Practitioner Interview Series by the CHA of BC Student Subcommittee member, Sarah Gavin.
Meet Krista Dawn Poulton, Medical Herbalist, Dip. Phyt, RHT, BKin ~ Herbalist ~ Educator ~ Medicine-maker ~
Sustainable Medicine Making and Creating a Network of Practitioners for a Resilient Future for Herbalists in Canada with Krista Dawn Poulton
Krista and I met up in a little eco-friendly and locally focused coffee shop called Habit in Victoria. We talked about the experience of starting a practice after finishing school, her goals within practice, teaching at the college and her visions for the future. I have been a teacher’s assistant for Krista’s Advanced Herbal Medicine Making class for two years now and when I first started school I remember Krista at the front desk helping me organize my schedule. Getting together for this interview was an exciting way to dive deeper into how Krista started, juggles and leads many herbal medicine initiatives.
Krista is a medical herbalist, educator, grower and medicine maker based out of Victoria, BC. She teaches classes at Pacific Rim College where she is encouraging students to become active members of the Student Subcommittee for the CHA of BC, a valued professional network of herbal medicine. In between creating and teaching courses at the college, Krista can be found in one of her three garden projects, one personal, one communal, and one a couple of provinces away; busy planting, growing, harvesting, and connecting with plant medicine. Krista is passionate about making her own herbal preparations for her clinical practice, which she runs out of a shared office space in Cook Street Village.
Following a degree in Kinesiology and than working in the field Krista started to become interested in holistic healing methods and herbal medicine. A first foray into the field through a hands-on apprenticeship led Krista to Pacific Rim College. Krista knew that she would start working in the field immediately after graduation and utilized her class time effectively to focus on projects, create clinic forms, and network future opportunities. She worked part-time as an Administrative Coordinator at Pacific Rim College while starting up practice, designing medicine courses and creating workshops.
Krista understands the value of networking within the herbal community. She recognizes the powerful opportunities to support each other in the field by joining herbal associations and connecting with local herb gatherings. She encourages people to keep the momentum after completing the education and to step back into the field if they have taken time off.
Krista Dawn Poulton is passionate about women’s health, particularly with reproductive empowerment. Her mission with her practice is to teach women to love and adore their bodies, address societal norms of body awareness and educate ways to shift reproductive issues with the use of herbs, diet and supplements.
Reproductive and women’s health is a specialty of Krista’s that began organically unfolding once seeing people in clinic. It started with a consult with a person curious about cycle tracking, where Krista offered a quick review of how to do it within the clinical consult. This left such an impact on the person that they referred two friends to receive Krista’s guidance and expertise. They wanted to know if she would host a workshop. Krista started pulling together information, resources and power points. She began with offering workshops to four people inside her clinical space and lead a three level workshop series. This led to learning and developing marketing skills as she had put energy into creating the series and there was an obvious need within the community. It was popular and ran every week for a year. Krista would offer deals to attendees to come and see her in practice and saw it flourish. While recounting this sequence of events Krista smiled and said, “Thanks to that one person who was like we should do this.” This has now lead to Krista teaching Menstrual Cycle-Tracking and Herbal Medicine to the general public and practitioners all over Western Canada, including developing an three part online course through Pacific Rim College Online.
A favourite herb of Krista’s is Peony (Paeonia spp). Her mother grew peonies and they were her favourite flower before becoming an herbalist. “I would just stick my head in them as the smell and softness of this plant is intoxicating.” Krista describes the energetics and medicine of peony, “She is very soft, subtle, sweet, nourishing, and powerful. There is a powerful experience when you take peony. It softens yet is not a pushy hormonal herb. It is similar to how people use chaste tree for everything, which I don’t as I prefer to use peony. If in doubt, peony is nice as a hormonal balancer. The herb does so much but doesn’t cause side effects such as some of our other hormone balancing herbs. It is for those who need to connect into softness, and gentleness, yet is also very powerful.”
Engagement within the herbal community is important to Krista. One of Krista’s visions for the future is a round table where people come together and compare different extracts of herbs. “I have been envisioning an organoleptic workshop where everyone brings in different holy basil and different extractions so we can compare. Almost like a coffee tasting but with herbal medicine.” It was an exciting year for Krista to set up three online programs through Pacific Rim College Online, designed for the general public to increase knowledge and empowerment with reproductive health with the use of cycle-tracking & botanicals and for practitioners to utilize cycle tracking as a diagnostic tool to assess reproductive pathologies with the focus on treatment protocols. She also grew more herbs this year than previous years, growing over 130 pounds of milky oats in Saskatchewan and plans to continue expanding in this area.
The vision for the future of herbal medicine is vast. Krista thinks of herself as a component in the ecosystem of herbal medicine and values the resiliency and strength of a well-connected network. We have to keep the profession strong in this time of political uncertainty in regards to how we reintegrate herbal medicine into the main stream. Diversity is critical to ecosystem health and we need all practitioners, medicine makers, growers, and students working together to have their voices heard and their needs met. Keep an eye open for future endeavours with Krista Dawn Poulton and she continues to expand her business with growing, advocating for sustainability in the herbal industry, offering online courses & workshops, as well as, her work as a Director with the CHA of BC working closely with the Student Subcommittee and Member Engagement Committee.
www.kristadawnpoulton.com
About the Author:
Sarah Gavin is a Phytotherapy student at Pacific Rim College in Victoria, BC. She is an enthusiastic medicine maker who enjoys urban harvesting and using herbs in the kitchen. She is currently Krista Poulton’s Teacher’s Assistant in Advanced Herbal Pharmacy. On her spare time Sarah enjoys creating nutritious and aesthetic salads with edible weeds and flowers. She hosts fermentation workshops reconnecting with traditional fusion methods for edible and medicinal plant preparations. This keeps her inspired and busy experimenting. Sarah is passionate about protecting BC’s Old Growth Forests and works with the Ancient Forest Alliance. Sarah will be starting her own practice in Victoria, BC when she finishes training.
