Southern Folk Medicine with Phyllis Light

Come with us to Arab, Alabama, to meet Phyllis Light, herbalist, responsible forager, native plant conservation advocate, founder of the Appalachian Center for Natural Health, and author of Southern Folk Medicine: Healing Traditions from the Appalachian Fields and Forests.

Phyliss Light was born on Brindlee Mountain, in this southwest extension of the Appalachian Mountains, into a family with Creek and Cherokee Indian roots. She learned herbalism from her grandmother, and spent long days of her childhood “gleaning” – harvesting wild foods and medicines, fishing and hunting, with her father. “It was a very practical kind of herbalism,” Phyliss explains, “if it didn’t work, we didn’t use it. We didn’t have the money to go to the doctor unless it was something drastic.” As an adult she was an apprentice of the late Tommie Bass, the world-renowned healer known as “the Herb Doctor of Shinbone Ridge.”

Although she has taught herbal medicine across the US, she has lived her whole life, and raised her family, on Brindlee Mountain. “There are over four thousand species of plants in this state,” she says, “and this is the place I know best-I’ve never needed to live anywhere else.”  Her book, Traditional Southern Folk Medicine, combines her unmatched knowledge of native plant medicine with deeply researched history into how this uniquely American healing tradition evolved, and how it has never been more relevant or needed than it is today.