Dr. Terry Willard, Wild Rose

Dr. Terry Willard’s line of over 100 Wild Rose herbal products is more than another set of go-to natural health remedies. What comes out of the bottle is just a few drops of a small empire of wellness education and treatment that’s turning greater numbers onto the time-tested benefits of natural healing.

The Alberta-based clinical herbalist not only develops some of the most popular natural products (including the top selling Wild Rose Herbal D-Tox), Willard is also director of the Wild Rose College of Natural Healing, a training centre where both the casual and serious student can learn a broad range of therapies, techniques, and natural health concepts.

Those same techniques are on display at his Wild Rose Clinic in Calgary’s upmarket Kensington district. For more than 20 years, Willard has recruited practitioners to offer therapeutic techniques such as Western and Oriental herbology, iridology, reflexology, naturopathy, acupuncture, massage therapy, homeopathy, flower essence therapy, aromatherapy and more.

The author of 10 books on the subject of herbs and a regular lecturer and pundit on both television and radio, Willard was motivated to create the Wild Rose brand three decades ago because he couldn’t treat his own patients with what was being made by others.

“I need products for my patients and there simply weren’t suitable ones in the marketplace, so I designed them.”

The fact that Wild Rose products are used in Willard’s school and his clinic every day means they’re more rigorously tested than the competition.

“That’s the biggest difference compared to any other line in Canada,” he says. “All our products are clinically tested. In fact, you could say each batch is clinically tested because we’re running them through our clinic and getting feedback from our own patients. We have quality control that nobody else in Canada has.”

Willard shrugs off the suggestion that skeptics still scoff at naturopathy and herbal remedies. It’s an unfair bias. Willard points out that the use of herbs in holistic treatments is rooted in the history of our species. The concept of physical, mental, and emotional health being interconnected (the whole body acts in co-operation and unison) isn’t a New Age retort against traditional medicine, but rather confirmation that “traditional” means thousands of years old.

Willard points to a World Health Organization report indicating that more than 80 per cent of the population of the planet still use botanical medicines as their primary treatment. Even in Canada acceptance grew from five per cent in 1992 to 30 per cent by 1999.

“It’s not like this stuff has just been discovered in the last five years. This is the original system we’ve been using throughout history. It’s regular medicine that’s new.”

And it’s regular medicine’s shortcomings that are drawing people to natural health remedies.

“The trust in the establishment is eroding,” notes Willard. “And at the same time, everybody has met someone who has had a turnaround thanks to natural healing.”

Willard doesn’t hesitate to admit that natural healing is not a cure-all for every ailment, but rather that people should have two health professionals: a wellness practitioner and sickness practitioner (a medical doctor).

More and more, he says, we’re seeking out the education to become our own doctors, too, “instead of leasing it out to a guy in a white jacket”. Willard’s patients and Wild Rose customers have a deep connection to the earth. Many have found they have adverse reactions to pharmaceuticals and want to be gentle on their bodies.

“And sometimes gentler is better,” advises the doctor.