Benefits of California Poppy
with Benjamin Zappin

---

---

In this episode, I’m excited to explore the benefits of California poppy with Benjamin Zappin, one of my first ever herb teachers down at the East West School of Herbology in California.

When might you reach for California poppy (Eschscholzia californica)? Among other things, it’s a wonderful herb to support sleep, relaxation, and emotional quiet. (Know anybody who could use more of those things in their life?) ;)

There’s a lot more to know about this beautiful plant, though, so be sure to listen in to the entire episode for all the details, including a recipe from Benjamin for a California Poppy Tincture. (By the way, don’t miss downloading your beautifully illustrated recipe card!)

Besides celebrating the gifts of the beautiful California poppy, Benjamin also shares a wealth of general herbal advice about dosage and formulation. When I hear “herbal formulation,” in my mind, there’s Benjamin Zappin. So I’m really excited to share this conversation with you.

By the end of this episode, you’ll know:

► Which parts of California poppy are most potent and whether to make medicine with the fresh or dried plant

► How to work with California poppy for sleep, anxiety, and pain relief (including what types of pain or discomfort may be helped by it)

► How to gain an understanding of the building blocks of herbal formulation

► and so much more…

For those of you who don’t already know him, Benjamin Zappin is an herbalist and licensed acupuncturist with over 25 years of clinical experience. He co-founded Five Flavors Herbs with his wife, Ingrid Bauer, to provide their community with exceptional herbal finished products and custom herbal formulas. Benjamin offers integrative herbal consultations through Paeonia Integrative Medicine. In his free time, you’ll find Benjamin cooking and studying music.

I hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as I enjoyed recording it!

-- TIMESTAMPS -- for benefits of California Poppy

• 01:13 - Introduction to Benjamin Zappin
• 02:17 - Benjamin’s herbal path
• 05:56 - How Benjamin and Rosalee met
• 08:19 - Why Benjamin loves California Poppy (Eschscholzia californica)
• 13:26 - The medicinal benefits of California Poppy
• 15:48 - California Poppy Tincture recipe
• 24:12 - Five Flavors Herbs
• 28:16 - Start with the basics
• 37:32 - What herbs don’t go together?
• 40:25 - Formulation from the landscape
• 43:20 - Creating formulas as a beginner
• 45:52 - Educational and other offerings at Five Flavors Herbs
• 54:05 - How herbs surprised Benjamin
• 1:03:07 - Herbal tidbit

Get Your Free Recipe!

Connect with Benjamin

• Website | FiveFlavorsHerbs.com
• Instagram | @fiveflavorsherbs
• Facebook | @fiveflavorsherbs

Transcript of the 'Benefits of California Poppy with Benjamin Zappin' Video

Rosalee de la Forêt:
Hello and welcome to the Herbs with Rosalee Podcast, a show exploring how herbs heal as
medicine, as food and through nature connection. I’m your host, Rosalee de la Forêt. I created
this Channel to share trusted herbal wisdom so that you can get the best results when
relying on herbs for your health. I love offering up practical knowledge to help you dive deeper
into the world of medicinal plants and seasonal living.

Each episode of the Herbs with Rosalee Podcast is shared on YouTube, as well as your favorite
podcast app. Also, to get my best herbal tips as well as fun bonuses, be sure to sign up for my weekly herbal newsletter below.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Okay, grab your cup of tea and let’s dive in.

I was very happy to sit down with Benjamin. He was one of my first ever herb teachers down at the East West School of Herbology in California. I got to know him through his incredible and creative cooking while I worked in the kitchens down there. Benjamin also led herb walks in other classes during these seminars. Over the years, we’ve stayed in touch and I’ve been so impressed with his important work in community medicine, formulation and so much more.

For those of you who don’t already know Benjamin Zappin, he’s an herbalist and licensed acupuncturist with over 25 years of clinical experience. He co-founded Five Flavors Herbs with his wife, Ingrid Bauer, to provide their community with exceptional herbal finished product and custom herbal formulations. Benjamin offers integrative herbal consultations through Paeonia Integrative Medicine. In his free time, you’ll find Benjamin cooking and studying music.

Thank you so much for being here, Benjamin. I’m really excited to have you on the show.

Benjamin Zappin:

Thanks for having me, Rosalee.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Absolute pleasure! As always, we get started by hearing a little bit about you and your path that has led you to us today and the different weavings that has brought you to the plant world. I would love to hear about that.

Benjamin Zappin:

Sure! I grew up in California. I’ve only lived in California. I moved to Santa Cruz, California and was at the right place and the right time in the early mid ‘90s. There was and there still is, to different degrees, a very robust herbal medicine culture there with Traditional Chinese Medicine school. At the time, there was a school called, “American School of Herbalism” that was run by Michael and Lesley Tierra, our mutual teachers and how we know each other. Chris Hubbs, Roy Upton, Bill Schoenbart – these career herbalists that I’m still colleagues and friends with for almost 30 years later, they held a container that infused us with inspiration about the herbal industry, herbs as primary medicine herbs and perinatal conditions. There are a lot of midwives in Santa Cruz who are using herbs. Traditional Chinese herbs, wild native Western plants and botany just got such a strong inculcation into wonder and inspiration about all these different topics. Tried to keep up with all of them and I’m honored to represent different facets of their original training.

I got to apprentice really early on with my close friend, Thomas Avery Garran. He had a small apothecary and I thought he was an adult at the time, but I think he was only 25. I got to work in his apothecary and go wildcrafting, have all sorts of adventures and learn about formulation with wild native plants. They were harvesting in the context of Chinese formulaic structures, which was really his and Michael’s jam. That’s the foundation for how I think about health and the body, medicinal plants, cooking, formulating, caring for individuals, etc. I went on to do a four-year apprenticeship with Michael Tierra in his clinic where I got licensed as an acupuncturist. I got to be in clinic with Michael at a time where there weren’t the same quality of medical solutions to some of the things that we got to treat a lot. I got to work a lot with individuals with hepatitis C at various stages, cancer, HIV, AIDS and really got to see what herbs could and could not do, really got a deep immersion into the powers of herbal healing and natural medicine that I think is difficult to get. It was not easy to get them. I was at the right place at the right time with the right people cued up for me in this incarnation.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

And you’re pretty young.

Benjamin Zappin:

I was very young. I started taking classes at American School when I was 20. 

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I was trying to think about it, Benjamin. I guess that we probably met in 2008, which if I’m doing match correctly is like 15 years ago, which seems not that long ago and a very long time ago. I was a student. It was then called “East West School of Herbology.” I was like a work study. I had a scholarship or work study, so I was in the kitchen. How I remembered it was like at least an hour of doing dishes after every meal and there are three meals. I think it was amazing for me to do that because I think you go to class for many hours. I think I would have rested after class, but here, I was doing the dishes and you were the cook for—how many people were there during these seminars? Hundreds?

Benjamin Zappin:

I did that for 20 years and-

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Twenty years.

Benjamin Zappin:

I think the peak was about a hundred people.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Hundred people.

Benjamin Zappin:

It got to where when numbers dropped below 60, it seemed easy. That was cooking 21 meals in succession – breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

It was a whole week. You just made the most incredible meals. My memory of you, Benjamin, is one, the creative scents and the smells and everything. The food was like every meal was something that we all talked about because it was talkworthy, and also music. That’s my memories of you. There was always some kind of eclectic music going on as the cooking was going on.

Benjamin Zappin:

I celebrate those memories all the time. One of my closest friends who I used to bring out from Mexico to cook with me, Nico, who you may or may not have met at that juncture, he became the director of that facility. So, even though the Tierras aren’t doing the annual seminars, now, when I go to Santa Cruz, that’s where I go because our close family friend is there.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Fun, fun. I have an agenda today, Benjamin, because I’m excited to talk about California poppy—and we’re going to dive into that in just a second—and then I’m really excited to talk about formulation too because when I hear “herbal formulation,” in my mind, there’s Benjamin Zappin. We’re going to talk about that, too, but first, let’s talk about California poppy. I love that you’re born and raised in California, and now we’re going to talk about California poppy.

Benjamin Zappin:

California poppy is the California State plant and there’s a popular myth that it’s illegal to pick. There has probably been zero citations of people getting arrested or fined for picking it. Clearly, it’s inappropriate to pick in poppy preserves. The good news is that it’s really easy to grow. It’s easy to grow as an annual. It will perennialize, that is it will go to seed and spread all over many different types of landscapes. You can grow it in a diverse climate. As I mentioned, as an annual, you can grow it places where it snows. It snows where I live. It grows where I live. It’s really easy to grow, and so hallmarks to me of really good herbs are they’re versatile. They can support a variety of human discomforts. They are easy to grow. They’re accessible. I care about accessibility and because we want to promote the people’s medicine – herbs as the people’s medicine, herbs as things that we can enjoy. I know this is a charged term, but I believe in this term “health sovereignty,” independence of our own ailments and control of our vitality, sickness and health.

California poppy is remarkable. It hits those hallmarks. It doesn’t require a lot of expensive inputs. It doesn’t require importation. It doesn’t require a lot of gardening skill and it’s easy to make medicine that’s really helpful. That’s why I’ve chosen—that’s why I keep choosing it and keep advocating for it. I don’t know why it has never become really popular, in part because it’s not exotic enough to make exotic. I’ve thought about this a lot. Most to the major herb companies that do any kind of extraction use a lot of California poppy. If you look at their products, it’ll be used in sleep formulas. It’ll be used in anxiety formulas. It’ll be used in analgesic formulas because it’s really useful for all these things. But it’s never the featured thing that’s front and center other than in a single. It’s not a great tea but it’s bitter. It’s never going to be as palatable as a tulsi rose tea. It’s also really accessible in how it quickly provides relief. We are looking for how to have gateway herbs that is herbs that build people’s trust that they’re really powerful medicines.

California poppy is really palpable as an anxiolytic, calmative, soporific. People take it and within a few minutes, they’re like, “I feel more relaxed” or “I feel drowsy” or “I feel less anxious.” All the ways people experience that.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

But these days, who needs help feeling less anxious or going to sleep, Benjamin? Is that really relevant for our experience today? I’m just kidding.

Benjamin Zappin:

It was funny. I showed up at a friend’s house the other day. He said, “I just took this thing you gave me four years ago. It really helped me relax.” Great! What did I give him? We made a formula that was a mix of California poppy, St. John’s wort, blue vervain and Artemisia, mugwort. I’ll harvest it at a Christmas tree farm on the summer solstice. These were all just growing there and I macerated them altogether.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Is this the Remain in the Light formula?

Benjamin Zappin:

Yeah, good memory.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I was going to bring up that formula, so you beat me to it.

Benjamin Zappin:

That was a thing for a while. Formulas that a landscape presents us with is a formulation strategy. It’s also a way to relate to spaces around you. I had this in a jug for probably 10 years. At some point, I poured some out and said, “Hey, I’ll take this thing in true form.” I wrote the date on it and the name of it in a pin on a label to give to a friend. It was like, “I took five drops. It was amazing. I feel really relaxed. This is really powerful.” I always like to share with people when they say, “What’s the expiration date on this?” I said, “The expiration date of the label is when you can’t read it anymore and the contents are going to probably remain valuable for quite a while.”

Rosalee de la Forêt:

That makes me very excited to jump into formulation, but before we do, just backtrack a little bit on California poppy. What I’m hearing from you is some of the main gifts are anxiolytic or helping to calm the nervous system. You’ve mentioned sleep. I believe you might have mentioned pain as well, analgesic. Are those, in a nutshell, why you’re reaching for California poppy? Or what would you add to that?

Benjamin Zappin:

In a nutshell, this other—to calm the mind, to still the mind, to support emotional quiet. If we look at TCM—I’m going to use the term “energetics” even though that’s a problematic term— function, flavor nature, chi actions and indications will say that it clears heat from the heart and the liver both at the deficient and excess nature. These can present as anger, as ADD and ADHD, as profound anxiety, irascible, advanced anger or low grade petulant anger where we’re thinking about road rage, like mild road rage when you’re in traffic and can’t do anything about it, that real chi stuck with some agitation kind of feelings.

We can use this as a pivot when we talk about formulas because how we’re going to use it and get the most out of it is also going to depend on what we combine it with. There’s a lot of different conditions, specific types of scenarios that we might get value out of California poppy for different types of headaches or for tooth pain, different qualities of sleeplessness. It’s not going to stop sleeplessness from hormonal dysregulation during menopause, but with the right type of formulation it can be useful and supportive and adjunct to a strategy related to that.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

The recipe you’ve shared with us is how to make a simple, which is California poppy simple tincture. On there, you specifically call for fresh California poppy. I wanted to mention that because that’s a question I get a lot in my classes. People want to know fresh vs. dried, specifically for tinctures. Do you feel like fresh is always best? What are your thoughts, fresh vs. dried?

Benjamin Zappin:

This is one of the herbs that I always prefer to access fresh. That’s safe for me because I always had access to it fresh and will always have access as long as I live in California, and because we do some scale manufacturing. We have access to farms that can ship it to us if that’s what we need to scale. I would use it dried. I would use it in a tea that’s available from suppliers. I would encourage people to explore that if you don’t have access to it and you want to make your own medicine, absolutely get it dried. Give yourself an opportunity to compare and contrast. I don’t want to dissuade people from exploring it.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I appreciate that. How about the parts too? Whole plant tincture vs. if somebody only wanted to use aerial parts, for example? Do you have any experience with that?

Benjamin Zappin:

It is purported that roots and seeds are the strongest… Seed capsules are the strongest part of California poppy and most of what you’re going to find in commerce, that is, as a dried plant, is aerial portions. As I’ve been instructed I still follow, depending on how much is available. I might leave the roots intact and harvest portions of the plant and leave the thing there to keep going to seed, and not disturb the whole stand by removing individual plants. If there’s enough, if I planted intentionally that’s in our property, I might take up the whole plant once some of it’s gone to seed. There’s a variety of seed capsules. I think that’s going to make the strongest medicine--a whole plant tincture like that later in spring, once it’s gone to seed.

In that recipe, I think I recommend a 1:2, one part plant to two parts menstruum and between a 75% to 95% alcohol. I’ve made it with 95% for a long time and gradually started reducing that. It is a plant that I think makes a really nice glycerin. As a fresh plant glycerite, it extracts well. If you want to blend this with other sleep herbs as a glycerite, it will do pretty well. There’s a lot of water content to it.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

That’s good to know. I’ve been getting really into glycerites lately.

Benjamin Zappin:

I’ve been experimenting with making them quite a bit. They’re hit or miss.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

In terms of what herbs work well in that menstruum?

Benjamin Zappin:

I just discovered today how poorly high pectin herbs extract into glycerite.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Interesting.

Benjamin Zappin:

High pectin herbs make pudding and glycerite.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

So, you have hawthorn pudding right now or elderberry pudding?

Benjamin Zappin:

I have hawthorn pudding, exactly.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Thanks for doing that for us.

Benjamin Zappin:

This will not be a R&D sample to present to a potential client. It will be a Christmas gift.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Delicious, wonderful, heart-supporting, but not maybe coming out of a dropper.

Benjamin Zappin:

I think it’s going to be required to spoon out. 

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Yeah, pudding. Unless you have anything else to add about California poppy, I feel like my head is buzzing with formulation questions.

Benjamin Zappin:

I think people should make it and experiment with it and try dosing at different ranges as a simple. I think that this is something that one can hone their perception. Herb is a meditation tool. Some meditation schools also say you don’t use anything to support your meditation. Part of the art is learning to relax without assistance. When I want to relax, I might want to use something to assist me. Using five drops of California poppy—three to five drops may be very powerful for some people and it really may support the qualities of quiet that we’re seeking. Taking 5 milliliters when you’re in pain or really having a hard time sleeping, really explore that gamut of doses and see how it influences you. See how it influences people around you.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I appreciate that.

Benjamin Zappin:

Some provings like drink a bunch of coffee and then take a little bit of California poppy to how it takes the edge off, listen to democracy now and drink coffee and see what it does for you.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I appreciate that about the dosing because that’s something that I think can be overlooked in terms of looking at plants and how they work for different people, and something I’ve come to appreciate because I tend to like much larger dosages for myself. One way that I worked with California poppy that hasn’t been mentioned yet is for spasmodic coughs, like the end of a cold where you lay down at night and you’re like, “Finally, I get to sleep,” and then the cough starts and then it’s this spasmodic cough that won’t stop. California poppy I’ll just take a dropper full. If I’m still coughing five minutes later, I take two dropper fulls. I just keep going for it until I’m out, which doesn’t take that long. I’m definitely more of the higher dosage. I’ve come to appreciate it, especially through clinical practice, but that’s not the way for everybody. Some people those five drops will do them kind of thing.

Benjamin Zappin:

Do you find when you do that that it makes you groggy in the morning?

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I don’t, but again, I wonder if that’s just something because I do that with valerian too and I don’t have that grogginess, but I have heard that so often that I feel like I would never say that won’t make you groggy. I just feel so good after getting sleep, I think. I just don’t have that return grogginess.

Benjamin Zappin:

Here I have been leaning on Robitussin when that happens to me. It hasn’t happened for awhile, but that’s-

Rosalee de la Forêt:

My magical formulas, linden and red clover tea during the day, and then at night just hitting up those antispasmodic tinctures in a major way. It works for me.

Benjamin Zappin:

Great.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I’d like to talk about formulation. I feel like formulation can be a very mysterious subject, but a very sexy subject for a lot of people, especially for people just beginning, there could be different areas of thought. A lot of people come at it from wondering, worried like, “What herbs can’t I combine? Will there be a problem if I combine?” There’s just a lot of mystery to formulation. How do you combine herbs? Why would you combine herbs? If I have a cough, do I just look up 20 cough herbs and put them into some kind of recipe and then take them all? There are so many different ways of thinking about formulation.

Let’s mention Five Flavors Herbs right now because this is your and Ingrid’s most incredible offering to the herbal world where you formulate. I’ll let you talk about it, but I feel like you have a lot of background in formulation, so you’re the perfect person to ask about all this.

Benjamin Zappin:

As far as Five Flavors Herbs goes, one of the resources that we provide that I care deeply about but might not make us rich, is our herbal pharmacy that allows individuals the freedom and flexibility without stacking a big apothecary mostly with liquid extracts but also with granulated extracts of Chinese formulas. We’ve discontinued any remote service with bulk herbs because it loses money. It’s visibly unsustainable to us. A lot of what we do now is contract manufacturing, and so we’re making herbal formulas for people who want to take their own brand out there. That’s a mix of seasoned nutraceutical companies for whom we’re supplying them, as well as individuals with emerging brands that either have a formula or want help with that. We help and nurture people’s passion and interest and help people through their launch stage with pragmatic guidance. I love to formulate. I can formulate in my sleep. Working less as a clinician these days and more running our company, that’s why I’m looking for that outlet through that. When working as a clinician for years, you’re formulating all day long.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I’ve fallen in love with many of your formulas. Of course, I can’t not mention your pain formula. It’s called “pain in the dot dot dot.” Is that right? Did I remember that correctly?

Benjamin Zappin:

I think we called it “MSK Comfort,” “musculoskeletal comfort,” because it got flagged somewhere that they said you can’t use the word “pain.” We said, “Okay.”

Rosalee de la Forêt:

So, that’s changed. Amazing formula! I use that formula when my back used to go out all the time. For anybody who has ever experienced that, I know it’s a funny term but it basically meant I was in indescribable pain where I could not move whatsoever. That formula wasn’t like I was suddenly doing back bends the same day, but it took off that incredible edge and I didn’t have to resort to things like ibuprofen. I would take that and get the hot water bottle on, put a fomentation on my back. It just gave me so much peace and made my life so much more comfortable. I’m proud to say now my back doesn’t go out very much because I’ve been strength training now. So, that’s good.

I used that also when I had a tooth out. I also used it when I had a root canal. Both times pain meds were given. I didn’t want to take them. I used that formula. That’s just an incredible formula. That’s just this wonderful herbal alternative to taking over the counter and what have you, so incredible formula.

I was going to bring up your Remain in the Light. I can’t remember when the last time I saw you at some conference and you gifted me that many years ago, it feels like. That was such a cool formula! I think it did introduce me to what you said – landscape as a formula, which was this incredibly beautiful thing that I have used ever since, so I want to talk about that. I also love—my background is in Chinese medicine through the East West School so we studied lots of Chinese formulas, lots of Chinese herbs. I love how you Westernize these classic Chinese formulas in your own way too. Anyway, I want to hear about it all.

Benjamin Zappin:

I think for people who are just exploring this, I think look at where are their traditional forms. I studied music and I’ve studied martial arts. The way to develop in addition to different threads of herbal medicine, I think the common unifying thing amongst these that I’m always thinking about studying and appreciating, is before you can experience freedom of movement, freedom of playing on an instrument, freedom of prescribing or formulating, learning forms and understanding the complexities of those forms and the simplicity of those forms, seeing them work, seeing them benefit people, is really the key to developing sensibilities of what’s going to work.

I think there are people that get really into studying and really in their head and into like, “If I do it this way, it’s going to be different because this teacher said this.” You’re like, “Well, have you seen herbs work?””No.” I have my own variations on that theme of the times that we’re headier and always questing for more information and details and granularities. Now, that I’ve seen plantain and calendula and chamomile and ginger really helping people with irritable bowel syndrome or a wide variety of inflammatory conditions—these are rudiments in Western herbal medicine. Other rudiments in Western herbal medicine are tried and true, teabag companies that are at grocery stores across America--really studying those and getting to know the situations for which those work and see here’s where marshmallow and licorice and ginger and whatever combined for throat irritation. You mentioned rose and tulsi. That’s relatively new but people have been combining rose and tulsi for 25 years in teabags across America.

Looking at these simpler structures, feeling them in your body, giving them to people, understanding why they’re helping in creating well-being or changes in tissue health or disease—it’s okay to talk about disease, I’m not trying to sell something—is really powerful. I’m always looking to these. I’m always looking to these for inspiration.

We mentioned cooking. Studying rudiments in cooking--you learn rudiments of sauce making or rudiments of spice blends as a hobby, obsession, passion of mine. When we’re talking about cooking for a hundred people, part of what we’re doing is we gradually came to where we never looked in cook books. Bring 20 cook books and be like, “I didn’t look at these last year. This year, I’m going to bring 10. I didn’t look at these.” How do you do that? You develop these sensibilities by practicing and learning how to improvise. With Chinese medicine, there’s corpus of formulas that are—there’s a lot of Chinese medicine that’s practiced as formulism that is you’re not studying the individual herbs as much as you’re studying the formulas, their actions and indications. There’s a lot of practitioner traditions in which people are only learning the formulas. Japanese Kampo, which is based on… 2,000-year old classical Chinese herbal traditions that are practiced in Japan. I learned these formulas for specific sets of actions and indications with some differentiation. A lot of people practicing with these are not thinking about the individual herbs and a lot of practice of Chinese medicine, contemporary Chinese medicine is not thinking about every individual formula within that structure. It’s thinking of the role of the formula.

When and how can we study these building blocks with whatever herbal traditions we’re using? I’m not thinking of which three herbs are in Triphala every time I give somebody Triphala. What are in these structures? How can we develop relationships with these structures and understand how these structures intersect with human physiology in maintaining health and benefitting sickness? It sounds like I’m marrying somebody whenever I say those words. It’s how I’m thinking about formulas.

Also, for me, that’s looking at the language of—that I learned working with Michael and Thomas and continue to study and think about as using Western herbs within the Chinese framework. There are a lot of structures within Chinese medicine and structures for formulation where you’re looking at how two and three herbs combined is called “dui yao” or formula pairing that is herbal pairing. Paired medicinals is dui yao. That’s kind of a school of thought that I’ve continued to immerse myself in. When you read analysis of traditional Chinese formulas, you’re always looking at flavor and nature, and the relationships between the flavor and nature. For instance, we’re using a sweet, acrid supplementing herb along with a bitter, acrid, draining and dispersing herb to achieve a certain outcome. So, taking that analytical framework and applying it to Western herbs based on analytical chemistry and comparative botany, etc., is how I think.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Just to reiterate, I really love how you started in recommending or at least, saying from your personal experience, you’re looking at structure first. The images I got from that is you don’t really hand someone a guitar who has never touched a guitar before and say, “Okay, compose music,” right? Instead, for most people, they are going to learn chords. They are going to learn the basic structure of music first. Just as like we can’t expect someone if they’ve never baked anything in their life ever before, you can’t just be like, “Okay, bake me a cake.” They need a recipe first. They need to understand that. As people get more advanced, they can create their own cake recipe or they can compose music, but we made those structures first. I love that because sometimes I feel like people do rush to the formulation without understanding it.

What I love about what you said, Benjamin, is that it’s not just a heady philosophical practice. It’s actually, “Let’s spend some time watching these where herbs work ourselves,” and having that practical experience with them so it’s not just book training, so to speak. Then it’s like some takeaways and then the next is study what already exists. Study the formulas that exist out there, especially even looking at these two-herb formulations that are classic that can be a starting place vs. just wanting to create a 20-herb formula out of thin air or whatever. It’s building these structures that you’re talking about. Does that all seem like a good reflection of what you said?

Benjamin Zappin:

Yes. Those are good reflections of what I said.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I loved it all. Something you said about the practicality of it is—I teach herbal energetics a lot, just very basic like the taste of herbs and feeling those. Early on, when I started teaching that, I realized—somebody said to me something along the lines of, “I have a warm constitution so I can’t have ginger.” I was like, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Please don’t let that be the takeaway ever of, ‘If I have a warm constitution I can’t have a warm herb,’” especially, as you said these herbs that are a quintessential part of Western herbalism. That we have to play around with things and try things for ourselves and see how they work and we’re not necessarily worried about—I would just never really worry about somebody with a warm constitution trying ginger, because it’s all information and feedback that we’re getting from those experiences.

What would you say about a big concern that people have about formulation is what herbs don’t go together?

Benjamin Zappin:

I think that within Chinese medicine, there are some very well-defined incompatibilities and all the incompatibilities tend to be really strong herbs. We memorize these things as these maxims of truth. You don’t combine licorice and Croton or gopher spurge. How often am I using gopher spurge? No. I think that within Chinese medicine it’s always looking at existing structures. I don’t know if there’s a—I don’t have a story about that--what’s actually incompatible because I think building things out from smaller clusters that do work together. I might be thinking about when to time things that is if I—just a crude way of thinking about it without getting into pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics, if I take this thing at the same time as this other thing, is my body going to be able to hear it as well? “If I take this tincture and that tincture at the same time, one is for my back pain and one is for my cough, is my body going to get the signal as clearly as if I take them a half hour apart? Or an hour apart?” is a consideration, but I can’t think of crystal clear like you shouldn’t combine these because there’s a maxim of truth in Western herbal medicine.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I feel the same way. In my classes, what I teach is that if you were an alien suddenly dropped on earth and you had no idea about things, maybe you would put ketchup in coffee thinking that would be a good idea. You would taste the ketchup in the coffee and probably that wouldn’t be like something you would do. That’s how I talk about herbal formulation. It’s like there are some “ketchup and coffee situations,” kind of like what you’re saying. It could be timing. It could be solubility issues. It could be two separate issues going on and combining them like you said. I’m not like you could drink ketchup and coffee and you’re going to be okay. They might not be fun, but there’s no danger.

Benjamin Zappin:

I think there are dosage incompatibilities. There are delivery system incompatibilities. These things that might not make as much sense as other choices one might make.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Right.

Benjamin Zappin:

There’s countless of those. 

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I know we talked about Remain in the Light, but just the formulation as a landscape. I think that’s just a beautiful thing. I wonder if you have any other formulas that you’ve been inspired to create from the landscape or other examples.

Benjamin Zappin:

There’s a couple. We used to go every year in camp and teach in the High Sierra. There are some calmative sedative herbs that all grew near each other and that was another example of that that we really enjoyed that were valerian and Anemone, like a Pulsatilla, and a couple of different Pedicularis. We’d make a combo of those. That’s a very strong calmative sedative. In the same landscape, Angelica breweri, Ligusticum and Osmorhiza occidentalis. Three really strong aromatic, antimicrobial, Apiaceae family herbs grew together. A couple of years I made mead out of those which was really fun. I also like to make tincture out of those as a really strong antimicrobial in flu season. They would also be useful for enteric infections like GI disruptions through food poisoning and whatnot.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Those are great examples. I have a local bitters recipe I do. It’s all made of plants for bitters. I love to harvest herbs--bath herbs. Do it at summer solstice or something from my own garden so I can literally steep in my garden during the winter. It’s a nice, nice feeling. It’s medicine on just a very beautiful and powerful level.

Benjamin Zappin:

I’m glad that resonates with you. We get more and more from our garden and do less and less wildcrafting. I definitely have some my own personal ethical reservations about teaching wildcrafting.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Likewise, which is also why the garden herbs have become my Materia Medica now, absolutely.

Benjamin Zappin:

I like to say Instagram ruined wildcrafting for me. Once I started seeing people on foraging sites go, “Let’s go forage California peony.” I was like, “What are you doing with that?” They’re like, “Foraging it.” I’m like, “No!”

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Yeah, that can be heartbreaking. Yay for gardens and California poppy which does grow in my garden! Anything else about formulation, Benjamin?

Benjamin Zappin:

Starting small. Starting small and looking at good formulary textbooks. If you go to Henriette Kress’ website where she has Remington’s and Scudders’, some of it are focused on single plants that if you go into these classic eclectic texts, you’ll see formula structures that were used in botanical therapy, 120 years ago that are compendiums of great formulas. Go study those. A lot of the same stuff is on the shelf today. That’s a really great place to develop a sense of one, what people are leaning on as a primary medicine and it’s what so many of us herbal educators today like to lean on. Another really great one that I have within reach, the Remington: The Science and Practice of Pharmacy, I find have lots of great remedies. I think there’s an addition of that on Henriette’s site. I’m a big fan of Jillian Stansbury’s, the book series that she put out. She’s one of my favorite herbalists and a great, great educator, a great human being and a really prolific author and put out this series of… One of those may be in reach, too. 

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I see them. She’s going to be on the show, I hope.

Benjamin Zappin:

They are within reach. They’re just stuck in my shelf. These are really fantastic herbal formularies for health professionals. It’s professional grade information, but it’s rooted in an intersection of great phytochemistry and folk traditions. I think she really reached for something that was pragmatic and true to all these lineages that’s heady and sophisticated like her. Heady and sophisticated enough for any physician who is going to pick this up and say, “I want to do herb stuff but also lots of really pragmatic stuff really rooted in the plants,” is also really powerful. 

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Well said. We’re talking now and hoping to have her on the show in early 2024. Thomas Avery Garran too, we’ve mentioned a couple of times.

Benjamin Zappin:

Good.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

You offer so much through Five Flavors Herbs. I would love to hear more about that, your gamut of offerings through the Five Flavors Herbs. You have your own formularies, custom formulation.

Benjamin Zappin:

By bringing this up, you’re distracting me and reminding me that I need to immediately close my computer after this and drive to our facility to supervise people. We’ve been an FDA-registered facility for over a decade now, which means that we’ve invited people with badges and guns to come in and show up at anytime unannounced when it happened. When the small business exemption was lifted for GMPs for the manufacturing practices, we were still making medicine in our house. It’s a nice stream of income and we’re like, “This is an awesome stream of income.” It really wasn’t but it seemed like it to us because we were naive. We’re like, “Let’s find a place so that we can keep up this practice of making herbal extracts and doing our thing and do it legally.” We did that and we did that in Oakland where we still have the vestiges of a brick and mortar retail apothecary. Hopefully, by the time anybody listens to this, that won’t be our responsibility anymore.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Yes, you’re in transition right now.

Benjamin Zappin:

We’re working on that but that’s been a beautiful and powerful thing that I’ve been extraordinarily proud of to be part of the health care landscape as an herb shop. It paid some dues and collaborated on creating an environment that facilitates access to herbs in a place where anywhere where there’s people. It’s going to be really beneficial if they can have high quality herbs that people can guide them to with some skill and care. That’s one of the things we’ve done, and also making an apothecary available where we talked about custom compounding folk herbs, tinctures, granules for people based on people’s instincts, whims, experience traditions, etc. That’s something we plan to continue to do and that’s now operated out of our Nevada City, Nevada County. We’ve been moving up here. We actually built a much larger place up here where we can do extraction and where we can compound and ship stuff out wholesale.

One of the things that we do that we create but we steward that I’m really proud of that is enjoyable for me, is we have a traditional Chinese formula line that’s dispensed and diagnosed based on Chinese medical women’s health diagnostics and basal body temperature geared towards fertility. Basically, we bought this from one of our customers. We get to work with hundreds of Chinese medical practitioners who are focused on fertility that are really smart and really well put together, and really caring and supporting families in achieving their goals of having children. We got a lot of feedback about that during the pandemic when people are putting acupuncture needles and people are like, “These herbs really work.” I believe that and I’m glad to get the input that you’re not using all these hands on, needle and searching modalities that herbs are the main thing. They are influencing family’s physiology. We have to support to support reproduction.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

At one point, you were doing some webinars too. Is that something –

Benjamin Zappin:

What’s that?

Rosalee de la Forêt:

At one point, you were offering webinars, I think-

Benjamin Zappin:

We do. For people who are interested in that, reach out and we can share them with you because we have a whole cache of things related to that. The summer Thomas Garran and I did a day-long class that was related to perinatal childbirth and also fertility, but more of childbirth. We use the term “supporting families” and somebody was very triggered by that. We got some hate mail about using the term “families” rather than “women.” There are some gender essentialism going on there. We weren’t talking about anything that complicated. It’s just family because we put there “family” [Crosstalk]

Rosalee de la Forêt:

We live in a world now where family is controversial.

Benjamin Zappin:

Or making families. Even if it’s just a two-person family, mom and baby. 

Rosalee de la Forêt:

You offer webinars on all sorts of topics. I hope I remember this correctly, but I want to say, not too long ago, which means at least in the past 18 months, I maybe saw you do a webinar on dui yao?

Benjamin Zappin:

Yes, we’ve done classes on dui yao. I do a lot of mental health classes. My wife, Ingrid Bauer, she’s a medical doctor, farmer and herbalist. We’ve done quite a few classes on drug herb interactions, drug herb interactions and how to communicate about them and how to understand them in a cautious yet not fearful way, that is. Maybe how to advocate for drug interactions that are going to help people more on how to work in collaborative care teams. We do a lot of interprofessional communication strategy education. I love to teach. I’ve been teaching for a long time. The business of teaching and promoting education has become more than we can manage, so as a result, we wind up doing a lot of free classes. We’ve been giving information out there and try to engage our audience as a community rather than people we’re just trying to sell things to, for better and for worse.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I appreciate all your offerings. I’m on your newsletter. Of course, just having known you as my teacher and as a fabulous cook for so many years now, it’s been fun to watch you and Ingrid grow, and watch Five Flavors grow, just all of it. Very excited for you and all the transitions that are happening now as you continue to blossom into your herbal path.

Benjamin Zappin:

Thank you. That’s how it feels. It feels like we’re doing some molting.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Molting, yes, getting down to the essential.

Benjamin Zappin:

I appreciate the containers you’ve created, all that you’ve done for the herbal community, Rosalee.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Thank you.

Benjamin Zappin:

You’ve been out there for more than a minute.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

It’s funny how that time goes by. It’s funny just talking to you because it brings up a lot of that back in the day of just being a fresh young student of the herbs.

Benjamin Zappin:

That’s how I still feel.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I do too, absolutely. Every day that I’m an herbalist, I’m reminded of all that there is to know that I don’t yet know. Benjamin, for this season, I’m asking everybody who are the people that they’ve learned from as a way to give a nod of respect to our teachers. I’ve heard you mention Thomas Avery Garran and Michael Tierra. We could talk about other people too and I have another question that I just want to spring on you if you’re open to it. 

Benjamin Zappin:

Lay it on me.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I love how you talk about how herbs work. You brought that practicality of before we get too far in our heads, just feel the herbs work. I’m wondering if you have any stories that come to mind of a time when the herbs surprised you, when you were like, “Whoa! These herbs work!”? A story or just even in some ways that the herbs have surprised you?  Feel free to take time to think about it.

Benjamin Zappin:

One thing that comes to mind, we only have so much practical time to look at different methods in our lifetime. If I was treating 200 people a day, which in China there are herbalists who do tongue and pulse, ask five to ten questions and write prescriptions. There’s a line out the door and they see 200 people a day. They have somebody fill in the prescriptions and they have somebody scribing the prescriptions. That’s not what’s happening for me right now. I don’t know about you in your community. If I was doing that, I could practice, “Here’s where I’m going to devote myself to, Chinese herbal medicine.” “Here’s where I’m going to devote myself to, just Western herbal simpling or formulas with two or three.”

At some point, I think it might be like a David Winston rudiment that was like kava, ashwagandha and black cohosh for musculoskeletal pain. I gave this to this woman, gave her a healthy amount of that. Gave her 4 ounces of it and said, “Take this in really liberal doses. Maybe there’s another herb in there too. I want to see if that rudiment work.” Nine months later, I see her again. She’s asking me about some different health condition. “What about this disabling, crippling pain that had you using a walker?” She’s like, “I took the herbs that you gave me and it cured it.” I was like, “What is this person talking about?” “I gave you 4 ounces of this tincture. You should have used that up.” She said, “I’m still taking it.” That’s what she said nine months later, “I’m still taking that and my crippling rheumatoid condition went away.” “If you took it like I directed you to, it should have been gone in three weeks. Take three to five droppers.” She’s like, “I thought you said three to five drops.” 

Now, whether those had anything to do with that or not, it really helped me shift my consideration that very small drop dosages may elicit more powerful effects than big amounts. If that was her story that that’s what helped her get off the couch then go out and live an active life, that’s amazing! If that was really those herbs, that’s really amazing. It unrooted me from my story about what it means to use certain qualities of dosage.

Another arena that herbs constantly surprise me although I feel I can trust them is more extreme states of consciousness. I’ve worked a lot with people with schizophrenia and more substantial mental health concerns and/or people choosing to elicit states of extreme states of consciousness through drug use. That’s become increasingly popular so I think it’s and/or accessible and above ground. I think it’s important to have tools to support people while they’re rolling the dice with their consciousness. Herbs are really powerful for getting people out of psychiatric crisis and can be really useful in conjunction with psychiatric medication and really help people be able to—somebody who is having rage and has schizophrenia and is non-verbal might have some of that rage resolved by taking some herbs.

Keeping those dialogues alive I think is really one of the more powerful places I’ve devoted myself that I’m still pleasantly surprised that I can really support people and have a quality of life that is different than if you were basically putting somebody in a medication incarceration. 

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Those are great. That was very good off the cuff how herbs surprise you. Thank you very much for sharing that. I appreciate them both on different levels. I was also taught from this Chinese medicine and Ayurveda perspective of very large dosages of herbs, which I personally like for myself most of the time. I also had to unlearn that and just open my mind to other possibilities. That story that you told is a really great example of that. When I hear those stories, I remember being in clinical practice and I will just be like—some people just accept it like, “I took the herbs you gave me and I’m better now,” whereas I’d want that to be headline news. Why don’t we start with that? The thing I would often say is people would come to me like, “I don’t know if it was the herbs, but now I don’t use a walker anymore.” I would always say we always give the herbs all the credit. That’s my bias as an herbalist. We give the herbs the credit.

It’s been really great to sit down and chat with you, Benjamin. Thank you for sharing so much about California poppy and formulation, and how herbs surprise you. It’s just been great to catch up with you.

Benjamin Zappin:

Likewise. I hope we cross paths in a non-digital space before too long. It’s been a while.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I hope so too. It has been a while. I look forward to that.

Benjamin Zappin:

There is a rumor going around that in late May, there’s going to be a kind of last West Coast throw down at Quaker Center with the East Coast.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Really? Interesting.

Benjamin Zappin:

It’s going to be shorter. It’s going to be like four or five days.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

That’s fascinating.

Benjamin Zappin:

Now that Thomas is running that school. It’s going to be kind of a “passing of the baton.”

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I see. I’m so glad they’re doing that. Wonderful. Thanks for telling me about that and thanks again for being here.

Benjamin Zappin:

Thanks, Rosalee!

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Thanks for being here. Don’t forget to download your beautifully illustrated recipe card above this transcript. Also sign up for my weekly newsletter below, which is the best way to stay in touch with me. The best way to check out Benjamin’s offerings is at his website at www.fiveflavorsherbs.com.

If you’d like more herbal episodes to come your way, then one of the best ways to support this podcast is by subscribing on YouTube or your favorite podcast app.

I deeply believe that this world needs more herbalists and plant-centered folks and I’m so glad that you’re here as part of this herbal community.

Also, a big round of thanks to the people all over the world who make this podcast happen week to week. Nicole Paull is the Project Manager who oversees the whole operation from guest outreach, to writing show notes, to actually uploading each episode and so many other things I don’t even know. She really holds this whole thing together.

Francesca is our fabulous video and audio editor. She not only makes listening more pleasant. She also adds beauty to the YouTube videos with plant images and video overlays. Tatiana Rusakova is the botanical illustrator who creates gorgeous plant and recipe illustrations for us. I love them. I know that you do too. Kristy edits the recipe cards and then Jenny creates them as well as the thumbnail images for YouTube. Michele is the tech wizard behind the scenes and Karin is our Student Services Coordinator and Customer Support. For those of you who like to read along, Jennifer is who creates the transcripts each week. Xavier, my handsome French husband, is the cameraman and website IT guy. It takes an herbal village to make it all happen including you.

One of the best ways to retain and fully understand something you’ve just learned is to share it in your own words. With that in mind, I invite you to share your takeaways with me and the entire Herbs with Rosalee Community. You can leave comments on my YouTube Channel, at the bottom of this page or simply hit “Reply” to my Wednesday email. I read every comment that comes in and I’m excited to hear your herbal thoughts on the benefits of California poppy, as well as herbal formulation.

Okay, you’ve lasted to the very end of the show which means you get a gold star and this herbal tidbit:

California poppy is a beautiful plant within the poppy family. Its botanical name is Eschscholzia californica. As Benjamin said, it’s easy to grow in your garden. It’s also an incredible sight to see in its native lands during super bloom years when the plants literally cover the hillsides with their golden blooms.

California poppies are mostly that gorgeous orange color though other colors do exist both in nature and as hybrids. Those beautiful blooms open with the sunlight and close at night and during cloudy days. The seed head looks a little bit like a sword rather than the oval type seed heads that you see on European and Asian poppies.

The plants prefer to grow in sunlight and sandy and well-drained soils. They are drought-tolerant and don’t require soil amendments. Once they’re established, they are often self-sowing.

One of the best parts about growing California poppies are the pollinators. My favorite visitor is the sweat bee. This is a small native bee that has this brilliant neon green coloring. I remember the first time I saw a sweat bee. I just couldn’t even believe that such a being existed. It was just so beautiful.

California poppy is truly a beautiful medicine that can bring much needed rest to our nervous systems.