“Like herbs themselves, The Business of Botanicals is rich in colors, scents, and flavors and is rooted in the earth—exquisite and messy, beautiful and dirty all at the same time. Armbrecht takes us on a journey to many corners of the world to visitplant growers and collectors, as well as teachers and conservationists. In the true spirit of inquiry, her journey comes back to the heart, the organ of true perception…. If the herbalism we practice is holistic because it considers the whole picture of a patient before formulating a prescription, and the whole plant we use is clearly more than the sum of its constituent parts, so too this book offers a truly holistic perspective. As Armbrecht says, her journey became the medicine these plants offer. . . . That is their promise.”
—Anne McIntyre, MAPA, MCPP, fellow of the National Institute of Medical Herbalists, author of Dispensing with Tradition and The Ayurveda Bible
The promise of herbal medicine is that it is better for us and for the earth. Is that really the case? The end product can only ever be as healthy as the health of each step of the journey.
Yet that requires being able to see behind the veil of an economic system that depends on our not seeing.
In Hedangna, a Yamphu village in northeastern Nepal, the priests and shamans can see double, they can see the living and the non-living, the ancestors on whom their lives in the present depend. Not seeing those ancestors, not seeing what it is that sustains us, these healers say, makes us selfish.
In the same way, not seeing the ways our choices impact the lives and places on the far side of the supply chain makes us selfish. We think of our needs and our rights and not our responsibilities.
Companies that don’t share these stories keep it that way.
It is up to each of us to lift that veil. To ask and to ask again. To buy less, perhaps, and to be more discerning in what we do buy. Through that discernment, we engage. And through that engagement, we heal.