The Way You Make It Matters: Intention, Craft, and the Heart of Herbalism
by Brandon Elijah Scott
Intention is the invisible ingredient. You can’t list it on a label, you can’t measure it with a scale, and you can’t prove it with a lab test the same way you can test potency or purity. But anyone who has lived a little knows it’s real. You can feel it when you walk into a room. You can taste it in a meal. You can sense it in the way something is made, the way someone speaks, the way a business operates, the way a person carries themselves when nobody is clapping for them. And if we’re honest, this is one of the biggest reasons the modern world feels so off sometimes. Not because people lack intelligence or resources, but because so much is built from ego, speed, and selfish desire instead of reverence, humility, and care.
In herbalism, intention isn’t a pretty concept to talk about over tea. It’s a practical reality. If you are making medicine for any reason other than the health and wellness of the person you’re serving, you will not make the best medicine you can. Something will shift. Maybe it’s subtle at first, but it shows up. When money is the first thought, you start to move faster than you should, you cut corners, buy cheaper ingredients, make mistakes and tell yourself “It’s good enough.” When status is the goal, you start making choices that look impressive instead of choices that are truly right. If building community, caring for those in need, and making the world a better place are at the heart of your desires, you can’t go wrong with leading with intention. When power is the desire, corners get cut, even if you don’t call it that. It might be tiny—less patience with a process, less care in measuring, less focus on sourcing, a little more willingness to “make do” instead of doing it properly. That’s how quality erodes: not all at once, but in small compromises that feel justified in the moment.
If power or stature are your chief desires, look elsewhere. Herbalism is the wrong road. Plants do not reward ego. They teach humility, or they expose you. This is especially obvious to those who have trusted a psychedelic ally for personal journey and growth versus doing it for the “high” in a recreational sense. These are living entities and they are intelligent, and they understand intention. They demand attention, consistency, and a willingness to be slow, quiet, and to listen. They ask you to show up as a caretaker, not a conqueror. And I’ve noticed something over the years: when someone comes to plant medicine with the intent to exploit, the experience has a way of drifting away from healing and toward imbalance. Sometimes that shows up as disappointment, sometimes as burnout, sometimes as medicine that just feels flat and hollow. It’s not because plants are punishing anyone. It’s because intention shapes behavior, and behavior shapes the outcome. If you’re not holding the work with respect, you’re not going to do respectful work. Yet, on a deeper level, herbalism is a relationship with the natural world—and real relationship asks for more than respect and trust. It asks for presence, humility, patience, reciprocity, and the willingness to be taught.
I think about this a lot through the simplest comparison: dinner. Have you ever been at someone’s house and you can feel that something is wrong? Maybe a couple is fighting, or someone is upset and pretending they’re fine, and the whole cooking process is rushed and distracted. Heat too high, steps skipped, ingredients forgotten, food plated without tasting, no calm in the hands. That meal usually tells the story of the room. It’s not that the person is “bad” or the ingredients are cursed. It’s just that intention leaks into everything. Compare that to grandma’s house—the kind of dinner that makes you feel steadier just sitting at the table. There’s love in it. There’s a quiet confidence in the process. It’s made the way it’s made because someone cared enough to do it right, and because they wanted you fed, warmed, and okay. You don’t have to be mystical or in touch with anything woo to understand the gentle power of intention. Most of us have tasted the difference.
That’s why we take intention seriously in our apothecary. When I’m making medicine for someone, I will never drag my frustrations into the workplace with me. I’m not thinking about money. I’m not replaying arguments or scrolling through problems while my hands are trying to do something sacred. I’m focused. I’m thinking about who this is for, what their life might feel like right now, and what kind of support they’re actually asking for beneath the symptom on the surface. Because the ingredients matter deeply, yes, and we are relentless about quality—organic or wildcrafted, properly dried, properly stored, made in small batches with careful attention. But the other half of good medicine is what you bring to it: steadiness, care, love, and the honest desire to do good for someone who is vulnerable enough to ask for help.
In our herbal kitchen, we keep a reminder on the wall. It isn’t there to sound poetic. It’s there to keep us aligned when the day is busy and the orders are stacking up and the modern world is trying to convince us that speed is the only virtue. It states that “Every recipe is made with 50% clean ingredients and 50% positive intention, because it takes love to heal others.” That line is our compass. It pulls me back when I’m tempted to rush or become distracted. It makes me slow down, take a deep breath, and recenter before I begin. It makes you remember that medicine is not just a product. It is a great responsibility. It is something you put into another person’s life and body. That’s a great responsibility, and it deserves your very best.
I’ll give you a specific example because it’s the easiest way to explain what I mean. If I’m formulating for a pregnant woman, I’m not only thinking about nausea. I’m thinking about the whole landscape she’s moving through. The way her sleep is breaking apart. The way her body is reshaping itself. The backaches, heartburn, swelling, fatigue, constipation, food aversions, mood swings, frequent urination, and the thousand invisible stresses nobody sees. I think about anxiety and overwhelm, about finances and responsibilities, about the pressure of keeping up with life while something monumental is happening inside her. I think about nourishment, minerals, and stability, and I want to ensure she has everything her body needs to strengthen her womb and to prepare her for motherhood. I think about building a foundation strong enough to support all of this. And while I’m working, I’m not just choosing herbs—I’m choosing a posture of care. I’m holding her story in my mind, and I’m letting that guide every decision, every measurement, every step I take.
That’s also why we don’t make medicine in chaos. People sometimes romanticize the “hustle,” but hustle does not make good salves. Hustle burns things. Anger makes you sloppy. High emotion makes you forget steps. Grief makes your mind drift. Stress makes you rush and cut corners without noticing you’re doing it. If you’ve ever tried to cook dinner while your house is tense, you already understand this. It’s the same in medicine making. So we pause. We regulate ourselves. We take our time. We remember what we’re doing, why, and for whom. If you can’t bring steadiness to the work, the work can’t carry steadiness to someone else. And if we’re not able to ground ourselves in that moment, then it’s best to put it aside for the time being.
Intention doesn’t end at the apothecary table, either. It’s a way of moving through life. It’s the difference between living as a person who is constantly reacting and living as a person who chooses their posture, their mindset, their energy. Positive thinking gets dismissed as fluffy sometimes, but I’ve watched enough life unfold to know it isn’t fluff. What you feed your mind matters. If you insist on interpreting the world through a lens of despair, it will truly feel that way. Your nervous system will believe it. Your body will live downstream from that chemistry. And if you never interrupt the spiral, negativity will eventually eat you alive.
This is personal for me. My mom was a nurse, and she struggled deeply with positive thinking. She had a hard time looking for light. She could get stuck in misery and stay there. And when her cancer arrived, it was swift—only a few weeks from the first signs to diagnosis, and it was already stage four. I’m not trying to reduce illness to mindset alone—life doesn’t run on slogans. But I am telling you what I believe after watching someone I love suffer: the mind and body are not separate kingdoms. The stories we repeat in our head shape our stress levels, our resilience, our choices, our sense of meaning, our willingness to fight, and our ability to receive support. There comes a point where chronic hopelessness becomes a kind of poison. And you have a responsibility to notice when you’re spiraling, and to intervene, and to choose a different way of feeding your brain.
This is also why old sayings survive across generations. Wives’ tales and myths often carry a kernel of truth. Planting by the moon, harvesting on solstices and equinoxes, watching the sky and the weather, reading the land—maybe you don’t follow every tradition literally, but the deeper lesson is still solid: pay attention. Move with reverence. Respect timing. Don’t treat life like a machine. Herbalism is full of that wisdom because the plants teach it over and over again. You can’t bully a seed into sprouting faster. You can’t force a root to become potent overnight. You work with rhythms, and you learn humility whether you intended to or not.
To our family, the act of cooking has always felt like a prayer in the truest sense—not religious performance, just gratitude made practical. A way of saying thank you for warm homes, full bellies, and the people we still get to feed. Feeding your family keeps them alive for another day. You can turn that into a sacred act just by adjusting your mindset. And when you’ve tasted what a real meal made with love feels like, you understand why a can of soup can never touch your mama’s chicken noodles when you’re sick. It’s not only the ingredients. It’s the care. It’s the presence. It’s the way love travels through simple things.
The same holds true with medicine making. There is a world of difference between slapping together a googled list of herbs and creating something with your whole heart. One is information. The other is relationship. One is “technically correct.” The other is made to hold someone through a hard season. And I think that’s what people are craving right now, whether they realize it or not. Not just products, not just quick fixes, not just louder claims. They’re craving care. They’re craving humility. They’re craving honesty and kindness in a world that’s gotten rough around the edges.
So this is my invitation, for herbalists and non-herbalists alike. Bring intention into everything. Don’t do things halfway if you can help it. Don’t live like your presence doesn’t matter, because it does. Whether you’re making a tincture, cooking dinner, sending an email, showing up for your kid, or speaking to a stranger at the store—choose the posture you want to embody. Choose good intention. Choose humility. Choose kindness. Choose honesty, even when it costs you something. Then do the work like it matters, because it does.
And if you’re ever unsure where to start, start small. Before you make tea, take one breath and remember why you’re doing it. Before you begin your day, ask yourself what kind of person you want to be in the world today. Not what you want to get, but what you want to give. The modern world will try to train you into ego and urgency and selfishness. You can train yourself back into steadiness. You can choose a glad heart. You can choose a focused mind. You can choose love and kindness as a practice, not a mood. That’s intention. That’s medicine. That’s how we make a life worth living.
