Beltane: A Seasonal Ritual of Becoming
By Mara Branscombe
/ 25 April, 2025
Date in the Northern Hemisphere: 1 May Date in the Southern Hemisphere: 1 November As the earth reaches the peak...
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Emma Drady is a naturopath focusing on women's health, and author of the book Women & Nature which looks at 25 women from around the world and their connection to nature.
In this interview Emma explains what naturopathy is and how it can be of support on our healing journeys as well as discussing the rise in women seeking alternative support for hormonal issues. Emma's approach to healing is one that is gentle and supportive, guiding us to listen within and ask ourselves is this right for me? Grace Cummins: Can you introduce yourself and tell us where you feel you fit into the holistic healing world? Emma Drady: My name is Emma Drady and I am a naturopath on the beautiful Central Coast of New South Wales, Australia. My main area of interest is in women’s health – anything from irregular cycles, preparing for conception, pregnancy and postpartum, menopause, and all things in between. I love to support women through all aspects of their health journey, and it has been a great honour to help the families of these women flourish. I’ve been working in the holistic healing space for around eight years, and I absolutely love the uptake I have seen during this time, seeing more and more people feeling safe and comfortable enough to try out something really different to ‘the norm’ or how they may have been raised. GC: What is naturopathy? ED: Naturopathy, to me, is the practice of nature medicine. To become a naturopath in Australia we must undertake a four-year degree, which involves a lot of science and a deep understanding of the human body, alongside learning various natural treatments like herbal medicine and nutritional dietary therapy. What constitutes as natural medicine is a fascinating concept, because technically, a tablet with the smallest extract of a plant or a lab-made nutrient falls under this classification – which is wonderful and absolutely has its place in the world. However, the way that I am tending to work is towards a more traditional approach. I take into consideration the whole person sitting in front of me – how much sunshine are they seeing each day? Are they breathing fresh air? Is their food from a packet, or can we identify the ingredients on their plate? Are they satisfied spiritually, romantically, professionally? Questions like this are really important to help me form my treatment plans. My recommendations are highly individualised and often involve a lot of behavioural changes and shifts alongside their prescription, which means we are often working together for several months, or on some occasions, years. GC: How can nature heal us and support our wellbeing? ED: From a literal perspective, nature has the capacity to heal most ailments. Nature is our fruit and vegetables, it’s our water, it’s our ability to survive in our place in the world – without nature, there wouldn’t be healing, but there also wouldn’t be any humans. We have seen a beautiful boom in research on the topic of nature therapies over the last decade or so which has shown things like the immune enhancing impacts of inhaling the volatile oils produced by pine and eucalyptus trees, or how spending time outdoors can lower blood pressure and cortisol levels, or even how letting our kids play in the dirt is great for their gut microbiome health. I am so pleased to see these results making it into the mainstream, to make nature-based therapies less ‘woo-woo’ and more widely adopted. What I would love to see next is a more wide-spread understanding of how nature helps us heal in ways that can’t be measured. Things like a sense of awe and wonder, improved creativity and inspiration, feeling less alone, and connecting to place and culture. This, in my opinion, is where our true healing as a species lies. GC: Your book Women & Nature looks at highly important topics in today’s world. What was your ‘why’ for the project? ED: I decided to write this book partly out of my own selfish want to meet these incredible women, but also mostly because I needed more ideas in my toolbox to prescribe to my patients. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to treatments, even with the best research out there. What works for one person may not work for the next person. I knew what worked for me when I was feeling unwell and off-balance – I would need to stretch my legs on a bushwalk or spend some time near a body of water – but that didn’t mean it would have the same impact on someone else. So, I wanted to see what other women were doing to connect to nature and how they were healing from the natural world so that I could pass on that knowledge to my community. The women featured in the book are from all around the world, of different ages, abilities, religions, and socio-economic backgrounds, which was really important for me to highlight so the reader could connect with at least one person and their story. What I also love about connecting to nature is that it’s free or really low-cost, which means it is accessible to everyone, unlike naturopathy, which is unfortunately not covered by any insurances or government subsidies. GC: Women’s health is showing up more and more in discussions, especially women who are turning to more natural solutions to try and answer their questions. Why do you think this is? ED: We have unfortunately seen how much the current systems are not working for a lot of us – especially women – and that includes the medical system. Don’t get me wrong, modern medicine is a life-saver and we need it for many situations, but it isn’t and shouldn’t be the only solution offered to us. Until scarily recently most medical research was conducted solely on men, which means a lot of procedures and medications that have a high chance of success in helping men are completely wrong for women. Women’s health is complex and multi-faceted and our concerns are often chronic, spanning many years or decades – no quick fix, especially one designed for men, is actually going to heal us. I believe we are turning to natural therapies more because as we turn away from the things that don’t serve us, we are seeking something new – which is actually something very old and strong in many of our lineages. Medicine women, midwives, the local witch – these were all women’s roles. We once had the knowledge to heal ourselves, our families and our communities, and I believe we are craving that knowledge again now. When we compare learning how to grow our own food and prepare a well-balanced meal, picking medicine from the garden, and waking up with the sun to sitting in a sterile, fluorescent-lit waiting room for our doctor only to be told it’s in our head, or to just take this pill, natural medicine feels right for many of us. GC: Why are so many of us women struggling with hormonal health and feeling so disconnected from ourselves, do you think? ED: Carrying on from the question above, I think we have been forced to fit into a world that wasn’t designed with our best interests in mind. Women’s bodies are governed by the peaks and troughs of our hormones, and if we were given the opportunity to honour this, I think we would feel so much more well and connected. Unfortunately, most of us have to push through even though we know it isn’t serving us. Taking a day off work to rest on the first day of our menstrual bleed, for example, is not a choice many of us can make, but if it was, can you imagine how much more balanced we would feel for the rest of our cycle? Or if we could take as long as we needed to care for our babies before returning to work, we would be setting our family’s futures up for long-term health rather than depletion.Along with these major cultural shifts we can work towards are all the other little things in our environment that impact on our hormones, like endocrine-disrupting chemicals in our skincare and perfume, microplastics from drink bottles, packaging and synthetic textiles, the fertilisers and sprays on our fresh produce, and the constant exposure to screens. Each of these things individually influences our hormones, but when we tally up our daily exposure, it is no wonder we are seeing so many women experiencing fertility challenges and changes to menstrual cycles. With the growing movement towards natural therapies, I feel optimistic for our future generations – if we can educate and empower today’s mums, tomorrow’s daughters will have the opportunity to feel balanced, healthy and connected. GC: What’s your one piece of advice to all clients or prospective clients? ED: Always ask yourself, does it feel right for you? If we truly allow that question to land in our body, our mind and our heart, we will get the answer. It can take a bit of practice to hear your guiding voice and intuition over all of the noise, but you know yourself better than anyone else, and you will know what is the right choice for you. If someone tells you to follow a particular diet or take a certain supplement, let it land before you act. The same goes for modern medicine: don’t be afraid to get a second, third, or tenth opinion. At the end of every appointment I ask my patients if they are okay with my suggestions, I check in with them shortly after to make sure their plan works for their life and goals, adapting when needed, and I keep the communication channels open. Taking advice from someone is a big deal – it involves a lot of trust, so it is essential that you also trust yourself. And if you’re really not sure, invite curiosity in – journal about it, meditate on it, go for a walk, create some art, take your time and then ask yourself again: does it feel right for you?
