This is an interview with Rox Madeira (she/her) a herbalist based in Scotland. In this episode we explore all her community herbalism work, including solidarity medicine making with refugees, the community learning apothecary and many other projects!

Links & resources from this episode

• Rox’s website
• Movement in Thyme
• The Sage’s Cabin Podcast
• Films for Justice Herbalism and Climate Change event
• Herbalism and State Violence Book

Find them all at solidarityapothecary.org/podcast/

Support the show

Music from Sole & DJ Pain – Battle of Humans | Plant illustrations by @amani_writes | In solidarity, please subscribe, rate & review this podcast wherever you listen.

Welcome to the Frontline Herbalism podcast with your host Nicole Rose from the Solidarity Apothecary.

This is your place for all things plants and liberation.

Hello, welcome back to the Frontline Herbalism podcast.

I'm really excited to bring you an interview with someone called Rox, who lives up in Scotland and is an amazing herbalist and community organiser, doing awesome stuff.

We're going to be focusing on sort of solidarity medicine making.

So the work she's been doing making medicine for different kind of refugee projects.

She's been very active in our mobile herbal clinic Calais for a long time.

So yeah, I think anyone that wants to do kind of projects or organizing or solidarity work will find it really interesting.

Just a cheeky reminder that there's only a few days left now to order a copy of the Herbalism and State Violence book.

I'm so excited to be posting them out, they're going to arrive at mine on Tuesday and then they will be out in the post, I ship worldwide.

Put a link in the show notes if you want to learn more about the book and I'll also put a link in the show notes to an event that That I'm speaking at that Rox is organized about kind of climate change and resilience and herbalism.

So check that out too.

Okay.

I hope you are well, take care.

Okay.

Welcome Rox.

Please, can you introduce yourself, your pronouns, like any political affinities or projects that you'd like to include?

That would be amazing.

Hi, I'm Rox.

I she, her, and I live in sterling shore in Scotland.

I'm a mum, I've got three pretty small children.

Okay.

Amazing.

I didn't realize you had three kids.

That's pretty that's pretty epic.

I imagine they keep you pretty busy.

So I was like revisiting your website to prepare for the interview and I just could not believe like all the different things that you do.

And I just wondered if you could share briefly about like what you do in kind of general, and then we could like dive a bit deeper into some of the particular projects, but yeah, just give us a bit of an overview of like everything that you're, you're up to at the moment.

Yeah, I know.

I think I do quite a lot and then I'm trying to always cut down and trying to make it look more streamlined because I think people are a bit, maybe get a bit overwhelmed, but basically I'm a community herbalist and I'm a trained nutritional therapist, a yoga teacher, massage therapist I take people out on foraging walks.

I run women's circles.

I have a patron where I do various things online, like kind of online workshops.

And then I do one to one consultations like in person and on zoom as well.

And then, so I've run my own business since probably about 2011 in kind of various kind of guises.

And then I set up Movement in Thyme, which is a nonprofit in January, 2022, when my third baby was two months old.

Yeah.

Amazing.

Yeah.

Like I can, I imagine, I don't know how you, I mean, everyone always says that to me, like, how do you do all these things?

But I was like, wow, so many things.

So what, yeah, what inspired you to create like Movement in Thyme?

Like, what does it do?

And, and also like, how did you land on that name?

Cause it's really cool.

Yeah, so it was kind of, it was after all the kind of craziness of the pandemic.

So I was just, everything just seemed, I don't know, kind of.

Yeah, I just felt like that all the things that I could offer would be really beneficial if I could get them out to a wider audience, basically.

And then I saw things like herbal remedies and stuff, and they were kind of being touted as being good for like everybody, like sort of medicine for the people.

But then at the same time, they were really unaffordable and like learning about it was really unaffordable and, you know, It kind of has become this kind of middle class luxury and kind of other people feel that I think they're going to feel that they can't access it.

And the same with things like yoga which is another thing that we do in Movement in Thyme.

So what I wanted to do was bring them together, particularly the kind of the movement aspects of like kind of yoga and gardening and nature connection and then the herbal aspect as well.

And so, yeah, like a few years ago, I, Before I had kids, I actually started, I ran a yoga class for refugees and it was really hard to sustain it because I didn't have any money coming in from anywhere.

And so I kind of sold a bunch of stuff to try and make it work so that I could pay for people to come to the classes and stuff.

And then obviously I thought, well, this isn't actually going to be sustainable for me.

It's not going to work.

And then I had my kids and so then I kind of stopped doing that and then at the time that I saw that the Scottish government, they had money that they put aside for grants to, for projects for like health and wellbeing.

And I was looking at it and thinking that, well, all the stuff that I do totally fits that.

And I couldn't apply because I wasn't a CIC.

And then I looked into that and I saw, okay, it's actually really easy to set up a CIC, which is a non profit.

So I basically just set it up and then I figured I'd apply for the grant and if I got it, then I'd kind of figure out how the rest of it worked.

And yeah, I was kind of surprised cause I, we got the grant, I got the grants and then I thought, right, okay, now I need to like make this nonprofit work and get other people involved.

And so that's kind of how much, how that started.

And I just kind of started looking around and talking to other people and trying to get other people to become involved.

And now we've got, there's four directors and we've got some other people that help run the workshops.

And I think one of the important things for me was to try and make it so it's sustainable.

We're still struggling with that, trying to figure out how we make money to keep it going.

But I think I want to be able to, everybody to get paid.

Having said that I do loads and loads and loads of the work, loads of the admin work and everything for free.

But apart from that, I want to try at least get some of it paid.

And the name, I guess, cause yeah, I wanted to include the kind of movement aspect and the herb aspect, and I guess it's kind of like a play on words.

It's kind of a movement in our time that something that we're trying to create.

Yeah, that's kind of how the name became about.

Amazing.

Yeah, I've definitely been in that community interest company world where, yeah, it's a lot of grant chasing and yeah, people don't like to cover like the core costs, do they, to make things happen, but they'll sort of pay for like a session or thing.

And it's, yeah, I remember it well.

But you're right, like me and I had an interview with Rasheeqa.

Do you know Rasheeqa?

Yesterday from London.

And yeah, we were, we had a long conversation about this of yeah.

Kind of like how, yeah, people just have to get paid these days, like to keep projects going and stuff.

Anyway, can you share a little bit about the solidarity medicine making you've been doing?

So I don't know if she I've seen her online and I've kind of messaged her online, but I don't actually, I've never met her.

But yeah, I totally agree that it's that thing because you can't just keep doing things if you don't make any money and you just kind of give, give, give all the time, but yeah.

So to the solidarity medicine making so I was volunteering with the mobile herbal clinic in Calais since 2019, I think.

And I really wanted to do more.

Medicine making, but I know that the the clinic in Calais, they didn't have a lot of money and I couldn't put afford to keep putting it my own money into it.

So that was kind of one of the goals when I set up Movement in Thyme was that we would make medicines that we'd get community to make medicines and that we'd kind of, that's kind of the whole kind of ethos is that we get people in the community.

to make, to learn how to make medicines themselves.

We leave medicines for people in the community and then we send medicines to Calais.

Obviously we can't do that every single month, every single week because we're doing, we're doing, we're doing medicine making all the time.

So we try and put as much as we can though to go to Calais and we've made things like the bruise balms and cough syrups and then I've got workshop coming up making indigestion tablets and we're just As we're getting recipes, we're trying to just kind of incorporate it in and then stock up on the remedies and then get people, connect with people who are traveling down south to try and send them down.

And then I find when I'm doing talks about the situation in Calais that the people who come, they really want to donate like clothes and stuff.

So if I say they don't have shoes and they're walking around with snow, people always wouldn't say, Oh, how can we donate socks or hats and scarves and things.

So I just recently connected with the mobile solidarity clinic in Calais who take donations of clothes and so I started collecting clothes and so I'm going to start sending clothes down to them as well.

So that's just another thing.

So my house is like covered in herbal stuff in clothes and just, yeah, every time people come to my house, they're like, Oh, why is there so much stuff here?

And I'm like, well, yeah, nice.

Kind of part of it.

Oh my god, I know.

I really know that feeling.

Of stuff being everywhere.

Not so much clothes for me.

I think I've set a boundary of like, I'm just doing medicine.

But yeah, I mean clothes are like really, really needed there all the time.

Yeah, and that's like, so awesome.

Like you've been such an amazing, like consistent person in the Calais project, like doing loads of amazing admin and, you know, blagging donations from all these companies, like heat packs and stuff, and then yeah, doing all this medicine making too.

So do you you also have, so when you say you like you're leaving medicine, like, and you're sort of sending the surplus to Calais or making specific Calais things, like what other kind of projects have been receiving the medicine or where is that kind of going?

So we've kind of connected with other projects.

So there's like a cafe.

Well, it used to be a cafe, but now it's a a community space called Milk in Glasgow, and they do a lot of refugee work and they also do a lot of work with other community groups.

So we run our workshop, medicine making workshops there, and then we've kind of created this kind of I don't know, a couple of shelves basically, which is like our community apothecary and we leave products there and they can be picked up for free or by donation because we have a donation box.

And then we've also got another project that we work with in another place outside of Glasgow that we've done some workshops with them.

We set up a garden with them, growing herbs.

And we also, they have a a community fridge.

So we've left some stuff with them as well.

And another place in Stirling, we're just beginning to set up where we're doing some workshops with them.

And then they also have a community fridge for, for anybody in the community to come and pick up things.

And with them, we're also running some refugee yoga classes.

So the idea is that we're hoping to leave items alongside the community fridge so that we can encourage them to go to the yoga class and pick up things from the community fridge.

Plus our remedies will be there as well.

I think we're still trying to kind of figure out how to develop it all and what's the best way to do it.

And we're, we're trying to make kind of the remedies as safe as we can.

And, you know, obviously we're keeping notes of everything that we're tracking notes of everything we've made and where they're going and everything, but Yeah, but obviously we're kind of, it is very much a kind of, it's up to the people to decide whether they want to take them and, and we do obviously have on the labels, you know, take this amount and everything, but obviously we can't track it and we don't have, we haven't taken like histories for people, but we're trying to keep them as generic, I guess, as possible.

Amazing.

And do you find that they're disappearing off the shelves?

Like, are people taking them in your experience?

Yes.

Yes.

People are definitely taking it.

And every time I go, there's hardly any left.

So we're on a constant kind of mission of having to constantly make more.

So yeah, so it's like a constant thing.

Cool.

That's awesome.

And what sort of you mentioned cough syrups.

Yeah, what, what other things are you, are you making or like leaving for folks?

So we've done, I'm trying to think, we've done fire cider we've done various vinegars we've done some glycerites like lemon balm glycerites I'm trying to think what else.

We've done all sorts of stuff because we've been doing the clinic in, the one in Glasgow, has been running weekly since the summer.

So we've been doing all sorts of things.

Sometimes like we haven't made enough to leave, like we've been doing even things like kind of bath bath salts and all sorts of things like that.

The ones in Stirling, we've just set up.

I'm kind of finding there's a lot of people already, A lot of organizations set up in Glasgow and they're kind of quite well, it's easy for us to go in and join with them, whereas in Stirling it's taking us a little bit longer to kind of make inroads, I guess, and to kind of get people to want to work with us, or even to get venues to even just reply when we were asking to hiring spaces and stuff, so it's just taking a little bit longer.

But I think there's like most of the refugees are based in Glasgow and, but they've started to kind of be dispersed other places.

And there are some in Stirling now as well.

And since that's kind of, that's where I live, that's my area where I live.

So that's kind of where I'm wanting to set things up, I guess.

Awesome.

Yeah.

I know Glasgow is like a real, like, disbursement city, isn't it?

Which is this, like, horrible state language of where they locate people who are seeking asylum, and then generally people are living in really shit accommodation or hotels or kind of other precarious situations.

So I think one of the things that people often ask me is why I support refugee work in particular, like the Movement in Thyme work, how my other work pretty much is accessible to everybody.

And especially Movement in Thyme is open to everybody, but people often ask why am I particularly focused on women's work and refugee work?

And I think Probably part of that is because of my heritage.

So I'm half British and half Iranian.

And so I lived there during the war with Iraq.

I don't really remember it cause I was a baby, but I do remember being there after the war had finished when everything had been full of sanctions from now, from, well, from then onwards, and there was like going to school with like bars in the windows and things.

And I remember like thinking that, you know, there was loads of rations and everything and I remember We, we left, you know, we moved to Britain and, you know, that was fine because I had this passport and I had this opportunity that I could just go wherever I wanted in the world and my British passport kind of opened up the fact that I could, you know, holiday wherever I wanted to.

And then there was, there was actually one time when we were coming back from France and my mom and dad, my sister was actually born in Iran and my mom and dad hadn't actually registered there.

As being a British national and we got stopped at the border coming back from France and they made her get out of the car and she was very young and they questioned like, was she allowed to back into the country?

And they phoned the schools because they actually, at that time, they'd taken us out of school to go on holiday because it was cheaper, but they phoned the school and the school said, Oh yeah, she is registered here and she does live here.

And they let her back into the country.

But I mean, you know, there were, There was that kind of tension, I guess, that they could have, you know, not let her back into the country.

And I mean, what were they going to do there?

She was like, I don't know, I can't remember, four or five, six, something like that.

She was very small.

They were only going to keep her there.

So I guess that kind of stuff has made me think about it.

And also because like my family in Iran, you know, they can't leave the country.

They can't just go with their Iranian passports anywhere that they want.

They can't just travel the world.

And also I think one of the things that kind of made me.

I realized this as well was like when I went to America one time and one time I was traveling through to go to Mexico and one time I was in America and both times because they saw my name, my maiden name on my passport, they gave me like extra searches and like, you know, Bomb swabs and made me stand in special queues and where nobody else is standing.

And, and I just kind of thought of just like extra suspicion.

And I just thought that was just really annoying and it's really kind of pisses me off really.

So that's one of the reasons.

And I was lucky because I had this British passport.

I didn't need to leave as a refugee, but other people obviously do.

So which do they have it like a million times harder.

And then people are like, you know, fleeing from war torn areas from, and they've got so much trauma having to flee and so much trauma from what they've seen.

And then from all the trauma that they have to travel, they're trying to get to places of safety and they just don't get, you know, any help.

Accepted by people and that just, I think it's just horrible.

And like, even when they get to places, maybe they get to Britain or Calais or wherever it is, they've managed to get to, and they're still treated differently and they still don't have this feeling of safety.

And I just think that we need to change the way that we, We are thinking about people in the world and how we like accept them and how it's not different when people aren't different, we're all the same.

And I think, I mean, this whole Rwanda plan is just completely ridiculous and illegal, and I can't believe we're still going through with it.

And I can't believe that people are even considering it as a viable option.

And then I guess what also used to annoy me.

was as a woman, you know, when we wanted to go outside, I'd have to go and get on like a scarf and long baggy sleeve tops and baggy trousers and like really cover up.

And that used to really annoy me, but at the same time, I find that when you, if you mention it to folk here, they have this kind of image that everybody in Iran is like fully hidden.

under a burqa, face covered and everything.

And it's only the women that have to do it.

And that's not true either.

Like, so, I mean, a lot of Iranian women will have loads of makeup on and there's always this kind of play with like how far back their scarf is going.

And, you know, obviously we've seen recently that scarves have been taken off and things.

And I think it's not quite the image that people see of there.

It's obviously, yes, it's very restrictive.

And yes, you can go to jail and everything for not wearing your hijab and wearing your headscarf.

But, you know, also men have to cover up as well.

You know, they don't just, you don't see men walking around.

It's very much in like shorts and t shirt either and I just think there's a lot of people here don't know about other countries and unless people actually go traveling and actually see places, they don't know, and they kind of have this image that the media just tells them about People who come from these countries who are like all terrorists and out to kill people or they're all backwards.

And, you know, obviously it's not like that.

People in every country are the same as we are.

They just want to live their lives.

They want to be with their families.

You know, people don't want to go fleeing wars.

They don't want to be in wars.

They don't want to go fleeing them.

They want to be next to their family, you know, the same way that you do.

And I think it's that trying to kind of, make people see things in a different way.

And I mean, I hope that all this kind of atrocities has happened in Palestine has opened people's eyes up a little bit, but I mean, I don't know if it has.

I mean, there was like a big thing where everybody opened up to Ukraine, but we didn't see the same opening of arms to the Syrian refugees, for example, that are still stuck at yeah.

Okay.

So yeah, that's like really awesome.

That Yeah, like people are making the medicine, you're leaving them, people are able to take them yeah, and like I can see also like from your website and just from knowing you that like bringing people together to learn is like such a big part of your work, and I'm always like really in awe of Herbalist that can do so much kind of like popular education work, like group medicine making and stuff, because I think I don't know if it's like a PTSD thing for me or just burnout from doing like huge amounts of similar things, like with a community food hat on.

Yeah, I've got into a terrible habit of just like being alone in my herb shed, doing everything, listening to podcasts, but that being very like nourishing for me.

Anyway, but it's something I definitely want to change in the future.

And I know having a baby, I'll definitely need many more hands on deck.

So yeah, what role does this kind of like community learning.

like, aspect play for you in your work?

And what does the, is what you've been talking about the community learning apothecary?

Or is that another thing?

Yeah, I totally know what you mean.

Like, I get the moments where I just want to go out and like, do loads of learning with people.

And then other times I just want to stay in my house and not see anybody.

And I think that's kind of the winter time.

I'm very much like kind of hibernation mode.

But yeah, what I've been talking about is the community learning apothecary.

And I think the kind of education part is really quite a big component of what we're doing because I think in general Glasgow has, and Scotland in general, has not a great kind of health record.

Glasgow's pretty, got quite a bad, like, not, what's the word, not death rate, but Life rate, I don't know, whatever you call it, but

Mortality rate

yeah, it's pretty low.

And so I think we're trying to, we want to make inroads in that.

So it's not just about refugees.

I want to also access other people who maybe don't necessarily know about herbal remedies, or there's a lot of people who've kind of go, Oh yeah, my gran used to use that.

And it's trying to kind of bring that back.

And there's still loads of work for us to do to kind of get in and to reach those people.

So we've just, we're just very much kind of like at the beginning.

And I think it's just, yeah, I just want to bring that back.

And there's also like this, even though there's a lot of people that support kind of refugees and are quite welcoming to refugees here, there's also a lot of people who are really against against them.

So when we're saying like, Oh, we're tending stuff to Calais, I've had people who I know who are like my friends, I guess, who like have said, okay, I would support your projects if it was for any other group, but not refugees.

I think that's kind of part of what Movement in Thyme is.

I wanted to make it so it's not just about them.

It's kind of supporting everybody.

And so like we want, I want to be very much open to anybody to be able to come and which is why we're running all the clinics.

We run them on a sliding scale.

And it's just all on Eventbrite.

So there's no questions asked.

We don't need to know how much anybody's paying.

We're not asking any questions.

Yeah.

And then we're trying to make connections with other groups so that we can kind of go in, like I did a group with a men's shed.

And it was very much new to them about working with herbs and stuff, but you know, they enjoyed it.

And I think that's kind of the thing.

It's just trying to get it out to as many people as possible and trying to show them that it's not this scary thing.

I don't know.

And just to show people, it's not, I think people keep going.

Or they doesn't need to be an exact amount.

And I'm very much like, Oh, you know, if it's over, it's fine.

It's a bit like cooking.

You just, you just kind of play about with it.

And just making it more accessible, I think.

And then kind of another thing that we're trying to do is set up community gardens because I think it's really important to develop the sustainability around growing the herbs and around the whole climate change and I'm kind of really interested in how we can develop community resilience around people knowing what herbs are around in preparation for disasters because where I stay is always flooded, gets flooded all the time and I just think it's quite an important role that we herbalists can play in mitigating climate change and things.

Amazing.

Yeah, for sure.

Like I did a little tour up in Scotland a couple of years ago and did a workshop with this like recovery group who were kind of like lots of like former prisoners and people kind of in active addiction or like recovering from addiction.

And yeah, it was just like tons of fun, like, and people were really receptive to it, but like, I can see how, yeah, that community education stuff is so important with herbalism because There's just so much prejudice around it, isn't there?

Like people are so like, what?

And then I'm like, Oh, so you don't drink to your coffee.

And they're like, Oh yeah, I do.

And I'm like, well, yeah, you're making like herbal medicine, like all day long, you know?

But yeah, yeah, yeah,

exactly.

Yeah.

I think it's just trying to make it so it makes more, more sense and more accessible.

And I've done yoga with like groups like that ex addicts and things like that, recovering, recovering groups and things.

And yeah, I found there were even with that, people are kind of like, It's more acceptable because it's almost like everybody knows about it, but at the same time people are still like, oh, I don't know about this and, but then when they started doing it, everybody really enjoyed it.

Amazing.

Yeah.

And like, I think that kind of like work in a particular geographic area is like very inspiring to like Rasheeqa and I were talking about this, this week of yeah, how we really need this like local infrastructure where lots of people have the skills, lots of people have access to medicine.

You know, like people actually have opportunities to learn about herbalism because otherwise, you know, it's just going to be kind of gate kept by like specialists.

Right.

So.

So the other thing I saw on your website and I think I've maybe seen a couple of Instagram pictures was about the historical herbalists and I just, yeah, I just was like super curious about that and wondered if you could share more about that kind of aspect of your work.

Yeah, so that's kind of like living history workshops and we've done a we've gone to various kind of festivals, I guess.

And I guess it's kind of broadening the scope of engagement and kind of just showing that how herbal medicines had like quite a, a long history and a long it's got longevity and how then just looking at like, how people have used herbs for such a long time in and how to kind of go back to basics.

And just looking at it in a different way.

And just, yeah, it's just been kind of fun, actually, just recreating old remedies.

And then it's, it's just been fun trying to actually just getting dressed up in costumes and being like a medieval herbalist for a day, or like being like a Viking herbalist for a day.

So it kind of, I don't know, brings it a bit more lighthearted and just takes it to more people.

Yeah, it's gonna go on my bucket list to come up and dress up, like, I think it just looks like tons of fun when I saw it, I was like, that's amazing have people been kind of into it, like, have people enjoyed it, that have come to the workshops and stuff?

Yeah, so we're mostly, we've mostly been doing festivals, but my plan is I want to do like workshops with it as well, because I think people would really like it because people that have come to see us at festivals have totally loved it.

And when we've mentioned that we were thinking about doing a retreat where people can come and just get dressed up for like a day or a weekend, people have been like, Oh my God, yes, we want to do that.

So that's kind of in the plan, plan, in the, Plans for the future.

Amazing.

Awesome.

So yeah, another kind of like big theme of your work that sort of stands out is sort of like ancestral connection and like animist work and the women's circles you do or like wise women ways you call it.

I just wondered like, yeah, what does that kind of look like and how is that work important for you and kind of how does that connect to your kind of herbalism?

Yeah, so I kind of, I run that from my own business, kind of separate from Movement in Thyme.

But obviously it all kind of interrelates eventually.

But I guess, like, with the women's circles, it's, I kind of feel that, you know, we've kind of made, obviously, as women, like, lots of, Progress with women's live and everything.

But at the same time, there's like just so much stuff that we don't know.

And like, for example, this is not herb related, but it's like when I was did when I was teaching yoga ages ago, somebody came into the class and she had like a prolapse and at the time I had absolutely no idea what that was and.

I went and I was like, looked up and then I was like, Oh my God, this is like a thing that happens that I didn't even know anything about.

And then I went and asked my yoga teachers, nobody knew anything about it.

I asked like another girl that studied with me, who was also a gynecologist.

She didn't know anything about how to deal with it or what they should people can do.

And they couldn't do any yoga classes.

And so that kind of just sent me off on a whole like, kind of another kind of route of trying to figure out, okay, well, why don't we know this stuff?

It's like such a massive thing.

Loads of people are walking around with it.

It has massive impact.

And then after you have kids, you know, people, you start to hear people talking more about it because it's more of a, an issue.

And so, yeah, that kind of took me off on that route.

And then also I think having kids also had, and having to like fight for.

Things that I wanted it with for my kids or how I wanted to give birth and not have interventions and things like that also sent me off on that kind of that kind of women's route, I guess that I wanted that where, where the women's circles came from.

So people could kind of come together and talk about things.

And I just sort of run mother's circles as well.

They're also kind of developing, cause I only just started in them at the end of last year.

So I'm still trying to figure out how to do it.

But I feel like there's just so much that we need to talk about that we don't talk about.

There's never spaces to talk about this stuff and you don't get that option of, of being able to talk without anybody, without feeling judged or without anybody kind of jumping in and interrupting you or like giving you their opinion.

And yeah, I just thought that was really important.

And especially around things like kids and stuff, because they just take up so much of your life and they just like completely just turn it on your head.

Well, this is, this was my experience.

This is how I find it, found it.

And then the animist aspect yeah, I guess that kind of relates with the historical herbalist stuff, because I just feel that it's this, we've kind of had this forgotten connection with the land that we've kind of forgotten that we used to think that everything was.

Everything was people like, you know, plants are people and trees are people and rivers are people and, and I kind of, when you go out, when I go out and I kind of have this feeling and this sensation of like, I don't know what spirit energy that things are, everything has a life force.

And I just feel that if we regained that connection, that we would be more likely to want to look after the land and work in solidarity with it rather than just using it.

So rather than looking at herbs and just going, Oh, how, what can I do with you?

We could kind of work.

together with the herbs and try and look after them at the same time.

And then I also think that the kind of wisdom and tradition they used to kind of bring in, then they used to kind of communicate with the spirits of the land.

And when they gave their remedies, they didn't just kind of give it like a pill, if you know, like, which is kind of sometimes how we sometimes give things now, there was kind of a whole ritual involved and charms for people to say.

And so people became really Kind of involved and active in their own healing.

They had to really kind of want to have the healing and, and I think that in maybe in that sort of nowadays speech is kind of like giving people affirmations or we know like the kind of the placebo and how it's important that people feel that, or they believe that the healing is going to happen.

And I think it's just trying to, that component I feel is missing.

And I think it's trying to bring that component back in.

And that's how I'm trying to figure out how to do that and how I can fix, bring that in better.

And so like, yeah, on my Patreon, one of the things I do is Journeys with the plants.

So it's like, we'll be drinking the teas and meditating the plants and feeling the plant energies, and then going out and sitting with plants and kind of getting to know them and kind of.

connecting with them on a different level, I guess, than just taking them as medicine.

And then I'm just starting a new course this year, which is weaving the feminine.

And the idea of that is to bring in this kind of animist land, the ritual kind of spiritual work connecting with plants and then kind of intuition, imagination, kind of all into it and into like an embodied way so that we can kind of look at the world in a different way and sort of bring healing in a different way.

Amazing.

Yeah, that sounds really, really beautiful.

And I think it's, yeah, it's often, you're right, like it is often the kind of missing part of herbalism somehow.

Or there's often people that focus just a lot on the kind of like ethereal spiritual stuff, but not necessarily on the like medicine making or groundedness of it.

But I think, I think you've got this really beautiful blend of all the things, if that makes sense.

Yeah, I think, I just think that's kind of the thing that I'm trying to, I'm finding difficult to do because I don't want it to be too woo, you know, because it's like, I think it can be really practical and it's just trying to find that balance.

Yeah, for sure.

And I think like most herbalists are kidding.

Like, I think even the herbalists that try really hard to be like, I'm wearing a white coat and I'm like basically trying to be a doctor.

Like, I think even them, you sort of get them together and it's like, yeah, you're all witches.

Like, I taught this medicine making course last summer, which was tons of fun and like, just like super spontaneously, like the whole group started singing while they were like making medicine and stuff.

And we had this conversation about like harvesting and like consent and asking plants, is it okay if I take a bit?

And then we did like a little go around of like experiences of, Like when the plant has said no, you know, like getting cut or getting a bramble in your face or falling over or like, and it was just, yeah, so funny that under the surface, like everyone was like feeling all that sort of magic, if that makes sense.

But yeah, I, yeah, exactly.

That's exactly what I mean.

And it's just that kind of accepting it and acknowledging it, I think, and just say, yeah, this is.

Yeah,

for sure.

For sure.

Okay.

So I know you're also a fellow podcaster.

I wondered where can people find your show and like, what is

it about?

Yeah.

So it's called the Sage's Cabin.

And it's on all the usual podcast stations and also on my website, https://www.roxmadeira.com/.

Yeah, I, yeah.

it it's about, so I listened to lots of podcasts and yeah, I feel like I learn quite a lot from them.

And then, but I find that they're all very American based and I just wanted to bring more voices from UK herbalists.

But then as it's kind of progressing, I'm starting to talk to a lot of more authors from the kind of feminine perspective and food perspective.

And it just, it's just always evolving.

It kind of started out where in the pandemic actually, when I just, I think I just felt a need to talk to people.

And I just wanted to like, Talk to other people and so I just kind of began from there and it's just kind of continued

Amazing and before we started recording you said it's much easier of being the interviewer, isn't it?

Yeah, so before we finish like is there anything else you'd like to share about All your like many different hats and different projects And also if you can let us know where people can kind of find you and I'll put all the links in the show notes But yeah, where can people keep up to date with all your amazing work?

Yeah.

So I guess just say that like Movement in Thyme, we.

obviously we run workshops in central Scotland, but we also take donations online and we organize hen parties, like Zen hens and like birthday parties and things like that.

And we also planning on running retreats.

So if anybody wants to come over to the beautiful national park in Scotland and have a come to a retreat, then yeah, we're going to have that.

Maybe you could sign up onto our newsletter and you'll find that on our website, which is movement in time, time as in the hub.

com.

And then.

My website is https://www.roxmadeira.com/ and I'm on Patreon and Instagram as wiseherbalways and the Sage's cabin is my podcast.

Amazing.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thanks so much for listening to the Frontline Herbalism podcast.

You can find the transcripts, the links, all the resources from the show at solidarityapothecary.org/podcast.