Transcription of Sarah Richards for the show Tea Time #230
Lisa: Today it’s my great pleasure to speak with a long time member of the Portland community and entrepreneur and healer, this is Sarah Richards of Homegrown Urban Tea. In her teashop on Munjoy Hill, which she has owned since 2006, she concocts her own blends, often referencing Ayurvedic medicine and western herbalism. What you’re doing is fascinating stuff. It’s been interesting to me as … I believe I first read about you probably when you opened your shop in 2006. At the time I was earlier on in my experience as a doctor, and it was the first I’d heard about Ayurvedic medicine. You were one of the first people in this area to start talking about Ayurveda. Tell me about that.
Sarah: I think like so many things it was probably prevalent, but hadn’t yet come to the forefront of alternative medicine and modalities in our community. But when I started learning about Ayurveda it was, for me, this really pivotal time in my herbalism. I had been making tea for a long time from a really western perspective. After all those years of doing it that way, the way western medicine always approaches things. It’s isolate the active compound and concentrate it, and consumed as much of it as you possibly can. There were these big missing pieces and I felt them really intuitively in what I was doing in how I was helping people just in making tea for friends and family. I could feel sometimes that a blend I made for people for a cold for example, would be really effective and well received by one of those people and not have the same effect on the other.
Over time I started to feel like, “I know this person needs that, but I don’t know why.” I just felt it. When I started learning about Ayurveda it was initially for my own healing. I was teaching school and was having skin problems and asked a coworker who had beautiful skin what she used. She lent me this book about it and it was absolutely eye opening to me, in every way and made so much immediate sense and logic that immediately took it in. It was kind … Yeah, I always compare it to learning how to play guitar or learning to speak Spanish, or to speak a foreign language. It’s like you learn initially the notes and the chords, and then you get to play a song and actually express yourself.
Ayurveda really feels like that to me in my tea making. When I discovered it and started learning about it, I had all those basic building blocks of knowledge about plants and their medicinal value, and then I got to discover their energy and how to apply the active compounds in a way that can be received in a healing way by the recipient. It’s endlessly fascinating to me. I never feel I’ve mastered it. I always feel like I’m getting to a different layer of it. I see it in the world around me everywhere. It’s the most beautiful cohesive element in my world to me. I’m really grateful for that moment when she gave me that book. It was absolutely life changing and it came at a time when I was super disappointed about my career. It was this beautiful serendipitous thing.
Lisa: You grew up in New Sharon.
Sarah: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Lisa: You’re a Maine girl.
Sarah: Yeah.
Lisa: My experience as also a Maine girl is that herbalism isn’t necessarily a career path that people are encouraged to go on. I know you were a Spanish teacher also, how did you find yourself interested in herbs?
Sarah: I have always, since I was a little kid, loved to cook and loved to concoct things. I have a friend growing up and we would make all these crazy drinks all the time and then record ourselves making commercials for them, we’d give them names. Then I became a waitress and a bartender, working food service from the time I was 15 until my early 30s. The joy of that work was always for me giving somebody something delicious that I had a part in making. Whether it was simply how I butter the toast and it thrilled the customer. That has always given me joy, that piece of it.
I remember when, my first 2 or 3 years teaching and when I finally decided, “Okay I’m not going to bartend anymore.” I had a little diner job on the weekends and I decided, “I’m so over this, I’m just going to focus on my school teaching.” I remember saying to myself, “I’m so done with that. I’m so burnt out I’m never going to do it again.” Here I am and what I do is so much a reflection of all the good parts of that work for me.
But in terms of herbalism specifically, I started making tea when I went to college and someone gifted an herbal encyclopedia. I would have an ailment and I was fascinated with looking up what herbs might be helpful for my ailment. I would get other herbs to mix with because alone they generally taste terrible. Then I would look up the herbs of those aromat … look up the medicinal value of those aromatic pieces. I started blending flavor with intention.
That was always one of the things about Ayurveda that appealed to me the most, was I knew in my heart for myself what was so powerful about tea was how good it tastes and smells and how powerful that is, how it makes you just stop and experience it without experiencing anything else necessarily. I knew that that was powerfully healing. I knew there was something about tea, even though it wasn’t this synthetic concentration or a homeopathic remedy or this or that. I knew that it was really special and a really important vehicle for how to help people. I think your question was how did it all start.
Lisa: Yeah, beginning interest in herbs.
Sarah: Yeah. That’s really where it came from. I’ve always loved the things in the garden that we used to cook with. The simple mint and chamomile and those things that grow readily and freely that you can make tea with. Those have always been there, sort of talking to me.
Lisa: It’s an interesting thing that you’ve brought up chamomile and mint. Chamomile is a flower, it grows out there.
Sarah: It’s grows everywhere, yeah.
Lisa: Everywhere. It’s been actually for children and adults, but a lot for children, it has a very calming effect.
Sarah: Yeah.
Lisa: It’s something that’s available to all of us really during the growing season, or if we dry it afterwards. Mint is used a lot for digestion. These are things that you don’t have to take a pill for.
Sarah: That’s right.
Lisa: We don’t have to take an acid blocker for our stomach, we can actually go out there and find something living that can help us.
Sarah: I think that’s very universal in our psyche, in our culture. It’s very universal to understand those simple things and what they’re simply good for. It’s amazing how we simultaneously acknowledge and then ignore that basic wisdom, that relationship that we have with plants. As opposed to choosing a simple cup of calming herb to go to sleep, people so often choose a medication, which sends you down this road of who knows what. That same person will often know that wisdom simultaneously like, “I could just have a cup of calming tea,” and, “I could just shut my laptop off at 8:30, 9:00 at night.” You know what I mean?
I love that about my job. I think one of the questions I answer referencing that, I think one of the best things about my job is when I just through a conversation with somebody get them to realize their own tools, get them to realize the very obvious basic things that they’re not doing to be healthy. It’s pretty remarkable, people feel so indebted to me but really all they’re doing is listening to their own story.
Lisa: You know you raise a really interesting point. I think that some of it is really cultural. If you are in China and you understand the 5 elements, or 5 phase theories, you know that there are patent medicines, or there are herbs that you just use. You don’t go to the doctor for them. They’re just out there. Similar to Ayurvedic if you’re in India or one of the surrounding countries. You know maybe I’m more of a kapha or a vata or a pitta, and maybe I’m going to combine these spices in my cooking or these herbs in my teas. But it’s really; there is a lot more knowledge of what can help us as individuals before we even get to the place of seeking medical care, or urgent basis.
Sarah: Yeah. I think we as a culture have really put our hands up in the air and accepted to not do our part. If we looked at our system of medicine as the reaction to the final stages of illness, as opposed to … I think it’s really unfortunate. I think that it’s changing a little bit and shifting a little bit certainly, but in general an experience with the average physician is not going to give you this great in depth conversation and reflection on what has brought you to this point of illness. It’s not going to look at the basic things like nutrition and emotional experience, relationships, what your job is like.
All of those things are things that we tend to ignore when we go about getting healthy in our culture. It’s very unfortunate. I do think it’s changing a little bit, shifting a little bit. The whole alternative healing entity in our culture is I would say, what, tenfold that it was 10 or 15 years ago. It’s really pretty prominent. That’s a good sign.
Lisa: What I enjoy is when I sit down with patients, and because I practice Chinese medicine I will talk about 5 phases with them. I’ll talk about what it looks like to have more of a wood element in yourself, or more of a fire element. People are thirsty for that knowledge. Coming from a western doctor they’re almost shocked that I’d be willing to talk about that. The same is true with Ayurvedic medicine, that you actually have to understand that, and I’ll let you talk about vata, pitta and kapha because I know that you make blends that are specific to those types, but to know that you are more of one type of a person than another type of a person.
Certain herbs are going to impact you in a very different way than they might impact your child or your father. That’s a new way of thinking, that’s not the logarithmic approach to medicine that we’ve had for a long time, which is if you have this disease you take this medicine and this is what happens to your body. Can you talk to me about the Ayurvedic approach to these different types?
Sarah: Ayurveda is really about reflecting on what your body is expressing. It comes from that very basic act of, what do I look like? What do I feel like? What is my body doing in terms of illness? In western medicine we sort of look at an illness as this problem to be solved. Whereas in Ayurvedic medicine, as in Chinese medicine, and they’re very parallel, if somebody gets advice from somebody practicing Chinese medicine it, 100% of the time, is the same advice you’d get from an Ayurvedic perspective. They come from that same basic perspective and science of balancing the basic energy that is in certain ratios a good thing for the individual, or bad things, or a place of imbalance for the individual.
You want to look at what your skin looks like. You want to think about what your emotions are expressing. You want to look at those symptoms, not just I’m coughing, but am I coughing wetly or dryly, or is my congestion in my head? All of those things are what we would think about if we were truly reflecting on ourselves in that moment of need for balance.
Lisa: Can you give me an example of a person, just a few sentences about someone who has more of a vata dosha versus more of a pitta or a kapha.
Sarah: Sure. The doshas are the types they call them. Human beings are a little different than plants and animals where within a species of plant or animal there tends to be a type. In humans we all have these very individual constitutions, they’re generally combinations of 3 types which represent really simply, vata is air and space, pitta is metabolically fire and transformative energy which includes an aspect of water that has to do with flow, and then kapha is earth, oil, water, mass, density.
Anything that’s alive has in its constitution those 3 things. It has air and space, it has the ability to metabolize and create, it has a presence, a physical presence, a density, water, mass, it’s there. In people because we have these very individual constitutions we tend to be a certain type. If someone’s a vata type, they tend to be slender, prominent boned, narrow, slightly irregular features, dry skin. There are many, many attributes to assess. Kinky hair, nervousness, sleeplessness, dry skin issues, constipation. Ailments are all reflective of what energy is high at that time.
You can be any kind of type, any dosha, and still have a different imbalance going on. But those attributes of each dosha, although they sound negative it’s simply a way to use those expressions as a tool to wellness. If you compared somebody vata type, skinny cold dry and light, to somebody pitta type, metabolically fire and transformative energy, have the attributes of warm and moist. Pittas tend to be affected through very fiery expressions, things like rashes and hives and allergies and digestive issues like IBS, as opposed to gas, which would be a more airy issue. They tend to be more medium build and less dry skin but can be prone to dry skin when imbalanced. The features tend to be medium, soft and pink as opposed to long and irregular and narrow.
Again, it gets so detailed. It’s like the color and kind of shapes of your teeth, the kind of hair and skin tone you have. All of those things are potentially attributes of a dosha. Then the kapha type, the earth dosha tends to be full bodied, oily skin type, prone to things like lung congestion and depression and weight gain. They’re all connected to different seats of the body, different organ systems. In long term imbalance certain diseases will be more prevalent than others. It’s a way a practitioner would approach healing that person.
For example if somebody was suffering for example from … What’s a good one? Well, constipation, just a basic ailment I guess would be the best way to approach it. They would immediately ask questions related to vata. People think it’s so amazing when they come in and they’ve got something going on and I’m able to say, “Have you been eating too many nuts and seeds and raw vegetables?” “That’s all I eat.” They think they’re going to contradict the point that I’m making and they’re always surprised that those are the things that … And how did I know and that kind of thing. You can literally see it expressed in people. You see it in their body, you see it in their skin, you see it in their energy, their mood when they come in.
It’s very, very obvious and I think it’s such a beautiful thing about Ayurveda that it is so simple really. It’s very complex ultimately but really basically the most simple way to heal someone, because it’s really based on those very pragmatic expressions that are just … They tend to be crying out to the person. When you listen it’s powerful. The littlest things can be so powerful.
Lisa: Different times of year are associated with different types. I know that when I go to Sonny’s for lunch, you provide teas for Sonny’s, and sometimes-
Sarah: I owe them an order.
Lisa: I won’t tell them. Sometimes you can order teas that have to do with time of year.
Sarah: Yeah. I give them a seasonal tonic. Yeah.
Lisa: What time of year, if we’re talking in the autumn now going into the winter, what type of tea would you offer as a tonic.
Sarah: I’m pretty purist about, I do 4 blends that aren’t on my regular menu that I put on the board that I only run during those seasons. One is always the seasonal tonic, which were blends that I created my first couple of years open. They’re pretty complex most of them, they’ve always been right on. People love them, they feel really good, they’re just the right herbs for that season. I don’t change those but the other 3 I change every year because I want to come from a new space and a new place when I create them.
But they are all balancing for that time of year. I’m pretty purist about when I change the blends, I do it on the solstice and equinox. It feels a little incongruent I think to the seasonal shoppers right now that they still get the fall tonic on the board and stuff. I’ll just slowly this week and next week introduce a simple winter tonic and then come up with my winter blends. This time of year it’s very true, the energies that are dominant in the different seasons are very strongly dominant in our climate.
Fall is very vata, there’s always a ton of change, it becomes cold and dry, sort of unpredictable. It’s sort of a chaotic time so we need what is really naturally right around us that time of year to emphasis warm and moist foods, things like root vegetables, cooked root vegetables and things that ground us and add more moisture and more oil to our constitution. The warming spices are always really good in the fall. We love them in the fall. We love clove and ginger and cinnamon and cardamom and nutmeg and all those things this time of year.
It’s lead into winter months which are dominated by kapha, by the earth dosha. They tend to be cold, they tend to be damp sometimes. A lot of those same warming spices are really helpful in the winter months for uplifting the earth energy which I think we all really feel. We all get a little bit … I always joke that it’s great for business because people are sick and depressed in the winter so they come in in hoards. It’s very true, we’re all sort of prone to being a little more depressive and a little more lethargic and more inclined to go inward. It’s not that it’s not a good time to do that and a good time to relax and restore but it’s also the trick I think to keep the spirit up in that time of year.
Then you’ve got spring which is high pitta, lot of allergies, everything warm and moist and getting funky. You want to be cooling and you want to promote the flow, the flow gets really blocked and creates all that hot and moist reaction physically by the body. It creates a lot of stress. Pitta’s really high at that time of year so you want to be cooling and flow promoting, a little more diuretic in your herb choices if you’re thinking tea. More greens, which it’s so cool I think to look at diet Ayurvedically because it very naturally goes along with what is growing right now anyway. Beautifully that’s when all those things like kale and arugula and Swiss chard and spinach and beet greens, those all pop up in the spring and they should be emphasized therefor.
Lisa: Well Sarah, you’ve just opened up an entire Pandora’s box of interesting things that people who are listening to are going to want to find out more about. I know they’re going to want to go to your store, probably get a tonic for the winter months, or the fall. Where can people find you?
Sarah: I am located at 195 Congress Street in Portland Maine. It’s right at the bottom of Munjoy Hill, very near Washington Avenue. As you start going up the Hill I’m on the left. They’re doing this horrible construction to the side of my building right now, which is not timely at all for my Christmas rush but I am open. I hope that my sign can still be seen and people dare to come in. There’s this scaffolding over the entrance right now, it’s not ideal but I’m there.
Lisa: You’re there, and people can also find you online. What is your website?
Sarah: Homegrownherbandtea.com
Lisa: I really appreciate you’re coming in and sharing your knowledge and also bringing your teas to Portland, and making the healing energy of these herbs available to the people who come visit you. We’ve been speaking with Sarah Richards who is the owner of Homegrown Herb and Tea. Thank you so much for all the work you do.
Sarah: Thank you Lisa.