In my practice, I operate by these principles, which I have found to be essential in helping people get results.
Investigate the whole - There may be things going on for you that seem unrelated to your current health issue but are actually very relevant. That’s why it’s important to be comprehensive in evaluating all body systems as well as looking deeply into your health history. This will help uncover patterns and underlying causes that may be contributing to what you are experiencing now.
Apply multiple healing lenses - Different healing traditions bring different insights. There is of course our modern scientific understanding of health and illness. There are also longstanding healing traditions like Western Herbalism, Ayurveda, and Traditional Chinese Medicine. These look at subtler patterns and give greater weight to psychological and lifestyle factors in illness. Combining time-tested healing traditions with current scientific knowledge brings the best of both worlds in service of healing.
Be mindful of the “pillars of health” - diet, sleep, exercise, relationships, stress management—these pillars are foundational to getting well for anyone facing a chronic health issue. The health of these areas need to be thoughtfully considered as part of your treatment plan.
Make small changes, incrementally, over time - Any changes you make need to be sustainable, something you can build on for the long term. I support you to make change in manageable steps, tweaking and adjusting over time, to help you find lasting results.
Personalize your medicine - Medicinal plants don’t work like drugs and shouldn’t be applied like them. We’re conditioned from Western medicine to match a drug to a disease, but herbs applied in this way are hit and miss. They work best applied to you, the person, not your disease - So there isn’t a depression herb, or an arthritis herb, or an autoimmune herb that works for everybody. Plant medicines (as well as diet and lifestyle therapies) need to treat the underlying causes of illness, and uncovering that is a large part of our work together.
Get back to *your* nature - Part of finding our way back to health is understanding that as a species we evolved to thrive in a very different environment than the one we live in today. Those biological requirements have not changed, even though our world has. Returning to natural rhythms, whether that’s taking breaks from screens, getting enough sleep and exercise, spending time in the forest or garden, or ingesting nature’s healers (plants!), will create a solid foundation for healing.