Here's the transcript for Part 1 of the Whole Woman Health Podcast, where I was a guest
Bethany of Whole Woman Health Podcast, Certified Registered Yoga Teacher and Ayurvedic Health Advisor:
Welcome to Whole Woman Health Season 4, Episode 6. Today I have Chwynyn Vaughan on and she is from Slow Botanicals. Chwynyn loves all things botanicals, but I will let her elaborate more. So, Chwynyn, thank you so much for joining the Whole Woman Health podcast.
Chwynyn of Slow Botanicals:
Thank you so much for having me, Bethany.
Bethany: You're so welcome. Why don't you share a little bit about who you are and where you're from, and what you love to do and what drew you to the Whole Woman Health podcast.
Chwynyn:
Okay. Well, I'm many things. I'm a mother, a wife, a friend. I'm a gardener, I forage, I'd say I'm a whole food advocate. I arrange flowers and I write. I create organic skincare products. But it's not necessarily all in that order, because all of these parts interact and they're interwoven - just like so many women with children and with other interests and who are working. There isn't a hierarchy or order to any of this. They're just the priorities I have right now in my life. They're really the only priorities that I make room for and they make my life very full.
In the past there were others on the list, such as yoga, and that was really important to me for a long time, but right now this is where I'm at. Really, I find it interesting that creating organic and natural skincare products became really important to me, because when I think of skincare products, personally I think of something really superficial. Yet I'm not superficial and I don't approach them superficially.
I think about and look at and live life really deeply. I'd say for years there was a struggle that I had between caregiving and creating and I think my creative self is really much easier and more natural. But my caregiving self has always been looking to be heard from - I think I've always valued it more and I previously assigned it as being much more noble. But it's a lot harder for me and it's exhausting, really. It energizes me. Yes, energizes me, but caregiving also drains me. So I feel like I settled into making skincare products because it's how I can put to use everything I've spent my life learning about. All the herbs, the whole body health, and it's how I combine all my all consuming passions and my obsession with plants and flowers.
Bethany:
Oh, my goodness.
Chwynyn:
Yes and so I feel like I was really attracted to your podcast because I feel like you really come from a place of mindfulness. Where people are living their day to day, doing what really feels right and looking for what we love and putting to use our natural strengths. That's really what I hear when I listen to your podcast, and so I think that really drew me to to listening to you on your podcast. And I'm really grateful to be here with you talking.
Bethany:
Where did you come from?! You just blew me away right now.
Wow, that is beautiful. I have so many things I want to say now, but firstly, just your obvious passion for creation. You just already sound like you naturally come from this artistic place where you want to make these things, create these things and, yes, it just pours out of you. So that's beautiful. And I can relate to the piece you said about caregiving, because you're so right about that. As a mother, if you have loved ones in your family, that is such a hard role. But if you're doing what you love or feeling in yourself, you're able to do that with more ease right?
Chwynyn:
Totally. Completely more with ease, absolutely.
Bethany:
Wow. So I would say my first question is how did you start making skin care products?
Chwynyn:
Well, I started making skin care products when I was around 21. I'm 51 now.
I I moved to Vancouver from Ontario, Canada and I quickly figured out that I loved plants and I loved flowers and I started to learn about herbs. But I did a lot, really, through other people's learning and asking questions. I would read books, but I feel like I learned more from just asking a lot of questions and then going out with the plants and picking them. Then drawing them and making teas, and infusing them into oils and vinegars and making tinctures. I just slowly figured out what worked and then I figured out what worked best together rather than working by itself.
So I started making skin care products and I started making tinctures. The skin creams are just something I've always done, through every other season of my life.
And so I finally realized this is something that I I really love to do and it's something that when I gave them to people, they would just be amazed at at all the healing. With how much all their skin conditions improved. How they'd had eczema for years and suddenly their eczema just went away, That type of thing. Bethany:
Wow.
Chwynyn:
And then of course, with aging, you start to notice your own skin start to change. I think that really also amped up creating the skin cream, because now I was at an age where my contemporaries needed something more than what they were using.
Bethany:
Yes, yes.
Chwynyn:
And just one more point: I also feel like suddenly, with the way the world has changed, suddenly what I did became relevant. Whereas I feel in my 20s everybody wanted mass produced goods, they wanted manufactured things. Things were professional if they came out of a factory. And I just think, as time went on, suddenly my skills were appreciated by more than just sort of a fringe element of society. So it gave me space to blossom out more and share what I've been doing for years.
Bethany:
Oh, yes, and I feel like that's exactly what people want now: organic, hand-created, something original and that is not mass produced, because we've been there, we've done that.
Chwynyn:
Yes, and we know what it looks like and what it feels like.
Bethany:
Right and we know we don't feel very good when we just kind of do the quick fix.
Chwynyn:
Exactly. Exactly yes.
Bethany:
Wow. I'm going to have to get my hands on your products.
Chwynyn: I'll send you some.
Bethany:
Yes, I mean I looked at your shop online. Do you typically send or is it more local? Do you ship out?
Chwynyn:
I do both. I started locally during COVID, really getting more serious with it.
In our town where I live, because we're geographically separated, the border was closed. I'll explain that. I live in a town that is a five mile peninsula and it's in Washington state. But it's not attached to the rest of Washington state and so, if people recall, the border between Canada and the US was closed except for essential travel. Which meant that over a two year period, I left my five mile town three times.
Bethany: Oh my gosh!
Chwynyn: Many people only left a few times, and so our kids couldn't take any classes. Even when everything opened back up, it wasn't open for us. So I really took that time to start more of a business with what I was doing, and to be really creative. And so I started out really, really local. I opened up a garden stand at the end of my driveway and I sold fresh flowers and I sold fresh produce out of my garden, because, again, there wasn't really much in the way of real, healthy produce in our town. It was really hard to get, and so I did that. And then it was also and almost like I made a little gift shop.
I sold my cloth napkins in the garden stand and my skin creams when I started. I made my soap and put it out there, and my tinctures, and I created this really beautiful space that was just very magical to look into and I gave people a place to go.
I'd already been working at our local clinic, and that gave people a level of trust in me to begin with, because they could see that although I was doing all these wonderful things with plants and flowers, they knew that I also had this scientific mind and I wasn't pulling one on them. They could trust what I was saying.
Bethany:
Oh, that's beautiful.
Chwynyn: And then I made the website. I had previously had a blog, so then I started blogging again and it just has kind of gone from there.
Bethany:
Yes, grew organically. I love it.
Chwynyn:
Yes, and I get such great responses for all of the creams and soaps because you know plants work.
Bethany:
Yes.
Chwynyn: They're so powerful.
Bethany:
Yes, so just the fact that you do it for yourself and your family. I was reading on your website you pretty much take care of your family's needs from your garden. That is so beautiful.
Chwynyn:
Yes, it's really wonderful. It feels like a really wonderful and giving thing to do and it also gives me an excuse to be able to garden and not feel like I'm being selfish -by just doing what I love, for me.
Bethany:
Yes, yes. Wow. I know I would love dive deep into herbs, but I'm sort of intimidated. There are so many things, I wouldn't know where to begin.
Chwynyn:
It's just so different with the Ayurvedic tradition because you'd be looking at them from a really different perspective, which, I have to say, it's a difficult perspective and it's a really fantastic perspective. I feel like if I was really doing a lot of herbs internally and I was doing it from an Ayurvedic perspective, there's a lot more to learn. But I also think they work a lot better than, I think, the Western tradition for herbs. I do some internal stuff and I have a rule that what I will make for people has to be a plant that is really powerful and really, really gentle. So it works, but it's not going to have any side effects. Whereas if you were diving into Ayurveda, you'd be working with plants that also have side effects and you'd be learning how to balance them all and make them integrate together. There'd be, you know, a lot more. It's very tricky. It's really effective though when it's done.
Bethany:
Oh, yes. I actually, just recently - so just a quick little sidebar, but you know I was briefly sharing before we began recording. I've been dealing with vertigo and I've been going to acupuncture and all of this, and I was taking these herbs. Ayurvedic herbs. I should have known that the combination of the two was almost like an extra dose. It was too much of the herb and I since have stopped and I've already noticed improvement. I'm like "whoa, that stuff works". It's potent.
Chwynyn:
It is potent. But it's funny how when you're treating yourself or when you're going through something, you don't have the mind that you have when you're helping somebody else. If you've been working with somebody else and they were getting acupuncture, you would have known.
Bethany:
So you kind of forget, right? It's been the ultimate self experiment. I feel like we're our own guinea pigs. To a point, totally true, but to a point.
So you must have, if you've been doing this over 30 years, you must have just this insane knowledge of botanicals, like flowers, and all of it, to produce everything.
Chwynyn:
I'm just so attracted to plants and flowers that everywhere I've ever lived, I've had a garden and I've lived in so many different circumstances. So it could be a garden on my porch, to like where I live now, where I've taken over my entire front yard. When I lived in LA, we had this big patch of dirt around a lemon tree and I transformed the whole patch around the lemon tree into this oasis. When I first started digging into that soil, there wasn't a single insect in it, it was completely dead soil and it was really wonderful to transform it. And to nourish my family and to give that, but then also to nourish myself while I did it - to have those quiet moments that you can have, both when you're with plants, and also when you're doing what lights you up.
Bethany:
Oh, yes, wow, what a gift. That is your gift.
Chwynyn:
It is. It's a gift to me and hopefully it's to others. I've realized it's so often what comes to us naturally, that we don't realize that's what we have to share with people. Yes, and so I have realized that that is something that I have to share with people and it's a gift that I'm giving now, as well as just receiving. There's that acceptance.
Bethany:
I'm so glad to have come across you. It's so inspiring.
Chwynyn:
Well, I think we all inspire each other when we're doing our right work.
Bethany:
Right, that's right.
Chwynyn:
Yes, Like I'm inspired by you and I'm totally in awe of what you do.
Bethany:
I'm barely scratching the surface, but, yes, I'm opening a yoga studio this month to be able to share more and get it out there, because I have so much inside of me and I just I can't keep it in anymore. I can't contain it, so I'm letting the creativity just lead me.
Chwynyn:
And that is just incredible. To create an actual physical space! I feel like that's really, that's really owning yourself. And it's really owning what you do to actually take that physical space and invest in that. It's quite a symbolic gesture.
Bethany:
Yes, I'm so excited, but I'm obviously rightly and appropriately anxious and nervous.
Chwynyn:
Of course, of course.
Bethany:
But it's been received very well and I have some people jumping on board with me already, It's just been really supportive and I feel like, wow, I think I'm making the right steps.
Chwynyn:
I'm sure you are. You just keep doing what you're supposed to do, and it's the right steps. Right?
Bethany:
Right and you keep getting guidance and you'll probably appreciate me saying this, because I had this little seed in my head for a while now, for years, and I was like, oh yeah, one day, one day. Right? So that's something about this year. It's pushed me to do it where it wasn't me doing it. It was like something bigger was saying "you're gonna do this now" and I'm like, "oh my god, I'm so afraid". But yes, it has to be that this is right and I have to do it.
Chwynyn:
Absolutely, and you know it's interesting when you talk about that, something pushing you, because one of the flowers I work with is wild rose. They bloom for about three weeks of the year. It depends on the summer. Sometimes they bloom for two weeks and can even bloom for five weeks. It all depends on the weather.
But every year I go out and I pick them every day and I pick them petal by petal. My senses are completely stimulated. You know, there's the pink of the way it visually looks. You know you can feel the petals and then the scent, the fragrance. All of all of what would be the chemicals that come out with the fragrance, are all around me. Just completely surrounded for a couple hours at a time, every year. And I pick other plants and flowers all through the season, but the roses, they just overwhelm the system in the most beautiful way.
And I feel like they talk to me every year and every year they push me and tell me "this is what you need to work on this year. You know this is what you need to do". A couple of years ago they said "you need to let go of the stress of family life and the children. Just let that go. And your kids are getting older. Just let go of some of the control".
And then last year it was all about "Don't do things in such a systematic way. Let yourself bounce around, you don't have to have everything in so much routine" and "Just make sure your boundaries keep staying really clear and healthy".
Then this year it was the roses telling me that these thorns were there to protect me and that I'd set up the thorns and the thorns were the act of having a plan, which means that I could then be free. The roses saying "just be free now, and we're going to push you to do what you need to do and to blossom like we do, because you have these thorns, which is your system, what you've set up around you to make you succeed. So just go for it and don't be afraid anymore. Because you've set things up appropriately so that you can flourish".
And when you talk about your studio, when I think about all you must have learned in your life and all you've been focusing on, it sounds like this studio is a lot like that. Pushed to go forward, you know you have what it takes. Yes, and the apprehension is there, but you probably don't really need it because you can stay clear, knowing that you're doing all the right steps and that you can be open to what you need to do differently, and that you know you're open to it and you're just going to figure out the right thing as you go along.
Bethany:
You know, Wow. Well, what you just said: I needed that message. Because of a few things. Firstly, roses are so Medicinal. So I don't know if you've ever come across this woman. She created Maya abdominal massage for women's pelvic health issues. I believe, and I don't want to misquote. Please forgive me if I'm wrong - she's from either Brazil or Mexico. Her name is Rosita Arvigo.
Chwynyn:
I don't know her. That sounds interesting.
Bethany:
I'll send the site to you after, with the show notes.
It's beautiful, because now that you're bringing up the roses, I saw on your Blog that you had written something about them. I need to check that out! You know I love roses. I've got to read that.
Chwynyn:
I think it would be good for you right now, in light of what you're doing.
I never expected you to say what you just said, because I read about this woman and the reason why she got into massage is she witnessed a birth. You know, back home, when she was young, well before got into herbs. The midwife said "There's a lot of bleeding. Go gather every rose out of the garden. Every single rose. Get all of the roses." They used the roses to stop the hemorrhaging and I was blown away.
Chwynyn:
Oh, I am totally blown away by that. I mean, my background is midwifery. That's my formal training.
Bethany:
Oh my gosh, I didn't even know that about you.
Chwynyn:
Yes, so that's really interesting to use the rose. And to me that just tells me how much we have to learn. I've never heard that before. And yes, I'll say it makes me really think. I'd love to read that.
Bethany:
Yeah, it was just so beautiful and just the way you described the roses speaking to you and like the thorns. I mean I I could relate to what you said about, you know, the structure of the routine with the family and it's just a struggle or whatever, and if you just let it go and just bounce around a little - that's what I'm living right now and I'm trying to find this balance. Exactly. So that message was powerful.
Chwynyn:
Yes, and it's interesting because last year when I was picking, they told me, "don't pick us in an order. Don't start at this end and work to the other end. Pick us in groups and just wander around". That was just so foreign to everything we're always being taught about. "You need to be efficient, you need to get things done", and I think back to being a child and I remember eating corn on the cob and I remember the day I looked up and noticed that everybody else in my family had these neat rows, and mine was just sort of these spots taken out. And that was the moment that efficiency set in. I thought, "okay, I need to be efficient".
You know, it's like the roses were telling me, "go back into that space where there's so much about just who you are, that can come out, and don't do even rows". There are times where that is absolutely appropriate and much of the time it is, but for other parts of our life, we really need to not go there. And so, you know, as a mother, you're constantly trying to mother and you're working, and your following passions, and you're trying to help your family and others. It's unbelievable how many things we squeeze into a day, right?
Bethany:
Yes, yes.
Chwynyn:
And so you are trying to find these systems and you can never find them, really, because they don't exist. You just have to have the priority for the day and just do it in the way you're going to do it.
Bethany:
Yes.
Chwynyn:
And I think that's kind of like that. You know, picking the roses, not all in the straight order. You will be, you will know, if you listen, what's important today and what's important this year and what's important right now.
Bethany:
That's exactly it, and staying present with it and not thinking about what happened or what's going to happen, and just be here. Yes, yes.
Chwynyn:
Exactly, yes. And just know that you, you're doing your other work. That will give you the space to do it. And I think too, I think at our age, I think about you opening this studio and I think about what I'm doing and part of me will be like, "why didn't I do some of these things earlier?" "Why didn't I go full-on?" But the truth is, I wasn't ready yet, because there's life experiences when we're going to help other people and when we're really going to follow our passion. It's no longer just for us and we're really truly putting it out there to give to other people. We have to experience and live and experiment before we have the wisdom and the knowledge to truly give as much as we want to give to other people.
Right? I do like that "start before you're ready". But I also think when you're helping other people in a deep way, you need to be thinking about them equally, which means that you don't do it before you're ready.
Bethany:
I can wholeheartedly agree with that, and I'm I also feel like maybe you didn't, we didn't do it sooner, because the world wasn't ready for it. That, you know, universal timing of when it's needed.
Chwynyn:
So I mean, I think about how few people in my 20s knew what Ayurveda was. And now everybody knows. Bethany: Yes, I guess that way more people do.
Chwynyn:
Yes, they do. I live in the west and I think almost everybody in the west of the country has heard of Ayurveda.
Bethany:
Yes, it's becoming way more common. But sometimes I'll say the word and people will kind of give me a look and I'll be like "holistic health". Yes, so that's been my part of my reasoning for studio. Yoga and Ayurveda are sister sciences, and you know it needs to be talked about. At least people know about it, and I feel like people know what it is. They just maybe don't know that that's what it's called. Perhaps?
Yes, so that will be interesting, just to see how that all goes when I see people face to face now a lot more in the public and just get their reactions about these new words and things like that. But I'm I'm ready for it, I'm excited. I know it's going to be a lot of work and, yes, I've done hard things before. I've been through so much, right? Yes, I'm sure you can relate with what you've been through in your life to bring you to where you are. It's like why not? Why not now?
Chwynyn:
Yes, and I mean all those things have brought you more compassion and, as a healer, compassion is really essential. Yes.
Bethany:
That's, yes, that's it. So Before you brought up the roses, I was going to ask you if you had a favorite flower or something that you love to work with, and then you brought the roses.
Chwynyn:
So it it is one of my favorites, for sure. I talk about this in my recent blog post, that if we have a power animal, the idea in shamanism is you have a power animal. And there is the idea of plant spirit medicine. But I feel if we have a power like a power flower, I'd say that wild roses are mine. But there are some other plants that I really love, and one of them is poplar buds...
...stay tuned or listen to the podcast now! Transcript of Deep Wisdom Podcast to be continued in future blog posts.
