 All right. Well, I'm really excited. This is my first one of doing an actual interview today. And I've got Tom O'Brien here. He's an herbalist from Ireland, and he's actually a PhD, which is awesome. And I've been watching his channel for a while. I'll put all this links down below and listed here. So it's the mental herbalist. Go check him out. He's awesome. But we're going to talk to him today about a lot of different things as to what got him into herbalism and just some of his thoughts on herbalism and herbs and a whole bunch of stuff that's going to be fun. So let's go ahead and kick it off. Tom, nice to see you today. Yeah, great, Eric. I'm really happy to be here with you. It's great to just share the passion for natural healing and herbs with other people like yourself. And you're doing some great work on your own channel. I just started following recently. So now I'm delighted to be here. And I love talking to people about herbal medicine and natural healing because there's such a need in a world where medicine is very shaped by pharmaceuticals. So it's a passion of mine to get people to think and reflect about medicine, not about herbs and natural healing. So they're so powerful. And yeah, I'm forward to this chat. Awesome. Well, for the people who don't know you, can you just tell me a little bit about yourself and what got you into herbal medicine? Well, yeah, like I became a herbalist in 2012, I think. So that's about eight years ago. It's kind of, there was a couple of different influences really in my journey. But the catalyst was a very good friend of mine died in 2007. Joe died of an aneurysm and we were really close friends and, you know, I had lost my father 10 years before that. And, you know, I suppose in my own family side, my father and my uncles all had heart disease and they lived in the south of Ireland. And I used to, you know, we'd go to funerals. And after the funeral, we'd be having a breakfast, typical Irish breakfast with bacon and eggs and so forth. And we'd be saying that this is the last time we're having this type of food because we were so conscious of the need to be healthier. But what happened was I took it seriously. And I became very interested in my own health, you know, because of the risk to heart disease in my family. And so when Joe died then as well, he was only 47, so died of an aneurysm. Partly today with grief and also my interest in natural healing, I just needed to do a course in something. So I did a bit of research and I came across this course in herbal medicine and I had fitted where I had been kind of coming from because as you mentioned my PhD, it's in adult education. But I was looking at I was doing a research on a drug project in Dublin for young people. And I basically, my research question was like analysis of the knowledge used to treat addiction. So in looking at, looking at addiction, the way addiction is treated, you can see clearly that medicine is the dominant model of treatment. And I explored other models and became very interested in herbal medicine at that time. I finished that in 2004. And I do in a night class around that time in homeopathy and holistic health just for myself. So the combination of my research, my family, my friend, ultimately human suffering because the loss of people prematurely through death is a form of suffering. And then people suffering addiction is another type of suffering. So in response to people suffering, I found myself studying herbal medicine and I just loved it. I mean, you know, primarily for my own health. You know, if I ever, if I never practice as a herbalist, just becoming a herbalist for my own health has been a great insurance. And actually, I don't have, in Ireland, you know, we have public health and private health. A lot of people have to take out private health insurance because the public health system is, is quite poor. There's a huge waiting list for treatments. So it's been a great investment. And it also, more recently, herbal medicine and, you know, my spiritual journey has become more to the fore. I'm more thinking now about herbs to open up consciousness, herbs to, to nurture the psychic, you know, to heal at that deeper level. And I think, you know, that's really interesting. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. That was interesting that you mentioned about your friend. I had heard about your friend from one of your videos before. That's the first time I heard that he had an aneurysm, which is actually how my dad died as well. Oh, yeah. So it's just like, man, because that didn't actually shock me at that time to get into herbs. Yeah. But what age was your dad? He was right around 64, I think at the time. So yeah. That's young. Yeah. But my mom as well, she's always been in pretty good health. She has actually like an aerobics instructor for a while. And she's always been kind of health conscious even more so than I was. But it's oddly enough, I it's like this year has actually been probably my most healthy year. And I think I attributed that a lot to starting the YouTube channel and doing all these investigations on myself. And the more I've researched and the more I've studied, it only got me into that. And it also helped lead me down the path to becoming a full vegetarian. So I'm not sure what your diet is now. As far as how well that's concerned, obviously, there's nothing against people who still no, no, but it's an important part of healing. I'm not a vegetarian or vegan, but but I grew up on a dairy farm. My father was a dairy farmer. So I grew up drinking raw milk. Raw milk is is now coming back, you know, it's a trend in terms of health. You know, I used to buy raw milk here and Dublin in the food market to make my own kefir kefir milk, which is really, you know, fermented foods would be a big thing. But I would eat very little meat. I'm very little dairy. And the course and the experience of being herbalist has definitely moved me more towards plant-based studies. As far as the meats you do eat, do you tend to go more for free range stuff or people from small butchers or small farmers? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Ireland has a very good reputation for its meat. You know, it's mostly grass-fed and but yeah, it will be local. But yeah, I mean, I think one of the biggest reasons I'd actually go off meat is for the environmental reason as well as the health benefits. But the environmental impact of meat is huge. Exactly, yeah. You know, so yeah, so some of the research I've seen, they can say that it actually has like an equal impact to oil in some ways. Yeah. That's serious. And I've been people, I just don't hear that research compared to hearing the stuff about how cars and oil and all those things really affected. Absolutely, yeah. It's true. It's true. Specifically, if you could change one thing about the medical industry, what do you think it would be? I think eclectism is the word that comes to mind, which is, you know, health use, like medicine in America particularly, which is, you know, a leading kind of country in terms of the development of modern medicine, particularly around pharmaceuticals. But there was a time back before, before the American Medical Association was set up in the 1840s, medicine was very eclectic in America. I've just, I know about America because I've read books have been written about that. And that meant that people had a lot of, it was normal to choose to go to a chiropractor, to go to a herbalist, go to a homeopath, you know, and many other forms of medicine. I think today, I think, and you can see it in the corona kind of pandemic response, you know, that medicine, you know, is very dominant in terms of how we think about viruses, how we think about the coronavirus. So if there was one thing I could change, which is kind of my passion, is to, that herbal medicine would become part of, you know, choice that people have, that it's not demonized or, you know, it's not pushed out to the margins, that within our hospitals, you know, why not involve a herbalist as part of a multi-disciplinary team? There's a lot of issues, you know, kidney issues, liver issues, heart issues, that can all be supported by herbal medicine and benefit the patient. But, you know, that's unlikely going to happen because the way hospitals and the way medicine and the way people are taught medicine, you know, pharmaceutical and other vested interests, you know, like medical, people that make medical equipment and so forth, they invest, they fund some of the medical training. So, and then they fund the building of hospitals. So it's designed to keep out other types of healing, other systems of healing. So I don't know, am I wishful thinking in thinking that herbal medicine could end up in a hospital? But what I do find is that I have a lot of conversations with people in my community, mostly online, that want choices, want to think differently about healing, particularly depression. You know, people, last night I was talking to somebody who, you know, the first instinct of their doctor was to prescribe them an antidepressant. They didn't want to go on antidepressant. So people need to have choices. So yeah. Absolutely, yeah. Living hope. Yeah, I mean, I very much have the same thoughts about it. I think from my perspective when you're talking about that, it seems like the easiest way for it to become connected with the actual hospitals and medicinal community at large is probably to have more of a groundswell and coming back from the people that they don't think it's some quack type thing anymore that they start recognizing as another valid thing that as more research comes out and as more channels like us are even about showing like, look, you know, these these been used throughout history this way. It's like until just recently when people are telling you it's a quack thing, that this is the way people cured things. So yeah, the more you just kind of get that back into the general consciousness, the more people will actually ask for the change and force it on them. Yeah. One of the things that fascinates me is how people think, you know, and how people how people's thoughts are controlled by greater systems, whether it be religion or politics or culture and or about medicine. And it seems that, you know, people want to be part of the crowd, you know, it's a human desire to be accepted and liked. So being a herbalist, I always thought it was a good thing to do and never I never taught that I never taught anything else. I just followed my intuition and my instinct. But as an academic, you know, with a PhD, looking back, I realized that it was a naive thing to do in my academic career, because it like I haven't really had an academic career, but I was assumed just doing different things would be would make me a better person and a better teacher. So even even academia, like the way universities, you know, think people are not really taught how to think critically or think independently. You know, if you look at what's going on in America, particularly in the politics, so divisive, or around the world about migration, or in UK and Ireland, we have Brexit and so forth, you know, that I'm always surprised the assumptions people make about their own health. It's like the health system in Ireland is designed for when you crash or break down, you know, it's not people are people are told, like more or less, people believe that you don't have to worry about your health until you have a health problem. And then we'll fix you, we'll put you back together, which is usually not the case, because the fixing and putting back together usually isn't always so quite successful. Now, if I had a car accident or broke a leg, I'd prefer to be in the hospital and go to a herbalist, you know, hospitals are very good at certain medical things. But as you said, Eric, you know, channels like yours and mine and others are helping people to reflect and think and engage in learning new ways of looking at health. Sometimes I get a bit disheartened in that process, but you know, you get remotivated and pick up the battle again. Yeah, it's always a wave to go through. As I said, that's natural life. And I've heard you just mentioned that on your channel a couple times that it's really good to just let that come through. If you run into a problem with some depression or anxiety or some other, you know, emotions that people are considered, you know, bad emotions or bitter emotions or negative emotions. They're actually just emotions that's something you just have to work through and allow it to either run its course and then you're good or it's something that you just as it's happening, you try and just get used to that pattern like, okay, why is this happening? Let me work through it so then I can just let it run its course and then come out better from it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's really important. And I had a client the other day for consultation and I actually mapped out, I ended up devising this kind of grid, which is kind of based on rituals. So it's like the idea that herbs are really powerful and healing. But if you do other things with them, like for example, I talked about energy cleansing, you know, particularly people that have psychological emotional problems, they need to cleanse their energy. And just having a shower, for example, is a is a good way to cleanse your energy. I'm a really water person, but probably because I'm a cancer sign, but I love water. And I'm cleansing your energy is a good ritual. Other rituals then like exercise, movement, spiritual rituals, food rituals, social rituals, and like the more rituals you have as part of your day. And then each day, the more accumulate effect will be your wellbeing and herbs being one of those rituals, but herbs on their own. And then not having rituals or doing things that not good for you, like not exercising, not cleansing your energy, not moving, not grounding, not connecting socially, you know, you won't really recover out of a depression, unless you you build in these rituals, you know, and as you said, the psychological emotion rituals of learning to understand your emotions, learning to, you know, stay with your emotions in the process rather than trying to dull them or suppress them because that's ultimately what anti depressants do. They suppress emotions, and they dull people. So anti depression, it's like against depression, you know, I think I had a post there, there was something I was thinking about today about depression as something we actually need, because like the seasons, you know, the leaves now are starting to fall off the trees. The tree is more vulnerable, exposed. It's letting go as it goes into hibernation and just come out in the spring. And we're the same. There's a reason why we can be depressed. And if we don't, as you said, figure that out, understand that and learn to accept, you know, because we do experience loss, you know, people have loss in terms of obviously the loss of a person is a big loss, but some people lose their jobs, some people lose their security, lose their health, lose their looks, you know, in terms of I've lost my hair. I'm not too depressed about that. There's a lot of pressure on people to look in a certain way and people have a lot of body issues, you know. And so it's, yeah, it's exciting. I'm still learning, you know, I love learning, you know, how to be a better herbalist, more effective herbalist, how to help people better. And I'm still learning about herbs, I'm still learning about healing. I love learning. That's a passion of mine. Yeah, I think anybody in this kind of field has to be because there is so much more to always pick up. And it's the same thing with me where like my wife asked me like a little while ago is like, so what happens when you run out of things to cover? I'm going, there's not going to be any time soon. I'm running out of things to cover. There's just so many more herbs to cover. There's so many more, you know, you know, properties, even like certain plants and stuff that I could cover. So it's like, yeah, there's tons of different things out there to learn and figure out and continue on with. Absolutely. It's not a problem. Yeah. Let me switch into a fun question here. I got my tea here and I noticed you like doing teas a lot too. So I was like wondering specifically, what are some of your favorite teas that you like to drink? Yeah, I drink a lot of peppermint tea. I have a box of it in my drawer at work, in my day job and a couple of boxes here. So peppermint would be one of my favorites. I love the minty taste. It's a calming herb for the gut particularly and soothing. I was in a shop the other day and I bought a whole heap of teas, you know, combination teas. So I love experimenting with teas, but I love making my own teas as well. I had a mugwort tea there the other day because I was making the video on mugwort and it's quite a nice, it was a lovely tea. And I love making blends and adding a little bit of licorice. Licorice is lovely as well, just like the raw licorice root. It's a lovely tea. When I mix licorice root, there's a lot of kind of dust particles, you know, and straight away I can feel my chest clearing, you know, it's like this flan mucus moving, so powerful. The peppermint would be my favorites. Yeah, very good. Yeah, I'm a big mint fan myself, so pretty much in that same regard here. As far as staying on the teas just for like one more, what do you think are some of your, the teas that are like your favorite teas for health? Obviously any herb can offer different types of things that are good for it, but are like there are some ones that are like more go-to ones, do you think you're thinking general health obviously go to these ones or those ones? Yeah, I mean I focus a lot on mental health, so you know teas like chamomile particularly, you know chamomile is great relaxing herb, it has many qualities, but it's very calming on the nervous system and you know it's associated with having people sleep better, so and it's a nice flower as well, it's a nice feel, it has a nice smell, nice scent, so chamomile and then sometimes you know if I was making a blend for somebody, you know I'd be looking at wild lettuce for example, it's a really good nervous system herb and hops as well, so I'd kind of try to combine leafy you know flowering parts and experimenting as well. I love valerian, valerian is, I would drink valerian every day. I buy herbs for for my practice, I have to be careful not to use all the valerian. Valerian you know obviously is a root, it's the root part and so sometimes I would recommend people to make a decoction you know, so it's just basically the same as making a tea but you brew it on a pot a bit longer because you're trying to extract the value, the necessary value out of the root and it just takes a bit more, so you have to kind of decoct it which is just let it simmer for a bit and then add that to water or add it to a tea, you could store it in the fridge for a while, which have valerian is great. I think we covered this a little bit already but you talked a little bit on your channel on some videos about trying to integrate both the body and the mind and how the medical industry is more focused on one side than the other and that we need to really balance between both aspects of the body like the emotions and we talked about depression already and in regards to that more specifically I mean what can you tell me about from the medical perspective they more focus on just dealing with the body and not so much the other aspects that can lead to causing problems right? Yeah yeah I mean there's a wealth of research now on the relationship between the mind and the body particularly in psychology the power of the mind over the body in terms of creating health and wellness versus illness and sickness and disease so you know it's the relationship between the mind and body is studied you know in a number of areas psychology and spirituality but medicine is still stuck in a very old paradigm you know that what's called sometimes referred to as physicalism which is the body you know medicine really works on the belief you know that you have to be able to see it under a microscope to know that it's real so there's a huge debate about the mind where is the mind what is the mind what is the relationship to the mind of the body and do people have a mind or you know is it just a brain is it you know a psychological system or is it a spiritual system? Medicine then being focused on physicalism you know the physical aspect of the body and the cells is missing out on the whole quantum science approach which is you know deeper than the physical now we have scientific evidence for energy in the body you know the energy system that you know the Chinese talk about the meridians meridium lines in yang and qi medicine hasn't really caught up with this new research you know that at a quantum level at an atom level in deeper than the cells you know there's more more stuff going on at that level than there is at a cellular level which is kind of the idea that disease is caused by cells mutating or whatever yeah I haven't seen any research myself maybe you have as far as them doing specific tests like they did on water where I've seen some of the tests they've done on that where they like did a lot of the things where they did nothing but positive things with the water yeah it showed a completely different structure compared to there being completely negative with it there's a lot of different types of research I don't kind of dig into the the the primary research I look at I'd be kind of reading books and authors that are talking about this research right I'm more interested in the philosophy ideas than the actual scientific nuances of it but then at you know if you look now at the whole movement about mindfulness mindfulness and well-being and holistic approach to life people returning to farmers markets people wanting organic people realizing exercise and all all of these ways are about nurturing your health it's the mind and body so people don't really need to be convinced anymore now that it's it's become nearly mainstream now yeah with medicine is still cut in this older older way of looking at things so I know from my own experience now you know I haven't worked in addiction for a number of years and it's it's most people's suffering is to do with their social experience you know relationships and their perception and experience of relationships you know people feeling isolated lonely there's a lot of research now on loneliness loneliness as you say is worse than smoking so if we know that love is a medicine it's healing social connection is really important and you know that that's because we're energy beings and we're interconnected beings we're not individuals and this is coming back to the thing about medicine if physicalism is that there's an idea called reductionism in medicine in science really we're just basically where they try to reduce complexity down to simple parts yeah so it's like in in medicine you have a specialist for the liver, hepatology, a specialist for the heart, cardiology, a specialist for the mind, psychiatry, a specialist for the the toes and the foot, podiatrists yeah podiatrists so medicine has divided up the body into all these different areas and depending which part is wrong you go to that specialist but the part that's wrong the part that's suffering is because it's basically in in Chinese medicine and in herbal medicine the energy medicine the idea that's you know symptoms in the body are an expression of being out of balance right so you know it's in her medicine we're taught not not to treat the symptoms you know like for example depression is a symptom of something else that's going on which is suffering and loss so try to treat the whole person so yeah I mean the mind-body connection I'm more and more convinced and more and more focusing on myself because I realize that people intuitively understand this as well and it's important as a herbalist sometimes you get kind of cut into reductionism a little bit somebody comes to the problem you're trying to fix that problem and sometimes you don't stand back and look at the wider issue or the historical issue in the person's life obviously some people do have genetic histories that lead them to have certain diseases you know rare diseases and conditions but most most diseases most physical or psychological diseases develop over time and they are as a result of our experience with the environment and our social social experience and if you feel very insecure or lacking in confidence then you're going to try and get more confidence and love from people so you do things to do that and some of those things you do like not believing in yourself or taking too much alcohol or drugs or eating the wrong foods you know it's all a way of coping with stress you know food has become a medicine you know hypocrisy is the father of medicine you know the famous quote that let food be your medicine and medicine your food but now people use medicine use food as a medicine to cope you know so like eating foods that are comforting but not not good if you eat them in high doses exactly yeah and that's the interesting thing I think as well with herbs is that it's it just goes to show that anything in life is that way it's like you have too much of an herb you can still cause problems to yourself yeah yeah absolutely with anything else absolutely yeah and so it's very important that everything has to have its balance in that sense and I think that's that's one lesson I take from it is that um when you see that in the herbalism world especially that it makes it makes you start thinking about the other aspects where like yes everything needs to find some kind of nice equilibrium if you're going to really make the hope the body work properly and help all of your systems work correctly as they each one of them needs to find that place essentially that happy place that nice medium place that's like you're not getting too much of this or too little of this and throwing yourself out of whack yeah and yeah either with the herbs or with whatever mentally is happening with you you don't you know overcompensate with something yeah and I think that can happen the same way on the other side where there's people who overcompensate with toxic mexico masculinity or with working out and they overpush themselves or anorexics or you know all these different things are symptoms of people over pushing themselves yeah yeah because of a mental problem yeah they think they need this and they just needed to have it sorted out to see yeah yeah notice that's very true it reminds me of one of the principles of mindfulness um which is called uh things called over striving or striving striving is always trying to do more and it's one of the weaknesses that I would have myself I'm a striver and my my desire to learn more is kind of a striving to kind of you know ultimately it creates more security for me but that striving is trying is nearly getting out of the present moment so it's it's something that I'm working on myself uh so but and that brings me back into balance so you know we're all human and we have to kind of accept that we're human but uh you know it's what what do you want from life you know what what are you striving for you know and I suppose we're all we all want peace and happiness isn't it exactly yeah but we we have we have that already if we just tune into it um it can't be God outside of ourselves right it's it's within us if we just sit sit and sit through the I think a lot a lot of a lot of our experience of life is conditioning you know we've been conditioned uh through our culture our society our our our family our spirituality I'm trying to I'm more influenced now by you know the non-jewelist tradition it's kind of Indians the Indian tradition of spirituality which is is really holistic approach to life it's less about the mind it's more about just being you know that uh in western culture we're very much striving as well you know there's it's embedded within us to do better you know to but then what do we do when we earn more money what do we spend more money on we buy a bigger car what does that do give us status you know status doesn't really make you well so if you get you know we can get caught into this striving pattern in life where we're constantly trying to improve ourselves but we're already perfect yeah in so many ways if we just look at the where we're at and just try and be happy with that and then it's like if you want to go for a goal that's always great but just like try and find a way to just find that happiness within then just build upon that from there absolutely yeah absolutely yeah yeah very much agree so um Tom you have an Etsy shop you recently opened yeah yeah that's right um and I had some problems with it today because they couldn't verify my identification so it's it's it's it's I think it might it might be able to get anything on it today but uh I'll have to try and fix that later but yeah no I I just opened it there about a month ago um because I was trying to find a way to respond to the stress of the pandemic and uh you know so I started thinking about you know trying to change my model and and you know it's worked very well I've come up with some nice formulas um you know one called compassion or one called acceptance you know and it's to try and support people who are experiencing stress at this time um so it's yeah people are responding really well um and it's really nice packaging the herbs and sending them off to different parts of the world uh at the moment mostly Ireland the UK and America and yeah it's nice a nice way to connect with people teaching people about herbs and sharing herbs so I'm really enjoying it yeah it's there's a bit of movement there so I have a nice community as well that I built up to YouTube and yeah and the Instagram more recently and um I'm enjoying this way of connecting with them you know and I love mixing the formulas it's something I love that I have medicines just the kind of the lab approach like mixing the formulas pulling them into bottles putting labels on them you know I live in an apartment in the city so I'm not I don't have the luxury you know to be the kind of country herbalist I do a bit of foraging when I can and I'm going to try and do some of my own kind of uh foraging formulas as well you know maybe small amounts on Esti you know because um that's a nice way to share as well but uh I tend to buy my my herbs in uh in Ireland or in the UK and I make the formulas then but yeah yeah now enjoy enjoy that part of it it's going well fantastic are there some uh other products or the different types of tinctures you're looking at getting on the shop soon yeah yeah I've put one up today called kindness I have a sample of it here um their kindness and I'm enjoying the the naming of them because that's your question about the mind-body connection and what I've been able to do with instead of the the compassion formula it's called compassion you know it's for people that have low mood or a bit of depression and it contains uh St John's wort and wormwood and mugwort but wormwood is a really bitter herb and um so it's called compassion because we need to be compassionate to ourselves and not to run away from the suffering as we talked about earlier so by experiencing the bitterness we are being compassionate to ourselves it sounds paradoxical but um and kindness then is is about being kind to ourselves because it's particularly this one is for people that have an overactive thyroid and the thyroid is really important psychologically and spiritually because it it's about how we connect with the world through communication and sometimes people who suffer from thyroid problems they're striving to communicate with others but it's they're not connecting and it's because they're they're they're seeking too much validation outside themselves so by turning in on ourselves being kind to ourselves um we can be kinder to others then really um so I'm I'm enjoying that part of it yeah I've put up the um some capsules as well um Bramie um is a nice capsule for depression it works very strong on the liver um and I have I'll be about 10 other types of capsules that I I saw some in did I'll be putting up in time and uh I will now I'm looking forward to making a um a gratitude formula uh because I like the word gratitude but um you know and a recovery formula for people that have addiction issues you know so supporting the liver particularly in their heart yeah so yeah it's it's um I'm really enjoying that yeah um well I'm gonna add your links in everything down below uh for you is there any other way that people could contact you if they want to get in touch with you yeah I'm very active on on them Instagram um I enjoy Instagram because it's it's uh you know there's different ways to connect there with you know stories and um reels now is a new part of it but you know people often message me there inquire about herbs I I put up photos um so the at the mental health herbalist on Instagram you can put the link as well um but I love YouTube as well I love engaging with people in in in the comments um and it's it's a great community and um I've got a lot of support there and a lot of encouragement and I'm back making videos there again I can't get disheartening on YouTube because the algorithm isn't really against isn't really supporting the likes of us so so I've set up a new email kind of subscribe subscriber things so I can send direct part of notifications which I know um on the mental health herbalist on on YouTube or the mental health herbalist on Instagram awesome okay well thank you so much for talking with me today Tom thanks Eric I really enjoyed the chat and I appreciate the work you're doing so keep up the good work and uh it's great all right