Practice Ways with Rachel Landon

Practice Ways is a monthly feature on Balance Practice, sharing practice notes from writers, makers, and coaches, and offering perspectives on what practice looks like as real life is happening.

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I’ve always dreamed of being able to recognize the medicinal properties of plants at a glance; to forage comfrey and chamomile from my local green spaces and create healing potions and salves for my family and community. Alas, my confidence ends with the dock leaf so I’m not very useful beyond nettle stings. To be attuned to nature in this way seems so innate and yet so far from how we live today. Nevertheless, the power of plants is something that I revere.

Herbalist Rachel Landon embodies the knowledge and skill of a natural healer. She’s a woman who has inspired me since I first woke to a warm mug of her sunrise tea back in 2018 when I lived not far from the North London shopfront of her apothecary, Wilder Botanics, that she runs with her husband Charlie. I’d pile my toddler into the stroller and waddle down the towpath with my pregnant belly, pulled by the prospect of renewal from Rachel’s healing creations that waited alongside the vibrancy of Broadway Market on a Saturday morning.

Now filled with decades of practical and meaningful experience, Rachel was initially inspired to qualify as a Naturopathic Iridologist and Herbalist after navigating her own health challenges during her career in the modeling industry. She set up Wilder to help cut through the confusion that so often accompanies “wellness” and started preparing her own herbal prescriptions for clients in the form of whole herb organic teas. Since then, her range has expanded to include face and body cleaners and oils, tinctures, and flower remedies that address everything from immunity and stress, to women’s health and sleep.

“The name Wilder was inspired with a hope of reconnecting people to herbs and their uses and instilling a feeling of self confidence in utilising the wild herbs that grow seasonally in our hedgerows and scrublands,” she says. “Common herbs that our forefathers would have used but more often now moved away from by generations since.”

Indeed, when I engage with Rachel’s work I can feel the care she’s put into it, as well as a subtle re-emergence of my own connection to the plants where they come from. I find this incredibly grounding. My well-loved copy of her book Super Herbs lives dogeared on my kitchen shelf and applying her Goddess of Protection Body Oil is one of my most loved gestures of care, a favourite quick reset for mind and body. And I rarely leave home without her Natural Hand Spray.

Rachel has been generous to share some of her recent notes on balance, and practice…