Not everyone comes to self-care the same way. Start here because your needs are unique and the contexts that shape your experiences matter. This episode introduces the show, the human behind the mic, and a concept that changes how you approach new care practices: onramps. We’ll think together about how systems like racism, classism, and healthcare gaps shape care, and how self-care is far more expansive than commercial wellness suggests. Come on in! Let’s explore bringing your self-care out of those commercial realms and In Your Hands, where it belongs.
What you’ll learn:
- Discover who this show is for and its depth
- Meet the host
- Consider what often gets skipped before care practices can stick
- How plants reach into more than one place at once—and what that changes about how we approach care
- Explore the under-recognized facets of self-care and how oppression shapes well-being
SHOW NOTES
Send a voice memo in 2 clicks! It’s a quick way to engage with the show, ask a question, or suggest a topic.
Connect with me
📧 quai [@] discoverspace.me
Full Transcript:
Hi. Welcome to the first episode of In Your Hands, herbal Self-Care for Emotional Bodies. I’m really excited to be rolling this show out. I’m Quai. I am a psychotherapist and an herbalist, and I hold space for people who are building self-care foundations and a lot of tendrils that are connected to that.
I genuinely love this work. I’ve spent over 15 years as a therapist. 10 years working with plants and 20 years offering some form of direct care, and I keep learning. So this show is distilling what’s worked across all of that and insights I’ve gathered from people I work with, from plants, from peers and mentors, and from figuring things out myself.
This first episode will give you everything you need to know about the show and whether it’s right for you. Before we get into that, I wanna draw your attention to a choice I made about the intro and outro for this. Series I made them into rituals where the intro sets you up for what’s to come, and the outro gets you ready to transition.
When we set ourselves up with rituals and do transitions intentionally, they become anchors that hold us steady while also giving us something to look forward to. I hope you have or find your own versions of this in your life. Here goes the intro that you’ll hear at the top of all of the following episodes.
Welcome in From Out of the Rain. I’m Quai, and this is In Your Hands. Herbal Self-Care for Emotional Bodies, a podcast about the complexities of building your own wellness blueprint. I’m a psychotherapist and herbalist who brings the critical lens to the systems that both help and harm. I’ll hold that tension with you as we explore plant remedies.
Trauma work, nervous system support, and building self-care foundations. And now for that awkward disclaimer I’ve gotta give you, this shows for educational purposes only and is not a replacement for therapy or personalized herbal care. The herbal remedies and practices discussed are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Please consult your healthcare provider for medical advice. Now, let’s begin. Remember all of your attempts at various things to support your self-care that never took off or petered out, like maybe there’s an exercise equipment in the back of a closet somewhere, or advice from a practitioner that’s rolling around in your mind like tumbleweed.
I honestly believe there’s so much to self-care and that on the surface it seems like things should be totally doable. But there’s so many things that make it hard to implement stuff. One of those things is a lack of on-ramps. We can’t jump from inspiration right into a practice. We need orientation to know what lies ahead, why facets of the practice.
Matter and what exactly they’re doing for us, it’s like when you’re in the kitchen and you wanna skip an ingredient because you don’t have it, but then your cake didn’t rise or the flavors are strangely muted, or there’s some fibrous material that really does make the end result unpleasant to eat, and you would’ve taken the time to strain it out.
Had you known that missing ingredient or. Step is what on-ramps are like. They’re the context you need to make things work. And on-Ramps are a huge part of what I’m doing with this podcast. Think of this first episode as onboarding you to the show, giving you the context you need to know if this is the right fit for you.
So let’s move on to the first on-ramp where I tell you a little bit about me.
Whenever I stumble upon a podcast, I’m always curious who’s behind the mic. So here’s a bit about me. I’m a queer therapist and herbalist, and I’ve spent years holding space for people who are building self-care foundations. I kept noticing that there were certain things that were missing, and what I’ve distilled that down to are.
Context frameworks and practical tool. I’m also always curious what motivates podcast hosts to do their shows. So here’s a brief behind the scenes for me, which is that clients that I used to work with, either in herbalism or therapy, um, some of my mentors and people from my community encouraged me to do some teaching.
They saw something in how I teach and talk about these topics that. They wanted more people to have access to, and that just felt right to me. I also had many moments where I was either talking to someone at a party or um, in a consultation with someone and talking through something, and I just kept feeling like, huh, like this really could be shared more widely.
So that’s a piece of it. A lot of what I talk about on the show is the things I talk about with my close community. Some of it I talk about with clients, but. I don’t always have time and I wish that I did. Many of the topic ideas I was inspired to make into episodes I believe should be freely available.
And part of preparing for what I was encouraged to do was waiting. I prepare for things long before I pursue them. Here’s what I bring to this work. People who know me well, tell me I’m thoughtful and I feel like that’s the thing that gets reflected back to me most often. Think that there’s something different when somebody’s teaching from a place where they’ve thought about what typically gets missed.
I’m also a non-linear thinker, an ambivert, so I kind of get things from like both sides of that spectrum and someone who values creativity and curating experiences. I’m not coming to this from the outside looking in. I’ve done my own work building foundations and navigating systems and finding what helps.
So I think the way I frame things might reach. People who need it said in a particular way or reach people to get pieces that they haven’t gotten in other places. Sometimes it’s about finding the voice that speaks to where you’re at. So I’m here to offer one more way in, and I’ve been thinking about this podcast for years, and I waited until the moment felt right.
I wanted to distill what wisdom kept surfacing across many people over the years of holding space. Um, certain pieces do come up again and again, small shifts that create more ease and patterns that when they’re understood compassionately and fully in depth, they shift how someone relates to themselves and their life.
And that depth of pattern recognition is part of what I’m bringing here. People also ask how I came to plants. I don’t have the story that many herbalist do, which is like a profound health crisis that led them to remedies or being introduced to it by another herbalist. My path was a lot quieter, but it felt inevitable somehow, and it does feel like something.
Drives me from before my lifetime, so I sort of work with that. I was curious about what could help bodies struggling with stress, trauma, and anxiety, and in ways that don’t separate the physical from the emotional, I realized that therapy. It can be really powerful. And it also has limitations. People need practices they can use at home in their bodies daily.
And good therapy is also gonna support that, but it’s coming from a different place. Herbalism is another way of working and I think that a lot of people, if they’re able to learn about it, it might be something that’s supportive for them. And by the way. I don’t mean to be dogmatic about herbalism or therapy.
I know there are many ways to find wellness and shed the masks and protective layers we often wear that obscure us from knowing ourselves. I’m just sharing with you some paths I’ve gotten to explore in hopes of providing info for those who are interested in perhaps. A starting place for people who may want to find other paths.
And a quick note, I’m not anti-medicine or anti healthcare yet. I do bring a critical lens to these systems. The history of medicine intertwined with colonization, pushed herbalism, and other healing practices to the margins. And that’s caused real harm. At the same time, there are practitioners within these systems doing important work, willing to examine power and how society shapes wellbeing.
I try to hold that tension. I wanna look at what works alongside, what’s harmful and who is harmed and how they are harmed. This is where. If that history matters and it gives us that context, and I think we all need to hold that. Whether you’re a practitioner examining how systems work or someone seeking care, we’re all navigating this together, or I think we could be navigating this together.
We all deserve better. That’s the lens I bring to this work, and herbs are just one of many, many ways of working with ourselves, and I also know that healthcare systems have gaps, whether that’s access, cost or not. Always having time to address what matters to you. That’s structural. I imagine the 15 minute appointments slot.
And other factors are exceedingly difficult for providers who seek to offer high levels of care. And there’s the reality that it takes time to find good fits with healthcare providers who work with your individual preferences. And there’s also additional barriers for people who are navigating things like black women not being believed about pain, or women in general being dismissed.
Queer folks being pathologized or their needs not being understood. People in larger bodies dealing with weight-based stigma and people navigating cross-cultural care may feel at a loss or have to code switch. I’m naming all of this, specifically racism, classism, ableism, sexism, fat phobia, queer phobia, transphobia, xenophobia.
All of these things are forms of oppression. And they shape what people need and how they approach care, and it’s related to our self-care. So I’m keeping these experiences in mind as I create this show. And herbs don’t fix systemic problems in healthcare. They can’t solve racism or transphobia or weight stigma.
They can be a tool among many that gives people more options and autonomy and their healing. They can also reconnect people to a form of care and connection with the Earth that has been systemically taken. They provide real soothing when life is painful and they can be. Infinitely personalized and adapted to what’s currently happening for someone.
And if we think about it, a plant that’s unaltered or a remedy with its precious constituents being preserved is a strong representation of what it means to exist purely as you are in your beautifully unique ways. So I see these remedies almost as symbols of whatever we might be without the thumbprints and alterations that oppression inflicts.
I often say that working with plants feels like I’m connecting with something ancient or before my lifetime, and I don’t think that’s imagination.
Here’s another thing. Plants and formulas that are good. Remedies good because they’re reaching into more than one place that someone needs. At the same time, they invite different questions than medicines do with a medicine. You might ask what treats anxiety. When you’re working with plants, you ask different questions.
You might start thinking about the conditions in someone’s system that create their experience and how those conditions relate to their environment and their whole system. So you can have the same concern with like seven different people and through limited language or through the medical models diagnostic lens, it gets labeled as the same thing.
Yet you need to address it in seven different ways. I’m not saying throw medicine away. There are things it can do that herbs cannot, and I’m not expecting medicine to solve everything. It can’t and shouldn’t have to. But I’m inviting you to consider what happens when medicine gets positioned as the ultimate authority and decider.
When that happens, other forms of care get pushed to the margins and a lot gets missed. So I like thinking about what might be possible if more resources went towards working with. Plants in ways that didn’t force the medical model onto them. And I’ll talk more about how herbal remedies differ from conventional medicines in episode five.
Um, but what draws me here now is how plants can be part of other forms of care. And I gotta be honest, I love the sensory experience of it. I also love bottles and jars, which I was into for a long time before herbalism gave me an excuse. To need a lot of them around. Um, I love finding just the right size for what you need and knowing what’s inside this, like this mini world, it’s like what the sunlight did, how the plants grew, and human hands harvesting that.
And I love that. That’s like all in small containers. Um, and the, for me, the connection to the tangible and intangible at once. Is a lot of what drives me. So the show will combine what I’ve learned from therapy, training, herbalism, years of witnessing what creates lasting change, and also influences outside of any formal or structured, uh, training because there’s so many places that wisdom is held and it’s not always within institutions.
Okay, so, so far I gave you two on-ramps, one on why on-ramps matter, and then another on who I am and why I’m doing this show. The third on-Ramp has to do with language. I’ll often say personal care instead of self-care because. This work is more expansive than most people think. Self-care is often thought as a singular thing.
So I’m gonna go back and forth between those two terms. But I wanna make the point here. It’s not just about relaxation and medical appointments or like, you know, a mental health. Day, it’s body care, managing your environment and the things that are around you. And by that I don’t mean having a neat and tidy home all the time.
People have different needs related to that. But your outer environment has to work for you on a number of levels. It’s also about what feeds your spirit and the infrastructure that makes it all sustainable. Other piece to it is that good personal care means you’ve got logistics that reduce the mental load.
Oh my gosh, if I have to think about every single thing I need to do to take care of myself all the time. I probably wouldn’t do about half of it. I also can’t constantly anticipate what’s coming and so setting ourselves up in ways that things are there at our fingertips, but also we, we carry knowledge that anticipate stuff is gonna come up.
We’re much more likely to have the what that we need, when we need and not be so strained mentally to figure them out in the moment. Just to give some quick examples about what I mean here is it can be something like having Epsom salts around because an epso salt bath helps with many things. I’m sure that will come up in different episodes.
Um, and then it can also be stuff like. Knowing that certain things might be stressful, and so logging for myself, like, what does stress look like? How does it come up so that I can learn ahead of time what kinds of things might be supportive for me, and I don’t have to think about them when I’m stressed because you’re not likely to think about it then.
Okay, the next on ramp is who the show is for. The show serves people that may be in three different kind of buckets. The first is people who are piecing together self-care and relationship skills that can get taken for granted, like noticing when you’re at capacity, following through on boundaries, even when it’s difficult.
For discovering body signals that help you figure out your needs. Perhaps you’re building skills that weren’t modeled learning in some areas and deepening in others. Maybe you have some practices that work and others that keep falling away, or you’re creating a more complete framework for the first time.
You may also be exploring or working with your relationship to coping strategies you may want support in finding what actually works on these different fronts, but not prescriptive advice or being talked down to. Second is for practitioners who, um, might be psychotherapists or herbalists or doing work that is in some way adjacent to these, to this.
So that might be. Body workers, acupuncturists, doulas, midwives, um, people who want to share resources with people who are receiving your services. The show will provide gentle reinforcement on topics like why self-care is harder than it looks and how trauma lives in the body. And the third group are people doing community organizing or others doing liberation oriented work who support people’s wellbeing and need accessible resources about.
Sustainable care practices that helps reinforce that self-care is not optional and is actually part of the work itself,
so the less on-ramp is what to expect and how to stay connected. The content related to systemic issues is helpful because of the resonance and language about why it’s really challenging to meet care needs. Both in our personal care and in accessing services. The content related to herbalism, somatic and trauma care and other practices are some options that anyone who’s curious should at least have an on-ramp to consider.
I’ll start with foundational episodes that go deeper over time. Some episodes build on each other, and I’ll let you know when that’s the case, but many can be listened to based on what you need or feel like listening to in the moment. Also, I wanna say expect. Imperfection. This is on two levels. The first is that it’s my value to show up with great care about the privileges I hold, and to create space that doesn’t alienate anyone and create space for different lived experiences and bodies.
But surely I’ll miss things and I hope to learn along the way. The other level is more on the technical and craft end of podcasting. I’m totally new to this. I’m doing it all on my own without a team, without a budget, and learning as I go. So while I hope the listening experience is overall a good one for you, I’m also asking for grace with the limitations of my time and otherwise that I have as I model imperfect ways of doing things.
If this show resonates with you, join my newsletter, which is also called. In your hands, and that’s where announcements happen and where I write about topics related to the show or maybe other topics. It’s a monthly newsletter. Sometimes I give herbalism recipes and tips. The link is in the show notes or at personalcareblueprints.me/freeofferings.
That’s Personal Care blueprints.me. / Free offerings. Welcome in. I’m glad you’re here.
All right. I hope this leaves you in a better place. If this episode was useful, please share it with someone who might benefit. That’s how the show grows and reaches people who need it. You can also subscribe to my newsletter for monthly insights on Herbal Self-Care and building your wellness. Blueprint links in the show notes.
If today’s episode sparked a question or perspective you’d like to share, reach out, especially if you’re speaking from lived experience or you are a practitioner working with similar themes. Take care however that looks for you today, and I leave you with birds I recorded on my city block to wherever you are.
Hi, I'm Quai - psychotherapist, herbalist, and host of In Your Hands: Herbal Self-Care for Emotional Bodies. This show is for anyone deepening their self-care practice, exploring intergenerational patterns, navigating harm reduction or recovery work, herb-curious folks wanting practical guidance, and practitioners looking for resources to share with clients.
I combine herbalism, trauma work, and a critical lens on the systems that shape wellness. Whether you're piecing together care skills that weren't modeled, working with your relationship to coping strategies, or thinking deeply about how oppression impacts wellbeing, this show offers context, frameworks, and practical tools.
We explore plant remedies, nervous system support, and the often-overlooked infrastructure that makes sustainable self-care actually possible. Join the newsletter at for care tips, episode announcements, and herb recipes.
