Camille Freeman - Herbal Magic

Megan Hamilton (00:02.314)
I'm Megan Hamilton and this is the Embracing Enchantment podcast. Today's guest is a dear friend of mine I met in a business program in February of 2020. You might say that we trauma bonded. She is many things, a flower lover, an herbalist, a professor, a mentor. She's the woman behind the popular podcast In the Clinic with Camille and the author of the book

write better newsletters, grow your one-to-one practice with emails people actually want to read. She has her PhD in nutrition and her master's degrees, plural, in herbal medicine and physiology. Please welcome my friend, Camille Freeman. Hello, Camille.

Camille Freeman (00:47.259)
Hey Megan, thanks so much for having me.

Megan Hamilton (00:50.51)
I am thrilled to have you not only because it means we get to spend extra time together, but also because we're going to talk about things that we don't usually talk about very much, even though I have a great interest in herbs and you know, which is your your wheelhouse. We just end up not very often talking about it.

Camille Freeman (01:16.231)
No, we're mostly sticking to business topics. So this is a fun detour to our normal conversations.

Megan Hamilton (01:19.073)
You

Megan Hamilton (01:22.754)
Yes, yeah, and I'm so excited to learn from you and I've got a lot of questions for you today. But before we get started on the podcast, well, nevermind, but there won't be a lot to discuss because the card has already fallen out. And so we always go with that card, but we will get to that in a minute. I won't look at it quite yet. It clearly wanted to come out. I'm wondering if you can tell us where your love of herbal medicine began.

Camille Freeman (01:43.985)
hehe

Camille Freeman (01:54.027)
Megan, this is a good question. I first studied herbs actually in high school. I had a teacher, Mrs. Strunk, and she wanted us to do a year-long project. And I was just interested in doing something related to kind of natural medicine. And she pointed me in the direction of herbs, and this was in the 90s, so I had to like write off.

You had to write letters and mail off for people to send you journal articles about things in the mail. And I wrote a whole, I did a whole paper on Indigenous uses of Echinacea in high school. Yeah, and that was my first interest. And then, you know, I kind of took a detour. I went to college undergrad for a while. And I took a few classes that were sort of holistic oriented, but

Ultimately, I came back around and decided I wanted to go to naturopathic school. And then I looked at the price tag of naturopathic school. I was like, woo. And I looked at the course catalog. And I was like, you know, the only ones I'm actually interested in are the ones about herbs. So that's how I clarified my interest.

Megan Hamilton (03:08.365)
Okay.

Megan Hamilton (03:13.293)
I had no idea and I've known you now for almost six years. Isn't that funny? It's so funny. I love that. And I should say, it's so interesting that you were looking at the indigenous uses of Echinacea because we are recording today on September 30th, which in Canada is National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. And part of what I've been thinking a lot,

Camille Freeman (03:19.547)
Yeah, that's funny.

Megan Hamilton (03:39.658)
about today is as I'm walking around in the park and looking around at the various, you know, what we would call weeds and what we might want to pull out and thinking about what I've learned over the last few years, just from interest about the indigenous plants that grow all around us, you know, and what is not indigenous to our particular places and why those things happen to be growing here now. So

It's fitting that that you had mentioned this as your sort of point of departure for this work that you're so interested in On on the day that it happens to be That's so neat, okay, I okay so as I'm going to pick up the card then how did you get interested in physiology?

Camille Freeman (04:30.659)
Well, I, you know, life is just such a roundabout situation. I became interested in physiology. I went to Herb's school. That's another whole nother story in and of itself. But I went to Herb's school in Maryland and I did a whole master's degree. I learned how to see clients. I was working with people and I just realized, I want to know a lot more about how the body works to understand how herbs are supporting us.

And so that's where I decided to go and get a second master's degree in physiology after my first one, which is kind of funny because I had never thought of myself as a science person at all, just was not my Valleywick, you know, and then I had a particular interest and it turns out I'm actually not bad at science.

Megan Hamilton (05:26.711)
This is so interesting because this is is leading to a question that I've got for you today. It reminds me a lot actually of one of my clients who I think came to me through you who developed an interest in T1 diabetes because her son was diagnosed with diabetes and so she went to school to learn about nutrition and I think you were her professor and then

learned that the whole complexity of nutrition has to be examined even further by studying physiology, by studying endocrinology, by studying how the body works and how you can't just manage things through just herbs or through just nutrition because the entire system of the body is so interrelated.

and has a different effect even on any given day based on a whole bunch of other factors. And that, guess, is where the holistic word comes in as well, right? We're not just going to take chamomile tea necessarily at bedtime. There might be other herbs that might work with us better at particular points. Anyways, I don't need to tell you this because...

This is the stuff you can be telling me, but it is so fascinating. And before we, my goodness, I just looked at the card before we get started here. We got temperance, which is really all about alchemy and mixing things together to create something new or something more powerful. So temperance is in the major Arcana. We relate it to

balance, but it's not the same as justice in the sense that we are creating we are using what is around us. We are using both our intuition which is shown by the angel having their toes in the water as well as you know, empirical tangible demonstrable studies, let's say, which is shown by her having the her foot on

Megan Hamilton (07:45.026)
the ground, right? So we're looking at science and we're looking at intuition and we're looking at beyond. mean, it is a angel in this card. So we know there's an element of spirituality. But what I love about this card is that she's pouring something from one cup into the other cup. But if you're looking at the card and if you want to head over to YouTube, you can see what the card looks like or you can look up temperance in the Rider Waite Smith deck.

That's not how liquid behaves.

Right? So the water that we assume is water is sort of flowing from one cup to the other, but it's on an angle that wouldn't make sense logically. And the water is waving, which, you know, again, is not necessarily how water would pour. And so it's really asking us to look at what we hold to be true and where we can have curiosity and imagination for what is possible or, you know, what is kind of beyond

Because we don't know everything. We have to ground ourselves in basic principles. But what is beyond and what could we explore and learn from? Also, the sun, the pathway right towards the sun and towards the mountains. Mountains usually mean knowledge and wisdom and the sun on the other side is reflective of the death card. And we think about that in terms of what's on the other side of letting go.

of, let's say, systems that keep us stuck in a particular narrow field of vision. And how can we open that up to be what's on the other side of this, if we get curious, if we get creative, if we explore feelings that don't necessarily make quote unquote sense. And I love that temperance came up as a

Megan Hamilton (09:48.127)
as the card for you because it's all about mixing things together.

I would imagine that's something that you really like to do.

Camille Freeman (09:58.92)
So true. So very true.

Megan Hamilton (10:02.551)
Okay, so for folks who are spiritually minded and who love to work with herbs, whether they're in tinctures or teas or even spell work, I mean, we can think of Macbeth, for example, right? The big cauldron and the witches pouring everything into the pot. Obviously, not all of those things are herbs, but a lot of them are. All of the ways that herbs have become integrated in spiritual practices, how would you suggest that somebody gets started

learning about herbs and what are some of the basics.

Camille Freeman (10:37.319)
Okay, this is a really good question because there are so many different ways to learn about herbs that it kind of depends on your personal interest and what draws you to the work or the knowledge because if you have the intention to become a clinical practitioner, then that's going to be a different pathway than if you are interested in

learning what herbs grow in your ecosystem and how you might harvest them safely. Or if you're interested in learning about traditional uses of herbs and the history behind them and magical uses, that's a whole different route. So you might pick different teachers and different paths depending on your interest. So I think the first thing I would recommend is just think to yourself, what is it that I actually really want to learn about? My second piece of advice would be to just

Look, there's, mean, it is the internet out there. The internet is out there. And there are all kinds of people who have, who take the approach of being, you know, one step ahead, and then they're going to charge you however much money to, to learn what they've learned. So, you know, of course, there is value in wisdom and learned experience and lived experience. But I also think if you really want to deeply, you want to look at who you're learning from.

and what is their background and what is their experience. So, you know, don't go trying to learn spiritual practices from some 20 year old who's just read a book or two. Like we want, you know, if you are interested in that, then let's find somebody who's authentically involved in this work and who is, you know, has been doing the work for long enough to have something to pass on to you and that it feels like a equitable relationship.

Megan Hamilton (12:29.741)
you

Camille Freeman (12:30.343)
Those are the things that I would say. There's so much that you can learn just by on your own, looking around, just being like, I wonder what that plant is. Let me look it up. There are medicinal and traditional plant books available for pretty much any ecosystem. You can find yours and start looking it up and start figuring things out on your own. There's absolutely low cost, no cost ways to start working with herbs.

I think that working with other people who have experience and a background in the kinds of things that you're interested in doing is probably the best thing to do. I can make more specific recommendations if people are interested in that.

Megan Hamilton (13:09.293)
Hmm.

Megan Hamilton (13:14.743)
Well, mean, you know, in your work, as somebody who, you know, you, you, your practice was mostly based in fertility, herbal work, is that right?

Camille Freeman (13:27.995)
Yeah, I do fertility, pregnancy, perimenopause, essentially.

Megan Hamilton (13:32.097)
Right, okay, so herbs and hormones.

Camille Freeman (13:34.919)
Yeah, sure.

Megan Hamilton (13:36.887)
the double H. And so.

But you also mentor people like you have a program called Monday mentoring and you teach people how to build their practices and you even wrote this incredible book. I'm just going to plug this right here, which is write better newsletters. And it is, you know, I can say that it is an incredible book as somebody who has written. I don't even know how many newsletters in my life and has taken many multiple programs on it. This is such a comprehensive way to get started.

with writing emails. So obviously it's written for practitioners, but it's great for anybody, frankly. So your work has evolved, but when you are mentoring people...

How often do you come across, are you only mentoring herbal practitioners? So people who have gone through a certain.

protocol.

Camille Freeman (14:40.663)
I work with people who are in clinical practice, either herbalists or nutritionists or both. So I do not train people to become herbalists or nutritionists. There's lots of people who are doing that really well. What I do is I take people who have already been trained, they're doing the work and they're like, this happens to a lot of us, I think, in all professions. You get out of school, get out of school and you're like, wow, I used to have professors and classmates and

resources and support and then all of a sudden you're just on your own and you're like, wow, this is a hard case or I do not know what to do when somebody asks for a refund or when I don't have any new clients and we're on week seven and I'm worried about paying my bills. So I essentially kind of step in there and support people in that aspect of, yeah, just swimming in the ocean, trying not to be alone. That's where I come in.

Megan Hamilton (15:38.404)
I love that. I love that statement or that metaphor. So thinking of the crossover with herbal work and its history sort of as the foundations of medicine or even modern medicine and thinking about the work that you're doing, how much crossover, you know, how much of the conversation, if any, involves sort of spiritual practice. Does that ever come up in?

the work that you're doing.

Camille Freeman (16:11.281)
Yeah, it does a lot. I think, because you can't separate that from the rest of, you know, it's not like, because I do, you know, I do clinical work, and then I do my mentoring work. And in both of those, whether somebody is coming to me for support around a health issue going on, or support around running a business as a practitioner, it's not like spirituality is separate from either of those things. It's, you can't separate these pieces out from people.

Megan Hamilton (16:16.749)
Mm-hmm.

Camille Freeman (16:37.883)
So the way that I think about herbs and the way I'm trained to work with herbs is primarily in the biomedical realm of thinking about, side effects, let's make sure this doesn't interact with your medications, let's make sure this is a good fit for you in those senses. But a lot of the work I've also trained to do is to think about the person as a whole and what are their overall needs. And one of the reasons I think plants and fungi,

I think what we might consider sort of broadly herbalism is different than taking, let's say, a supplement, vitamin E or something like that, is that plants, like people, are complex beings. And so part of what we think about to figure out which plants might be good friends with which people is just that chemistry, that alignment.

And I think part of that is a spiritual practice of acknowledging that these plants are complex beings that are in many ways mysterious. We think we can generally predict how they might interact with a person, but we don't always know. And that's, I think that's a big, a big part of what makes herbalism different from the supplement based model of like, let me take this herb for this condition. It's really not what I do.

Like you can read about that, you can go to a health food store, you can get that and that is absolutely fine and some people find that very helpful. But working with an herbalist is a bigger conversation than that.

Megan Hamilton (18:11.181)
Okay, well that is really interesting and I'm wondering if there's a way to dive into that a little bit further. So what is the difference than say going to the drugstore and getting some valerian root and working with an herbalist?

Camille Freeman (18:31.621)
Right. Well, it depends on the herbalist because there are herbalists trained in all different ways. So I don't want to speak for everybody. But I will say that most of the people that come, if people are going to pay to come see me, they have tried some things. They're not, you know, people are, people have the internet. They have looked up some basic DIY things and tried them at home and suddenly been like, this is not working. It's not working the way I thought it would. It's what have you.

Megan Hamilton (18:48.044)
Right.

You

Camille Freeman (19:01.805)
So where I come in, and I think where a lot of herbalists come in, is that we're looking, we're not just looking for what symptoms are you having and let's match up this herb with that symptom. We're looking for patterns. We're looking at the person as a whole and saying, okay, you have all these symptoms. We are taking into account your medicines and your diagnoses and any safety issues to be aware of and all that sort of thing. But we're also saying, hmm, I noticed that this person is profoundly

ungrounded based on life events or current events. mean, all of us are a little ungrounded right now, I would say. But, know, we're looking at an overall picture. We're looking at, wow, what are we feeling in our hearts based on what this person is telling us? What is our intuition? Is there something going on where this person needs to be soothed? They need to be warmed up. They need improved circulation. What are these things?

Megan Hamilton (19:37.471)
Yeah.

Camille Freeman (19:59.688)
So we're taking all that into account and then we're thinking which herbs come in and support people in these complex ways, not just, Valerian sleep, this person's having sleep problems, let's give them Valerian. We're thinking more like, okay, they can't sleep because their mind is running in circles all night. do, do, do, do, do, do. You know, they're just this constant list of I should, did I turn the oven off? Did I tell that? Did I write back to that email I was supposed to write back to? You know, I forgot to tell my kid good night, whatever.

Megan Hamilton (20:29.089)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Camille Freeman (20:29.209)
If that's an issue, I'm going to give you a totally different herb than if you are waking up seven times a night because you're in perimenopause and you're too hot and you're, sorry. That's a different scenario and there's a different plant friend that's going to come in and support you in each of those cases, depending on you and what else is going on.

Megan Hamilton (20:52.869)
Yeah, that feels so good to hear. Just in the, you know, there are certain times when all of us have probably gone to somebody for some support and given a symptom and then finding that that

you know, doesn't work. And then the person, maybe we go back to the person and the person just says, and I'm very specifically not naming a profession because I'm trying not to demonize any profession because, know, I've had terrible doctors and I've had incredible doctors. I'm very blessed right now to have a gorgeous team of really caring people, as well as mental health doctors, as well as, naturopaths, you know, there's so many different modalities of, of, I guess, healing.

But the idea of looking at the cause and the root instead of just treating the symptom feels really.

like nurturing.

Camille Freeman (22:03.013)
Yeah, and I think one of the hardest things about living in such a complex moment in time is that it's really, really hard to objectively understand your own situation. You know, sometimes some of the biggest work that I do for people is just listening and saying, wow, there's all of these things going on. I can see why your body is speaking to you in this way.

you know, like it makes sense that your body might be advocating for itself and trying to get your attention. And you know, they always say that the old saying, you can't read the label from inside the bottle. I think that's what many of us are doing is just trying to be that outside eye of putting things together for people. The other thing I'll say about herbs that I really love is that

Megan Hamilton (22:44.917)
Hmm... Mm-hmm...

Camille Freeman (22:59.759)
It's almost like our relationships with people where when we have a friendship with somebody or a relationship, we don't really have to have the answer from them. They don't have to fix us per se, but sometimes just being around someone who resonates with you is healing. And I find that herbs are like that. with herbs, it's almost the same as when you are meeting new people for the first time. And there's some people where you're like, this is a lovely person, but they are not.

Megan Hamilton (23:09.921)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Megan Hamilton (23:16.898)
Mm-hmm.

Camille Freeman (23:28.699)
my lovely person. They irritate me. They irritate me. Like we don't get along. Even there are for some people that they're not for me. Herbs can be like that too. You know, like there's some herbs that you just are like, this is my, I love this plant and I feel better when I am working with this plant. And there's some where it's not like a dangerous or risky herb, but it's just like not your herb. So because they're complex beings, just like we are and

Megan Hamilton (23:30.199)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Megan Hamilton (23:37.985)
Right.

Camille Freeman (23:56.848)
sometimes for mysterious reasons, we either fit or we don't fit. But I wanted to make a side point there, which I think a lot of people don't think about when it comes to herbs, because we're just thinking in more of like a biomedical model of, okay, we have all these amazing medications that do incredible things. I'm a huge fan of pharmaceutical medications for the most part. But they are designed to do a specific thing. know, they're working on a pathway, a molecule, a

you know, they're intended to do a certain thing. Don't always know exactly how they're doing it. But with herbs, I think one of the beautiful things is that we don't, we're not trying to treat a symptom. It's illegal, in fact, in the US anyway, for us to treat anything. We're not medical practitioners. What we're doing is really sometimes just giving the body space to reset.

a little bit. So the theory is, if you give the body the resources and the space, in many cases, not all cases, but in many cases, it can heal, can recover, it can at least get to a more balanced spot. And so we're not, it doesn't, you don't actually have to know exactly what is going on. You just have to find plants that meet people where they are that give them a little bit more resource and capacity.

to heal.

Megan Hamilton (25:28.909)
I'm just, I'm really enjoying this conversation, Camille. I am loving listening to this approach. And with that in mind, what are some of your, you know, best friend herbs?

Camille Freeman (25:44.336)
Okay, so for me, one of my very, very best friend herbs is chamomile, which everybody, yeah, I know it's just, it's such a, for me, it's not for everybody. There are people who don't get along with chamomile. It's shocking to me, but it is true.

Megan Hamilton (25:50.454)
I knew you were going to say that.

Megan Hamilton (25:59.694)
I mean, aren't some people allergic to it?

Camille Freeman (26:03.335)
It's not, yeah, it's not for everybody. It's so sad for them. Not really. There's other amazing choices for other people. Yeah, they do. They do. may find some people may find chamomile irritating. I just, feel one of the things I love about chamomile that resonates with me so much is that it's underestimated. People think, sweet peter rabbit chamomile. What a gentle herb for babies and, you know, calming people down.

Megan Hamilton (26:09.965)
They might have their own best friends.

Camille Freeman (26:32.773)
I'm like, no, it is incredibly powerful. Only you have to take enough and you have to take it for long enough. You have to give it a chance to do its thing. And if you do, it is, it is slow and it is steady and it is incredibly good at giving you that support to, to change it all around.

Megan Hamilton (26:55.137)
to change what all around?

Camille Freeman (26:57.361)
Well, it depends. One of the main things people think about chamomile for is calming the nervous system. And it absolutely does. Not necessarily if you take a tea bag from the grocery store and dunk it in hot water for a minute or two. I mean, it's lovely. It's a nice beverage. And it can be soothing just to drink warm water. But if you really want to give it a shot, what you need to do is

triple quadruple that dose of a tea bag and let it steep for 20 to 30 minutes at least covered so you don't lose all that lovely aromatic quality to it. And then you need to have it every day for six weeks or so and see what happens. And I make a joke sometimes to my mentoring folks. say, I'm tempted. I've never done this, but I am tempted sometimes to tell people that before I will work with them, I want them to just take chamomile for six weeks.

And we will work with whatever's left over at the end of that, if anything.

Megan Hamilton (28:02.025)
that is so interesting. So interesting because, well, and I told this to you recently, I was in my backyard and I've already, you know, I love to, and I say this with so many caveats because we want to make sure everybody's safe. And, and, know, there's, there's all kinds of stuff out there that can make you very, very sick. For example, I've got, lots of nightshade berries in the back right now that, you know, don't touch them, don't eat them. They're not.

They're not ingestible. However, I also have dandelion and wild chamomile, which I was telling you about the other day. And I just found lambsquarter, right? Which everybody's garden has what we would call the weed of lambsquarter, but I saw that it was seeding and it looked so interesting. And I was like, you know, I'm just gonna look up what this is. And then I found out that it's really high in iron, I think, and maybe niacin.

and that the seeds are similar to quinoa or at least from the same quinoa family and have a lot of incredible properties to them as well. And I was like, great, I'm going to grab this and throw it in my morning smoothie and see what happens there. Now, again, this is I am by no means a scholar in

any capacity with herbs. But when I get curious about things, if I feel like 100 % certain that I that what I'm foraging, I guess, is what it I think it is, then I'll give it a shot. But one thing that I was finding really interesting when I was telling you about the chamomile, because I was putting some herbs together to make for teas for people for Christmas, because I

I just like to do stuff, you know, like a forged or I saved my morning glory seeds last year. And that was one of my Christmas presents to people.

Megan Hamilton (30:11.273)
When I realized that this little plant that grows in clusters that has these cute little yellow balls with tiny little petals that I love the smell of, I just had never realized that it was wild chamomile. And then, you know, then I was so excited. I thought, yeah, I'm going to forage this and make it into a tea.

But now I know I don't even know if I have enough for one cup If I need four times the amount

And with that in mind, mean, thinking about being curious and thinking about how we even get started and being interested in this. And I know you said like, it's, you know, think about what you want to do with it. But what if you're just trying to figure out even where your interests lie? Is there, you know, a beginner's like a book that you recommend or a podcast to listen to or just about somebody who's got sort of a very layman's

curiosity about about herbs that might turn into something else. Where is a great place to start to just, you know, as you say, figure out what's in your backyard.

Camille Freeman (31:32.549)
Yes, okay. So I have a lot. I have a lot of recommendations. Okay. Yes.

Megan Hamilton (31:35.789)
That does not surprise me. When you go to Camille's website, you are going to see literally hundreds of recommendations and it is such a valuable resource.

Camille Freeman (31:47.4)
Okay, so here's what I would do. First of all, do not spend a lot of money. This is, we like to call herbalism the people's medicine. You do not need to go buying some $500 course to learn all this. Just please, let's get some books, let's get some low cost things, let's go to some herb walks locally, like find the people who do know. Usually parks and rec or even if you have a local herbalist, a lot of them

do herb walks every now and then you can sign up for, it's really fun, then you can be very sure that you know because there's a person there telling you. So that would be my number one recommendation is to see if you can sign up for some herb walks or some herb classes from your local herbalist or parks and rec people because they will, there's often lots that you can do there. If you want to do a very low cost sort of educational thing, if you like online courses at a,

Megan Hamilton (32:23.361)
Hmm.

Camille Freeman (32:42.759)
beginner friendly level from people who are very good herbalists, there is a platform called Learning Herbs. And I believe it's something like seven or 10 or $12 a month that you can sign up and they have all kinds of courses that you can learn how to make salves and you can learn about any herb you want and you can learn how to more about energetics and whatever. It's a great beginner resource for folks who are getting started at a low cost. So I'd recommend that.

For books, there are, I have, I don't have them right here, but have them nearby. There is a book by Maria Noel Groves. She wrote Body into Balance. It's a beginner-friendly book to just get your wits about you when it comes to herbs. Rosalie de Laforet wrote one called The Alchemy of Herbs. That's great for people who have a interest in energetics and matching plants to people. Kat Meyer also wrote one called Energetic Herbalism that your folks might be.

interested in. And there's also the wild medicine solution by Guido Amase that talks more about this, this, this, what happens when we work with our local herbs and our wild herbs and why there's something special and different about that versus just taking a bottle with a capsule in it. And how when we, when we work with herbs, we really are taking

Megan Hamilton (33:40.981)
Hmm

Camille Freeman (34:07.207)
pieces of our ecosystem into our bodies and we're communicating with the world outside. We're hearing more. We're hearing from the plans on a visceral level. And I love that. I love that.

Megan Hamilton (34:14.25)
Hmm

Megan Hamilton (34:20.413)
yeah, I mean, I'm getting full body chills. I think it's part of the reason I love to go in the backyard and take a look at all of these plants that I have, you know, just never really thought much about and learning what, what, what, how much food we have available to us too, you know, just, not even anything that we cultivate, just kind of on its own naturally. There's wild raspberries in the backyard and wild strawberries. never.

I didn't do anything about those and frankly I didn't get to anyway because the bunnies got them but but you know what that's great because I love having bunnies in the backyard and if they want to have do bunnies like chamomile

Camille Freeman (35:03.143)
would assume they do, but I don't know. I can never get chamomile to grow here, so I don't know. No, no.

Megan Hamilton (35:09.429)
Really? you're gonna have to come visit then and come in come and see my wild chamomile in the backyard. Okay, so this is thinking about what we were talking about before about sort of, you know, the integration of spirituality and herbs and you know, the holistic approach and thinking about everything kind of as a whole in the sense of

Camille Freeman (35:15.143)
I'd love to.

Megan Hamilton (35:33.464)
taking an herb that is native to where you live and thrives on some of the same things that you thrive on has the same sunlight patterns that you're exposed to. you can sort of, if you start to think intentionally about it and not just as these like separate pieces, you can start to see where that might be the quote unquote magic.

of it all, right? The idea that there's stuff that we do know about it, but then there's all this stuff that we don't know. And as you said earlier, it doesn't matter if we don't know why, we just know that you love chamomile and love it, right? And it really works with you and it may not work for somebody else. But I watched an interview with Jinx Monsoon who is...

a famous trans drag queen, Broadway star, magic woman. And she, think, I think she's a witch as well. And she said, basically, I'm not perfectly quoting her, but she said science and magic are the same. Science is just magic explained and magic is science. We haven't found the explanation for where can we integrate

science with our spirituality and not feel like we need to shun one in favor of the other.

Camille Freeman (37:04.133)
love that.

Megan Hamilton (37:05.249)
Yeah. But that's my question to you. Like, how can we, you know, one of the principles of magic is that you can hold two seemingly separate things to both be true at the same time. And so I think I feel like it's coming back. It used to be that science and spirituality, for example, you know, like the work of Carl Jung very much had a scientific model to it, but also

Camille Freeman (37:06.983)
love that. Yeah.

Megan Hamilton (37:33.983)
explored curiosity and spirituality as sort of one in the same. And then we really started putting everything in categories and separating it and not looking at the integrations. But now it seems like maybe we are coming back to that, or at least there's a movement towards that. How would one

Megan Hamilton (38:00.386)
for somebody who has grown up.

Megan Hamilton (38:05.323)
without a spiritual background, for example.

how might they be able to see, let's say, herbs and the holistic value of herbs that you were just talking about, right? The soil and the sun patterns and where they grow and the location and the differences, maybe just even in the minerals in the soil in a particular place. But then the stuff that we don't know.

How would you start to, what's the word I want to look for? Cause I don't want to make it some kind of morality issue where if you believe in one thing or not the other, that's a moral issue. But if you were curious about how to deconstruct,

the idea of science and logic being the only ways of looking at the world, do you have any suggestions for how people might start to cultivate a curiosity while also having grown up in those frameworks? That's a complex question, I know.

Camille Freeman (39:22.223)
It is a complex question. And I think part of it is that you just have to experiment. You're not gonna, I don't think you're gonna talk somebody into one way or the other. You know, I think that the science-y people,

Megan Hamilton (39:34.943)
Mm-hmm. Great.

Camille Freeman (39:41.082)
in order to understand a more spiritual or energetic approach to herbs may, I have seen, for example, people where going through their own health challenges has been what opened their eyes to where they're like, okay, well, I got to the end of what science could offer me and I still wasn't better. And then I started to look around and say, okay, what else? What else? So that may, for some people that may be where they are. And it's for some people,

Megan Hamilton (39:58.498)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Megan Hamilton (40:06.413)
Hmm.

Camille Freeman (40:10.703)
If they want to look at it through the lens of science and that's what makes sense to their mind and their body, amazing versus folks who want to look at it, who are like science doesn't matter to me. I want to be in like a heart space and a magical space and a, you know, whatever space. I don't think that those folks necessarily have to understand the science. think that obviously with herbs, there are safety issues and we want to be, you know, we don't want to be just running around willy nilly using things and

harvesting and their safety issues for the plants as well as for the people. So I don't think we have to necessarily marry them. I think that there are so many levels and it works whether you think it works or not. What's going to work is going to work. So I'm happy to be where I am. And I know that if people need a more academic approach than what I offer, there's lots of practitioners who do that if they need a more spiritual approach.

Megan Hamilton (40:55.789)
Hmm.

Camille Freeman (41:08.337)
than what I offer, there's lots of people who do that too. So I feel like more than changing people or like changing their minds, it's just about being like, yeah, these are all layers of the truth. And so we can be in any of the layers and it's still real.

Megan Hamilton (41:27.819)
Yeah, yeah, yep, I love that. People get to be where they are, right? Yeah, yes, yeah.

Camille Freeman (41:39.378)
Yeah, to get to be where they are. And I have to say that it's, you know, it is possible to be a bull in a china shop on any of these layers too. To be somebody who knows just enough to be dangerous, you know, from the spiritual all the way up to the most academic layer of all, that each of these still requires its own knowledge and experience and they all

Megan Hamilton (41:51.521)
Mm-hmm.

Camille Freeman (42:08.771)
know, they have their own rich traditions, whether that's in PubMed and reading scientific papers or whether that's in books and wisdom that's passed down generation to generation. It's all, you know, we can't just go wild in any of the layers and think we know what we're doing. has, you you come in humbling yourself as a beginner and learn and listen and

be with the plans and be with people who know what they're talking about and go from there.

Megan Hamilton (42:40.557)
Yeah, I mean, would you say that could be a red flag if you're looking for a practitioner and that person is very

Megan Hamilton (42:54.551)
what's the word I would be looking for? Not prescriptive necessarily, but my way or the highway.

Camille Freeman (43:00.103)
Oh, I tell you what, if anybody seems very sure that any intervention will do something, I don't know what to tell you. It's not true. It's true. The same goes for medicine, a prescription, over-the-counter herbs, anything. If somebody's like, oh, of course, if you have asthma, you need to do X, Y, and Z. I'm like, this person is overconfident.

And there's all kinds of reasons that they may be overconfident. But I'm like, if you have any experience or knowledge of working with actual people, then you will know that there is nothing, there is nothing that is true 100 % of the time. There are first steps, there are things that seem to help most people, there are good ideas of places to start, and then people's bodies do not listen to instructions sometimes.

Megan Hamilton (43:57.962)
So pesky.

Camille Freeman (43:59.356)
So pesky. You're like, but you are supposed to relax when I give you magnesium and you're not.

Megan Hamilton (44:04.141)
You're doing the opposite. Okay. So as we're, as we close out, because I feel like I, I feel like I have now 50 more questions than when we started. And that's, that, that could be you and me another time. you have this program that's starting. So if you're catching the podcast sort of within the first few days of when it's coming out,

Camille and you know Camille had been talking about this. She and I meet what every two weeks just about to talk about what we're up to and sort of mentor each other. And you've got this program coming up that I just love the title and it's called Take Your Tonic and it's for everybody right.

Camille Freeman (44:53.361)
for everybody. Yeah, it's I will tell you about it. It is a I started this program in the spring of 25 because I just felt like everything was going down the drain here in the United States. I don't know. Just and I was like every single person I work with, whether it's my one on one clients, the people I'm mentoring, my colleagues, everyone, it was just like fried crispy.

Megan Hamilton (44:55.255)
Can you tell us about it? Yeah.

Megan Hamilton (45:08.961)
What do you mean?

You

Camille Freeman (45:23.695)
And I was like, all need a tonic just to get through what's happening right now. It's a tonic. And for people who aren't familiar, a tonic is something that you're doing for overall health, not to fix a problem, but just to strengthen you, to fortify you overall. So it's considered like a gentle, super safe, either herb or action or activity that nourishes you. And the idea is to

If you just do these gentle tonics daily, like I was talking about with chamomile over time, they fortify you, they strengthen you, they give you the resource that you need to do the work that is important for you to do, whether that's taking care of yourself or others or whatever else it is that's important out there. I was like, okay, I just want to, I know how to recommend tonics.

So I decided to have this program where it's very simple program. We meet, I go through just a little presentation about what is a tonic and some options. People pick their own. I'm not picking them for them, a tonic, last time we did a tonic, I did chamomile tea as my tonic, of course. But one person did yoga nidra with that person's tonic and they just tried to do it every day or as many days as possible. Some people did like a syrup, like a rose syrup.

Megan Hamilton (46:33.581)
I was going to ask you that.

Camille Freeman (46:45.799)
or Skullcap or anyway, there's bidders. Sometimes some people decided I want to take bidders every day. Anyway, some people decided journaling was going to be their tonic. So we just pick a tonic. We have that one meeting to help you pick. It's recorded in case you can't be there. And then the idea is you're just going to take your tonic for six weeks. And then we check in at the end and see how it went. So there's no other meetings. I send you a couple of emails a week just to be like, hey, did you forget about your tonic?

hardest thing about doing this is actually remembering to take your tonic. And then we just check in at the end and see, hey, how did it go? your tonic, do you feel better? know, what's up? That's it. That's the whole program. It's very straightforward. And my intention is just, please, could we all take a tonic to just navigate this as best we can so that you're not.

Megan Hamilton (47:17.633)
Yeah.

Camille Freeman (47:37.756)
draining yourself and burning out, just trying to wake up every day and change the world a little bit. So that's it. I would love for people to join. I can give you the link. It's $25. It's very low cost. I find that if it's totally free, people don't, people just sign up for funsies and don't actually do it. But if money is a problem for anybody, you could just email me and I am happy to get you in there. It's more just a,

Megan Hamilton (47:55.597)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Camille Freeman (48:03.687)
you know, sign up if you actually want to take a tonic, not just because you think you might theoretically take a tonic at some day in the future.

Megan Hamilton (48:11.147)
I love it. I love it. And how did you feel at the end of your six weeks of taking your chamomile teatonic?

Camille Freeman (48:18.759)
It made a difference. I felt calmer. I felt better the day I you know every now and then there's a day that I didn't take it and I was like, okay I notice if I don't take my chamomile Yeah Yep, I I switched I'm gonna do I'm on a different tonic right now, but I do I have a every night before bed I make myself and actually my kids now I make them some tea we all make me I'll have a glass of tea mug of tea before bed and That's what we do. It's just like our own little ritual

Megan Hamilton (48:28.001)
Really? Do you take it before bed?

Megan Hamilton (48:49.831)
right. we know, cause we've talked about ritual so many times on this podcast, how important ritual can be. Right. And honestly, so much of the time I find it just all boils down to intention thinking, thinking about it, not just being swept up in the sea of life and the troubles and the overwhelm that's happening, but just stopping and taking a moment and saying, wait a minute, what do I want? How would I like things to be?

What is something I can do towards that? Not just feeling constantly like you're powerless within all of the different things that are happening. If one were to start a chamomile tea practice, how much chamomile are we talking? What's four times the amount? What does that look like? Like what's a cup version? Like how many cups?

Camille Freeman (49:40.679)
Okay, so.

Camille Freeman (49:44.38)
Yeah, and I will caution people that if you are going to start a new tea, a new herb of any sort, please look it up and make sure that it is appropriate for you because even like chamomile, it is in there, you know, it is in the ragweed family. Some people who have really strong allergies, it may not be the best choice. Some people with IBS do not do well with chamomile. So even the even like the gentlest, safest herbs are not for everybody.

So it's okay, please look it up, especially if you're on any meds, especially if you have any diagnoses, even if you think it's super safe, look it up.

Megan Hamilton (50:18.957)
Like they're not kidding when they say talk to your doctor before you take stuff, right? And you're like, what do you mean? It's just a flower. It's like, no, no, no, it's medicine.

Camille Freeman (50:24.709)
No, no.

Well, this is the thing, like if we want to believe that herbs are powerful and affecting us, then we have to believe that they're powerful and affecting us and therefore they may also affect our health and our bodies and our medicines and everything else we're doing. So yes, let people know that you're doing them. It is possible to use herbs symbolically and ritually. So I have worked with people, for example, a lot of folks I work with are pregnant and for various reasons, there's herbs that are not appropriate for them and that's

Megan Hamilton (50:31.949)
Mm-hmm.

Camille Freeman (50:57.585)
phase of life, but you can work with herbs symbolically such as just sitting with a plant, smelling it, being around it. These are also ways to work with a plant that don't involve ingesting it. So if you're worried and you're like, I'm in very fragile health or I don't want to upset the apple cart, you can absolutely do topical herbs. can grow an herb. You can go outside and sit with an herb or look at an herb that you already have nearby. These are all also ways to

to work with herbs and think about them and have them in your life that don't involve ingesting them. So anyway, I forgot where it's going. dose, right. So most of our sort of gentle, safe, everyday herbs, medicinal, I don't wanna say medicinal, because we don't really think of them as medicine in the same sense of a prescription, but a therapeutic dose if you're really looking to get a good, good.

chunk of it in there would be a sort of at a minimum seven to ten grams and a tea bag usually will have like one or two grams. Okay so chamomile happens to be really fluffy it's very light when you dry it and so it's very big you know volume wise it's very big if you've ever gotten a pound of chamomile it's I mean it's it's like a pillow you know you're like wow that is a lot of chamomile.

Megan Hamilton (52:02.689)
Okay.

Megan Hamilton (52:21.057)
just pillow. Yeah, but you'll go through it quickly because you're using like a cup of it.

Camille Freeman (52:22.319)
Yeah. But yeah. Yeah, you need a lot to get to get a therapeutic dose. So you really can't overdo it with chamomile unless you don't like the taste of it. But you're not going to overdose on most of us are not going to overdose on chamomile. So you can you can have too little to make a difference, but you can drink as much as you want, really. And then a lot of people are just aren't steeping it long enough. And so

Megan Hamilton (52:42.209)
Right.

Camille Freeman (52:51.987)
The other thing is chamomile is fairly delicate once it's dried. And so if you're getting it from a store that doesn't have good turnover or wasn't processed, you some kind of cheap old grocery store brand, it may not be giving you as much benefit as a fresher, higher quality chamomile. And so it should smell flowery and a little bit like green apples when you crush it up. And if it doesn't, then you know, you need to kind of start over and maybe get a better quality.

Megan Hamilton (53:22.548)
And do we include the roots?

Yeah? Not with chamomile. Okay, just the flowers and the stems.

Camille Freeman (53:26.725)
Not with chamomile. No, with chamomile we do not. Not with chamomile. Yeah, usually it's just the flowers. And that's why it's... Yes.

Megan Hamilton (53:34.743)
just the flowers.

I'm going to be, I think I have one dose in the backyard. That's it.

Camille Freeman (53:44.377)
It's, yes, it takes a lot to grow chamomile because it's a lot of leaf for flower. The leaf per flower is quite high. Yeah.

Megan Hamilton (53:53.55)
Okay, so just the flowers. Okay, gotcha. That's good to know before I make my Christmas tease.

Camille Freeman (54:03.655)
Yes, yes. Well, you know what you could do is you could dry some and put it in a sleep pillow. Because that, you know, with some lavender and some rice or something like that, could do that.

Megan Hamilton (54:04.781)
Maybe I will consult with you before I put them all together.

Megan Hamilton (54:14.72)
that's a nice idea. Yeah.

Mm hmm. Okay. Camille, it's been so nice to talk to you about about all of this and your passion and all of the like I love how much you love flowers and herbs. It gets really enjoyable to be around. So I appreciate you coming here and sharing all of this with us and your thoughtfulness around it as well.

Camille Freeman (54:46.425)
thanks so much for having me, Megan. This was really fun.

Megan Hamilton (54:49.289)
It was really fun. Okay, so you can find all of the information and takeaways from today's episode in the show notes or at embracing enchantment.com. Please subscribe and follow wherever you get your podcasts and we'd love for you to leave a review. You can also leave a voice note at embracing enchantment.com and we might feature it in a future episode. You can find out more about Camille including all of the things we talked about.

where to grab her excellent book, and where to follow her in the show notes. You're gonna wanna make sure you're subscribed because we have incredible episodes about witch stones and spells for success as we're coming on our first anniversary, which is so wild to me. You can catch up on previous episodes where we talked about astrology with Colin Baddell, hereditary witch Amy Miranda, podcast host and author Pam Grossman, and so much more. Until then.

Here's to building an enchanted life. Thanks, Camille.