Evolutionary Herbalism: Part 2 - The Fascinating Science, Spirituality & Medicines Of The Plant Kingdom With Sajah Popham.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Podcast, there is an aspect of this process that is about our own connection to nature and our ability as humans to utilize our sensory mechanisms. Who is this person, like the wholeness of this person? How are they embodying and expressing these fundamental, in this case, kind of elemental forces of life? Where are they excessive? Where are they deficient?

Help, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield.

Welcome to the show. All right, folks, well, this is part two, part two of my podcast with the author of a really great book. It's called Evolutionary Herbalism. And Evolutionary Herbalism is a book that's basically all about the fascinating, like the sacred intelligence of plants and some of the more subtle nuances of things like plant foraging and just getting to be better connected to the copious amount of intelligence and just wonder and magic that surrounds us in nature that we really, I think, have lost quite a bit of connection with and that my guest on today's show and on part one of this special two part podcast series that we did has studied up on and knows quite a bit about. Now, if you missed part one, you can actually access that if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com EvolutionaryHerbalism I know it's a mouthful, but it's BenGreenfieldFitness.com evolutionaryherbalism which is also the title of the book. And in part one we covered a whole host of topics, but they included things like how we can actually go out and forage for plants and do a better job doing it. The lost language of plants that we've kind of lost connection to. And just in general, how an evolutionary earthquake herbalist actually lives and operates on a day to day basis. So if you want to access the show notes for today's show, you can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com EvolutionaryHerbalism2 like evolutionary herbalism, the number two, and you can learn more there. In addition to that, just a quick introduction to my guest. If you listen to part one, you're already very familiar with him, but his name is Seja Popham. Seja has this really innovative approach to herbalism that incorporates medicine and healing, but also harvesting of plants and kind of like isolation of a lot of the molecules and plants that can help people out. He has a degree in herbal sciences from Bastyr University where he studied up on a lot of this stuff and he studies herbal traditions all around the world. The chemistry of the plant, the energetics of the plant and the spirit of the plant to really work on a person's entire mind, body and soul. And so in today's episode, we're going to kind of start where we left off in the last episode, in which we were discussing kind of like the approach that one would take if they wanted to actually be treated by a doctor or by someone like Seja, who actually specializes in kind of applying the plant to the human. Now related to that, Saja. And by the way, welcome back.

Yeah, thanks for having me again. Good to be back.

And, you know, you have a really, really fascinating part in the book because we were talking about, like, the doctrine of signatures earlier, and, you know, how different parts of the plant give you clues as to what effects those plants might have on different aspects of our physiology. But you also talk in the book about, I believe, what you call the different elements, the different elements of the body, and you talk about how plant parts corresponds to specific elements. Can you get. Get into what you mean by that?

Yeah, well, one thing. When we look at different herbal cultures from around the world, it's pretty universal that they all have some form of integration of the elements into their system of healing, into their, I guess, metaphysics, their understanding of the natural world. Looking at earth, water, air and fire, the four elements are more commonly used in the Western systems. In the east, we see the inclusion of the fifth element, ether. In the Western alchemical tradition, they acknowledge a fifth element that they refer to as quintessence. But these elements are really seen as the building blocks of all of life. Looking at how these elements really are at the basis for life, if we look at a plant, we see that those elements are necessary in order just for the basic fact of how a plant grows. It grows within the earth. It requires the water, it requires the carbon dioxide from the air, it requires the light or the fire from the sun. And it needs some space to grow in. And so the plants require these. These five elements in order for them to generate and to grow. But then when we look at a plant on a deeper level, we see that there are these core parts of a plant that also correlates to the elements. And different cultures and traditions have kind of corresponded these slightly differently. But the way that I've come to understand it is that, you know, we have the roots of the plant, which are obviously growing within the earth, correlating to that earth element. Then we have the stems of the plant, which is, you know, how a lot of the nutrients are being conducted from the soil up into the aerial parts of the Plant through the fluids, right. So there's that water element, and then the leaves being where photosynthesis is happening, being where gaseous exchanges are happening, being the air element, and then the flowers of the plant at the. It's like the color, it's its expression, it's its radiance being the fire. And then we see the seeds of the plant or the fruit being that fifth element or that quintessence. And I find that to be very interesting because in the Western alchemical tradition as well as in Ayurveda, they say that fifth element, that quintessence or the ether, is the synergy of the other four elements. When earth, water, air and fire come into a perfect harmony and balance, they fuse into that fifth element. And so that fifth element contains the other four within it. And isn't that what a seed is? Right. Of a plant? The seed of a plant contains the roots and the leaves and the stalks and the flowers of the next generation of plants. So I find that to be a very interesting correlation of how we can see kind of these. And that's a big premise of the alchemical tradition, is we're looking at the macrocosm, we're looking at the great forces of life and creation and nature and seeing how they relate to the microcosm. And so for myself as an herbalist, doing that with plants, but it also absolutely applies to people as well. And that really is what ultimately forms the basis and foundation for the practice of medical alchemy.

Now, is this related to. Because I interviewed Dr. Thomas Cowan and he talks a lot about Rudolf Steiner and he makes like these vegetable powders that he powders up, like achitaba and moringa and beets. But he always, always kind of like either combines the roots and leaves and the stems and the seeds in different ways to target different body systems, or will isolate something. Like he has one called a root healing powder, which is like the root of a bunch of specific plants. I forget which ones. But ultimately the root healing powder is supposedly something that kind of like grounds you or is good for stress reducing properties or depression or things like that, or maybe like sacral or pelvic issues, because those might be all considered root based issues. Is that kind of along the same lines of what you do? And is that all based on this Rudolf Steiner guy?

It's similar. I have studied Steiner's work a bit. I am by no means an expert in his. You know, his works are vast and there's a lot to it. But in general, yeah, I mean, and that is, in a way, an application of what an alchemy is referred to as the doctrine of similars, which is also based on signatures, where you're correlating the plants to the person based on similarity of properties. And so it is a little bit more of a, I suppose, an esoteric way of applying medicinal plants to people, whereby you're looking at, you know, for example, within a person, say, you know, they have a lot of these, you know, maybe air element or ether element within their constitution. Maybe they're really spacey or ungrounded or really anxious or their nervous system is really amped up. So from an elemental perspective, we would say, oh, they're kind of lacking in this earth element quality. Then we would turn to earth element plants in order to fill in that elemental deficiency and help them to regain balance. That is one application of, I suppose, more of an energetic understanding of people and plants and a way of applying herbal medicines in that way where you're not necessarily looking at a person and saying, oh, we need to work on this biochemical pathway, or, oh, they have this symptom, and this herb's good for them. That symptom. We're looking at it from a little bit more of a holistic lens in terms of who is this person? Like, the wholeness of this person, how are they embodying and expressing these fundamental, in this case, kind of elemental forces of life? Where are they excessive, where are they deficient? And we're going to bring plants in to help to fill in those deficiencies and weaknesses and to maybe tone down those excesses. So that is definitely one way of applying plants in that way.

Okay, so from what I understand in your book, different people are kind of like made up in different ways from an elemental standpoint. And so each of us, I guess, we have our own type of elemental type, I suppose. Can you explain what exactly that means, how we each have different elements?

So this is a really important concept in traditional systems of medicine, which is essentially the understanding of the constitution. And that is that we all have our uniqueness, right? We all have a heart, we all have a mind, we all have these organs in our body. So to a certain extent, we're all the same. But yet we all have our unique dispositions. We all have our unique tendencies, right? Why is it that some people tend to get really inflamed and hot all the time, and some people tend to be really cold and pale and depressed all the time? How come some people get really nervous and anxious and can't sleep at Night and other people get full of fluids and get really damp and stagnant and things like that, right? It's like we all have these different predispositions towards health issues that we face. The concept of the constitution is that we are all born with this unique composition of these elemental forces, right? Like I was saying, earth, water, air, fire and ether. And different traditions of medicine really have different understandings of constitutions. But ultimately, when you really boil it down, they're all saying the same thing just in slightly different words, right? I mean, Ayurveda, they have. And kapha, Chinese medicine, they have their five elements.

Isn't Chinese medicine like metal and water and stuff like that?

They have metal and wood are the two slightly different interpretations of the elements. But really, when it gets broken down to it, the metal element is very synonymous to the air element, right? It rules the lungs and the large intestine similarly to the air element and vata dosha and Ayurveda. And then would some correlate that to, like the ether element as it's kind of these seasonal transitions and it's the dynamic of growth and change. While, yeah, on the surface sometimes there can seem like there's differences, but really, when you break it down, they're talking about the same things, right? And so that we all have tendencies. And so the premise of constitutional systems is for us to have an understanding of where we become excessive and where we become deficient. And we can tailor the way that we live our lives in terms of when we go to sleep and when we wake up and what types of foods we eat and when we eat and what types of activities that we do where we choose to live, right? There's all these different factors that affect us on a constitutional level. And the goal of it is to try to live in a way that we are not producing these excesses and deficiencies and can ideally stay in balance. Of course, there's no end to that, right? I mean, you can find balance and then a gust of wind comes and you're out of balance again. So it's a constant daily practice of just seeing where. Where we are and understanding how things affect us and being aware. It's really, to me, constitutional systems are all about self awareness and how the things that we do affect us and making sure that we're not pushing our system in any one way or another too far, because that's where we can start to experience pathology. This is where another important juxtaposed concept comes in with herbal medicine, which is the concept of energetics of plants. So, you know, modern biomedical herbalism really sees medicinal plants as acting based on their chemistry. Right. But traditional systems didn't have an understanding of biochemicals. Right? But they knew that when you take cayenne pepper, you get hot, right? It pushes the blood to the surface. You get red faced and you break a sweat. It's a hot plant. When you take wild lettuce, it cools you down. When you take something like nettles and you are increasing your urination, it tends to dry you out. When you drink marshmallow tea, it moistens your lungs. So you have these plants have these warming and cooling and moistening and drying properties that alter our constitution. And this is a really important concept because when we look at human health strictly through the lens of symptoms or disease names, it can be very easy to overlook the constitutional factors. And people can have the same symptom with a different underlying constitutional factor. So I always like to use constipation as an example. Right. People can get constipated for a number of different reasons, right? Someone might be constipated because they have dryness in their bowel. Another person might be constipated because they have cold digestion. And a third person might be constipated because they have a lot of tension and constriction in their intestines. The end symptom is still constipation, but the tissue state, the constitution of the tissue underneath it is different and therefore changes what types of remedies that you would give to those people. So it's a very important concept in holistic herbalism that I'm very adamant about sharing and teaching, because to me, in my experience, it really is the pathway to finding the right remedy. And I think that's one of the reasons why sometimes people try an herb and they're like, yeah, it didn't really work, or it didn't do anything, or worst case scenario, it made me feel worse. And oftentimes it's because the energetic of the plant was not the correct match for the constitution of the person.

It seems like western medicine, like allopathic medicine, is one of the few forms of medicine, and correct me if I'm wrong, where we're not necessarily typing people. I mean, I know we have anthropometry in fitness where sometimes we'll say, oh, this person is an endomorph or an ectomorph or a mesomorph, like a pear or an apple or a ruler shape or whatever, but it seems to me that that's about the closest that we get. But it is kind of weird, isn't it, that like Chinese medicine has their typing and Ayurveda has their typing. And I don't know the root of the type of typing, I guess that you do. I assume that's also kind of rooted in more Eastern or Ayurvedic tradition or something like that. But do you get what I'm saying? Does Western medicine have the equivalent of that?

Well, not that I'm aware of. I think there's some people that do work with it based on like endocrine types. And this is something one of my herb teachers talks about where he. And those types that you're talking about, Sheldon's endomorph, ectomorph, mesomorph, those are pretty much picture perfect matches of vata, pittacapha and Ayurveda, which also correlate to, you know, in medical astrology they have their seven planetary types of. Of people. But as far as modern kind of Western allopathic medicine, I'm not too sure if people are using that. I know that there are endocrine nervous system types. So there's the sympathetic excess, the parasympathetic excess.

Yeah, that's true. I mean, I've actually seen a lot more of that in osteopathy and naturopathy. But there is one doctor, I think it's Nick Gonzalez, who does a lot of that parasympathetic sympathetic typing. I think it was actually Joe Mercola, who's kind of a lightning rod these days, who introduced me to some of that sympathetic, parasympathetic nervous typing type of work. And since then I've delved into it a little bit more. I talked about it a little bit with Anthony Beck when I interviewed him on my show too. This idea of looking at your sympathetic versus your parasympathetic balance and eating accordingly, with meat being something that's a little bit better for, I guess, more parasympathetically driven people and plants being better for more sympathetically driven people. But yeah, it seems like as far as the advanced nature of the type of Ayurvedic constitution or what Chinese medicine has or something like you're talking about, it seems like there's not a lot of that in Western medicine.

Well, yeah, and I think a lot of it really boils down to, I guess, for lack of a better term, philosophical approach and just the whole way the system is constructed from my understanding of it, it seems like most Western medicine is really built around diagnosing the symptom. And here's the drug that you use to treat that symptom or that disease. And it's not very customized to the uniqueness of the person. And of course that's like a very general statement. I'm sure there's lots of doctors out there that practice in very different ways, and I'm sure that they all have their different approaches. But it seems like in general the consideration of the uniqueness of the individual is oftentimes overlooked. And I think that's big premise of holistic medicine, right. Is treat the person, not the disease.

Now what about just to kind of get into some practical examples. What type are you if you're to use your elemental typing?

Yeah. Well, if I was to describe myself from an elemental perspective, I would say I am predominantly a fire type individual with a secondary air element quality going on. From an ayurvedic perspective, I would be considered a pitta vata. And then in an astrological perspective, I have a dominance of Mars, which all basically are different ways of saying the same thing.

Yeah. And for you, just so people kind of understand, even though I know the book has hundreds of pages on kind of like what to do and what each of these different elements mean, but what are some examples of how you might live your life or eat based on the fact that you're constituted like that? Like what would be some adjustments you'd make?

So I mean in general, when we're talking about, for example, like an excess of the fire element in general, it tends to produce much more heat patterns within the individual. And I'm speaking in general here, not necessarily about myself only, but. Right, heat patterns. So the fire element governs the small intestine. The fire element governs the heart. And the circulation has a lot to do with the immune system and inflammatory processes within the body. So when those elements tend to be in excess, you can end up with hot digestion. Sometimes people don't. They almost digest too quickly and there's not enough time to absorb nutrients. They can tend to be. Autoimmune is very common these days for people with a lot of fire. Fire excess or just hyper inflammatory in general. So a lot of inflammation is present there. And then another big one there would be the adrenal glands and the excess of the sympathetic nervous system. A lot of fire element tends to. Especially when you have fire combined with air, it tends to the wind fans the flames. Right. And so that type can very commonly become easily triggered, easily stressed. They can really push themselves really hard and get to a place of burnout. As far as a lifestyle orientation, you know, one of the things that I think is really good for people with these types of constitutions is eat cooling foods, you know, and the irony of it is that you're oftentimes drawn to the things that are similar. So it's always the like hot, fiery pitta mars people that like dump hot sauce on all their food. Right. I mean, I love hot, spicy food. Me too. It's like the worst thing I should do, you know. Right. So it's like, you know, eating things like cucumbers and like fresh salads and like cooling raw, like more raw foods are good. You know, I'm not a proponent of strictly raw foods, but cooling fresh foods tend to be better for those types of people. You know, in Ayurveda oftentimes they do a lot of dairy. So they, you know, tend to recommend cooling dairy foods for pittas and things like that. But yeah, cooling foods, calming activities. They generally recommend not to do overly rigorous exercise, but more like calming, settling type exercise. Sleep is usually pretty, pretty important for them. They oftentimes don't want to sleep, but they're the ones that need it a lot.

It's kind of funny as you're going through all this because I'm known to be according to some of the Chinese typing I've done, Even though I haven't really gone through the exact typing system in your book. I actually am one of those people who is recommended to do more relaxed exercise, have more, I think, cooling foods, et cetera. Yet I love hot sauce, I love high intensity exercise. And so it's kind of weird. And the typing that I did to give me advice on that, I think was all based on birth date. It was more of a Chinese protocol. I actually did a podcast with Avi Hershowitz down in the Bay Area and we did a whole podcast on the Chinese typing. And I kind of messed around with it for a while. Honestly, the only thing that stuck with me was I tend to. I guess the best way I can explain this is I tend to do better when blood is more kind of like shunted towards my upper extremities and my lower extremities. So they advise that anytime I finish like a run or a walk or a bike ride or something that has the propensity to pull a lot of blood in the lower extremities that I finish that up with, like, you know, a set of push ups or, or like inversion therapy or something that moves the blood back up to My upper body and my head. And that was the only thing that really, really seemed to stick with me as far as something where I actually feel more energized when I finish a long walk and I do some push ups or some upper body movements, or I finish a bike ride and I do inversion, a lot of the rest of it. You know, maybe I didn't do it for long enough or strict enough, but I didn't notice it that much. However, it's also very complicated, man. Like, like, is there, is there an app or like a quiz or a questionnaire somewhere where you could just go take a series of tests, figure out based on type of elemental typing that you do what you are, and then it just spits out a bunch of recommendations for you. Does anything like that exist that you know of?

Not sure about an app, but I do know that, I mean, a lot of the texts on Ayurveda generally have like little questionnaires that you can fill out to help you determine what your dominant and then often secondary dosha would be. And then oftentimes those books will be full of like, okay, for, you know, pitta people, here's the dietary recommendations. Kaphas, here's the dietary recommendations. Vata, here's the dietary recommendations. Stuff like that. So I mean, I think that's the closest thing that I've found to things like that. And I think, you know, I think for me, the thing about it is it's like it's so easy for people to get so a little neurotic about it, you know, and just get like too controlling or it really stresses them out. And it's like, no, that's not the point. It's like, to me, the most important thing is pay attention to your body. All of this is geared towards reaching a new degree of self knowledge and self understanding and determining and deciphering, you know, how things influence you and how things affect you. And so I say, yeah, it's good to study these things and have an understanding, an intellectual understanding of it is good, but it's not nearly as good as paying really close attention to your body and paying close attention to, oh, when I eat this food, I feel this way. When I'm in hot weather, I feel that way when. And just being aware of it, I think, is the key for all of these things, both in oneself and in another. When I first learned about constitutional systems, I mean, I was practicing all the time. I'm standing in line at the grocery store and I'm just observing, oh, look at their fingernails and the texture of their hair and how bushy their eyebrows are and the tone of their voice and how they dress. Oh, interesting. Everyone's in shorts and a T shirt and they've got a coat on. You know, all these things, like, they must be kind of cold. And it's a lens, you know, I always say it's like a lens that you see the world through and being able to kind of decipher how people are put together on that level, you should do like.

Like, I don't know if you could do this, but like. Like Skype consults or zoom consults with people where you could just walk them through a series of questions and look at them and talk to them and then, you know, work up some recommendations based on that. Seems like it'd be super helpful because. Because, like, I get the value of it after reading your book, especially the value of it tied to the use of these plant extracts to actually kind of really dial someone in based on deficiencies or excesses or certain elemental types. But I don't know. You ever do something like that, like online work with people or kind of almost telemedicine for elemental typing?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's a big, big part of my consultation work that I do with folks. And I live out in the mountains, so I don't see people in person very much these days and obviously especially now with the whole Covid world. So, yeah, most of the work, the one on work that I do with people is from a distance. And it works to an extent. It's not that great for things like tongue assessment and obviously you can't feel someone's pulse, but at least being able to see them and get a sense for their constitution that way is very helpful. And I prefer it over just speaking.

Over the telephone, you know, when it comes to something like that. I'll definitely put a link to your website in the show notes. If you'll go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com EvolutionaryHerbalism for part one, or BenGreenFitness.com EvolutionaryHerBalism2, the number two for part two. I already linked your website and your book anyways there, so that'd be super interesting. I might even have you do something like that with me in the future. Maybe we can video it. But to the plant piece. I have a lot of the plants that you talk about in the book, like nettle and yarrow. I touched on this in my last podcast with you kind of floating around in my backyard and, you know, you give some examples in the book about how you would actually, like, look at a plant and type that plant based on elemental principles. Like, let's say, I mean, maybe we could use nettle as an example, right? Like, I have a bunch of stinging nettle. The white tailed deer love to eat it. It's got tons of proteins that help these mammals grow big and strong. I like to harvest it for stuff like pesto and tea and. And I'm curious, if I was to take nettle and kind of like type it based on elemental principles, how would I actually kind of tear apart that nettle mentally, so to speak, and know what elements that it would feed? I guess, if I'm using the right language there.

So if we were to speak of things within kind of the boundaries of the elements. So there's the handful of things that I'm usually observing with a plant in order to decipher an elemental correspondence. So the first thing is looking at the habitat of the plant where it prefers to grow. You can actually get a lot of information about a plant based on where its preferences are in the ecosystem. And one thing that we see with the nettles is that they oftentimes prefer very damp habitats, right? They like to grow in ditches or along creek beds or by the river, by, you know, just anywhere it's really damp. Basically that's why it's so, so abundant here in the Pacific Northwest, so that it tends to like that type of habitat. From there, we tend to look at the morphology of the plant. So the overall structure and appearance of the plant, nettles is a pretty. It's an intense plant, right? I mean, it's got the really sharp edges of the leaves, what in botany would refer to as a sergerated leaf margin. It's studded with these tiny formic acid crystals and it just has a pretty intense appearance to it. And so if we were to just visually look at nettles, we would say that it has a predominance of the fire element based on its intensity and the sharpness of it. These are all qualities of fire. This is further confirmed when you touch it, right? And you get that sharp, burning hot, inflamed sting on the skin that gets really red and it gets really itchy and it's just, it's intense, right? That nettle sting. So that is good. Further confirmation of that fire element. From there, if we turn to actually ingesting the plant, one of the key things that we look at is the taste of the herb. Taste has a lot of indication of medicinal virtues within A plant. And one of the key tastes that we see with nettles is that that it is actually considered a salty plant. I know that sounds surprising to a lot of folks, but in herbalism, the salty flavor isn't necessarily the taste of sea salt, but it's more of a. I always describe it as like a crispy, kind of minerally, like green taste. Like, I always kind of correlate it to like. Like celery actually has a salty taste. Or like raw kale.

Yeah. Although I almost. Sorry to jump in. I almost classify. To me, it seems almost more like umami, you know, kind of like an MSG type of taste. Not pure salty, but like umami. And I even like when I make my pesto, I actually include this in the cookbook that I just wrote. I like to ferment it actually for a couple of weeks. That really draws out like the saltiness and the minerals and the umami type of flavor.

Wow, nice. Fermented nettles. That sounds awesome. So that's like that taste of minerals and that's the flavor of that. All the proteins in there too, for sure. I think that's what we're tasting there with the nettles. And it's slightly astringent. And then from there we look at organ systems. So what parts of the body is nettles influencing? And one of the main areas that influences is the blood. It influences the kidneys and the urinary tract, and the root influences the prostate gland, and the seeds influence the kidneys and the adrenals. And so one of the things that we see there is another correspondence to the water element in the kidneys and the urinary tract as the body's main mechanism for relieving fluid waste products. And then the blood being also the fire element in the way that nettles builds the blood through its rich mineral content, especially iron. And then also in the way nettles cleanses and clears the blood of metabolic waste products and sedates heat and inflammation. So now we're kind of getting more into the action of the herbs. So there's the affinity. Where in the body does the plant go? And then there's the action. What is it doing in that part of the body? So it's very diuretic, it's very inflammation modulating. And it has all of these properties that are associated with cleansing. What we refer to as an alterative detoxification mechanisms. So a lot of it really for nettles boils down to a prevalence of the fire and the Water elements. From the way that I have understood this plant, it's a little bit of a tricky plant, though, because it has a lot of earth element, too, because it's a food, right. It's nutrient dense. We've got a lot of amino acids. We got a lot of minerals. We got a lot of nutrition in this plant as well. That just nourishes and builds the body, which is a very earth element quality as well. But from a medicinal standpoint, I say most predominant, there is fire and water.

Yeah. This is so cool. You know, in the last podcast, I talked about these apps that I use, like Flower Checker and Plant Snap to kind of like analyze a plant. There's no one called, I think Picture this that does that also uses artificial intelligence intelligence. It'd be so cool if there was some kind of like an app that would also delve into the. The typing of a plant. I mean, obviously, go with a field guide or with your book and figure it out, but, man, wouldn't it be cool if some of this could be tied to technology so you could just learn this stuff about the plant without necessarily. I mean, what you. You went to school for years and years to learn this stuff, but it seems like you could actually. You could do some of this just with. With an app to analyze it.

Yeah, I don't know. I'm. Personally, I'm not super into that idea just because. Because there is an aspect of this process that is about our own connection to nature and our ability as humans to utilize our sensory mechanisms, to see with our eyes, to engage with our senses. I mean, this whole process that I'm referring to, I mean, a lot of the work that I do is really based on the tradition of alchemy and the European system of alchemy. And so much of that system is really focused on human beings evolving, right? And for us to come to a deeper understanding of the natural world outside of us and the natural world inside of us. And I think this process of engaging with plants in this way, it triggers those things, right? It awakens a new way of seeing the world around us, of having a connection to the natural world around us, and to be able to learn directly from the plants. And so for me, I think that's such a critically important part of this work, and I think an app would just get in the way of it.

Maybe that that's either the lazy part of me or the orange. The work smarter, not harder part of me. Or perhaps I just need to. Need to develop a more. More sacred relationship with plants using your book as a guide. You know, there's a lot of people though, that, that seem to either fear or vilify plants. You know, like, like they'll take a lot of the components. You know, you talk about the seed, how that could be like the fifth element or the either component, yet the seed seems to also wrap into it a lot of the natural built in plant defense mechanisms, you know, dictating that. Guys like, you know, Dr. Stephen Gundry might say in his book the Plant Paradox about how all those lectins should be avoided or stripped from the plant prior to consumption. Or you might have a guy like Paul Saladino. Both of these guys are former podcast guests and really smart dudes, in my opinion. Possibly slightly myopic in their approach to the plant kingdom and the dangers that those plants might pose to a human gut. I think they perhaps have a little bit of accuracy to their state treatments when applied to someone who has say like a compromised gut or an autoimmune condition that might dictate they can't really do nightshades or they can't do a high amount of say like gluten or lectin. Yet I'm curious what your take is on this whole idea of don't eat plants because of their built in plant defense mechanisms. And I should say that from what I understand, both of these guys are okay with the use of plants as medicine, but not as like food staples. Does that make sense?

So from a medicinal plant standpoint, it is the plant's innate defense mechanisms that oftentimes are the medicinal components of the plants for us too. Right? And so I think that's the critical piece there with a lot of medicinal herbs is that yes, they do have their own innate defense mechanisms. This is why, in my opinion, wild plants are infinitely stronger than cultivated plants, because they've been, they are in a competitive environment. They weren't getting a rationed amount of water every day, or they weren't getting a bunch of nutrients and fertilizers, and they're just growing in nature and it's a rough life out there. And there's pests and there's other plants that they're competing for with soil space and they're trying to grow up to the sun. All those stressors make those plants tough and that makes them better medicines than something grown in a nice fluffy raised bed in a garden. Right. And I'm not saying cultivated herbs obviously still are beneficial and effective. It's not like they're inert. But in my experience Wildcrafted plants just can't, can't be beat. From a medicinal standpoint. As far as all plants having defense mechanisms and we shouldn't eat them, I don't know what to say to that, that.

Do you at least believe in like deactivating a lot of those mechanisms? I know you talked a little bit about raw foods, but you know, this concept of soaking and sprouting and fermenting and slow food prep and, and kind of like approach approaching plants in the same way that you would say approach animals in that you're not going to just, you know, jump out of a tree with a knife on your back and, and start to, you know, skin and eat a deer right there because you're either A, going to get stabbed by antlers or hooved or B, or going to get sick from not cooking it. You know, what's your approach when it comes to consumption of plants from a preparatory standpoint?

And I definitely feel like there is certain plants really aren't that great to eat straight out of the ground and you know, you don't want to eat a fistful of quinoa right off the.

Plant or like, or like nettle.

Yeah, right. So I mean, I do think there is, you know, over however many thousands of years we've been around, we figured out some things on how to consume certain foods and, and how to not consume certain foods. And I think there is a relationship to how things are prepared that is good in the way that, yeah, some foods are really best eaten fermented, some foods are best soaked and sprouted. Some foods are best just cooked and not raw. And this is coming from myself. I've adhered to a lot of different dietary things over the years. I was a strict vegan for a long time. I was a strict raw vegan for a long time. I've come full circle and I'm carnivorous now. And I've seen the different effects that different foods have on people and even very strict diets and things like that and how some of them are good and some of them are not good. Yeah, the food question is such a big one and I think it's so individual and so unique. But I do believe that a plant based diet. Well, I think the conclusion that I've come to is that I do feel very strongly that a plant based, plant based diet is the most ideal human diet. And that doesn't mean to not eat meat. I currently eat meat and probably will for the rest of my life because it makes me feel a lot better than I did when I wasn't eating meat.

So what you mean by plant based diet then would be kind of like a Michael Pollan approach where he says, you know, eat food, not too much, mostly plants. You're not saying that you swear off all meat, but that plants form a very large base of the foundation of your diet.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you're getting the diversification of nutrient nutrition that you get from eating a variety of plants is. I just don't think you can get it anywhere else.

Now, what would it like a day in your diet as an evolutionary herbalist? Maybe like an ideal day of eating. What would it actually look like for you? I'm just curious how you weave a lot of this stuff practically into your own life, like breakfast, lunches and dinners and snacks. I'm super curious. How do you actually eat?

Yeah, well, I mean, generally speaking for us in our household, we are believers in a stout breakfast. So we usually have a pretty solid breakfast every day that can sleep consists of oftentimes usually like yams. Like yams and a lot of greens. We have a lot of our own chickens and things like that. So we always have fresh eggs out of the coop. And a lot of it too, really depends on the seasons. Like a lot of it. We eat pretty seasonally. So like right now we got a ton of zucchini in the garden, so we're eating a lot of zucchini right now. Tomatoes are starting to go up off. We don't really eat those things in the winter because they're not in season. So we really do our best to eat seasonally. We do our best to eat locally. We do our best to grow a lot of our own food, raise our own meat. So our meats are predominantly chicken and lamb fish too. We live in the Pacific Northwest and we've got friends that are fishermen. So we oftentimes do trades and have lots of salmon and halibut in the freezer.

Yeah, it sounds like a very omnivorous diet with a large foundation of plants. Now you said in the book that you like. I actually did this for Boundless. When I turned my last book, Boundless into the publisher, it was like 1500 pages and I had to kiss a lot of my babies goodbye and cut it down to like 650 pages. So kind of a big book. But I left a lot of the information that I cut from the book on the book website so it's still accessible to people who buy the book. They'll upload the their order receipt and get access to all the Hidden pages and that type of thing. That's how I kind of mentally tackled the prospect of saying goodbye to a lot of the stuff that I wrote. But you said in the book that you actually cut a lot of chapters from your book, which is also quite a hefty book. So I can imagine you had to. What did you cut from the book and does it live on elsewhere?

I actually have a very similar thing. It sounds like that you do that when folks purchase the book. They can go onto the website and put the receipt in there, the receipt number in there, and then they get access to. I call it the Lost chapters, which is like. I think it's like three or four chapters that I had to cut out. And then along with like a five week course and stuff like that you get for free, along with the book, kind of a book companion course. But yeah, jeez, it's been so long. What did I cut out? I think I had to cut out a whole chapter on alchemical theory of health and disease, which really gets into, like, from the perspective of alchemy, why do we get sick and why and how do we get healthy? Yeah, there's like three or four that had to get cut. And I mean, honestly, a lot of it was me just, like, taking an ax to every chapter and just like, okay, what can, how much can I cut out of here?

The editorial process of a book. I can tell you that the easiest editorial process process for me was probably my cookbook, because that involved me just like, curating and collecting all the recipes that I've created and kind of like putting them all together and deciding which category they would go in. Like, like, like I had to choose, like, what's going to be herbs and rubs and spices and what's going to be, like, in the cocktails category and what's going to be in the smoothie category or in the meat category or in, like the dessert category. But aside from that, I just basically had to like, run all the recipes through the. Through a test kitchen, which actually costs a lot of money to do all the testing and kind of like perfect the recipe and find out, you know, how much baking powder I said versus how much baking powder the expert chefs who actually know what they're doing said, and then getting all the photos and everything together. But ultimately it was a super easy book to write, really, because I was just collecting recipes. And then it was more like making a work of art and then double checking it for errors than it was like sitting down and laboriously writing chapter after chapter after Chapter like a real book goes. So if I ever have to do a book again, again, like a cookbook would be, I guess, pun intended in this case, pretty palatable. So maybe you should do that for your next book. You should just do, like, you know, Cooking with Herbs and Plants.

Unfortunately, I feel like there are probably a lot other people, more people out there that would probably do a much better job at that than I would. I probably don't have the organizational capacity to put something like that together.

Well, I tell you what, though. You put a dang good book together, and this thing was. Was super informative for me. And I just can't walk through nature without thinking about the sacred intelligence of plants in a whole new way. I obviously, you know, already have talked about and love the book the Hidden Language of Plants. And there's another one, I think, is it Steven Buhner? Do you know who I'm talking about, who has another book about plants? What's that one called?

Yeah, well, he's got a handful. He's got the Lost Language of Plants, and then he has the Secret Teachings of Plants, and then he has Plant Intelligence in the Imaginal Realm. And those are kind of like a part one, part two, part three. Fascinating books. Love Buhner. His work's amazing. Changed my life. Super nice guy, too. I got a chance to sit in a lot of workshops with him and hang out with him a little bit, and he was just really, really great.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, your book is right up there, too, man. So kudos on writing it. And I think that if anybody's listening and you didn't get a chance to listen to part one, go listen to part one of this podcast because we really get into vitalism and the missing link between the human and plant kingdom, that gap that seems to be growing increasingly wider. And we compared and contrasted molecular herbalism with modern pharmaceuticals and how plants have their own electromagnetic field, the fascinating communication between plants. And I just wanted in this episode to kind of talk a little bit more of the practical nitty gritties of all this. And so, anyways, read the book, listen to part one, and I will link to everything if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com EvolutionaryHerbalism the number two. And then part one of this podcast is at BenGreenfieldFitness.com evolutionaryherbalism I know you had a lot of construction going on at your house today and during our last podcast, Seja, so thanks for bearing with me. I'm glad we were able to get all this out for folks, because anytime I discover a fascinating book, it just brings joy to my heart to be able to share it with people. So thanks for writing this and keep up the good work, man.

Well, thank you, Ben. I really appreciate all your good words and thanks for having me on your show. I really appreciate it and all the good work that you're doing out there, too. It's just always really great to meet other folks that are doing the good work to improve people's lives, improve people's health. And I think that's just so much of what's needed in these crazy times on this earth. So thanks so much for doing everything you're doing and really great collaboration here. Thank you.

Word Man. If you ever get over to the east side of Washington state over here towards Spokane, drop me a line and we'll go like, I don't know, pick, pick some nettle or, or eat a steak or something, or both. Pick. Pick some nettle and put it on a steak.

Sounds great.

All right, I'll talk to you later, bro.

Take care.

All right, folks, until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield, along with Seja Poppin signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week.

Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep, digestion, digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes. Use the promo codes that I generate because they that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.