Tonic Herbs as Allies for Well-being in the Anthropocene with Guido Masé

Welcome to the Virtual Herbalism Conference. I'm your host, Lindsey Feldpausch. In this session, we are joined by Guido Masé. Guido is a clinical herbalist, educator, writer, and Chief Formulator at Traditional Medicinals, as well as an herbalist at Urban Moonshine. He is known for his deep insights into the relationship between humans and plants. His books, *The Wild Medicine Solution* and *DIY Bitters*, provide readers insights into the world of herbalism and how to connect with the medicine of the natural world in a deep way.

In our conversation, "Tonic Herbs as Allies for Well-being in the Anthropocene," we'll dive into tonic herbs in an era defined by rapid change and environmental uncertainty. This topic will help us consider how these enduring connections between people and plants can support our well-being on both a personal and planetary level.

Guido, thank you so much for joining us.

Lindsey, it is my great pleasure. Thanks for that lovely introduction and framing of the conversation. I think it's really spot on.

Guido, I am so excited to have you here with us today. You are one of my favorite herbal educators out in our field, so this conversation is going to be so potent. I just know it. If you could start off, though, by sharing the meaning of the Anthropocene epoch for our audience to give clarity to this conversation.

Yeah. The Anthropocene, to me, means this period of time when the planet's ongoing self-regulatory fluctuations have begun to be really deeply affected by our own activities, meaning the activities of human beings. It doesn't mean the planet has not had ups and downs of climate throughout its history. It has. But now, during this time of the Anthropocene, what we see is that a lot of the climate and balance point events on this planet have really been deeply influenced by our own activities, and particularly our urban expansion and loss of habitat that might accompany that, our emission of various types of novel—or at least novel concentrations—of chemicals into the atmosphere that's altering that homeodynamic balance. In short, a time when the planet's really feeling the activity of human beings and that we are beginning to almost take control in a certain sense, although I wouldn't call us in control of anything, of the way the planet is expressing at this moment in time.

Guido, you've done a lot of work with tonic herbs, and I would love for you to start off by defining tonic herbs and what they mean to you, but also through this lens of the Anthropocene.

Yeah. Well, I'll start off by saying that I think this idea of tonic herbs or the process of tonification, which I'm really excited to talk a little bit about, it pretty much is really unique to traditional herbal medicine. It's not something you see as an element of some of the more modern systems of healthcare. If you're going to, or I would point to one of the most unique and intriguing things about herbalism, I would say it is the process of tonification. It is these tonics. You and I and herbalists, we know that there's incredible plants that can work in the moment for all sorts of things that come up. That's great. They serve as the basis for a range of modern pharmaceuticals that really improve people's lives. But as I think about it more and more, it is the tonic that is the deepest and most precious gift that I have seen herbalism at least offer to me in my life.

And so what do I mean by this concept of tonification or what are these tonic herbs? It's hard for me to offer a blanket definition, and I think this is the reason why, Lindsey. I can't define tonic herbs in a vacuum. I have to define them in the context in which they're operating. Now, whether that's the ecology in which they grow and have evolved, or it's the systems of cultivation and processing, traditional processing systems, or it's the human being, that one person who takes the tonic into their body, context changes everything. For me, abstracting the tonic and saying tonic herbs do this as a definition is really difficult. I try to offer a contextual definition of tonics.

Tonic herbs are herbs that serve as part of a non-reactive daily practice that is unique to the individual and the time. What that means is that whether you're using dandelion or ginseng, bringing a tonic into your everyday life usually is nontoxic, usually is something that is taken as part of a habit, usually is something that can be taken for extended periods of time, and which tends not to show super intense dramatic results from a single dose, but tends to achieve its effects through the strengthening of a long-term, non-reactive relational practice.

So I know that's a little bit of a strange definition. When you go into it that way, it's like almost any herb could be considered tonic. If you think about even a plant-like tea, a cup of Camellia green tea that we might drink on an everyday basis, many people might think of that as a stimulant because of its caffeine content. But one cup, two cups of green tea a day with its elaborate polyphenol content and that little bit of caffeine, you become connected to it in this ritual way, and it actually is incredibly good for us long term. It's a source of support and guidance even for our cardiovascular system and beyond for many different cells in our body.

If you look at the way people have connected with tonics throughout the centuries. Even herbs that we might think of as being very drug-like, for example, *Rauvolfia serpentina*, which is a strong, strong Ayurvedic plant that is used for cardiovascular support, but it's very potent, and I usually use it in clinical practice for short periods of time. Rumored to have been a daily tonic for even folks like Mahatma Gandhi, who would take it in small quantities to just chill out the nervous system and help maintain peace. In whole form, even these really potent plants can be considered tonic. You can even go to some of the most powerful, we would consider, initiatory plants that don't lend themselves to tonification very well. Plants and mushrooms, from *Salvia divinorum* to the psilocybin mushrooms, these are not normally considered tonics. These are powerful one-up initiatory experiences that help restructure our lives when taken correctly. But for some folks, small quantities of these herbs and mushrooms are also used on a gentle daily basis as a tonic. Again, it depends who you are and it depends what your context is, but tonics can fit in and their main commonality to me, is that you are taking them as part of a practice and you're doing it in a non-reactive way. You're not waiting for a problem. You're not trying to address an issue. You're bringing them in just like exercise because it simply increases your vibrancy and supports your resilience in the world.

Guido, what I hear you saying is that any herb can be a tonic, and duration and dosage plays a role in that action. Obviously, when we think about tonic herbs on a broader spectrum within the herbal world, we're talking about nutritive tonics, probably at the first, right? Can you share three herbs that fall into that tonic category that you wish people knew more about or maybe even used more?

Yeah, for sure. Lindsey, that's a really good point. While it might be true that with the right approach and the right dosage, almost any herb could be a tonic, it's much safer and a better starting point to use the ones that are safe at higher dosage that we know can be taken on a daily basis for extended periods of time, even weeks, if not longer. That's definitely the place that I would start, especially if you're looking at developing a relationship with one or more tonics to help improve your life and to help them bring that resiliency to your life. We talk about adaptogens, we talk about bitter tonics, and these lovely sour tonics from the Rose family. I want to get into them all a little bit because they're all really cool and unique. But I also just appreciate at the outset being able to point to a few that are maybe not as appreciated or not as often seen. And ones that I've seen be really relevant in clinical practice.

The first that I'd love to call your attention to is codonopsis. Codonopsis is an herb, a root of a beautiful plant that makes these lovely balloon-like flowers. The root is taken and harvested and sometimes processed, roasted a little bit. It has a smoky quality from Traditional Chinese Medicine, but it doesn't have to be. My favorite use of it is to take codonopsis roots when they're dry and grind them into a powder and use that powder anywhere from 3 to sometimes 5, 6 grams a day, mixed with grains or oatmeal or other easily digestible, nutritive porages, basically. My favorite application for codonopsis is what's called a convalescence tonic. Convalescence is something I don't think we do enough of, which means to say when things get a little crazy in our life, when we are experiencing a lot of challenge, and when we move through that challenge and resolve it, we actually should take a little bit of time to recover, right? Whether that's a stressful event, you name it. Codonopsis is really good during that period of time, especially with these nutritive porages that are warming and easily digestible, like rice congee or oatmeal, to restore and support the strength of our digestive tract during that period of convalescence, help nourish and protect and restore the microbiome, and really get us back on this solid absorption footing. That's really why I love codonopsis. I've seen it work so well so many times to bring people to this great state of balance and health.

Another one that I think is underappreciated, and probably isn't news to your listeners, but is oats. I'm just going to hop right on with the oatmeal. Not only is oat in its grain form a great convalescent food, too, to help us recover, it's loaded with glucans that are great for our lipid metabolism as well as for our immunity, believe it or not. But oats in its green form, whether it's the grass or the unripe milky tops, is one of the gentlest yet strongest nervous system tonics and supporters that I've seen. It definitely is safe to use for prolonged periods of time, and it may not feel or sound as sexy as some of the nootropics, from lion's mane onward that you see today, but it really is a potent remedy, especially if you have access to it fresh. Fresh oat grass, fresh milky oat tops, preserved in tincture form, or just juiced and taken, it is a great cognitive tonic and nervous system stabilizer.

Finally, I don't know that I would call this as much of a nutritive tonic, but it is used as a standard beverage in Korea as well as in TCM, and that's schisandra. Schisandra is a beautiful and fantastic tonic. We definitely see this fruit touted in the literature on adaptogens. It doesn't have as much clinical research behind it as ginseng or ashwagandha might have, but it has some, and generally speaking, shows its effects on occasional stress and improving our resilience in the modern world. One of my favorite preparations is to take, if you have access to fresh schisandra berries, fantastic. But fresh or dry, put them in a jar and just cover them with honey. And then people will take, after a couple of weeks, take a spoonful of that honey, berries and all, and just pour hot water over it. You got this instant, delicious sweet tea. It makes a great preparation that, again, can be taken as a tonic on a daily basis. Gentle, calming adaptogen that also is excellent for the health of our liver. So put those two things together. Modern world, schisandra is really, really helpful. There's three of some of my favorites, and maybe a couple that might not be at the top of everyone's list.

I absolutely love schisandra as well. One of my favorite extracts with it is making a schisandra solid extract, Guido, so I'll have to try that honey. You started talking about the various categories of tonic herbs that you have worked with. Could you go into that more for us now and give us an overview of these boxes that we can put the plants into?

Yeah. I appreciate you pointing out that there are boxes. We have to remember that when we're generalizing like this, it's always going to be wrong, but it still can be a useful starting point. But the best way is for you to maybe start from here and then develop your own understanding and develop your own relationship. Remember, context changes everything. It's super important on how these adaptogens show up. They're going to show up in you differently than they will in me. So saying everyone should take schisandra or everyone should take ashwagandha, misses a little bit of that subtlety. But nevertheless, all of these tonics have a certain uniqueness. Even within a category like adaptogens, what we're finding is that not all adaptogens are created equal. They very much have their special flavor and special properties. But just like a perfume, when you put it on your skin, it's going to show up differently than it will on my skin. When we take these herbs into our lives, we really have to pay attention, and that's how we'll really get to know how it applies.

But I like to start with really the flavor. The flavor of the tonic points a little bit to the chemistry, and there's some connections there. Believe it or not, the flavor plus chemistry also tends to bring us into some botanical families in some case or some plant parts in other cases. Anyway, hopefully this framework will make a little bit of sense.

I like to start with the sweet tonics. These are roots a lot of the times, but I also include mushrooms. I know most people would not think of reishi or cordyceps as being sweet. Even like lion's mane, shiitake, you're starting to get a little less bitter, but sweet. I put the mushrooms in with herbs like astragalus or codonopsis or ginseng. As the sweet tonics, partly because they contain polysaccharides. A lot of nutritive starches, immune active starches, and a good complement of saponins. These pretty water-soluble molecules that we think also have a lot to say, both about how our immune cells interact and how they show up and behave inside of us in our digestive tract and beyond, but also to a certain extent, how our various endocrine secretions, our hormones, are metabolized, processed. I think it's like a buffer in that department. These sweet tonics are really good for helping our immune system find an even keel. I think about them as one of the entry points for talking to our internal immune and metabolic fire, the way we dole out energy, the way our immune system stands up to deal with potential threats, but also can relax when things like pollen might be floating through the air once in a while and we don't need to freak out about it. So these tonics help us find the even keel. When you look at the clinical research, they're not only looking at roots like ginseng for helping with occasional stress. But modern research on American ginseng, for example, shows that it's very appropriate to use during the colder months of the year to help support and maintain immune function. So that's why I love the sweet tonics. You'll see many adaptogens in there.

Then the next one is these sour, berry tonics. You will see everything from hawthorn to the Ericaceae, like blueberry and cranberry and bilberry. But often it's rose family. And the Rosaceae, what a tonic family. Even rosewater as a facial toner, a toner for the skin. They're gently astringent, so they're tissue tonics. They help the tissue tighten up and feel ready to go. They have so many polyphenols. These somewhat astringent, clearly anti-inflammatory, clearly helpful compounds are loaded in all—and it doesn't just have to be hawthorn. It can be apples, and it can be rose hips. Many of the fruits, flowers, even leaves from these rose family plants are these excellent embodiments of sour tonics. Again, a little more food-like, a little bit higher dosing than the sweet tonics, usually. A little bit easier to prepare in that regard. Making jam is a lovely thing. But the sour tonics are primarily there for cardiovascular health. And then I'm also going to talk about the ability to impact the way our genes get turned into reality. So what does that mean? We talk about genotype and phenotype, meaning what's written in the genetic structure of our cells versus what pieces of that genetic structure actually show up and become reality, become physical form. It's not a given that everything is going to show up in the phenotype. That's where polyphenols come in. They help regulate and change the way on a moment-to-moment basis, and also on a long-term longevity basis, our cells show up and express their own resilience and longevity. So these sour tonics are foundational, and it's no wonder that we see them primarily of interest in cardiovascular health, because that's top of mind nowadays in this culture, but so much more potent than that at the level of gene expression of every single cell in our bodies.

Now, the next category is near and dear to my heart. Those are the bitter tonics. Bitter tonics are defined literally by their taste. Any herb that tastes bitter, which almost all do, has a little bit of a bitter tonic quality. But of course, our classic ones rise to the top. Dandelion is the poster child of the bitter tonics. But you can also see some ones that cross over a little bit, like burdock. It's a little bit of a sweet tonic and nutritive, right? Speaks to immunity, but it also has a little bit of bitter quality in its root bark that brings it into the bitter tonic category. Then we have our much more potent and well-loved bitter tonics like gentian root or artichoke leaf. You can see those in very traditional preparations from bitters, like digestive bitters, Angostura, all the way to bitter liqueurs and aperitifs like Cynar, made from artichoke.

What bitter tonics do is they really support digestive function, and they do it without pushing the digestion around one way or another. They simply ring the bell of activation, and it starts with our tongue, and it goes further to all the bitter taste receptors throughout our GI tract and beyond. They're found everywhere in our bodies. Not everywhere, but in many places you wouldn't expect. Immune cells, cardiovascular cells, and beyond. There's compounds that taste bitter in these herbs. Generally speaking, they're of the lactone family, and there's some very special ones called iridoids that you see in super bitter herbs like gentian or blue vervain, and that literally will color the glass of your tincture bottle, iris-colored, dark, deep purple. So that's where they get their name. But that bitterness is the trigger for the production of digestive juices, as well as important hormonal secretions from our digestive tract. Nowadays, we get really excited about GLP-1, and how these new drugs impact this particular receptor structure in our body that is tuned to this compound, GLP-1. Glp-1 is a satiety hormone that helps regulate how much we consume and also how food moves through our GI tract. Bitters have been speaking to taste receptors that are involved in the production of GLP-1 since before we were human beings. If you want this balanced connection to your appetite, bitter tonics are the place to go. It highlights what the absence of tonics do to a culture, do to a species. In many cases, the appetite dysregulation that we experience sometimes, the difficulty with our weight fluctuation that we experience sometimes, is a symptom of the absence of this tonic hand that nature can place on our shoulders. You can talk about cardiovascular health as being partly guaranteed by or supported by sour tonics. Digestive health and liver metabolism being in part guaranteed and supported by bitter tonics. The health of our immune system and the metabolism of our stress hormones being connected to these sweet tonics.

There's a couple more that I want to just end with. One is the pungent aromatic tonics. These are worth thinking about, and I don't normally think about them as tonics quite as much, but as we were saying in the beginning, with the right dosage and the right ritual practice, any herb can be a tonic. Even pungents like ginger or turmeric and aromatic nervines, like even damiana, I can consider those tonics that you can take on a daily basis. If you look at ginger and turmeric, they're included in traditional daily tonic preparations in the Indonesian system of medicine known as Jamu. People will take little shots of turmeric on a daily basis. It just helps digestion. It helps everything overall. It's considered to be a vitality and longevity tonic as much as ginseng would be in Traditional Chinese Medicine. So don't ignore those.

When we're thinking about the nervine tonics, often these are dramatic. If you go beyond herbs like oats, even an herb like skullcap, if you distill out its volatile fraction, it has this lovely gentle minty quality, has an aromaticity to it. If you think of skullcap as a cooling nervous system tonic that can help for presentations that might be a little fidgety, and maybe there's a little spasm in there, you can to the other side of the spectrum with an herb like damiana, which is warming and uplifting and aromatic, or even historically, an herb like St. John's wort, which would be considered a restorative nervous system tonic that is warming, and that fits more for presentations that are underactive or uninspired or needing a little more of that fire and zest and joie de vivre. That helps distinguish both of those tonic herbs, one from the other, like a cooling like skullcap versus a warming like damiana. But remember, both of them can be great allies to your nervous system when taken on a daily basis. So these pungent, aromatic herbs, we should think about them, too.

You mentioned Lindsey, the nutritive tonics, and that's really where I want to end. It's sometimes hard to draw the line between oats and oatmeal as a nutritive tonic and the nervine tonic quality that it provides by restoring the nervous system. But under the nutritives, I tend to go with herbs like nettle. That are a little drying for some folks, but for many others are a tissue tonic that is slightly astringent, decreases bogginess in the tissues, and provides a great source of nutrition. So nettle is right up there for sure. But I also would include in these nutritive tonics, herbs like raspberry leaf. And yes, we have some chemistry in there that I could point to. And yes, there's some chemistry in nettle too, as well as in oats. But to me, the nutritive tonics are maybe some of the most special because a lot of the mystery about how they bring this vitality power into our lives, it's still there. We don't really understand exactly how raspberry works, or at least I don't. I don't really understand all the intricacies of why nettle root, leaf, and seed all bring vitality to people who consume them, but they do. It's not as easy to draw a line between them and some of the chemistry I talked about earlier in some of these other categories.

But in all of these cases, you'll see it with every one of these categories. There's daily practice, right? You take your bitters every day, you take your Rose family cardiovascular tonics every day. Part of that practice also involves usually a pause or a cycle, where you may be taking them during certain parts of the year, or you may be taking them more at certain times, and then maybe with an adaptogenic sweet tonic like ginseng, every 6-8 weeks, you take a week off. If you think about the way herbalists talk about using tonics, regardless of the category they're in, there almost always is this cyclical quality to it. I just like to encourage you to think about that. What category might be right? Which herbs do I want to try and work with, depending on what I'm trying to support in a non-reactive way? Then what cycles in my life can get resonant with the cyclical taking of these particular tonics? How can they plug in on a monthly cycle, on a weekly cycle, on a yearly cycle for me? If you put all those things together, you have the foundations of a practice that brings the tonic hand of nature again into our lives. I believe, as a result, helps us make more sustainable choices and walk with greater grace on this Earth, and almost as a side effect feel a greater sense of wellness for ourselves.

I think the flavor profile that you have presented in regards to these tonic herbs is really supportive, especially for audience members out there, Guido, who may feel like they don't really know where to start. I love teaching about organoleptic usage, our senses, and the innate ability we have to know plants through the use of our senses. Can you speak towards how individuals can go about pairing these tonic plants with themselves or with clients that they're working with?

Yeah. I love what you said about using your senses. If you're tasting an herb and thinking about its potential as a tonic, if it's hitting you over the head, like turmeric might, or ginger, you might say, Okay, I hear you. Probably won't use quite as much. Very strong, powerful flavor. Maybe I'll think a little more about how… Maybe it's a shorter cycle that I use this really pungent, potent herb with. Anyway, it's so useful to engage our senses when working in the practice of herbal medicine.

But if we all had perennial tropical garden greenhouses where we could grow all the herbs we love and have them fresh every day, my favorite way is to just eat them fresh. That's certainly part of my personal practice. But that's often impractical. For myself, I live in Vermont, I don't have access to this fresh herbal material all year round. I have a couple of favorite ways. Honestly, especially with the sweet tonics, taking the often roots or mushroom fruiting bodies and grinding them into a powder can be really a great way to incorporate them into your life. For most of the roots, that's all you need to really do, dry and use a powder. The tricky part then becomes making sure your supply is fresh. You don't want a powder to sit around for more than four months, maybe six months. But if your supply is fresh, it's great. A lot of these sweet tonics are not super disagreeable from a flavor perspective, so they're relatively easy to mix, like I was talking about with codonopsis in grains or even yogurt or even as part of smoothies. You can have a jar of your powder to put into whatever you want, and you take maybe a spoon, maybe a couple of tablespoons a day. For really picky folks, you can take these powders and mix them with honey and maybe cacao, another tonic herb. You just have to be a little careful about the sourcing of it, make sure that it isn't putting a lot of heavy metals into your body. But cacao, honey, herbal powders, and maybe some dehydrated raspberry to make a little truffle treat pioneered by Rosemary with her bliss balls. These are delicious ways to take your tonic herbs.

But for many of the others, including the sour ones, I like cooking them down. Sour berries are very heat stable, and the compounds, the beneficial polyphenols, are also very heat stable. Believe it or not, it's not just rose family plants. You also see red onions, for instance. Even yellow onions are loaded with polyphenols like quercetin. If you take hawthorn berries or red onions or strawberries, you name it, and you just cook them down in a pot until you get to a jam-like consistency, you can keep that stuff in the fridge and you can have a teaspoon or two of that on a daily basis, essentially a solid extract, not as potent or medicinally standardized as the schisandra extract you made Lindsey, but still a great way to get a good dose of sour tonics into your life on a daily basis.

For some of the others, pungents, some of the nervines, if you can get fresh oats, that's my favorite way to go. You can dry oats, and dried milky oats make a good tea as well, especially if you let them sit for hours so that they fully infuse. But in a lot of cases, I do like either freshly dried, aromatic herb like damiana. It just dried for 2-3 days, so the water content left, and then you made a tincture out of it. But you can also make it fresh. Tinctures are made with alcohol, Although a lot of times you can use glycerin, I don't find it to be quite as effective of a solvent. But alcohol is a great way to preserve and stabilize these aromatic and pungent tonics and keep them for the long term.

Finally, for the nutritive tonics, holy cow, Those are also great as powders. You can make all sorts of fun preparations. You can basically make fruit leather out of nettles. I've seen some incredibly creative preparations for these nutritive tonics, but they almost all come back to food. So food like in soups, you can take nettles and just basically put them in a blender with a little water and then pour them into ice cube trays and store those in the freezer and pull out two or three nettle ice cubes to throw in your soup all winter long or to get started in February, March, as spring is beginning to think about coming and you want some of those nettles before they've come out of the ground.

With bitters, I almost always tend to go for the tincture form, like aromatics and the bitter roots because that way you get a little bit in the mouth, you can taste it fully, which I really appreciate, and you don't have to put a whole mug full of super bitter tea. But that's to say, for aromatic herbs, if they're relatively fresh, even for bitter herbs that are gentle like dandelion, and certainly for the sweet tonics, using water as the most accessible, low cost, and frankly, effective way to go is a great way to bring tonics into your life. You can simmer some of the more fibrous things like roots into a decoction, or you can just steep them into a great infusion into a tea. For those aromatic and nervine tonics, that's one of my favorite ways to go.

Guido, this sounds so much like a whole food or a whole herb diet, really incorporating these plants into our daily life through food.

Yeah, and that's it, right? We're not being reactive here. We're not waiting for an issue, right? We're supporting the body's processes through tonification, and that means regular exposure. Honestly, the reason that there are spices in traditional systems of cuisine is very likely because these are functional ingredients that in that context, in that place, help regulate the human system and maintain its wellness. Very much, the art of herbalism is a practice that is super connected to the kitchen. That's maybe my first and foremost suggestion, the foundational suggestion to you and to your listeners is, get them in a place where you'll see them every day so that they will easily be a part of your routine. It's like laying out your exercise, your workout clothes the night before. When you wake up in the morning, there's less friction. You just want that stuff available for you so you can sprinkle a little bit of powder in there, and you want to be able to start listening to how your body is responding to it. You might say, Okay, August, September, October, now it's time for some of those sweet tonics that speak to my immunity, and I'm going to eat more oatmeal in the morning as a result. Wow, that feels really good. In the summer, you might be more like, Wow, I'm going for fruit, and I'm going to have a shot of turmeric there, and it's going to support my increased physical activity during this time. You get the idea. It helps you pay attention, and as you pay more attention, you become more connected, and as a result, you experience less friction in your life, and you experience more creativity. I think that's what the plants want for us, and tonification is the road.

I think that the overall impact will be beneficial to the planet in this Anthropocene lens that we're discussing today as well. If we are in good health, then we're going to want to see good health in the world around us. Thank you Lindsey, for bringing that back. If we talk about tonics and how we can't really discuss them in a vacuum, tonics are "this." Tonics engage this process when you engage with them. In that context, a human being who is experiencing tonification that herbal medicine can provide starts to see the world differently. We don't have to believe in the power of plant chemistry or think that plant spirit is working through us. Though, if you talk to most herbalists, we would agree that both of those things are probably true. You just have to put the tonics into your body. Our spirit, and I've seen this in so many folks, our spirit begins to soften, we begin to consider more, and we begin to appreciate more. And all of these things make it harder for us to take an extractive and reactive mentality to everything that's happening around us.

What do I mean by that? When you appreciate how dandelions supports your digestive health, or when you begin to appreciate that this weedy, scraggly tree, hawthorn tree, has berries on it that are like your ticket to cardiovascular longevity, then this idea that humans know best begins to lose a little bit of its potency. We know a lot of things. We do great stuff. I don't think, although I'm not sure, but I don't think plants have been able to escape the gravity well of the planet. But we have. And plants might be very interested as they have been exploring different places all around the world, as they've traveled with humans. They might be very interested in new frontiers that we might be exploring as human beings. I really try not to be judgmental about the Anthropocene and everything that has come along with it. It, after all, is an expression of the evolution of this biosphere. All I ask as an herbalist is that as we move forward in this creative future that human beings are so excited about, whether it's AI and our crazy water hungry energy hungry data centers, or whether it's new ways of thinking about how to structure societies in ways that are just and provide equity, as opposed to some of the societal structures we've explored in the past, or when we're thinking about ways to feed folks that are connected to the way the planet grows food, as opposed to connected to how we think food should be grown. All of these places are challenges that for us are becoming very difficult to navigate on our own. We exist in Anthropocene, but I'm not sure that the long-term sustainability of us as humans in the context of the Anthropocene will be something that we are going to be able to come up with on our own. As we try and think about sustainability for ourselves and for the world, all I ask is that we bring nature to the table. I think the best way to do that is to engage in the chemistry of communion that tonics provide. And the attitude that we bring to that process. Not, "I've got a problem, I will take you as my solution," but more like, "Can I get to know you, friend? As I get to know you, can I just be grateful at how you're softening my approach to this world and helping me realize that I'm not as in control as I think I am?" Think about that, how approaching problems could be different if we approach them from the perspective that human solutions are likely not the best possible solution, and that engaging in an ecologically-driven process could get us to a place that is showing us solutions that we might never have even thought could possibly exist before.

One example of this Lindsey, and then I'll stop, is the herbal products industry is actually struggling a little bit with the impacts of the Anthropocene on our what people call raw materials. It's so funny. We're like, we must industrially process our raw materials in order to make products that support wellness. That's one way of looking at it. The other way of looking at it is, let's engage with this intelligent life form, which is not just a plant, but is a plant in a context of people and place where it grew and where our understanding of its medicinal powers also grew and where our understanding of how to process it effectively to be used as a daily supportive tonic was born. Let's take those areas and think about them as living beings and ask them, "How do you want to show up in the world now and how can I support that?" As opposed to, "What can I get out of you that will help me accomplish my goals?" There's so many assumptions in that statement. I have a goal. It's what needs to be accomplished. I don't necessarily need to listen to what your goals are. I know what you're for. All these assumptions.

A great organization that I'm involved with is called the Sustainable Herbs Initiative, spearheaded by Ann Armbrecht. The idea there is that we need to bring nature to the table in the herbal products industry. If we don't do that in a couple of decades, because of the consequences of living in the Anthropocene, we not only might run out of potent herbs that can accomplish what historically they've been able to accomplish, but we might also run out of the traditional human knowledge about the ecology and about where the good herbs grow, how to process them, how to encourage their growth in a cultivated setting. All of that knowledge is at risk of being lost. So by taking the focus away from raw materials turning into products and putting it back on this living being, this ecological system that uses plants as almost an organ to affect the world, including the animals in the world like humans, and we start to ask that area, How do you want to show up? Then we can, hopefully, get to a solution set that is very different than what we might have come up with as a human trying to increase sustainability of ashwagandha and actual medicinal potency and withanolide content in the roots in the face of these crazy monsoons that are keeping the dry season that's necessary for ashwagandha to mature from happening correctly. Should we put greenhouses over them? All these human solutions tend to muck things up. So what I'm asking is, let's get tonics into our lives on a daily basis. That's bizarrely the solution that I think we are finding as part of the Sustainable Herbs Initiative, engaging in that chemistry of communion for the people who are working on a daily basis with these plants so that their minds begin to change. The way they approach those herbs, not as raw materials, but as co-conspirators on this journey towards sustainability, that lens shift is, I think, the greatest gift of tonics and the greatest gift of tonic herbalism. As we move into that future, my greatest hope is that we'll be able to maintain that beautiful, super-excited human creativity that sends spaceships out into the sky and do it in a sustainable way that respects the biosphere as the source of all of our strength and all of our creativity. We know better now than we did maybe 100 years ago, so let's engage. Let's bring the ecology into us and let's give nature that seat at the table.

I love this image you have painted so much, Guido. I mean, the idea of this tonification of our individual selves can be the answer to our capacity to listen to nature. When you talk about the product industry, though, my brain immediately goes to, is it possible to maintain the system that we are living within in this mass production of herbal products in the way that we're doing while still listening to nature?

That is a really good question. If you've never thought about that when you're listening today, I encourage you to think about it. Herbs are living beings that come from not only ecologies, but also socioecological context that involve people and animals and culture and intricate webs of life. We tend to think of everything as being something that we can extract, and nature will make more of it, and we can just keep going and growing, and growing, and growing. That might not be the case for everything, for most things, in fact.

How to address that from the perspective of the herbal products industry? I'll tell you, Lindsey, I start from this place that is a little weird, and I don't know if everyone would agree with it, but I'll offer this thought. Plants want to be consumed so that they can influence those who consume them. We get to move around and do stuff. If we want to get something or we want to have something change, we can literally pick it up and move it. Plants can't do that. They influence everything through the chemistry they secrete into the environment and they count on, they rely on having their fruit consumed and their seeds spread, having their leaves consumed to a certain extent, and regulating insect populations thereby. It's all... I come from the perspective that plants want to be a part of our lives, and medicinal plants are trying to do that. Look at how apples colonized the world. Look at how cannabis spread around the world. Plants are very good at doing this.

If we assume that an herb like ashwagandha, which is experiencing challenges in its native environment in terms of climate shifts, is still into the idea of tonifying human beings so that we can be resilient and participatory in a co-creative ecology, then the question to me becomes, how can I introduce people who might benefit from ashwagandha to this herb in a way that makes ashwagandha happy and helps support that unit that has the social, cultural, ecological knowledge and this intricate web of life around it? Ashwagandha almost being a hormonal secretion from one organ to another organ, or from one system, the socioeconomic and ecological context where the plant grows to another system, the American herbal products industry, with all of its very interesting distribution channels and stores with shelves.

Anyway, there's two ways to go. One is I really support decentralized herbalism, local herbalism, community herbalism at its source. We don't need big multinational companies to deliver herbs to us because in many cases, lots of incredible plants can grow really close at hand. If it's not in your house or on your windowsill or in your garden, then maybe it's your neighbor next door. What if we could have an herbalist on our block who could help facilitate this process of tonification. That, to me, is the closest analog to the biological system, right? But I really like my coffee. I also really like kava kava once in a while. Not that I would necessarily use it as a tonic. Ginger, also incredible. While I've grown a little bit of ginger here in Vermont, and others have done better than I have, it's not possible. If I want some ginger, there also is a role to a centralized, more global way of connecting herbs to people. We know the plants want this, right? If we can also support decentralized grassroots community herbalism, then these larger companies, it's really the onus is on them to make sure that we are connected to and respectful of this intricate web of life that contains the social, cultural, economic pieces of person, plant, and place. And generally speaking, that can be in the Pacific Northwest, it can be in India, it can be in China, it can be in Europe, it can be in Africa, Central and South America, you name it. But these places exist everywhere where these herbs come from.

To just give you a little bit of an example in terms of how this all fits in. I work as a formulator at Traditional Medicinals. When we come up with a tea formula that we would like to share with the public, and we would like to share this formula because it helps you feel better, but also because we believe that by drinking tea and doing it in an autonifying way, not only are we creating more herbalists, but hopefully, we're also doing that work that the plants want to do to bring more regulatory chemistry into the culture that needs it. I always start with a tonic, and usually one that is really accessible, really sustainable. For example, in a recent tea we made, to celebrate actually 50 years of Traditional Medicinals, the Rosy Mood tea, we start with hawthorn. Hawthorn is the tonic. It's the heart medicine. It's the sour tonic. It's there at the base, and because the rose family is so lovely, there's a little rose, too, to just soften the heart and bring that emotional quality to it. But both of those herbs, very sustainable, long history of cultivation. But even still, we want to make sure that the herbs are certified organic and that they come from places in the world where they are harvested sustainably and folks who harvest them are truly compensated for not only the herbs, but the fact that they are stewarding herbalism for us, that they're helping to maintain the vitality in these places where plants, people, and the environment have co-evolved. It's actually really important to steward that. Maybe not everyone realizes that if we don't continue maintaining an herb trade, it's not likely that those traditional environments and ways of doing things, things that I experienced as a kid growing up in the Alps, people go up to the high mountains and bring their cows there. That's why there's meadows there, because little baby trees can't necessarily grow above the treeline, and the cows keep everything at bay and fertilize. That's where the gentian grows. That's where the arnica grows. If humans and cows weren't there, that whole thing wouldn't work, and we wouldn't have gentian and arnica the way we do. So that needs to

be stewarded. So if we're making herbs at scale, I think hawthorn, ashwagandha, they want to be part of our lives. So who are the right partners who will maintain stability and sustainability in those places? How do we support them rather than extract from them the most we can? As a result, what types of products should we put into the world?

One of the things that is also in this 50th anniversary celebration tea on the hawthorn and rose is damiana, an excellent uplifting nervine that can be used on a daily basis if you keep the dose mellow, two or three cups of tea a day, and is harvested in a sustainable way by partners that we have been working with in in Mexico, who can also make sure that the damiana is of the quality that we need it to be while maintaining that people-plant-place continuum and that traditional know-how in a sustainable way. Not everyone behaves that way, but I'll tell you that I feel really privileged working in the herbal products industry because it's a lot easier for us to go into that place of support and respect versus extract because our personal lives have been changed by plants, or at least my personal life has been changed by plants. It's really difficult to think of an ally and friend as an extractible, exploitable commodity.

I go right back to it, Lindsey. If we want a sustainable herbal products industry, we need everyone at every level to be putting herbs into their body, closing that feedback loop, right? One of the things that really struck me is that even just bringing cartons of tea and being like, this is where your herbs go. This is what we make with them, and this is what people do with them, and this is what they experience when they take your herbs into their bodies. Closing that loop creates potency because now we're all part of this same gift cycle that is increasing creativity. When everyone has that realization and realizes that we're not the beneficiaries of mineral extraction, but we're co-creators of this dance and plants want to be part of it, too, it changes our minds around respect and sustainability, not just in the herbal products trade, but with everything.

It's easier for us to be less reactive with our friends and with our partners who sometimes might be really upset about something, and we take it super personally, we take it a little less personally, and we're a little less reactive when we have herbs on board. I'm telling you, I've seen it time and time again. And so imagine that in boardrooms, imagine that in government, imagine that in schools, right? Imagine that as part of your life when your morning starts in a non-reactive way where the gifts of nature are brought into your body and renew an ancient gift that your cells long for. Imagine that as a way to start your day instead of perhaps reading the news. And it doesn't mean that you can't read the news. But when you have herbs on board, you'll be able to handle what life throws your way, I think, with a lot more equanimity and peace, and make decisions that are more grounded and sustainable. I know it sounds strange. I'm not providing solutions. I'm saying, let the plants provide solutions. But I think what we have is an ample body of knowledge that shows us why this actually works, why this actually works. We can talk about individual pieces of clinical research. We can talk about population epidemiological level research that shows what happens when people take whole plants in a greater proportion into their lives and specifically start using traditional medicines more in their lives. Herbs heal more than just people. They heal cultures, they heal systems. I think it's because plants want that. They're our great modulators on this biosphere. If anyone needs it, it's human beings in the Anthropocene. So let's do it.

Okay, Guido, that was incredible. I feel like mic drop, 100%, the message that we all need to hear, this tonification of ourselves and the world at hand, the work that plants do on a cellular level and a global level. I mean, I'm so glad that there are people like you and companies like Traditional Medicinals thinking these big thoughts that are so potent for our world. Well, I appreciate you and I appreciate the Herbal Academy as well, who's helping to get this not only knowledge out, but to inspire people, right? To inspire people to take that step and to deepen it if you've already taken the first step. I think that's really important.

Guido, I feel like you have painted such a beautiful picture of the work that tonic herbs can do on an individual and worldwide scale. But most of us are living in a place where we feel burnt out and we feel like we are in the chronic stressors of everyday life. What do you have to say to that in regards to tonic herbs and how we can work to address really balancing ourselves on an individual level? Yeah. Thanks, Lindsey. It's good to bring it down from the philosophical realm, which sometimes feels like not super relevant. I know that we all agree that it's something we need to work on in terms of global sustainability, but I do think it starts with you. It It starts with the person. I think you're absolutely right. Burnout is very real. I see it in, particularly professionals all across the board, whether it's physicians, you name it, particularly in health care, we're seeing it a lot, which isn't that ironic. I think it's the same thing that leads us to think of herbs as commodities. It's this extractive, reactive mentality, and we impose it on ourselves. We expect that we could just keep going, and we did great last week, so we should just keep doing great. Even in the process of tonification itself and learning to work with these tonic herbs, there always is a cycle. There always is a period of timeline. I take hawthorn every single day, a little bit of extract I make from our trees, as well as a little bit of a tablet that has this extract from Germany that all the clinicals were done on because I love both of those approaches. But I still take a couple of weeks off every summer. When I'm out in the woods camping or away from home, I just stop taking hawthorn for a few weeks. I think that cyclical quality is really important. Clearly, it's important for us as humans to have powerful creative cycles and really fallow times as well. But for the same reason we tend to extract from the natural world, we also extract from the human world, because we treat everything that way, including ourselves.

Again, I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but even though tonification of the individual leads to a global stability in homeostasis, I love that you brought up the idea of the allostatic load, which is the level of tolerance we can have for fluctuations in the world and beyond which we experience detrimental stress. As people are experiencing detrimental stress, whether it's occasionally, and we can talk about that from a range of different perspectives in the Anthropocene. If we treat ourselves as inexhaustible resources that we can continue to draw on forever, we're going to end up in a place of complete deficiency. It totally makes sense, and I've seen it over and over again. If you're there right now, or if you're seeing your friends show some of the signs of irritability and high reactivity, difficulty handling things that maybe normally would have been handled with a little more patience. You're standing in line, you're driving in the road, you're reading your email inbox, and all of a sudden this anger comes up around, that frustration to the point that you can't go about your day in a peaceful way. These are signs that maybe what you're upset about is the way you and the world have been treating yourself. I know that's a really easy thing for me to say. For many of us, we're stuck in a system that makes it really difficult for us to exist in any other way. To that, I would just say, bring the herbs in. I go back to our celebration tea that we just formulated. It's got that tonic hawthorn, it's got tonic rose, and then it has that little bit of uplifting damiana in there as well. Taken as a daily basis, shared with friends, to celebrate, to have a moment apart that isn't intoxicating, where we're totally messed up and taking psychedelics or getting really drunk or who knows what. It's a lot more sustainable as a celebratory ritual. Over time, it begins to soften your nervous system.

For many people, I know adaptogens are the hot topic right now in terms of tonics, and they're fantastic. I've got nothing against adaptogens. Other than what I think David Winston once said really wisely, which is that the one bad thing about adaptogens is that it actually helps us be more extractive onto ourselves. I paraphrase, but it helps us keep going. I can totally see Red Bull and 5-Hour Energy getting traded out for natural ginseng-based, rhodiola-based adaptogens that you take so that you can extract more from yourself longer. Adaptogens can really renew us and support our response to stress and help us endure and adapt. But if we have to endure and adapt to the point where we feel ill-equipped to do so on our own, always, then that's an issue. So honestly, before adaptogens, I love nervines. Nervine tonics like skullcap, damiana, oats, right, lemon balm, because what they do is they immediately give the nervous system a little bit of respite, right? So that that sympathetic reactivity, that high allostatic load, is immediately brought down a little bit. That gives you room to breathe and to say, what's going on here? How might I like my life to be structured? What am I worth? And what prominence should my worth have in my life? As opposed to all these other competing interests. Nervine tonics give us a chance to have that moment. Often that, to me, brings a relaxation in breathing, a greater sense of gratitude, and love for my friends. At that point, then, after a week or two of having that on a daily basis in your life, you might revisit the idea of the adaptogen. You might say, Wow, look, I'm actually not as energy depleted as I thought. I've been mellowing out and not stressing quite as much, and I feel like I have more energy. I've been sleeping a little better and I feel like I have more energy. Maybe I don't need the adaptogens. Or maybe I'm going to take the adaptogens when I have to do that work trip that is 10 days long, and I know that's going to be stressful, and I'm going to take them for a two-week period, like one week before that trip, and then for the 10 days that I'm doing it, and they're going to help me stay super resilient during that time, and then I'm going to stop, and I'm going to rest, and I'm going to take five days, and three of those are going to be in the woods with my kid, and I'm going to get to pet my dog, and I'm going to spend some time in the garden. As opposed to, I'm going to start taking adaptogens, and I'm going to take them every day, along with nootropics and caffeine, in order to perform. I just want you all to think about that as you're approaching tonics and think about maybe coming in and soothing the nervous system. Or for you, if people have been talking about cardiovascular health, maybe a cardiotonic, some of these sour tonics, are the place for you to start. I've seen hawthorn—I was just talking about it with Rosemary the other day—soften the nervous system and the emotional and spiritual being just as much as a nervine. It might be a bitter tonic if digestion is a place that sometimes needs support in your particular case. Bitters also, believe it or not, make people feel grounded. They make them feel less reactive. Imagine taking something like occasional hypoglycemia or hangriness off the table. You don't feel that anymore throughout your day. How do your moods, how does your perception of energy, how does your reactivity towards coworkers, towards family, how does that shift? If all of a sudden you feel more balanced in your blood glucose levels, more balanced in your appetite and in your digestive tract. So think about what speaks to you. Adaptogens are fantastic. Think about how even a little bit of caffeine might be nice as a tonic for you. That going back to that green tea. Take the example and then bring that into your life on a daily basis. But if you're going to start, I really do suggest starting with nervine tonics because they'll give you that breathing space and they'll make you calmer so that that "I want to suck more out of myself, I want to extract more, I want to be more productive" feeling can get softened. And that's the culture speaking through you all. That's not necessarily you. And it's totally fair. Culture is what culture does, and she has her personality. And let me tell you, if it takes us 2-3 weeks to feel the effects of tonics, it may take the culture 2 or 3 generations. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't start today.

That is so beautiful, Guido. I love hearing you speak from this philosophical perspective. One of the things that I love about your teachings is you also pair this deep thought with science and evidence-based research. Is there any tonic herb studies that you would like to share about and any current research that you're excited by? Well, Lindsey, I've been diving deep into the research on adaptogens lately, and actually excited with some colleagues that will hopefully be able to share some of what we've discovered, which is that a lot of the adaptogens, and we looked at Panax ginseng, Asian ginseng, we looked at schisandra, ashwagandha. We looked at this cool fungus, cordyceps, as one of the adaptogens. Anyway, they're all a little bit different. They all have an amazing clinical research basis. If you look at an adaptogen like eleuthero—folks have been using eleuthero tincture in clinical studies since the '50s and '60s, particularly in Russia and in Eastern Europe. Over and over and over again, you see eleuthero not just being able to support us for occasional stress and keep our energy and vitality up, but these really interesting subtle effects on immunity. Where eleuthero is this amazing assistant to the immune system, not something you would normally think of front and center for adaptogens. A lot of the traditional Russian literature looks at that, even though the modern lit on eleuthero hasn't caught up yet. One of my things that I've been most intrigued by, actually, is ginseng as a cognitive function enhancer, even short term, for people who are needing a little bit of extra focus, or to just help support cognitive function as we age, or for a range of different reasons. I don't normally tend to go there. I use herbs like bacopa a lot and gotu kola. Even historically, I would have thought of rhodiola as being a little more like stimulating cognitive function related as an adaptogen. While there is some research there, you look at some of the stuff that, for example, DO Kennedy has put out on Asian ginseng, it's really a fantastic cognitive support herb that doesn't make you feel like jittery or overstimulated the way sometimes caffeine can, for instance.

There also is an incredible body of literature on the sour tonics and blueberries, cranberries, bilberries, you name it, cardiovascular function, microvascular function. We even have multiple meta-analyses now that have pulled thousands of patients for an herb like hawthorn. A recent one just came out in 2023 out of Iran that looked at hawthorn in the context of helping to maintain healthy blood pressure levels. This builds on SPICE trial, which that was back in 2008, was a landmark study on hawthorn that looked at its ability to help maintain cardiovascular health, especially as we age, and the heart muscle tends to take the brunt of aging a lot of the time. At this point, it still is surprising to me that we just don't bring out hawthorn at age 30 for pretty much everybody. But my hope is that as this research even continues to build, herbs will become part of the gold standard. In many countries of the world, they already are of medical care. As we do that, not only are we understanding the mechanisms a little bit, and I could go into how the anthocyanins and polyphenols in hawthorn are working at the level of the vascular endothelium, that inner, most intimate lining where blood is coming into contact with the lining of these blood vessels. Hawthorn is increasing the amount of negatively charged surface proteins that that lining expresses so that they actually act as a magnetic levitation device that keeps things like white blood cells loaded with cholesterol from getting in there and causing inflammation and creating plaques that lead to calcification and hardening of the arteries. It's profoundly upstream, and it's about ecological sustainability if we think of our bodies as an ecology. The pharmacologist ecology of it, to me, it's like, wow, you guys are doing deep ecology here on the human system as a living ecology, and you're finding that restoring the stream of chemistry that we evolved in is one of the tickets towards long-term sustainability and health and wellness for this human ecology. And you're defining all the little pieces of it to the level of granularity and detail of ecosystem restoration, talking about planting cattails and marsh marigolds and creating water. Anyway, the way hawthorn works as an ecosystem engineer inside us is remarkable and highly intelligent and reflective of an intelligence that transcends us and that is truly, I think, this reflection of the plant people place power carried into our bodies from far-flung corners of the planet or from the hawthorn tree that grows on the edge of the farm field right here in Vermont. Thanks for bringing up the research. We could talk a lot about it, and I love the beauty of the pharmacology. But in short, every time we find how these polyphenols work on gene expression, how they work on the vascular endothelium, we're discovering a very ancient lock that plants have the key to. The reason that lock key system exists is because we evolved in a plant-rich context. It's as simple as that. All I'm saying is tonification restores that context. It does that on a beautiful individual basis where you can bring all of this art and all of this spirit into the process to create what works for you. As you do it as a human and your relationships begin to soften and you turn your friends onto it, we really can change the world together. It's a collective working on this.

Beautiful. Guido, my final question for you is, what does a resilient and tonic-informed herbal community in that Anthropocene look like to you? That is a great question. The vision I hope to see is a vision of educational, economic, and social structures that mimic the social and biological structures that exist all around us. I think we can achieve this vision because we've been able to talk about from a system science perspective, what this biological life looks like. It's deeply interconnected, it's deeply context-sensitive, it's co-evolved and participatory. Everybody's voice counts, and yet nobody's voice can drown out the others. As a result, what I see phenomenologically, meaning on the ground, is I see diversity, in living ecosystems, and that diversity is there as a hedge against fluctuation. It provides adaptability just as much as a wetland buffer allows a city plant rowing next to a river to weather floods more effectively than if that wetland buffer weren't there. The vision is great diversity of growing green things in all our living environments with people who understand not just the human element of those environments, but the non-human element, too, and can act as matchmakers and bridges in everything we do, not just our morning smoothie, but also our team meeting. Imagine if our team meetings not only were like half the time outside or in rooms that had tons of plants in them or that were more organically round, but also involved tea drinking and interesting plant smells, if you can deal with that, and if that works for you. And that when we walked outside, we would go to homes that aren't necessarily just one crop, lawn grass, but contain multiple diversities of plants that maybe sometimes are useful to our neighbors, sometimes are useful to us, but everyone recognizes, are fun to be around, and sometimes lead to bouquets of flowers. What if rather than just an opening invocation at the beginning of school, at the beginning of a new session of Congress, you name it. What if beyond a pledge of allegiance to a nationalist symbol like a flag, which is fine, we also had a pledge of allegiance to the biosphere, and that more than just words. We allowed the biosphere to speak to us, too, which is largely done through chemistry. We took these plants into our lives as the vessels for this chemistry of communion, which is the voice of the ecology. What if community gardens were standard practice and large multi-acre sections of land devoted to corn were diversified with regenerative agriculture techniques that involve less tilling, that involve greater diversity of intercropping, barrier rows that include medicinal herbs would bring more pollinators in. If I have found something from practicing herbal medicine, Lindsey, it's that their resonance exists in nature and in living systems, and living systems exploit that resonance all the time to make our lives easier so that we can have room for creative innovation to drive greater complexity and greater efficiency and life flow. The best way to support that is to not think about control, not think about top-down imposition of standards, but to focus on supporting those systems when you find them and trusting that the systems you encounter know what they're doing. If we have locks in our body that are unlocked by the keys that tonic herbs possess, that is evidence that an ancient system exists that we are a part of. Can we stop and trust that it knows what it's doing? Rather than trying to control it, focus on what we can do to support it, and that the best way to support a living system is to provide the greatest amount of diverse signals that that system can draw on in order to maintain its resilient adaptability. That's what I've been talking about with tonic herbalism. And if we can internalize that lesson, then I envision boardrooms, schools, government offices, places of businesses, urban centers, to all of a sudden start reflecting non-extractive regenerative biological processes that are decentralized, that focus on support, that teach us to meet each other, not in a reactive mode, but in a mode of gratitude and in a mode that expects trust and good intentions. That doesn't mean that those are always going to be rewarded. Sometimes weird things happen, but we have to assume that life finds a way and that by engaging and providing greater diversity, we can provide greater support to all of the systems, and as a result, actually have greater resilience and adaptability for the long term. We build in those buffer zones, we build in those wetlands, so that when then floods hit us, we sustain with greater resilience. And it's inevitable that these things are going to happen. I'm not saying herbs will make this all go away. I'm saying, why not walk with a friend by our sides? We do not need to be alone. And I think our cities will start to show differences, and that might be the first place, and you're seeing it already. Even in places like New York City, where aquaponic projects, community garden projects, are bringing real food systems into places where we never thought they could be. I think it's because people are eating a lot of plants as they come up with these ideas. Their thoughts might not be entirely their own. That maybe it's a good thing.

As always, your teachings feel so life-changing. Can you please tell our audience where they can find you out in the world and learn more from you and the work that you are doing? Yeah, I appreciate that Lindsey. As we've been talking, we talked about a little earlier, I've been teaching a lot less and being out in the herb community a lot less over the last few years. Partly, it's to just respect myself and try and support sustainability for myself and my own family. I've been doing a lot of work through a couple of companies. Urban Moonshine is one. You can find a lot of writing there that the team and myself have put together over the years. Traditional Medicinals is, of course, another where I work as head formulator. One of the things we came up with over this last year, along this line of like, herbs are simple, they're gentle, they're very effective when taken as part of this daily tonic ritual. We introduce you to some of my favorites, everything from raspberry to metal to dandelion in this series called the Plant Wisdom Collective. It's free, just like this amazing Virtual Herbalism Conference, so that you can get started. Maybe if you already know a lot about it, maybe you can turn your friends onto it. It's a really accessible intro with very bite-sized chunks for some of our favorite herbs, including a lot of tonics. That's a place where you can learn a little bit more about what I've been up to and maybe have a little bit of resources, too.

Thank you, Guido. We will make sure to put all the links in the chat so folks can find those resources you have offered. I will plug, if you haven't read Guido's book, The Wild Medicine Solution, it is one of my top favorite books, and you will experience much more of Guido's teachings and philosophizing and discussion on tonic herbs. Guido, thank you so much for your time, and as always, for your teachings. We are grateful for you. Thanks Lindsey. It was so good to reconnect with you, and I appreciate you very much, and I'm very honored to be a part of this conference.