#76 Herbal Jedi Yarrow Willard on The Benefits of Medicinal Mushrooms

Yarrow Willard (0:00)

We've teased down our intelligent sensory perception based on having too much information always coming at us like this.

So our bodies are...

One speaker calls it homo sapien domesticated fragilis, or this fragile domesticated versions of the homo sapien. So as soon as there's stagnation, there's friction. As soon as there's friction, there's heat. As soon as there's heat, there's inflammation. As soon as there's inflammation, there's some kind of pain signal, there's some kind of signal to the universe that I need help, I need support, and if you don't listen, you create disease on every level. We've been throwing antibiotics on this planet like crazy. We're spewing like, I think something like 2,000 tons or more a year, just like dumping into the environment. The bacteria are pissed off. They're like, humans, get a grip. Like you are screwing this planet up and we don't like it. This is a big piece of what life is really about. It's about symbiosis, right? It's not survival of the fittest.

It's survival of the most communal, the one that can adapt and can be part of the natural system.

Siim Land (1:03)

Body Mind Empowerment.

SPEAKER_3 (1:05)

Get stronger, faster, smarter, quicker, friendlier, more helpful, more driven.

Siim Land (1:11)

Everything the body needs.

SPEAKER_3 (1:12)

Control your mind.

Siim Land (1:16)

Welcome to the Body Mind Empowerment Podcast. I'm your host Siim Land, and our guest today is the Herbal Jedi, Yarrow Willard from Canada.

Yarrow is a clinical master herbalist who runs his business Harmonic Arts. He shares the healing powers of plant medicine, herbalism, medicinal mushrooms, wild foraging, and sustainable living. Yarrow and I first met at the Biohacus Summit in Helsinki last year, and I immediately loved his authenticity and his intuitive way of connecting with the natural world around him.

Yarrow Willard (1:46)

And we're going to make ourselves a little mushroom cocktail.

Siim Land (1:50)

And he's definitely a super smart and super fun guy to be around, and I believe, like, in our society, you can learn so much from this traditional way of herbalism and living with nature. So, Yarrow, I'm definitely glad that you could make it, and I'm super excited for this.

Yarrow Willard (2:05)

Thank you. Yeah, I mean, me too. Really loved seeing you blossom and just rise into your power of becoming an awesome, amazing human being. So thanks for having me on.

Siim Land (2:15)

Well, you've been a huge inspiration in this sense, so thank you.

So let's maybe let's start off like, how did you become the herbal Jedi? What got you into herbalism and plant medicine?

Yarrow Willard (2:27)

Well, I originally got into plant medicine really as a, it was actually a family lineage. My father is a herbalist before me. And so I was like five years old and he was like, okay, everyone, this is my son Yarrow, and he's going to tell you about Yarrow today. And that's one of the herbs that grows around here all over the world, in fact. And, you know, first thing I said was, well, you know, I'm a fuzzy leaf with a tall stem. And I had no idea what I was talking about, but what I described was the kind of energetic way in which the plant showed up, which was really more around the intuitive way to learn from plants directly. And this sort of fed on as I grew into, well, there's more than just the books. There's a lot of ways we can start to directly communicate with plants and with the natural world. And in fact, we could communicate in way more than our voice, our ears, our eyes, and all of our senses.

So there's kind of some omnipresence ways we can start to get connected with plant medicine and with each other. And that's one of my missions now, is to deepen our connection with the natural world and that type of intelligence and communication.

Siim Land (3:32)

That's interesting, yeah. But when did you decide to kind of turn it into a business?

Yarrow Willard (3:38)

Well, when I graduated from my clinical herbalist program, I moved out to the West Coast here on Vancouver Island, and I was going to be a practitioner, and I was going to see patients.

But, you know, being a young man that I was, people were looking for the old wise Merlin or the shaman, so to speak, and I felt like, hmm, maybe this isn't my role to be a one-on-one practitioner. Even though I knew how to do this, I really wanted to connect people with medicine. And everyone that I knew around here had some shiatsu master or some massage therapist degree or some reiki, some level of healing energy about them that they wanted to do this same kind of service for the world. So we started a business based on the fact that everyone around us really needed connection to plants deeper and didn't have that access. So we started our company about 12 years ago now. Well, 10 years officially, but it was manifesting over those first couple of years. And so now we offer a full online and in many different health food store, botanical dispensary that's all over Western Canada and even into the States a little bit.