The new season of ‘Alone’ is out & the contenders are all from our community: Nats, Nuts & Herbalists. Who’s likely to last longest?😅 I’ve been entertaining myself with this idea ever since I attended an inspiring interactive workshop at the recent NHAA Summit. Seated at a few round tables outside (bliss), we were asked to imagine we were on a deserted island & come up with the most uses for the single herb we’d been assigned. I was team ribwort. I had nothing to contribute. I was in awe, however, of the knowledge pouring out around me – about teas, compresses & all the consumable parts to boot! About various applications ranging from topical to internal, with many speaking from first hand experiences. It was clear in that moment, that if there ever was a survival contest, I was going to lose.
Which has given me a lot to think about...& just might for you too.
Not because I suffer any Gina Chick* delusions but because I studied naturopathy because I am a lover, & child, of nature.
* for those overseas readers that’s our Bear Grylls but better
A hippie at heart (anyone actually surprised?) – being in the elements is essential to my sense of self, as well as my physical & mental wellbeing. I’m a huge fan of first-light, an electrifying ocean-immersion under a stormy sky (for which skinny dipping can’t be beat🏊♀️), the majestic light that filters through the bush, as I walk at twilight. It’s my connection with nature that has most often inspired me and offered my thinking direction. And about so many aspects of life, including how I eat, move, rest & sleep, and the rhythm of these across each day. And it’s done so, since I was an adolescent. So when I was living in Byron Bay at 18 & learned that there were people calling themselves ‘naturopaths’, regardless of the real meaning and origin of that word, it felt like a fit! I would lead patients down their ‘path’ to health, as laid out by ‘nature’. And certainly in my first thrilling year of study, I imagined my future-self spending most of my time in clinic doing just this. Then the medical sciences really ramped up in the coming years and, having also a very analytical mind, I adored these too.
Nature & science had materialised as an overlapping Venn diagram in my mind.. And as long as my approach to health sat within this intersection between them I felt ideologically aligned with these 2 great loves of mine. But of course ‘those lines’ moved. Both objectively, once EBM took a seat at naturopathy’s table, as the overlap between them ballooned, and also personally. My position increasingly shifted further toward the science, which, at times, neglected the balance of ‘nature’.
By student clinic, I had mostly stayed the course , but also strayed a little.
Still keeping ‘food first’ & health-related behaviour at the core of my patient recommendations – but of course, supps, and pills and potions and lotions also had their undeniable appeal.
In part, because it became patently clear, they were a far simpler sell to the patients.
A decade in to my own clinical practice and just asking someone about the micro-details of their diet, let alone, working up a sweat trying to talk them into substantial course-corrections, suddenly seemed like VERY heavy-lifting. And most patients preferred the pills. ‘Swallow these supps’ is a comparatively tiny ask, of course, almost always given the alternative. ‘Shop differently, learn new ways to prepare foods, unlearn everything you’ve learned online, cut down on things you’re propping yourself up with (sugary cabs, caffeine, couch time & cocktails!) and, oh that’ll be $300’. Ouch. And while the purists in our profession play an essential role, and will suit some, many patients with reduced capacity or health literacy need us to meet them exactly where they are. And if we ignore this, instead maintaining our own rigid ideals, well we leave them out on the margins and our ‘purism’ risks tipping over into puritanism, which does a lot of damage – to individual patients and the whole profession. However, equally, once we as naturopaths & herbalists, start ignoring the power (both positive and negative) of ‘the path laid out by nature’, or, the ‘everything else’ beneath the ‘bottles’, we are forced into overdelivering – more complicated (and much more expensive) products and protocols. Tell me I’m wrong.
Now I’m only speaking as myself & describing my own full circle.
It’s a total trope that we’re all hemp-wearing hippies – what an under-estimation of our diverse community!
We come in every imaginable flavour. That’s one of our strengths.
But back at the workshop, I was aware that just behind our outside tables, adorned by real living herbs at the centre of each, was an exhibitors room. Packed to the rafters with products, associated packaging and marketing. And while I had nothing on ribwort – I could talk to these –
U N D E R W A T E R. Because these are what have formed the biggest portion of my prescribing across my career. And I felt suddenly, not so much, a values misalignment, as a compound fracture of them. Of who I thought I was and what inspires me to work in this space. Yet another moment of recognition I’ve had recently, I sense of my own need to refind the path, not away from the wilderness but into it!
I know nature-care is simply not enough for everyone, certainly not everyone I see, but I fear it’s increasingly becoming a signpost on the path, rather than ‘the path’ itself.
Anyone else?
…right here👇… this is the spot where you’ll be able to answer that question, add your own ideas & read those of others. And I can’t wait. For now, I’m simply putting a match to kindling to see what conversations ‘catch’ for you, for us. What lights us up as a professional community – whether that be with passion or rage or insight or inspiration. Together, we can build a whole series of campfires & talk through the nights (especially any long dark ones 😉) – maybe with an occasional Kumbaya for good measure 😊
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