DANIEL REDWOOD: What first drew you to herbs and plants? What are some of your early memories?
 
TOM WOLFE: I was trying to decide whether I should continue my studies to become a physician, and I worked in Nantucket Hospital on Nantucket Island, off the coast of Massachusetts. There was this elderly gentleman who worked for IBM, and they were giving him potassium pills. I looked it up, and found that there was just as much potassium in a banana as in the pill.

So I pointed this out to the doctor and the doctor threw a fit. That was an early memory. At the same time, I had a friend who was in medical school, who is now a physician. He sent me a box of medicinal herbs, with a note that said, “You should get into this.”

He also sent me a copy of Back to Eden, one of the great books in the American herbal tradition. And that’s how I started to use herbs. But the big thing that made me use herbs was when I first walked into Smile Herb Shop in 1974. I had had a chronic cough for three years, and had been through the regular medical route.

The woman who then owned Smile told me to drink half a gallon of yarrow tea. She knew that I did pranayama, the yogic breathing, so she told me to do some pranayama and drink half a gallon of yarrow tea. I did that, and I spit up some bloody mucus and the cough was gone.
 
REDWOOD: This is not a half a gallon a day for two weeks? This is just one time?
 
WOLFE: Yes, one half a gallon, one time. And then the deep breathing. It just completely released this thing from my throat, and it was gone!

I was just really struck with the question of why this is not common knowledge. Why does no one know about this? At that point I decided to study with this woman, and then a week later she decided that she didn’t want to be indoors anymore, and she sold me the shop for $200.

It’s a wild Sixties story. But that was when I decided to study herbs in earnest, to find out what she knew and what the other herbalists in D.C. knew.

Most of the herbalists then were older African Americans. I started running Smile, which at that point was in the basement of the building next door to where it is now,  and all these elderly black folks came in. And I would ask them, when they bought black cohosh, or buckthorn bark, or whatever, “What do you do with that?” And they would tell me. That’s when I really decided to study herbalism.
 
REDWOOD: Since there was not any official career-track degree in herbalism, how did you put that together? How did you study?
 
WOLFE: From 1974-1989, it was strictly listening to what the mostly elderly African American population said they used herbs for. Some of these people were pretty sophisticated herbalists. There was no American Herbalists Guild then.

Then, in 1989, David Hoffman [a leading American herbalist, author of The Holistic Herbal] wrote me a letter and asked if he could come and teach a class at Smile. This was, for me, like Mount Olympus. I said sure you can come and teach. He took me on as an apprentice, which was more formal study. Even before that, I had been teaching classes, but it was strictly what I had learned by listening at Smile and reading books on my own. There was really no formal training.
 
REDWOOD: What is the American Herbalists Guild? What training does it offer? What are its goals and principles?
 
WOLFE: The American Herbalists Guild is the premier organization in this country representing clinical herbalism. There are 130 professional members, three of whom work at Smile, myself, Claudia and Tina.
The AHG was founded by a number of British herbalists, along with Michael Tierra [author of The Way of Herbs] and some other California herbalists, to really focus on the practice of herbalism. Not the products, not the business, not the retailing or the manufacturing. Those all have their own trade groups.

Here the focus is on the clinical practice of herbalism, working with physicians and working with people who have diseases. Its goals are to develop the clinical practice of herbalism, but without going to route of licensure. It’s a very vibrant group of people.
 
REDWOOD: How does herbal practice in the United States differ from that of Europe and other cultures? What are the similarities and differences?
 
WOLFE: In our country, the practice and study of herbalism was broken by the Flexner Report, in the early 1900s.
 
REDWOOD: This was the report that examined medical and health professions education in the United States, and made recommendations that resulted in the closing of many schools (including various alternative schools such as those teaching homeopathy), and also led to what from some perspectives was an upgrading, or at least an intensifying, of the level of training in medical schools.
 
WOLFE: Consolidation of power, anyway.
 
REDWOOD: That, too.
 
WOLFE: Carnegie-Mellon funded it. Fundamentally, they outlawed the education of homeopaths, midwives, and herbalists, virtually overnight. And so, in America, you have a broken tradition, and therefore the practice of herbalism in America is really different. In Europe, Henry VIII wrote the “Herbalists Charter,” which guarantees by law that herbalists would always enjoy the protection of the king.
 
REDWOOD: Fascinating.
 
WOLFE: The herbalist tradition in England, which has culminated in what is now called the National Institute of Medical Herbalists, was unbroken. But personally, I feel that it was really providence that America suffered in that way, because from not having a professional class of herbalists, American herbalists have been completely open to Oriental philosophy and herbalism, because our cup is not full, if you will.

As a result, what’s going on in American herbalism is the most exciting thing on the planet.

The knowledge of Ayurveda, the traditional medicine and system of herbal use of India, the knowledge of the sheng cycle of Chinese medicine, has been integrated into practice here, because there’s no profession defending its …
 
REDWOOD: Turf?
 
WOLFE: Yes, turf. For instance, one of the best British herbalists, Simon Mills, is now running the Traditional Acupuncture Institute’s masters degree program in herbalism here in Maryland. I’m on the faculty there.
 
REDWOOD: I found it quite interesting that when that school, which for 25 years has essentially been an acupuncture school, set up a program in herbalism, it was not specifically for Asian herbology, but rather a more wide-ranging approach. More of a “world herbalism.”
 
WOLFE: It’s partly because this is not just a school of acupuncture, but of Five Element acupuncture, which has more of a spiritual emphasis than Eight Principle Acupuncture, commonly known as Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), as codified in the Peoples Republic of China over the past generation.

I’m sort of the “Five Element” representative on the herbal faculty, along with  the Cherokee herbalist David Winston who has found much unity between Cherokee herbal medicine and five element herbal theory.
   
When they asked me to teach, I told them I would teach if they brought the students to my Five Element herb garden, which I have here at my home. I am focused on teaching herbalism in a small-scale agricultural sitting, where I walk people through a garden that physically goes through the Five Phases of Chinese medicine. There’s a section of the garden with the Wood element plants, and sections for the Fire, Earth, Metal and Water element plants. Are you familiar with the sheng [creative] cycle of Chinese medicine?
 
REDWOOD: Yes, I’ve been practicing acupuncture for four years. Wood gives birth to Fire, which gives birth to Earth, and so on through a never ending circle of life.
 
WOLFE: Good. But most acupuncturists aren’t at all familiar with the herbs in an agricultural setting. If I had to put a scale on it, I’d say the understanding of the sheng cycle is ten times stronger if you learn it in an agricultural setting. That’s why I told the school’s planner that I would only teach this in an agricultural setting. In the last five years, my own herbalism has developed by leaps and bounds, by being out in the garden.
 
REDWOOD: What can someone learn by meeting these living plants in a garden or agricultural setting, that they would have difficulty grasping from a book, or from seeing the plants in dried form or in a capsule?
 
WOLFE: My spiritual teacher is Meher Baba, who was born in 1894 and passed on in 1969. Meher Baba kept silence from 1925 until the end of his life. He had five masters, who all worked with, among other things, prana, or the energetic plane.

Each of these five teachers had thousands of students in India and each gave their authority to Meher Baba. 

I think that the crux of the matter at this point in history is that we need to redefine spiritual life and healing. Meher Baba defines “closer to God” as shifting focus from the physical reality toward the energetic reality. You can learn so much about this from the garden. When you talk about the sheng cycle, you’re talking about Wood generating Fire, and Fire generating Earth, you can tactilely experience this. You can feel it, you can taste it.

In a book, you don’t get that experience. In the garden, you actually experience each of the Five Energies. Once you’re conversant with and can control those Five Energies, through pranayama and the use of herbs, you can actually experience the energetic plane. So you can be Water, and be Wood and be Fire. So, in short, you can be closer to God in the garden through the experience of these Five Energies, in a way that you can’t through an intellectual experience. When the rishis of ancient India taught Ayurveda, and when the sages of China taught about heaven and earth and Five Element theory, they were really teaching a path to God.
   
In the garden, it’s wonderful! There’s a naturopath named Bill Mitchell, and he described it the other day this way/ he said that if you get in touch with herbs in the garden, and you really do it, you can tell Eden from non-Eden, experientially. You can tell where humanity went astray. It’s really true. My experience during the last three years in that garden has been just such a blessing. I’ve been an herbalist for 28 years, and I didn’t get it before.
   
Now, what I’m trying to do is set it up for the acupuncture community, who are conversant in the organ pairings of the Five Element paradigm. You need to get the acupuncturists, and the docs, and anybody who’s trying to use that model, out there in a garden. Today, we’re starting to design a garden at Smile Herb Shop, and take the energy that’s here in the garden at my home, which has been 10 years in the making, and export that over to Smile so that we can teach it there as well. It’s a very sacred thing, which takes a lot of nurturing and paying attention to every aspect of the garden.
   
We need to have more balanced energy on the planet. We don’t need more analysis. We need people who can really speak to where Eden was lost.
 
REDWOOD: How would you characterize the growth of herbal research in recent years? What do we know now that we didn’t know before? Is research leading in helpful directions?
 
WOLFE: Absolutely. I started a company called Integrative Medicine Communications, which published Commission E in English. There are two German government commissions in herbalism, K and E. The K deals with baths and topical applications, and E deals with internal applications. The Commission E report represents 6600 legitimate standard Western studies in herbalism.

That research, combined with the budget of the American NIH Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, is going in a very exciting direction. With TAI’s program in clinical herbalism, which is the first of its kind, merging with an existing tradition in Five Element education, what’s going to happen is that organ pairings of sheng cycle are going to be validated by placebo-controlled studies. That’s where I think this is headed.
 
REDWOOD: For readers who may not be familiar with the concept, an example of an organ pairing would be that the lung and the large intestine are considered to be paired together, in what Chinese medicine calls the Metal element.
 
WOLFE: The Metal element is directly related to the nervous system, so if you can heal the lung and large intestine meridians, you can also heal the nervous system. Ayurveda also recognizes this link, where these organs are part of the vata (element) category. But it should be said that the large intestine’s link to the nervous system is not established in Western medicine, nor is the lung’s link to the large intestine.
   
I think that there will be a huge amount of herbal research forthcoming, because of the involvement of the large pharmaceutical houses. In the last year, five major pharmaceutical houses have bought old, mainline herbal manufacturing companies. So the combination of all these things is going to accelerate the emergence of the new medical model. This is imminent.
 
REDWOOD: One of the developments in the last decade or so in herbal formulation has been the development of standardized potencies. What do you see as the advantages or disadvantages of herbs being available in standardized potencies?
 
WOLFE: The advantages would be that they can then be used for reproducible effects in scientific studies. The disadvantage is that it takes the energetics out of the practice of herbalism.
 
REDWOOD: How does it take energetics out?
 
WOLFE: How do you know they’re standardizing the right component? The further you get away from whole plant extracts, the further you get away from the way that God designed the synergy of all the buffers and all the thousands of molecules in every plant, the more you’re saying that the intellect of the human being is necessary as the go-between, between the whole plant and the energy of the person. And in terms of energetic herbalism, it’s meaningless, the whole standardization of molecules.
 
REDWOOD: Do you think there’s a danger of the standardized potency, single-herb formulation, becoming the “coin of the realm,” the main way that herbs are available in our country?
 
WOLFE: Sure. Almost by definition, the pharmaceutical houses will have to standardize. Otherwise, there would just be whole plant extracts that anybody can make. I don’t consider it dangerous, though, because I think, to be honest, that God is orchestrating this whole thing. And the more that herbs are in the mainstream of human thought, the more it will evolve toward energetic herbalism. So I’m not concerned in the least. There is a real profit motive behind the standardization of herbal extracts, because if you standardize it, you can make patented, unique formulas. And the pharmaceutical houses are going to need to have something to differentiate their products from ethanol extractions.
 
REDWOOD: Otherwise they can’t patent it.
 
WOLFE: Because otherwise ( which is the whole beauty of herbalism ( anybody with an understanding of energetics can go out in their garden and make their own medicine.
 
REDWOOD: In your own work, are you generally working with combinations of herbs rather than single herbs?
 
WOLFE: Combinations mostly. Usually about five in any given mix.
 
REDWOOD: How would you describe the way in which you arrive at a formulation for a particular person?
 
WOLFE: You determine the energetic makeup of the person, within the three elements of Ayurveda or the five of Chinese medicine. To me it’s all the same energetic statement.
 
REDWOOD: I’ve studied both, and I agree.
 
WOLFE: So you determine the energy of the person, where their deficiency is and where their excess is. Ayurveda tends to reduce the excess and Chinese medicine tends to build up the deficiency, as a general rule. Basically, you build up the element that’s deficient and you decrease the one that’s in excess. With the herbs, it’s very easy to do, particularly in our culture, which is quite Water-deficient. For this, we use what are called alteratives in Western herbalism, or rasayanas in Ayurveda, or Wood element herbs in Chinese medicine. Herbs with that action are almost guaranteed to help, in this culture.

So for me alteratives from western medicine would be Lemon balm: Melissa officinalis, and Nettles: Urtica dioca, that build up both surface resistance and deeper immunity, that are the hallmarks of water in balance. In Ayurveda, some Rasayanas (herbs that build Rasa) would be Ashwaganda: Withania somnifera and Coriander greens (Coriandrum sativum. In the Chinese system some wood and water building herbs would be the different sour tasting Sorells: Rumex various species, and Marshmallo: Althea officinalis. Our Waterin this fast paced culture is quite depleted.
 
REDWOOD: When you say we are Water-depleted in this culture, what are some of the ways that shows up?
 
WOLFE: As adrenal exhaustion, to begin with.
 
REDWOOD: Many people reading this may not be conversant with these terms. Tom, if you saw a person sitting in front of you, who you judged to be Water-deficient, what would the average person see in that individual?
 
WOLFE: They would be tired, struggling to maintain their energy level. They would probably be taking stimulants to keep their energy up for their job, or other demands such as parenthood. A lot of people would have respiratory problems, allergies. A lot of that is related to auto-immunity. A lot of autoimmune problems may relate to difficulty with stable kidney function.
 
REDWOOD: You’ve described some of the characteristics of someone who is Water deficient. Could you describe characteristics of someone who had an excess in some element?
 
WOLFE: Sure. How about Fire. There’s hypertension, digestive ulcers.
 
REDWOOD: Are there also emotional characteristics of Fire excess?
 
WOLFE: Anger, good old anger. Excess anger is excess Fire, while excess fear is excess Air in Ayurveda or depleted water in the Chinese system which is the same energetic statement. Excess earth in both systems tends toward greed.
 
REDWOOD: Tell me more about your teaching? Aside from the program at Tai Sophia, what else is available to people interested in learning more about herbs.
 
WOLFE: We’ll also be teaching at Smile. Through my prayer life and spiritual practice, I’ve been shown that was teaching five element theory, that Jesus was teaching three element theory, and that Buddha was teaching Ayurveda. Basically, these great prophets have tried to put into language the unity that they found on the energetic plane. In herbalism, what we have is a tool to put it into action in our bodies. So I tie it all together with the modeling, and then take people out in the garden.
   
We start with the herbs that have the sour taste and the astringent taste, the Wood, and get used to what that does in the body. What I teach is the experience of the five elements in our own taste and our own physiology. There is a spirituality infused into these plants. What I’m teaching is really a kind of “spiritual weeding.”

To me, these plants are the bridge. We talk about the Father, Brahma, Holy Spirit, or Adonai, Allah, or Elohim, or all these names that we give to God, but we rarely actually experience a sense of God’s presence. And through using these plants, you can really experience these plants as a single entity, and see that it’s all in unity. It’s a beautiful thing. I feel very blessed to be doing this.
 
Dr. Daniel Redwood, the interviewer, practices chiropractic and acupuncture in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He is the author of A Time to Heal: How to Reap the Benefits of Holistic Health and Contemporary Chiropractic, and Associate Editor of The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. A collection of his writing is available at www.drredwood.com. He can be reached by e-mail at danredwood@aol.com
   
Tom Wolfe , and his wife Linda are Quakers and for 28 years have been the co-owner with of Smile Herb Shop and Smileherb.com in College Park Maryland. Tom has written Pathway’s Herb column for the past 12 years. 

He is the author of “The Forty Habits of Highly Effective Prophets” and a three part musical about the imprisonment of William Penn in the tower of London named “Convinced of What?”. Tom is currently on the faculty of the Traditional Acupuncture Institute teaching 5 Element Herbalism from the garden.

   ©2002 by Daniel Redwood