It was super to attend the UCL annual Spices and Medicine Symposium on June 3rd, and to be invited to be on the panel. I’ve attended the event many times over the years and it brings together experts in the field interested in ethnobotany, pharmacology, and this year there was more of a focus on …
In March I ran two blending workshops as part of the “Thrive 55” programme led by Oliver Pratt at the National Centre for Integrative Medicine in Bristol (NCIM). These days were based at the beautiful Ham Green House where NCIM is located, and offers people from busy Bristol organisations the chance to pause, and also …
Read more “Herbal tea blending for Bristol-based workplaces”
This is a celebration of Herbal Reality which is a UK-based open-access platform for herbal research, monographs and practice discussions. The site is an amazing resource and includes tips on how to make your own remedies, recipes, research, and highlights important issues like the sustainability of global herb supplies. My “research seeds” are published each …
I was excited to speak at the Weleda-NCIM festival on Friday 18th July. I did a joint session with Dr Elizabeth Thompson who spoke about the clinical benefits of the Arnica flower (Arnica montana), a beautiful yellow plant in the daisy family. I gave an update on Arnica clinical research having reviewed around 50 randomised …
What an incredible event and incredible community at this years IPM Congress. Full of such knowledgable doctors, practitioners, companies – who are all greatly informed by research and their own professional practice. The congress is all about being holistic – thinking about the whole person – whether promoting health and wellbeing or dealing with disease. …
Delighted to have run another tea blending workshop at Ham Green House recently. This time my lovely guests were three medical students from Bristol University. I always love working with students as I know their lives are so busy and they are never far from feeling stressed and over worked from time to time. The …
Springtime is bursting forth and everything is arriving and flowering early. For me it also brings seven sets of marking across the education providers where I work. These include marking health practitioner business plans and herbalist research skills. Also individual final research projects from our NCIM Extended Diploma in Integrative Healthcare qualification. All of this …
Over the winter I’ve kept the herbal love going by working with local cosmetic creator Laura Pardoe. She is the driving force behind the Cotswold Herb Centre based where we are in Dursley Gloucestershire. On the first Saturday of each month we do a local herb walk and is such a great way to lift …
What a delightful workshop last weekend (Saturday October 26th) in the Nailsworth Sub Rooms. The upstairs room was bathed in sunshine and there was plenty of room for all of the herbal materials and attendees to spread out. The workshop had a musical theme as all of the participants were singers, and as a saxophonist, …
Autumn has its own vibe for me – September is my birthday month and usually I am doing some teaching so it marks the start of the new academic year. But it is also a time to explore as there is still so much going on around us, and with warmer extended seasons, there are …