People often ask what actually happens when they come to see me. Do I just hand over a bottle of tincture? Do I prescribe supplements or rigid protocols? Will I look at their tongue, their pulse? Do I need their blood tests?
The short answer: your symptom is only part of the story. I want to understand the whole of you. I track your health and vitality over the span of your life, paying careful attention to the language you use about your own experience, and make space for you to centre what you care most about addressing. Herbal medicine, at its root, is a practice of relationship: between a person and the plants, between a body and the land it lives on and the systems we currently live within, between practitioner and client. My work holds traditional assessment and evidence-based clinical tools side by side, letting each sharpen the other.
Here's how that unfolds.
The first consult: listening first
An initial consultation is mostly listening. Deep listening, the kind that leaves room for the things that perhaps didn't have enough space in the intake form. Often the most important part of someone’s health story comes out sideways, and I want to make space for you to be really heard. This is a core part of herbal medicine - carving out enough slow space to build trust in a very fast-paced world.
Alongside that open listening, I ask targeted questions. These are the details that help me see the pattern underneath your symptoms: how you sleep and wake, what your digestion is like, your appetite and energy through the day, your cycle or bleeding, your transition into parenthood, what your postpartum has been like, what your mood is like, how peri or menopause is going for you, how you handle heat and cold, where you carry tension. Questions that might seem unrelated often turn out to be the key.
We also talk about your history, your family’s history, the medications and supplements you already take, and the conditions of your life: work, housing, caring loads, stress, support.
These things are not separate from your health. A body carrying exhaustion, displacement or financial pressure is a body under load, and a good herbal plan has to account for that load rather than pretend it isn’t there. I acknowledge the systems we live within that contribute to our symptoms, whilst always centring the spaces where we have agency and power to make positive changes to our wellbeing and health.
I also screen carefully for herb–drug interactions and anything that needs a referral. Herbal medicine sits well alongside your GP, midwife or specialist care, and I’m always glad to work with your wider team.
Tongue and pulse: reading the body's own language
Before numbers, there is the body itself. Drawing on Chinese medicine and older Western traditions, I look at your tongue and feel your pulse as part of every consult.
The tongue shows a lot in a glance. Its colour, coating, shape, moisture and the marks along its edges speak to heat and cold, dryness and damp, depletion and stagnation. A pale, scalloped tongue tells a different story to a red, dry one with a thin coat.
The pulse adds texture. Is it thready or full? Fast, slow, slippery, wiry? Pulse reading tells me something about circulation, tension and vitality that a questionnaire can't.
These assessments aren't diagnostic in a medical sense. They help me understand your constitution and current pattern, so I can choose herbs that suit you (warming or cooling, moistening or drying, building or moving) rather than herbs that suit a label.
Blood tests through a functional lens
Where it's useful, I ask to see recent blood pathology, or suggest tests to request from your GP. Then I read those results a little differently.
Standard reference ranges are drawn from a broad population, and they're mostly designed to flag disease. You can sit inside them and still feel far from well. Functional, or optimal, ranges are narrower. They ask a different question: not is something wrong? but is this body thriving?
So a ferritin, B12, vitamin D or thyroid marker that is technically "normal" but sitting low can still help explain fatigue, low mood, hair loss or poor recovery. Looking at markers together (iron studies alongside a full blood count, thyroid alongside symptoms) shows patterns a single number misses.
This gives us a baseline to track over time, and evidence to guide whether we bring in a targeted supplement, a dietary shift or a herbal formula. It also helps me know when to send you back to your doctor.
Acute care: short, focused, responsive
Acute complaints, like a cold settling into the chest, a flare of cystitis, a sleepless week, a gut upset, a child with a fever and a cough, need medicine that meets the moment.
Acute protocols tend to be:
Short. Days to a couple of weeks, not months.
Frequent. Smaller doses taken more often, to keep the medicine working while the body is working hard.
Targeted. A focused formula for the presenting pattern, often with simple supports like teas, steams, compresses or broths.
Watched closely. I check in, adjust as things shift, and am clear about the signs that mean it's time for urgent medical care.
Acute care is also where herbal medicine is most accessible as community medicine: the kind of everyday care families once held for themselves, and can hold again.
Chronic care: slow medicine for long stories
Chronic conditions like hormonal imbalance, long fatigue, persistent gut trouble, anxiety, poor sleep, fertility challenges, recovery after illness or birth, usually take years to form. They deserve care that unfolds over months, not days.
Chronic protocols are built in layers:
Foundations first. Sleep, nourishment, digestion and nervous system support. Without these, nothing else holds.
Address the root patterns. Herbs chosen for your constitution and the patterns we've uncovered: tonics to rebuild, gentle movers where things are stuck.
Targeted support where it's needed. Select supplements to correct genuine deficiencies shown in your bloods, alongside diet and lifestyle shifts.
Review and refine. We meet regularly, reassess the tongue, pulse, and symptoms, and, where useful, repeat pathology. Formulas change as you do.
I work with liquid extracts and dried herbs for teas, decoctions, steams, and compresses, drawing on both modern Western herbal and traditional medicine systems, and choose the form that will actually fit into your days. I also work with targeted supplements where needed.
Gentle, trauma-informed, accessible and shaped to your capacity
The best protocol is the one you can actually follow. A plan with twelve supplements, three daily teas and a total diet overhaul might look thorough on paper. For a new parent running on broken sleep, or someone already stretched thin, it's just one more thing to fail at.
So I start gently. I ask what's realistic: your budget, your time, your taste for bitter tinctures, your energy for change. I prioritise a few things that will make the most difference, and build from there when you're ready.
Gentle doesn't mean weak. Plants can do a great deal, steadily, without forcing the body. Part of my work is trusting that slower pace, and trusting that you are the authority on your own life.
Health care should be reachable for everyone, not just those who can afford premium wellness. I offer sliding-scale fees for people who need them, and I'll always look for the simplest, most affordable way to get you the medicine you need.
Coming to see me
Whether you're in the middle of something acute or carrying a long story in your body, you're welcome here. I see people across the lifespan, from preconception, pregnancy and postpartum through childhood, midlife and beyond.
I practise on unceded Gumbaynggirr Country, and I hold this work as part of a healing commons: plant knowledge shared, care made accessible, and medicine that honours both the land it grows from and the people it serves.
Book a consultation, or get in touch if you'd like to talk first about whether herbal care is right for you.
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