My Plant Path

I started my studies in the Vitalist Herbal Practitioner program from the school of Evolutionary Herbalism with Sajah Popham in 2021. With a firm belief and passion in energy bodywork, I quickly understood the energetics of plants. Sajah encouraged me to listen and connect to the plants before embarking on this deep medical journey. I started a large medical garden which led to a deep relationship with each of the plants and their own unique healing properties. I took this connection and language into my healing bodywork practice and explored using the vital force of the medicine to heal misalignments in the body. Dramatic results have happened since then and my faith in plant medicine has become a honorable practice for me and my family.

Vitalist herbalism

Vitalist herbalism is a holistic approach to herbal medicine that emphasizes the vital force or energy within living organisms. This perspective is grounded in the belief that health and healing are fundamentally linked to the body's vital energy, and that herbal remedies can support and enhance this vital force.

The vital force is the underlying intelligent pattern of Nature directly imprinted in people and plants, determining their unique qualities and characteristics. This model of herbalism is often summarized through systems of energetics.

Energetics is not a esoteric concept; it is rather a holistic description of the relationship between whole plants and whole people. It describes their physiological actions and organ affinities. It understands the root causes of symptoms in the body by looking at the essence of disease. It is an ecological model of medicine, rather than a mechanical one. These symptoms stress the uniqueness of the individual, outlined through constitutional patterns that are influenced by the energetics of the plants.

In vitalism, the causes of disease are not just spiritual; they can also arise from a misalignment between the organism and its environment. In other words, a persons interaction with the world around them affect them physiologically, emotionally, and physically. Vitalist traditions suggest that people get sick because of how they live every day, including the foods they eat, thoughts they think, people they surround themselves with, the weather, seasonal changes, and a host of other factors.

The therapeutic goal is to achieve balance between one's internal constitution and the external environment. Many of these traditions, born out of indigenous and folk practices, continue to honor the spiritual faucets of both people and plants. The primary characteristic of the vitalist phase is that herbalism became systemized and standardized within particular culture and geographic regions.

Vitalism can be seen as striking a dynamic balance between the intuitive faculties of the heart and the rational nature of the mind. Unfortunately, modern medicine has neglected the wisdom of these vitalist models in favor of a strictly biochemical model of medicine, in which our knowledge is solely rooted in the reductionist perspective of the mind while paying no heed to the holistic nature of the heart.

 - Evolutionary Herbalism by Sajah Popham