Herbal Tattoo Care

The Holistic Herbalism Podcast

Herbal tattoo care starts a while before your appointment. You’ve got to prepare the skin in advance, get hydrated, and ideally do a little work to keep inflammation down in the lead-up time. You want that skin to be in the best possible shape before you get work done. You might even want to get some test spots done, if you have very reactive skin.

We don’t actually like to throw a ton of different plants together in our herbal tattoo care preparations. Instead there are just a few excellent, simple preparations we turn to again and again. Rosewater is a beautiful light astringent & refrigerant, toning and cooling the skin. A honey salve or other light, simple salve is protective & soothing. We might try a chamomile compress as well. But we’re not going to come at the tattoo with strong vulnerary herbs or lymph-moving plants, because these might actually interfere with the healing process and the settling-in of the ink. So let’s keep it simple!

Mentioned in this episode:

• Physio-Medical Therapeutics, Materia Medica and Pharmacy, by T. J. Lyle (1897) – search the text for “tattoo” to find the reference to oak galls.
• Medicine Mama’s Sweet Bee Magic – a honey salve we like for pre- & aftercare.

Herbs discussed include: oak, comfrey, rose, chamomile, sage.
Many of our listeners would describe themselves as budding herbalists. They already know some herbs, and they’ve been making teas, tinctures, and salves for themselves and their loved ones for a while. Is that you? If you’d like to take the next steps to develop the herbal skills you need to support your community, then our Community Herbalist Program is for you! You’ll expand your knowledge and build your confidence to work with a broad array of topics, including energetics, formulation, basic phytochemistry, and systematic support with holistic herbal practices. Join us in weekly live Q&A sessions, and connect directly with Ryn & Katja. Your courses never expire, and whenever we add new material, that’s added to your account automatically at no extra charge. Get the full details here and keep your herbal education moving forward!

As always, please subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen, so others can find it more easily. Thank you!!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Support the show

You can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!