Podcast: The Revelation Project Podcast Episode Title: Judith Berger: THerbal Rituals and the Rapture of Nature Host(s): Monica Guest(s): Judith ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Monica (Host) | 00:00:03 to 00:00:23 Welcome to the Revelation Project podcast. I'm Monica Rogers, and this podcast is intended to disrupt the trance of unworthiness and to guide women to remember and reveal the truth of who we are. We say that life is a Revelation project, and what gets revealed gets healed. Monica (Host) | 00:00:25 to 00:01:08 Hello, dear listener. Welcome to another episode. This one's on herbalism, the importance of rituals and the rapture of being human. Today, I'm with the wise and wonderful Judith Berger, and we cover so many gorgeous things in this episode. So I can't wait to share. But before I introduce her, I have a few announcements. First of all, as many of you may notice by the number on this episode, I'm dangerously close to crossing the threshold of almost 180 episodes. And I'm so grateful. I mean, this is amazing to me, as most of, you know, I take the summer off. So the episodes you've been listening to were prerecorded so that you could continue to enjoy them uninterrupted throughout your own summer. I myself am looking forward to beginning a brand new season after I return home from my pilgrimage to Greece, the original home of the goddess. Where I'll be exploring many sacred sites with my favorite travel companion, the corkler, just kidding, Monette and 20 other wise women. So this is going to be an epic pilgrimage. I can't wait to share more when I return. In the meantime, I have three more announcements. Thank you so much for your patience here, but you're going to love these announcements. I brag. So the first one is if you haven't yet joined my giveaway, I really hope you do. The reason why I'm so excited about this is because I'm inviting you to join me in the spirit of reciprocity and generosity. These are two subjects that are near and dear to my heart. The indigenous people have, it's almost like the spirit of the giveaway, right? It's like an entity in itself. And it's all about selfless giving and being unattached. And so the opportunity here is to win an incredible array of curated books and gifts that honor the feminine and journey of self-discovery. If you win, you have the opportunity to receive the gift to choose someone else that you want to give the gift to, even if they're not on our mailing list, our emailing list, they don't even have to be part of the giveaway. You can choose someone and just tell us to send them the gift. You can even put in a personal note. As long as you live in the US. And actually, even if you don't live in the U.S. but want to choose someone in the U.S. as the recipient, you can do this. So this can either be yourself or someone else. If you don't live in the U. S. and you win, you can gift someone in the U. S. and you yourself will win a digital gift. So there's so many great reasons to join this and there's more details on the giveaway page, which you can find in the link in the show notes. My second announcement is to urge you all to check out a sister podcast called Home to Her. Home to Her is a podcast that's hosted by a dear friend and colleague of mine. Liz Kelly. Liz is an incredible ally to me and to so many women around the world. She hosts gorgeous interviews and has incredible guests, and her focus is primarily on the sacred feminine. And I'm just celebrating the fact that she's starting a brand new venture called Home to Her Academy. It's an online school for seekers of sacred feminine wisdom. And as I say this, I'm feeling such a surge of gratitude and reverence for the many women in my life who've dedicated their work to bringing the sacred back to the world. By amplifying the values of feminine wisdom in all of her forms and in assisting to harmonize and integrate with the energies of the sacred masculine toward a more sane, humane and sustainable world for all of us, a world of equity, compassion, and love. I'm wishing you so much luck with this venture, Liz, truly. It's going to be amazing. My third and final announcement is to let you know that Libby Bunten and myself are going to be offering another round of the Unbecoming Sisterhood Circle this coming November, beginning on November 7th. Last year's Sisterhood Circle was a smashing success. And if you're new to group coaching, it's an incredible opportunity to be in community with other women who are doing the inner work of untangling from disempowering patriarchal patterns. This work has an incredible impact on the women who participate because we expose the lies that hold so many women hostage while dissolving layers of toxic social conditioning. In it, we explore, develop, and remember the authentic self. It's really about reclaiming your voice, your body, mind, and spirit through the teachings, tools, and practices of what we call embodied feminine leadership. And it's really for any woman listening who knows that there's more to life than constantly feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, anxious, and even despair. If you're interested, feel free to learn more by jumping on the wait list or getting yourself on the newsletter. You're sure to learn more about when we launch our enrollment, which will happen sometime late September. You want to go to this link, https://signup.jointherevelation.com/unbecoming I'll say it again. It's https://signup.jointherevelation.com/unbecoming . Okay. Now to the main show, Judith Berger is revered in the world as one of the great herbalists. She is the author of herbal rituals, also known as the Bible to herbalists around the world. She is a poet, a writer, and physician's assistant. She was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, and her earliest contact with nature was through the prism of fairy tales, the wilds of her father's backyard garden and the door, dark corridors of the local plant nursery, where she first cherished the scent of soil in Ithaca, Ithaca. She, where she went to university, she experienced her first encounters with the forest that would eventually lead her to study, teach, and write about medicinal plants over the years. She's ventured deeper and deeper into the woods, spending much of her free time, backpacking in the Catskills and in the Adirondacks and studying animal tracking, I love that mushroom identification, and she continues to harvest. Plant and mushroom medicine for her clients, family, and community, and to write about her encounters with the natural world, she loves to talk about how to deepen our relationship with the natural world and how to retain soulfulness in a world so devoted to speed and productivity, please join me in welcoming her. Hi, Judith. Judith (Guest) | Hi there. Monica (Host) | It's so great to have you on the show, and so nice to be yay yay. Of course, I want to first get curious. Monica (Host) | 00:02:16 to 00:02:51 I love how you said the scent of there's. I think about as a writer, even describing that smell. And as a poet, I'm going to hand that right off to you and say, how would you describe the smell of soil? Well, I'm going to go back into that memory, which was very special because the trees that were in the nursery, the baby trees, were all wrapped in burlap. Their roots were all wrapped in burlap, and they were kept in the dark. Judith (Guest) | 00:02:51 to 00:03:45 There was very dim lighting in this part of the nursery, and the ground was just soft beneath my feet, and I wasn't used to that growing up in Brooklyn. It was more just the linear cement surfaces. So I loved running back and forth with the give that was underneath my feet, as if the earth was receiving my body weight, and then my footfall would actually disturb or ignite is probably a better word. The scent coming up from the soil itself, and it was just very wet, minerally and very intoxicating. It made me want to breathe much more deeply than I usually did. Judith (Guest) | 00:03:45 to 00:05:01 Yeah, and it also felt the way some people might feel when they walk into Holy place where the air is perfumed. But the incense in this case was the actual soil and whatever volatile oils were coming off of the needles of the conifers that were in the room there. I love that it's actually bringing me back to Scotland where I was in September because we tend to kind of, I think, notice those smells in those unfamiliar places where we're kind of taken out of our everyday environment and as you were saying, was different from the concrete places in Brooklyn and so it activated your noticing. And there's this wonder, I think that begins to kind of have its way with us when we go to those places. They become these liminal places where we are able to intuit a different understanding not only of ourselves but our interrelatedness to whatever it is we're interacting with. Judith (Guest) | 00:05:01 to 00:05:38 Yeah. I think there's a mutual sense of welcome so that the sense and the nature are just there isn't anything that has to come up to block or interfere with the signals coming through all the senses from a natural environment. And I think, conversely, we are welcomed into that environment by those beings, whether it's tree beings or creatures or moth, whatever. Mushrooms. Yes. Monica (Host) | 00:05:38 to 00:06:30 And I love that right off the bat, I'm almost getting this visual of two different worlds but where they also intersect because, of course, there is that separation, I think, for many of us of what I would call the modern world and the natural world. And more and more of us are realizing how important it is to actually find and create the intersection and the intersectionality in all of our remembering work as we come back to it's. Like if the pendulum of our evolution has been swinging in one direction. I think we're trying to really find this harmonic balance now. And I love that you even pointed to it as I was introducing you. Monica (Host) | 00:06:30 to 00:07:13 It's like, how do we maintain our relationships to what is natural, what is important, what is inherent in such a fast paced world? Yeah. And the image that comes to mind when you say that is a feather. So what I mean by that is sometimes we need little totems or symbols to help us recall. And for me, I have quite a lot of things, actually around my home that I've taken from my walks in the woods. Judith (Guest) | 00:07:13 to 00:07:27 It could be a stone. Feathers I don't really take anymore because the cat skills, at least, are protected. And so you're supposed to leave feathers. But I have had feathers. And I had recently read is it called Where the Crawdads Thing? Judith (Guest) | 00:07:27 to 00:08:04 Yes, that book. And there's a lot of feather communication going on. There is. And that's what came to mind in that it just has to be unique to you, individual to you, in a way. You're trying to keep a portal open when you're not actually in the nature, because, sadly, that's the way things are these days, that there's a separateness that I think isn't natural. Monica (Host) | 00:08:04 to 00:08:36 Yes. To us. And so in trying to one, we have to go out into those places. Those places need us as much as we need them. I know when I first became an herbalist and I wrote herbal rituals, the reason that I wrote the book was because I thought if people went out to go gather plant medicine, they would form a sense of caring for the earth that wasn't abstract. Judith (Guest) | 00:08:36 to 00:09:35 So not a kind of save the environment that was just cerebral, but one that came out of love and intimacy. And as I've gotten older, I realized it doesn't just have to be through herbal medicine that you could create that care. But I think having those little keepsakes is important, as well as going out over and over again and finding a place. I think a lot of people actually do these things, and then there's people who have absolutely no relationship whatsoever to anything that is green. Yeah, well, and it sounds like as a kid growing up in brooklyn, you had this opportunity to connect at an early age and to have it really call to you. Monica (Host) | 00:09:35 to 00:10:02 And so I'd love to hear a little bit more about what that journey has been for you. And also just to kind of let my listeners in on the fact that what you told me earlier, which is you still have this relationship where you go back to Brooklyn and then back to the Cat skills and then back to Brooklyn and then back to the catskills. You said, what, every other week? Oh, no, every every week. Okay. Monica (Host) | 00:10:03 to 00:10:26 So it's really amazing in that way that it continued to kind of be that rhythm where you kind of are back in nature, back in the concrete city. Back in nature. Back in the concrete city. Tell me more. Well, in response to the first part, when I was younger, I would say I was definitely a tree girl. Judith (Guest) | 00:10:27 to 00:10:58 I just always experienced the trees as beings that were sentient alive. Reading fairy tales or things about dryads probably increased it, but I was already there. It wasn't like I needed to be convinced. And in the area of brooklyn where I lived, everybody had a front yard, everybody had a backyard. There was a lot of trees around, so it wasn't quite like the suburbs. Judith (Guest) | 00:10:59 to 00:11:42 There weren't like, huge tracks with forest in between each house or anything like that, but the front of every house had a tree, and people tended to plant one or two of them in the back as well. And so those were the trees that I got to know. I wasn't really allowed to venture all that far on my own, but I was left alone enough to go and spend hours. I remember that bruce next door, and it had a very thick canopy and then the earth underneath it was just brown and strewn with whatever the cones were. And I would sit under there for hours knowing nobody could find me. Judith (Guest) | 00:11:42 to 00:12:20 And I really was hoping for contact, to hear, to see, to have a very real experience of what I would read about in the fairy tales. I was waiting for a spirit to come out and talk to me or something like that. And that didn't happen then, but I didn't mind. But that was definitely I had my own alternative universe that was happening for me. Yeah, very different than how I had to spend my day growing up in an Orthodox Jewish family. Judith (Guest) | 00:12:20 to 00:13:03 I went to a yeshiva, so we studied Hebrew subjects for the first half of the day and then English was in the afternoon. But I will say that there's a fair bit of magic and myth in those stories, even though there's a tremendous amount of patriarchy and misogyny and all sorts of stuff we all know and don't like. But nonetheless, I was definitely primed for a sense of magic being perfectly within the bounds. Magic and miracle were definitely in the realm of possibility and in my mind, in my consciousness. And that only got stronger once. Judith (Guest) | 00:13:03 to 00:13:25 I fell in love with the Greek myths when I was about eight. Oh, yes. The Greek myths. And I had a different experience, but also similar. I would say that I had an early super active imagination and very, very intimately connected to nature. Monica (Host) | 00:13:25 to 00:14:03 I think so many kids in our generations where so much of our days were come home when the streetlights come on, or for some of us I know you were in a city, it was a little bit different, but there were so many of us who just were outside most of the time. Especially, of course, in the summertime other than the school days where we were inside. And I see that less and less. Like, our neighborhood is very quiet. I know that there are children here, but most of them are inside with screens. Monica (Host) | 00:14:03 to 00:14:55 You don't see gangs of kids on bikes, you don't see groups of children laughing and playing basketball or things like that very often anymore. So there's a grieving that I feel, knowing the importance of it as I get back to imagination, but also really recognizing separation as I'm playing with this idea of separation as a necessary part of coming back into wholeness. Because without that polarity, we don't understand our whole journey, let me put it that way. So I try not to get too upset about it and just to kind of the way our parents used to be, like those kids, the music they listen to today. Monica (Host) | 00:14:57 to 00:15:32 Like looking at the world and having my own kind of cynical way of looking at the world. But then also just remembering that the world and life is trustworthy. And if the journey is about everybody coming to consciousness that I don't need to do their revelation project for them, and I don't need to worry on behalf of parents everywhere or do any of that stuff. But I do notice it of the quietness of our neighborhood and think about back when we were kids and how much that was everywhere. Kids, packs of kids running everywhere. Monica (Host) | 00:15:32 to 00:15:59 Kids in nature. Yeah. I mean, I had it in a limited way, but I also remember very much so that it stopped because schooling and good grades really were very important in my family, and playing was not. So the outdoors really went underground for me until I went to Cornell. Ithaca was just this incredible place for me. Judith (Guest) | 00:15:59 to 00:16:40 I remember when I was there, the classes were on top of a hill. All the buildings were very old, and I loved that. But I also loved that all I could see in the horizon was the sky and the clouds. There were no tall buildings at the time there, and the air was fresh, and you could feel the slow change from day to night. You could actually participate in it by observing it and sensing it and moving with it in a way that was just not possible in New York when I was growing up. Judith (Guest) | 00:16:40 to 00:17:19 Once I had all these responsibilities. I mean, I think when I was very young, I often watched twilight, dusk and the way the treetops, the branches stood out when the light would change. But to get that back again, that brought me full circle, and I was able to very much deepen my connection with nature. Or maybe it was even a much bigger introduction, because there was a lot of forest there, and there were waterfalls and many places to go and be outside. I didn't really have any desire to come back to the city at all while I was there. Monica (Host) | 00:17:21 to 00:17:42 Yeah, you just allowed yourself to immerse in it. Yeah. And I think we were talking before about being embodied. And I think, for me, that time, being in college was a very embodying time, like resting, being able to rest in my physical body for a variety of reasons. There were certain pressures that weren't there anymore. Judith (Guest) | 00:17:43 to 00:18:17 I was surrounded by a lot of like minded people. There was a real richness to what was going on in my thinking, and I was being fed on a lot of levels. And I think when you're fed that, naturally, you can kind of come back into your body. And so then nature just it was like a natural channel that happened that I feel really grateful for because it really shaped my life well. And that's where I would love to actually dive more deeply. Monica (Host) | 00:18:17 to 00:19:26 Let's go more deeply into that embodiment conversation that we were kind of surfing over as we were visiting before the call, because I get curious about growing up girl in a house full of boys in also a religious household. And in a city. And then I know that you're someone who really is very sensitive. Yes, very sensual and also very I have to tell you, the poets in my life are some of the most deeply sensitive people. It's like they have this incredible ability to not only feel into many different energies at the same time, but also put language around it, which I find fascinating because poetry is one of those places that I just find magical, actually. Monica (Host) | 00:19:27 to 00:20:02 I find that people who can articulate and create from that liminal space that is so hard to catch. I find that that can be incredibly intoxicating. As a reader, as a lover of poetry, it really has this ability to stir and move me in a way other writing does not. I want to offer any place that you want to talk about just how did you develop that aspect of yourself? How did you come back into your body and did you ever leave it? Monica (Host) | 00:20:02 to 00:20:34 What was it like? I would say that I left it rather young because there was a lot of strife in the household when your nervous system, in this case mine, yelling, things like that, weren't going to help me settle or feel safe. Did I know I was disconnected from my body? Not really. I would say it was more that I didn't know how connected I could be when I got to college. Judith (Guest) | 00:20:34 to 00:20:58 And there was the absence of those stressors, even though there were other stressors. But generally in college, it's all about the body for quite a few people. And I remember specifically it was skinny dipping. I had this friend who was two years older than me. I can only tell you that I was so nervous to go skinny dipping. Judith (Guest) | 00:20:58 to 00:21:18 But at that time, growing up in an Orthodox family, I felt like I had missed so much because you're kept away from a lot of the world. And so here I was, like, in the world, and you go a little feral in a way, but I was very safely feral because that was just me. Judith (Guest) | 00:21:20 to 00:22:09 But I remember going skinny dipping and how after the initial thing, it was really comfortable and wonderful to feel the sun on my skin and the water directly next to my skin. And then it was like a three mile walk back from this particular swimming hole, back to where I lived. And so I would walk there and I would walk back in the summer. These were not things I'd ever done before. And so I literally felt like I was vibrating with just what a body could feel in all my senses, just even walking through the woods after being sort of made new by the water or warmed so deeply by the sun. Judith (Guest) | 00:22:10 to 00:22:36 And I did find it very difficult to come back to New York City after. Very, very difficult. And I arranged to leave the following year. I had a medical experience that I felt was very violating. And because of that and females were treated very differently. Judith (Guest) | 00:22:36 to 00:23:04 We're talking about the mid 80s. Things have changed a lot since then. But at the time, I made a decision right after that experience that I was going to take care of my own health, that I was going to separate myself from the medical anything. And that eventually led me toward herbal medicine, like about a year later. And at the same time, I started studying yoga. Judith (Guest) | 00:23:04 to 00:23:31 And that I would say at the time, the yoga was very different. It hadn't replaced running as this like the new thing. It wasn't so strivy, it wasn't so pushy. And the yoga, I felt a lot of rapture in my body. You would do a pose and then you would rest in between each pose. Judith (Guest) | 00:23:31 to 00:24:08 Nobody does that now, but you would do a pose and you would rest. Do a pose and rest. And that oscillation seemed like a very natural rhythm and really did open up. I know you're aware of chakras and things like that, but it opened up something in a lot of different areas in the body so that I felt fully not only embodied, but connected to the atmosphere. I love that you used the word rapture because I think it's such a beautiful word and I think it's such a specific word. Monica (Host) | 00:24:09 to 00:24:40 What does that word mean to you to mean? That means the potential of experiencing a pleasure that has no bounds. Yeah. So it isn't like a pleasure that comes and goes. I think it's what happens when you can feel fully free in your senses, which has a lot to do with feeling safe. Judith (Guest) | 00:24:40 to 00:25:18 Like, you wouldn't be able to feel rapture unless you felt safe. So one needs to be in a safe environment to experience that. And I felt it so many times. It was why I kept doing yoga, was because it felt so good in my body that I got to feel just what a body could feel in the way of something pleasurable. But more than that, there was a sense of it being connected to something, some other kind of force. Judith (Guest) | 00:25:19 to 00:25:49 And when I studied medicine when you study medicine, you don't study anything about health. You only study disease. So basically you're learning like hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of diseases one after another. And I could feel how that could impact my spirit a lot. I felt very sorry for the medical people who had never had any experience of rapture, because for me, it was like a spectrum. Judith (Guest) | 00:25:49 to 00:26:18 And so in medicine, you went from neutral to terrible. Yeah. And in yoga, you went from neutral to rapture. You're right on completely opposite ends of the spectrum. But as a medical practitioner, I don't know how you could live without rapture, because there's a huge impact on the spirit to just the way it's set up that you see one patient after another who's coming with a problem one after another, like, all day long. Judith (Guest) | 00:26:19 to 00:26:57 How can a person survive that if they don't have some sort of sense of rapture? When I see people as an herbalist, I always feel that the plants are a form of rapture and wholeness that also protect me when I'm dealing with somebody else's intense lack of health. And in the medical field, there isn't that kind of safety. There isn't a safety for it. So I remember when I was first studying, I felt really sad for people who didn't have that relationship with rapture. Judith (Guest) | 00:26:58 to 00:27:38 And now I feel it's important for me to impart to anybody that I work with, if that's not present in their life, how might they take baby steps toward that? One thing I like about where the crawdad thing was, she experiences just heartbreaking, loneliness, and yearning. And she also experiences this tremendous rapture in her relationship to creatures and nature. Yes, I related a lot. I bet you did. Monica (Host) | 00:27:38 to 00:28:48 Yeah, it was such a beautiful story, and I read the book and watched the movie, and I thought they did a pretty good job in the movie. To tell you the truth, I don't always feel that way, but I felt like they did a pretty good job. I want to go back to the medical experience, not the experience itself, but that led you down the path to herbalism. And just underscore that, although I didn't become an herbalist, what I did do was have an experience as well, where I just repeatedly felt deeply unseen and unheard with general practitioners and specialists and back to the separation from nature or what is natural. Just really noticing the fragmentation and the disassociation in the medical community around, oh, no, I'm a kidney specialist. Monica (Host) | 00:28:48 to 00:29:17 I don't know anything about any other organ. Right. That our bodies are this system of intelligence and interconnectedness. And back to kind of what you were pointing to with the rapture and the nervous system and the connection all of that has to our health and our well being. Yes. Judith (Guest) | 00:29:18 to 00:29:58 I think one of the things that when I first studied herbalism and I was studying in the wise woman tradition of herbalism is what it was called, which is very much based in nourishment. Nourishing herbs, nourishing foods. And one of the ways they looked at the illness was looked at was that your body had some sort of message for you. And I think one could get very heady about that, like, maybe too much in the head. But I do think that there is a kind of primal responsiveness in the body, even if the responsiveness is for the body to be ill. Judith (Guest) | 00:29:59 to 00:30:47 And I think the language in the medical field doesn't really make much room for that. And it may arise from we live in a time period where people live a very long time. But 100 years ago or so, there were so many orphan children, so many babies who would die young, so many people who didn't live long. And maybe that's what gave rise to the way medicine became what it is today. But certainly other systems, for example, five element acupuncture, there's a poetry involved in the way the body is seen and the natural connection. Judith (Guest) | 00:30:47 to 00:30:54 Like its seasons, the seasons are connected to an organ and a time of the year. Judith (Guest) | 00:30:58 to 00:31:23 I think in the body there's connections similar to the way that it's discovered, the way mycelium help, the trees, they are all connected. They can communicate with one another. So I think mucous membranes, for example, are connected throughout the whole body. Maybe it's just an intelligence we can't measure in any way so we can't see it. It's not measurable. Judith (Guest) | 00:31:23 to 00:31:45 We don't think it exists. If we're coming from a medical standpoint, we might be able to use some of our senses, if we work with our senses deeply and be able to somehow sense those connections. But that would be a very subjective thing. A lot of self trust, a lot of self trust. Then some people might use intuition. Judith (Guest) | 00:31:45 to 00:32:20 These are all fine ways. I think our bodies just really appreciate the real attempt to tune in in some way and see what's happening. Because sometimes it isn't even an adjustment that's needed, it's an awareness. Oh, yes, I feel really sad about that thing that happened. And because one didn't make any time or feel safe enough to feel the sadness, it got stuck in a certain part of the body for a while. Judith (Guest) | 00:32:22 to 00:33:09 But the medical field, that's not part of that language at all. Very linear. As an herbalist, I'm just wanting to get curious too and bring our listeners more into this conversation, because it did lead me, my experience did lead me also to a path of really getting more curious about the use of what now cracks me up as alternative. Because to me, it's now my mainstream, right? And so I look to essential oils or herbal remedies or plant medicine for a whole range now of symptoms or ailments or support for my body. Monica (Host) | 00:33:09 to 00:34:25 And it makes so much sense to me now, even intuitively, to kind of feel into where and what am I feeling or noticing if I'm just over the course of several days feeling a hollowness in my gut or kind of chilly at the tips of my fingers and toes and just kind of what is my body needing for support or nourishment and just having a whole different conversation from a whole nother level. And also really deeply longing to want to bring this conversation to my audience. Because I feel the women and men who tune in and listen to this are hungering, in a way, for alternative conversations that give them an opportunity to enter portals of understanding or exploration for their own lives and their own bodies. Because I do feel that water seeks its own level. And so many of my listeners are often experiencing oftentimes a disenchantment with what mainstream everything has to offer at this point. Judith (Guest) | 00:34:26 to 00:34:26 Yes. Judith (Guest) | 00:34:29 to 00:34:58 When I became an herbalist, it was pre internet. So the way that I first found a teacher was because I was reading this feminist magazine, an interview with an herbalist who lived in the castills and who called herself a witch and kept goats. And I was really drawn to that because it brought that whole fairy tale element back in. It was just something said, yes, go. And that was how I first began to learn. Judith (Guest) | 00:34:58 to 00:35:25 I think that people born in the internet era maybe can't really relate to how there was so much more, what you were calling synchronicity or serendipity or destiny, whatever that here. I had asked. I wanted to take care of my own health. Then I came across this interview with a person who used herbal medicine. And then I went, began my studies, found someone who was teaching in New York City so that I could become educated. Judith (Guest) | 00:35:25 to 00:36:21 Now there's almost a plethora of information on the Internet, and it's also hard to parse out the teachers who are teaching from the ground up. There's a lot of online learning, but I feel so fortunate that I learned in central park. Right, but there's so much out there for people to learn. Now, I know when people come to me, like you were mentioning about being cold at the tips of the fingers, and I was thinking about a client I'd had who had that in the winter. And we just gave her linden, which is wonderful for circulation, and cinnamon, which is known to disperse to the extremities for circulation, and how that winter, there was no coldness for her interesting, in the fingers, and she just drank it as a simple tea. Judith (Guest) | 00:36:22 to 00:36:46 And I think I actually had given this person linden that I had gathered at the park next to the friend school. There's a lot of linden trees in the cities. They have beautiful scent, and there's a bunch of them outside the met. There's beautiful paintings of them from the 18 hundreds. I really love linden. Judith (Guest) | 00:36:46 to 00:37:08 And there's an American kind and a European kind that are on the trees in New York City. I love just I get up on a park bench under the canopy. It's always like the first week of June, and I go and people look at me and I've got, like, my big basket. And I gather enough because there's nothing like picking yourself. It's like the medicine's, like, falling on you. Monica (Host) | 00:37:08 to 00:37:29 Oh, my gosh. Like the bounty. Yes. Right. But and what I want to point to Judith, it's so fascinating to me that I'm just picturing you doing this and becoming almost like this attraction for people, like, wow, getting curious just like this. Monica (Host) | 00:37:29 to 00:38:15 You have this whole other understanding of the medicine that is in our midst at all these different points. And there's then people who just. Walk in complete unawareness that gaia earth, mother earth, is constantly providing us with such a bounty of medicine magic that we have. And so there's that hiding in plain sight. The person that's been so modernized, or as you'll call the internet age is I think there's a longing to really reconnect, to know, to see what you see, to know what you know. Monica (Host) | 00:38:16 to 00:38:50 And yeah, I just get curious about what that's like. Well, I think that when people feel longing, it's important to follow the longing, to make room, to follow the longing. Because certainly those things that came together for me pre internet, are what led me to learn what the plants did. I mean, I was always very attracted to the archetype of the wise woman who lived in the forest, in the middle of the wood, who had plants hanging from the ceiling. I'm certainly not alone in that. Judith (Guest) | 00:38:50 to 00:39:23 I think probably maybe at least half the herbalists you'll meet at any herb conference or who's interviewed anywhere will bring up fairy tales and that same archetype. So it lives within us. Not everyone's attracted to it, but also there's other kinds of links that people make. I know when I talked about herbal medicine during my training, I remember I was at kings county hospital on my internal medicine rotation. And the attending in charge at the time, there were two. Judith (Guest) | 00:39:23 to 00:39:56 One was iranian and one was nigerian, and they both had grandparents who gave them herbs when they were little. It was only the Americans. The American medical students were the only ones who sort of scoffed at herbalism. Everybody else had a relative story, a story about a grandparent who had given them this when they had a stomachache or that. So I think that people can find how to learn quite easily now, and that's a wonderful thing. Judith (Guest) | 00:39:56 to 00:40:37 What I feel really lucky about, I didn't take any notes my whole first year of studying. I wanted to retain everything orally and use my other senses. I also learned plant by plant, and I didn't feel a pressure inside myself or from the outside to be overly scientific. I think there's a little more rigor now, even in the herbal community, about people making just claims without having any case studies or any clinical experience. I kind of allow a lot more of it in. Judith (Guest) | 00:40:37 to 00:41:14 But then there are days where I might hear somebody say something and wonder what they know that would back that up, or kind of can fall on either side, depending. But I certainly feel that a tactile experience, something that you were talking about, that poetry. Well, what makes up that poetry is senses. Story senses, storytelling, things that are in the right hemisphere of the brain rather than the left. So I was very attracted to making my own herbal medicines, and I still do. Judith (Guest) | 00:41:14 to 00:41:51 I still make my own herbal medicines, whether I'm making like, a little smudge stick from different evergreen trees, or I'm making an evergreen oil, or this year having a garden for the first time in the last few years. I grew calendula this year and it just had such a fabulous year. And so it was my first time making Calendula oil and I still have it sitting out. It's got one more week to go and I had met somebody in need of an ointment. They were having a side effect of statin drugs in their fingertips that was causing a tremendous cracking. Judith (Guest) | 00:41:51 to 00:42:48 And they'd been here and there and everywhere, and we worked together and I'm going to make them an ointment that includes a few different things that I gathered from my own garden that I will make up for them. There's also plenty of great products that people can buy that are handmade all over the internet as well. But for me, I've always really liked direct contact. So I like to use medicine that I know it's not a hard and fast rule. I certainly use things that I didn't make myself, but that adds a different aspect to my feeling, that sense of being almost like swaddled by this fabulous birthright, being taken care of by these medicines that are right around me. Judith (Guest) | 00:42:48 to 00:43:39 And I especially like oils because I think people need to touch themselves more. Yeah, I recently have been doing a lot of the ayurvedic oil. Also just being somebody who tends to be cold all the time in the winter is just doing that more and more, but also just the ritual of it and the nourishment of it and the awareness of it. It just creates a whole different relationship for myself, my body, my bath time, right? It becomes this ceremony in some cases where I really tend to myself in a whole different way. Monica (Host) | 00:43:39 to 00:44:54 And I'm so much more, I think, mindful about what I'm really nourishing, not only my skin and my body, but there's a spiritual aspect to it that feels very meditative. That feels very also very nourishing, very connecting to these various senses, whether it's the smell of the oil or the feel of it on my skin or the different thoughts or memories that it activates in me. So back to kind of the poetry of it, as you were saying that there's. I think all of these ways of being in relationship to ourselves and to the world that are coming back to me now that know that as a child what's coming in is actually I had this fascination with mud. Making mud pies and caking myself with mud all over even my chest and my arms and just really playing doctor in some cases even and using the mud as a tonic or whatever it was. Monica (Host) | 00:44:54 to 00:45:44 And really there is just a forgetting period I feel we all go through. And also that there's some of us that are way more connected because our destiny is entwined with certain aspects of what we're becoming. And in your case, poetry, herbalism, and just this back to this wise woman archetype this mythology, and to go back to how the fairy tales and the myths influenced you and really have continued to thread themselves through your life. It's really informed not only who you are today, but how you serve others. And I think for me, it's also bound up in beauty. Judith (Guest) | 00:45:44 to 00:46:33 I know that my friends will often say that that's important to me, beauty is important to me, and it's a very particular kind of beauty. And so I do feel that the world of plant medicine, the medicine of the plants, is both in what they do for the body in a physical way, but also that they carry beauty and wholeness in their very being. And so, however we take them in, whether we put it on our bodies or we're sipping the tea or we're smelling them, that comes back to us, that we get to experience that kind of revelation, you could call it. Yes. That keeps going back into hiding because the world is so hard in that way at this point in time. Judith (Guest) | 00:46:33 to 00:47:39 And maybe it's always been, I don't know. But yeah, it's a kind of necessary beauty, and I'm happy to keep bringing it to people in whatever way that I can. Well, yeah, and if you would, I'd love for our listeners to hear how you really serve and any other aspects of your work that you want to share with them in these final minutes to just really help them understand how you might be of service to them. Well, I know one of the ways that people often get an introduction to me is through reading the book that I wrote so many years ago, Herbal Rituals, that I republished myself again in 2019 and one can find on Blurb. If you're interested in herbal medicine, it's wonderful to read because it will keep you from going into a science defect way of looking at it too quickly. Judith (Guest) | 00:47:39 to 00:47:48 It will give you the other side. It's divided into the months of the year. There's a strong sense of rhythm. There's a lot of poetry in it. There's recipes. Judith (Guest) | 00:47:48 to 00:48:09 It's just one or two herbs every month. There's plenty of guidebooks out there. I also write a newsletter during the pandemic. I was doing it every two or three weeks, but now it's down to like once every few months. But still, I usually talk about something in relation to the natural world during it. Judith (Guest) | 00:48:09 to 00:48:40 And I also offer poetry classes, so I advertise those there. And then I do consultation work on Zoom or in person for anyone who feels they want to take herbs more regularly to bring them back toward more wholesomeness in their physical body. I love that. So, directing those that are interested in the book that you republished to go to Blurb. Yeah. Judith (Guest) | 00:48:40 to 00:49:00 And it's also available on Smashwords if you like to read ebooks, okay. But most people like to have this book in their hands because they might read it month by month. I still get letters. I wrote it in 1998 and I still get letters about it. People now have given it to their daughters. Judith (Guest) | 00:49:01 to 00:49:12 They'll send me old copies to sign for them. I love that. Yeah, it's a lovely thing. And I am working on a new book. I have been for quite a while, and I won't say any more about it. Monica (Host) | 00:49:13 to 00:49:34 Okay. But just to know that little teaser, we'll keep kind of checking in about that. And so just quick question on the newsletter, although you say you don't do it often, is it a monthly newsletter? It might be every month, it might be every two months right now. Whenever the spirit moves you. Judith (Guest) | 00:49:35 to 00:49:52 Yeah. I think you can sign up on my website, Judithbergerherbalist.com. I think that's where you sign up for it. So that's a good way to hear from me. And you can also reach out to me on the website and I'll write you back. Monica (Host) | 00:49:52 to 00:50:25 Okay, great. And then one last question before we go, just because I'm so curious. So you mentioned about the calendula, which I love, and you talked about that. This was a really plentiful year for calendula for you, but what other herbs would you say you have a real super personal connection to that you just have always loved? Well, I've always had a very strong relationship with stinging nettles and oats straw. Judith (Guest) | 00:50:25 to 00:50:43 Those two. I drink them as herbal infusions. I have for years as I've gotten older. And my urinary tract is more sensitive to the stingers in the nettles. I add marshmallow root, which I make separately as a cold infusion. Judith (Guest) | 00:50:43 to 00:51:05 And I just feel so nourished, there's so many vitamins and minerals in the nettles that are water soluble. The oat straw is really nice for the nervous system, and if I don't drink them, I really feel the difference after a few days. So those are some of my favorites. And Hawthorne for the heart. The heart always needs extra support. Judith (Guest) | 00:51:05 to 00:51:41 At least mine does. That's so funny, because when we were in Scotland, we were with a woman, she was the host of The Airbnb, who actually ended up showing us becoming our kind of driver. And then, of course, she became one of our best friends. But I remember that my friend Monet, who I was with, ended up we were, like, going to the bathroom probably in the places that we were, kind of just out in nature. And she would go around the corner and then come back and she'd been in a stinging nettle. Monica (Host) | 00:51:44 to 00:52:14 And I remember Katya, who was with us, saying, oh, there's another plant. That's the remedy for the stinging nettle that will always grow right near it. Yeah. And so she found some and then rubbed it on the stinging nettle. And I just immediately became, again, kind of enchanted with this, just understanding again that in this one place, there was not only this stinging nettle, but there was also kind of the remedy for it growing right nearby. Monica (Host) | 00:52:14 to 00:52:25 It just fascinated me. Yeah, it's just a wonderful thing. It's a wonderful thing. Well, thank you so much for this nourishing conversation. Thank you. Monica (Host) | 00:52:26 to 00:52:50 Wonderful to get to know you a little bit and just to be able to share with my audience just ways that they can interface with your work and know a little bit more about what makes you tick. And we'll be sure to check out your poetry and I'll be sure to include some links in the show notes. But until next time, for our listeners more to be revealed. Monica (Host) | 00:52:53 to 00:53:11 We hope you enjoyed this episode. For more information, please visit us@jointherevelation.com and be sure to download our free gift, subscribe to our mailing list or leave us a review on itunes. We thank you for your generous listening and as always, more to be revealed.