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Thorn Medicine (Replay) · The Holistic Herbalism Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Hi everybody.
0:01
SPEAKER_00: Rin here on the Holistic Herbalism Podcast with a quick note before today's episode begins.
0:06
SPEAKER_00: August is the fallow month for us here at Commonwealth Holistic Herbalism, and that means that we're dialing back on some of our activities while we focus our attention on things like coursework production, curriculum development, and most importantly, some hands-on herbalism in the field, in the kitchen, and in the apothecary.
0:25
SPEAKER_00: If you're not familiar with this concept of fallow month, then don't worry, we can fill you in on that.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: Check out episode 212 of the Holistic Herbalism Podcast, helpfully titled Fallow Month, for the full explanation.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: Or you can also uh read a bit that Katya wrote about it in an article she titled, If you really want to learn herbalism, stop studying.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: You'll find both of those at the top of the show notes for this episode today.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: This week we're doing a uh a replay of episode 274, which is about thorn medicine.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: And we selected this one because this is a great time to go out there and to harvest thorns.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: Uh there may still be flowers, there may still be leaf material that looks good to harvest, but basically everywhere we've got students that you've got the opportunity to go out there and get yourself some thorns, do some work with them, make them into a tincture or some other preparation.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: These are not a plant medicine that you can easily purchase.
1:24
SPEAKER_00: And this is really a very personal form of medicine preparation.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: Uh we've been working with this and thinking about thorn medicine for quite a long time, and we really have gotten a lot out of it, so we wanted to share that with you and encourage you to give it a try as well.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: So without any further ado, here's the episode.
2:05
SPEAKER_01: Rin is doing some work on the brand new stress management course that's gonna release in like one or maybe two more weeks by March 1st.
2:15
SPEAKER_01: So I'm really, really excited about that.
2:17
SPEAKER_01: And I'm taking a little break to share uh one of my favorite topics with y'all, which is thorn medicine.
2:26
SPEAKER_01: Um, and by thorns, I mean really and truly the pokey parts, right?
2:34
SPEAKER_01: Like it's not a metaphor, I really mean this the stabby parts of plants.
2:39
SPEAKER_01: Um, so in 2026, we have been talking about all kinds of herbs for happiness.
2:46
SPEAKER_01: Did you you heard those little air quotes there, right?
2:49
SPEAKER_01: Um, and by that we mean herbs that will help you to get grounded, get centered, and release enough stress so that you are able to experience moments of joy even if you are in a hard time, that you're able to experience moments of kindness, even if you are surrounded by cruelty, that you can allow moments of beauty to energize you so that you can move forward into your day and not be crushed by stress or grief or overwhelming uh badness everywhere.
3:30
SPEAKER_01: Um so, you know, we're not talking about like take this herb, it will make you magically happy.
3:37
SPEAKER_01: But herbs that will help you get to that place where you can access those feelings.
3:41
SPEAKER_01: And so talking about thorns is actually part of that work.
3:47
SPEAKER_01: So here I'm thinking like rose thorns, hawthorn thorns, okatio thorns.
3:54
SPEAKER_01: Um, it's a really special kind of medicine.
3:58
SPEAKER_01: So I'm very excited to talk about it with you.
4:00
SPEAKER_01: But first, our reclaimer.
4:02
SPEAKER_01: Um, all right, well, you guys know what it says.
4:05
SPEAKER_01: It is, you know, we're not doctors, we're just educators.
4:09
SPEAKER_01: Uh, herbalists are not licensed in the United States, so these ideas are for educational purposes only.
4:15
SPEAKER_01: I hope they're really helpful for you, but everybody is different, so this is not like dogma or any like perfect way that you should be living your life or doing herbs or whatever else.
4:26
SPEAKER_01: It's just hopefully something that is helpful to you and will help you think about working with herbs in a cool new way.
4:34
SPEAKER_01: Okay, that was I got it all right.
4:36
SPEAKER_01: Like I didn't miss anything.
4:37
SPEAKER_01: I think I got it all.
4:38
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
4:39
SPEAKER_01: So before we jump into the actual thorns themselves and how to work with them, because I'm gonna get really specific.
4:48
SPEAKER_01: Um, there's two other things that we need to address first.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: And the first one is that when we're talking about herbal emotional work, working with herbs for the purposes of doing emotional work, we need to get really specific.
5:09
SPEAKER_01: We can't talk about herbs for depression or like I've been talking about herbs for happiness, you know, like we can't even say herbs for happiness and then say, oh, you know, I really mean about accessing joy and accessing moments of beauty, because that still isn't specific enough.
5:26
SPEAKER_01: We have to be really specific about each individual person, like what is blocking this person's ability to access those moments of beauty and joy and kindness in their lives?
5:40
SPEAKER_01: Is that um like that they are locked down in rigidity because they don't feel safe?
5:45
SPEAKER_01: Is that that they are depressed in a numb way and they're not able to access any feelings at all?
5:53
SPEAKER_01: Is it that they um are so overwhelmed by anxious feelings and worry and that they aren't able to make space for um accessing happiness, right?
6:06
SPEAKER_01: Like all these different things are different.
6:10
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna choose different herbs for each one of these.
6:14
SPEAKER_01: And so we could look at any person and say, that person has depression, or that person has anxiety, or that person has whatever, but we still need to be more specific so that we choose the right herbs.
6:28
SPEAKER_01: Um, because depression isn't specific enough.
6:32
SPEAKER_01: We just we have to just be super, super clear about exactly what we mean.
6:38
SPEAKER_01: This person's depression has them like stuck on the couch watching the same Netflix show over and over again.
6:46
SPEAKER_01: That person's depression has them working way too many hours in a day.
6:50
SPEAKER_01: You know, like it's gonna be different herbs.
6:53
SPEAKER_01: All right.
6:55
SPEAKER_01: That remember, that is true, not just for emotional work, but also for physiological work as well.
7:01
SPEAKER_01: We always wanna be super specific.
7:04
SPEAKER_01: A medical diagnosis is not specific enough to do herbal work because although medical diagnoses are real, those are just words that are used in the medical system.
7:15
SPEAKER_01: They are not fundamental truths, they are descriptions.
7:19
SPEAKER_01: And those descriptions are specific enough for the medical environment, but they are not specific enough in the herbal environment.
7:26
SPEAKER_01: So we we my theme here is specific.
7:29
SPEAKER_01: We want to be really specific.
7:30
SPEAKER_01: We will find a better match, we will have better success in choosing herbs that really work for the person the more specific that we get.
7:40
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
7:42
SPEAKER_01: The second thing that I wanna put out here, and both of these things we're gonna talk about more as we go on.
7:49
SPEAKER_01: Um, but so when we talk about herbs in emotional work, sometimes that can get to sounding a little woo-woo.
7:59
SPEAKER_01: And y'all know we like the science here.
8:01
SPEAKER_01: So I wanna put the science part right up front.
8:06
SPEAKER_01: Especially in like as we're talking about thorns in general.
8:09
SPEAKER_01: All right, ready?
8:11
SPEAKER_01: The first half of this is herbs work in the body, and emotions are also in the body.
8:19
SPEAKER_01: We think about emotions as being ethereal.
8:23
SPEAKER_01: We think of them as vapor, we think of them as intangible, but that is not true.
8:28
SPEAKER_01: That's not accurate.
8:30
SPEAKER_01: Your emotions are in your body, my emotions are in my body, along with my liver and my kidneys and the fascia and everything else.
8:39
SPEAKER_01: Neurotransmitters and hormones and all the other things that are impacting emotion, they are real, actual physical things.
8:48
SPEAKER_01: They are tangible, they are measurable.
8:51
SPEAKER_01: And the messages that they are sending around the body are being influenced by our physical state, by our environment, by our experiences.
9:02
SPEAKER_01: All this messaging is flying around in every direction between all the bits of the body, right?
9:08
SPEAKER_01: Between the brain, between the liver, between the stomach, between the all the things, right?
9:12
SPEAKER_01: The body bits, the brainy bits.
9:15
SPEAKER_01: But it's all body.
9:18
SPEAKER_01: It's physical, real stuff.
9:21
SPEAKER_01: So when you're thinking about herbs for emotions, this is not magic.
9:27
SPEAKER_01: It's just thinking about emotions as part of the physical body, which we don't usually do in our society, but it is actually true.
9:36
SPEAKER_01: Right.
9:38
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
9:39
SPEAKER_01: So what does that specifically mean about thorns and how they might help us with emotional stuff?
9:46
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna be specific about how rose thorns are different than hawthorns, are different than okay t or different than whatever.
9:53
SPEAKER_01: Like these, they all have different effects.
9:55
SPEAKER_01: Okay, but first off, why should they work at all?
10:01
SPEAKER_01: Thorns are astringent.
10:04
SPEAKER_01: All the plants that we're gonna talk about have some astringency in their aerial parts.
10:09
SPEAKER_01: That means the leaves and the flowers.
10:12
SPEAKER_01: And then that astringency increases in the barky stemy parts of the plant, which is where the thorns are.
10:21
SPEAKER_01: And then that astringency typically increases even more in the roots.
10:25
SPEAKER_01: Now, like this does not mean now that I've said, like, like, oh, the leaves and flowers, oh, the stems and thorns, oh, the roots, they have the most astringency, usually.
10:36
SPEAKER_01: This doesn't mean that the roots are the better.
10:38
SPEAKER_01: And so you should be out there astringency maxing.
10:41
SPEAKER_01: Like I do, I don't mean that.
10:42
SPEAKER_01: But I feel like you kind of have to like make that little disclaimer whenever you say, like, oh, and this has the most, because in our culture, right?
10:51
SPEAKER_01: We're we're always out there maxing, we're always out there looking for what's the thing that has the most.
10:56
SPEAKER_01: You don't always need the most.
10:58
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so we in this case, we're talking about Thorns and their specific Goldilocks amount of astringency.
11:08
SPEAKER_01: Um and most of the actions that we're going to describe in much more prosy, much more poetic language really just comes down to various ways of pulling it together.
11:22
SPEAKER_01: And that's just astringency, right?
11:24
SPEAKER_01: Astringency literally is pulling tissues together.
11:28
SPEAKER_01: Like that's literally the action of astringence.
11:30
SPEAKER_01: It pulls your stuff together, right?
11:32
SPEAKER_01: So that's what we're doing emotionally.
11:35
SPEAKER_01: We are pulling it together a little.
11:37
SPEAKER_01: We are also giving it a little more structure, giving it a little more strength.
11:42
SPEAKER_01: Because that's what happens when you pull things together.
11:46
SPEAKER_01: All right, so not magic, not mystical, not woo-woo, not weird, actual like stuff you can see with a microscope happening behind all this stuff.
11:56
SPEAKER_01: So even though from here out, like some of this stuff might sound poetic and like whatever, just remember, grounded in science.
12:04
SPEAKER_01: All right.
12:06
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
12:08
SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about some specific thorns and specifically how they can help you.
12:14
SPEAKER_01: Well, well, first let's like generally about thorns.
12:17
SPEAKER_01: What, what, what is even the why do plants have thorns, right?
12:21
SPEAKER_01: Protection?
12:22
SPEAKER_01: It's to protect the plant.
12:24
SPEAKER_01: It's to protect that plant's resources, it's to protect the plant from harm, from predators.
12:32
SPEAKER_01: Oh, we don't think about plants as having predators, and we certainly do not consider bunnies to be predators, right?
12:40
SPEAKER_01: But like if you're a lettuce, a bunny is a predator, right?
12:44
SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, bunnies are not going to eat your rose bushes.
12:47
SPEAKER_01: Well, they might nibble at a couple of leaves, but that'll be about it.
12:50
SPEAKER_01: But um, there are lots of animals out there.
12:53
SPEAKER_01: Let's settle on deer.
12:54
SPEAKER_01: It's a nice sort of middle-sized animal.
12:57
SPEAKER_01: And also, there's a lot of them around, and they want to eat my garden, and they want to eat your garden, and they want to eat all the plants everywhere.
13:05
SPEAKER_01: And they start like before the leaves are, they're like, ooh, tasty buds early in the spring, eat it up, destroying the whole plant's like life cycle for the year.
13:14
SPEAKER_01: No problem, let's munch that.
13:16
SPEAKER_01: That's why plants have thorns, to protect themselves from being eaten.
13:23
SPEAKER_01: And so already we can be thinking about that in our kind of poetical way, right?
13:32
SPEAKER_01: Like, okay, thorn medicine is about protection.
13:35
SPEAKER_01: Thorn medicine is about protecting me from stuff that wants to strip all my resources away, stuff that wants to get me, you know, whatever.
13:47
SPEAKER_01: Um, and like, you know, you could wrap yourself up in like a bramble of thorns.
13:56
SPEAKER_01: And if somebody's trying to get you, they'll probably still get you, right?
14:00
SPEAKER_01: Like this is metaphorically speaking here.
14:03
SPEAKER_01: But it is that aspect of feeling like you have that protection, of feeling like you are not just hanging out there open to everything, of feeling like you're you're pulled into yourself.
14:18
SPEAKER_01: You know how when you are really overstimulated and you feel like your filters are way too open, those are the times when you say things that you maybe shouldn't have said.
14:30
SPEAKER_01: And but also those are the times when you're just overwhelmed by all the stuff coming in at you.
14:35
SPEAKER_01: That is like a way too open state and emotionally that leaves you really vulnerable.
14:42
SPEAKER_01: Like that is exactly the sort of situation where people talk about you need to toughen your skin, like you have you have thin skin and you need to thicken up your skin, right?
14:50
SPEAKER_01: Like you're easily offended or easily upset by things.
14:55
SPEAKER_01: And so, like that openness is just really leaving you open for emotional upset, emotional injury.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: So, okay, so often like we talk about plants like Yarrow about thickening your skin, you know, when you feel thin-skinned and you need armor and whatever.
15:16
SPEAKER_01: Okay, but so in this case, we're talking about thorns and their ability to like protect you from the things and you know, even sort of create a like barrier between you and emotionally the things coming at you.
15:27
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so that's our general overall.
15:30
SPEAKER_01: So let's talk, let's start with rose.
15:33
SPEAKER_01: Um, and here I'm I'm talking about wild rose, but really many roses will do this.
15:42
SPEAKER_01: Like the more fancy your garden cultivar is, um, then maybe the less effect.
15:50
SPEAKER_01: But on the other hand, astringency is astringency.
15:54
SPEAKER_01: And ultimately, when we are, we're gonna tincture, all these are gonna be tincture.
15:59
SPEAKER_01: When we tincture it, it is, you're gonna know that it's astringent.
16:02
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna feel the astringency.
16:04
SPEAKER_01: Um, so my kind of criteria here is if it hasn't, if you're not, if it's not sprayed by any kind of like pesticides, and if it doesn't have any weird like growth enhancers or whatever, but if it's just sort of, you know, maybe your grandparents planted it like however many years ago, and they used to tend it and have like prize roses, but now it's sort of neglected and it's just been kind of growing kind of wild on its own lately.
16:30
SPEAKER_01: That's going to be a fine rose to manage.
16:33
SPEAKER_01: Um, we had a rose like that in one of our apartments uh when we were living in Brighton, and it had it like certainly this rose bush had been planted by like the the original owners who, you know, by that time were like 90 or maybe maybe would have even been older than that.
16:53
SPEAKER_01: Um and but by the time that we got there, it was just like brambling all over the place, right?
17:01
SPEAKER_01: So wild rose is awesome out in the wilderness.
17:05
SPEAKER_01: But um, if you have a like mostly gone wild rose in your yard and your soil is like okay, then I would still say go with it.
17:14
SPEAKER_01: All right, but for our mental visualization here, think about a wild rose.
17:21
SPEAKER_01: This is this is why this that part is important, because a wild rose forms a bramble.
17:29
SPEAKER_01: The vines grow up, but there's no trellis for them.
17:32
SPEAKER_01: There's nothing for them to like hold on to.
17:34
SPEAKER_01: So they grow up a certain amount, like maybe four or five feet, and then they start to arch over back towards the ground.
17:42
SPEAKER_01: And they kind of make this like, I don't know, like a sea urchin, like you know those sea urchin skeletons, and they kind of look like a pincushion, but they're made out of spines.
17:52
SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, I always think about that, but it's just like, you know, this umbrella that goes all the way down to the ground and is made of thorns.
18:02
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so if you're out in the woods and you come across a thicket like this, the other thing that you will notice is that on the ground there are little tiny trails where all the chipmunks and the bunnies and the squirrels run around underneath the rose bush, underneath the umbrella of thorns, because no hawks can fly into that.
18:27
SPEAKER_01: Foxes can't like push their way into that.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: That's a literal for these little furry creatures, it is a literal physical protective barrier.
18:37
SPEAKER_01: We're working with it emotionally, but for them, it is physically giving them a space to rest before they go out and find some more lettuce to eat or sunflower seeds or whatever it is.
18:49
SPEAKER_01: Um, so usually using that image in your mind, when you're thinking about how can I work with Rose to help me, I mean, okay, all the thorns have some astringency, they're gonna help you pull it together.
19:03
SPEAKER_01: But we can get more specific than that.
19:05
SPEAKER_01: So when when I'm working with somebody or myself, uh feeling like their to-do list or their obligations or their like whatever is stressing them out is hunting them.
19:19
SPEAKER_01: Like they're a cute little bunny and their inbox is like gonna come and like you know, devour them.
19:27
SPEAKER_01: That's when I'm thinking about Rose.
19:30
SPEAKER_01: Because that's literally the purpose that Rose is serving in the ecosystem.
19:35
SPEAKER_01: And so emotionally, sure, all the thorns will help you pull it together, some because they're all astringent, but like, how are we pulling it together?
19:43
SPEAKER_01: Just exactly the same way that it's happening out in the wild, right?
19:47
SPEAKER_01: It's just gonna give you that feeling of a place to rest where your inbox or your to-do list or your calendar can't get at you for a few minutes and just, oh, okay, calm your heart.
19:58
SPEAKER_01: All right, I think I'm ready to go back out there.
20:01
SPEAKER_01: I think I can do this.
20:02
SPEAKER_01: There's gotta be some good lettuce out there somewhere, right?
20:05
SPEAKER_01: All right.
20:07
SPEAKER_01: So the next one is in the same plant family, actually, Hawthorne.
20:12
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so Hawthorne is this is so interesting to me.
20:17
SPEAKER_01: So in the book, A Once in Future World, that was written by someone whose name I should remember.
20:28
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I can actually see it on the shelf from here.
20:32
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's McKinnon.
20:35
SPEAKER_01: Um if you Google A Once in Future World, it'll come right up for you.
20:40
SPEAKER_01: Or if you put that in an internet search, it'll come right up for you.
20:43
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so when he was writing about Hawthorne, like the like the prehistoric versions of Hawthorne, the development of the plant itself, how like um it evolved over time, uh, he was back in like the way, not all the way to the dinosaurs, but in the very early mammal stages of North America.
21:08
SPEAKER_01: And at that time, there were giant sloths.
21:13
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, you probably have seen a picture of a sloth that is like furry and kind of looks like a muppet and has like really long claws, but they're not sharp.
21:27
SPEAKER_01: They're they're clearly like this guy is hanging from a tree with his really long claws, right?
21:33
SPEAKER_01: He's just just chilling out, being a hammock, being a furry animated hammock.
21:38
SPEAKER_01: Not too animated because they don't move fast, right?
21:42
SPEAKER_01: And literally they look like muppets, shaggy, shaggy muppets.
21:46
SPEAKER_01: And they're like what?
21:48
SPEAKER_01: Uh bigger than a golden retriever, maybe a little bit, or you know, smaller than a panda bear?
21:56
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
21:58
SPEAKER_01: That's not what we're Talking about here.
22:01
SPEAKER_01: The giant sloths were like 3,000 pound animals.
22:07
SPEAKER_01: So that's like bigger than a really big cow.
22:11
SPEAKER_01: Like if you have, you know, there are some cows that are like five or five feet maybe at the shoulder.
22:18
SPEAKER_01: But like if you think about a Holstein, and that is like maybe almost six feet at the shoulder, okay, that cow is like 1500 pounds.
22:29
SPEAKER_01: So bigger, like two Holstein cows, right?
22:32
SPEAKER_01: Really big animal is what I'm talking about.
22:35
SPEAKER_01: And so the reason that hawthorn developed thorns and hawthorn thorns are like three inches long, but they're not close together.
22:46
SPEAKER_01: So today, a deer can walk up to a hawthorn tree and daintily nibble at the leaves in between the thorns.
22:54
SPEAKER_01: It's not going to do it super fast, but its face can fit in between the thorns usually.
23:01
SPEAKER_01: But this 3,000-pound creature used to go up to trees and put a hand, a paw, a claw, or whatever, at the base of a branch and pull it forward and strip all of the leaves off and stuff all of them in their mouth.
23:20
SPEAKER_01: And that was like one bite, and the whole branch was gone.
23:23
SPEAKER_01: And so, like, this creature was eating an entire tree in, like, you know, a few bites.
23:31
SPEAKER_01: And so Hawthorne developed these thorns that prohibited or was like to protect itself against this behavior.
23:40
SPEAKER_01: Can you see where I'm gonna go with this now in our emotional metaphor?
23:47
SPEAKER_01: When you feel not like a fox is after you, not like a hawk is after you, but like a 3,000-pound creature is about to come and like demolish you.
24:01
SPEAKER_01: Hawthorne thorns.
24:04
SPEAKER_01: That's what they're made for.
24:06
SPEAKER_01: Again, this is just a matter of helping you pull it together.
24:10
SPEAKER_01: Your perception is I'm about to be destroyed.
24:16
SPEAKER_01: Like I'm about to be, like everything I have is gonna be taken.
24:20
SPEAKER_01: Hey, that might also be true.
24:21
SPEAKER_01: Like I don't mean to say this is all in your head.
24:23
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's all in your head.
24:25
SPEAKER_01: Um, or sometimes it is exaggerated in your head.
24:29
SPEAKER_01: There's reality, and that is stress and true, but then your head makes it a little bit bigger.
24:34
SPEAKER_01: Okay, that happens.
24:36
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it is just flat out.
24:38
SPEAKER_01: You are literally about to lose everything.
24:41
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna get evicted from your apartment, you're gonna this, you're gonna do, you're gonna whatever.
24:45
SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, Hawthorne is not going to stop those things from happening to you.
24:50
SPEAKER_01: But they are gonna help, it is gonna help you pull yourself together so that you can deal with it.
25:00
SPEAKER_01: And if that is not happening, but some bad stuff is happening and you've made it a little bigger in your head, it helps you to pull that together so that you have a more realistic perspective about what is really going on and how you can handle it, how you can move through it, how you can get help for it, whatever.
25:20
SPEAKER_01: That's really what this is about, is we can't always change what's going on around us.
25:29
SPEAKER_01: But we need to be able to pull ourselves together so that we can react in a way that is good for us, that is aligned with what is important to us, that is gonna help us get through it, that is, you know, like whatever is the healthy thing in that particular situation.
25:52
SPEAKER_01: All right, so we've got rose when you're a cute little bunny.
25:56
SPEAKER_01: We've got hawthorn when a giant 3,000-pound prehistoric creature is going to gobble up all your leaves.
26:05
SPEAKER_01: Um, so the next one we want to talk about is ocateo.
26:09
SPEAKER_01: This is a plant, rose and hawthorn, they grow all across the country and also in Europe and also in many other places.
26:16
SPEAKER_01: Ocateo is a plant that grows in the desert southwest.
26:22
SPEAKER_01: And it's really uh you can't be really unique.
26:28
SPEAKER_01: Unique is already, it doesn't really actually need any modifiers, but wow, ocoteo is unique.
26:34
SPEAKER_01: It is giant, and by giant I mean like it can be 15 feet tall, it can be taller than that.
26:44
SPEAKER_01: Like staffs that do have some leaves when it when it's time for it to have leaves.
26:54
SPEAKER_01: And at the very top has like flaming orange flowers when they're when it's time for that, because it's a desert plant, right?
27:02
SPEAKER_01: So sometimes it doesn't have any leaves or flowers or anything, it just looks totally dead.
27:08
SPEAKER_01: But the part the part that is the part that is interesting here is that the staff that goes up to end up in flowers is covered in so many great big thorns that, like, you cannot grab this plant.
27:30
SPEAKER_01: You cannot just reach out and be like, I'm just gonna, no, no, you cannot do it.
27:36
SPEAKER_01: Um, because it would just, it's it's it's never you can't.
27:41
SPEAKER_01: You would just be stabbed in every part of your hand.
27:46
SPEAKER_01: And so just imagine this plant, and it is not like a central trunk with with branches everywhere.
27:55
SPEAKER_01: Each branch comes like basically out of the ground.
27:59
SPEAKER_01: So all you see is just these individual like arms reaching up high, like really high, much taller than you, just covered in thorns.
28:13
SPEAKER_01: And like, okay, a rose thorn is like, you know, a quarter of an inch or something like that.
28:18
SPEAKER_01: Don't get me wrong, sharp and stabby, but not not like huge.
28:22
SPEAKER_01: Hawthorns might be like three inches, or they might be even longer than that, depending on the species.
28:28
SPEAKER_01: Okatio thorns are like two inches, may maybe a little bigger, but I feel like, you know, like two inches is so okay, they're like hefty size-wise, but also they're just there's no space in in between them.
28:46
SPEAKER_01: There's like you could just barely kind of like if you had a q-tip, you could carefully put the q-tip and touch the central part of the stem in between two thorns, like like just with a q-tip.
29:02
SPEAKER_01: But there's just just thorns everywhere.
29:07
SPEAKER_01: Being able to visualize this plant, like I realize I've just spent a lot of time describing what this plant looks like.
29:13
SPEAKER_01: But you kind of need to know that.
29:16
SPEAKER_01: Because when what you need is a giant, enormous billboard of back the F up, get away from me, when you need to fully assert yourself, when you wish you just had a baseball bat that was covered in thorns that you could go around whopping people with, do not hit people, I am not condoning violence, you know, like whatever.
29:47
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
29:48
SPEAKER_01: But when you wish you had that, now visualize this plant that is just thorns to the sky.
29:59
SPEAKER_01: And so I feel like, and and like when you need your thorns to have attitude, when you need to pull it together and also kind of have a little middle finger going on, that that's okay.
30:17
SPEAKER_01: That is like there is no mistaking what you're trying to say here.
30:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
30:23
SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, sometimes you just need a little, like, oh, okay, I had a little break, had a little protection for a few minutes.
30:31
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes you need to be like, oh, don't eat me.
30:34
SPEAKER_01: But sometimes you kind of need to have some attitude as you pull yourself together, right?
30:40
SPEAKER_01: That's okay too, for sure.
30:43
unknown: Okay.
30:47
SPEAKER_01: All right, so let's um let's add mother wort to this mix.
30:52
SPEAKER_01: Now, mother wort, it's not technically thorns.
30:57
SPEAKER_01: Um, it's actually spines, but that's okay because they're really sharp.
31:03
SPEAKER_01: So they totally still count.
31:05
SPEAKER_01: So, okay, mother wart, um, if it's really happy, it can grow to be like six feet tall.
31:14
SPEAKER_01: But like kind of usually or like average, it's maybe like between your elbow and your shoulder.
31:20
SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, I'm six feet tall and it's between my elbow and my shoulder.
31:24
SPEAKER_01: Um and it's, you know, a mint family plant.
31:30
SPEAKER_01: It's got alternating green leaves and it's got little fuzzy pink flowers at the base of the leaves.
31:38
SPEAKER_01: Um, and the stem is so square.
31:43
SPEAKER_01: Like every, like the corners are exact 90-degree angles.
31:48
SPEAKER_01: Like somebody used a like a T square to make this stem.
31:54
SPEAKER_01: All the times that people say that like everything in nature is round, I'm always like, oh, you have clearly never mint anyone, met anyone in the mint family, and especially not Mother Wort.
32:04
SPEAKER_01: Motherwort is so square.
32:05
SPEAKER_01: If you're out there and you're totally square, and people told you that you need to like, I don't know, like, you've you always felt like a square peg in a round hole.
32:14
SPEAKER_01: I don't know, whatever.
32:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's okay.
32:16
SPEAKER_01: There's a whole plant family just for you.
32:19
SPEAKER_01: So the thing about motherwort, it's it's it's spininess, it's stabbiness in the beginning is not really like in the very beginning, it's not there at all.
32:35
SPEAKER_01: And then you feel it and it's kind of like not very threatening.
32:40
SPEAKER_01: But once the seeds, if the spines come out of the seed pods, and once the seeds start to develop, the spines become very sharp and very tough.
32:53
SPEAKER_01: And so around so the stem of the plant is tall and there's leaves every few inches, and the seed pods are in circles at the base of where the leaves attach to the stem.
33:08
SPEAKER_01: And these little circles are covered in spines going in every direction.
33:17
SPEAKER_01: Mother Wort is protecting its resources, right?
33:20
SPEAKER_01: Mother Ward is saying, Don't you touch my seeds?
33:23
SPEAKER_01: Don't you touch, don't you touch my babies?
33:26
SPEAKER_01: And so a lot of times we talk about mother wart in terms of courage, mother wart in terms of um, like especially if you feel like you you are the protector.
33:37
SPEAKER_01: Um, but also mother wart in terms of boundaries, um, giving you the courage to hold your boundaries.
33:45
SPEAKER_01: And in the case of mother wort, we have like, oh well, all of these have some special things going on.
33:51
SPEAKER_01: I'm focusing on the astringency because it's what's in common between all of them, but there are other factors for all of these as well.
33:58
SPEAKER_01: And with mother wort, one of those factors is that it calms palpitations and calms the stress response.
34:06
SPEAKER_01: So when we talk about like mother wort gives helps you have healthy boundaries, I mean that sounds pretty woo, right?
34:12
SPEAKER_01: But it's really that like if somebody asks you something and you're afraid to say no, and you're feeling that stress response and you're feeling that threat response, it's really hard to take the risk and do say no.
34:27
SPEAKER_01: But if someone says something and you want to say no and you're a little bit afraid, but you're working with a plant that reduces that feeling of fear, reduces the palpitations in your heart, reduces the other the other feelings, the like heat-rising feelings that happen when you have that little adrenaline rush, then it's a whole lot easier to stand there and stick to your guns and say, you know, no, I'm not, I'm not gonna do that.
34:57
SPEAKER_01: Because you're not having that like need to run away kind of response.
35:03
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
35:05
SPEAKER_01: But we also have astringency going on.
35:07
SPEAKER_01: And since that's what I'm focusing on, we'll we'll talk about that.
35:10
SPEAKER_01: So this, like when I think about mother ward, I really think a lot about when you feel like you are gathering in your family, your community, if you have children, your children, your pets, your whatever, and you are like mama bearing this situation.
35:29
SPEAKER_01: You are um that's not really a word.
35:34
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
35:35
SPEAKER_01: I just imagine like, or like a lioness protecting her cubs, or like, you know, what I guess any animal protecting their babies, because it doesn't matter how cuddly of an animal it is, they all protect their babies, right?
35:49
SPEAKER_01: So whatever animal it is that you like.
35:52
SPEAKER_01: If you are feeling that way, where you are like even like a strong person in your community and and you're providing that for people, and that's hard.
36:03
SPEAKER_01: And and it is hard.
36:04
SPEAKER_01: Like just because people look up to you to provide protection or provide guidance or provide whatever, does not mean that you always feel it.
36:11
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean that you don't fall apart.
36:13
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean that you don't feel weak and scared and want to hide under the covers.
36:20
SPEAKER_01: But when you need those boundaries, when you need that feeling of I can do this, I can hold it together, then mother wart is really helpful there.
36:37
SPEAKER_01: All right, there's one more that I want to talk about.
36:40
SPEAKER_01: Well, there's a whole lot more than I want to talk about, um, but there's one more that I want to talk about here first, and that's mesquite.
36:46
SPEAKER_01: Okay, now we're back to real thorns again.
36:48
SPEAKER_01: Mesquite is a tree that grows in um the Southwest, and I grew up in Texas and it grew all through Texas.
36:57
SPEAKER_01: And if you grew up in a place with mesquite, I don't need to say anything else right now.
37:07
SPEAKER_01: But because you might not have grown up in a place with mesquite, let me explain.
37:13
SPEAKER_01: If you grew up in a place with mesquite, you know a story of the mesquite thorn went straight through your shoe or somebody else's shoe.
37:24
SPEAKER_01: Whenever I talk about mesquite to anyone who has lived in a place with mesquite, the discussion always includes the sentence right through the sole of my shoe, if you know you know.
37:37
SPEAKER_01: Mesquite is like the rocket spikes of the plant world.
37:43
SPEAKER_01: Okay, listen, rocket spikes have gotten kind of trendy right now, but they used to be pretty shocking.
37:49
SPEAKER_01: And it was an absolute boundary.
37:52
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, you can think about mother wart if you need to hold a boundary, yeah, but if you like really need to get it done, if you need to get it done, and we're back to having attitude, right?
38:04
SPEAKER_01: You need to get it done, and maybe you also need to kick some butt while you're doing it.
38:08
SPEAKER_01: Mesquite.
38:09
SPEAKER_01: These thorns are like three, four inches long, and they are brutal, and they're really, really strong.
38:19
SPEAKER_01: Like, even though the end comes to a fine point, they're hard to break.
38:28
SPEAKER_01: They are really strong.
38:29
SPEAKER_01: And that's a quality of mesquite wood, anyway, is that it is just extremely, extremely hard.
38:35
SPEAKER_01: Um, and but but because of the strength, I mean, it really goes right through people's shoes, like for real, and often enough that everybody talks about that.
38:47
SPEAKER_01: If that's the kind of strong you need to be, if that's the kind of pulling it together you need, then mesquite thorns are for you.
38:59
SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah.
39:03
SPEAKER_01: Now, you might not live where all these places, like, you know, hawthorn and rose grow pretty much everywhere, but ocateo and mesquite don't grow everywhere.
39:12
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but uh in the places where they grow, they literally grow everywhere.
39:18
SPEAKER_01: So if you have a friend who lives in the southwest, you could be like, I need some mesquite thorns, can you just and you can go out with very sharp pruners.
39:27
SPEAKER_01: Um, and and your friend can literally, like in five minutes, get tons of thorns.
39:33
SPEAKER_01: Um so it's not, yes, okay, those two only grow in a much smaller region, but they grow super abundantly and it's not hard to get the thorns.
39:44
SPEAKER_01: And taking the thorns does not kill the plant.
39:46
SPEAKER_01: Um, so okay.
39:49
SPEAKER_01: All right.
39:50
SPEAKER_01: Um, this could be hours long because there are so many wonderful thorns to work with.
39:59
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I'm just gonna list a couple more that are worth your investigation.
40:04
SPEAKER_01: So Japanese barberry, again, like everywhere.
40:08
SPEAKER_01: Um, and lots of people don't even want it around, so it's like really easy to get.
40:13
SPEAKER_01: Raspberry and blackberry.
40:14
SPEAKER_01: You can get thorns right out of your garden, right?
40:17
SPEAKER_01: Blackthorn, which is um kind of like hawthorn.
40:21
SPEAKER_01: Uh okay, so then we also have some spiny ones.
40:25
SPEAKER_01: Uh, Oregon grape and agarita and tribulus.
40:29
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, again, more on the motherwort direction, they're spines, but spines are an honorary thorn.
40:35
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, they're sharp.
40:36
SPEAKER_01: So that's what we're going for here.
40:38
SPEAKER_01: We want that sharpness.
40:42
SPEAKER_01: But not all thorns go on the list, because not all thorns are non-toxic.
40:48
SPEAKER_01: So don't just go out there in the world willy-nilly gathering any thorn that you come across.
40:55
SPEAKER_01: Um, because, okay, that's not safe.
40:59
SPEAKER_01: Um, but any of these are fantastic, and these are pretty ubiquitous, pretty easy to find.
41:06
SPEAKER_01: So, how are we going to actually do this, right?
41:08
SPEAKER_01: You're you're like, okay, okay, okay, this sounds great.
41:10
SPEAKER_01: I want some thorns in my life.
41:11
SPEAKER_01: How are we gonna do it?
41:12
SPEAKER_01: Tincture is the way to go.
41:14
SPEAKER_01: Because, like I said, all these are astringent.
41:17
SPEAKER_01: Also, they don't taste awesome.
41:19
SPEAKER_01: Um, so we're not making tea.
41:21
SPEAKER_01: And and also, like, how many thorns would you need to make tea?
41:24
SPEAKER_01: You'd probably need a lot of thorns.
41:26
SPEAKER_01: Um, so we're gonna make tincture.
41:28
SPEAKER_01: In order to make tincture, you don't need that many thorns.
41:32
SPEAKER_01: You you when we take this, we really only you only need a couple of drops.
41:36
SPEAKER_01: It's not like you need big doses of thorn medicine, it's pretty powerful, and we're trying to impact like an emotional response.
41:44
SPEAKER_01: We're not trying to astringe your whole body here.
41:47
SPEAKER_01: So you don't need high doses, which means really, if you just make one of those little half-pint jars, or if you want to share with friends of like a pint jar of tincture, that is totally sufficient.
41:59
SPEAKER_01: And even though when we make tinctures, usually we want to like really get as much plant matter in there compared to the amount of alcohol that's in there.
42:10
SPEAKER_01: In this case, it doesn't have to be quite so tightly packed.
42:14
SPEAKER_01: Um, so because you're gonna get a lot of the astringency regardless.
42:21
SPEAKER_01: All right, so go on out there with like pruning shears or good sharp scissors and just clip the thorns off the plant.
42:33
SPEAKER_01: Or, like if you are getting ocateo, that's not gonna be easy.
42:39
SPEAKER_01: Um, but you could wear gloves.
42:42
SPEAKER_01: You guys wear gloves.
42:43
SPEAKER_01: You could just take like one branch and clip the end off of it.
42:50
SPEAKER_01: That will mean that that branch won't flower, so don't do that to the whole plant.
42:56
SPEAKER_01: But um for bark, we don't need, you know, when we're harvesting flowers, we want like the most beautiful best flowers.
43:06
SPEAKER_01: But for bark, like if there's an ocateo branch that like got damaged in a storm, and so it no longer has its flowering top, take part of that one because damaged in a storm does not really change the astringency of the bark at all.
43:24
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so now you're clipping off the end of a branch that wasn't gonna flower anyway, so you haven't done any harm to that plant.
43:33
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so whether it is ocateo or whether it is, you know, if it's hawthorn or mesquite, it's real easy to just clip the thorns individually.
43:43
SPEAKER_01: If it's rose or umcateo, that's gonna be a little bit harder.
43:50
SPEAKER_01: So you can just take like a three or four inch piece of the stem and put it in the jar and tincture it that way.
43:57
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna get the astringency from the Stem itself, the bark on the stem itself and the roots, that's okay.
44:04
SPEAKER_01: Um good.
44:06
SPEAKER_01: So, and other than that, it's a standard tincture.
44:09
SPEAKER_01: You're just gonna put it in there, you're gonna shake it, you're gonna leave it for a month.
44:13
SPEAKER_01: If you need it in a pinch sooner than that, feel free.
44:17
SPEAKER_01: But leave it in there for a month and then drop doses.
44:20
SPEAKER_01: You can formulate that with other plants that help you in stressful times.
44:25
SPEAKER_01: You can keep it on its own and then like just have that for special.
44:32
SPEAKER_01: You can make an elixir where you take the flower, or in the case of Hawthorn, you might prefer the berry because the flower is not super delicious.
44:44
SPEAKER_01: Um, but like let's say rose, you take all the thorns and then you take the rose petals and infuse those in honey.
44:51
SPEAKER_01: And the thorns are infused in alcohol, mix them together, that's gonna be an amazing elixir.
44:57
SPEAKER_01: And if you are in a moment where you just need a moment to pull yourself together and rest before you go back out there, then it's really nice to have something that is actually on the sweet side.
45:09
SPEAKER_01: Because it's not just that this medicine is helping you pull it together and helping you manage your emotions and whatever else, but also there's a little moment of delight in that.
45:18
SPEAKER_01: And you have you've captured the smell of the rose petals as well.
45:23
SPEAKER_01: So you can get really creative with this, and I encourage you to do so.
45:27
SPEAKER_01: Um, if you were gonna do this with raspberry or blackberry thorns, you can make a honey infusion of some berries.
45:34
SPEAKER_01: Like, go right ahead.
45:35
SPEAKER_01: It would taste so nice.
45:38
SPEAKER_01: Ah.
45:40
SPEAKER_01: I I now I want some.
45:42
SPEAKER_01: I'm just like, hmm, that would be so nice.
45:44
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
45:46
SPEAKER_01: And that's it.
45:47
SPEAKER_01: That's it.
45:48
SPEAKER_01: Carry it around with you if you're in a time of high stress so that you have it always available.
45:55
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna take small doses, couple of drops, but there's like no reason to skimp on that.
46:01
SPEAKER_01: You can take a couple of drops every hour if you need to.
46:04
SPEAKER_01: That's totally fine.
46:05
SPEAKER_01: Whatever you need to get through your day, whatever you need to help you pull it together and stay together until you get to a place where it's safe for you to fall apart, that's also fine.
46:16
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to never fall apart.
46:18
SPEAKER_01: You don't win if you never fall apart.
46:20
SPEAKER_01: We just want to fall a place, fall apart in a place where it's okay to do that.
46:23
SPEAKER_01: Like maybe, you know, once the once your obligations are done, whether that's work or the kids are in bed or like whatever else is going on, or at least maybe just not in a public place, because it isn't fun.
46:36
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't feel good to fall apart in a public place.
46:39
SPEAKER_01: So that's fine.
46:40
SPEAKER_01: We we've got our thorns for being out in the world.
46:43
SPEAKER_01: And then if you want to fall apart, you can fall apart at home.
46:49
SPEAKER_01: I feel like I feel like I have been talking super fast.
46:53
SPEAKER_01: I'm really excited about thorns, and I'm really excited about spring.
46:59
SPEAKER_01: It's nowhere near.
47:00
SPEAKER_01: It's only February 16th.
47:02
SPEAKER_01: Spring is a long way off, but I have spring in my heart, and I cannot wait to be out there and gather rose petals and not have piles of snow everywhere, even though I'm grateful for the snow.
47:20
SPEAKER_01: And I feel like I'm just ready for springtime, I'm ready for all of the beauty of all of the flowers.
47:33
SPEAKER_01: I'm just ready for it.
47:35
SPEAKER_01: And so thinking about thorn medicine, helping me hold it together a little longer until spring comes, actual spring and also metaphorical spring, you know what I mean?
47:49
SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, yeah, it's got me very excited.
47:53
SPEAKER_01: So maybe normally you listen to the podcast sped up, and maybe this time you had to slow it down.
48:00
SPEAKER_01: I don't know, because that's okay.
48:03
SPEAKER_01: At any rate, I hope that this was helpful for you.
48:07
SPEAKER_01: And this is the part where Rin would say, take care of yourselves, take care of each other, drink some tea, and um get some thorns to help you pull it together.
48:19
SPEAKER_01: It'll help.
48:21
SPEAKER_01: Bye bye, I'm gonna go.