New Botanical Medicine Chair Maintains Eye to Future and Deep Respect for the Past

Nancy Welliver, ND, is coming down with a cold, and she is quite pleased with herself. It is the first week of November, and a smile crosses her face as she talks about how "excited" she is to be getting this early winter sickness out of her system.

"In naturopathic theory, when you get a cold and cough and sneeze and bring up all sorts of discharge, you're getting rid of the toxic stuff in your body," says Dr. Welliver, who brings an almost motherly bearing to her discussions of naturopathic medicine. "You're also activating your immune system. The idea is all this is potentially protecting you from a worse illness later on."

For Dr. Welliver, who formally took over as chair of Bastyr University's Botanical Medicine Department in September after nine months as interim, the concept that the body is ever working to heal itself is an important one. In fact, it's at the very core of her identity as an educator — and now department head — at a university of natural health arts and sciences. Her goal: to maintain a focus on the philosophy of naturopathic medicine while helping her students understand its importance in their maturation as healers. 

It is a value and approach borne through the experiences of her own journey as a healer. And it is why she left a lucrative private practice six years ago to return to Bastyr and teach.

Finding her path
Dr. Welliver grew up during the mid-'70s in northern California's Sonoma County, a traditional hotbed for natural medicine. Steeped in this environment, she developed a deep appreciation for nature and began studying herbs at the age of 16. By the time she finished high school — and after watching her best friend’s mom pass away from breast cancer — Dr. Welliver knew she wanted to pursue a career in the sciences and medicine.

But it wasn't until a number of years after graduation, while attending a natural foods convention, that she learned about the John Bastyr College of Naturopathic Medicine (now Bastyr University) and decided to pursue naturopathic medicine as a career.

"I'd been trying to piece something together, and then I found this school that taught all the things that I was interested in learning," Dr. Welliver says. "I said to myself, 'That's where I’m supposed to be.'"

Four years, innumerable tests and an established reputation as the homeopathy geek of her class later, Welliver graduated in 1992 with her Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine degree. Within another four years she had opened her own practice in California's Napa Valley. And it was there in wine country, treating everything from chronic liver disease to acute pain conditions, that she began to truly understand the power of herbs. "I was like any other young naturopath when I started. I often used herbs allopathically," Dr. Welliver says. "But, as I matured as a doctor, I saw how much better the results were for the patient when I primarily used herbs to support and nourish the body."

In fact, her growing understanding of herbal treatments prompted some healing experiences so dramatic she felt compelled to leave her practice of 10 years to share the knowledge with the academic world. "They would only be considered 'medical miracles' because we lost track of the fact that herbs could do those things," she says. "That's why I came back to teach — I wanted the students to remember how herbs had always been used, successfully, to treat serious acute and chronic illness."

Professor Welliver
Dr. Welliver joined the University as an adjunct faculty member in 2003, and she immediately imprinted herself upon the school. If you've ever heard the phrase "herbs work, really," or read it on a shirt, she counts herself responsible. It's a mantra she says she repeated so often and passionately to students when she started that one enterprising individual turned it into a T-shirt slogan. It is a phrase that underscores a serious dedication to developing a deeper understanding of herbs.

Dr. Welliver encourages students to not merely "throw herbs" at patients, but to explore the traditions of botanical medicine and place today's understanding of herbs in a more historical/philosophical context. She gives the example of caffeine, which seems to be the focus of a new study almost every year — some lauding its benefits, others decrying it as a health hazard. As a medical practitioner, "you can find yourself changing your take on an herbal treatment almost daily," she says.

That's where the philosophical foundation Dr. Welliver so firmly believes in comes in. "What it really comes down to is providing students with a strong philosophical background from which to practice and showing them that this philosophy is also practical," she says. "Once they have that as a basis, they will develop the ability to look at each patient, and treatment, in a new way and understand the appropriate way to promote health

Chair of the Department of Botanical Medicine
As chair of the Department of Botanical Medicine, Dr. Welliver is all about tradition, both in management style and program concentration. She has spent her first year in the position careful not to make hasty decisions, "observing what's here and gaining an understanding before I try and make changes." Now she says the next step is to begin to structure the program not just "from a green allopathic philosophy," but with more of a balance with traditional approaches to botanical medicine.

"The goal is to have students look to science and folklore with a critical eye, seeing how the two can be used together," she says.

But Welliver also maintains an eye to the future — or, more specifically, the future of her students. To give herbal sciences students more career options upon graduation, she would like to develop writing courses that prepare graduates to work as herbal experts in the publishing world and business classes that prepare students to pursue entrepreneurial endeavors.

As for her naturopathic medicine students, the approach is a little less bold, but no less important. More than anything else, she says she would like to instill in them an understanding of how botanical medicine can work in concert with all modalities of naturopathic medical practice. "When they're out in private practice, it's not really an option to send patients to the nutrition department or the homeopathy department like you would at our teaching clinic (Bastyr Center for Natural Health)," she says, matter-of-factly. "I'd like our students to have the foundation necessary to use all the different techniques of naturopathic medicine, in addition to bringing botanical medicine to an art form."

To learn more about our programs or to speak with a peer advisor from the program you are considering, contact the Office of Admissions at (425) 602-3330 or admissions@bastyr.edu.

Interviewed November 2008