Healing From Within | Special Podcast Episode

✨Hello, I’m Fran, Your NLP & Business Coach. I’m exploring a wide range of business ideas and money-making paths, with practical takeaways you can apply.

In this episode, I'm interviewing Kathy Sanderson.

Kathy Sanderson is a herbal remedy maker, community facilitator, and energy healer living on 25 acres in South West Wales. Alongside her husband, David, she runs Community Camping and Healing Gatherings.

She is passionate about creating herbal remedies, mushroom tinctures, flower essences, and natural skincare products.

You can connect to Kathy in the following ways⬇️

https://communitygatherings.uk
Facebook group : communitycampingandhealing
https://www.facebook.com/healingfromwithinuk
https://www.tiktok.com/@healing_from_within?_r=1&_t=ZN-97hLv6F3m6A
https://www.instagram.com/healingfromwithinuk
 
Find me @ https://melancholymentor.com

As a coach, I listen without judgment, understanding that others views may differ from my own.

#nlpcoach #nlpcoaching #inspiration #energyhealing #business

Transcript

Welcome And Meet Kathy

Fran 0:27

Hello and welcome to Melancholy Coaching Podcast. I'm Fran, your NLP and business coach, and I'm delighted to welcome an inspirational guest. Kathy is a herbal remedy maker, community facilitator, and energy healer living on 25 acres in South West Wales. Alongside her husband David, she runs community camping and healing gatherings, which sounds gorgeous. Kathy's passionate about creating herbal remedies, mushroom tinctures, flower essences, and natural skincare products. When she isn't hosting retreats, teaching workshops, or tending to the family's many animals, which also I love, you can find her foraging and tracking the changing seasons on her beautiful land. So Kathy, welcome to the show. Thank you, Fran. It's lovely to be here. Oh, it's quite an introduction, isn't it?

Kathy 1:20

Yeah, is I'm like, oh, I want to meet this person.

Fran 1:24

Um, so I've got just a couple of questions for you, just nice and gentle, and we'll have a little chat around that if that's okay with you. So the first one that I've got, because I like to pre-prepare this stuff.

The Oak Tree That Pulled Her In

Fran 1:36

So the first one I've got for you is what drew you to the folklore? Because I did look at what you do, so you know, some of it's framed around folklore. So what drew you to the folklore and deeper energy of plants?

Kathy 1:50

I so when we moved here, so we would have been here five years, August, and I had just started, just started to connect with one tree. That was it, because I found a tree at the end of, we were on like the back of the Cadbury estate in Birmingham, and not a housing estate, but where they actually lived. So it was just outside Birmingham. And we had a public footpath that went downside of our house and went into the Cadbury woods. And I used to go along that way most days with my dogs and my children, especially during lockdown. Found this tree that really pulled me in. And I named her. She was called Celestia, she was a very big oak tree, very big, you're like you couldn't even put your arms around her so big. And I used to talk to Celestia because I was going through quite a turbulent time, and I used to find comfort in her, she would calm me, and everyone just thought I was crazy. I had before that in my previous house gone and hugged a huge big oak tree that was just outside our house, but we were on a busy B road, and like the number 50 bus and the number 49 bus went past every five minutes. So people must have just thought I was crazy. So it was lovely to find Celestia in the middle of these woods and stuff. And one day I was hugging her and I felt like this, you know, like in films, you see like the whirring of the time going back, and you feel like you're whirring and stuff. Interesting. And she took me like 500 years back to how the land had looked then. Amazing. And and I just felt like it was such a privilege. Such a privilege. But that became a separate incident. I didn't do anything else about it. I just felt like me and Celestia had this connection, and it was a bit sad to leave to Birmingham from Birmingham.

The Move To Land In Wales

Kathy 3:56

And I came here to this land now in the middle of the lockdown housing boom, it took us nine months to sell our house, and we had to drop the price, which was unheard of, absolutely unheard of. Everyone else's houses were selling really quick. And the reason I think that was is because this place where we live now didn't come on the market until two weeks before we accepted that offer.

Fran 4:24

Right, okay. So the timing was was actually aligning you with your ideal property. You just didn't know.

Kathy 4:31

Exactly. And we we'd seen this online. It was two things we didn't want. We didn't want neighbours because neighbours in the past had been a bit of an issue. And we won didn't want a bungalow, and we wanted land all around us. So we were there, you know, like how you're trying to see on right move what it's actually like. And I'm like, I'm sure there's a house next door. It's a bungalow, I don't want a bungalow. So we cancelled the book viewing of this house, and we came down to Wales, and the the guy who the estate agent that we first saw, he he actually did a kind of escape to the country thing. He's like, What are you looking for? What should we go? And it like it took us to loads and loads of houses, and we're like, Oh, I really like this one. And there was one where there was um the fields were over the other side of the house, and it was two houses merged into what one house that had been split by two sisters, so it would have been big enough and everything because my mum was moving with us, and we could have made an annex. And then we went to see a different property from him, and it was one of these auction properties. Now, the Forestry Commission had gone in and bought all of these big farms, took all of the land, and left you with 10 acres and the farm buildings. So we went to look at it because we could have like made like built barn conversions and stuff. But the horrible thing was everybody in that room was wanting the same thing. So you're watching the auctioneer walking around in his white coat, and everyone is saying your same ideas, and it got too overwhelming. Plus, it was right, it was like an hour away from civilization. So if we hadn't got stranded again, it would have been so no, no, no. And the estate agent phoned me and he says, Oh, where are you? I'm at that house that you wanted to see. We're like, Oh, which one was that? Was that the one he was talking about where he couldn't get the keys? So we rushed over another hour, pulled up outside, and he was like, Oh god, though, it's that house. Oh, well, we're here now, let's go and look. And we walked in and the house was lovely, and then we got into the kitchen where I'm talking to you from now, and we looked outside, and I was like, Oh my, it would that all be ours? And he's like, Well, even more. I said, What would be ours? He says, Past the Scots Pine. I'm like, What's Scots Pine? The dark green trees. Oh, okay. Fell in love with it, but it was raining, so came back on the Sunday, walked round it, it just filled my heart, and of course we got it. But this land has never been really farmed, it's not farmable land, and it's got such a beautiful history. People used to walk along here, I believe, to go to the burial site on the other mountain. So we found druidic stones, really quite tall ones buried in the path and stuff, and it's got crystal going all the way through it, it's got crystal seams, yeah. So there's two trees here that make a portal, and you know, like you think, oh, I'm going crazy feeling this, but other people have come and they've felt the same, and I haven't told them what I felt, but they've said the same thing, so it's kind of made me know. And we did I had our 15-year wedding blessing in those trees, it was gorgeous, but those trees have taken me on journeys too, very, very um weird, like not what you would expect, type journeys, but it made me understand what I had to do. So I believe that plants are very, very healing, but I believe the most healing is is being able to listen to the plants themselves, and the folklore comes from people actually taking that time to listen.

Fran 8:42

There's a lot to unpack in what you've said. So, firstly, because obviously, from a coach point of view, because I'm an NLP coach, I'm very interested in the fact that you had your non-negotiables in place. So you already knew that you didn't particularly want neighbours and you wanted this and that, and that's okay because we're allowed to put those non-negotiables in place, we're allowed to have those boundaries in place. The thing about the the word crazy, words, words we interpret words as to what they mean to us, you know. So to some people, that's a bad thing. To me, it's not a bad thing, you know. It's just it's just a way of describing something. So, quite possibly the people passing you on the bus when you were back in Birmingham and you're hugging that tree, they might have been looking with wonder and awe. They might have been looking, thinking, I'd never do that, or how embarrassing, or because we never know, we preempt what people think, and it's not always the right uh thing that they're thinking, is it? You know, because and that could that could build towards our own limiting beliefs, and you haven't let that happen. So you've you've potentially thought what people might think, but it hasn't held you back. Um so that's a very interesting thing as well. So the the whole thing about the the land, I think that it was waiting for you. It was waiting for you to be there. This is gonna lead me on to my next question as well, just generally about people.

How Folklore Meets Health Benefits

Fran 10:12

So for somebody who's completely new to plant healing, like the thought of plant healing, how do the folklore and the actual health benefits, how does it come together?

Kathy 10:27

Okay, so my one of my favorite favourite plants is dandelion. And when I moved here, there was hardly any dandelion, you know, dandelion everywhere, hardly any. So I used to have to go when I started making my magic balm and collect from neighbours' gardens and friends' gardens who hadn't sprayed because there was none, and you can't go and collect from parks and stuff because you're not sure. But dandelion, I was like, why am I so drawn to dandelion? And no one could really tell me, but when we were in Thailand, so we took the kids for a whole month backpacking around Thailand three years ago, and really taught the kids that you could actually live out of a backpack, even as a type one diabetic who needed all of her supplies just in case. So I went to do a sound bath in pie over a river, it was lush, and they at the end they had cards, or at the beginning they had cards, and you could like go through them and choose cards. And one of the packs was energy plant energy healing. Obviously, I'm gonna pick that one. So I went through and I picked out dandelion.

Fran 11:46

Yeah, this is a this is another thing that's led you on the path, isn't it? Yeah, you know, the signs have been there, and you and you you haven't missed them, you've picked up on them.

Kathy 11:56

I'm very good. Sometimes it gets me into trouble, but I'm very good about listening to the voices in my head, what they're telling me. And I pulled out the dandelion card, and it said that dandelions release anger energetically, yeah. Which all made sense to me because as a little one, I had a lot of anger because you were unable to express yourself. So, like my middle daughter now, she really struggles with her emotional regulation, but rightly or wrongly, we allow her to express her anger because I wasn't allowed, because you know, that generation you didn't.

Dandelion, Anger And Skin Conditions

Fran 12:37

It's about I think it's about doing it in a safe environment. So I don't think that any of our emotions and our feelings, and you know, whether it be anger or peaceful or whatever, I don't think they're inherently bad or good, they just are. So having the intelligence to sit and feel your feelings and express your feelings, but then to learn not to do anything detrimental to yourself or others. That's that's a journey, that's a learning journey, isn't it? So I'm certainly to sit with your feelings or to allow those feelings to happen because you can it helps you to process them.

Kathy 13:14

I watched my dad be two different people, so he would be like salt the earth to everyone, and then he'd come home and he'd express his feelings. So I learned that I couldn't express my feelings because you know you get told, don't you? It's bad behavior, all of those things. And I didn't want that for my daughter, but what also it made me realize was a lot of skin conditions are unsuppressed anger or are suppressed anger. So the reason that my magic balm was helping so many people with skin conditions like psoriasis and eczema was that energetically the dandelion was helping them to release their anger.

Fran 14:02

So and this I'd just like to say as well for anybody listening, this comes with no judgment and no no blame or anything like that. You know, if you if your body's holding anger or your mind's holding anger, there's no blame involved in that. It's it it just is, and you may not even be that aware of it. So, you know, the fact that these bombs and everything can help, we've got no judgment for other people, have we? Like what they're holding on to.

Kathy 14:26

Oh gosh, no, and we're taught, we are taught that we cannot express our feelings. Like, you know, if you said you were angry and you expressed your anger, you were told off. You were told off at school, you were told off at home, and there's a whole generation that has never been able to get in touch with their feelings. We had uh sulfur long weekend for adults only, and a gentleman came along and he's like, I really just don't know if this is my thing. But for the whole of one day, he sat in his tent alone, and we're like, My god, is he okay? And he came out and he's like, I've just connected with my feelings, yeah, my emotions. I've I've never done that, and you know, having to wait until you're in your 40s or your 50s to do that damages your body. How much can you push down?

Fran 15:17

I I think that's because he f finally felt that he was in a safe environment and he gave himself permission to do so. You know, it's a apparently the uh our beliefs and things like that are formed within the first eight years of our lives, like according to you know, brains and things. And we get that predominantly from our parents or caregivers. Your belief system can be changed, but you've got no how to. But you things like emotional regulation, you also learn that within those early stages of life, and you learn it from your caregivers or your parents. So if they also suppress their emotions, you know, it's no surprise that you don't learn how to emotionally regulate.

Kathy 15:59

No. And the thing within a child is as well, you so yeah, that seven of seven years becomes your Bible, doesn't it? That's how life is. So if you observe your parents never being able to say how they feel to other people, but coming home and then doing it and doing it in the wrong way, then that that's what you learn. But interestingly, as well, as life gets busier and busier, like my dad used to drag me every Sunday to the Licky Hills in Birmingham. As a family, we had to go, and you know, because you don't understand how much it meant to him, you just think it's a punishment, don't you?

Fran 16:41

Having to walk up these hills and it's really interesting thing, actually, because without that piece of communication, you know, we're not to know the reasons as to why people want to do things.

Kathy 16:52

But the reason was that he came over in the Irish immigration after the war. So, and it was no blacks, no dogs, no Irish. So the only place, unless they carried on living in a tiny cramped two-house bed house in the middle of Birmingham, was they got a caravan and got it taken up to the top of the Licky Hills, and they were able to stay there. Now, for him, he had his whole garden as this huge expanse of greenery, and that's where he grew up, but it was never communicated to me. The reason he loved going there and walking there and taking the dog there and everything was because this was his childhood home. Of course, he didn't own it, but you know, this he knew all of the areas, he knew it all. He caddied and everything, but yeah, unless you actually tell your children stuff, you grow up just thinking, Oh, we had to go every Sunday, it was such a drag. And I only know this because I read his diaries, because he's gone now, you know. You only put those things together. No one ever said it. So there's so much energy around what we're doing. We've totally deviated, haven't we? But the folklore of plants is the energy. So when people come on our herbal remedies, so this the 17th and 19th of July is our ancestral remedies. When they come on that, my friend Holly teaches them all the medicinal stuff because that's her back. I'm all about the energetic qualities and feeling into the plant, and just because it says that that's the plant you need to use, talk to the plant, is that the plant you need to use? That's the connection that we've lost for a very, very long time.

Myths And Plant Detox

Fran 18:48

I've got a dandelion story for you. So when as a child there's things that are relatively traumatic in my life, don't need to go into that right now. However, I was a bed wetter for many, many years. So that carries a lot of guilt and a lot of shame in it, you know, because you you're the one that wets the bed if if you go on a school camping trip or you're not invited to that people's houses and you know, things like that. So there was there was a lot of shame involved in it. And I was a fairly quiet child. Now I loved playing with with daisies and dandelions and things like that. And I was told that dandelions make you wet the bed. So I think that there's something in there that, like from a herbal point of view, that maybe it flushes out your body or something like that. It doesn't make you wet the bed, but there's some there's some kind of there's always a grain of truth, isn't there, in these these wives' towels or these labels that plants get. So for a long time I was in almost in like a I can't think what how to say it, maybe like a turmoil, thinking, I'm so drawn to these little flowers, but I'm being told they're making me wet the bed. Um, so I still played with them, and you know, I got over wetting the bed, and it's fine, and I still love dandelions. But sometimes I think they've that the medicinal properties in in flowers and in plants and things like that, we're not we're not that aware of, but there must be some historical stuff that gets passed down, but it gets changed slightly and it gets thought of as a as an old wife's towel or something like that, doesn't it?

Kathy 20:25

Totally, yeah.

Fran 20:27

So I find things like that interesting as well.

Kathy 20:31

Definitely, and I thought exactly the same, you know. If I touch them, I'm gonna wet the bed. And like you say, you know, it was a shameful thing. So we stayed away from them, and it's such a shame. They they're they're still called, I think, in Scotland, pista beds or somewhere. Oh, yeah. Because, you know, it's so funny, the the different names for them. I handle them all the time. It it does it doesn't make me need to go to the toilet more. But what it does do is the the roots work really well as a detox, so they help your livers and your kidneys, which would possibly that's where you you flush out toxins, so you know it got termed as you're gonna you're gonna wear the bed. And people, I suppose, because they didn't understand the parts. So if you if you're a well person and you drink plantain tea, dandelion tea, and nettle tea, that will keep you well because it will the nettle will cleanse your blood, the dandelion leaves will cleanse your lymphatic system, and the plantain will heal whatever's going on in your body. But because suddenly no one can do plant things because it becomes witchy, and the only people who can do plant things are the people who take them into a lab and make lots of money, then everything gets changed. And isn't it interesting that we're now encouraged to have a lawn that is absolutely no healing property? Other than a garden of daisies and calendula and plantain and dandelion and nettles and pineapple weed, all of the things that will just grow if you let them. But there's a billion pound industry on weed killer.

Fran 22:21

And back in the day as well, a lot of witches were actually herbologists, weren't they? They've they were interherbal or they were midwives and they understood the properties of plants. So I wonder whether some people now that kind of do more stuff with the land, whether they're more kind of on the hedge witch side of things, possibly. Interesting. Another conversation there, because what I'm going to ask you next is literally what's next for

Herbalist Training And Glamping Plans

Fran 22:49

you. So you've you've moved to this beautiful property, you've lived there for a while, you've got land all around it. Some of it is run as a business, so it's a family home, but part of the land is run as a business for yourselves. What's next for you?

Kathy 23:03

So in September, I'm starting to train as a herbalist. Because I've sat there for like two, three years now thinking, I wish I could do this. What should I do? And I was there at Christmas, and I'm like, oh my god, had I actually just got my bottoming gear, I would have been halfway through my training. And I found this really so in tune with the way I am with plants, rather than going to a university and studying through that way, where they are all about being with the plants. It's done on some land in Exmore. There's there's two in it's called the Plant Medicine School. So there's two in Ireland, there's one in Scotland, there's one in Exmoor, and there's one nearer to London. And although it's in a different country, it's not too far away from me, two and a half hours. So some of it's in person and some of it's online. And that's absolutely perfect. I love their EFAS, I love that way, and I did a lot of research and I found out that a lot of herbalists wish they'd done this route. So I'm choosing the route which has been recommended to me. And I'm so, so excited. I'm currently doing a medicinal mushroom practitioner course. So once I've done the herbalist course, I can prescribe both, but it gives me that extra insight into doing the into using the mushrooms that I grow and being able to prescribe them to people. And the reason I'm doing the herbalist training is I get so many people coming to me asking for me for advice, but I can't give them advice because I'm not medically trained. So this will give me that training, that backing behind me, rather than the intuition and everything that I've learned myself, and I can get insurance and I can help people in that way. Because we might want to travel in the winter, because my husband's got seasonal affective disorder. And I have created a blend for him, which we're going to see. But he wants to go away in the winter when the children are old enough. So I'd still be able to see patients and everything as a herbalist. But we're also building, so finally, finally, got planning permission after 18 months to build luxury glamping lodges because people want to come to our events, but they can't be in the cold. They have got medical conditions and stuff. So this means that they can take part too, as well as the people who can camp or the people who glamp or becoming. We've we're halfway through. We plan to have it finished at the end of this month. Whether that happens depends on materials. And then we've got another five to build. One will be completely accessible so people can come in wheelchairs and stuff. We want to build a kitchen diner because I think one of the most important things about commute coming together as a community is the eating. You can go to workshops and things, but this is where the talking, this is where people get to talk over drinks and stuff. And whales being whales and why it's so lush and green is it rains a lot. Rains a lot. So being able to have our beautiful views because we're on top of a mountain, um, and see out even in the rain and not getting rained on and not getting cold is a really, really good idea. Accessible toilets, accessible showers, so that people can come whose children need that additional support, or people who need to be able, it's more the children, the adults can kind of deal with it unless they're in a wheelchair, but the children need a bigger space if they regularly need to be washed.

Fran 26:48

So a lot of this as well will lend itself to being seasonal, because you've mentioned already about your husband. I feel him by the way, because I I also am affected by seasonal affective disorders, it's disorder, isn't it? I'm not sure how I feel about the word disorder. That's called sad SAD. I've got a long history of depression, and a lot of it is uh around the seasons as well. So I use a light lamp and you know all the things to try and help my circadian rhythm and everything. So I get that. So part of the business that you're running, I presume then it will be seasonal. Do you stop for the winter then?

Kathy 27:23

We currently stop for the winter, but when these lodges are built and we've got the kitchen diner, we won't need to stop because we can still run the retreats. Would you want to? I think so. I like doing them. So when we can't run the weekend ones, we do day retreats, do windwiz, and we did an amazing winter solstice day retreat and stuff. I I like doing these things, I like bringing people together, and I think that the winter is such a miserable time for so many people. People refuse to go out. Like I run a women's woodland group, it's free. Women come, only women. So this is it like two hours a week. They escape children, escape dogs, or sometimes dogs come, but it's when they can all be together. So we do some crafting and stuff. But to get people out in the winter, especially because it's only under a covered area, it's really hard. So if the kitchen diner was made, we could come together and you know it'd be easier and be warmer. So yeah, these are my these are my plans.

Where To Find Kathy And Next Steps

Fran 28:28

Lovely, thank you for sharing. Right. So we're gonna start wrapping this up now. So thank you so much, Kathy. I feel like you've shared some wisdom with with me and the listeners, so that's lovely. And I'm interested to find out more about like your journey once you've once you've got your training. The thing to mention about training is that we all have knowledge and wisdom, we just do. And if you don't think you have, it's there in your subconscious mind, like in your unconscious mind, like we we we know all the things that we we just do. And as a business owner, it's how much training do you need to actually be that professional, you know, to be able to do the things that you do, but you're doing it for a particular reason, you know, because it's gonna get you somewhere because sometimes we need to just stop, like just another training course and I'll be ready, just another thing to learn and I'll be ready. You know what I'm saying? So it you've got a very clear path as to where that training is gonna take you and how you can then benefit your community from it, which I love as well. So if you're interested in learning more about Kathy and her work, your website is communitygatherings.uk.

Kathy 29:42

Yeah.

Fran 29:43

Um I was looking for the co on there, but apparently there isn't one.

Kathy 29:46

It's just.uk my other one is healing fromwithin.co.uk. So that's all my magic balm and tinctures and teas and everything. So there's two rather silly. Maybe they should just all go under my name, I don't know. But um, I have two websites, so I give myself lots of extra to do.

Fran 30:05

You've got a Facebook group, which is community camping and healing gatherings, which is lovely. You've got a Facebook page, you're on TikTok and Instagram, and it's all healing from within UK. Yes. And that's how people can find you. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Um, and I'm gonna look up all of those. I think I'd looked up some of them already and followed you. So if you're interested in more content like this, be sure to visit www.melancolymentor.com and that's me, and follow for the latest updates. And until next time, keep igniting your creative potential and stay curious and go and find Kathy. Thank you very much, Kathy. Oh, it's been lovely, thank you. Thank you for listening. I'd love for you to subscribe and visit www.melancolymentor.com for the latest updates. Till next time, stay curious and keep exciting for your creative potential.