Every herbal heritage weaves its own unique tapestry, and the world is a richer place with all of them intact and remembered. And, according to the World Health Organization, an estimated 88 percent of all countries use traditional medicine. On Herbalist Day, April 17, we spotlight four world herbal traditions: Ayruvedic medicine, Curanderismo Traditional Medicine, Gullah Geechee Herbal Traditions, and Traditional Chinese Medicine.
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Ayurvedic medicine
Rooted in the medicinal traditions of India and encompassing thousands of years of wisdom, Ayurveda is a lifestyle-oriented healing system that includes a range of modalities such as herbalism, diet, massage, meditation, and yoga. Its name says it all: Ayur means “life,” and veda represents “knowledge.”
Ayurveda favors foods, herbs, and self-care routines that are individually formulated to provide energetic balance to body, mind, and spirit. In Ayurveda, the elements of space, air, fire, earth, and water are expressed in varying amounts through an individual’s temperament and mood, as well as through the manifestation of their physical body.
Ayurveda categorizes people into three energetic types, or doshas. A vata dosha is characterized by space and ether or air. Creative and mentally inspired, and physically prone to cold and dry, vata is supported by grounding and warmth. A pitta dosha is a combination of fire and water. Fierce and ambitious by nature and prone to inflammatory flares and acidity in the body, pitta benefits from cool and calm. A kapha dosha is characterized by earth and water. Soft and nurturing within, but prone to congestion and stagnation when imbalanced, kapha finds equilibrium in warm stimulation and movement.
Together vata, pitta, and kapha compose the tridoshic model of Ayurveda. While each dosha is present in every person, individuals have one predominant tendency. An awareness of this innate dosha informs a counterapproach meant to restore balance to the body. Ayurveda embraces a traditional herbal kitchen with spices like turmeric and ginger often at the center of many heathy dishes. But ultimate reverence is devoted to the life-enhancing and rejuvenating Rasayana herbs like ashwagandha, holy basil, and shatavari.
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Herbs used in Ayurveda
Ashwagandha: Thought to balance the three doshas, especially vata and kapha, it clears brain fog, boosts cognitive health, improves attention span, and is considered an aphrodisiac.
Holy Basil: Also known as tulsi, it can calm the disposition and clear away cognitive cobwebs. Blended with turmeric, it fights chronic inflammatory conditions like arthritis.
Shatavari: This legendary herb of one hundred lovers gently nourishes the reproductive tract, supporting libido, fertility, and milk production.
Curanderismo Traditional Medicine
A living model of Latin American folk healing, curanderismo’s specific practices vary according to its regional origins. It includes elements of ancient Indigenous Mesoamerican wisdom enriched by the healing traditions of the African diaspora and infused with Catholic and Spanish customs.
The ancestral roots of curanderismo are best expressed in the ceremonial treatment of the psychospiritual as an essential component of physical health care. In this tradition, spiritual and supernatural effects on health are taken seriously and remedied with herbs, diet, prayer, and ritual.
The shared traumatic history of Latin American people has instilled a sense of resilience into their health culture, focusing on the powerful bond between the soul and body. A susto, or traumatic fright, can result in soul loss and have grave effects on physical health, similar to PTSD. The curandero (or healer) exercises compassion for those who are troubled with trauma, envy, or malice. The healer might prescribe spiritual baths using sunflower petals or lemon balm to comfort the soul back into the body. They might sweep the body with herbs like rue or lemongrass in a limpia, or a cleanse, to remove unhealthy bilis, or rage, that may bring illness.
In curanderismo, the sense of belonging in the community contributes tremendously to a person’s well-being. After illness, resocialization with family and neighbors often happens at the kitchen table over a warm mug of damiana leaf infusion. Health-oriented communities can lay the groundwork toward embracing traditional medicine, which begins with unraveling the perspective that the only acceptable medical model is the one based on allopathic, or Western, standards of practice.
Many Latin Americans today opt for allopathic care in certain circ*mstances, curandero care in others. Curanderismo perseveres as an important facet of public mental and physical health care, especially among people dedicated to preserving connections to the healing ways of their ancestors.
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Herbs used in Curanderismo
Damiana: Its leaf has long carried a reputation for evoking passion and desire and instilling bonds between partners and within communities, and also supports fertility and menstruation.
Ruta graveolens: Associated with eye health, contemporary herbalists consider rue to be an effective eyewash for eyestrain and irritations.
Sunflower: For headaches, the large leaves can be blanched and draped over the forehead warm or cool. For bronchitis, a leaf syrup or simple decoction can clear phlegm.
Gullah Geechee Herbal Traditions
Among the wide streets and Spanish moss–laden charm of southern cities, the bustle of touristy beach towns, and the daily routine of quaint fishing villages along the Atlantic coastline dwells a living web of medicine.
Gullah Geechee place-based healing practices are rooted in African ancestry and embodied today in pockets of the southeastern United States. Gullah Geechee herbalists represent ancestral traditions in the cultural corridor ranging from Jacksonville, North Carolina, to Jacksonville, Florida, and 100 miles inland, including the Outer Banks and the Sea Islands of the Atlantic coast.
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Use of a dense repertoire of medicinal botanicals is intimately entwined with the culture of Black and Indigenous herbalists of the lower Atlantic states. Gullah Geechee herbal traditions are infused with the vibrancy of West and West Central African cultures. Prayer and song while gathering wild herbs, drumming and incantation during the setting of healing intentions, and community medicine-making rituals are common practices.
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Healers in this lineage find subtle ways to tend to their own, passing along herbal wisdom through the generations via storytelling, song and dance, and the creative arts. A pervasive mistrust of conventional medical services, along with rural isolation and lack of access to health providers, has shaped a culture of autonomy and community care that lingers among the Gullah Geechee diaspora, still passed through the generations.
With both sacred and practical connections to water as a source of healing, herbalists of this lineage favor decoctions. Herbal tisanes might be brewed from wild plants like elder, passionflower, and the important staple called life everlasting or rabbit tobacco. Many common uses of these preparations inform the materia medica of American herbalism today, though the Gullah Geechee receive little credit for them.
Governmental policymakers are beginning to place value on the heritage of the region. With the establishment of a federal national heritage area—the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor—the culture’s stories are being shared.
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Herbs used in the Gullah Geechee tradition
Elder: Elderflower can be drunk cold on a hot day or warm to relieve a fever. Also an effective cold remedy, elderberries are renowned for their antiviral effects.
Sumac: The red, velvety sumac berry enjoys a long tradition of folk use as food and medicine, as a coolant (in lemonade), or to ward off a cold with its plethora of vitamin C.
Witch Hazel: As handy as the commercial astringent liquid is as a base for skin-care remedies, often herbalists turn the twigs and leaves into a strong eyewash, sitz bath, or facial steam.
Traditional Chinese Medicine
The central thread of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is the life essence or qi, the unseen force that runs through the body’s invisible highway of meridians—paths of energy flow.
In TCM, life is movement and change is constant. Blockages and stagnation can impede the flow of qi, which can interrupt life’s essential dynamism. Balance is curated with reverence for the fundamental principles of yin and yang, which exemplify the complimentary duality of the energies of the universe within each of us. In its most simplistic form, yin is cold, heavy, slow, and stagnant. It is deficient, inward, and peaceful. Yang is hot, light, fast, and lively. It is excessive, outward, and more agitating.
A skilled TCM practitioner makes a series of observations about a patient, evaluating a wide range of phenomena. Someone can run cold, damp, and stagnant (excessive yin) or dry, hot, and stimulated (excessive yang), for example. Generations of observers have assigned the five elemental classifications to herbs and foods, which also have designated energetics based on their flavors. Five flavors have been traditionally identified: sweet, salty, bitter, pungent, and sour.
From the TCM perspective, foods and herbs inherently elicit a variety of sensations. Not only can they be heating like ginger, cooling like andrographis, or even neutral like shiitake, but they can also feel stimulating or stagnating. They can moisten or dry, tonify or deplete. The basic principle is that herbs and foods are believed to either heat or cool the body, thus easing a symptom emerging from an overly hot or overly cold constitution. For example, someone suffering from rheumatic chills and aches that are exacerbated on damp days might find relief from an herbal formula that is drying and warming.
TCM also assigns yin and yang principles to herbs and foods. Ingredients with a cool nature are considered yin to a varying degree, while warm herbs and foods are deemed yang. Flavors such as sour, bitter, and salty are yin and cooling in nature, while flavors including sweet and pungent are yang and warming.
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