Day 1 PREMIERE: Nervines for Calm & Uplift + Restorative Builders | Plant Path Immersion – Transcript

12:16My name is Vai Herald. I am a postpartum doula and folk herbalist. My name is Grace and I'm the owner of Gunk in the Woods. Hi, I'm Hima. I'm a folk herbalist and founder of Balcony Care. I have an online business and an in-person business and I have been using the herbarium for a little over 6 years I think as a teacher and even before then as a student and the herbarium has been one of my go-to resources for so many

12:43years. Not only is it reliable and trustworthy, but it's also just filled with so much good information. Being in the barium has been a very accessible resource for me. I love exploring different aspects of herbalism and because my interests are always evolving. Having an allencompassing uh library at my fingertips has been extremely valuable. One of the ways that I use the ararium is the intensives.

13:10Last year I just completed the postpartum intensive and it was such a really good refresher for me and my work as a doula in my community. I also just love it because I can't take my library with me whenever I'm out in the woods.

13:25And the aquarium allows me to research and figure out the plants that have piqued my interest in the woods and how I might be able to incorporate them into my everyday life. uh whether I'm exploring a new topic of herbalism through an intensive or looking up a monograph for plants I'm working with uh the herbarium gives me the flexibility uh to learn to explore at my own pace and yeah I never want to be without the ability

14:29Marshmallow whose binomial is ala a fishalis is a perennial herb belonging to the malvesier family. This plant shares its name with a popular confection marshmallow as the original candy was created from its powdered roots. Marshmallow thrives in Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America. Growing up to 7 feet tall, it features thick downy soft green leaves and an ovate to

14:56heart-shaped leaf with tooththed margins.

30:01Hello. Welcome to our first plant immersion or deep dive into plants. I really hope that you were able to make it to our first sessions of the day. I'm Pamela Spence. I'm your host. I'm a lead herbalist educator at Herbal Academy.

30:19I'm a medical herbalist of 20 years, an author, and a longtime contributor to the herbarium as well. As you know, today's theme is the nervous system and resilience. So, we live in a fastm moving world with lots coming at us all of the time. We have pressures from all angles coming to us. It might be work.

30:43It might be family. It might be the adverts on the telly. It might be trying to keep up with what everyone round about you is able to do or seemingly able to do. And our nervous system is at the front lines of this experience. So, how do we support it? How do we build resilience so that we can respond and not always be reacting and not burn ourselves out in the process? So, we are

31:09exploring ways that we can support ourselves with herbs that do just that. And in this session, we'll be talking about nervines. Some of you will say nervines. If you haven't come across the term before, a nervine is simply the name for a herb that supports our nervous system. So, we might reach for these herbs if we're getting through,

31:34you know, a time of stress or if we're noticing things like maybe some anxiety rising up, some disturbed sleep patterns, some disturbed digestion perhaps, or just whatever it is that happens to you when life feels a bit overwhelming.

31:53So, here are the deep dives in this session. Today we're going to have an introduction to Skull Cap by Lisa Olsen. So Lisa is a clinical herbalist and course development director at Herbal Academy and she often contributes to the herbarium as well. So she'll be inviting you to her garden to talk about how she uses SkullCap for calming anxiety and

32:19overwhelm and supporting the nervous system as a whole. And then we'll have lemon balm presented by Sarah Woo. Sarah Woo is a longtime contributor to the herbarium, a herbal educator and a permaculture gardener passionate about regenerative practices.

32:40Passionate about lemon balam as well. She'll be uh talking about growing lemon balm and sharing its many uses including for emotional uplift, for easing anxiety, for building up the nervous system, and also for cultivating focus, which is something we don't always think about when we talk about calming the nervous system down. We also often need

33:05to cultivate some focus in there. So, I really encourage you to take as many notes as you can as you listen in your plant path immersion workbook or maybe in a notebook. Perhaps later you can choose uh one of these herbs to experience through your own senses like Lindsay discussed in the last session.

33:27So, make sure to activate your free 3-day trial membership to the Herbarium if you haven't already, so that you can see these monographs in real time as we learn together. It really helps to have all the resources in front of you so that you can make the most of this free 3-day trial experience. Check your email for instructions or see the chat if you're not sure how to do that and someone will be able to help you. Let's

33:54start to build your materiamemedica together. >> Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us. I'm so excited to be here with you today sharing about SkullCap. Um feel free to pop into the chat and let us know who you are, um where you're watching from today. My name is Lisa Olsen. I'm a clinical herbalist and the course development director here at Herbal Academy. So excited to share

34:22about one of my favorite plants, skull cap. Um, and you know, like any plant, skull cap has a very wide variety of uses, lots of different ways to use it. Um, but today we're going to focus on its effect on the nervous system, specifically for calming anxiety and overwhelm, which I'm really grateful for skull cap for helping with because who doesn't need that right now, right? Um,

34:49so we're going to start this session by talking about the plant itself. You know, what it looks like, where it grows, and then we'll move into how it's harvested and prepared. And then we'll talk about more about the experience of skull cap, its energetics, its flavor, its actions, and its uses. And then we'll end today's session with a quick note on safety. So, if you're filling in

35:15a plant path immersion workbook, you can follow along and fill that in as we chat. Um, so I'm here in Vermont in my herb garden in front of a small patch of skull cap. I think you can see it. Um, it's a very short uh plant. It never gets to be above maybe 18 inches in my garden. So, you can feel free to look at the echgonatia instead behind me. Skull

35:39cap is kind of a nondescript plant. Um, but it is cute. I have some here. We'll talk a little bit more about what it looks like in a minute. Um, but I'm hoping that by sitting next to the skull cap here, I'll sort of be able to tap into the special plant a little more as I'm chatting and sharing with you. And I am here. I'm sure you will see my cats.

35:59They're around me. Um, they don't like to be excluded from anything, so you'll probably see them, too. Um so the the species of skull cap that we most commonly use as a cal calming nervine in herbal practice is scutilaria lateral flora um which is the species that I have here. There are several other um types of skull cap closely

36:26related skull cap that are used this way as a calming nervine. Um, where I live in Vermont, we have a few scootilaria species that grow wild um, including this species scutilaria lateral flora and we also have the common um, it's also called marsh skull cap scalaria gallericulada um, growing wild and some others that are less common. And um, though I have found these when I've been, you know, out and about hiking and such. Actually,

36:54I usually find them when I'm in a canoe because they like to grow near water. I never see them in great abundance. Um, so I never harvest from the wild. Um, it might be different where you live, but that's the case here. So I always prefer to grow my own skull cap. And the species I grow is the scutilaria lateral flora. And um, note that this group of skull caps shouldn't be confused with bicol skull cap. Scootilaria bicolencis.

37:21um that is another commonly used herb in herbal practice, but it has more of an affinity for the immune system. Um typically used for inflammation, infection, although some herbalists do think it has a bit of a nerving action as well, but that's not the plant we're talking about today. So I'll primarily be talking about scuttileria lateral flora simply referred to as skull cap or sometimes mad dog skull cap because uh

37:48this plant was historically used for rabies which is interesting. Um so scootilaria latter of flora. It's in the lame acce or the mint family and um like most mint family plants it has these I don't know if you can see it but it has these square stems. Um, so when you think of a plant stem, you usually think about like being able to roll it in your hand because it's smooth and round, but that's not the case with many mint family plants, including skullcap. So it

38:15has these square stems. Um, it has opposite leaves, so the leaves grow opposite each other along the stem. And um, you can't see it here, but maybe you can see it back here. It branches quite a bit. Um, and it has these reims just starting here. this group of flowers that are kind of a purplish blue color. And like I said, it doesn't get much taller than

38:4118 in, maybe 2 feet. Um, especially in the garden. Uh, and if you are growing it in the garden, it likes a pretty cushy garden bed. You know, a lot of herbs we say can get by with like a lot of neglect, right? But skull cap likes to be watered a lot and fed regularly.

39:00And um although I had a very busy spring and did not compost this bed like I usually do in the spring and you know it's doing okay, but it's definitely not the most vibrant I've seen it. I'll still be able to get a good harvest out of it, but um don't want to do that two uh years in a row. Um so when it comes to harvesting, I harvest the flowering tops once the plant starts to flower. So this would be a good stage to harvest.

39:27And I'll maybe cut the top three inches or so. And I always either prepare skull cap as a tincture or a glycerate because I find that the plant the fresh plant preparations are really a lot more effective than the dried plant preparations. I found that when I've tried to use dried skull cap in a tea for myself or for a client, it really doesn't have as pronounced an anxolytic effect. Um, like I said, and we'll talk