Alyssa found her way to herbalism by way of organic farming, realizing that she was as interested in what the “weeds” were up to as the crops she was supposed to be cultivating! While teaching hands-on garden education at Jones Valley Teaching Farm, she fed her profound love of science, plants, and cooking by connecting Birmingham City School students to food, farming, and the culinary arts through standards-based lessons and after-school programs. If plants were her second love, languages were her first. At Virginia Commonwealth University, Alyssa studied legal and medical interpretation and graduated at the top of her class with a certification in Spanish-English Translation and Interpretation and a minor in Arabic. She completed her clinical training at the Eclectic School of Herbal Medicine, where she earned the distinction of Functional Herbalist (FH). She also studied briefly at the Appalachian Center for Natural Health in Arab, AL.

Alyssa integrates the rich tradition of Western Herbalism with movement and exercise therapies, clinical nutrition and functional medicine. She endeavors to blend the best of these fields while working to deconstruct the aspects of herbalism and its history that are colonialist, patriarchal and otherwise problematic. She is deeply invested in working with clients to build a preventative, compassionate model of care that addresses the root causes of illness and discomfort in an effective and comprehensive way. Alyssa has a bottomless and enduring love for movement and an affinity for wild things, which she feeds by practicing mixed martial arts, hiking, scuba diving, swimming, and searching the woods for reptiles with her partner, Ben.

In this episode, we discuss numerous aspects of health, alternative medicine, herbalism, the dichotomy between Eastern and Western medicine, treating the whole human, and much more!