professional because if you go to the USDA nutritional database you'll find nettles for example. Which stinging nettles is something people don't think they can eat but even in the USDA website they tell you all that's in it and it is packed with vitamins and minerals and nutrients and we're talking iron and calcium and magnesium. In some instances the herbs that are out there are even more nutritious than things we grow in our gardens. So sometimes I even hesitate to use the word herbs with some things because like nettles to me you could say is a vegetable and it certainly is used by many many people and cultures. And I like to talk about in my extension role I like to talk about how some of the weeds that we want to get rid of and dump chemicals on are delicacies in other places. Personally for example that's used in Asian countries and it's just grown and sold in a market like you would see spinach and so these are kind of the pieces of information I'm getting out as my role in extension. But I certainly cannot talk about medicinal properties of herbs in extension so that's why I do full circle herbals. I can talk about what research is being done on herbs and looking at medicinal properties. I can talk about that in extension. I can just talk about what research is being looked at and what plants they're looking at and talk about the results of that. But I certainly couldn't have anybody walk into my extension office and tell them what herb they can use for a certain element. I don't go that route at all as extension but I certainly do in full circle herbals. One thing I noticed you didn't speak about is what we might call spirituality and I do want to remind people that they are listening to spirit and action which is a Northern spirit radio production. We're on the web at NorthernSpiritRadio.org that's like organic not commercial. And on that site you'll find ten and a half years of our programs for free listening and download you'll find connections to our guests. For example with Aaron LeFave you'll find a connection to full circle herbals as well as a county extension locally so you can see the kind of resources that we do have available to us. Follow those from the NorthernSpiritRadio.org website. Also there's a place to leave comments and we love two way communications. We need to hear your voices. Our voices may give you the start of an idea but you can complete the conversation by commenting when you visit NorthernSpiritRadio.org. There's also a place to donate. This is work that's supported completely by your donations so please do support us by clicking on donate when you visit NorthernSpiritRadio.org. Even more important than that though I would say is to support your local community radio station. We vitally need alternatives to mainstream story and community radio has a freedom and a width and depth of music and of news that you get nowhere else on the American airwaves. So start by supporting your community radio station. Again Aaron LeFave is here if you don't know how to spell LeFave you're with the clan but the link is on our site so come there and you'll find out how to spell her name and you'll find the link for full circle herbals. Now one more piece that I wanted to ask you about and again spirituality is an important issue to me and some people may think spirituality is very fairy and to some degree because we can't do scientific reduction on our full life experience on our holistic experience on ecology to some degree to even think of those things trying to fracture them into their components. We lose a certain essence there. Tell me about your connection with spirituality. Is there a portion of full circle herbals which is spiritual? What place does that have in your life Aaron? Well this is a topic I don't think I've spoken about publicly. I certainly speak about it with friends and family but plants for me has been a part of my spirit since I was a child. Like it's not something I will never do and in fact if I didn't do full circle herbals as a business I would still be doing it. I've been looking into plants and studying plants since I said since I was a child I've been playing with them. Then came to this kind of understanding that I think I connect with plants in a way that other people don't. Like I have this fascination with plants that I'm seeing around me that other people don't care about. Like yes Aaron we understand you like plants we get it. And so I started to look for people who almost worshiped plants the way that I do who really connected in a spiritual way with plants like I did and it's hard to talk about because it's hard to explain in words. But I'm sure that people out there who are really plant lovers understand what I'm talking about and some people are really animal based or some people are really water based and people connect to different parts of nature in different ways and that's great and that's fun to learn how everybody connects that way. But for me I couldn't stop learning about plants and in herbalism there's definitely a spiritual component to plants and I do talk about that with some clients sometimes if they want to go that route there are some people that just want to learn about how do I put plants in my body to help my body. There are other people who really don't want to ingest herbs and they want to know how to use them in a more spiritual way. And one way to do that is something called flower essences and I won't get too much into the way with that but flower essences are basically working with the energetics of a plant. That helps people sometimes just as much as taking them in so I'm all about the mind body spirit connection with plants and when I'm working with somebody I tune into that like what part of the do they really connect with are they more physical spiritual. More just want to study with their mind study plants too so plants for me it's just a part of me and it is a spiritual connection for me. The earth is a spiritual connection for me and in my extension work I find people who are the same way and they're so excited when they can find a group of people that connect with plants really well. So we have the master gardener volunteers and people like to just be part of that volunteer group because not only do they get training but they also just get to hang out with people who can geek out on plant talk. You know either just about the whole you know how to grow them to you know more intense or more in depth looking at plants and they kind of find each other in that community. The spirit part of full circle herbals is I think I am doing full circle herbals because it really fulfills the spiritual calling almost to share my knowledge with people. And that's more so what I want to do I mean the money part of it you know sure it's nice little tiny bit of income that comes in but that's not the reason I do it the reason I do it is because I want to share what I know and people say Erin you know stuff about plants that people want to know when I say I do I just thought everybody knew this. In a way it's kind of pulling the knowledge and experience out of me to give to other people and it's kind of a gift and people say well you shouldn't charge if you're using your gift and well I really do need to pay for things too. So don't be discouraged if you're finding natural healers that are charging because you know they do need to purchase things too that you can't always make on your own. So please keep that in mind too but really the sharing of what I know is my I could say my calling with full circle herbals and it's really a lot of fun to work with people and just to share that with them. That's so beautifully said Erin really and it's lovely to see it in action too. There's another step spirituality is also somehow related to this thing called religion. I sometimes think of religion as spirituality plus a deliberate set of community and organization. It's how do you maintain because everybody has some kind of native spirituality even people who think that they're completely intellectually based. There is a spirituality that we all identify something as our center and our source and what the big most important thing is even if it's all about me for instance. But some of the stuff that you talk about with respect to herbalism and how we should eat comes down through religion. So for instance there is the whole history of kosher with respect to Jewish folks. Muslim folks will have halal which has its own purposes and I think that to some degree ethnic groups you know Scandinavian folks for some reason in this country think that Ludafisk is a good idea which beggars the imagination here. But there are some degrees of ethnic identification which identify you know basil on tomatoes is an Italian idea of what's really going to be healthy for you. So religion culture ethnic could you talk about the connection of those things with our health and herbals. Well two things that I think about is people do eat based on tradition so we're eating things you know like Ludafisk people think well it's traditionally made with why why would you do that and well okay so there's tradition to that and there's a reason why that started and people want to continue that tradition because here again they want to connect with their culture their ancestors you know something bigger than them in some ways. So you can think of people eating food for tradition and you see that even today with even in the holidays like well we have to make Christmas cookies because that's tradition and sure that's great but we don't have to eat that many pounds of sugar really. I mean let's just think about this let's have a couple cookies so I encourage people to think about like what am I eating just because of tradition and oh here's one more example Kool-Aid. People like to give Kool-Aid to their kids because that's what I drink when I was a kid and I don't want to deprive my kids of Kool-Aid but really think about it it's water and it's sugar and there's no nutrient value to it. And that's just a kind of a I'm laughing because you know I think of these things too with my children is sometimes I give them things thinking this is really not that healthy for them so why am I doing this and it's because I suddenly think like oh they have this memory of childhood and they can connect that I we've all had this memory of childhood and so I just just think about that. And then we also eat things you know we think of things that people are eating like Mark you mentioned the basil and the tomato and we kind of think of you know Mediterranean diet and the things that we eat are based on what was available in our environment as a culture so you think of all the things we eat here in America and the quote unquote melting pot of different regions and religions and cultures and we eat some of those things because that's what was literally growing at the time in that area so that's the only thing you had to work with. So people are will continue eating that and it also becomes traditional like oh my grandmother ate that and why did they eat that well that's what maybe came from where they lived. Dandelion is a fun example dandelions were brought over here by Europeans because they ate that over there and it has a lot of nutrients in it and they didn't know what was going to be here in America. And so they brought things with them to make sure they had something to eat and we've kind of lost some of those things that we used to eat. But some people may out there may be remember oh yeah my grandmother ate nettles in the spring or people out there right now can remember yes we collected nettles all the time and we eat them in the spring and because that was the first kind of green thing that comes up after the winter and it's packed with nutrients. So you know we eat the things that we eat because of tradition and because that's what is in the area growing prolifically where we live. So sometimes I don't really see religion and spirituality as different but like you said Mark and I agree with you religion is a little bit more organized. I do meet people that say I don't have religion but I consider myself spiritual and people who are more spiritual tend to say I take from many different religions I take what kind of I like from different religions and I do those things in my life and that's my spirituality. But it doesn't really have a name it doesn't really have a group of people but on the other hand people who are spiritual do have a group of people that they meet with that have like minds or their spirits kind of come together and they seem to match. I don't know there's kind of an intersect where religion and spirituality come together and I think people who are spiritual really it's kind of an inner feeling and sometimes in religion it's more of what they were taught and they just want to continue with the tradition of what their family does. You know it's just kind of all kind of overlaps some people have a little bit of the religion and a little bit of the spirituality and all kind of comes together I think and I've met people of all spectrums of that. I know people who go to a particular church let's say because that's just what they grew up in they like to connect with those people but they'll say I don't agree with everything that's being said there and you know I do I do other things in my life that make me feel more spiritual. So you know it's all good to me whatever you're feeling and works for your life I think is good so I tend to think of myself as more spiritual too. I don't necessarily think there's a real hard and fast religion that's out there that really speaks to what I do I mainly identify with the word pagan because to me pagan is a nature centered spirituality and so nature centered spirituality I think is where I'm at and if I get pushed for a name for itself I'll use the word pagan which has so many different connotations from bad to good in it but to me it's kind of just an umbrella term for many different kinds of nature centered spirituality out there. So that's a pretty clear picture of where you are now I'm wondering how you got to where you are and that makes such a difference in terms of how we're going to do something good for the future I mean that's what spirit and action is about how can we help use what we know now to get to a better future and certainly you're inspirational in your work with full circle herbals and even with the county extension it's such important elements of building blocks to make our society more healthy how did you get to that spot where you raised religiously who were your role models we talked yesterday about Toroni low dog who I imagine has some effect on you because she is such a powerful one for person what are the influences on your life that got you to be a happy pagan. That is a funny question my family would say how are you like the way you are and I've often wondered the same thing but no I've the influences I was not raised in any religion in fact I was not raised in a church I was not really raised in any sort of thing I think the only thing that I could say that was really constant in my family was there were women in my family who talked about what people would consider supernatural things so you know spirits ghost definitely was talked about as if you know those are real and grandma visited me last night in a dream so dreams and spirits were talked about but in kind of a hush hush manner it's not something that we just were like really talking about in openly in the cafe or restaurant or something but it was certainly a little stream that ran through my life And then nature definitely growing up in North what are we in they call us West Central Wisconsin so there is a lot of nature around us and my father was a hunter and a fisherman still is and he took us all three girls there's three of us in the family took us out fishing We spent time in Chatec at a cabin where there was no electricity there was a little electricity we had a generator that could be used there was no plumbing so we had it we really had a house this was a real cabin so I got to experience what that was like there was no hot running water We only had cold running water so then we would have to heat it up so I got to experience what life was like with kind of limited use of the finer things in life that we have now the nice amenities that we have now so I think in some ways that was part of it so I had a lot of connection with nature I played outside a lot when I was a kid that whole get outside and go do something get out of my hair you know I'm sure a lot of people heard this from their parents we really did go outside and play a lot and we were not we could get dirty and play and my mother encouraged that like go outside and get dirty and play then you know in the team I could say about in the teenage years I was really in some sense it's hard to explain but disheartened by what I was seeing around me there seemed to be more to life than what I was being taught I have a very clear memory of learning about Native American Indian history in America and how that all came down and it wasn't pretty and I was fascinated by how we weren't being taught in that in school and so I started just reading every book I could get my hands on about Native American Indian culture and I think that really shaped me a lot too about I kind of felt like it was the great lie that was being told to me and that really started my whole kind of what else out there is kind of not a clear picture to me so I was really interested in history and then I started just getting into other religions I started reading about other religions and about other cultures and that whole thing just fascinated me and then there was just this inner innate hunger or just this calling inside of me to be with nature and that just didn't go away and I didn't ignore it I explored it a lot and spent time in nature and read books about other people who had these you know nature centered spirituality kind of things and so then I knew I wasn't alone in that but in my community you definitely didn't come across people who had kind of these same ideas and especially when you're a teenager they're trying not to be who they are because they're afraid that if they're really who they are that they won't be accepted so of course you know it took some time to find friends that had some kind of similar ideas to me so those I think are kind of some of the things that shaped me you know nature just exploring and reading and I was a really avid reader when I was a kid I could get lost in a book and that was good for me I really liked that and I just I don't know I was kind of one of those people who just walked to the beat of their own drum so to speak and I didn't care I really didn't I really felt like you know I am a long-term thinker that is what I've realized about myself and I was doing that as a young child I just thought I don't want to do what my friends are doing because that just doesn't look like it's going to amount to anything positive I just wanted to say that I didn't do things that kids and teenagers do but I really was kind of careful about what I did I didn't want to ruin my body or my mind and so I don't I don't know I just kept all that in mind and then people in my life I've had some teachers in my life that encouraged me English teachers I think had a big impact on my life and also some environmental studies people I had some environmental studies classes in high school and they looking back I can tell that they knew that I had a career that I had a kind of a knack for learning some of these things and then certainly in college I had a mentor her name is Lisa Theo and she's at Steven's point right now and she just took me under her wing and got me into research and leadership things and you know really got me signed up for stuff she really helped me understand what my potential was and so that you know people listening I think that's huge for kids and teenagers these days is to know what their potential is and to let them understand where their strengths are because I didn't know what my strengths were I like I have said before I just thought I was everybody was like I was in some ways wow what an adventure I love traveling the spiritual path with people I have my own experience I grew up Catholic and by the time I was in my later Catholic years that is to say towards 18 I was very clear that it wasn't the spiritual home for me although it was a particularly fruitful place for me to be and I really enjoyed my Catholic background but then I had to go through my own search through the wide garden of the world and find where I could fit the best so I really respect people who actually do that maybe some people are always planted in the right ground for them I tend to think that maybe the grass is green or at least maybe the tandelions or the alfalfa or whatever it's a greener on the other side but let's come back to your work and particular full circle you talk on your website full circle herbals.com you talk about some of the services you provide one of them is you can provide consultations another thing is you can help with plant identification people can know the riches that they're living in the midst of on their property a lot of us have such shallow knowledge about that and then you sell slippery own gruel mixture and I'm wondering why slippery I mean of all the things you could have chosen and maybe that just happens to be the one thing that's on the website. That is just the one thing that's on the website I do make products and that's not my strong suit right now because there's so many regulations that are involved with trying to get things certified kitchens commercial kitchens to make sure things are done so things are just made in my kitchen right now and I am still kind of unsure whether that's okay to do in the whole regulations realm but I just put slippery on gruel on there because I wrote a blog about really short blog about how you can help your digestion using herbs and I have a little recipe that I put on there and I just thought oh maybe people probably don't necessarily want to go make this themselves so I could make some for them. It's just the only one I have up there right now and you know it's the websites always in the making and for those of you out there who know websites are a lot of work and time. They seem really easy but they just take a lot of time. So slippery on gruel in particular how does one use this? Is this a replacement for oatmeal or is it an addition that you add to whatever you're cooking? It can be made into like a tea which is not necessarily something you drink because part of the ingredients is one of the herbs slippery elm and marshmallow root which can be kind of mucilaginous. So it's just really thick and it's not something that most people want to put in their mouths to tell you the truth so I mix it in oatmeal because it's just all the textures together and I know some people out there thinking I can't even get oatmeal down my throat. So actually I just use it in its powder form sometimes too and I just sprinkle it on my oatmeal is what I use it on because I think the flavors go well together but you could add it to anything and it's just a real suitor of the digestive track and I give it to my kids too so it's real gentle. And if I can ask Aaron how old are your kids that they're still willing to eat slippery elm gruel? They don't know that it's in their oatmeal and they are seven and almost three and you know I don't put a lot of it in there just so they don't taste it. It doesn't have a bad taste but you know with kids especially my kids if they taste anything slightly different they're just like what are we eating here and so I just put it in quietly and don't let them see it and like I said it just mixes well with the flavors of oatmeal if you're adding. Usually I'd like brown sugar or honey and some cinnamon to it and it works just fine. Well let's do a little bit more consultation about herbs because again American knowledge about such things is so shallow whereas really a hundred years ago people knew to grab herbs from their environment. They didn't have to grow everything they recognized they could take the stinging nettles and they recognized that you can grab the ramps that are growing here and so on. A lot of people a hundred years ago did not know about acorns like Sam Thayer educated me about and by the way you should try my wild rice acorn burgers they're excellent. So what other herbs in our environment have particular value that you know about that you know why don't we just use this one that's right next door. Yeah so I've already talked about the nettles and the dandelions there's something in our gardens or lawns even called Perslane and it grows nationwide and that is high in omega threes really high in omega threes which is something we think of in fish you know in animal meat. It's in plants too and that can be cooked it can be added to salads so we can add it to it and people think well I don't know if I can eat a lot of it and you're right you just you're adding these things little bits to your daily meat. It's free vitamins and nutrients that you don't have to buy it you can just go out and get them. The dandelions are kind of bitter and which is good for our digestive system most of people in general you know in America bitter is not a flavor we're accustomed to but in other cultures it's very prevalent in their diet and bitters help with digestion. And like I've said with the nettles they're just packed with iron and magnesium and things like that. Some of the other things that are out there that people can use on their own right now I'm looking out the window and I see white pine and those needles can be used to make a tea and they have things that will help you during a cold and it makes a really fun tea that kind of turns pink you don't think of something like that turning pink. The thing with dandelions too is you can eat the whole thing even the ruts people that came over to America from Europe they brought that dandelion over to because the rut when you dry it it is like a kind of a coffee substitute is what we say it doesn't have the caffeine in it but it has that kind of bitter robust flavor to it that you would get out of a like a flavor out of a coffee that we were used to accustomed to and in the morning and so that's good for your digestion too. And then there's the burdock root that is really good can be cooked raw or it can be dried again and used for digestion too it's known for. And just the caution to say out there be 100% sure of what you're picking out there too. You know I'm saying burdock and that might give you a picture in your mind of a plant that you think is burdock but really isn't burdock. But maybe you were just kind of taught to use that name common names are kind of tricky sometimes because like I'm saying is burdock for one person can be a totally different plant for another person. So before you go start digging things up and collecting things just make sure you know what you're collecting. There's certainly a lot of berries out there that people think are just ornamental plants like a nanny berry it's a viburnum. People think that it's just an ornamental plant but you can actually eat it and it's pretty good actually. And so Aaron if we can't identify these things should we go to the county extension and say is there someone in the area of horticulture who could help me identify these plants. Or do they have to come to you when you're in your altar ego as full circle herbals. No as an extension agent I do a lot of plant identification so I certainly will teach people how to identify anything if they say what does burdock look like I can walk them through that process. And I'll even tell them what is edible like foods you know edible plants I've taught people that through my extension roll too. I just not going to go into medicinal qualities of things per se you know I even give you as an extension like I said before I can give you some nutrient information too and things. Well it's been delightful to get to know you even though we've been in Eau Claire and I've certainly known of you for years. I haven't had the pleasure of your company yet before and so this has really been a wonderful conversation for me. I know we've only scratched the surface. People can go to full circle herbals.com to catch up with you more and to have a consultation or identification or help point them to some good products. They can go to Eau Claire county extension if they happen to be in this region. But there's extensions throughout the nation and it's a valuable resource for everybody throughout our nation to be able to deal better with the food and what nature has already provided us or maybe what we're trying to cultivate. Again my guest has been Aaron Leveve. You'll find a link to her on north spirit radio org. You'll find her a person who will be helpful in listening and in sharing deep knowledge if you can get ahold of her. So thanks so much Aaron for joining me today for spirit in action. Thank you for having me. This has been a wonderful conversation and I hope your listeners enjoyed it. The theme music for this program is turning of the world performed by Sarah Thompson. This spirit in action program is an effort of Northern spirit radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host Mark Helpsmeet and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is spirit in action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along and our lives will feel the echo of our healing. (upbeat music)