Medicinal Lichens, Moss, & Ferns w/ Robert Dale Rogers, RH (AHG)

Meet Robert Dale Rogers, one of the most prolific herbalists alive today, with over 65 books and decades of clinical practice rooted in botany, indigenous plant wisdom, and a deep love of the overlooked medicines of the Earth. In this episode, Robert joins Chris and Mel to share the stories, the science, and the magic behind some of herbalism's most under-appreciated medicines: lichens, ferns, mosses, and fungi. 

This one is rich with wisdom, wild stories, and a few things that might just change how you look at the forest floor. 

What's in this episode: 

• Robert's path into lichens, ferns, and overlooked plant medicine 
• Usnea as a clinical tool for drug-resistant tuberculosis and antibiotic resistance 
• Lungwort and the Doctrine of Signatures: why this lichen keeps showing up when you need it 
• Learning from Cree healers and documenting a 10th-generation medicine bundle 
• Flower essences in clinical practice, including Gorse for hope 
• 26 years of developing mushroom essences and shadow work 
• You can learn more about Robert and his coming events here, and get his latest books here.  

Herbal Terms in This Episode: 

• Doctrine of Signatures: A traditional concept suggesting a plant's appearance may offer clues about its potential uses 
• Usnic Acid: A compound found in roughly 32 lichen species, studied for its unique ability to affect bacterial cell function 

We'd love to hear from you! 

Have you ever had a plant show up at exactly the right moment? Share your stories with us on Instagram or TikTok @eclecticherb 

Full show notes and transcript: eclecticherb.com/ blogs/news/medicinal-lichen-robert-dale-rogers 

Explore Eclectic Herb's freeze-dried supplements at eclecticherb.com Follow @eclecticherb on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook 

Thanks so much for tuning into Eclectic Herbal Wisdom! 

We'd love to show our gratitude by giving you a 20% discount on your whole order at eclecticherb.com. 

Just use the code PODCAST20 at checkout for 20% Off all your herbal goods! 🌿

And, if you have time, be sure to reach out and let us know what you think of the show! 

At Eclectic Herb we're passionate about bringing you herbs as fresh as plants in the wild!

That's why we take the time to gently freeze dry our herbs, right after they've been harvested at the peak of their medicinal potency. 

We know you'll feel the freeze dried difference in every capsule, every powder, and every bit of herbal love you get at Eclectic Herb! 

Follow @eclecticherb on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:02

Hello and welcome to Eclectic Herbal Wisdom, where we share stories from the roots of plant medicine. I'm Mel Mutterspa, clinical herbalist and herbal educator at Eclectic Herb. And I'm Chris Olstedt, herbalist and owner of Eclectic Herb. We are so glad that you're here. Whether you're brewing up your first cup of metal tea or crafting your own complex herbal remedies, this podcast is for you.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

In each episode, we'll open the pages of Herbal Law from the archives of the incredible eclectic library to the living wisdom of today's best herbalists. Together we'll explore how plants have supported people for centuries and how they continue to do so now.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

You'll find stories, science, and soulful conversations with other brilliant herbalists, all sharing real-world insights that you can bring into your daily life and your practice.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Because herbal wisdom is timeless and it's meant to be shared.

SPEAKER_02 0:59

So come grow with us as we rediscover the living legacy of the plants. Hello and welcome back to another episode here on Eclectic Herbal Wisdom. Today's episode is a very, very sweet treat because we are going to be talking about so much medicine around the forest that I am so grateful to live in. And we're going to be talking with Robert Dale Rogers, who is a brilliant herbalist that has been practicing for decades. And he has so much genius and knowledge behind him, especially around lichen medicine, moss medicine, fern medicine, and of course, herbal medicine. And with your history, your background, of course, I could keep going for days about all of your fascinating work that you have done. But I just wanted to say thank you and let you know how excited I am to listen and learn from you on today's episode, Robert. So welcome.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Oh, yeah. Thank you very much. Really a pleasure to be here and share what I can. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 2:09

Yeah, it's very exciting. So I absolutely love that you are really focused on that fern medicine, on lichen, on the things that so many people really tend to look past when it comes to different natural healing therapies, particularly herbalism. And I'm really curious how you ended up down that path.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

That's a great question. Well, uh, let me go back to medicinal lichens. I really have always, as a practitioner, prized lichens like eusnia. I mean, most herbalists are very familiar with eusnia for strep and staph, and I used it in clinical practice successfully for drug-resistant tuberculosis, things of that nature. And I mentioned it briefly. I wrote a book called The Fungal Pharmacy a couple of decades ago and talked about basically at the end of it, I had a little subchapter on lichens, and I was never satisfied that it really wasn't what I liked. And so I finally got around to taking time to research and do it properly. And yeah, it's good. One of the things about lichens that I enjoy as a clinician, a retired clinician, I haven't done clinical for about 20 years. But as I start researching, two things are really popping to mind lately with regards to overall human health. And one is the increasing levels of chronic disease, including, you know, diabetes, cardiovascular, and cancers, for example. And lichens contain very interesting compounds that are really not well researched, have been, I would say, at a research level, but haven't integrated themselves into the herbal world or for sure into the biomedical model. And the other is that there's some compounds and some lichens that make a lot of the bacteria that are drug resistant. And so many of the antibiotics have lost their efficacy. And by combining the two in a synergistic manner, sometimes it increases the efficacy, in one case, up to 700 times more powerful. And so that kind of information, I think I'm hoping researchers will run with that a bit, and we can create opportunity to help people because hundreds of thousands of people are dying every year from drug-resistant bacteria and probably not necessary. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

What lichen? I don't know a lot about it, but is it, can you propagate it, or does it always have to be world-harvested?

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Oh, that's a great question. Um, no, it's pretty resistant to cultivation. You can cultivate ferns and you can cultivate mosses, but lichens are a very interesting symbiotic relationship between a fungi and bacteria or cyanobacteria, and sometimes even viruses are now being found in these combinations. And this community is very unique and very specific geographically about what kind of area they can live in. The fungi providing the structure, and of course, the algae providing the photosynthesis for food. And so they're very unique and distinct, and there's not a whole lot of cultivation going on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:35

I love that you brought up how the fungi and the algae coming together. I love to teach children, and I'll tell them that they come together and they take a lichen to each other, and that's how we teach them that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

So exactly. Yeah. I tell her really I tell a really bad joke about that. It's like uh Annie algae and uh Freddie Fungus met at a party and got together and then they got married, but now it's on the rocks.

SPEAKER_02 6:05

I might have to steal that one. Uh to the book.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

No, you can use that one. I I think I stole that from somebody as well.

SPEAKER_02 6:11

So I love that. I um I just recently got your book in my hands, the medicinal linen's book that you have. And I am so happy to see Lungwort on the top or on the cover there. I want to share a quick story of Lungwort and how it was for me early in my herbal studies and journey. And I had gone to a Brightonbush herbal conference and all the great elder herbalists were there. And I remember being on a walk where they taught me about, you know, if you listen to the plants or the lichen in this case, they will teach you. And I was like, wow, that's really cool. And after that, I was like, I need to take all the herb classes and enrolled for everything. And a few months later, I got my first case of bronchitis and I was miserable. I need to go outdoors in order for my soul to be happy. And after about three weeks of lots of lung hacking and misery, I finally told my partner, like, I need to go for a walk. And he took me to the beautiful, luscious Salmon River Trail here in the foothills of Mount Hood in Oregon. And I was able to take about five to ten steps before I'd have to like stop and catch my breath. I was still very sick. And, you know, I would lean over and just be hacking my lungs out. And every time I leaned over, there's a branch falling down covered with lung wort. And I'd get back up and I'd keep walking and did that about five or ten times somewhere in there before I was finally like, oh. And that lungwort is really talking to me and saying, Hey Mal, I'm here for you. And so I picked some up and I took it home and I made a little tea of the lungwort lichen, just a small little piece in there. And I sipped that tea, and I was able to take my first deep breath in over three weeks within less than a minute of sipping that tea. And from there, I was forever mind-blown at the power of these lichen and what they can do for you. So yeah. And I know you mentioned Usnia a bit when you first got into this story. And, you know, lungwart and the doctrine of signatures is very, very prevalent in the way it looks and the way it works. But I'd love to hear a little bit more about lungwart as medicine.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

Oh, well, lungwart. I mean, I go on for chap a couple of pages in my book. It not only has that really cooling, demulcent, uh, moistening kind of effect, particularly with dry, irritated coughs, but it also has other compounds in it. And particularly a lot of the research, interestingly enough, has been done by several researchers out of Iceland. Iceland, as you know, doesn't have much for trees, right? There's a joke in Iceland that what do you do if you get lost in Iceland? You stand up. And uh the search for lichens, and particularly Iceland moss, is everywhere. So it's not a moss, it's a lichen. I think 1200, think back to 1200 AD, they passed a law in Iceland that you can't steal other people's Iceland moss from their land. And it's in every grocery store and it's in every food stuff. And so lichens are just a natural part of healing and food in that part of the world. And lungwort, of course, is there too, where available. But lungwort really thrives in two distinct areas, and it really likes moist forests. It likes where, you know, temperate rainforest of the coast where you are, and that also there's another type that it's a slightly different lungwort, same species, grows around the Great Lakes down in that part of the world as well. And, you know, it has compounds in it that are very helpful for blood sugar. It's been used for it has some effects that way. And it's really not well researched, but it's easily available, it's plentiful, we're found. And I don't feel badly. I mean, some people give me a hard time about, well, you shouldn't over-harvest all of these things. And, you know, I see on Facebook, like people who talk about uh ghost pipe, for example, you know, that that it's rare and endangered. And I can go outside my door here and there's like miles of it, you know. You have to take it in context. We're on the Pacific Northwest, lungwort is readily available. It's interesting, like some other plants, like mosses, that lungwort will, when it's a dry season and you guys have a you know hot, dry summers, it basically dries up and goes, you know, uh goes into a dormance type stage. And as soon as it rains, it gets green again and it's flush again and makes itself more visible. And so, yeah, it's one of my favorites. Pulmon area, uh, really, really, really, really important. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:18

That's amazing. It's definitely one of my favorites too. Very crucial in my herbal journey. So it's fascinating to hear about it for cancer and for blood sugar, too. So definitely going to be diving deeper into that information.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

There's so much in the world of lichens, and you're the expert. So I was wondering if there was anything that you wanted to share with our listeners, some tidbit that they might not be able to access otherwise. Like, what's your favorite lichen or what's the most effective for the first time?

SPEAKER_00 12:47

My favorite lichen, gee, was that that is a tough one. I would have to say, uh, based on my early history, I was six years old when I came down with tuberculosis. I had an uncle who came back from the Korean War and was infected and passed it on. So they gave me really strong penicillin of the time. This is the mid-50s, about 10 times what I should have been given, and became quite, you know. Well, I lost half the hair that never did come back. One of the things why I'm interested in eusne is I had people in clinical practice who had been taking antibiotics for tuberculosis for several years, in one case, this young 16-year-old, she had been taking it constantly for two years and still was active. And six months of eusnea tincture finally eradicated it. She shows positive that she had it, but she no longer has active tuberculosis. As we know, uh TB basically is walled off in your lungs, so it cannot reactivate itself. And so you have to be very careful that you don't create a condition where it will open up again and become reactivated. Once you've had it, you never really get rid of it. But eusnia is powerful and it works differently. All of the lichen, there's about 32 lichens that have eusinic acid in them, for example, not just eusnia. And how it works is quite different. Uh antibiotics basically are taken up by bacteria, and to a degree they use it as food to build their cell walls. It destroys, in some cases, a majority of the bacteria, but some have learned how to live on it and grow from it. But eusenic acid has the ability, even with both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria, eusic acid is able to enter through the cell wall and shut down the mitochondrial cells in the bacteria. Kill them. Literally kills them. And so it's quite a different activity than antibiotics. So that I say, I would say eusnia is my favorite. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:12

Thank you for sharing that. I really love eusnia too. I just want to share a quick way that it really helped me in life with the antibiotic kind of help. When I was pregnant with my daughter, I had group B Streptococcus, and they're like, there's no way you can get through this and not use antibiotics. And I was like, well, we're gonna try for a moment. And I used eusnia and garlic and took the eusnia as a tincture, thanks to my midwife and naturopath at the time, and put the garlic up where the pretty things are, and um two weeks later tested again, and I no longer had group B strep. And my uh my naturopath is really, really happy about that. She teaches at the Naturopathic College here in Portland, Oregon, and that was when I was going through my clinical studies. So big, big fan of that one as well.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

Great story. Well, and and I think it's important for people to note that because many of the lichens were used for food, eusnia is very poorly soluble in water, eustic acid. Uh, much more powerful in alcohol, right? So use a high test alcohol, and most potent in oil. So, you know, making a carrier oil with eusnea can be really important. And then you can use that for athletes' foot, ringworm, all of those type of conditions. And it's quite popular in parts of Europe, Northern Europe, they use a lot of eusnia type creams and salves and things like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:47

Sounds like a fabulous remedy. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 16:51

Incredible. So, Brockwell, I believe you're the author of over 70 books on herbal medicine. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 16:59

No. 60, 65. Oh, yeah. I'll never catch up to my age, unfortunately. No, yeah. Somebody said you should have a book for every year. I don't think that's possible. Like I'm slowing down as I get older here. But yes, uh uh 65. And I have one more coming out um next fall on cacti, medicinal cacti. Oh, we're readable. It's always had it been an interest of mine. And you know, I've worked with curanderos and with peyote and sing Pedro in Peru back in the early 80s and things. So uh I start to look at cacti and amazing. So looking forward to that as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

Is there anything you could share with us about cacti that you found to be interesting?

SPEAKER_00 17:46

Oh, well, yeah, they're cacti are fascinating. I mean, basically, just about any health condition you can think of, they have been used by traditional people. And since cacti are really native to the new world, really, there's one species found in Africa, but it's perceived that probably that was a transplant or a migrated or whatever. But, you know, from Mexico, Central, South America, there's hundreds and there's thousands of varieties and species of cacti. And not just used for ceremony and medicine, for example. You know, we're all familiar with peyote, of course, and and uh the mescline in San St. Pedro. I worked with a curandero in uh on the coast of Peru in the early 80s, as I mentioned, you know, and became quite proficient at chopping up these large uh St. Pedro cacti. And he used to do ceremony every Tuesday and Friday nights. And then I came home. My dad passed away young, and in 84, I came back to Edmonton, Alberta here because my mom was alone. And also, and then I started my own herbal clinic. So I ran a herbal clinic from 84 till 2002 and helped some people with their different health issues and found some you know fascinating stories and things. I could share a few if you like, but you know, some of the more dramatic cases that like might interest people. Yeah, yeah. So so I started in September of 1984, and I was the only herbalist in town, right? I was brand new in a small city of half a million people, maybe. I was running out of money. I mean, both for an apartment and also for the place I had for my clinic. And then about a week before Christmas, the local paper phoned me and said, Would you mind if we do a story on you? And I said, No, that's great. And so they came, they did a story, and I told them the story I'll tell you, one of them and a couple of others. And then it came out the day after Christmas, and I thought, you know what, I might have to leave the city and go back up to my little log cabin up in northern Alberta because I'm out of money. What am I going to do? And the next day I got 72 voicemails on my phone wanting appointments. And that turned the tide, right? It was like the universe kind of went, no, Robert, you're supposed to do this work. You're so, you know. And the one story I tell is I late had a lady came in and she had really severe vertigo. Maybe it was men years. I wasn't sure what it was going on there. But I'd read back in the day, I'd studied with Dr. Christopher. And you guys know, probably know of his infamy, right? Back in the day, and mostly learned from his books. I met him once, we had dinner together. So it kept coming to my mind B and B, and I think, and I thought, B and B tincture. He used to have a B and B tincture, which was half black kohosh and half blue kohosh. And I don't believe it's available on the market anymore, I don't think, but it was pretty well a 50-50 ratio, I think. And so I gave it to this uh young woman because she had really balanced problems and hearing, she had tinnitus or tinnitus, you know, all of the classic symptoms. And I couldn't figure it out. So she took it as director for a couple of weeks and nothing was happening. She phoned me and I said, Well, just carry on. You've got some more left. And then she phones me back and she goes, You're not gonna believe this. I was walking down the street and I heard this bang. I thought somebody had shot somebody in the area, and then I coughed and choked. And she spit out, she says, I spit out what looked like a little piece of chalk, and all my symptoms are gone. She had a calcification in the Eustachian tube that was softened and removed, and boom. Oh wow. Yeah, so that was kind of interesting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

That's so cool. Called it an incredible story. I love light.

SPEAKER_00 22:01

Yeah. And then, of course, I had a great interest in aromatherapy as well, essential oils. And my wife and I, when we met in 1990, we brought over Daniel Penuel and his wife from France, a fairly famous aromatherapy medical doctor. He taught me some things, and then I learned I was really curious. And so I learned about what they do in France. They have over 10,000 medical doctors who practice aromatherapy, right? And whole clinics of hospitals. Like North America could really learn from that model. We really could. Um, but they did something called uh aromatogram, and basically it's basically taking a uh egg or plate, swabbing what you believe might be the infective organism, you know, and get the swab from the nose or or anal or vaginal or wherever, right? And and smear it, and then use a drop of essential oils. Usually I would do four on a plate, and then just see over the next four days what is the biggest zone of inhibition. Right? And so I had a lady come in and she had suffered from chronic vaginitis for over two years, like it was wrecking her marriage, it was wrecking her life. She tried everything. She had tried everything, internally, externally, you know. And so I said, Well, let's try it. And so we do a suave, did the thing, totally illegal, by the way. I'm not, I'm not licensed to do this, right? And then I did seven different essential oils, all the heavy hitters, what you would think, like tea tree and you know, etc. And uh, or oregano, right? I thought, for sure. And I had one spot left, and I thought, uh, and I had some sandalwood popped up, and I just put a drop of sandalwood there. Five days later, I look at the plates. The sandalwood where I put the drop had not only taken over that area, but it was spreading right across the plate, and it was by far the largest inhibition. And so we made up some sandalwood suppositories. And in probably, I think it took 10 days, something like that, 10, 12 days, totally cleared it up for the first time in two years.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

And you would never, if you read in the literature, sandalwood is not indicated for that at all. But in her particular case, it actually worked for her with her specific issue. And and so therefore, I always tell people, I said, it's fine what you read in books, but really when you finally experience and work with something, then you get to know it much better. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:53

Amen to that. I really love how it sounds like it the sandal would jump down at you intuitively, or it's another case of those, like if you listen, the plants are gonna shout out and say, Hey, I'm the one that's needed right now. And that's the gift of a great herbalist.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

And thank you.

SPEAKER_02 25:10

Yeah, thank you. So it brings up a question for me because I hear in these stories that you've shared that you're like, wow, that worked. And I still get that often myself. Like, holy cow, that worked. Did you ever come to a point in your practice where you weren't having experiences where you were just like, wow, that worked. That's amazing. Curious.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

That's a great question. Uh, probably less and less is like it's like after about 20 years. For example, this sounds a little crazy, but I'm going to share it anyway. So sometimes I would have people come into my office, and as they're walking in to sit down in the chair by my desk, I I sometimes would get a feeling about what I thought was really their bottom line root cause issue. And more often than not, as I had some 20 years' experience, that became more obvious. It became more common to have that. But in the initial years of practice, I mean, I practiced as an herbalist for about 10 years, back from early 70s. I graduated from the University of Alberta with a botany degree. And then I went hitchhiked around South America for a year and lucky to be alive. Then I went up north, a group of friends, we got a little place up north, and I was very fortunate to have two indigenous healers lived in the reserves, what they call now First Nations, on either side of me. And both of them taught me some interesting things about local plants. Because when I went in the woods there, after getting a degree in botany, I didn't know one plant in those forests. Like not one, because there were no books on it. And in the libraries of those days in the early 70s, there were two books on herbal medicine, and they were both from England. And the plants are completely different than northern Canada. And so I spent the next number of years, about 20-some years, uh investigating and looking at indigenous uses of plants. What part did they use? When did they harvest? How much, blah, blah, blah, that stuff. So I know about 600 plants fairly well from my part of the world. And one, Russell Williar, who was a Cree Healer to the West of me, back in the day, about mid-2015. I was part of a group, I was a clinical professor at university in family medicine. And we invited 32 indigenous healers from around North America to come to the university and ask them respectfully in a conference if they'd be willing to share their knowledge before it's lost. And 30 of the 32 said, no, we'd rather die with it. Which kind of shocked me, you know, really. But Russell, who I'd known from way back in the day, and uh Dr. David Young, who had written a book on him previously, we got together and collaborated. And the University of Alberta turned it down, but North Atlantic picked it up, and we published in 2016 a book called A Cree Healer and His Medicine Bundle. And what it entails is interesting, is that the Cree people, it was an oral tradition. There wasn't really written knowledge per se, right? So everything was remembered. And the medicine bundle was actually a bunch of beaver pelts that were rolled together, and there were 62 combinations of herbs. Two, three, or four herbs in a bundle were attached to one part of the bundle, and then a space and another one, and whatever. And it was the job of the oldest son to memorize what those 62 bundles were good for. Was it for heart or lung or cancer or whatever? And Russell was the 10th generation. There was a 10th generation medicine bundle. And luckily, he shared that information with us before he passed away a few years later. And so I'm always thankful for that. And so that book has become just as well that the university didn't print it because it got printed by a larger publication company and it's gotten around, and people can see the value in it and then explore from there. And so I'm very happy to have done that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:50

Yeah, that's incredible work. You've done so much to bring herbal knowledge to the people. It's an incredible life journey you've had.

SPEAKER_00 29:57

Yeah, he did a project uh back in the day when I knew him called the psoriasis project, and he took 10 young people with psoriasis and did sweats with them and gave them his formulas and a salve and whatever like that. At the end of the uh three-month experiment, and this was all documented and filmed and whatever. Six out of the ten had totally cleared up psoriasis, totally, three partially and one not. Dr. David Young, who helped, we co-authored the book, The Cree Healer, after that project came out, he was called into his dean of the time. He was a professor in anthropology, and the dean of the department called him in and said that he would prefer it if he did not work anymore with witch doctors. Can you believe that? This is like in the 1980s, like primitive, like I couldn't believe it. Anyways, and of course, David ignored him and continued to do work together, anyways. But but you know, it it just shows how um, you know, I've often for a long time believed that there was a opportunity to have some kind of an integrative healthcare system, you know, and have spent numerous hours on committees and chairs and a clinical professor and I'm adjunct now at in the little town I live in, hoping that there would be a way to blend biomedicine with some of the other therapies. And I have to tell you, right now, having spent you know 40 years on that journey, that I don't believe it's going to ever happen. Not in North America. And it's very unfortunate because Europe has really embraced a lot of those kinds of attitudes, and certainly in Asia, that's very true. But in North America, it's just like um it's so I don't know if it's that they've done such a good work of convincing people that you know you have to take a pill or surgery to get better. But it seems like North Americans still are learning and we're getting more educated, but it's a long ways away still. I'll be gone before there's any kind of integration, I'm afraid, you know.

SPEAKER_02 32:16

That's sad to hear.

SPEAKER_00 32:19

It is. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think there's hope, but the young graduates coming out. I taught for a while in university, and the graduates, particularly the ones who come out as family physicians, the young, you think there would be some because of the environment they've grown up in, right? They're young, they're like in their mid-20s, right? But they get so ingrained that this is the way it is, and this is the drug for this. And it becomes really difficult for them to sway too far without the college kind of, you know, wrapping their knuckles for even thinking about this or that. But there is hope because actually I was at a cocktail party many years ago, and I was sitting beside a lawyer, and she says, What do you do? And I said, Oh, I'm an herbalist. And she's oh, and I'm a lawyer. She said, Do you know want to know why doctors are not interested in herbal medicine? And I said, Yeah, I'd I'd really like to know. And she says, in legal terms, there is something called uh conformed consent. You've heard that term, right? Informed consent. Of course. And she says, what that means in legal terms is that for medical doctors, if you know about a product that is efficacious, safer, cost less, and less side effects, you are required by law to share that with your patient. If you don't know about it, you don't have to share it. So they deliberately don't want to know. That's my thought. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:54

Wow. That's a very interesting theory.

SPEAKER_02 33:57

Think about that.

SPEAKER_00 33:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:00

That's crazy to think about. Absolutely crazy to think about.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

But on the other hand, you know, there's a bunch of us started herbal medicine back in the 70s, and you know, Ed was one of them, and some of the elders are still with us, you know, like uh Christopher Hobbes and Winston and Matthew Wood. And I just finished a book with Matthew, by the way, coming out next year called The Immune Herbal. Which people, and it took us three years of uh, you know, figuring how do you make the immune system readable and understandable to the average person. Right. Because it is a pretty intense thing. But now there's thousands and thousands of herbal students and clinical herbalists and you know, the American Herbalist Guild, and we're way better positioned than we were in the 70s. I thought back in the 70s, uh, when I was doing starting my herbal practice, that, you know, it was against the law, right?

SPEAKER_02 34:59

Rebel.

SPEAKER_00 35:00

Yeah, it was against the law. But, you know, a child of the 70s, right? Yeah, has to do something different. Yeah, yeah. So uh there's great hope for herbal and naturopathic and all of those. I mean, people are flocking to those. One of the disadvantages in Canada is that we have what they call a universal healthcare system where all your visits are paid for by the government, by the taxpayer, right? Um, whereas in the States, you're paying anyway. So you may as well go to somebody who, you know, aligns more closely with your belief system, right? So it's quite different. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:39

That's fascinating. See, I'm on the end of like, I still see the hope that the integration can happen because I know I have a lot of people from the allopathic system that are like, wait, I want to learn more about herbs. And thanks to you and your generation, we can make those things much more readily available to those people. But I see it happening. And it's definitely like you use the word flocked. I think that's absolutely happened, particularly since the pandemic, where people were like, oh, this system isn't all about our health care. They actually prefer sick care. But that guy needs to dance together, you know. We really need to, you know, Western medicine saves lives in ways that herbs can't.

SPEAKER_00 36:24

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 36:25

But herbs help you not need the Western medicine so much.

SPEAKER_00 36:29

So yeah, it should be first level of influence, right? I mean, uh, go to your community herbalist, that's the first thing. And then learn how to take care of yourself and educate yourself about diet and how to handle stress in your life and all the different things that really influence your overall well-being. And we'd be better off and there'd be a whole lot less visits to hospitals. I'll tell you that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:54

Amen. That diet piece, too. It's just one of those things that, as I see so many people flocking to the world of plants, hooray, we love this, but they often are seeking that instant fix pill that we are so used to getting in the allopathic system. But we all know, herbalists know, that we need to look at the diet and other lifestyle factors. How can we help people in that level before we decide what's the plant or you know, the formula? So it's an interesting world out there to help people recognize that the plants are amazing. And if you don't like the way the life you've been living is and the way you're treated is, maybe you need a new shift that's not just looking for an instant fix pill.

SPEAKER_00 37:40

I agree. I agree. And you know, in my clinical practice, I used to use a lot of flower essences. I really believe that when people can shift some of their older patterns, you know, bring light into areas of dark and recognize that this isn't working for me anymore. And there's another way to look at things and look at my life. And I think that's really important. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:02

What flower essences have you found great success with when it comes to those people that are like, wait, I'm finally seeing the message. It's time to make those shifts. What have been some really supportive ones for your clients?

SPEAKER_00 38:16

Well, I would say I wrote a book years ago called Herbal Allies and called My Journey with Plant Medicine. I wrote down nine key things to pass on to other herbalists. And the one flower essence that really came up time and again is I would often get people in my clinical practice who were towards the end of their journey with their health and life, basically, which is unfortunate that it came to that. They tried everything else, and now they come to the herbalist, which really, with severe problems, that can be problematic. But I found the flower essence from Bach, Gorse. Gorse is the flower essence for people who suffer from hopelessness. They need hope. And I remember that really distinctly because I was giving a talk at the university one time to third-year medical students, and I mentioned during my talk that, you know, as a healer, as a practitioner, you need to give people hope. You can't say, oh, well, you know, you've got six months to live, you know, stuff like crazy stuff like that. Because that implants in people's minds. Like, oh, I've only got six months, and you believe that that's probably going to happen. So you have to give them hope. And that professor at the end of that talk, he pulled me over and he says, you know, that's not very professional. He says, You shouldn't be giving people hope. And I looked at him and said, What? What are you talking about? He says, Well, that's just raising false expectations. And I said, Well, I have to disagree with you. You know, like from a perspective of someone who believes that the body can heal itself, you have to have hope. You know, if you're someone who believes that you have to intervene with drugs and surgery, that's a different story. But from my perspective, hope is the most important. And of course, uh, I went on from there in 2016. I put a book out called Mushroom Essences. I actually took the idea of flower essences that made mushroom essences under lunar influence. And 48 of those, and so those are getting around the world and are kind of fascinating too. And those are for people, particularly young Ian psychologists who want to work with depth psychology, who want to work with shadow work. And so that's an interesting book as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:37

Wow, that's fascinating. That sounds really deep, obviously. I'd love to love to hear more about the mushroom essences. That's that's exciting.

SPEAKER_00 40:48

Yeah, yeah, that was a fun project. That took me 26 years to put that all together into a book. Because I I needed to use the essences, think about them, prepare them, use them in clinical practice, get feedback from people. So all of the essences, I have one or two case studies that indicate how you could possibly use that essence for this issue or whatever. And so I worked on that. And then the fellow, Doug, who did my uh fungal pharmacy and pre-healer, he says, What are you up to, Robert? One day he phoned me and I said, Oh, I got this book. I said, Would you guys be interested in a book on mushroom essences? And he goes, Oh, he says, I don't know. He says, I'll have to talk to my editorial board. And I said, Yeah, sure. I said, So he got back to me about two days later and he says, uh, nobody thinks that's gonna be a popular book. And I said, Okay, I said, I'll tell you what, this is a Thursday. I said, I'll tell you what, Doug. I said, you know, if you change your mind, or they do, if I don't hear back by Monday, I'm gonna self-publish it because I put 26 years in, I got to move on to other stuff. It's done, ready to go, whatever. He said, Fair enough. So that weekend, this is a true story. And by the way, I told this story. I was in Denver last June at the psychedelic uh conference. I forget what it was the title is. But anyways, every psychedelic in the world was there in Denver for this conference. So it's kind of interesting.

SPEAKER_02 42:17

Sounds fun.

SPEAKER_00 42:18

Yeah, I like, anyways, and I was talking about uh mushroom essences, right? And Doug had who I hadn't seen in about eight years, he shows up in the audience. I go, Oh, there's Doug. And so I had to tell this story. So um, and I told that story there as well. He and his family went to the Sierra Nevada for a hike. The family went and they came up over this hill, and there were a group of young women sitting around a crystal bowl in a circle, 13 of them, get that a little true coven. Yeah, 13 of them sitting around in a circle. And he slowly walked up with his family, his wife and kid, and walked up to them and says, What are you up to? And one of the women turns up and goes, uh, well, we're making a flower essence. And Doug goes, Oh, he says, What would you think about mushroom essences? And all 13 turned to him exactly at the same moment. They all turned their heads to him and go, Where do you get those? And on Monday he wrote me and he said, Yeah, we'll print it, Robert. And so that's the reason it got published.

SPEAKER_02 43:29

That's amazing. Like the universe is magical in that way. Where it's true.

SPEAKER_00 43:33

It really is.

SPEAKER_02 43:35

Creators like you get an idea, and the universe is like, yes, let's make this happen.

SPEAKER_00 43:41

Exactly. And true. And I'm working with a famous homeopath in Berlin who loves the mushroom essences, and he's actually taken some of the information of those essences and has made uh treacherated homeopathics that are not out there and having very interesting success. And he's finding that when the provers work with these essences or with the homeopathics, that they get some of the same sensations, some of the same word categories that came up for me working with the essences with people. So I find that pretty remarkable. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:19

They sound incredible. What are some of the examples of things that they treat? I know it's deep psyche work.

SPEAKER_00 44:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:26

Do you have an example?

SPEAKER_00 44:29

Oh, there's so many. I mean, see you is what I guess uh the one that always strikes me, and I sometimes share in conferences, is in our part of the world there's something called a diamond willow fungus. It's a haploporo odorus. It grows only on diamond willow trees. And sometimes these trees are big, so they can be up to the size of a small football, right? And they smell very much like anise, uh, like silicorice, right? And they're used by Indigenous people for smudging, for uh enhancing the environment of sharing information, like working with people who are having difficulties with their mental emotional patterns. And so I thought, well, I got to make an essence of this. I don't know what it's going to be good for, but I got to do it anyways. And so I did that. And it finally came up. An indigenous fellow, about 50 years old, came in. He had been uh really abused in a Roman Catholic one of these uh schools that they had set up by the government, the residential schools were it was heavily a lot of abuse and uh ill treatment and things like that. They were separated from their family, like when he was five years old. Can you imagine? I can't imagine. Anyways, and uh he was gay, and so he's a 50-year-old, he was on the street, he was basically homeless, whatever, and he came in to see me, and basically we started talking about his story. And he says, I feel really lost. And so I talked to him about, you know, well, the possibilities that are going on there, that props that when he was young, maybe one of his, maybe when he was five or six or seven or something like that, uh, one of those young children that are part of him, part of his soul, basically, um, is lost or or hidden or buried or whatever. And he kind of got it, you know, a little bit. I said, I've got an essence called Diamond Willow from Diamond. He says, Oh, I know that. He says, That's a really powerful medicine. And I said, Yeah. So I gave him the essence and he took it for lunar cycle. I always had people take it for 28 days, right? Because attached to our lunar cycle. Those are lunar essences as opposed to solar essences. So he took it for the 28 days and he came back to see me and not much. I said, Well, keep going. And so about six days later, he phones me. He says, Robert, he says, You're not gonna believe this. He said, I woke up in the middle of the night, and there was me, looked like I was about six years old, crying. And I went in and hugged him, and I woke up in the morning, and I feel completely different.

SPEAKER_01 47:17

Oh, it's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 47:20

And then he went on, yeah, and then he went on to actually be a counselor at the one of the centers downtown where where they would house people overnight, you know, and feed them who had nothing, who are street people. And uh Northern Alberta has a lot of share of indigenous people who want to leave their communities and go to the big city, and then they're they're kind of stuck, right? There's there's no jobs and things. And so he turned his life around completely. And so that was the most dramatic of that particular essence. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:55

Wow. That's such an incredible story. And that as you spoke in the beginning when you were talking about mushroom essences of that like shadow work and that inner child healing, like, wow, that's that's beautiful. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 48:11

It is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's 48 of them. I had to narrow it down. And that's why it took me 26 years. It took a long time to develop them. Which way should I prep them? How did people who took them respond? You know, basically getting my clients to volunteer to take these and get back to me, you know, is so I thank them endlessly because without that in that feedback, you know, who knows what, you know. So that was all good.

SPEAKER_02 48:38

Yeah, we know we know the big money is not gonna pay for these studies, that's for sure. Thank you for dedicating your life to like bringing the true medicine of this earth and the universe all together to people and like really getting into the science of it. It reminds me of the eclectics too, there, Chris. Like combined.

SPEAKER_00 48:59

Very much, yes. Yeah, I really believe if I was born 150 years ago, I would have been an eclectic. There's no question about it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:07

You remind me of Dr. Bach, is what I was thinking. He knew it was like he discovered the 38 flower essences, and it seems like you've had the same life path with the mushroom essences. I do remember when I met you at the United Plant Savers Conference and I'd had trouble sleeping, and you gave me some lavender oil, and you said, This is like no other lavender oil you've tried. And I got back and I changed hotels, and there was a fire alarm going off outside my room when my partner called me and said, What is that? I said, I've been trying to get it turned off, but it just keeps going. And then I took the lavender oil, put it on a cotton bud, and went to go to sleep. I fell asleep right then and there, all my makeup on, clothes, woke up in the morning, and the fire alarm was still going off and couldn't believe it. It knocked me out like nothing. It was some alarm right outside my door that was just in my room. It's going boom, boom, boom. And the oil just knocked me flat. So I think everything they have is super powerful.

SPEAKER_00 50:06

I'm so happy to hear that. Oh, that's really nice. Um, yeah, that's is a Croatian lavender. That's not, you see, it's very interesting to note. Did you know that France exports eight times the amount of lavender they produce? Did you know that?

unknown 50:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:22

It's fake.

SPEAKER_00 50:23

How could you do that? That's amazing, right? Um, because I've been in this field for, well, we have a company, my wife and I call Sense of Wonder, which I gave you that little bottle. And in France, they produce a hybrid called lavendin, which is like lavender grows about this tall, right? Whereas lavender grows about up to two or three feet, and they harvest it with these huge machines. But it's not exactly right. And so they get from Croatia and some of the Mediterranean islands, they buy more expensive lavender oil, and they then use enough in those barrels of oil to make it suitable for the market. They call it 4042, meaning linolol, linolacetate. Um, and then they ship it over, double the price, ship it over to North America, and that's what you get. And that's not true lavender. It's not true lavender. And so there's the difference when you use real essential oil, you get you have you experience a different sensation with it, right? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:29

Yeah, it's incredible.

SPEAKER_00 51:31

Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_01 51:36

I was blown away. Judith, the lady I was with, had the same experience. Knocked flat. We slept so peacefully and woke up refreshed.

SPEAKER_00 51:45

That's good. You probably were exhausted from the weekend, though. I mean, United Plant Savers and all of the herbal presentations and going to the Lloyd Library. That was really I I loved that. That was really exciting. Yeah. Yeah, it was pleasure to pleasure to meet you. I didn't when you volunteered to drive me back to the airport, I was so thrilled. Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 52:09

I was pretty nervous. My driving's not the best.

SPEAKER_00 52:12

You did good. It was fun. It was really fun.

SPEAKER_01 52:15

Yeah. Yeah, it was an honor to have you in the car. And I was I felt like I was very privileged to meet you and very inspired by your work.

SPEAKER_00 52:23

I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. I'm getting to the end of my career, but it's been fun. I wouldn't trade it for anything. I remember one of my books, Herbal Allies Think, Matthew Wood wrote a foreword for me. He writes, Back in the day, you know, I was talking to somebody in Appalachia about being an herbalist, and the guy says, Oh, I wouldn't want to do that. I'd have to live in a log cabin and I wouldn't make any money. And then he writes, Robert grew up, moved north, built a log cabin, and became an herbalist. Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_02 52:56

And yet the riches we receive when we get to be immersed by these plants and other spirits out there. And I think being able to share stories of the impact that your wisdom has on people, like that right there is richness, unlike any other, in my opinion.

unknown 53:17

I guess.

SPEAKER_01 53:17

Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 53:18

Yeah. I uh shared this with you when I was almost 40. I was a bachelor, of course, and uh thought, yeah, it's pretty all right, you know, hadn't met somebody I really want to share my life with. And and so I I just come back from a holiday in the Canary Islands. I was going through something, and in my dream one night, I just had this immense feeling of tightness in my chest around my solar plexus and whatever, and I coughed up this golden egg. I picked I this egg came out of me in my dream, and I'm holding it in my hands looking at it, and I went, what was that? And so I got back to Edmonton and I was given a course class by Dr. Young, invited me in, and he'd showed a movie of Eduardo Calderon, the wizard of the four winds, who I studied with in Peru. There was a movie about him. He was a famous guy, Eduardo Calderon. You can read about him. And then he asked me to talk about my time with Eduardo, right? Doing the chopping up the cacti and whatever. And um, he was an interesting guy. I used to use iridology, reading the iris. He used to do uh guinea pig, the Inca guinea pig, where they would take a guinea pig and run it a live guinea pig and run it up and down the spinal column and then all over the body at the different meridians, and then kill it, open up, look at the entrails, and he would tell where your disease was. And he was highly successful. People came to him from all over the world. He was invited to Switzerland to talk about his work and whatever. But, anyways, basically, I was in the class and I was talking about my experience with it, and I mentioned the golden egg. And unbeknownst to me, my future wife was sitting in that room in that class. She had been looking forward to it and whatever. And then she heard me talk about the golden egg, and she had had a similar experience about six months before that. So we ended up, we found out we lived in apartments right beside each other, like unbeknownst. We had never met to that point. We ended up going together, and very shortly we lived together and got married and been happily married for almost 36 years.

SPEAKER_01 55:38

Wow. It was mean to be.

SPEAKER_00 55:40

It was. I always thanked David Young for inviting me to that class. And another synergistic thing that happens that, you know, it seems like, you know, when you're paying attention a bit, things really do manifest.

SPEAKER_01 55:54

So that's beautiful. Beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 56:03

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, she's an author as well. She's written a number of interesting books. She works a lot with goddess work, particularly the Greek goddesses, and works with, well, we're both retired now, sort of retired. She works a lot with young women, helping them to understand the foibles of being a teenage girl and all the different things, the patterns that come up, and how to avoid the issues that are very evolved with learning wisdom as you grow and trying to avoid some of the pitfalls that can happen, you know.

SPEAKER_02 56:37

Well, it sounds like this mother of a 12-year-old girl is about to buy some of your wife's books too.

SPEAKER_00 56:43

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And she's and first of all, when I had a little line of essential oils and she thought at first, oh, there's nothing to these, and now she loves them. And she's actually, I would say, 10 times the sense of smell that I have. And that's generally true for women. They have much more sensitive uh olfactory system. And so we've worked together for the last 35 years with essential oils and flower essences. And she helped me with the astrology part of the mushroom essences. She used to be an astrologer when she was 15 years old. She was doing astrology. And so it's just meant to be. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:24

I feel like I need a trip to Alberta just to hang out with you and your wife for a week or so and listen to stories and soak up the wisdom. It sounds exciting.

SPEAKER_00 57:33

Yeah, we haven't been to Portland for a lot of years. We'll have to make our way down and make sure we bring you some more lavender. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:40

Oh, absolutely. The geese cottage. My library.

unknown 57:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:45

Yeah, I would love to. Love to. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:48

Can I ask one more question before you go? It's an easy one. Where can our listeners find all of your books, your amazing essential oils, and your wife's books?

SPEAKER_00 57:59

Almost all my books are available through Amazon. I know people hate that, but that's the reality.

SPEAKER_02 58:05

I got your book off bookshop.org, which is not Amazon. So we'll link that too. Oh, there's another one.

SPEAKER_00 58:12

Oh, good. There's other options. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:14

Bookshop.org is actually a great place to purchase your books. They do not support Bezos. They support small independent bookshops all around the country. Good. The woman-owned black woman who runs the company. They're amazing. So that's that's where I always recommend like any of my students or anybody listening to me talk about books. I send them to bookshop.

SPEAKER_00 58:35

Okay, good.

SPEAKER_02 58:36

And that's where I got yours last week.

SPEAKER_00 58:37

So but I will give you a website just so you people can keep in touch or see what's out there and what's available. It's w dot self-s-e-l-fealdistributing.com. And then there's a little bit on there about, and then once in a while, I don't do regular courses. My wife and I, we had a college, the Northern Star College, Mystical Studies, for about 16 years where I taught herbal medicine, flower essences, mushroom, essential oil, all of that. But you'll see on there occasionally any courses or places I'll be this summer, I'll list them there. I am going to be presenting at the Vancouver Island herd gathering in June. So I'll be and if things settle down at the border, I'm hoping to speak at the Telluride Mushroom Festival in August.

SPEAKER_02 59:38

Fund.

SPEAKER_00 59:38

Exactly. Yeah, I'm going to talk about medicinal lichens, actually. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:45

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:46

Because they are in the fungal kingdom, but they're not really, you know, people don't think about them in terms of mushrooms, right? But they are.

SPEAKER_02 59:54

Well, thanks again for coming on and sharing so many fabulous stories. It's always interesting when you hop on a call or a podcast with people and you have like these lists of questions that you might ask. And you get guests like you that are just like, here's this wisdom and these fabulous stories that just ooze from you. So thank you. That was really fun. I really appreciate you coming on the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:18

Oh, you're very welcome. Yeah, I enjoyed it. It's always a pleasure to uh interchange with people who know what they're doing and ask the right questions. And away we go. So thank you so much. And great to see you again, Christine. Yeah. Take care.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:31

Great to see you tonight. It was such an honor to see you again and have you on the show. And I'm sure we will meet again.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:37

I think we will. I'm pretty sure we will. Take care, Mel. All the best.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:41

Yeah, you too.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:41

Okay, well, we'll be in touch. Have a great day. Absolutely. Take care. All the best. Bye. Bye-bye now. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:47

Bye. Thank you. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Eclectic Herbal Wisdom. We are so grateful you spent your time with us. And if you enjoyed this episode, we'd love it if you share it with a friend who might appreciate it as well. And if you have a moment, leaving us a review really helps other plant lovers to find the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:08

We'd love to connect with you. Be sure to reach out to us on social media or on our website at Eclectic Herb. Let us know if you like the show, if you have any questions, or if you have any ideas for future shows.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:21

And speaking of future shows, new episodes drop every other week. So make sure you're subscribed and you don't miss a single show.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:29

Before you go, a quick reminder. Everything we share on this podcast is for educational purposes only. We are here to inspire and inform that this isn't medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare practitioner before studying any new herbal protocol, especially if you're pregnant, nursing, or taking medications. Thanks again for tuning into the show. Until next time, may the plants guide you.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:53

Take care.