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Can I Be A Plus-Sized Herbalist? (Replay) · The Holistic Herbalism Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey everybody, Rin here at the Holistic Herbalism Podcast.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's August.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: We're doing a fallow month, and that means that we're going to be airing some replays on the pod feed.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: This week, we've chosen episode 243 for a replay, and this one was titled, Can I Be a Plus-Sized Herbalist?
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that if we were to make a movie trailer for this one, it would kind of start with that movie trailer guy voice where he goes, In a world of imposter syndrome, you know, and we would have to, you know, go on from there and make a nice story and have some some compelling visuals and so on.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: But the the point here is that a lot of people start to feel imposter syndrome, or they start to feel doubt or shame or other kinds of negative emotions when they look at their Instagram feed, or they look at YouTube, and they see people who are calling themselves herbalists, and a lot of them kind of look sort of the same.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's a mold, and if you don't fit into that mold or that model, maybe you're not supposed to be doing this work.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're not right for it or not good enough, you know?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: And we just really want to break that down, take it to pieces, and turn it into compost or something, because you can be a fat herbalist, you can be a skinny herbalist, you can be an herbalist with thinning hair, you can be an herbalist with eczema that you haven't totally solved, you can be an herbalist with chronic illness that's always part of your life and isn't going to go away just because you love plants and you know how to work with them to help people.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Herbalism is something where it doesn't matter what you look like, it doesn't matter where you live, you don't have to be in the cabin in the woods, you know, or in the busiest city with the most cool people.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: You you can be however old you are, you can be whoever you are.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Herbalism is for you, herbalism is for everybody.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: What matters if you want to be a practitioner, if you want to be an herbalist, is your skill, your knowledge, your capacity, and especially your ability to explain and to share and to convey that to other people.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's what matters most, not what you look like.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what this episode is about.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening, and here it comes.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: I am just making a quick emergency pod today.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, actually, in a little bit, Rin's gonna make a new episode for you about some more of the herbs in commerce and some other great stuff, but there was something that came up today that I felt like I just had to talk about right away because it's so, so important.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so the disclaimer, you know, we always or our reclaimer, we always do our reclaimer.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, y'all know what it says, right?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not a doctor, I'm an herbalist, and it's not gonna matter for this one anyway, because there's no medical advice in this episode, and we don't give medical advice anyway because we're herbalists, and also you're awesome.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, that's the super short version of our reclaimer.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, here's the issue.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: A student wrote today and said, well, here's what they said.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: Here's what they said.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to ask for any advice or your thoughts on how to handle being a plus-sized herbalist.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: I am plus sized, though I am currently working on a healthier lifestyle that includes herbs.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like when people see me or when they see that I'm plus sized, they may not want to work with me or work with any of my products.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like herbalism is my calling, and I have fallen in love with herbs and how they work naturally in the body.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: But I feel like this could also hinder me from even opening my own practice one day.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: I kind of feel alone in this due to most of the herbalists I see on social media are very fit and quote healthy.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: Am I wrong to want to be an herbalist even though I am going through a battle and a journey with my weight?
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: We need you.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: We need all of you plus size plant lovers out there.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: We need everybody to learn about how to help each other with our health, with plants, with everything.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: We, we're all we've got.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: All of us.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: And we all are living our lives in the bodies we've got.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: They may be skinny, they may be plus size, they may be abled or disabled, they may be bodies that were shorter than we wanted to be, or taller than we wanted to be, or the wrong color hair.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I guess that one's pretty easy to fix.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, like whatever.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: Not a single one of us is happy with our bodies.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody is.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: I wish I were short.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: I wish I'm six feet tall.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: I wish I was like five feet tall and like tiny.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: I I can't tell you how much I wish this.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and everybody's like, oh, but you must love being tall.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: No, I hate being tall.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the first thing.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: Every one of us doesn't love our bodies.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's not even the first thing.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: The first thing is being skinny doesn't make you healthy.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: Appearing to be fit doesn't make you healthy.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: Look at every like Olympic gymnast out there.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: They look really fit, right?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: They're skinny, they're you know, whatever.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: Most of them have to have like joint replacement surgeries before they're 30.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: Simone Biles, I think maybe hasn't had to do that yet, but she is she is the goat.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's true.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: She is uh pretty amazing.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: But like if we look at, or if we look at ballet dancers, you know, whatever my sister-in-law was a professional ballerina, like you know, Swan Lake and and all that stuff at a big company.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: And she's tiny and she looks fit, and definitely if you just looked at a picture of her, she would be like, oh yeah, I always wished I looked like that.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: She's not healthy, she's like every joint in her body is busted, like so much of her body has borne the incredible toll of that work.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: But nobody sees that when she's walking down the street.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: They just look at her and say, She's healthy.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: If you asked her, she would be like, Are you kidding me?
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: But we don't we just look at other people and we think, oh, that person's really healthy.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know they're constipated all the time.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know that they're whatever, you know, whatever's going on for them.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: Because of course they don't have a sign.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: They don't wear a t-shirt that says, I'm not actually that healthy.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I know I look great, but I'm not really that healthy.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: We also don't have t-shirts that say, you know, like it doesn't matter how much I weigh, I actually am wicked healthy.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: I so I I guess I'm just trying to say we have to separate these ideas between what you look like and whether or not you are or ever have been or ever could be healthy.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: We're all in the bodies we're in.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: We're in the bodies we're in.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's part of our journey through life, right?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so we do whatever we can to try to make it more comfortable.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: For some people, that's tattoos or piercings, and for some people it's how they dress or what color they make their hair, or for some people it's going to the gym all the time, or like whatever it is.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: We're all just trying to find a way to get through every day in this life, in the body we've got, in the world we live in, in all those things, and because of that, we need herbalists in every kind of body.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: We need every kind of herbalist.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yes, there are so many social media influences influencers out there who have like that look.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, I don't want to make a blanket statement in any direction, but if I were gonna make a blanket statement, I would say don't trust them.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: Don't trust them just because definitely don't trust anybody just because of how they look.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: Don't ever do that.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: Trust them if their information is good, but not because they look healthy, because you don't know, you don't know what's going on for them, and on social media, you don't even know if they're telling the truth, you know?
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe I should have written down bullet points because I feel like this is all rant and no organization whatsoever, but I also feel so ferociously about this topic.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: We need big herbalists.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: We need some small herbalists too.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: If you are a plus size person out there, if you are a big person, if you're living life in a larger body, if you're fat, like whatever, do you not think that other people who are living that experience deserve to work with someone like them?
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: They deserve to work with an herbalist who knows what it's like to be discriminated against by how they look, to be to be told, oh, you weigh too much to be healthy.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: They deserve to work with somebody who has those experiences and can help them navigate life in their bodies.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: Because it doesn't actually matter how much you weigh, that's not what makes you healthy or not.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever kind of body you have, there are ways to support the things that you want to do in your life.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's true.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like at six feet tall, I was never gonna be a professional Olympic gymnast.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: That was never gonna happen.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, there are some things that you can't do in your life.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: But as a hobby from time to time, I used to love to play on the balance beam.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: I did some circus stuff, I did all kinds of like there are things you can do at the hobby level.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I I don't I'm I don't want to say like anyone can do anything.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: No, I mean there there are some limits on us.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: But if you have some specific health goals, if you have some specific mobility goals, it doesn't really matter what your weight is.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: You can work towards those things.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: If it doesn't matter what your weight is, about whether you're healthy or not.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: Skinny people are not necessarily healthy.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: Lots of skinny people are very unhealthy.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: Lots of large people are quite healthy.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yes, we need every kind of herbalist.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: We need large herbalists just to remind other people that you can be healthy in any kind of body that you've got.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: So, oh yes, please.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: If you are out there and you are plus sized and you are thinking like this person, like, how do I handle being an herbalist in this body?
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: If people see me, I think they're not gonna want to work with me.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: Oh no, we can fix that.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's just a matter of getting the word out there, that's just a matter of how we present you to the world.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like, that's business skills.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: We can deal with that.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: But we need you, we need you as an herbalist, we need you to help all the other people who are like, I think I could be healthy, and I'm not getting the support that I need to do that because I'm being told that just lose weight, and that's the total solution.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's not the total solution.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: Be healthy in the body of God.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: And if you are feeling like you're in love with herbs and you love learning about them and making herbal products and learning how to help people with herbs, please don't ever feel like I know it is so hard to live in a society that thinks that only small skinny women are valid, valid, and men have their own body issues, and then of course there's everything in between, too, right?
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: So, like, we've all been just saddled with these ideas of what health is and what beauty is and what's acceptable and valid for your body.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: Your body is acceptable and valid, you're in it, you exist.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: That means like that means you're valid.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you if you if it wasn't valid, it wouldn't exist.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: I I just like there's all different kinds of trees, and some of them grow grow kind of crooked or whatever else.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, is that not valid?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because the tree, like I'm looking out the window right now, and there's like a really tall, straight up and down tree, and then there's a tree that's like way curvy.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like, is the curvy tree not right?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: Is it somehow broken?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's just as old, it's like it's just as big as the straight up and down tree.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: We can't all be the same.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: That would be so boring.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: And also, it would be so impractical if we were all the same.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: There would be a whole lot of problems that we couldn't solve because we would all just be in this like one bandwidth, right?
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: We need all of us.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: We need all of us to solve the problems, we need all of us to have all the perspectives.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yes, there is prejudice out there, but that's stuff we can take care of with business skills.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's stuff we can take care of.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you're worried about having an herbal business because you are whatever size you are, do not worry about that.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: We can we can handle that.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: And don't let it stop you because we need you.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: We need all of us.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: And also, I don't want to sound like I'm saying that concern is not valid.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: It is valid.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: I have that concern too.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: I used to be a lot skinnier.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: When Ren and I met, it was 2007, and I weighed 145 pounds.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm six feet tall, but that's not really enough pounds.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: Now it is 2025 and I weigh 225 pounds.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm perimenopausal.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I went through a period of pretty extreme grief that I dealt with by um comfort food.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean I tried to listen, do you see?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: I have to do that.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: The pressure you're feeling is real, is what I'm trying to say.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: I feel it too.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: I feel it too when I look at the videos that I made when I was younger, and I look at the videos that I make now, and I think I'm much larger now.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I also think, what if people don't believe me because I got bigger?
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: But everybody does that.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody gets bigger, everybody has whatever they have.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Our bodies, we don't even have always have control over it.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I can't control how tall I am.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: And believe it or not, there are aspects of weight that are very difficult to control as well.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: Some of those aspects were like keyed into your system before you were even born.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's not always something that you have complete control over in terms of like the exact number of pounds that you weigh.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: And getting really thin often requires unhealthy strategies.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I just, yes, I it's true.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's scary to put yourself out there when you feel like you don't look like whatever the social ideal is of what we're supposed to look like so that we're healthy and attractive and whatever else.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to be the social ideal.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: I want to be real.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: I want to help real people.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: Nope.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah, some people are the social ideal.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: But most people aren't.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that we are more in our integrity to help others when we've really gone through it ourselves.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever it is.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have to go through exactly what you're going through.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to go through exactly what I'm going through for us to be able to relate to each other.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: But we need to have gone through some things to be able to relate to other people who have gone through some things.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: We need real people, real bodies, and we need everyone.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: We need the diversity.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: We need the full spectrum of experiences and of life.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: We need you.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: If this has been a question on your mind, if you have ever felt like you wanted to learn this stuff, but you didn't know where you could go without being criticized for your body, here, right here.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: This is where.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever you, whatever you look like, whatever you feel like, whatever you identify as, whatever you your experiences have been.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: We want you.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: We want you.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: So yes, you're right.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: There are people out there who will judge.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know you're right, because you've already experienced it.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: You don't need me to tell you that you're right.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: You're right.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: But not everybody will.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: And the more that we come together as people who value each other, as people who value real people, not fake influencers.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: Then that's the movement that we're making.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: You're welcome here.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: We want you.
• 21:32
  unknown: We want you.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I have to say.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I hope this was helpful for you.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: Please feel free to email me if you've been feeling this way and you just need somebody to send you a hug, you know, or if you have questions about anything, you can email us.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's info at commonwealth herbs.com.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: I want to hear from you.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe just you just needed to hear somebody say that.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: And if so, then I hope that this was helpful.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: Alright.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: And later today, Rin's gonna make an episode that is organized and orderly and has flow and is very rational and all that stuff.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so until then, take care of yourselves, take care of each other, drink some tea, and love your body.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: Bye-bye.