Meet Arika
Arika Rapson, MA, is a holistic herbalist and owner of Island Herbal Consults based on Lopez Island, Washington. Her passion is to support folks living with chronic conditions to have more bandwidth and less restrictions around their health, using evidence-based practices and interventions that support physical, mental and emotional needs.
Arika completed the foundational portion of her holistic/vitalist training through Commonwealth Holistic Herbalism and also holds certification as a cognitive coach through IBCCES. In order to meet the ever changing health needs of our times, she remains committed to ongoing clinical mentorship, training and peer consultation and is an active member of the American Herbalist's Guild (AHG).
When not working with clients, she also enjoys writing about neurodivergence, plant medicine, and 'rewilding' your body by getting unplugged and more engaged with the natural world. You can find her work in Diverge Magazine, the Journal of the American Herbalists Guild, and regularly on Substack.
She lives with her husband James on the edge of the woods on a registered ARK (Acts of Restorative Kindness) – a mix of native and medicinal plants that support a diverse local ecosystem that includes wildlife, pollinators and micro-organisms.
Her Story
Arika first came to herbalism as an individual with significant health challenges and chronic pain resulting from a rare genetic disorder. Conventional medical treatments had been unsuccessful, and at the worst of it she was experiencing high levels of pain four out of every five days.
After moving to Lopez Island in 2018, she began working with local plants on the island and felt a long awaited shift in her body. Connecting with the land opened her eyes to the medicinal plants all around her, and the forest suddenly became alive with medicine. Discovering plants growing wild in her own backyard to be more helpful for her than expensive and hard-to-access medications had ever been, she was able to reduce her medications substantially (in consultation with her medical team) and remove a number of the limitations that had been holding her back for years.
And that’s when she got the bug! Those initial encounters inspired her to go more deeply with her studies so that she could make herbs more accessible for more people. Having been on pharmaceuticals all her life, she especially wanted to bring plant medicine to those whose access had been limited due to concerns regarding herb-drug interactions or whose issues had seemed too complex for other modalities to help with. Plants are powerful, and to get safe, reliable and consistent results (especially when pharmaceuticals are in the mix), you need to get serious about training.
So it was at this point that Arika decided to pursue formal training as a clinical herbalist. It is her passion to bring the best of Traditional Western Herbalism and modern science together to support the challenging health issues of our times.