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Welcome to the Frontline Herbalism Podcast with your host, Nicole Rose from the
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Solidarity Apothecary.
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This is your place for all things plants and
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liberation.
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Let’s get started.
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Hello.
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Welcome back to the Frontline Herbalism podcast.
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So today is the second episode in a series all about herbal support for sleep and insomnia.
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So if you haven’t listened, please cheque out the previous episode because I give a kind of
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bird’s eye view of where I’m going with all this stuff in terms of things like daytime
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time nervous system support and reducing inflammation and nutritional deficiencies and
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the roles of, like, sedative herbs.
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Like, I just kind of introduced them all briefly with a goal for the kind of subsequent
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episodes to go into them in more depth.
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So, yeah, that this episode will be more
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useful if you listen to that one, if that makes sense.
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But before I dive in, shameless plug.
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The herbalism PTSD and traumatic stress cause
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is open for enrolment as we speak.
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Well, depending on when you’re listening to
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this.
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So, yeah, if you’re interested in that course, please cheque out the link in the show notes.
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No one is turned away for lack of funds.
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There is like a siding scale, including
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starting at zero, if that’s what you need.
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And I explore, like all of this stuff in so much depth.
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And I explore all of the herbs I talk about in a lot more depth, as well as things around
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their contraindications, their safety things, their energetics, their constituents, clinical
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studies,
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all of the stuff.
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They’re all in there for 32 plants.
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So please cheque them out.
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So I have,
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I have a tiny bit of time while my mum, bless her, has often offered to give my son a bath.
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So I just season it to do a podcast.
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So I’m just gonna ******* dive straight in.
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So today I’m gonna talk about,
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like, this feeling of when you are ******* exhausted, but you just cannot sleep.
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And most people will kind of know the like, colloquial term, like, like when you’re wired
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and tired, right, you kind of are super frustrated because you know you’re really,
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really tired, but you just can’t kind of drop off.
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And I want to talk about, like, some of the reasons that that happens.
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And more of these will be explored in later episodes around nutritional deficiencies and
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like, kind of more like layered trauma stuff.
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But like,
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yeah, I guess just kind of like to start at the basics.
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Like,
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our nervous system isn’t a binary by any means, but for simplicity’s sake, people often
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refer to it as these kind of Two dominant states that we dance between through the day.
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So one of them is the activation of the sympathetic nervous system.
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So this is our kind of fight or flight mobilising.
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Take energy, take action, like high energy state.
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You know, like if you were just about to get hit by a bus, you would want that nervous
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system state to kick in so that you would ******* jump out of the way.
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We’d grab someone else jumping out of the way.
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It’s like high adrenaline, blood sugar, racing
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heart,
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fast heart rate, like all of the things that you kind of want for survival, if that makes
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sense.
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And then we have our like parasympathetic state, which.
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Which is our like rest and digest state.
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So this is when we have much less tension and
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we have the ability for our digestive enzyme flow and our muscles to relax and our
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sphincters to kind of open as they need to help us,
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you know, digest food and help things kind of move along in our bodies when we’re digesting
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them.
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And that parasympathetic state can look like just kind of resting, but there’s often like a
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active element of it.
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So I talk about this in way more depth in the
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herbalism PTSD course.
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And I’m butchering it out of kind of time’s sake now.
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But basically there’s a kind of state that enables us to kind of have that downtime.
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And we need some of that in the day so that we can sleep well at night.
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Because it is that parasympathetic state that is signalling to our body that it is time to
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rest.
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And I know that doesn’t always happen.
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And I think people get into a pattern where maybe they only sleep when they’re like
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absolutely smashed.
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Like when they are just like so ****** and broken that that’s when they like kind of
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collapse into bed rather than having this kind of like wind down time to help them sleep.
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But ultimately in a kind of like.
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I don’t want to like impose a kind of like
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healthism,
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like neurotypical model on anyone, but like how the body is kind of designed is like this
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kind of relationship to the seasons, right? Of, oh, it’s getting dark, let’s slow down.
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Do you know what I mean? Let’s prepare our bodies for sleep.
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Like animals do that.
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Like, it’s kind of just, yeah.
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Inherent to that kind of relationship to the land.
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Does that make any sense?
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So when we have too much stimulation of this sympathetic fight or flight response,
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we kind of have a kind of like hangover from that in the sense of like,
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that stimulation and activation and energy is like somehow still moving in us unless we can
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kind of of more skillfully kind of move between the states.
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And I think some people kind of like hack the system a little bit where they may be like
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super, super triggered but then they do like a meditation or breath work or something and
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that just triggers that parasympathetic response.
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But I think for most people we’re kind of like swimming around in the dark a little bit and
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kind of just that process will trigger itself a bit naturally of like we’ll just kind of
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have to gently stop and slow down without kind of like conscious be engaging in that,
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you know, like as our kind of energy runs out through the day.
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But yeah, what can happen is when we are in states of like high activation, especially
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where there’s a lot of high stress hormones, like I don’t mean just like day to day
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busyness, which is also often,
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you know, the consequence of this nervous system state.
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But I mean like you’re triggered, you’re getting into fights, you’re ******* having
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panic attacks, like that really high intense like survival fight flight energy, like it
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does kind of wreak havoc on us physiologically.
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And I explore that in the herbalism PTSD course in much more depth.
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And that’s the kind of like tragedy of trauma of like some of us can be stuck in that kind
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of triggered state for a really ******* long time.
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And that’s why it’s amazing to work with plants, because they can help us trigger a
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like parasympathetic state.
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Not just kind of taking them, but just being
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around them.
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Medicine making, foraging, like all of these
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like wholesome things.
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But what we’re kind of thinking about when someone is experiencing like insomnia or sleep
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challenges is like I’m always thinking about what is going on for them in the daytime
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because that’s going to have a consequence for the nighttime.
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Right? And I see this all the time with my toddler,
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bless him, like in terms of like that dance between like having enough parasympathetic,
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simple like gentle time versus like overstimulation at like soft play or nursery
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or whatever.
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And he needs to you know, wear himself out in
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different places.
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But there’s a kind of difference between like
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movement and like adrenaline.
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Does that make sense? So anyway, so I’m always thinking about where
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are we starting in the morning?
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And that’s kind of where the herbal stuff comes in.
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But before I talk about that, I wanted to kind of talk about the other like mechanisms where
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that kind of wired but Tired state comes from.
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So obviously the kind of sympathetic activation is like, a critical part and the,
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you know, the stress hormones picture.
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But, like,
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there is also an element of, like,
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I don’t know if it’s like, just neurodiversity or if it’s like,
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just the world we live in and how overstimulating it is.
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But, like, there is an element of, like,
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being really tired but having a lot of ******* racing thoughts.
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And I think racing thoughts are kind of like a challenging nervous system state, because
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sometimes it does feel like that’s just someone’s kind of constitution.
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Like, they’re quite kind of, like, airy, if that makes sense, and intellectual and will
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kind of have that thinking pattern of, like, overanalyzing.
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Like, I remember being with a herbalist in Calais who had really bad insomnia and she’d
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had it for years.
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And, like, she was basically trying to figure out if she should break up with her husband or
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not.
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And it kept her up for ******* years.
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And she was like.
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She’s like, how do you sleep so well, Nicole?
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Blah, blah, blah.
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And I’m like, well, because I’m thinking
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about, do we have enough bandages for tomorrow?
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Do I need to buy more kitchen roll from the supermarket?
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Like, I’m thinking about very, like, mundane, practical things because that’s kind of how my
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brain is.
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But when you’re in that, like, kind of
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emotional turbulence where you’re, like,
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making a big life decision, like, that kind of stuff does keep you up, right?
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And I think there’s an element of, like,
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herbs can’t really help with that other than.
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I mean, Passion Flower is amazing for that
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kind of, like, mental racing energy.
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But I just mean that, like, sometimes what’s
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keeping us awake are actually things that our nervous system needs us to address in our
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lives.
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And often it’s not until the end of the day, when we actually have time and space to think
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about something, that our nervous system actually has the opportunity to, like, start
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processing our feelings.
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And our nervous system is ultimately there for survival.
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Right.
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Like, I’ve got a whole email series.
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In fact, I put it as a podcast as well, called Soothing Survival, where I talk about the
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different nervous system states and how we judge them as good or bad.
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But really, like, they are all serving a function of, like, trying to keep us alive,
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trying to keep us safe, trying to keep us in the familiar, trying to heal and process
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what’s happened, but also, you know, like, not always knowing how to do that, like, all of
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these things.
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But, like,
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yeah, sometimes we are not Sleeping because there is like something that is like a
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survival need.
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And I think unfortunately, like financial
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anxiety, for example, used to be something that would just keep me up so much as a kind
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of like survival mechanism.
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Like I need to solve this problem.
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And I think that’s very similar for lots of people in kind of acute, you know, situations
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or dangerous situations where someone’s trying to get out of it or change their life or
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whatever.
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So that’s why like the herbal stuff can never be separate from like the collective,
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like structures and systems that like generate trauma.
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Does that make sense?
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Okay, you’re probably like, get to the ******* herbs.
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Okay. So that’s like two things.
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So high,
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like sympathetic activation through the day and then racing thoughts as a kind of survival
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related pattern.
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The other thing I had on my list was kind of like muscle tension and like vigilance, which
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is a kind of obviously is like a nervous system state, but can accompany multiple
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nervous system states.
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But for me I kind of see this as something kind of like different in terms of the body
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and the enable.
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Like what, what will enable someone to kind of
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like switch off and relax.
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And I think, for example, if you’re in prison,
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the night times are really ******* hard because that’s when you hear the officers
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walking around, that’s when like girls start trying to like kill themselves.
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And you hear the screws respond to that.
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And in a way you’re kind of semi safe because the door sucked, but you’re also unsafe
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because you can’t do anything about it.
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And you’re like kind of literally frozen in a
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room.
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So like,
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and you know, that’s like obviously quite captivity is just like inherently traumatic,
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but like that kind of like hyper vigilance, like it is an activation of the sympathetic
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nervous system, but it’s a bit different to just like having loads of adrenaline in your
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system.
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It’s like much more of a holding pattern.
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And again, that’s where we can’t separate like
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nervous system stuff from reality, right? Of like what is keeping you in that holding
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situation.
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Like especially if you’re in unsafe housing or in an unsafe environment, or processing having
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gone through something awful like sexual assault in your sleep or something, like all
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of these things will kind of create that pattern.
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And that’s where we want to work with daytime nervous system relaxants.
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But like, if someone has that really kind of like tense constitution as a result of trauma,
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like it might be where antispasmodics with a lot of nuance here could be really helpful in
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terms of relieving Some of that muscular tension,
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like skull cap is ******* beautiful for like kind of relaxing that tense nervous system
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state.
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But as I talk about all the time, there’s
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loads of nuance here of like,
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I don’t want to like trigger that feeling of being sedated.
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And like, sometimes someone just needs to like build up their sense of safety much more
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before they can like really learn to release.
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Does that make any sense?
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Okay,
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so yeah, so I’ve mentioned about like the hyper vigilance, but also I just want to name
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that like the nighttime just can be a traumatic time for people for all sorts of
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reasons in their life.
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And that’s why in the like herbalism PTSD course I have a module where I talk about
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plant medicines.
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But I also introduce like a bunch of other
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kind of trauma healing related modalities like trauma releasing exercises or edmr.
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Because I think like plant medicines are one tool in the toolbox, right?
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And to process kind of traumatic memories and create a kind of new pattern in your body,
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like that does need like skilled support from other people.
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And you know, it’s like a whole other ball game to just kind of working with herbs.
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So yeah, everything is kind of connected and I hope I’m not being too,
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too like over detailed with this stuff, but.
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Okay. And then there’s just kind of like baseline sensitivity and like sensory
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sensitivity.
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Like sometimes people are wired but tired
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because they’re hearing like noises or they’re in a new place.
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Like how many times do you go to a new place and you just can’t sleep the first night?
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And I think that’s kind of just normal.
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Like I think that’s the nervous system like
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scanning the environment for threats and then just like evaluating if it’s safe or not.
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So there’s like lots and lots of things and I know like neurodivergence brings in just like
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next level sensory sensitivity, stuff that like is a whole other ball game.
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And ******* hell, I would love, love to like work with some herbalists around that in terms
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of learning from them because I feel like,
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yeah, it’s just kind of, we are kind of taught herbalism in like such a neurotypical way.
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And then you get to know people when you just see the kind of like wild differences of
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reactions to herbs and stuff.
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So if that’s you hit me up.
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Okay, so why does this look like practically like, I guess for me my sort of statement
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around this is that basically like sleep support like begins when we wake up.
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So like our kind of cortisol cycles and Our circadian rhythms do kind of kick in around
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certain times of day.
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And I hate to say it, but if someone is, like, sleeping in till quite late,
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that might kind of suit their pattern and their lifestyle and their job and everything
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else.
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But, like, it can like about with your
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rhythms.
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So sometimes it is a case of, like,
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starting your day a little bit earlier so that you have a bit longer to get tired, and then
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you kind of sleep at a kind of, like,
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time that’s a bit more, like, aligned with your digestion and everything else.
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Does that make sense?
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But what we’re kind of looking at with relaxant nervines is, like,
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how do we support someone through the day? And you’ve heard me talk about this if you’ve
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listened to episodes before, but, like, I call it, like, toning it down by, like, 10%.
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Like, and I think herbs can do way more than 10%, but 10% difference in how activated you
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feel might be the difference between a panic attack and not having a panic attack.
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And having a pan attack will probably mean that you have a bad night’s sleep because
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you’re ******* racing full of adrenaline.
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Not having a panic attack might mean you get a
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better night’s sleep, which might mean you don’t,
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you know,
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tip into ******* psychosis or something, which is, like, a real threat with, like, hardcore
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insomnia.
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And I should stay at the beginning of the
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series.
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Like, it is a spectrum and my approaches
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really are, like, person specific because everyone has different drivers of what is
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causing their insomnia.
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And that’s something, you know, I’m obviously trying to explore through these different
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episodes.
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But, yeah, working with nervous system relaxants through the daytime, which, in the
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herbalism PTSD course, there’s a whole module about relaxant nerve iron.
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So these are herbs that kind of reduce the activation of the sympathetic nervous system.
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But ideally they’re not too sedating.
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But annoyingly, they can still be too sedating for some people.
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So it’s a bit of a dance.
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But herbs like lemon balm, for example, or
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chamomile,
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hawthorn berry and flowers, I think is a fantastic nervous system.
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Like nervine kind of daytime relaxant that I love to work with.
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And then there’s herbs that kind of, like,
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can kind of, like, be in your back pocket for, like, acute moments of anxiety.
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Like, I love.
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I like motherboard and rose glycerite mix.
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Oh, it’s dreamy.
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Motherwort tincture, rose petal glyceri as a, like, panic attack blend.
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Dreamy. Like, people have just Told me how much it has helped.
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Like they’ve taken it after like counselling or therapy sessions or kink sessions, whatever
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floats your boat.
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And they will be like on the edge of a panic
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attack and then take a few drops and you know, their heart will not race as much.
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And it all just sort of prevent that full blown escalation to overwhelm.
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And I think that’s kind of where we’re going.
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But then there’s also all the like nerve tonic stuff, right?
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And I’ve had, I did a whole, I’ve didn’t like several episodes or nerve tonics, but really
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kind of like nourishing the nervous system so that it’s kind of like you know, functioning
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well.
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There’s like enough nutrients in there, things are communicating, bouncing around properly.
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Like all of that stuff will fundamentally support someone to sleep better ultimately.
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Like that’s kind of my approach.
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So herbs like milky oats for example or oat straw like in an infusion is *******
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wonderful.
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Or like skullcap is like a sedative herb that
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I work with mostly in the nighttime.
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But it’s also a like fantastic nerve tonic in terms of like this super reparative long term
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healing, like full of B vitamins,
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loads of research around it and like its effect on neurotransmitters and stuff around
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myelin, myelination and like all of this stuff.
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Like it’s very interesting hub.
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So that’s kind of where I’m going.
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But I don’t tend to work with Skullcap in the daytime because I just.
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Yeah, it’s like way too sedating for me.
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And then like the other kind of daytime picture is like what are you doing to like
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prepare for sleep? And I think people think that preparing for
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sleep starts like an hour before bedtime.
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Like that’s the kind of like sleep hygiene approach.
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But like, oh my God, it’s like so much sooner than that.
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Like it’s about kind of timing what time you have a meal maybe like what type of meal.
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Like is it kind of like heavy, like too heavy for the nighttime?
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Is it too stimulating? Is it potentially a bit gassy?
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Like all of these things are like factors and like where are you getting that kind of
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parasympathetic time in the day? Like I used to find, like I ******* hate it
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when organiser type events,
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political events, like they’re always in the evening and I understand about full time work,
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do you know what I mean? I get it.
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But like my PTSD would just go through the roof doing these evening events or Even an
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evening meeting where it’s like blah, blah, blah, prison and repression.
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And then I just wouldn’t be able to sleep because I wouldn’t have that parasympathetic
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like downtime to then like successfully get to sleep.
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Does that make sense? So it’s like thinking about how you structure
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your day of like labelling that rest kind of time and like if you do have an event in the
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evening,
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then like just timetabling a little bit longer in the afternoon so that you can have a bigger
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meal and have like an hour to digest it.
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And I know people will be listening to this
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like laughing, thinking, that’s like not possible for them.
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But like,
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you know, sleep deprivation is really serious and like any sort of modifications that are in
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your control I think are really, really important.
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And it’s probably like my main area with my clinical practise where I become a bit of a
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dom because I’m just like herbs can’t match a good night’s sleep,
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they just can’t.
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So let’s get people sleeping.
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And also in terms of daytime stuff, I’m going to talk about this next time in more detail.
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But like planning your meals of when you’re going to eat and what you’re going to eat kind
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of will,
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if you’re having sleep challenges is also really important.
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So actually I will save that for next time.
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But finally, yeah, so having enough parasympathetic time in the day and I often
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give my clients like a evening like nerve nourisher tea which I encourage them to kind
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of like have when they’re sort of work day or like main chunk of the day kind of ends.
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So that includes a tiny bit of skull cap but also chamomile.
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Excuse me.
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See, I’m hitting my parasympathetic desire
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time.
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Yeah, that will include skull cap,
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a little bit of,
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sorry, a little bit of skullcap,
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oat straw, chamomile and like a dash of lavender.
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Oh, and it is dreamy.
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And again that tea might put some people to
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sleep straight away.
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For other people it’s more likely to just
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trigger this kind of evening wind down ritual.
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And I find that rituals are really, really important in kind of telling the body to
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prepare for bed.
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You know, like with my toddler, like I will
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close the curtains in the caravan, put a nice lamp on, like we’ll just kind of wind down.
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Like I mean to be fair, he will like watch trash or whatever while I do some chores
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before bed.
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But then you know, we’ll do like we’ll have A
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soft light in the bedroom.
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We’ll do like,
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like books and then we’ll have some milk and like a little storey, maybe some songs.
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And it’s like.
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It’s just giving him these cues over several
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hours, to be honest, that, you know, we are preparing for sleep.
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And I think if we had lives where we were like, embedded in the land, we would get those
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natural cues, you know, like the sun is setting and the birds are chirping and, you
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know, we’re preparing our bodies for rest.
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Like, all of that stuff is just like there right in the universe.
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But we kind of have to, like, resist the like,
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modernity of just like bright lights and like, hyperstimulation and like all of this.
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But yeah, if you can work with herbs to like, create a nice, nice evening ritual for
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yourself, if the evenings are like a possible time for you.
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I know it’s really difficult when you’re a parent.
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And like, Lee now will be like, if he has an afternoon nap, like, his wake windows are so
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long that he won’t go to sleep till like, 8, 9 o’.
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Clock. And I’m just like, completely broken.
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Like, there’s no parasympathetic time there
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for me.
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Like, I just.
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As soon as he’s asleep, I’m out.
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And it’s very annoying because I need to work
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in the evenings often.
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But, you know, when he doesn’t have a nap and then he’ll go to sleep early and then I’ll get
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like.
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You know, it feels so, so luxurious to just
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like,
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work on my phone a little bit.
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Like work on the frontline hub, there’s a
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membership and then I’ll have time to watch a movie and then I can go to sleep.
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And it’s like, wow, I’m like, so recharged with this parasympathetic time.
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But basically what I’m saying is you can integrate herbs into your kind of, like, daily
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pattern to, like,
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communicate to your body that it is preparing for sleep.
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I don’t know if you’ve got hardcore insomnia, it’s going to be like, off.
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Nicole, like, I don’t believe you, but I do think, think if you’ve got hardcore insomnia,
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like, the other episodes will kind of maybe be a little bit more revealing because there are
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just like so many other factors that people aren’t aware of.
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Okay, I think I’ve stopped blathering on now.
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What I’m basically, the short version of this half an hour is stress in the daytime affects
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our ability to sleep.
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We need parasympathetic time to wind down, to
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communicate to our body that it’s time to sleep.
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We can work with herbs to reduce those levels of activation in the daytime to, to prevent,
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like, hardcore overstress, overstimulation, like panic attacks, things like this.
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And then we can start potentially working with things like sedative herbs for the actual
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getting to sleep process.
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And I will record a whole episode about that
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too.
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But yeah, I’m going to stop talking now.
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And please cheque out the herbalism PTSD and
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traumatic stress course.
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I’ve got a whole lesson in there about sleep
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where I talk about how to track and observe your sleep, how to work with sedative herbs
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safely,
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how to support your nervous system through the day with relaxant nerve ions, with nerve
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tonic,
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with cardiac nerve irons, with all the ******* nerve irons.
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32 nervines coming out of the course.
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Sorry, I’m in a really weird mood.
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Anyway,
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thank you for listening.
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Yeah, please, please cheque out the course if you can.
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Okay, take care.
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Thanks so much for listening to the Frontline Herbalism podcast.
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You can find the transcript, the links, all the resources from the
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[email protected] podcast.
