Heart of Herbs Herbal School Podcast
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Heart of Herbs Herbal School Podcast
From Nursing to Herbalism: Discovering the Magic of St. John's Wort with Cynthia Coons
When Heart of Herb Alumni Cynthia Coons shifted from her role as a seasoned RN to an herbal enthusiast, she didn't just change her career—she transformed her life. Her discovery of St. John's Wort oil's power against restless leg syndrome is just the beginning of the story we unpack this episode. Cynthia guides us through her adventures in wildcrafting and the intricate dance of growing her own healing plants, sharing insights that only come from years of hands-on experience and a deep passion for natural remedies.
The healing properties of herbs like lavender and calendula are no secret. Still, when you hear about Cynthia's thriving garden and her practical tips for cultivating these resilient plants, you'll be inspired to start your herbal haven. Our conversation also ventures into the economic side of herbalism, revealing how Cynthia navigates the waters of selling homemade remedies and partners with local apothecaries to bring her St. John's Wort oil to a wider audience.
Joining us from the ranks of our program's esteemed alumni, Cynthia generously imparts wisdom on the therapeutic wonders of various herbs, including a dive into the beloved "boom boom oil" for bruises. The connection between traditional nursing and holistic practices shines through as she continues to support and engage with our student group. For those eager to learn more or seek out Cynthia's oil products, we promise connection, ensuring our listeners can tap into her wealth of knowledge.
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Bingo, bingo. Hi, this is Demetria Clark, the director of Heart of Herbs Herbal School, and this is the Heart of Herbs Herbal School podcast. So today we're talking to Cynthia Coons and she is going to just illuminate us and let us know about herself and the work that she's doing in her community, and I'm really excited to have her on today. So, Cynthia, let everyone know about you.
Speaker 3:Well, it started at the turn of the century, at the fin de siècle. Actually, a few years before that, my husband retired from teaching school and enrolled in a massage therapy program at the Mount Nittany School of Holistic Healing in State College. He also brought home some brochures from the school, one of which was an herbal simpling class that was to begin shortly thereafter. It was one full eight hour day once a month for a year, taught by Jennifer Tucker. Jennifer is still alive and well and teaching and herbaling and doing all that stuff. The school itself doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 3:So when I started that class I was I've been an RN almost 50 years, so all too well acquainted with allopathic medicine. But when I started Jennifer's class, as far as herbs went, I knew nothing. I didn't know what I didn't know. I knew nothing. Years ago my father was sort of interested in what he called yarbs. His idea of herbs was Yule Gibbons and that didn't go anywhere and he's long gone, departed so anyway. So I took this year long class from Jennifer and was much engaged in it. I also had a private consultation with her concerning some issues that I had, chief among them restless leg syndrome. My mother had it. They, the allopaths, treated her with Valium to shut her up and get her out of the hair.
Speaker 3:All right, I had no specific treatment for it at that time and Jennifer introduced me to St John's wort oil, used topically for the remediation of restless legs. It was nothing short of miraculous. It worked instantly and completely and you know that launched the whole deal, although there were other. She taught from the bottom up. She taught basics, but I was a little. She was teaching herbs, the use of herbs, herbs, the identification of herbs and wildcrafting all together, and at that time I did not have access to lovely fairy lake woodland, to to wild crap.
Speaker 3:So I actually started out by using commercially purchased dried herbs from a place in Iowa, herbalcomcom all herbs it's. It's had a couple of names, they're a real basic, no frills. Here's what it is. The herbs would come in these dark blue plastic bags, making them light proof, and with very basic labels that gave the common name and the Latin name and that. So I started infusing those sorts of herbs. But the St John's Wort oil thing. Jennifer had provided me with a one ounce bottle one ounce, little teeny one ounce bottle of St John's Wort oil, and if you're doing your whole leg, that's not going to last very long.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Or both of your legs right.
Speaker 3:So I used up that bottle and I called her and I said I need more St John's Wort oil and she said oh, you're on your own, got to figure it out for yourself. Well, this was about 1998-99, somewhere in there, and at that time Frontier you're familiar with Frontier they sold an eight a one ounce bottle of St John's Wort oil. That was so concentrated it was black Wow, and it was $8 for one ounce.
Speaker 1:Wow, could you imagine that nowadays you can't get a bottle for that cheap?
Speaker 3:No, so I would buy that one ounce bottle of extremely concentrated St John's Wort oil, put it into a clean new eight ounce bottle, fill it up with grapeseed oil and it would result in a lovely dark red St John's Wort oil that assuaged my restless legs very nicely, and I did that for maybe a year or two, and then my husband and I would. We started riding on a bike trail up north of us here up in Jersey Shore, and alongside this bike trail grew St John's Wort Ta-da. It was great. So initially I would pick the flowers, which was basically illegal. It was state land. You weren't supposed to remove anything. We won't tell anyone.
Speaker 3:But the St John's wort was gross, it was profuse, it was just. You know miles and miles of it. And to pluck the flowers doesn't damage the plant and in fact it keeps the plant happy. The plant wants its product to be used. So I would pick these flowers and it was about an hour's drive home again. I come home, put it in oil, sit it on the windowsill and, bingo, I got a nice red St John's Wort oil. We did that for four or five years and the last time when we rode up, went up again to ride the bike trail and pick the saint john's ward. It was gone. There was no to be seen. Um, the literature says saint john's it. It likes to walk, it likes to travel, it doesn't and it doesn't like civilization. If it starts to get crowded it moves on. I don't blame it.
Speaker 3:So I then purchased plants from richter's in canada. You can't buy plants in this country. They're illegal because the department of agriculture deems it a noxious invasive weed. I bought seeds and I bought plants and I had the seeds professionally germinated because they're very difficult to get started. But I got them started and at one time I had a huge flower bed in my front yard and I would be waist deep in St John's board and I taught my husband and my grandkids how to pick the flowers and I would infuse it Um, and I've been doing that ever since. So now we're going, we're pushing 25 years and then some Um. So I studied with Jennifer for a year and then bought books and bought books. Everything rosemary gladstar had read, matthew wood read. Everybody got involved with the american herbalist guild and they had a symposia at seven springs in pitts. Out near pitts is still almost a four-hour drive for me, but I went twice out there and met up with all the American Herbalist Guild people.
Speaker 3:Matthew Wood, jennifer and Matthew are old friends and have stayed in touch with them. I continue to produce St John's Wort oil, my major stock in trade but I also I grow my own lavender. I grow and my calendula story just launched. Last year I had attempted to grow calendula and was never successful. Two years ago I had my front, my big garden out front, got completely away from me I'm old and creaky and I don't bend over well, and the weeds took over and I had the front yard landscaped and had raised beds. But somewhere in between there I missed, missed. I studied with you. Yeah, because that time.
Speaker 3:Well, in 2010, I graduated from the University of Phoenix with a BSN in nurse, a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. I had been a registered nurse for over 30 years, but I went back to school and got a bachelor's degree. Back to school and got a bachelor's degree, at which point I got sucked into teaching at a school down the road from me. A friend of mine taught anatomy and physiology there and they had there was an elderly retired physician who taught pathology. He finally he hung it up, and so my friend who taught A&P said to me you're going to teach pathology at the Valley School.
Speaker 1:Oh am I.
Speaker 3:I said but I'm not a teacher, I'm a nurse. No, no, you have a bachelor's degree that makes you eligible to teach in a private school. Well, okay then, so I did, I taught and it was a it was a canned curriculum from you know, the book people, whatever and so all I had to do was teach it. I had a teacher's manual and I had slides and I had blah, blah, blah, and the prereq was anybody who ended up in my pathology class would have successfully matriculated A&P 1 and 2. So in the process of teaching pathology and these were massage therapy students primarily I would frequently interject and introduce various and sundry herbal remedies for various issues, and then that would produce more questions and more conversation, until the director of the school asked me to develop a class. She wanted an herbal simpling class developed for her massage therapy students. Nice, so I did that. Um, and lord knows, I am not a teacher, Although I remember very clearly when I started studying herbs and didn't know what I didn't know to these people and and there was, it was a kind of a motley crew of people, you know, some of them had some experience with herbs, others had none.
Speaker 3:There were nurses in the group. There were, but primarily they were massage therapy students. But she made this a requisite, a required class for her massage therapy students. Oh, that was nice. And I also acquired a curriculum developer who was in one of my classes, because she says you just go off on tangents. And I knew when I first met Matthew and first listened to Matt. Matthew is a wonder in the herbal world and I have every book ever published.
Speaker 3:And he's incredibly's, he's in dynamo, incredibly knowledgeable, great guy and the worst speaker on the face. But he has Tara now and she keeps him, she keeps him in line. But there you go would ramble and um and on, you know, make you crazy, but anyway, and I knew that's what I was doing. So anyway, we, I did that for a couple years and then COVID hit and COVID essentially shut down the school yeah, yeah, a lot, of, a lot of businesses didn't make it and she used.
Speaker 3:She had a little shop there in the school and she used to sell my salves and my saint john's world oil, which was my primary outlet is there a way for people to get that from you now?
Speaker 1:do you sell it?
Speaker 3:word of mouth, word of mouth. Okay, I meet up with them or they get it. They come to my house okay, cool.
Speaker 1:So what is it that you love about herbalism?
Speaker 3:autonomy, having been in rn for decades, um, and I, I mean, I really can't. I'm reasonably healthy, fat, but healthy, um, but I do have. I had the restless legs issue, which no md would even discuss. Now they want to put everybody on any convulsant drugs for restless legs, but it doesn't work, it doesn't. I mean say, restless legs may very well be something of a seizure disorder, a central nervous system kind of thing, um, but the drugs that we use, starting with delantin on through the rest of them, they just don't work for restless legs, where saint john's wort oil is nothing short of, you know, miraculous. Oh yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1:I love putting it on my legs from everything muscle strain, sore legs, hiking too much, swimming too much, whatever. Too much sun, you know I love I mean I think it's also like one of those oils that I feel like when I put St John's more oil on that, my skin's being kissed by the sun. Yes, it just kind of gives you that kind of warm. I love it, and so that's what it is sunshine in a bottle, yeah for sure, right. So, um, what other things do you love about herbalism besides autonomy?
Speaker 3:Well, mostly that. I grow my own lavender. And last year I had the most phenomenal crop of calendula. You cannot imagine I have enough calendula for the entire East Coast. I bought one little tiny package of seeds at the hardware store isn't that awesome, it was the real stuff. Planted them in this raised bed and they went berserk. No, I love that.
Speaker 3:So I harvested flowers, I harvested seed. My raised bed is about's wider. I can't reach from one side to the other, walk around the perimeter harvesting seeds all along the way, and then of the bed that I just left there and left them go and you know how the flower blooms. And then the flower dies and goes to seed and leaves those little wormy, those wormy. Look at the seeds, yeah. And so those seeds were just deposited in the raised bed. Oh nice, and I thought, well, deposited in the raised bed? Oh nice, and I thought, well, we'll see what happens.
Speaker 3:So I have probably I don't know what you say like a half cup or three quarters of a cup of harvested seeds from last night. That's a lot. Plus, I've given away little pill bottles. Here you want some calendula seeds? I've given away, I don. Here you want some calendula seeds? I've given away, I don't know, three or four to three or four people. Oh, that's awesome. So this spring, when winter finally started to leave it, it has been hanging on like it's like oh, it's like fighting isn't it?
Speaker 3:it's not winter. Oh, it's winter again. Oh, now it's spring, now it's winter, whatever. Um, and our last frost date here traditionally is the end of may, memorial day, or since they redid the zones, it may have backed up to mother's day, but around the first of april, this, my calendula block, uh germinated, and the bed is covered with a bazillion little tiny baby calendula plants. Oh, I love that and I, I was excited, but I'm it's the first of april and we had frost every night.
Speaker 1:And I mean frost, I mean you know, so you're laying out there with an electric blanket to keep them warm at night my grandson, who's quite the plant person, also says you're gonna have to cover these because we're in.
Speaker 3:You know, we're a long way yet from last frost, but I'm like I have lots of seed, I'm just gonna wait and see what. What happens? And those little buggers have survived. The frosts have come night after night and I go out in the morning and look at them and now they're. The bed is a foot away from my front porch, so I don't know if there's a microclimate there. Oh yeah, yeah, that would make sense because of the proximity of the house or something. I don't know. But these bazillion little baby calendula plants are still green, still alive, and um. Now it's cold again today, but last week, the week before, we had some like 60 degree days for a couple of days in a row and I saw them progress a little bit beyond their primary leaves. But then we go back to the, the frost at night, but it doesn't seem to affect them.
Speaker 1:I don't they're just, they're happy and they're not going anywhere, sorry.
Speaker 3:We're waiting to see. That whole entire bed is half St John's wort and half calendula. Oh nice. Last year was the first season in my new raised beds and I had transplanted the St John's wort plants that I could from the catastrophe, plants that I could from the catastrophe, with no expectation of having enough flowers to produce oil. Well, I produced two, two and a half gallons.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love that so you got enough to last you for a while. Are you going to roll around in it? Did you roll around in it during the winter time?
Speaker 3:Well, interestingly enough, on Facebook, last summer, spring I don't know appeared this post from a young woman who was opening an herbal apothecary in the next town, like five miles from me, next town over. So I messaged her and introduced myself blah, blah, blah told her that I produced St John's wort oil and she said oh, I want to buy some. And I posed with her that I would prefer to wholesale her oil, like I would bring her a half gallon jar of St John's wort, then she could bottle it and label it under her label. Oh, nice. And she agreed that was great. That was great with her. So then came how do I charge her for this oil? Well, I have a girlfriend who's an accountant, so we reviewed online.
Speaker 3:David Winston sells St John's Wort oil for $20 an ounce and other people sell it for like, or they list it for about $12 to $15 an ounce, and other people sell it for like, or they list it for about 12, 12 to 15 dollars an ounce. But when you try to order it they always say they're out of stock. But we use those prices to gain, you know, to this side. So we settled on five dollars an ounce, nice, um, for wholesale, yeah, that's a great.
Speaker 3:That's a great deal for them but I took her, you know a brand new half gallon, uh, regular canning jar, a half gallon jar with a plastic lid and a label, and she sat down and wrote me a check for $320 without batting an eye. Nice.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. That's awesome. I mean, I know that you know your St John's wort oil is a specialty of yours. Why do you think it's so special? Is it just like how much you love it or how much energy?
Speaker 3:When I first started using it. I mean I was like an addict I had to have it. I couldn't live without it, and that year that we rode up the bike trail and there was no St John's Wort to be found, I still had a quart left from the previous year to see me through, and that's when I started to order plants and seeds from Richter's yeah, yeah. I like.
Speaker 1:Richter's. I've never been disappointed with anything I've gotten from them. Um, yeah, no, it's funny when, when you make that connection with a plant, um, I think people, people be like, oh yeah, I can make sage on the world, but I think there's just some people who can make that connection. And then there's it's just better you can all follow the same steps, but there's is better.
Speaker 3:It's like something in their body's chemistry, their vibe their whatever Right, and it's like there's is better Well and the thing that I do, um, have always never say never, but I've always had a tremendous or more flowers available to me than I can afford. Oil Okay, oil's expensive. My budget only permits so much. I started out by ordering grapeseed oil from Camden Gray in Miami. I would order two gallons of grapeseed oil and they would ship it to me. Then I got up to where I was ordering a five gallon pail. Yeah, those are hard to open. But the last year I ordered from them, the oil itself was $75 and the shipping was $40. Wow, and I thought you know I've got to do something else.
Speaker 3:Well, fortunately for me, there's a local chap here. He's a farmer, he's a. He's heavily into everything organic and natural and da, da, da, da, da da, everything you want. And he started out. He contracts with local farmers in Pennsylvania, ohio, ohio, new york to grow rapeseed, which the general public knows as canola. I said to him, and so I would buy oil from him. He's local, I don't have to, you know, I drive his plant and buy the oil. I said you got to think of something besides canola. Please don't call it canola. Canola makes herbalist sphincters clench. It's just such horrible stuff. And so one year he labeled it as rapeseed oil and no one would buy it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's kind of a hard name to swallow, right so he went back to call it.
Speaker 3:He calls it canola oil, but his he grows or processes and it's cold pressed. You know no heat, no, nothing. He's. It's a. It's a big industrial operation and but his prices are phenomenal. I could buy five gallons from him is like 62 dollars, right. And he does flower oil too, and so that I haven't even bought my oil yet this year. I usually buy it in January or February, but I haven't bought it this year. I have to replace all my lavender. My lavender got smothered by my Tulsi. I planted 12 Tulsi plants and they were a foot away from my lavender plants, but they went berserk and grew and proliferated, like you can imagine. I harvested. I had friends over to harvest, please, please take it.
Speaker 3:I mean, you can't have too much Tulsi Until you have too much Tulsi. Mothers of lavender plants. Lavender plants are cheap and easily acquired and actually I'm rethinking. I may not even put lavender back in the raised beds. I may plant lavender all around the perimeter of my paving.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah. I mean it is a good hedging crop. You know it is a good border crop. I like lining our fences with things like that, you know. So I guess my last question, lb, is what inspires you the most in herbalism?
Speaker 3:What inspires you the most in herbalism? Well, again, just the autonomy, the ability to produce products that solve problems quickly and efficiently without horrendous side effects. My other big gig is yarrow oil. I call boom boom oil. I babysit two little boys and my next door neighbors have a little boy and a little girl and you know, toddlers tumble right and they get goose eggs. My granddaughter, who's now 19, when she was about two she took a header down the basement steps, smacked her forehead on the cement floor, got this humongous goose egg. She's screaming bloody murder. Her mother called me on the phone. They're both screaming and bawling and it's just total chaos. And her mother's trying to put ice on it and she was having no part of it. So I went over with the yarrow oil and we're sitting in the living room and she's sort of running around in circles hysterically screaming. But every time she got within arm's reach I would swipe the goose egg with the yarrow oil and for 30 minutes the goose egg was gone. That's funny. The bruising remained to some degree, the discoloration.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 3:But she calmed down, quit screaming and bawling. You know, sat my lap and I've used yarrow oil myself. I I would this office I used to work in. I'd jump up from behind the desk and run around the desk in the corner of the desk would jab my very fleshy thigh and hurt like a bugger and make a big goose egg and bruise. Well, swab that off of the arrow oil. The bruise goes away. The goose egg doesn't form. It stops the pain, it's antiseptic, yeah, everything you want it to do. So my boys they call it boom, boom oil. You know, fall down, cry, stand up, daddy, boom boom.
Speaker 1:Oh goodness gracious, I love that. I love that. So it sounds like herbalism is like a family affair. In your family and and everyone who comes in contact with you, it ends up being a family affair. I love that. So how long have you been practicing herbalism again?
Speaker 3:since the turn of the century, so we're pushing 25 years here. Wow, I managed to get myself listed in Matthew Wood's faculty. I'm not quite sure that happened. He did a part of that one night and we were St John's Wort came up in the conversation and I impressed him because I could tell him or anyone how you tell when it's time to pick your St John's Wort. And I said to him in my latitude it's roughly between 10 and 10 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon and you can tell if the oil has risen by looking at a leaf. If you have white dots, those are empty oil glands. If the dots are black, your oil glands are full. And I can't. I mean he knew that that was not news to him, but for some reason it impressed the hell out of him. And then he did.
Speaker 1:It may have been the way you said it too. Like sometimes, even if you know something and you hear the way someone else says it, you're like oh, that makes sense to a broader you know. Like you know more people can absorb it that way, and then you appreciate it. You know you really appreciate the way that they appreciate it. You know you really appreciate the way that they said it.
Speaker 3:So that's awesome and the one, the last year, that I had the big garden and had waist deep St John's wort. It rained and rained, and rained and I was getting panicky. Oh yeah, right, because it would never dry off enough to pick. And I'm in, we're going, we're now approaching the end of June and I'm like we got to do something. So I cut whole stems with leaves and flowers labeled on a cookie sheet and put the cookie sheet in the bed of my pickup truck, which has a black liner, and so, even if it would stop raining for an hour or two, the sun would be in there and and dry it. So that I and I mean before I cut the stems I would check the leaves yes, yeah, yeah, is it's, it's risen, it's in there. And so I cut these stems and sort of bake them on cookie sheets in the back of my pickup truck and then infuse them in the oil. And the other thing I wanted to say is I triple infuse my St John's water.
Speaker 1:Okay, so tell people, what that means.
Speaker 3:Well, I start with a a clean, clear glass gallon jar. I fill it about halfway up with my oil and I set it out. My front yard faces south and the sun blazes in there beautifully. So we start picking. Every morning, after 10 o'clock we go out and we pick all the flowers that have bloomed that morning and put them in the oil. Every day you do that, do do that, do that, do that. Pretty soon the plant material will raise the oil level to the top of the jar.
Speaker 3:So, I took that in the house and I have this crazy frigging rigging that you know the official name of frigging rigging and you pour it.
Speaker 3:It's a strainer and a funnel, and and a wire mesh strainer and a funnel. The funnel is, I bought it at tractor supply. It's for putting oil in tractor trailers. It's huge. And then I bought this other thing. I don't even know what it is officially it's, but it's, uh, it raises the whole rig because you have to keep the bottom of the funnel out of the oil. Like you know, you need elevation, a riser, I guess you'd call it.
Speaker 3:And then that plant material, those flowers and the leaves are so tiny and they will hold a large amount of oil. And they will hold a large amount of oil. So that sits overnight and drains and drains, and drains and drips. And you know, initially, as you pour, you get the bulk of the oil. Yeah, no, goes right through, no problem.
Speaker 3:But I wouldn't. The first time I did it, I looked at that plant material and it was just covered in oil. There was like another ounce or two, and you know oil's expensive. So in fact, every time you change containers you lose oil. So, yeah, yeah, try to avoid that as much as possible. Um, and that started bad. So then it would sit overnight and so that would leave me, that would leave me a half gallon the jar would be half full now of one infusion and I back out front it would go and we would continue picking, pick, pick, pick, pick, day, day, day, day, day and again, till it raises the oil in the jar and then you'd strain that off, take it back outside, continue picking, because I will have St John's work from St John's Day, the middle of June, all the way through till frost. Oh wow, that's awesome till September, october, oh.
Speaker 3:But the first thing I forgot to mention is I use every drop of oil that I can afford any given year with fresh lavender, and I am firmly convinced that the lavender, besides infusing the oil with its own vulnerary properties, it preserves the oil oh yeah, that would make a lot of sense.
Speaker 3:It has such a high essential oil content well, it brought home to me a friend of mine. This is a long story, I'll try to shorten it. She set up shop in Seattle making soap commercially big time. I mean, this was her meat and potatoes. Okay, this was not your kitchen entertainment.
Speaker 3:And it was when I was trying to find another source for grapeseed oil. And I had talked to a guy in California because that's where great oil comes from, it's a waste product of the wine industry. And he I said this guy said he could send me a 55 gallon drum of grapeseed oil for like five dollars a gallon, which was phenomenal, phenomenal price, and that I don't even. I don't know that. We discussed shipping, but the point is she said to me now she's making soap commercially, right, and she said to me I couldn't use 55 gallons of oil, it would go bad before I use it up. And it was like a light bulb went off in my head, because I do five gallons and I, my salves have pretty much guaranteed years shelf life, but I've had salve last three, four or five years. Yeah, yeah, and I'm, I'm firmly convinced it's the lavender. I also will throw in some rosemary too for good measure. Rosemary's good for lots, bugs at bay and yeah, yeah, all that sort of thing.
Speaker 1:Wow, Well, we learned so much from you today. Thank you so much for joining us. I would love to have you on again sometime. I will connect with you. So thank you so much for joining us. Is there any promos or anything? You want anyone to know how they can get your oil or anything like that? Are you good Well?
Speaker 3:I'm pretty good. I mean, I'm here, I have I've dispersed probably a thousand business cards with my name, address, email address and phone number over the years and you know people dribble in here and there.
Speaker 1:OK, well, we'll put your information up. I'll clear with you which information that you want to have when we get ready to put the podcast up there, but I wanted to again thank you so much for joining us and everyone. This has been Cynthia Coons, and she has been talking to us today about St John's Wort, her herbal journey and so much more. So we really appreciate your time.
Speaker 3:Thank you, you're welcome, very welcome for what it was worth, and I am an alum of your program also.
Speaker 1:Yes, oh, yeah that's true, right. We talked about that a little bit. So yes, she's an alumni and she still is in our student group and is always very helpful. So thank you so much. You're very welcome.
