The Seven Rivers of Healing, with Susun Weed

Part Seven: Incite Strong Responses, the fifth river

John Gallagher:  This is John Gallagher from HerbMentor.com and you are listening to
Part seven of the "Seven Rivers of Healing, " a course about health care choices, your
inner wisdom and charting a route for your personal health. Our guide on this journey is
herbalist and author Susan Weed. And you can visit her at SusunWeed.com. Susan, nice
to have you back.

Susan Weed:  It's good to be back with you. Hope you've been thinking about the
nourishing and tonifying and you sounded really excited about that concept of the great
divide, so I hope that's useful to you.

John:  Yes, it is. It really just puts the... It's such an amazing metaphor and even in my
own acupuncture practice and it just helps me be more empathetic to where people are
coming from when they first come onboard to not go: Oh, I just use a nourishing herbs,
nettles, of course, where they're just a little lost because all they've ever seen is this other
side that we're about to get into now. And to be more empathetic to help guide across the
great divide, to understand about nourishment and about tonics and energy medicines and
all these other things. So anyway you can take over.

Susan:  You can see yourself as Sacajawea. That's what she did, wasn't it? Sacajawea
took Lewis and Clark over the Great Divide, literally.

John:  To the west coast. [laughter]

Susan:  To the west coast. [laughter] Carrying a baby on her back.

John:  There's no accidents at all. [laughter] The universe patterns ...

Susan:  My goodness, so when we move into the fifth river we are going to incite strong
responses. The wonderful thing about inciting strong responses is you know something
has happened. When you give somebody a glass of vinegar water with a teaspoon of
cayenne in it and they drink it, they know something has happened and you know
something has happened. And we might compare that to giving somebody a cup of nettle

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 The Seven Rivers of Healing, with Susun Weed
Part Seven: Incite Strong Responses, the fifth river

infusion. They drink that nettle infusion and do they know anything has happened?

John:  Well, I don't know, the first time maybe, the first few times they might start to feel
a little better. [laughter]

Susan:  But it's not like drinking the nettle does something like cayenne does.

John:  Right, right, right.

Susan:  Right. You drink that cayenne and your eyes are burning and your stomach is
going [growling sounds] and you're like whoa something just happened to me. Well, I
think because you know I started learning about herbs and herbal medicine in the '60s and
there was almost like a... it was presented to me like it was a contest between us and the
doctors, you know? And I was supposed to be like in an adversarial role with the doctors.
I was supposed to keep people from ever taking drugs. And instead turn them onto herbs
but the things I was reading I thought my goodness what the herbs are suggesting is that
the herbs are almost as strong as drugs. And then of course, a statement that we all hear
that herbal is true but like a scorpion it has a bit of a sting onto it and that is: well, drugs
are made from herbs.

I'm sure you have heard that. I of course heard it a lot in the '60s and '70s and it was kind
of a how can you say herbs don't work, drugs are made from herbs.

John:  Right, right, right.

Susan:  And of course that little scorpion sting is that we are being told that herbs are
drugs. And I have to say, well, gosh if they're telling me that herbs are drugs, it's because
I told them that herbs were drugs for years and years. [laughter] Before I realize that they
weren't. Although they can have some very powerful affects and can incite strong
responses. And so in general what it seems to me is that historically that our interest has
been pulled to and focused on the herbs that have the greatest ability to incite strong
responses. I think about wonderful herbalist, Ed Smith, of "Herb Farm." He was talking
about he was going to take a vacation down in South America. A pharmaceutical firm got

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 The Seven Rivers of Healing, with Susun Weed
Part Seven: Incite Strong Responses, the fifth river

in touch with him and said: Hey, we'd like to hire you to look at some herbs while you are
in South America. Anybody who's listening including you and I who knows about herbs
and herbalists is laughing because what do herbalists do when they go on vacation? They
look at herbs.

[laughter]

Susan:  OK, we're monomaniacs, what can we tell you? We're interested in plants
wherever we are. We've interested in plants. We're working. We're interested in plants
when we go on vacation, we go to see plants. So Ed's thinking: hey this is pretty good. I
tend to go down there and look at plants anyhow. It looks like they are going to offer me
money to look at plants. And sure enough, they did offer him some money. And he said,
well, what plants do you want me to look at? They said, oh we're going to give you a
little test kit and it's going to test whether or not the herb is alkaline. And if it's alkaline it
will probably contain alkaloids and so you can bring a sample of that back to us.

He said, you don't want me to like interview native people? Oh, no, no, no. We're just
looking for the plants that contain poisons. And again, I'm not saying that this is wrong.
I'm saying that this is what is. This is where human interest has taken us in plants incite
very strong responses in us because those plants can be life saving.

So there is a greater push to learn about and learn how to use those plants. Somebody had
said the other if you will forgive for bringing in a little current event here. Oh, how
horrible it looks like the President is going to take away the money from NASA and we're
not going to go back to the moon.

John:  Why is this bad? [laughter]

John:  I was kind of happy about it.

Susan:  Well, I thought about it. I thought: you know, what would we do there?

John:  That's what I was wondering. Why do we want to go there? [laughter]

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 The Seven Rivers of Healing, with Susun Weed
Part Seven: Incite Strong Responses, the fifth river

Susan:  Well, we want to go there because we want to go, OK? And it's kind of the same
thing. Why are we interested in herbs that can incite strong responses? Because we are
interested in things that are different and challenging. And so, I really admire the human
spirit that says: I want to go to the moon. I want to go to Mars. And I do, too. But at the
base of it, I have to say that: hey, we had people on the moon 50 years ago. And if there
was a reason for us to be back there, we would have figured out a way to get back there.
But all I can say is that we haven't found a reason. And I think that's disappointing to me.
Gosh, when I was 10 I signed up to be one of the first passengers on the moon shuttle.

And I thought for sure there would be a moon shuttle by now. Certainly in the '60s I was
for sure there would be a moon shuttle by now. But we just didn't find anything that made
it pan out. But here on earth we have found lots of plants that can cause very strong
responses. And because of who we are, and what we are, those are the ones that fascinate
us.

So to most people, herbal medicine is only plants that incite strong responses. Golden
seal and cayenne and lobelia, things that really reach out and get in your face and grab
you. You are an acupuncturist. What is the primary purpose of inserting a needle into an
acupuncture point, into the [Inaudible 9:15].

John:  Well, you know, it really depends on the style you are doing and your intention.
Me personally it's to bring a person's chi into harmony. There are other acupuncturists
who may do that sometimes but there are styles that often, well primarily do that to
stimulate or sedate something. But I think really calm something down. Kind of really
interfere. Where my intention that I do however is more to bring into harmony.

Susan:  Mm‑hm. So you are doing a more tonifying acupuncture?

John:  I do. The five elements style is about that. I always on the side call it more wise
woman acupuncture, but. [laughs] .

Susan:  And moxibustion is the tonifying acupuncture technique.

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 The Seven Rivers of Healing, with Susun Weed
Part Seven: Incite Strong Responses, the fifth river

John:  And that's part of what I do as well. But I don't know much about TCM. I only
had to take enough to pass the test [laughter].

Susan:  Oh, that sounds pretty good.

John:  But I was patient for awhile in it and I do remember what I felt when I did it I
often would feel a more sedating and less tonifying experience.

Susan:  Yes, yes. A classical acupuncture is stimulus and sedation.

John:  Yeah, I agree.

Susan:  Yeah. And they use moxibustion as the tonifying. And what I was thought and I
never studied enough to pass the exam because I am a little needle‑phobic. Having them
in me is bad enough, I can close my eyes. But putting them in other people I can't close
my eyes so. Can't go there. [laughter]

John:  I just can't do hypodermic needles. Those needles are easy. As long as they're not
taking anything or putting anything out of people, I'm OK.

Susan:  Just a little needle, I want you to have. That needle phobia just comes up and
grabs me. So I remember when Justine was young and she had to get a smallpox
vaccination. And they suggested that I hold her on my lap. Which was not the brightest
move, because I came to laying on the floor. [laughter] And with a needle doing a little
funny thing to me. I guess why that's why I don't use them. But you know, what they
taught me was you want to tonify you do moxibustion. And if it's a pretty serious case
you do direct moxibustion, which is close to needling. But the needling itself is going to
stimulate or sedate the energy and change how the energy flows through the meridians.
So that in the very early days of teaching acupuncture here in the United States they were
very clear that you reserved that until you needed it. That's certainly not what's being
practiced now, and that's you know just water down another river there.

But what I was saying is, that incites strong responses is not just herbs. That it's not just

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 The Seven Rivers of Healing, with Susun Weed
Part Seven: Incite Strong Responses, the fifth river

acupuncture isn't it. It's Swedish massage, isn't it? You get a Swedish massage you're
going to get effleurage and you're going to get perusing and you're going to get some
pretty strong responses to what's going on there.

Again, these are very useful techniques. One of the techniques that I loved the best that I
learned when I was studying traditional Chinese medicine and five element theory was
Guasa. Which is a direct form of, well it's very similar to cupping. Do you use any
cupping at all?

John:  Not in my style, no.

Susan:  Mm‑hm. Do you use guasa?

John:  No.

Susan:  Have you seen it?

John:  No. I have not.

Susan:  So let's talk about guasa a little. It's pretty interesting and really easy for anybody
to do. Let's say that your child or your sweetheart is congested. They have like a chest
cold, or bronchitis or pneumonia or something going on in their respiratory system. They
can sit or lie down with their back toward you. And you put some lubricant like olive oil
or whatever nice herbal oil you have on their back. And that you take, classically, you
take a very smooth edged half of a bivalve shell. Like an oyster shell or a clam shell. But
you. Some of them can have very sharp edges. It's very important that it be smooth edge.
Now what most Americans use is a metal lid from a quart jar. A one piece lid, not the two
piece lids. Although you could use a two piece lid, and I've seen people do it. And it can
actually work well if you have grip problems because you can get your hand right
through it.

Then again you have a nice smooth edge and you're going to take your nice smooth edge,
your going to start and just below the cervical vertebrae so you don't want to go up in the

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 The Seven Rivers of Healing, with Susun Weed
Part Seven: Incite Strong Responses, the fifth river

neck area at all. You want to start at the base of the neck and you run your smooth edge
down the back with some pressure. Not a whole lot of pressure and then you keep doing
it. You're going down your not going up and down your just going down. When you're
done with that stroke you take it off the back and you come back to the top and you go
down again.

What happens is you will be using enough pressure that anywhere there's enough
congestion in those tissues you're going to break capillary. The congestion and
inflammation is going to push the capillaries nearer to the surface of the skin.

John:  OK.

Susan:  When you do this on somebody who has some real congestion in the lungs you
actually get the exact image of the lungs on the back coming up in bright, bright red.

John:  Wild.

Susan:  Remember when you were a teenager and you were necking and you got hickies
or you gave hickies?

John:  Nah. (laughter)

Susan:  That's what it looks like.

John:  Oh wow.

Susan:  Bright like a big mass of surface blood, it doesn't hurt. The person is not going ah
oh were not talking about a huge amount of pressure here. But you'll get the feeling of it
as you do it as to how much pressure and you'll see the congestion literally flowing up to
the skin where it dissipates very quickly from the skin. Usually it takes two or three days
and all of the red that you brought up in those broken capillaries are healed. And the
person feels great usually within the hour. This is inciting a strong response. I mean when
I do this in class and people are looking, the person that is having it done starts freaking
out. Because the people that are looking are going oh my gosh, look at that oh are they

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 The Seven Rivers of Healing, with Susun Weed
Part Seven: Incite Strong Responses, the fifth river

going to bleed, how long is it going to take that to heal? All of these comments and the
person is going what are they doing too my back it feels so good.

Cupping the person is exactly the same thing right.

John:  Same kind of thing.

Susan:  Same, you take a cup you heat it you a little back if forms a suction and shh it
pulls the inflammation from the deeper tissues up to the surface tissues where it can
dissipate very easily. There are so many ways to insight strong responses. And because
this is an area that for thousands and thousands of years has said, "medicine to all of us it
is an area where we can't hope to even encompass the entire ethic of it. We can just kind
of splash around this river give ourselves some idea what it is.

When I'm working with my students in the spirit and practice of the Wise Women
Tradition correspondence course I give them list. I give them a list of 20 stimulants, and I
give them a list of sedatives and I ask them to put those things in order.

What do I mean by that? Let's imagine that we are making a table of contents and we say
OK were at the fifth river and we have 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5 all the way up to 5.6, 5.9
and then our next thing would be the 6th river.

If I say to you I get anxious you might say motherwort tincture is a herb that relieves
anxiety and notifies so that you feel less anxious in the future. So I would call that 5.0 it
is inciting a strong response but it's working as a tonic at the same time.

At 5.1, we might put tincture of milky oats to help someone who is anxious. A little more
sedative than motherwort, but still with some tonic effect. At 5.2, we might put
chamomile tea, a little big stronger than our tincture of milky oats, and not tonifying.

At 5.3, we might put passion flower, the tea of the leaves of passion flower, wonderful for
relieving anxiety. A little bit stronger than our chamomile. At 5.4, we might say time to
get out the skullcap tincture. This person is very anxious; we're going to have to come in
with something stronger here. Get some skullcap tincture on the case. At 5.5, we're going

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 The Seven Rivers of Healing, with Susun Weed
Part Seven: Incite Strong Responses, the fifth river

to maybe offer some nice, strong hops tea.

So, at 5.6, we start to move into the realm where addiction is possible. So, we would start
using herbs then, that are yet stronger. At 5.7, we might have a tea of poppy heads. And at
5.9, we would have opium.

John:  That's a jump.

Susan:  But it's not much of a jump from poppy head tea to opium, is it?

John:  Right. Where would valerian be?

Susan:  I would put valerian at about 5.6 or 5.7. But that's valerian root; I tend to use
valerian flower, which is more 5.4. All right? So, as my students struggle through this,
and it is a struggle for many of them, to get a sense of this, some other issues come up.
It's important to understand these other issues, because they have to do with how much
damage we're going to do and how strong the response is going to be. So, I was pretty
specific. I didn't just say oat straw or skullcap, I mentioned a form of it.

In general, we could say that the water base is going to be less likely to incite an
over‑the‑top response than any other form. And the weaker that water base, the less
likely the harm will be. So, chamomile tea brewed for five minutes is not going to be very
harmful.

But, if we make chamomile infusion...

John:  Yuck!

Susan:  ... whoops! We'd have to move that up to 5.8, right?

John:  Yeah.

Susan:  And then if we made chamomile tincture, oh. Well, fortunately it's not quite as
strong as the infusion there, because we haven't infused for that long. But again, that's
going to incite a stronger response than the chamomile tea. What if we take the essential

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 The Seven Rivers of Healing, with Susun Weed
Part Seven: Incite Strong Responses, the fifth river

oil out of the chamomile? As you lean, now we're in the sixth river. Now we have
actually made a drug, all from chamomile. And I'm sure that this is one of the things that
makes you distressed. It certainly makes me distressed when people don't qualify the
preparation or the dosage of the herb.

John:  Right, because you just said milky oat tincture, right, 5.0? But then you can have
oat straw infusion which is on the other side of the great divide.

Susan:  Exactly. Oatmeal, which is over there in strengthen and feed health. All from the
same plant.

John:  And also, if anyone goes and watches the video interview I did with you a couple
of years ago on HerbMentor.com, I think you say on there, the difference between a drug
and a poison is the dosage, right?

Susan:  Exactly. That is the difference. The difference between a benefit from a drug, and
damage from a drug, also is the dosage, because drugs ‑ by definition ‑ are poisons. And
so we have to become much more careful. I was talking to a wonderful friend and past
apprentice ‑ she runs a tincture business ‑ and we were talking about dosages. And I said
to her, "In terms of what you put on the bottle, I don't think that it helps people to get too
specific."

You might say, "Oh, I find that the best dose of skullcap is five drops." I said, "But let's
face it, you're a manufacturer." Unless it's an herb like poke, where you really don't want
them taking more than one drop at a time, I would just put on the bottle what everybody
puts on the bottle. A dose is a dropper full.

In most tinctures that you buy, that's what people put on the bottle is a dose is a dropper
full. Dosing, of course, if one of the most highly individual aspects of herbal medicine. I
often remark that we have, living and working right now, herbalists like Matthew Wood
whose high dose is three drops.

That's his top, three drops. Whoo, that's a lot! And at the very same time, we have

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 The Seven Rivers of Healing, with Susun Weed
Part Seven: Incite Strong Responses, the fifth river

herbalists, English herbalists, herbalists who are trained in England whose starting dose is
a teaspoon of tincture, which is a lot more than most American herbalists use. A teaspoon
is about five or six droppers full.

Yeah, it's rare that we would use that much of most herbs. An occasional herb, hey that's
not a bad starting dose for Echinacea. But that dropper full has become more of a
standard American dose. So, if we just say the name of an herb, we don't really have
enough information to get a sense of is it going to be nourishing? Is it going to be
tonifying? Is it going to be stimulating?

Catnip is a wonderful sedative herb, and it is very useful, especially as a tincture to help
hyperactive children be more focused. But, as with any herb that elicits a strong response,
that strong response goes both ways.

Valerian is a classic sedative herb. Does everybody who takes valerian go to sleep?

John:  I don't think I'm one of those people who do. I think I'm one of the small
percentages that hypes up.

Susan:  It's not such a small percentage. I think it's about 30 percent of the people that
react to valerian by getting hyped up.

John:  OK, well that's good to know.

Susan:  Well, we think about other things that incite strong responses like alcohol.
Stimulant or sedative? Yes, it's both, isn't it? Or, marijuana, stimulant or sedative? Yes.
And the same thing with the catnip. A mom said to me, this catnip tincture was so helpful
in calming my child down and keeping my child focused, so I gave my child four times
as much because we were going on an airplane ride from New York to California. And
the child bounced off the windows of the airplane for the entire six hours, screaming his
head off, only to fall soundly asleep for 12 hours when they landed.

John:  I'm just laughing as a parent who remembers those days.

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 The Seven Rivers of Healing, with Susun Weed
Part Seven: Incite Strong Responses, the fifth river

Susan:  Those days, indeed. I think that if people were offered a choice of riding on an
airplane with no children at all, that many people would probably pay double fare for
that. Excluding, or maybe even including the parents. They all just, let me have an
airplane ride without it. I was fascinated that when the airplanes did a survey of what was
the least favorite thing about the plane rides, that was number one, the children on the
planes. More compassion, folks, it's hard for them to sit still for so long.

But, what I'm saying is that inciting a strong response, especially when you're using
natural means, we cannot be sure of the direction of action, there. And this can even be
true sometimes for drugs, but especially with herbs, massage, acupuncture and so on.

I remember Michael Tierra, when he was just learning acupuncture, and he was trying it
out on people. And, as I said, I don't mind being needled, because I can always close my
eyes and not look at them.

And he needled me, I don't even know what point he needled me at, but again, the next
thing I knew, I was looking up at him from the floor. And he was about as white as I have
ever seen a person be and still be standing.

John:  Acupuncture black‑out?

Susan:  I am very responsive to acupuncture, yeah. And he just knocked me on the floor
from it. He hit something, and some energy went charging through my body, and
p‑toom! It was like an earthquake. So, this is one of the reasons, again, remembering that
this "7 Rivers of Healing" is based on first, do not harm. We've moved into the area where
we are always going to do harm, but that doesn't mean that we are always going to do the
same amount of harm, right?

So, now it behooves us to start to get more subtle. And this is why people are studying
with you, and this is why people are studying with me. This is why people study herbal
medicine, so that they can get more subtle.

So that they, too, can have this discussion like we're having, about the minutia difference

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 The Seven Rivers of Healing, with Susun Weed
Part Seven: Incite Strong Responses, the fifth river

between catnip this way and catnip this way, and oat straw this way and oat straw that
way, and preparing it this way, and this kind of dose and that kind of dose.

So, the water‑based things are going to be safest. Vinegars are going to be next safer.
Tinctures are going to be more potentially harmful, more potentially dangerous, but of
course, because they're stronger.

Once we standardize a tincture, that makes it yet more dangerous. And of course the most
dangerous thing that we can do with an herb that incites strong responses, is to powder
that herb and put it in a capsule.

Just about any herb, that's going to incite a strong response, that we put in a capsule and
give to people, is going to be up there at 5.8 or 5.9. I think we talked a little bit about
ephedra, an herb that for all intents and purposes, is absolutely safe. Over 3, 000 years of
safe use in China, and yet one of the few herbs that is actually outlawed in the United
States, because when we powdered it and put it in capsules, we had dozens of people die.

John:  You know Susan, I have one experience with ephedra. I worked at the herb farm,
now it's this fancy restaurant. Well, Eagle Song and Sally worked there, each of them for
a time. It used to be, before, it was a nursery for awhile. I worked there and my allergies
were bothering me one day. The head of the gardening, and this is before I knew anything
about how to use herbs for medicine, I was just interested in it, so my friend said, "Get a
job at a nursery." I said, "All right." So, that's what I did.

Anyway, the head of the gardening said, "Well, here's an ephedra plant, and why don't
you chew on some of it," and I just chewed on a little bit of that plant. Oh, yeah, it
cleared my allergies, but my heart was racing all night from just chewing a tiny bit.

Susan:  It incited a strong response with you.

John:  It sure did. I never touched any form of it; I don't want to go near it.

Susan:  Like, oh!

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 The Seven Rivers of Healing, with Susun Weed
Part Seven: Incite Strong Responses, the fifth river

John:  Since then.

Susan:  It has that affect on me, too, as a matter of fact. I won't let a dentist use Novocain
on me, because the Novocain now contains epinephrine.

John:  Oh, really?

Susan:  Yeah. And it freaks the dentist out. I say I'll bring some motherwort for you. So
you can calm down, because believe me, it doesn't freak me out, it just doesn't really hurt
that much. We're talking about a couple of seconds of drilling, there. And especially
because I'm needle‑phobic, I don't want those needles coming to my mouth, thank you
very much. So, we can see, and thank you for reminding me, that of course the safest way
to use even herbs that incite strong responses, is exactly as you did, is to pick a leaf of the
fresh plant.

John:  Well, what I forgot, to wrap that up, is I can't even imagine if I took the capsules,
let alone that little tiny bit.

Susan:  I imagine that you're taking a capsule of ephedra, because somebody's told you it
causes you to lose weight. And you're not eating well because you want to lose weight,
and now, you've taken something that is going to start your heart racing. And your heart
doesn't have the flexibility to deal with that.

John:  Yes.

Susan:  I was in a car accident some months ago, and the medical people there kept
taking my blood‑pressure, because it kept going up. And I said to them, "It's not a
problem." At some point they said, "Your blood‑pressure is 190 over 80."And I said,
"And it will be back down to 120 over 70 as soon as you go away. And they wanted it to
be like, that's where it is and that's where it's fixed. But I said, "Look, you can see. You've
taken my blood‑pressure three times and it keeps going up. It's going up because all of
these police are in my face and there's all of you people in my face."

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 The Seven Rivers of Healing, with Susun Weed
Part Seven: Incite Strong Responses, the fifth river

And within three minutes, one of my students had arrived with the motherwort tincture. I
was feeling better, they took my blood‑pressure, and of course, it was right back down to
normal, because I understood that of course my blood‑pressure is going to react to this
stress and it's going to react to this by saying you had better get ready to run away here,
girl. There's some bad stuff going down.

And of course, I couldn't. But, we understand that. So how wonderful that a student was
near‑by and could literally come to my rescue there. We think about when we're using
these herbs to stimulate and sedate, we are often dealing with ourselves or with other
people who are in a situation that might be extremely painful or extremely frightening.

I'm not going to stand by a woman who is hemorrhaging postpartum, after she has
delivered her baby, and give her a lecture on stinging nettle infusion. I'm going to put
some shepherd's purse tincture or some cotton root bark tincture under her tongue, and
I'm going to stop that bleeding.

Then I'll bring her a glass of nettle infusion, and the next day we will talk about drinking
nettle infusion.

John:  Exactly.

Susan:  Right? Now, the heroic tradition is called the heroic tradition, it's not a term I
made up, a term they made up, because they are heroes. So, if I tell 100 pregnant women
to drink nettle infusion while they're pregnant, and none of them have a postpartum
hemorrhage, I'm not much of a hero, am I? I'm a wise woman, because basically I have
disappeared. I don't look like I've done anything. If I don't tell them to drink nettle
infusion, a certain number of them will hemorrhage. And then I can be the hero by saving
them with herbs. And that's visible and right there.

Wow, thank goodness I was there, otherwise they might have bled to death. So, we've
been talking off and on, as we've talked about these rivers, about preventative medicine
and the way that the first four rivers function as preventative medicine.

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 The Seven Rivers of Healing, with Susun Weed
Part Seven: Incite Strong Responses, the fifth river

And sometimes people say to me, "Well, then I guess you only have to use herbs that
incite strong responses if you haven't nourished yourself well enough." And I say, "No,
life is not that simple." You know, no matter how well I nourished myself, that van turned
left in front of me and I ran into it. The van was totaled and my car was totaled, and the
airbags went off and it was a big hoohaw, let me tell you.

You know, hey, he didn't see me coming and turned left in front of me. That's why it's an
accident because you don't see it coming. If he saw me, he wouldn't turned left in front of
me, of course. And if I had seen him, I wouldn't have run into him, either. But I was down
in the dip and he was up at the top as I came up, there he was.

And the same things happens to us. I've had probably more colds in the past couple of
years than I had in the previous ten years. How come? Because I'm hanging out with a
child. And that child needs to develop their immune system by getting colds, and I'm
going to be around that, I'm going to get more colds. That's not because I'm not
nourishing myself well. It's because my immune system is going long for the ride.

Ask people who teach grade school or who teach nursery school how many colds they
have, and they'll laugh and say "I have colds all the time." So again, we don't, in the wise
woman tradition, define health as the absence of disease. We're not saying if you do the
first four rivers right, you'll never be sick. No; if you're never sick, you're dead, come on.

[laughing]

You're going to drop something on yourself, somebody's going to splash boiling water on
you, all kinds of things are going to happen. I was up on the roof, fixing the roof and I'd
put my nice aluminum extension ladder up and while I was up on the roof, somebody
decided it would be in my best interest for them to move the ladder. So when I came
down off the ladder, it wasn't on the flat ground that I had put it on. It tilted a little to the
side. I tried to save myself and I wound up breaking the long bone in my foot of my little
toe.

Is this because I failed to nourish myself? No. Accidents happen. So we're happy to have

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 The Seven Rivers of Healing, with Susun Weed
Part Seven: Incite Strong Responses, the fifth river

the fifth river. We need the fifth river. We're not getting it along without the fifth river. We
need to have some of these things on hand. I call them my herbal medicine chest; the
tinctures and the remedies that I carry around with me for those inevitable things that
happen as part of life. How wonderful that the herbs can be there for us in those situations
as well.

If someone's listening to us and thinking "Oh my goodness. I drink poppy herb tea every
night to go to sleep. What should I do?" Or take valerian every night, or can't wake up
without drinking my chai, then again, our reminder is that we go backwards in the rivers.

The fact that we're talking about them, from the first river to the seventh river does not
mean that's the only direction to go. And this is the question that I often ask people. Let's
plan the path that we will take to move out of this river that we're in and into the river
previous to that one so long as we're on this side of the great divide, we want to be
moving back. We want to be moving toward the other side of the great divide.

Do you have herbs that are favorites for you in terms of their stimulating and sedating
effects?

John:  You mean what herbs that I use that may have stimulating or sedating effects?

Susan:  Herbs that you might use are herbs that you might suggest to people or a
particular difficulty, perhaps that you see frequently that needs something that will incite
a strong response. While we talk about, what could happen with nourishment?

John:  Well, if I'm using herbs that need to incite a strong response, it's often for first aid
type of situation.

Susan:  Yes.

John:  Something amusing for a little bit. I'm looking at my first aide over there. There's
a lot over there.

Susan:  And thus, we come to one of the safe guards. Now, remember again, that setting

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 The Seven Rivers of Healing, with Susun Weed
Part Seven: Incite Strong Responses, the fifth river

a time limit is a safeguard and here, when we are inciting strong responses. Our time limit
ideally is very short as you just said.

John:  Right.

Susan:  Oh, when I want to use an herb to incite a strong response, I am going to be using
it for a limited time.

John:  Yeah.

Susan:  So, to differentiate again, between the tonic herbs and the stimulating herbs, we
are going to use tonic herbs for as long as we possibly can but get some tonic herbs that
we like and they are going to be part of our lifestyle medicine and we are going to use
those herbs, those exercises right up until the die hopefully. But with stimulating and
sedating herbs, we are going to use only as much as we need and only for as long as we
need it and then we are going to stop.

John:  Except for the coffee, I have a hard time on that one. I drink my cup in the
morning and I don't know if I want to stop. I like it.

Susan:  Yeah. For many people, a cup of coffee actually could be considered tonifying. I
would prefer that people who like their coffee not drink it in the morning. If we think
about the actual physiological effect of coffee, it's digested, it's bitter so it increases the
ability to digest your food. When I was teaching in Spain, really the difficult thing for me
was the last day of the meal in Spain is eating very, very late at night. Ten o'clock, eleven
o'clock at night like not unusual. It was hard for me because it was lot of food and a lot of
pretty greasy food.

John:  I dated a Spanish woman for a while and we get back to her mother's apartment or
like we go out and we come back at eleven and her mom is there cooking up eggs.
[laughs] .

Susan:  Right, right. And my digestive system is saying you expect me to eat all these
food and all these grease at ten thirty at night and let you go to sleep? Think again. And

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 The Seven Rivers of Healing, with Susun Weed
Part Seven: Incite Strong Responses, the fifth river

what was traditionally served after this big meal in Spain? Coffee, coffee. But how much
coffee?

John:  You drink it all the time.

Susan:  Actually, a tiny little bit of coffee. It was a demitasse. Right?

John:  Right, right.

Susan:  Right, it's a half cup and a cup is only six ounces. So a half cup is only three
ounces of coffee. It's really a tiny amount of coffee and it is given to you at a point which
your body says digest, pay coffee, let's go.

John:  Right, right, right.

Susan:  And how wonderful and we do know that small amounts of coffee in the diet aid
the brain, aide the memory and help reduce the incidence of Parkinson's disease. Coffee
is not evil. It is not potentially poisonous but if we get up in the morning and
drink...Some people are out there drinking twelve ounces of coffee first thing in the
morning with no food at all.

John:  Right.

Susan:  And so now we have to say wait a second, one of the coffee's function is to help
you digest food. How about you eat some eggs and bacon with your coffee? Right? And
this is where it got started, isn't it? The idea...The original idea was not get up in the
morning and drink a cup of coffee. The original idea was we are going to have a big
hefty, heavy breakfast because we are going to go out and work hard. And we are going
to get some coffee in there to help us digest it. For some people, switching to dandelion
blend, Peter Gale's wonderful Dandy Blend.

John:  I like that.

Susan:  ...is a really good switch off from their coffee in the morning time. And then I

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 The Seven Rivers of Healing, with Susun Weed
Part Seven: Incite Strong Responses, the fifth river

suggest that they have their coffee with a meal later on. So that you still get your coffee
and you still get that thing that you like. There's nothing wrong with liking it or drinking
some coffee but that we get it in a way that is kinder and more useful to the body.

John:  Don't forget the nourishing herbal infusion. [laughter]

Susan:  And don't forget your nourishment. Exactly, but remember even Hippocrates said
that every human being is allowed one vice.

John:  [laughter]

Susan:  And usually our vice is going to come from the fifth river isn't it? It's going to be
something that incites a strong response that we just say, I really like this. I don't care if
people say it isn't good for me, I like it and I'm going to do it. The only caveat I would
say there is do it up but don't overdo it. You're going to drink coffee, good. Go out and
buy the most expensive, organic, fair trade coffee you can get. And then you're not going
to drink too much of it, are you? And hey, it's your coffee. It's your ritual. You're going to
get a gold coffee filter. You're going to get a hand thrown mug for your coffee.

John:  That's right.

Susan:  Right. This is not like I'm going to make a coffee pot and dump it in some old
mug. No, no, no. If you are going to have a vice, really have a vice!

John:  I got my snowman mug the Haley painted me.

Susan:  There you go. Right. So that it becomes a ritual. And in that you are nourishing
yourself.

John:  Right. Ah, got it.

Susan:  Because rituals are very nourishing to us. Even if it's a ritual of doing something
that may be could be counted as not quite great. But again, and especially in the fifth
river, dose, dose, dose, dose, dose, right? A glass of wine with dinner, very healthy. A

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 The Seven Rivers of Healing, with Susun Weed
Part Seven: Incite Strong Responses, the fifth river

bottle of wine with dinner, hm. [laughter]

John:  Exactly. I like killing two birds so I have elderberry wine with it so then I can not
only have the glass of wine but I can also help with flu prevention. [laughter]

Susan:  There you go. And you make wonderful wine.

John:  That's right. [laughter]

Susan:  You know I ask all of my apprentice groups to make wine just on the off chance
that civilization disappears and they can't go to the store and buy vodka. Because that's
how tinctures used to be made. If you look at the older herbals you will find that the
doses are given in wine glassfuls. They couldn't go to the store and buy vodka and make a
tincture the way we do, so they would literally fermented the plant into a wine to get at
those alcohol soluble constituents. Or they would take the plant and soak it over night in
wine, which they had and then they would drink that. Sweet woodruff in wine is called
May wine. It tastes wonderful. So in a way we can't say enough about inciting strong
responses and in another way we can't begin to say anything useful about inciting strong
responses. As I mentioned, this is why people study herbal medicine.

Because this is the place where we do need to have some deeper understanding of how to
prepare the herb, what dose we are going to use and how long we are going to use that
dose and what indications would let us know that the dose is too big or the dose is too
small or we haven't given it long enough or we have given it for too long. These are
things that you can't get from reading a book, from listening to a recorded talk. These are
things that you need to have a mentor. You need to have a teacher. You need to have
experience.

I often tease that I very much believe in animal experimentation. And that is because I
have experimented so much on my animals with herbs, generally to their betterment. I'm
not saying that I just go out and give them anything to see what happens. But certainly
my animals have gotten into some pretty tight situations, again, life being what it is. I
have had the grace to have the herbs I needed at hand. I was talking today to someone

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 The Seven Rivers of Healing, with Susun Weed
Part Seven: Incite Strong Responses, the fifth river

about one of the most dramatic situations where I came home from an evening talk and
when I went out to the barn and a baby goat about three months old appeared to be dead.

She was playing and having a good time when we left home and she was laid out on the
floor of the barn, stiff, her legs stuck straight out in front or her. Her tongue lolling out of
her house and a horrible shade of blue.

John:  Oh, my goodness.

Susan:  And one of the apprentices dropped down and put her head near to the goat and
said, "I can hear her heart beating. She's still alive." And I looked at her and I said, "She
must have eaten poison. I can't imagine what else would bring a goat down like this with
no symptoms of any kind. Let's give her some slippery elm." And we mixed some
slippery elm with some milk from the baby goat's mother. And this apprentice, a
wonderful, wonderful woman, stayed up all night long with the baby goat, dripping this
slippery elm/goat milk mixture into this little baby goat's mouth and stroking her throat to
help her swallow. She was practically paralyzed.

By the morning the goat could stand up. She was blind but she could stand. We continued
to give her slippery elm mixed with milk from a bottle. And it took about two and a half
weeks but the blindness remised as well. So you know, John, I probably wouldn't have
been confident enough to do that on a person. I probably would have taken the person to
the hospital.

But I really thank that goat for giving me that opportunity to see the power of slippery
elm which I would call a nutritive herb. It's a very, very safe herb. It doesn't incite a
strong response. And yet, it is, somebody said to me slippery elm that's for sore throats.

I said, the really thing of slippery elm is that slippery elm absorbed and neutralizes every
poison. And it is certainly something that I have in my first aid kit because I do travel and
I eat food that isn't my own homemade food. Some of it does not go exactly down right.
And laying in a strange bed, feeling strange food, slippery elm to the rescue.

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 The Seven Rivers of Healing, with Susun Weed
Part Seven: Incite Strong Responses, the fifth river

So it's not necessary, of course, as we know to always incite a strong response but
learning about herbs that do that is one of the most important parts of herbal medicine
and then understanding that most of what we call alternative medicine does incite strong
responses. That's what the fifth river is about, whether it's acupuncture or really strong
message, whether it's hydrotherapy, in which we are using hot water and/or cold water.
Whenever we are inciting strong responses we're in the fifth river of healing.

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