Clinical Herbalist and Naturopath with a diploma from L'Herbothèque, my herbalism practice is rooted to this place and the Earth. I offer individual holistic health consultations and community workshops, as well as maintain a garden of over 60 medicinal plants to stock my homegrown apothecary. Convinced that herbalism must remain the medicine of all peoples, my bilingual consultations are offered on a sliding scale, either in person in Montreal's South-West, or online.

Getting to the root imbalances:

While I work with a wide range of concerns, I specialize in the neuro-endocrine - immune complex. That means that I work together with my clients to return balance to the nervous system, to the hormones and to the immune system in order to resolve a range of symptoms:

• Fatigue, low or variable energy
• Stress, anxiety, insomnia, mood disorders
• Auto-immune diseases or frequent infections
• Digestive issues
• Reproductive or menstrual issues

Perinatal care to be present and prepared

I also have a particular focus on perinatal care, offering support through pregnancies and after birth. I accompany pregnant people through the many changes our bodies experience during and after pregnancy, and the issues that may arise. I offer guidance to take advantage of herbal medicine at this time in a way that is safe and supportive on such topics as: breastfeeding, labour, recovery, baby-care.

To keep in touch and hear about upcoming workshops and activities, recipes, consultation schedules and more, subscribe below to my newsletter (emails about 1x / month):

Insurance receipts are available.

Types of consultations

Initial Consultation – An Initial Consultations is 90 minutes (including herb preparation) and cost $75-$125* (for information on sliding scale payments, click here).  The herbal protocol suggested can be tailored to your budget, typically costing $20-$60 a month. Initial Consultations can be done in person (in Montreal's Southwest) or remotely online or by telephone.

Follow-up Consultation – A follow-up consultation lasts 60 minutes (including herb preparation) and cost $60-$100* (for information on sliding scale payments, click here).  Follow-up Consultations can be done in person (in Montreal's Southwest) or remotely online or by telephone.

30-Minute Care Check – Shorter consultations are available for acute conditions: colds, flues, or other acute illnesses, injuries (that don’t require immediate medical care) or for quick check-ins. They are particularly helpful for parents of young children seeking to avoid pharmaceuticals for their children and are often done on the phone, but in person or online is possible as well.  30-Minute Care Checks cost $40-$60* (for more about sliding scale, click here), plus the cost of herbs.

Herbal House Call – A herbal house call is a home visit from an herbalist reserved for when you or your family members feel too sick or are in too much pain to go out of the house.  Visits are available on the island of Montreal and cost $100-200* (for more on sliding scale, click here), plus the cost of herbs.

Community Healing Days – It is important that herbal medicine remains the medicine of the people, accessible to all.  To this end, I participate in monthly Community Healing Days, organized conjointly by the Salle de soins Collective and the Tiger Lotus Cooperative, where treatments are offered by donation.  For more information, click here.

*Bartering is also welcome! No one will be turned away for lack of funds.

What can I expect at an herbal consultation?

Consultations take place in a confidential space in a community center or remotely through video chat.  The first two sessions are focused on understanding your health concern, or aspects of your well-being that you’d like to change or learn more about.  We will cover a range of topics including emotions, lifestyle, sleep, diet, support, to paint a broad picture of you as a whole and complex being.

After the first session, you will leave will some initial suggestions, usually involving support for shifts you would like to make as well as a simple herbal protocol.  The second session, usually held 2 weeks later, will add more layers through a herbal protocol specifically designed for you, and include such elements as diet, sleep, exercise, life goals.  A third session is held approximately one month later to make adjustments to the protocol and bring in secondary concerns, as well as to allow you to reflect on your healing journey.  Further consultations may be desired in some cases to allow us to adjust as needed and shift towards a long-term maintenance plan. 

In each session, I combine recommendations for plants that treat and support specific systems of the body paired with practices that support a deepening of relationship to our bodies and to the place to which we belong.

Herbal preparations

Herbal preparations can often be sourced from my home-grown apothecary or available at herbal boutiques.  Herbs can be picked up within a few days of the consultation, or mailed to your home (with additional shipping costs).  Herbal preparations may include teas, tinctures, medicinal vinegars, infused oils, syrups, salves and beyond.  Most clients will need to follow a herbal protocol for 3 to 6 months, depending on the nature of the imbalance at hand.  Herbal medicine works over time to show our bodies how to return to their own life-enhancing patterns, away from the patterns instilled by external stressors (infections, stress, inflammation, trauma…).

What to bring?

• Any recent diagnoses or any relevant lab tests;
• A list of questions you may have;
• A friend/advocate, if that would make you feel more comfortable;
• If this is a follow up appointment, please bring any empty bottles for reuse;
• Let me know in advance if you have any specific needs or considerations.

Complementary practices

Throughout our work together, I can offer complementary practices on deepening one's connection to place through readings, plant meditations, group work, guided journaling and more.  These practices have come to me through a variety of influences, most notably: permaculture, the Work that Reconnects, Mindful meditation, and the decolonizing work of Indigenous and settler authors and activists.  As with each of my suggestions, we will choose together which, if any, practices are right for you.

Cancellation Policy

Appointments can be cancelled or rescheduled at no additional charge up to 48 hours in advance. Appointments cancelled or rescheduled between 48 and 24 hours in advance are billed at 50% of the total fee, and appointments cancelled or rescheduled less than 24 hours in advance are billed at 75% of the total fee.

I offer a range of workshops that can be adapted to different audiences including:

• popular education in community centres;
• professional workplaces;
• youth groups and high schools;
• garden groups and centres;
• general public

My workshops always combine elements of theory as well as hands-on, experiential applications.

Workshops are priced at a sliding scale, based on the resources available of the host organisation or the participants.  The average cost of a 1h30 workshop is $100-$200. Please contact me for more information, to reserve a date or to develop a workshop topic together.

Coming to Balance : A full-body approach for vibrant wellbeing

A 5-week group program starting in March, 2021 to shift the root causes of interconnected symptoms:

• Fatigue, brain fog, irritability
• Anxiety, addictions, insomnia
• Auto-immunity, PMS, infertility, and more

Removing barriers to your body's innate capacity for balance with plant medicine, therapeutic foods, removing toxins, identifying triggers and more, adapted to you and your budget. Learn more here.

Popular workshop themes:

• Introduction to Herbalism:  In this workshop, we will meet a range of locally-available plants and learn the basic preparations for making home-made medicines. We will discuss various different plant medicine traditions and discuss the importance of place.
• Preventing and Moving Through Burnout:  In this workshop, geared to either the workplace or small group settings, we will learn the physiological basis for burnout and share strategies as to how to stay healthy even in challenging environments.
• Garden Visits and Plant Walks: Guided plant walks allow participants to discover the amazing diversity of medicinal and edible plants growing right around us. We will cover respectful harvesting techniques as well as the question of contamination.
• Preparing Herbal Tea Mixtures: In this hands-on we will learn how to combine herbs into teas for maximum benefit. We identify together a number of ailments we would like to treat, and choose from the herbs available to develop custom blends. Participants leave with an individually designed bag of tea.
• Reconnecting with plants, with our bodies: This workshop is an invitation to use our senses to reconnect with plants and their healing ways. Through experiential activities and sharing, we will explore our co-evolution and deep connection with plants and practice developing our intuition around how to use them.
• Coming Home to Here: This workshop introduces a series of practices and exercises allowing participants to explore and own their place on this Earth, and this time, in the bodies they are in. We will discuss attachment theory as it applies to the land, and explore what right relationship to land can mean for settlers.

All plants from my garden are certified organic by Ecocert Canada.

I knew this was in a special spot as soon as I saw it.  In a clearing, in the woods, what must have been an old cattle watering area.  The soil is deep humus, almost black earth, but with a well-drained sandy loam layer below.  Never before have I seen Catnip grow so tall, Milk thistle towering above such luxurious  hyssop bushes.  This half-acre garden, located in the Ottawa River valley, near Lachute, Quebec, is a place where magic happens.

While co-managing La ferme coopérative aux champs qui chantent, my partner and I built a little cabin and maintained a small kitchen garden.  While we left the farm project in 2015, we continue to visit the cabin and maintain what has become an extensive medicinal plant garden.  I cultivate over 50 varieties of medicinal herbs and wildcraft a couple of dozen more from this beautiful and spirited site.

(She/Her) Of predominantly Scottish, Irish, English, German ancestral background I am a settler based in Tiotia'ke (Montreal), unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory.  Initiated to the healing power of relationships with plants in the fields and forests of my youth, I completed my training as a Clinical Herbalist and Naturopath at l’Herbothèque, where I now work as a researcher.  I combine my training in traditional Western herbalism with my scientific background to address a wide range of health issues using medicinal plants. Using a trauma-informed approach, I support clients in their goals to find the balance unique to each person and return to vibrant well-being.

I strive to offer accessible, empowering health care to strengthen the life force towards wholeness, towards justice.  Coming from a belief that individual and community well-being and the health of our non-human relatives are inseparable, my practice fits within a context of radically caring for ourselves and for the world: we are medicine for each other.  Our work, then, is based not only on supporting the various systems of the body, but also on restoring our relationships to body, to place, and to our own ancestral traditions, turning to plants as our greatest guides.

Exploring what forms right relationship to land might take for settlers has been an enduring thread since an early age.  My path to and through herbalism has been an exploration of possible answers.  This path has included a B.Sc. in Environmental Science (McGill University), an M.Sc. on colonialism in food systems and alternative medicine (Concordia University), an internship with Kuna botanicos (Kula Yala, Panama), co-founding and co-managing a 100+ family Community-Supported Agriculture project on a cooperative farm (La ferme cooperative aux champs qui chantant, Brownsburg-Chatham, QC) and coordinating networks of collective gardens, both urban and rural. 

A rich tradition

The use of medicinal plants has been a part of almost all human cultures since before we have called ourselves human.  We have, all of us, evolved with plants, our first form of medicine, and our bodies respond intuitively to them.  Even today, though we rarely hear it discussed in the news, medicinal plants represent the primary form of medicine for most non-industrialized societies.  It is truly the people’s medicine.

Although most synthetic drugs from the pharmacy originally came from plants, today they rarely contain any actual plant material.  Herbalists, however, use plants in the natural state- whole flowers, leaves, roots, seeds that they transform into teas, tinctures, medicinal vinegars and a variety of other medicines in order to extract a wide range of molecules.  While pharmaceuticals often use a magic bullet approach, trying to identify the single active principle responsible for the desired effects, herbalists believe that active principles work best in synergy, as they are found in Nature. 

Pharmaceuticals tend to give the body commands, while whole plants contain living information that helps support the body find its own healing potential.  Instead of solely treating the direct cause of dis-ease, herbalists work to improve the terrain, to prevent imbalances.  We strive for well-being based on wholeness and balance, rather than seeing health as the absence of sickness, or, as in biomedicine, the ability to work.

While the effects of herbal preparations may not always be as immediate or dramatic as those produced by the pharmaceutical industry, they have proven themselves effective and with much less risk over centuries of use.  We are nevertheless delighted when the scientific community turns its attention to plant medicines to offer explain scientifically what we know through observation.  Pharmaceuticals certainly have their place and serve an incredibly important role for many people.  They can often be used with great success in complement with herbal supports.

In an effort to ensure herbalism stay accessible as a medicine of the people, I offer consultations and workshops at a sliding scale fee and trust folks to situate themselves within the scale appropriately.

For the pricing of consultations, click here. Barter is always welcome and no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

For a better sense of how to situate yourself along the scale, Underground Alchemy in Albany, NY has put together a wonderful outline, found below.

What is a “sliding scale” you ask?

It is a tool for building economic justice, and it requires your active participation. If a sliding scale is implemented effectively, everyone pays a similar percentage of their income for the same products or services. A wide spectrum across the scale promotes broader accessibility, while ensuring fair compensation to the therapist. Paying according to one's available resources creates a more equitable, diverse and sustainable community we all benefit from.

Sliding scales are often based on individual income levels, with people of higher incomes paying more. However, many factors complicate and affect our financial status.  Some groups of people have specific costs that the larger population does not. And others have access to resources that are not always reflected in their lifestyle choices and income levels. Please consider both your class background and earning power when choosing your payment level.

Practice economic solidarity!

Here is a short list of guidelines that we're hoping will be helpful as you navigate the question of how where to situate yourself in the range of prices offered.

Consider paying less on the scale if you...

• are supporting children or have other dependents
• have significant debt
• have medical expenses not covered by insurance
• have tuition/educational expenses
• receive public assistance
• have immigration related expenses
• are a senior citizen

Consider paying more on the scale if you...

• have private insurance that covers naturopathy
• own the home you live in
• have investments, retirement accounts, inherited money
• travel recreationally
• have access to family money and resources in times of need
• work part time, by choice
• have a relatively high degree of earning power due to level of education (or gender and racial privilege, class background, etc.) Even if you are not currently exercising your earning power, we ask you to recognize this as a choice
• have racial privilege (i.e. are white-passing) or are a settler on Indigenous lands

The scale is intended to be a map, inviting each of us to take inventory of our financial resources and look deeper at our levels of privilege. It is a way to challenge the classist and capitalist society we live in and work towards economic justice on a local level. While we ask you to look inward please don’t stress about it. Pay what feels right.

*thanks to Radherb, Third Root, and the Kula Center for their contribution and work on developing sliding scale models.

I maintain a dispensary well-stocked with teas, tinctures, oils and vinegars that I have prepared with herbs from my garden or that I wildcrafted.

All plants are certified organic by Ecocert Canada and are harvested by hand at the summum of their vitality. The full inventory of plants available is listed below.

Popular herbal tea blends: Focus, Immuni-thé, Digestive, Calme, Cycle (menstrual)

Popular dried herbs: Nettle, Lemonbalm, Sacred Basil, Anise-hyssop, Flowering Oats

Popular tinctures/medicinal vinegars: Valerian, Sacred Basil, Garlic, Echinacea, Elderflower, Gotu Kola, Scullcap

Personalized blends are available by request and through consultations.

To order: email Heather at heather.herboriste@gmail.com, indicating the items and quantities desired. Once orders are confirmed, payment is through etransfer (interact via email), by cash or by cheque. Orders can be picked by appointment up in Montreal's southwest, or sent via Canada Post, with additional shipping fees.

Pricing

• Tinctures and medicinal vinegars: $18 for 50mL or $34 for 100mL
• Dried herbs: $7 for a 25g bag
• Salves: $14 for 50 mL or $25 for 100 mL

When appropriate for the plants' chemical makeup, I prioritize the use of a strong, organic apple cider vinegar for my liquid extracts rather than alcohol. More supportive of the body and locally produced, medicinal vinegars are comparable in action to alcohol extracts and are accessible to those who can not consume alcohol.

My herbalism practice is place specific, based on this land. This place, Tiohtià:ke (a.k.a Montreal), is within the unceded territory of the Kanien'kehá:ka, and has been used by many Indigenous nations. These lands and waters continue to serve as a site of meeting and exchange amongst nations and more recent immigrants, including myself. I recognize and respect the Kanien’kehá:ka as the custodians of these lands and waters on which I live. Gratitude.

I believe, also, that it is not enough just to acknowledge the keepers of this land. I encourage everyone to learn how colonialism is perpetuated in their own lives and communities, keeping us caught in the very systems of oppression that make us sick. The diverse forms that resistance can take to the dispossession of Indigenous lands and bodies is part of the healing journey for settlers and Indigenous peoples alike.

The image at the top is a colour-based map of the traditional Indigenous inhabitants of Tiohtià:ke/Montreal copied from https://native-land.ca/.

To be added to my newsletter email list, to organize a workshop or for any questions, please fill out the form below.

Please complete the following form and return it to me by email before your first consultation.

Can you imagine feeling energized, calm and see your symptoms improved in just five weeks?

A Full-Bodied Approach to Well-being

Date: March 4, 11, 18, 25 and April 1st, 18h30 to 20h30

Online via Zoom

A small group program with interactive sessions, paired support, and recommendations to put into practice each week.

Your symptoms are not in your head! You do not simply have to work harder.

These symptoms are just some of the many symptoms that arise when your neuro-endocrine – immune complex is out of balance.  What is that, you say?  The neuro-endocrine – immune complex is a network consisting of the nervous system, the endocrine (hormonal) system and the immune system, which participate together in a form of reciprocal regulation to maintain homeostasis in the body. It relies on signaling molecules, such as neurotransmitters, hormones, and cytokines, and when one part gets out of whack, signals get crossed and lead to a whole host of conditions that may, on the surface, seem unrelated.[i]

In this 5-week group program, you will learn how to actively take back your health. Working progressively week by week, we will address the root causes of imbalance and take steps in each of our lives to make changes that will bring us back to our innate well-being. Organized as a hybrid between a traditional course and a group consultation, you will leave with recommendations tailored to your specific conditions, and receive support along the way as you put them into practice, week by week.

We will discuss such topics as food triggers and blood sugar balance, gut disruption, environmental toxins, mindfulness and emotional regulation, therapeutic foods, and immunity. The group format allows participants to connect outside of course time to check-in and stay on course. Inspired by medical doctor, herbalist and midwife Aviva Romm’s approach to adrenal-thyroid support, this program is guided by traditional western herbalism and supported by evidence-based scientific literature. This program is an excellent complement to longer-term work with a psychologist or psychotherapist, allowing you to work of multiple levels at once to improve outcomes.

This program will be offered principally in English, though the written material is available in Eng and FR, and the discussion will shift between these languages, depending on participants’ needs.

Cost

$125 - $275, plus the price of herbs, supplements and suggested foods (tailored to your budget)

Limited bursaries offered for Black people, Indigenous people and people of colour.

Receipts are available for insurance purposes (naturopathy).

To Register

Email me to confirm space, then send an etransfer to heather.herboriste@gmail.com to reserve your spot. Your payment will not be deposited until the minimum number of people (5) have registered.

The deadline to register is February 20^th, 2021.

For questions, contact me here.

[i] Steinman, L. Elaborate interactions between the immune and nervous systems. Nature immunology5, 575–581, 10.1038/ni1078 (2004).