If you’ve ever found yourself on Argyle Road in the Brooklyn borough of New York, odds are you’ve run across Sacred Vibes Apothecary, a Black-owned brick and mortar that reads across the front, “Organic herbs and spices, herbal & green teas, herbal capsules, seasoning blends, resins & burnables, herbal consultations and classes.” An apothecary that centers on ancestral forms of healing and wellness, Karen Rose has set up shop in hopes of providing her community with accessible wellness, rich history and above all, quality care.
For Karen, an interest in herbalism started at a young age. From shadowing and learning under the tutelage of her grandmother, she would come to appreciate the capabilities of plant medicine.
“I was born in South America and Guyana, and so I grew up there learning plant medicine with my grandmother and working with plants with my grandmother. It’s always been a love,” Karen told THE BLOCK.
While her upbringing put her on the path of herbalist medicine, Karen explains that the pressures of assimilation for an immigrant often deterred her from continuing her familial practice as she got older. She admits that, for a time, she fell out of touch with the child who learned about plant medicine from her grandmother.
“You lose track of that love because you start to assimilate. The assimilation takes away so much of your indigeneity,” Karen said.
Nevertheless, even as she became more comfortable in this country, there was a calling she could not ignore: her ancestral connection to plants. With her first child, although healthy, she was determined to use plant medicine to keep it that way. And in turn, found her love again for the art of herbalism.
“It was a returning back to my roots and the teaching of my ancestors,” she said. “I started to work with people using plant medicine. I went to herbalism school to study Western herbalism and then started to visit the Caribbean and really incorporate the spiritual practices that I grew up with as part of the plant magic.”
Since launching Sacred Vibes Apothecary in 2009, Karen has gone on to teach hundreds of store patrons and clients about wellness, herbalism and care. Rooted in traditions and ancestral practices, Karen implements the teaching she received as a child into her work today, including reframing what wellness looks like in the West. Often, Karen says, we view health and wellness as a counteract to poor health, instead of as a daily facet of our lives. Her work not only teaches the pertinence of daily wellness but of the misconceptions that herbalism is another form of allopathic treatment.
“we have disconnected medicine so much from what wellness means that we only take medicine when we feel sick.
Wellness, overall to indigenous people, means staying well—even when there’s nothing happening.”
Karen rose
“Medicine is a daily thing that you take,” Karen continued. “I’s not something that you take when something’s broken and needs fixing.”
Part of her work is also showing customers to learn to prioritize their own care. Through the hustle of the workweek, it can be easy to neglect your needs, but Sacred Vibes teaches taking time, or rather, making time, and holding oneself accountable for it.
“I think one of the biggest things I learned about care is that it’s an everyday commitment. To be gentle on myself and to be a witness to my own care.” Karen says. Since 2002, Karen has been instructing store patrons on what herbs to use for ailments as well as relief, and how to take control of their wellness in hopes others would pick up the practice of care. But quickly realized her community would need more than just a class, but a center where her knowledge was offered in abundance.
“[I] started to teach classes here, started to see clients, and then realized that my clients didn’t have access to the herbs that I was asking them to get for their health. And saw a need to create an apothecary. And so that’s where Sacred Vibes Apothecary came from. This need in my community to have access to the medicines.” Karen says. Accessibility is one of the pillars that prop up the Sacred Vibes Apothecary. Seeing neglect in larger medical institutions that she could not ignore, she reaffirms that her work is for the betterment of her community, which also means being a source of healing for Black folks both physically, mentally, and even spiritually.
“When I first started, I think there was much less of a conversation around wellness than there is now. As time has gone on, there’s been a lot of frustration with the medical complex. The way in which they treat Black bodies, the way in which they treat Black mothers, the way in which they treat anyone who doesn’t have privilege and access to their information,” Karen said.
“I think that these [apothecaries] have become more important in the community in ways to say, ‘We see you; we understand you.”
With health and wellness taking precedence in recent years, from normalizing mental health awareness to the commercialization of self-care, Karen shares that as the conversation shifts, she is happy to sit with other Black and brown and indigenous folks at the forefront of the wellness movement.
“It feels like coming home and a reclaiming of the space to be a Black woman in this, and I think my greatest joy is my apprenticeship program where I educate other Black folks and POC folks to take up space within their healing tradition, their ancestral tradition.”
You can visit Sacred Vibes Apothecary’s website to learn more about Karen, her classes and how you can get and keep your wellness on course.
