Keeping Warm: Countering the Cold with Warming Herbs

The Plant Path: Herbalism, Medical Astrology & Spagyric Alchemy

Sajah Popham

Alternative Health, Health & Fitness, Medicine

4.8 • 570 Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2025

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

There's something about winter that makes us want to bundle up and get warm. And while many of us do this with sweaters, a beanie, and thick wool socks, there's another critical way we stay warm: Through the herbs and food we eat.

In many herbal traditions, plants are often split into warming or cooling. A cooling herb might be great in summer, but it can leave you feeling off-balance during the cold winter months. That's why it's important to turn to warming herbs and spices that heat us up from the inside out. By doing this, we not only stay warmer, but we also come a little bit closer to living in harmony with nature's cycles.

In today's episode, you'll learn:

How living in harmony with the seasons connects us with nature
Why using warming herbs keeps us balanced, vital, and healthy during winter
The main actions, energetics, and affinities of warming herbs
How to use simple warming spices you already have at home
My favorite recipes for warming teas, herbal lattes, and even a few cocktails

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CONNECT WITH SAJAH AND WHITNEY

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To get free in depth mini-courses and videos, visit our blog at:

http://www.evolutionaryherbalism.com

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Get a free 5-week course when you buy a copy of the book, Evolutionary Herbalism:
https://www.evolutionaryherbalism.com/evolutionary-herbalism-book/

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ABOUT THE PLANT PATH

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The Plant Path is a window into the world of herbal medicine. With perspectives gleaned from traditional Western herbalism, Ayurveda, Chinese Medicine, Alchemy, Medical Astrology, and traditional cultures from around the world, The Plant Path provides unique insights, skills and strategies for the practice of true holistic herbalism. From clinical to spiritual perspectives, we don't just focus on what herbs are "good for," but rather who they are as intelligent beings, and how we can work with them to heal us physically and consciously evolve.

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ABOUT SAJAH

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Sajah Popham is the author of Evolutionary Herbalism and the founder of the School of Evolutionary Herbalism, where he trains herbalists in a holistic system of plant medicine that encompasses clinical Western herbalism, medical astrology, Ayurveda, and spagyric alchemy.

His mission is to develop a comprehensive approach that balances the science and spirituality of plant medicine, focusing on using plants to heal and rejuvenate the body, clarify the mind, open the heart, and support the development of the soul. This is only achieved through understanding and working with the chemical, energetic, and spiritual properties of the plants. His teachings embody a heartfelt respect, honor and reverence for the vast intelligence of plants in a way that empowers us to look deeper into the nature of our medicines and ourselves.

He lives on a homestead in the foothills of Mt. Baker Washington with his wife Whitney where he teaches, consults clients, and prepares spagyric herbal medicines.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the plant path, your window into the world of herbal medicine, with Saja and Whitney Popham, founders of the School of Evolutionary Herbalism.
0:23.6	Hey there everybody, Sagea Popham here, founder of the School of Evolutionary Herbalism,
0:29.6	and as they say, winter is coming.
0:33.6	Or for some of you, winter might already be here. But nonetheless, this is the time of year when we start to enlist a particular set of herbal medicines
0:46.1	in order to maintain our balance and health with the seasons through the use of warming herbs, warming up not just the body,
0:57.0	but also our minds, our psyches, our hearts. And that is going to be the topic of discussion
1:05.3	today. So I'm going to want to cover some of the primary properties of warming herbs, why warming herbs are very important
1:12.8	to use throughout the colder times of year, the importance of altering and adjusting and
1:19.8	fine-tuning our lifestyle, our diets with the changing of the seasons.
1:25.1	We'll cover some of the primary herbal actions and
1:27.9	energetics and affinities of warming herbs, as well as some of my favorite warming plants
1:34.6	that you can easily incorporate into your daily life.
1:40.3	So I want to start off by talking about this principle that we see in many traditions of holistic medicine where we want to alter and adjust the way that we live our lives with the changing of the seasons, with the changing of the weather.
2:01.5	And, you know, a lot of people talk about, you know, living a natural lifestyle or being
2:07.0	holistic and things like that.
2:10.0	And that's all great.
2:12.1	But I think sometimes it can be seen a little bit superficially, like living a natural
2:16.3	lifestyle.
2:18.8	Maybe that means, you know,
2:25.1	they change the products that they purchase from the store or they use herbs instead of over-the-counter medicines and things like that. But if we're really talking about adopting a natural lifestyle,
2:32.0	to me, what that really means at its core is that we strive to live our
2:37.2	lives every day in accordance with the rhythms and the patterns and the cycles of nature.
	...

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