Spiritual Herbalism and Intuitive Healing with Ashe Kelly from Pura Luna Apothecary
We had a chance to sit down with Ashe Kelly of Pura Luna Apothecary to learn more about spiritual herbalism and her upcoming class at Holisticism. Keep scrolling to learn more.
Michelle Pellizzon: I'm so excited for your class. It looks so amazing. And we got a bunch of questions about you and Your own practice in terms of herbalism, but also spirituality. So I guess the best place for us to start is when did you first start getting into herbalism yourself?
Ashe Kelly: Yeah. So I would say it was during my trying to conceive journey which started about 10 years ago, I turned 26. And I was like, This is my year, my wife and I've been together since we were 17 and 18. We got married when I was 24. So two years into the marriage, you're just like, yes, let's expand our family.
I had this naive approach that it was going to be easy because I'm a young girl and like all these things, and it ended up being a real uphill battle for me, as well as just swimming upstream. And so I did a lot of different modalities to try to increase my fertility. And really, this was at a time that I wasn't trying to get to the root of the problem. I was just trying to treat the symptom, which was pregnancy. And so I went Chinese traditional Chinese medicine where I had to like boil this like these a bunch of herbs for five hours and drink this black sludge every day.
And that was and then I went west full Western where I was taking like Clomid and forcing my body to over ovulate and like just really a totally masculine approach to my body. My body really hated that my hormones were crazy. I was a crazy bitch. It was not good. Not fun.
And then I decided to go just traditional herbalism and working with like red clover and red raspberries and things like that. And it still wasn't working for me because I wasn't getting to the root of the problem, just treating it and then I decided to go to Costa Rica in order to just find myself in the jungle. I did a yoga teacher training in the beginning because yoga was always something that kept me grounded, but I definitely spiraled into a place that wasn't of my highest essence and decided that I needed to go away and really do that. So I spent 30 days in a wellness retreat that I thought was going to be with other people. And it was just me in this giant round house alone inside of the jungle. And that was really clarifying.
MP: Did I just sign up for a vipassana in the middle of the jungle?
AK: Pretty much! Yes. And the loudest, the loudest thing, even though the jungle is very loud, the last thing were my thoughts. And I was like, Well, I have a lot of work to do. And so there was also a healer there and a herbalist. Her name was Rachel, she was the person who owned the property and she introduced me into plant spirit medicine. As far as just being able to go around the land and connect with different allies. And so her whole garden is full of different plants that grow natively to Costa Rica.
And so it was really wonderful to have that connection. And I brought home some of the medicinal herbs I was working with there. And I just kept coming back to Costa Rica until finally, spirit was like, Ashe, this is great, but you got to learn what's right around you because as I know, now, the best medicine grows around us and we're just kind of oblivious to the plants and the spirits that want to work with us. They're constantly like, Hey, girl, what's up!
MP: I feel like fertility for so many female-identifying people and people with uteruses, it is this stressful place of push and pull. At the beginning of our lives, right, we'll do anything to avoid pregnancy, that when it finally comes, it's like, we just decide and we want to get pregnant immediately. And it's like, it's so discordant to, I don't know, just like the cycles of life. Personally, I'm worried that I'm going to get pregnant, but I'm also worried that I'm not going to be able to get pregnant. I just I relate to your story so much, and I know infertility seems to only be rising within the population.
AK: I think that's major, you know, the fact that we are very disconnected from our bodies and we are told to shut down our body shut down our fertility — that fertility is bad. And I really just think to learn to reclaim that word, fertility is anything that you're wishing to birth in the world. So I definitely know that my babies are my businesses, my babies are my plants. My baby is also the baby that I didn't birth. My wife birthed, our child who's now two-and-a-half. But I'm still a very fertile woman even though I wasn't able to fully conceive a human in this life, but I really want to reclaim that word because people are so fearful of it. And it's like, no fertility and creativity are so similar. Earth creates all these beautiful things, and we try to shut her down with like, roundup and all of these weed killers, but nevertheless, she persists.
MP: that's so true. And infertility isn't necessarily a gender thing, right? It's the end and it doesn't have to be your human baby that we give birth to. And so often when we stop focusing on like, what the outcome is that we want the expectation of like what fertility looks like, it blossoms in a completely beautiful, different wild way, like your business. You run Pura Luna apothecary in Santa Barbara, right?
AK: Yes!
MP: How long have you been running it?
AK: Both my wife and I are both pregnant at the same time. So Quest was born October 14th. And then Pura Luna was born November 17, both in 2017.
MP: Wow, that's so cool. And it must be amazing to see them evolve together.
AK: Absolutely. It definitely keeps things in perspective for me, you know, I wouldn't expect my daughter to run as a newborn so fast, you know, it's like it's a process and so now seeing her at a place where now she's swimming, she's running she's, you know, learning to talk and in the business is also growing and swimming and thriving through adversity and all of these different things. So it's a really big blessing to have these two as mirrors of each other because that's definitely what they are.
MP: Yeah! So wise, yeah, we wouldn't we don't expect an infant to just immediately start voicing their needs and like telling us their opinions on politics, right? I love how you mentioned that the best plans or the maybe the ones we need the most are the ones that are growing outside of our door. Can you talk a little bit more about that? I feel like so often we look outside of ourselves and beyond where we live for medicine or herbs are like practices like wellness practices. So how did you come across that yourself?
AK: Well, it just became really clear so once you have a really strong connection with a plant world and you really are able to listen, that's what I did hear the call. I stopped going to Costa Rica. Because Spirit was like, “What you need is right here” and I'm like who are you? I don't know you. I don't know you know you.
I would say that you know what we need is always in abundance around us and I think you're in California as well. It’s so abundant with native plants, especially plants that were utilized by the native tribes where I live in Santa Barbara, the Chumash are our native tribe here. And so it's been really eye-opening and really interesting to find out more about how they use what you walk by when you're hiking. And that's something that we can definitely bring into our lives and incorporate.
But it's interesting because a lot of us are dealing with, you know, anxiety and things like that. And the dandelion is growing right now, and dandelion definitely helps with the gut mind, you know, we don't really talk about how the mind and the gut are very connected. And if you're having these issues with you know, digestion and gas and bloating or whatever it is, it could be a sign that you need some support there. And the thing about plants is that they have like their doctrine of signatures, but they also have their colors correlate with different chakras, which I found really fascinating for me, personally, because when it comes to healing yourself, there's always this daunting task of like, Where do I begin?
So many layers to this. And what do I do, I always start at the root. And so if we look at we just stick to the plant dandelion, you know dandelion root is an incredible digestive tonic, but it also is a root. So when you ingest root medicine you are to are taking on that root of perspective and when we heal the root so the root chakra is definitely a place of like having our needs met, you know, having a roof over our head, you know nourishment, all of these things.
This plant in itself is so full of vitamins and minerals and so nourishing that you get to repair your roots by working with its roots. And then as we work out the plant, you know, then we have the green dandelion leaves. Well, green speaks to the heart chakra, you know, anything that that's better. I don't know if anybody has tried dandy libraries, but they're extremely bitter, they're very bitter. So it's really great for digestion, but it's tonifying. So tonifying to the heart to the lungs to this topic, it's like everything. So helping to really like tighten up that area and feel strong in your heart space.
And then as the dandelion grows, it's yellow. So, yellow is the sign of the solar plexus again digestion the solar plexus is the seed of who you are feeling you, forthright in this is me and I'm proud of who I am and this is what I have to say and like all of these things shining your light and being that lighthouse in the world a lot of us have had issues with that.
So just working with the entire plant dandelion, you're getting three more than three chakras but you're getting so much healing and so many medicinal benefits which are also getting the spiritual aspects of it, too. And that's what I love about the type of herbalism I practice — I don't just look at these plants as “Oh, plants” with this medicinal effect if anything I know more about their spiritual side than I know about their medicinal side because I deeply relate to their them on a spiritual level and then the physical side.