Herbal ally series: How herbal medicine supports sustainable leadership

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So for a long time, I held two worlds simultaneously. I was a medical herbalist and I was leading a finance team inside a pressured corporate environment. What I was doing really well, you know, I was getting things done. I was holding the standard. I was carrying a responsibility load that had grown gradually over time. And if I’m honest, it was because I kept saying yes and the work kept getting done. I was also making genuinely clinical decisions about how to support my body through that. Plant medicine was part of how I showed up.

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It wasn’t a lifestyle choice, it wasn’t a wellness choice, it was a clinical decision. And it was working for me. Then one day, something stopped me. I realised that I couldn’t actually remember the last time that I had really laughed. And if you know me, I am someone who laughs a lot, easily, often loudly. Laughter is genuinely part of how I move through the world, how I connect with people, how I know I’m actually present in the moment rather than just moving through it. And around that same time, I was beginning to notice that I was becoming sharper in my communication with my team. You know, it was a kind of precision that had an edge to it.

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And I. I didn’t love that. I had days where being asked just one more question or making one more decision was just too hard. And there was this quiet resentment that was beginning to sit underneath all of it, around the volume of what I was carrying. Even though, you know, when I was honest with myself, I’d said yes to most of it. Responsibility had accumulated around me because I was reliable, because when I took something on, it got done. And somewhere along the way, the load had become something that I was managing rather than something I’d consciously chosen. So the herbal medicine was supporting my body through all of it beautifully, actually.

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But I was starting to realise that, you know, in those honest moments, that I actually didn’t like who I was becoming. What I eventually discovered was that there was a layer beneath the physiological one that the herbs weren’t quite reaching. And it was because of what was driving my leadership patterns. Well, it wasn’t happening in my body first. It was happening in my identity and the subconscious beliefs I held about what good leadership looked like, about what I needed to be in order to be respected, about what might happen if I stopped being the person who held everything together. And my nervous system was responding to those beliefs every single day. And this is where I want to bring in something that I think is absent from, well, what most leadership development conversations are talking about. Because when we talk about growing as A leader.

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We’re almost always talking about the external layer. Better strategy, clearer communication, stronger executive presence, more effective delegation. And I want to be clear that these things matter, right? They’re important to great leadership. But the woman doing the leading is also a biological system. And that biological system is being shaped every day by what she believes about herself, about what success requires of her, about what she needs to do in order to earn her place. Her immune function, her cognitive clarity, her energy, her capacity to be present with her team, the quality of her thinking at 4 o’ clock on a Thursday afternoon, all of it’s running through her physiology. And most leadership development never touches that layer at all. Now, herbal medicine does.

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Plant medicine works with your body’s own intelligence. It supports the systems that sustained pressure quietly depletes over time. Things like immunity, digestion, energy production. Your body’s capacity to recover, to restore, to remain resilient through sustained demand. A well chosen herbal ally isn’t sitting on the surface of your experience. It’s in conversation with your body at the level that your body actually operates. And yet, even with all that support in place, I was still running the same pattern, because the belief beneath it hadn’t been touched. So that moment changed when I was in a session with my mentor.

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I was talking about everything I was holding at work and she looked at me through that zoom screen and she said, , you don’t have to do more in order to be more. And something in me just stopped. I would have loved to have seen my face on the screen, you know, that moment where your eyes go in every direction all at once. Because I’d been a coach for years by that point. I understood behaviour, I understood patterns. And in that one sentence, she had named the operating system beneath all of it. The belief that my worth, my place, my belonging in that leadership environment was contingent on my output, on my capacity to hold more, to deliver more, to absorb more. So I signed up for her Neuro Identity Evolution programme because I knew that, that in order for things to change in my life, I needed to be different.

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But I just didn’t know what that different was. What I found inside that work was the architecture beneath my own behaviour. The patterns, the beliefs, the storeys, the behaviours that have been quietly running underneath how I was showing up every day. And as those began to shift, something else happened that I hadn’t really anticipated, because I already had the herbal medicine supporting my body. So it meant that I had the biological safety that I needed to evolve in real time. So the identity work wasn’t asking my body to navigate change while simultaneously being depleted. My body was held through it. And that combination is part of what made that change lasting and made it relatively easy, easy to navigate.

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So let’s talk about herbal medicine in this context. So plant medicine has been used for thousands of years across pretty much every culture on Earth. And what makes it so remarkable from a clinical perspective is the intelligence of how it works. A well chosen herb works with your body’s own systems, supporting your physiology towards its own balance, meeting your body where it actually is. Now, there are different categories of herbs that become particularly relevant when we’re thinking about leadership. Adaptogenic herbs are perhaps the most discussed in the leadership space. Their adaptogens support your body’s capacity to respond to stress, to hold it, to adapt through it, and to recover from it. They work with your stress response systems in a way that builds physiological resilience over time.

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Herbs like Ashwagandha, Rhodiola, Holy basil, Siberian ginseng. I’ve talked about some of them on the Herbal Allies series that runs through this podcast. Now, these are plants with substantial clinical histories and meaningful research behind their use for energy, cognitive function, and sustained physiological resilience. When you’re under demand, there’s also nerve and herbs that work directly with your nervous system. They support its capacity to regulate and to settle. Herbs like skullcap, lemon balm, passionflower. They can support the quality of your sleep, the steadiness of your emotional tone, and your capacity to actually rest when rest is available to you, rather than lying awake with your mind still moving through tomorrow. And then there are trophorestorative herbs.

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Now these are deep restoratives, the plants that work slowly and steadily to nourish and rebuild various body systems that have been under sustained demand over time. So green oats, for example, is a beautiful example of this. It’s deeply nourishing to your nervous system, and it nourishes at a restorative level rather than as at an acute level, although you can use it for both. Now, these are the herbs you work with when the goal is to rebuild your body’s own resources from the inside. And herbal medicine does so much more than help us manage our stress, right? We have plants that support your immune system, herbs that work with your digestive system, cardiovascular system, respiratory health, gender specific health. And this is so important because everything is related. For example, your digestive health influences your energy, your mood, your cognitive clarity, and your overall resilience. So a skilled herbalist looks at the whole physiological picture and chooses Plants that support your body’s own capacity to find its balance across all of it.

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Now, this is potent, clinically informed, biologically intelligent medicine. And when it’s chosen well and used with knowledge, it creates real physiological change across your body’s systems. So what does this mean for leadership? Because the biological environment inside which you’re making decisions, leading teams, holding responsibility matters. Your immune resilience, your digestive health, your energy production, your sleep quality, your cognitive clarity, all of it shapes the quality of your leadership in ways that no amount of strategy or communication training is going to touch. Herbal medicine addresses that environment directly. And here’s what I love most about when we bring together herbal medicine and the deep neuro identity work. Herbal medicine creates real physiological change in your body. Your immune system supported, your nervous system is supported.

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Your energy, your digestion, your sleep, your body’s capacity to remain resilient through sustained demand. All of it’s being actively tended to. And let’s be honest, changing things in your life creates sustained demand. So the herbs are doing their work now. At the same time, if the subconscious patterns beneath your leadership don’t get touched, the patterns around what you need to do in order to be enough, the identity structures around being reliable, being responsible, being the one that holds everything together, your body’s gonna keep returning to the same physiological place because your nervous system is still receiving the same signals from the same identity architecture. So the herbs are supporting your body through what that pattern’s creating, but the pattern itself is still running. So neuro identity evolution works at the level where those patterns actually live, at the level of the subconscious beliefs that are quietly running underneath how you lead, how you relate, how you rest, and how you experience your own success. As those beliefs begin to shift, your nervous system stops generating the same physiological signals, the body stops needing to sustain the same level of alert.

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And the herbal medicine that’s been supporting your body through that pressure begins working in an environment that’s genuinely sharp, shifting rather than simply being maintained. When I experienced this myself, what struck me was not that one thing worked and the other didn’t, because both were working. What changed when I brought them together was the ease and the speed of the change. Because my body was supported through the identity evolution rather than feeling depleted by it, I wasn’t asking my system to navigate a shift at identity level while simultaneously running on reserves. My body was biologically supported through that identity evolution. And the identity evolution meant that my body was no longer being asked to sustain the same level of physiological demand indefinitely. That’s Pretty elegant, eh? So all the parts were being tended to at once. And what changes is the experience of that evolution? It becomes easier, becomes manageable, it becomes sustainable.

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And this is what sustainable leadership looks like from the inside. Your body supported your identity, evolving both layers tended to simultaneously. So if you’ve been listening to this and something in you is quietly lit up, I want to leave you with this. You’re already leading through a level of demand that asks a lot of your body, a lot of your mind and a lot of your identity every single day. And the conversation we’ve had today is really an invitation to consider what becomes available when you tend to all those layers. Not just the strategic and the psychological, but the biological ones too. Herbal medicine has been a part of my life and my clinical practise for a long time. And what I know from both my own experience and from working with the women I support, is that when your body is genuinely resourced, when your systems are supported rather than quietly depleted, the quality of everything changes.

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Your thinking, your presence, your capacity to lead without it costing you the parts of yourself that you actually want to keep. And when that biological support is combined with the deep neuro identity work, the ease and the speed of that evolution is. Well, it’s something that amazes me every time I get to witness it. So if this episode has sparked your curiosity about specific herbs and how they work in the context of your leadership and your biology, I have a Herbal Ally series that runs right here on Project Joyful and I’d love for you to explore that if that’s calling you cheque out. Episode 228, Valerian Root, more than a sleep herb. Or maybe episode 223, Tulsi, the adaptogen for modern stress. If you’re wanting a bit of liver support, cheque out episode 215, Milk Thistle, your herbal ally for the season of more. Because I did it around Christmas.

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What about episode 206, Schisandra, the five flavour adaptogen for aligned leadership. Each one brings a single plant into focus and looks at what it does, how it works and where it becomes particularly relevant for you as a high achieving woman. And I’ll pop all of those links in the show notes. And if you’d love something that lands in your inbox once a month, I’ve also got a Herbs for Health email series. So each month I showcase a different herb, its properties, its clinical relevance and how it might support you. And it’s one of the favourite things I get to create. I’d love for you to be a part of it. So if that’s calling you, you can sign up for that@traceyutty.com herbsforhealth and of course, I’ll pop that link in the show notes too.

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I know your time is precious. I know you’re busy, so I really wanna thank you for spending this time with me. And if this episode’s resonated with you, I would love to know that. And also, if you know another woman in leadership who’s ready to hear this conversation, please share it with her. For now, I’m sending you lots of love. Bye for now.