Self Heal with Richard Mandelbaum

---

---

It was truly a pleasure to chat with Richard Mandelbaum about self heal!  He not only discussed many medicinal gifts of this lovely little herb, but also dove deeper into nature connection, herbal energetics, and the intricacies of medicine making, weaving all of these things together in such a beautiful way.  Richard’s joy in embracing his curiosity about the world is so delightful, and I just know this episode is one I’ll be listening to again.

Richard also shared his incredibly detailed recipe for making a Fresh Tincture of Self Heal - making it easy for both new and experienced herbalists to make potent medicine from this beautiful little plant!  A link to Richard’s beautifully illustrated recipe card can be found in the section below.

Self heal is often seen as simply a wound-care herb, but this underrated herb can also be worked with in so many other ways!  Here are just a few ways self heal’s gifts can benefit your health:

► To help you recover from injury and wounds - including after surgery!

► To soften hardnesses and masses, such as tumors or cysts

► To help restore and maintain good skin health after sun exposure

To learn even more ways that you can work with self heal, be sure to check out the entire episode!

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

► Five different herbal preparations you can create using self heal

► How self heal can be supportive when you’re feeling anger and frustration

► Ten health challenges that can benefit from self heal’s medicinal gifts

► How the taste of self heal gives you insight into its medicinal benefits

►Two things to consider when determining what alcohol percentage to use in making a tincture

► and so much more…

For those of you who don’t know him, Richard Mandelbaum has been an avid student of our native flora for close to forty years.  He has been practicing as an herbalist since 1999, blending Chinese and Western herbal traditions, with a private practice online and in person in the southern Catskills, NY. 

In addition, Richard teaches classes in clinical herbal medicine, phytochemistry, medicine making, field botany, and foraging.  He is co-founder of the ArborVitae School of Traditional Herbalism and is on the faculty at David Winston’s Center for Herbal Studies and the Won Institute of Graduate Studies. 

He has been an AHG Registered Herbalist since 2003, and served on the AHG board of directors from 2012 to 2018, serving as Secretary and chair of the Committee for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.  Richard lives with his wife Gabrielle and his daughter Rose in their straw bale home in Forestburgh NY.

I can’t wait to share our conversation with you today!

-- TIMESTAMPS --

• 01:12 - Introduction to Richard Mandelbaum
• 04:19 - How Richard found his plant path
• 18:11 - Self heal is an underrated herb!
• 23:13 - Medicinal benefits of self heal
• 31:04 - “Ice cream deficiency” - balancing energetics to provide healing
• 38:09 - Herbal preparations using self heal
• 39:42 - Fresh tincture of self heal
• 52:04 - More ways self heal can help with both physical and emotional challenges
• 56:45 - Richard’s current herbal projects
• 1:01:19 - How herbalism has surprised Richard
• 1:09:30 - Herbal tidbit

Get Your Free Recipe!

Connect with Richard

• Website | Richard Mandelbaum RH

Transcript of the 'Self Heal with Richard Mandelbaum' 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.

From the beginning of this podcast, I knew I didn’t want this to be simply a list of medicinal uses. Instead, I wanted to dive deeper into how herbs heal through medicine, through food and by strengthening our connection to nature. My interview with Richard weaves together all of these things in a beautiful way. It was truly a pleasure to chat with him, and I especially loved his advanced view of herbal energetics and self-heal. This episode was really insightful. I have no doubt I’ll be listening to it again myself. 

For those of you who don’t already know him, Richard Mandelbaum has been an avid student of our native flora for close to 40 years. He has been practicing as an herbalist since 1999, blending Chinese and Western herbal traditions, with a private practice online and in person in the southern Catskills of New York. 

In addition, he teaches classes and clinical herbal medicine, phytochemistry, medicine making, field botany and foraging. He is co-founder of the ArborVitae School of Traditional Herbalism, and is on the faculty at David Winston Center for Herbal Studies, and the Won Institute of Graduate Studies. He has been an AHG registered herbalist since 2003 and served on the AHG Board of Directors from 2012 to 2018, serving as secretary and chair of the Committee for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. 

Richard lives with his wife, Gabrielle, and his daughter, Rose, in their straw bale home in Forestburgh, New York. 

Welcome to the show, Richard!

Richard Mandelbaum: 

Thank you so much. I’m super happy to be here.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I’m thrilled to have you here. I don’t know if you’ll remember this, but I was a student in one of your classes at International Herb Symposium. I can’t remember when, like years ago. It wasn’t the last one. Maybe the time before that or the time before that. I don’t remember. I didn’t tell you this before we went on air, that I’m about to be your student again because I was just accepted at the David Winston Program.

Richard Mandelbaum: 

Oh! Wonderful! 

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I’m looking forward to it so.

Richard Mandelbaum: 

That’s wonderful. Just to say, David’s program—and I’m sure we can talk more about that—one thing that’s interesting and engaging about it for me as one of the teachers, is that in the mix of people who are newer to herbalism, it also attracts people who really already know what they’re doing and are in it, and just want to learn more from his perspective and from the school's perspective. That’s actually wonderfully engaging for me, so I look forward to that. I’m happy to hear that. 

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I’m excited. For me, I love being a student. I love being in learning environment. I just feel like there’s so much inspiration there. Anybody who studies herbs knows there’s always more to learn, so I’m really excited for all of that. I’m looking forward to your teachings as well. I’ve enjoyed being your student in the past, so it’s going to be exciting. 

Richard Mandelbaum: 

Thank you so much for that. 

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I don’t really know about your backstory and how you got on the plant path, so I’m excited to hear that, Richard. 

Richard Mandelbaum: 

I’m here talking to you from my underwater chamber here. We have a little video blurriness. Would you like me to just dive in anywhere on that? It’s such a good question, but I’m happy to just babble for you if you like. 

Rosalee de la Forêt: 

I am. This is one of my—I love hearing about everyone’s plant path because I feel like for me, at least, me—and I hope for the listeners—there’s always something there that resonates. There’s this commonality of how the plants have called us together. It’s always interesting to see what threads have pulled you in.

Richard Mandelbaum:

I so much agree. It’s something I say often that it’s just fascinating among herbalists and the herbal community to ask people, “How did you get here?” It’s always interesting with anybody to ask that kind of question just to know somebody’s path. With herbalism, I think because we’re such like a motley crew of stray animals, in a way. It’s like we’re feral cats and stray dogs wandering around. It’s even more interesting because as you know, you talk to people all the time. Some people come at it from a healthcare background or from their own health challenges, or as you’re alluding to. For me, it’s very much like it is for a lot of us, the plants giving ultimately no choice. It’s like, “You’re doing this.” It’s a matter of how long it took me to realize it or to listen properly.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I have goose bumps. That has definitely been my experience. That is so true.

Richard Mandelbaum:

Absolutely, absolutely. It’s funny because—so, I’ll dig in and answer your question more directly. I promise. Sometimes people ask me what do I like to do on my free time. One of the things I most like to do is just get outside and be with the plants. It’s not like I want to do something different from my day job. It’s a privilege. It’s a blessing. It’s so fortunate to be able to be on a path like this.

In any event, to talk a little bit about my own story, like I think a lot of us, I was an odd ball teenager. I won’t put you on the spot to ask if you were, but I could guess. Looking back on it, I think that I just was realizing on some level how empty—there was a space inside. There was a hole inside that wasn’t being filled and living in such a materialistic culture, I think we all feel that, honestly. Some people either become more self-aware of it. Some people are more privileged to be able to act on it. Some people don’t have that ability or option as much. I think that was there for me. As like 14, 15, 16 years old, that kind of age when so much is changing, my daughter is that age now. Everything, the whole universe is changing. Just realizing that and just seeking, reading a lot of Buddhist sutras, the Bhagavad Gita, philosophy, poetry, writing poetry, and finding solace in the world around me, meaning the “natural non-human world.” I also went through something very traumatic at that age, difficult and challenging. Again, looking back on it, there’s just no doubt in my mind that this is what helped me get through that and continues to.

Part of that journey for me was finding a real joy and embracing my curiosity about the world, like learning the birds, learning the constellations and the names of the stars, and then the plants, of course, and the trees. It really started with me with the trees, and just learning with crappy field guides that I found to start to identify the trees around me in growing up in New Jersey, not having grown up with anything like this at all. So, it really started with—words are always limiting. They don’t really express what we have to say, so I’ll say it with botany, but with learning to identify the plants and starting with the trees and going from there.

One thing for me I think is true, but I share with students too, particularly when I teach about me is I feel like that is the first step towards reestablishing intimacy with the plant world, and then with the planet more broadly than that. I liken it to like you and I could conceivably get to know each other without recognizing each other or knowing each other’s names, but it would be very strange and more awkward and challenging than it needs to be. A first step like, “Hey, we share each other’s names!” that’s what you do when you meet another person. I feel like with the plants, it’s the same thing. Botany, for me, meaning being able to recognize, “Hello. I know who you are,” is a foundation for me, at least, as it is with a lot of herbalists. Again, herbalists come at it from different angles, and that’s all good as it should be.

That led me for many years just as like this parallel part of my life going out on my own. It was actually many years before I found anybody else who—or stumbled across anybody else is probably a better way to describe—who like to do that kind of thing. I had just been teaching myself that whole time, which is a horribly inefficient way to learn botany, by the way. It was a labor of love just many, many hours. It’s funny because I didn’t even know if I knew anything until I ran into other people who have a background. When I finally started hanging out with botanists, it’s like I think I know a lot, but maybe I’m wrong about everything. So, got some affirmation that way.

In any event, that kind of never, never for quite a few years, never gelled into something that I realized would be a life path. It was really just like what do I want to do to ground myself and to satisfy my curiosity, and to reengage with the world around me on my free time. That led me as you can imagine it would to foraging, because once you know a lot of plants then you start reading, like “Oh, I could eat that! I know that plant. That’s interesting. Let me go back out and get some.” So, getting into foraging and then being interested in growing and learning how to garden, interning on organic farms and things like that, learning how to grow, and for a while thought maybe that’s the direction I would go in. It’s growing parallel to all this. Not to diverge, but also was very involved in food justice, and sustainable and organic agriculture movements. It was all sort of going together for me.

With the medicinal part with plants as medicine, that came later. I’m lucky in the sense that this all started when I was younger. I’m talking now about my mid-twenties or so, stumbling across the depth of herbal medicine as you know it, as I know it, but until you know it, you don’t really know. I’m sure you have students where it’s like, “Oh, my God. I didn’t realize it goes this deep.” We’ve all had that moment. At least, those of us who didn’t grow up with it. I didn’t. It was a road trip to an herbal gathering. I don’t know if this predates you, but Frontier Herbs used to have an herbal gathering conference, if you want to call that, out in the cornfields in Iowa. I was living in Arkansas at the time. A few of us took a road trip up there and just got to see some real life herbalists talking and doing their thing. That was the moment, so to speak, where I realize, “I think I knew where this is all going.” David Winston was one of those teachers, so I ended up going-

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Really?

Richard Mandelbaum:

Going back to New Jersey and studying with him, and again, involved in food justice movement and other things at the time too. Anyway, that’s sort of-

Rosalee de la Forêt:

That’s must have been a very exciting conference – life-changing, paradigm-shifting, like your life diverged after that. Maybe continued on the same path, but deeper.

Richard Mandelbaum:

Clarified, right? Solidified because it all felt like, “Hmm. I’m here,” and then it’s like, “This is where I am.” Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. It definitely was life-changing. I can say that, and motivating and exciting. All of that, for sure.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Your first real introduction to herbal medicine was through David Winston’s program?

Richard Mandelbaum:

Yes. It was interesting because I knew a lot of plants at that point. It’s funny because I was in a class. Of course, this is back in the previous millennium, which I like to say because it’s funny to say, but it’s true. In the late ‘90s, his program, at that point, was all in person. There really wasn’t any—the internet wasn’t good enough back then for streaming or anything like that. It’s funny because I was in the room with some other people including a couple of physicians who really knew their health side really well. I was the one who knew the plant side really well. David would mention health conditions or that sort of thing, and it would be all new to me--exciting, but new. Whereas he would mention a plant like, “I know that plant. This is really cool. What can I do with it? That’s really interesting.” It was an interesting perspective to bring to it on that level. Of course, I’ve been aware for a long time just being interested in plants that yes, there are medicinal uses to the plants and all that, but it was that year that I was living in Arkansas that I met my first real life herbalist. She was an herbalist midwife. She was part of that road trip up to this gathering in Iowa, and that just opened it all up for me in a way that I didn’t even realize existed.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I was curious about that because in your bio you said that—I think you started in 1999, but by 2003, you’re a registered herbalist, if I’m remembering that correctly. I was like, “Whoa! He must have done something that really”—because that’s no small thing to become a registered herbalist with the American Herbalist Guild. The practitioner training is really intense than the process of that. I wonder what happened to that put him on that track in such a straight way. Now, I get it. It was David Winston’s practitioner program.

Richard Mandelbaum:

Yes, absolutely, which I’m still so fortunate for. I teach a lot for him now, so I feel very privileged to be able to be doing that. That has gradually increased over the years. It was sort of, “Okay. Dive into the deep end and go for it.” Once I engaged with it, I really engaged with it in that sense for sure.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Thank you so much for sharing your story. I am always curious. I’m always excited to see you. We invite someone to the podcast. I’m excited to see what herb that they’re going to choose. You have chosen one of my favorite herbs and an herb that I think is so underrated. An herb that I used to like personally is underrated because there’s not a ton of information in Western herbalism up about it. Sometimes it’s just so generalized. Self-heal, heal-all--it heals everything! You’ll see that. You can really see that in older herbal books, it heals everything. Okay. What does that mean? So, I’m excited to hear why you chose self-heal and excited to hear more about self-heal from you.

Richard Mandelbaum:

Let’s have a conversation about it. I hope you don’t mind me sharing this. In the line up to come in after your invitation to join here, there was some messaging of, “Try not to pick an obvious herb because some things we just keep getting over and over.” There was some language. I was like, okay. I’m going to pick one of the herbs I feel like, just as you said, is undervalued in a lot of the herbal community, but that I love to use and talk about. Different things come to mind. Mulberry was a close runner-up, for instance. Self-heal—and just to say, I went back afterwards and I know that you’ve talked on your podcast about self-heal too. Again, I would love to have a back and forth here about it.

Just as you’re saying, it’s so underrated, particularly, outside of those herbal practitioners that come from an Eastern Asian tradition, whether that’s their ethnic heritage or that’s their training. In that case, the herb is part of the materia medica. What’s interesting to me about self-heal, and of course, we’re talking about prunella vulgaris. We can get more into the botany and everything like that too, as much as you like. In terms of, as you say, Western herbalism—and I’d love to deconstruct the term “Western herbalism,” if you don’t mind.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

We’ll just try to separate it from, like you said Eastern herbalism, this is part of their materia medica. They use it so much.

Richard Mandelbaum:

Totally. Totally, but we can put that to the side and circle back to it if you like. I think it brings up interesting conversation to talk about those terms. In any event, one of the things about self-heal in particular that I find so interesting, is that most herbalists—again, let’s say, herbalists outside of the Eastern Asian tradition—but most herbalists in the herbal community in the United States as we know it, know the plant and will point it out on herb walks like they know the plant, but don’t really use it.

When you look at formulas herbalists are using or talking about certain energetic disharmonies or patterns or, “What do you do for this or in that kind of situation?” it doesn’t come up that often. People aren’t really using it. It’s an interesting dichotomy between how much people recognize the plant, point it out, are familiar with it and appreciate it for its beauty and for its presence, but don’t actually use it clinically or medicinally. That’s an interesting—not quite paradox, but contrast that I find. That was part of my motivation in bringing it up and why probably, like you, I like to proselytize about it. I like to talk about it because it’s all over. It’s just all around us.

One of the interesting things about the plant itself is that a lot of people don’t realize this – it is native to here, to North America. It often gets described mistakenly as a European herb that came over with colonization and wasn’t here previous to that. In fact, there are two different subspecies. There’s one that’s native here and one that’s native to Europe. Eurasia broadly, not just Europe. Like yarrow and some other plants, we’re realizing that what a lot of the 19th and 20th century in particular, characterized as non-native, isn’t actually always accurate. This plant has been here for who knows how long. There are little ways you can distinguish between the subspecies that’s native, and the subspecies that’s Eurasian. Not that it ultimately matters in a sense. If it’s here, it’s here. They’re used the same way, but that can be interesting to those of us who can get more into the botanical geekery of things. The shape of the leaf in particular, is the main thing that you look at. In terms of uses, should we talk a little bit about how I think about self-heal?

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Yes, yes.

Richard Mandelbaum:

Self-heal and how to use it? If you look at it from a European tradition, just like you’re saying, what you often see, like you look up John Gerard—I like Gerard’s herbal. He was Shakespearean time English. I’m sure you know, but just for anyone listening, Shakespearean contemporary, more or less, herbalist in England. Like what you’re saying, he says it’s good for healing wounds. Use it topically. Use it internally. But the thing is it’s a styptic. It’s somewhat astringing. It helps to control bleeding and regulate bleeding, and for recovering from injury, from wounds. It has some antiseptic properties, so you can make a wash of it and use it topically. Of course, you can incorporate it into salves, creams and ointments too, but you can just use it in kind of a first aid sense.

Internally. If somebody wants to get my advice about recovering from surgery, let’s say, which is something that comes up. One herb that I often think of is gotu kola, but self-heal is and should be often right up there for the herbs we might recommend to somebody for recovering from surgery, which is intentional injury. You can think of it as in many ways.

As a vulnerary, self-heal is often overlooked compared to other vulneraries we have for something that is everywhere, beautiful, not hard to find, not hard to grow. We should be using it more often. Looking to the Chinese tradition of how to use self-heal, it’s the same species. Maybe arguably different subspecies, but same plant, and that’s good to know because there are also a lot of plants in the Eastern Asian materia medica that are closely related, but not exactly the same. In some cases, overlap really well with local plants we have. In other cases, slow down maybe, maybe not, so you have to be careful with that. But when it’s the same species, that’s where the botany comes in and can be helpful.

One of the ways that botany can come in and be helpful is like, “Same plant. We’re good.” Although slightly different part of the plant, slightly different stage at which the plant is harvested, which we could talk about in Traditional Chinese Medicine, it’s an herb that clears heat. It’s the main way it would be characterized. We might refer to that as cooling. I’ve come to appreciate even just in the last couple of years, what’s more important than cooling—and we maybe want to be careful with too much cooling—is to recognize when we need to clear heat, which is not always the same as cooling. Someone might actually be cold in some ways, but there’s a stuck, trapped heat at the same time. You don’t want to cool that person down, but you somehow want to clear the heat. Self-heal is wonderful for that. We can circle back to that.

The other main thing that it’s used for is for softening hardnesses and masses, tumors, what in Western herbalism might be called “lymphatic.” Fairly enough, self-heal is right up there with violet leaf and red clover, herbs we might think about. Cleavers, more quickly than self-heal, but I find self-heal so helpful when you want to have that action in a formula of getting things dispersed, broken up, moving and cleared. It has that kind of action. It doesn’t really have a nourishing action. Part of combining herbs is knowing when someone needs to be nourished vs. cleared. Often it’s both, so then you can combine herbs in the right way that you make sure with foods and with lifestyle to—I’m not a fan of the term “lifestyle,” but we’re stuck with it—to have that right balance of what somebody needs.

Self-heal has a bitter flavor. It has a salty flavor, a little bit of an acrid flavor. That kind of reflects what it does. The bitter is clearing the heat and draining downward, so when heat is rising up to the head and to the eyes, liver fire and liver yang rising, for folks who are knowledgeable about Chinese medicine and energetics, but we could deconstruct that a little bit or dig more into that. The salty flavor, which is dissolving masses and tumors, the acrid flavor, which is dispersing, gives you a little window in what the herb does. I think with any of that that I just briefly summarize, we could dig into a lot more detail.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

All of that is excellent. Since I’ve fallen in love with self-heal—and the way I fell in love with it is I had people asking me to write a monograph on self-heal. I was like, “It just doesn’t grow near me, so it’s just not something that I use a lot, but okay.” I did a lot of research on it and then I became fascinated, and now it grows all over my garden because I put it there. It has become a staple in my wound salves. I often do a plantain yarrow self-heal wound salve or something like that, so it was great to hear that from you. I do tend to be more on the lymphatic side or dissolving those, but I think it’s just a really underrated lymphatic. It’s interesting to hear you say you don’t think of it as a nutritive one, because I haven’t thought of it like that. I wonder would you consider cleavers a nutritive lymphatic? Would you consider pairing them as being, like you’re saying, as a crossover of different aspects?

Richard Mandelbaum:

It’s interesting. I see what you’re saying. Cleavers definitely has a gentler spirit to it. I guess what I meant more by that—and it’s interesting to, again, deconstruct the semantics of it because ultimately, anything that helps you is nourishing in some way. It’s getting you to where you need to go. What I meant more by that was self-heal, I think, is this clearing activity. I do think cleavers, violet leaf, red clover, particularly as infusions, have a little bit more nutritive value to them than say, figwort, self-heal or red root as lymphatics. Part of that too gets into the energetics where often, if somebody is experiencing a lot of heat rising to the surface, and heat rises so it often rises to the head, these are dilative liver headaches of behind the eyes and visual disturbances, sensitivity to sound, to light, feeling frustrated, irritable and on the edge, sometimes blood pressure goes up with that--that’s all liver fire or liver yang rising.

The thing to look for with those kinds of patterns is often that person will be yin-depleted. You’ve got yin and yang out of balance. This is helping to clear all of that heat, but it’s not helping to nourish yin as much. Whereas violet leaf, I think does cover that more. Chrysanthemum flower, which can be paired with self-heal really well, does that a bit more. You can also just formulate. It doesn’t mean don’t use it. It just means, “I know what I need to combine this with to address that imbalance.” This has much more of that alterative “clear it out, move it out, get it moving, get it flowing again” kind of energy to it vs. to build somebody back up and rejuvenate them. You just throw in the right herbs to do that – fresh milky oats or night-blooming cactus or shatavari. It all depends on the person, but there are plenty of herbs we could choose that work that way. That’s what I was getting at with that, if that makes sense to you.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

This made me think of something that is a little bit of a side, but I’m just going to dive into anyway. I get those headaches. I’m like your pitta headache person, especially when it’s hot. I get dehydrated, but it’s not just the dehydration. I feel like it’s that lack of yin. This heat is rising and I have to—anyway, the best thing that I have found for this is ice cream. I’m not joking. This has been like—I tell people this is my best for this type of headache. It’s only my husband’s homemade ice cream, which uses coconut milk. There’s coconut milk, a little bit of salt and then some kind of fruit. It’s frozen, of course. It’s very simple ingredients, but I’ve known that ice cream is literally—because when I get those types of headaches, my mouth is dry and hot. I feel dry and hot, so ice cream is a good one there.

I can just see that coconut milk is being this incredibly—just as you described it, it’s also replenishing. It’s not just clearing the heat. There’s a nutritive replenishment that’s going on, that’s restoring that. I just have this other—as you’re speaking, I’m like, “That’s why the ice cream works so well for that headache.” I have tried store-bought ice cream with regular dairy. It’s not the same. I’m not saying that it wouldn’t work for anybody, but it’s just something about the homemade coconut-based ice cream that’s just more cooling. I’ve had that headache and have taken ibuprofen for it, and just didn’t even touch it. The ice cream is the one thing, so I call it my “ice cream deficiency headache.”

Richard Mandelbaum:

I like that.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Which I say jokingly, but it does help. It’s the one thing that really helps.

Richard Mandelbaum:

That makes a lot of sense to me because if somebody is yin-depleted in terms of nutrition and broad food categories, it’s fats that often speak to what somebody needs. I’m always going to look to whether someone is on a plant-based diet or anabolic plant-based mix. We can solve those things easily if we’re flexible enough and get good, healthy fats in. That’s our most yin-nourishing category of foods beyond drinking enough water, right? But that doesn’t always do it. If somebody comes to us dehydrated, that’s easy. Drink water. So, that’s makes a lot of sense to me that that would be helpful.

It’s interesting because one of the things when I’m teaching energetics, I like to share with students after we get past the basics level for people who are totally new to it, like “What the heck are you even talking about?” kind of level. You let that settle in, repeat it and work with it. It’s nice to take your time with those things and not try to rush it, because it can feel very abstract and weird if you try to rush it and become just a thing of memorization that doesn’t actually make a lot of sense.

Digging down a little deeper, one of the things that is really common is that yin deficiency with empty heat or sometimes it’s called “false heat” or “vacuity heat.” The metaphor—and I didn’t make this metaphor up, but I use it a lot—is it’s like a forest that has become so dry. It’s prone to igniting into forest fire. You can keep putting out the fire, but the drought is actually the underlying disharmony, so you have to address the drought if you want to get past just putting out fires all the time.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

A very poignant analogy for our times, Richard. I use the car oil analogy, but this one is living in the West here hits home.

Richard Mandelbaum:

Absolutely. There are some herbs that do that all on their own. Like I mentioned, chrysanthemum flower or white peony root in Chinese medicine, renowned for clearing heat, but nourishing yin at the same time. That’s like a nice trick. Back to self-heal, doesn’t do the yin-nourishing part, but that’s okay because, again, we formulate. We just know if that’s what’s going on. We just need some yin-nourishing foods, eat your ice cream and yin-nourishing herbs. Yin-nourishing activity in someone’s life is equally important, I think too.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Your thing I should go be on the hammock right now. Is that what you’re saying? It’s hammock time?

Richard Mandelbaum:

I think so. Maybe wait until we’re done. Unless we’re done now, maybe you can go for it.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I have more questions beginning with, how do you like to work with self-heal in terms of preparations?

Richard Mandelbaum:

It does work its way nicely into topical remedies like you mentioned. You can make an infused oil and then incorporate that into salves and so on, and that works well. I do use the tincture a lot. As a dried herb, you can use an infusion or decoction, which would be the traditional Chinese way to prepare it. I should pause because I have some here beside me that I picked. It’s flowering all around my house. You’ll see the blurry vision because of this video that we have, but just such a gorgeous, beautiful plant. Just stunning. You know because you have it in your garden that like a lot of “weeds,” it can be very small if it’s in your lawn. But then you transplant that or let it grow in good soil and keep the competition down around it, it can get quite bit bigger rather than a small weed in your lawn. It can become a foot or a foot and a half tall, or even a little bit taller than that at times. Just stunning. I think stunningly gorgeous plant in the Lamiaceae family, mint family. We can get into that more.

I do use the tincture a lot as well. Tincturing it works quite well. I tend to tincture it fresh. This is a perfect time. What I would do with this, for instance, is you could just tincture this whole thing, but what’s a little bit more effective is if you strip off these leaves and the flowering top. Don’t tincture the stem with it. There’s nothing wrong with including the stem, but stem material with some exceptions, is biochemically more inert in plants. Stems really are there to provide cellulose space structure to hold the plant up vertically, and also all the vasculature to move things back and forth. We sometimes do stems in our medicine, but it can be more potent if you strip that off and just tincture the leaf and flower.

In Chinese medicine, traditionally, they actually use the fruiting spikes. You know this, but for anyone who isn’t aware, just botanically, a fruit refers to what the flower transforms into once it’s been fertilized, once it’s been pollinated and the eggs have been fertilized. Fruit doesn’t mean something fleshy and even safety, necessarily in a botanical sense, but it’s just whatever is in a flowering plant angiosperm protecting that seed as it matures. The fruit spikes later in the season are actually what’s used more in Chinese medicine.

There are some indications from some of the science that’s out that including the leaf material is maybe more effective for when hypertension is part of the picture of what’s going on. Not any kind of high blood pressure, because hypertension is something that isn’t really a thing. It’s an outcome of something else, so you have to figure out what is it that’s driving that blood pressure up. If it is, that liver fire, liver yang rising kind of pattern, then this can be tremendously effective, but we can use it, in other words, in both of those stages in different ways.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

You prefer to use it more in the flowering stage than in the fruiting stage yourself?

Richard Mandelbaum:

I do. I do. I will admit it might be just an emotional preference.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

That’s kind of how I feel.  When you order it from a Chinese medicine source and it comes in this brown material? It’s just like a different feeling than something when you dry it fresh and it’s still so vibrant-looking, or using it fresh in a tincture.

Richard Mandelbaum:

It’s true.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I can't say that Chinese medicine is wrong. There are thousands of years they’ve got on me, so I’m not saying it’s wrong. It’s a hard one to pivot on, I think.

Richard Mandelbaum:

Yes, and some people mistakenly look at those brown spikes from a Chinese herb shop—and of course, you have to get it from a good source just like anything—but think, “Oh, my God! This is so brown. This is crappy quality.” It’s important to keep in mind it’s not the dried flowers. It’s post stage, so it is brown. It is supposed to look like that. That’s one thing sometimes if you go in thinking this is dried flowers. You just think, “What is this?” It’s just at a later stage that it’s harvested.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Another thing in Chinese medicine is the dosage. Dosage in Chinese medicine tends to be much larger than—we’ll do the quotes—“Western herbalism.” Bensky, if I remember right, they’re recommending up to a 180 grams a day as an infusion, which is a lot. That was my preference. I was like, “I just want to use this as an infusion. I want to use it as a tea. I’m not sure that a tincture, you can really get the benefits from a small dosage tincture.” But I have come around to that partly because it’s just really hard to get that much of it even growing it in my garden. I harvest all that I can and there is no way that I can get that amount, but I could drink the tea regularly. I wouldn’t really attempt 180 grams a day myself, but even to get 28 grams a day would be tough to do that. It’s not really available in commercial either. A lot of places don’t carry this much. I’ve come to appreciate the tincture more as this is the option.

You’ve given us an incredible tincture recipe that is so detailed and really shows how to make fresh herb tincture. People can download their own copy of this at the show notes at herbswithrosaleepodcast.com. Very extensive. My question that I had while looking at it is that you were calling for 35% alcohol? I was curious about that.

Richard Mandelbaum:

The thing that—the reason—so this is part of the answer. Forgive me. I have this thing that I do often of not quite answering the question directly, think of something else first and then going back.

But just to say, part of why I wanted to give that much detail in the instructions was because—and you know herbalists differ on this. I’m not trying to start a fight or anything. It’s fine. We all have different approaches, but often when making tinctures with fresh herbs, herbalists don’t always account for—again, we’re talking about fresh herb—the fact that most of this is water. So, the analogy I make is that most of you is water. Most of me is water. If we dehydrated ourselves—you need a bigger dehydrator for that to work—you would be a third of your weight or a fourth of your weight, right? It’s the same thing with this. This is mostly water.

One of the things that can happen when fresh tinctures are made is that it’s not always exacting enough, and you can end up with much lower alcohol percentage than what you think you were doing because you’re not accounting for the fact that it’s mostly water. I know that in the herbal community often we talk about folk tinctures vs. not. I’ve just recently, in the past years, thought about I want better language for that. This is clunky. Maybe somebody listening or yourself will come up with better wording. I now talk about measured tinctures vs. unmeasured tinctures, and it takes the emotion out of the whole thing because the herbalist can get very emotional about that. It’s all folk medicine as far as I’m concerned. If we can make it in our kitchen, it’s folk medicine.

In any event, measured vs. unmeasured, what I’ve seen sometimes happen when you don’t measure, if you start out with something like vodka that’s 40%  or maybe 50% alcohol, something 80 proof, for example, or there about, and you tincture something fresh that has a really high water content like chickweed, it can actually go bad. I’ve seen people’s tinctures go bad on them because what they aren’t taking into account is how much water is in there. They don’t actually have a 40% tincture. They might have a 20% alcohol tincture, so when I say 35% alcohol, that’s the end result.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

The end result. I see.

Richard Mandelbaum:

Including the alcohol in the water. Excuse me, including the water already present in the herb as it’s growing. That’s important to distinguish too. It’s often something when I’m evaluating somebody else’s tinctures—again, it’s not meant to judge what’s better or worse necessarily, but just to figure out. Like if I have a client, my practice, who says, “I make my own tinctures,” or “I’m getting my tinctures over here,” I have probably three or four or five questions I want to ask just to arrive at what is my advice going to be about what dosage to take, or do I think that works or not. On lower alcohol percentage like 35%, again, that’s describing the final result, not what you’re adding to it, but the final result of what will be in your bottle, your jar as you’re macerating, and then your bottle after you press it, that would be appropriate for an herb where there’s more water soluble constituents in it.

One of the things that is helpful about varying the alcohol percentage in the tinctures we make is that you could choose a middle of the road alcohol percentage like 40% or 50% and you’ll capture a lot. That will work for a lot of things, but there are things on one end below that and the other end above that that aren’t going to be ideal if you stick to that for everything you’re tincturing. The more that there are polar constituents, water soluble constituents that constitute the bulk of the medicine we’re trying to extract, you might want an alcohol percentage that’s a little bit lower than that. Hawthorne would be another example of an herb where I would use a lower percentage of alcohol like this. Whereas, something really as an example, resinous like calendula, cannabis, things that are really resinous, resins themselves like myrrh, for instance, you’re not going to get as effective a medicine using that middle-of-the-road alcohol percentage that you would if you bumped it up higher and used pure alcohol, or 80% or 90%. That’s the idea behind using a lower percentage. 

Of course, there’s room for all sorts of differing opinions in the herbal world too because part of it is also just maybe by changing the alcohol percentage in a tincture or how you’re preparing the plant any other way using a decoction on the stove top vs. whatever, you might just be getting a somewhat different flavor of that herb. You might be extracting. It’s not always better or worse, but it’s sometimes a little different because you’re pulling something different from the plant that way. Anyway, that’s the very long-winded explanation of that.

The details and the recipe are about accounting for the fact that this is probably three-fourths water. If you want it to be very nerdy, geeky and exacting about it, and if you have a dehydrator, what you can do is the day before you’re going to make tincture, you could take a sample of 10 grams or 20 or 30 grams of the herb and weigh it because that’s how you know that it’s that amount. Then dry it and see what it weighs, and then that tells you exactly how much water was in it. Estimates are pretty good. It’s going to get you pretty darn close and good enough too. Anyway, that’s the reasoning behind all that.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

That’s excellent and thank you so much for all of those details both here and in the handout.

Richard Mandelbaum:

Sure. Absolutely.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Is there anything we haven’t covered about self-heal that you want to cover?

Richard Mandelbaum:

There are definitely things we mentioned that we didn’t dig into the details of, like as a lymphatic that dissolves masses and tumors. It’s good for cysts, ovarian cyst, and benign breast cyst. It’s also used in a lot of cancer protocols. There’s some evidence at least that’s growing, that it has some actual anti-cancer activity. It might be helpful in inducing cell death of cancer cells, apoptosis, or other means by which it’s impeding the reproduction of cancer in the body either way, as an adjunct or does it really address the cancerous growth itself at the same time. It might be doing a bit of both. It’s used in a lot of those protocols. Helpful for hyperthyroidism in many cases, which is very much like a fiery yang state. Sometimes that also includes nodules or goiter, so there’s that link too. 

There’s more detail in what we spelled out about self-heal for sure where I would think this is a helpful herb. Sometimes without all those things, honestly, just when somebody is livery and easily frustrated, kind of on edge and irritable, we think of anger as associated with the liver, but anger is not always what resonates with somebody to describe how they’re feeling. I find frustrated often because frustration can lead to anger, but doesn’t always lead to anger. It’s like one step behind it, I think. Even on the emotional level that’s how I would think of self-heal too--with frustration. When something is frustrated, it’s stopped. It’s blocked.

Going back to what we’re saying in the beginning, an herb with this energy of break it up, dissolve it, let it move again, clear it out--that’s the kind of energy you need if you’re feeling stuck and frustrated about things, on edge and irritable. The light, the sounds, the people – all of that. Those are a few things I would add to how I think about it.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Thank you for that. I’m never frustrated. I’m always cool as a cucumber. Just kidding. That is kind of like, that is my thing.

Richard Mandelbaum:

You said pitta before, so I was like, “Really? Really?”

Rosalee de la Forêt:

That is interesting distinction because I don’t think of myself as an angry person. I rarely get angry, but I will get frustrated. That’s my indication it’s time to go see my five-element acupuncturist. When everything is frustrating, it’s time to go. I’m going to think more about self-heal during those times as well.

Richard Mandelbaum:

Yeah, absolutely.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Have you worked with it at all as a skin protectant? That’s something that I’ve really leaned into using it for.

Richard Mandelbaum:

Do you mean for antioxidant? It’s chockfull antioxidant. Is that what you’re thinking of mostly?

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Yes. Again, just making it all about me. I loved to get a lot of sun when I was younger. Now, I feel like one of the important roles I can play for my skin is preventive care. Of course, I think of calendula, which I use a lot, but when I was studying self-heal and I came across that it’s just being a wonderful plant for helping post sun exposure. Now, I try to limit the sun I get, but I think there’s a lot we can do to keep restoring our skin health over and over again. It’s one that I’ve been infusing into oil, infusing it into a jojoba or apricot kernel oils, something that’s light. I put it on at night off and just let it soak in throughout the night.

Richard Mandelbaum:

That sounds great. That sounds excellent. It makes total sense to me to use it that way, pumping up antioxidants into your foods and herbs you take internally in a background way as well, which I’m sure you’re keyed into. It’s also really helpful both with our herbs and with our foods. That makes complete sense to me that it will be helpful that way.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Right now, I’m just my own single study on this, so it would be great for more people to start trying it as well reporting back.

Richard Mandelbaum:

Yeah, yeah.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Thank you for sharing so much about self-heal. I love that you love self-heal. It’s fun to meet a fellow self-heal admirer. It’s lovely. I’d love to hear about projects you have going on. I know you’re a faculty at David Winston. You also have your own school. You have some other things going on, so for people who are like, “I want to learn more from Richard,” where do they find you? What do they learn?

Richard Mandelbaum:

Thank you so much for asking that. Yes, I teach for David, and I’ll see you there, which is wonderful. There’s a small team of us now who do that. There are a few other instructors along with David who are teaching the program. That’s a two-year program. As you mentioned, about a decade ago or so, a little bit longer than that now, I co-founded the ArborVitae School of Traditional Herbalism with Claudia Keel. I no longer direct the school. A couple of years ago, I stepped back from the admin side of that, but still do a lot of the core teaching along with her and many other teachers. That’s a hybrid in-person online program in the Hudson Valley in New York State. Especially in the summer, those things keep me busy.

I do some other teaching here and there. I’m teaching a couple of courses for an acupuncture school, which I do every summer. I’m not an acupuncturist, but I teach botany and biochemistry of plants, phytochemistry for them. I do, particularly in the summer–for folks who are closer to my neck of the woods, which is the southern Catskill part of New York—do a lot of all-day plant walks and herb walks. Some of them in New York City. Some of them up closer to where I am. Folks could check that out on my website, which is just my name, richardmandelbaum.com, and see if they’re interested in that.

One other thing, just to mention, if I can, a project that I’m super excited about right now-

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Please do.

Richard Mandelbaum:

Which I am playing a peripheral supportive role in. I want to be really clear. You probably know Margi Flint, I’m guessing?

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Yes. So I know which project you’re talking about, I think.

Richard Mandelbaum:

Oh, you do? Good. The William LeSassier project. I was super lucky after I had studied with David too, and this was with Claudia Keel who arranged a study group for William. It was six to eight of us sitting around, learning from him. Incredibly fortunate to be in the right place at the right time looking back on it all now, because that was leading up to his passing, which I didn’t know at the time. Just a phenomenal herbal genius--genius, in general. There’s this project to turn his teachings into books because people have learned from him all over the herbal community, or learned from people who’ve learned from him, or have notes scribbled in their own notebooks from 20 years ago, and they took a class or whatever it is, and “How do we save all that and pass it on?” And so, there’s this tremendous effort underway that people can either donate to because it’s all grassroots fundraised. Or also, there are some seeking right now of people for actually some limited hired positions to help out with transcribing and consolidating, and putting those into book forms. Several of us are going to help review drafts. It sounds like you’re involved in that too. It’s very, very exciting because a lot of folks know his name, or even don’t know his name, but are benefitting from all the wisdom he passed down. To be able to preserve that is really important. Just to key people into all of that is something I’d like to share for sure.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Thank you for sharing that. I’m so glad that’s being done. It’s interesting. I feel like in the past couple of years, there’s been a big movement towards doing this posthumous publication of stuff like Christopher Hedley and his partner—escaping the name. There’s a couple of books of theirs that was published posthumously. I hear there’s one being worked on for Cascade Anderson Geller, William LeSassier, so that’s really wonderful.

Richard Mandelbaum:

Absolutely.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Before I let you go, I have one last question for you. The last question for you, Richard, is “How has herbalism surprised you?”

Richard Mandelbaum:

In so many ways. Like I said earlier, I didn’t even start out on this realizing it would be a life path per se. I do plant walks now or botany classes. Just this past Saturday, I was out on the water in this marshland, wetland that’s near me, leading a kayak, canoe, herb paddle. We were studying the aquatic plants all day. Just to look back and realize all the time I put in just for my own passion, and now can share and pass down, that’s certainly one thing that’s total surprise, unplanned, which is often the best way for things to unfold. I would say probably the biggest answer to that question for me is the people, the human beings, because for me it’s really the foundation of why I’m doing all of this. It’s a continual seeking and reinforcing of my intimacy with the plants and with the planet, especially, again, in a larger culture that’s so alienating and disassociating. I feel like it’s a constant effort.

That’s the foundation for me--just to be out there with the plants, but there’s part of me that’s more of an introvert. I wouldn’t say anti-social because I really love being social, actually, but I could picture myself on some alternate path, just like out there as this weird hermit gathering the herbs. I think what I never anticipated and has surprised me so much, and really keeps me in it in terms of both teaching and practicing, which really make up the bulk of what I do day-to-day as one or the other, is the wonderful people that you just encounter on this path. I believe that the vast majority of human beings are wonderful people.

It’s not that it’s special to herbalism, yet I think it’s fair to say I’d be curious what you think that there’s this natural filter of people who are plant people, that includes botanists who don’t know much about the medicinal uses. But certainly, in the herbal world, both people come to me in my practice, people who want to study it, people you just run into and meet who are passionate about it in one way or the other as well. It’s like this natural filter where you can be pretty darn confident it’s going to be good people who are just fun to hang out with and interesting.

I don’t know a better word for it than simply good folks. That’s not anything that was ever on my radar or that I anticipated, but that I continually come back to when I feel like holds me in the community space in this wonderful way. Anyone watching this is probably already there to some degree, but if you want to filter out the noise a little bit and find good folks, this is a pretty darn good way to do it, I think.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

It is. That’s such a great call too for people to look for local herbalists in their area, to go on plant walks, to go on a kayak. That sounds amazing, a kayak paddle for aquatic plants, to go to conferences. Every time I go to conferences, I’m just always blown away by the amazing people there. I was in Italy this year with Rosemary Gladstar on an herbal retreat, and all the people there were just so fantastic. I often tell people it’s like we were in this a thousand-year old castle. I often didn’t have water or if I did, it was just freezing cold water. The high was 50 a day, in the 50s. I didn’t care. I was just surrounded by such great people. I was like, “Yeah, whatever. I’m taking a freezing cold shower. It’s cool. I’m with cool people.” I really resonate with that a lot and really recommend for folks to get out there and spend time with plant folks.

Richard Mandelbaum:

Absolutely. Like you’re saying, the larger conferences, it’s like there’s all this concentric circles. Find the people right near you in your neighborhood, or in your town, or in your community. You want to expand it too and that can be a beautiful thing, just to realize that, “Oh, as an individual I’m not isolated in this. I’m not alone in this. Even as my local community, we’re not alone in this,” and it just keeps expanding outward that way. There’s a real grounding and comfort that comes from that as well.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

That’s so well said. That has been a lot of the podcast for me too. It’s been such an honor to interview people and get to know people. Sometimes I know the people well. Sometimes not as well. I would say you are no exception, Richard. It’s been absolutely fabulous to spend some time with you, hear your perspectives and hear your wisdom about self-heal.

Richard Mandelbaum:

Thank you so much. This has been a pleasure. I look forward to running into you and taking a walk, or having a cup of tea, or whatever makes sense at the moment.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I’m looking forward to that too. Thanks, Richard.

Richard Mandelbaum:

Thank you. Take care.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

As always, thank you so much for being here. Don’t forget to download your beautifully illustrated recipe card above the transcript of this show. Also sign up for my weekly newsletter, which is the best way to stay in touch with me, below. You can find more from Richard at richardmandelbaum.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. Alex is our tech support and Social Media Manager, and Karin and Emilie are our Student Services Coordinators and Community Support. For those of you who like to read along, Jennifer is who creates the transcripts for us 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 my favorite things about this podcast is hearing from you. I read every comment that comes in and I’m excited to hear your herbal thoughts on self-heal. 

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

As Richard pointed out, self-heal is native to North America, and as a result, has many relationships with beneficial pollinators. According to the website of Illinois Wildflowers, self-heal flowers are visited by long-tongued bees, short-tongued bees, small butterflies and skippers. Bee visitors also include bumblebees, little carpenter bees, long horn bees, halictid bees, including green metallic bees. Lots of the pollinators love those self-heal flowers. 

If you’d like to dive even deeper into this fascinating plant, then check out the interview I did with Caroline Gagnon, as well as my own solo episode. I’ll include links to those in the show notes.