Meet Dr. Joshua Park: The Quiet Force Behind the Herbs

One of the most brilliant herbalists in the country — and the most generous person you've never heard of.

By Brehan Crawford, MAcOM, LAc  ·  Chorus for Life

Some of the best people in this profession never chase the spotlight.

I've been practicing for over twenty years now. In that time, I've met a lot of practitioners — some brilliant, some generous, a few truly exceptional in both respects. Dr. Joshua Park, DSOM, L.Ac is one of those rare people. He is, without qualification, one of the leading herbalists in this country. And yet if you walked past him at a conference, you might never know it. That's Joshua. He doesn't do flash. He does the work.

I wanted to sit down with him because our Gut Brain Synchrony community deserves to know who's behind the scenes — the person who shows up at every ASA conference offering help before anyone thinks to ask, who fields late-night herbal questions with the patience of a saint, and whose clinical and academic depth runs deeper than most people will ever realize.

This conversation covers Joshua's path into medicine, what drives his clinical work, and why having him in our Skool community is such an extraordinary resource for members navigating gut health, autoimmune conditions, and the complex landscape of herbal medicine.

"Joshua is one of those people who makes everyone around him better — not because he's trying to impress anyone, but because he genuinely cares about getting the medicine right."

— Brehan Crawford, MAcOM, LAc

A Healer Who Was First a Patient

Brehan: Joshua, let's start at the beginning. Most people in our community don't know that you came to this medicine as a patient first. Tell us about that.

Dr. Park: I dealt with chronic digestive illness for a long time. It was one of those situations where conventional approaches weren't getting to the root of it. And then I found East Asian medicine — acupuncture and herbs — and the resolution was rapid and permanent. It changed everything for me. I realized that if this medicine could do that for me, I needed to dedicate my life to making it available to other people dealing with the same kinds of conditions.

Brehan: And that took you to the National University of Natural Medicine in Portland. What was that training like?

Dr. Park: It was immersive. My doctoral training focused on the theory and application of classical medical texts — the foundations that most modern training only scratches the surface of. I studied with top physicians from Korea, China, Europe, and the United States. That exposure to multiple lineages of this medicine was formative. It taught me to think in systems, not symptoms.

Brehan: And that's what I want people to understand. Joshua's depth with classical texts is unusual. Most practitioners learn a formula and move on. Joshua understands why that formula exists, the diagnostic framework behind it, the modifications across lineages. That's a rare thing in our profession.

From Hospital Floors to Herbal Pharmacology

Brehan: After Portland, you went to South Florida and spent four years at Memorial Healthcare System's Division of Integrative Medicine. That's a major hospital system. What did working alongside MDs teach you?

Dr. Park: It taught me that the best medicine happens at the intersection. I was treating oncology patients, veterans, people with neurological pain, autoimmune disease, digestive ailments — the full spectrum of complexity. Working collaboratively with MDs forced me to communicate in two languages at once. I had to articulate why a classical formula was working in terms that mapped onto Western pathophysiology. That pressure was the best education I ever got.

Brehan: And this is something I want our community to really hear. When I say Joshua is "super smart on herbs," I'm not throwing around a compliment. I mean he operates at a level where he can take a 1,500-year-old formula like Tong Xie Yao Fang, explain its classical diagnostic logic, and then walk you through the modern research showing how it modulates colonic serotonin levels through shifts in gut microbiota. That dual fluency is extraordinarily rare, and our Skool community benefits from it directly.

Dr. Park: That formula is actually a good example. In TCM terms, it treats Liver qi overacting on the Spleen — the pattern behind a lot of stress-driven diarrhea. But the pharmacological research is now showing that it regulates 5-HT levels in the colon by shifting the relative abundance of specific bacterial populations, including Akkermansia and Clostridium species. It also restores intestinal barrier integrity through anti-inflammatory pathways. When you can hold both of those frameworks simultaneously, your clinical precision goes up dramatically.

The Most Generous Person You'll Never Hear Brag

Brehan: I want to talk about something that I don't think you'd ever bring up yourself, which is exactly the point.  At the ASA conference, Joshua is in the hallways and at the tables, finding people who need help and just… helping. He's the person who pulls you aside to walk through a complicated herbal interaction. He's the person who stays late to answer questions nobody else had time for.

I've watched him do this for years. He's been asked to help teach seminars and has taught acupuncture and herbal classes at multiple universities. But you'd almost never know it because Joshua doesn't promote himself. His humility is genuine, not performative, not false modesty, it's just who he is. And in a profession that sometimes rewards self-promotion over substance, that kind of character deserves to be recognized.

Dr. Park: I appreciate that, Brehan. Honestly, I just think the medicine is bigger than any one person. If I can help a practitioner understand a formula better, or help a student see a diagnostic pattern they were missing, that's the work. That's what my teachers did for me, and it's what this tradition asks of us.

Brehan: And that right there is why I consider him one of the leading herbalists in the United States. It's not just the clinical skill — although that's formidable. It's the fact that he treats knowledge as something to be shared, not hoarded. When you meet someone like that, you hold on to them.

"The medicine is bigger than any one person. If I can help a practitioner understand a formula better, or help a student see a diagnostic pattern they were missing — that's the work."

— Dr. Joshua Park, DSOM, L.Ac

Hidden River and the Gut as Ecosystem

Brehan: You co-authored Hidden River: The Lost Science of Gut Ecology with Dr. Yaron Cohen. Tell our community about the book and its central thesis.

Dr. Park: The book approaches gut health as an ecosystem rather than a set of symptoms to fix. We follow two healing journeys — Nicole and Jake — to show the limitations of conventional approaches and the possibilities when you honor the body's deeper wisdom. We explore the hidden connections between breath and bowels, stress and digestion, daily habits and gut resilience. The gut isn't a machine — it's a living ecology, and it responds to ecological interventions.

Brehan: That philosophy is exactly what our community is built around — ecology over warfare. Terrain restoration over symptom suppression. And it's why having Joshua as a resource inside the Skool group is such an extraordinary benefit. Members aren't just getting advice from someone who read a textbook. They're getting access to a clinician who has treated oncology patients at major hospital systems, who is currently practicing at UC Irvine Medical Center, who has published peer-reviewed research on herbal modulation of the gut-brain axis, and who literally wrote the book on gut ecology.

Dr. Park: The community aspect is important to me. One of the things I've learned from treating people with IBS, ulcerative colitis, Crohn's, and autoimmune conditions is that isolation makes everything worse. When someone can learn from other people's journeys, share what's working, and get real clinical guidance — not just generic wellness advice — the outcomes are completely different. That's what this Skool group provides.

What Dr. Park Brings to the Chorus Circle

Brehan: Let me be direct about this. When you join the Gut Brain Synchrony community, you're not just getting a support group. You're getting access to a clinical team that includes people like Joshua — practitioners with doctoral-level training, hospital-system experience, peer-reviewed publications, and deep classical knowledge. That's a rare combination anywhere, and it's virtually unheard of in a free online community.

Joshua, what do you want people who are considering joining to know?

Dr. Park: I want them to know that they don't have to keep guessing. A lot of the people who come to me — in my clinic and in this community — have been through years of trial and error. Diets, supplements, protocols that helped for a month and then stopped working. The problem is usually diagnostic. If you don't have the right framework for understanding what's actually happening in the terrain, even good interventions will underperform. This community gives you access to that diagnostic clarity — and to people who have spent decades developing it.

Brehan: And he'll say it with a smile. That's the other thing about Joshua. He's kind. Genuinely, deeply kind. In a field where egos can run hot, especially among people with this level of expertise, his warmth and patience are distinctive. He treats every question like it matters — because to him, it does.

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References

1. Yang, E., Park, J., & Ross, T. (2025). Herbal Modulation of the Gut–Brain Axis in IBS-D: A Case Report. Convergent Points: An East-West Case Report Journal, 4(2). https://www.convergentpoints.com/article/view/73
2. Li, J., Cui, H., Cai, Y., et al. (2018). Tong-Xie-Yao-Fang Regulates 5-HT Level in Diarrhea Predominant Irritable Bowel Syndrome Through Gut Microbiota Modulation. Frontiers in Pharmacology, 9, 1110. doi:10.3389/fphar.2018.01110
3. Chen, M., Tang, T.C., Wang, Y., et al. (2018). Randomised clinical trial: Tong-Xie-Yao-Fang granules versus placebo for patients with diarrhoea-predominant irritable bowel syndrome. Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics, 48(2), 160–168. doi:10.1111/apt.14817
4. Hou, Q., Huang, Y., Zhu, Z., et al. (2019). Tong-Xie-Yao-Fang Improves Intestinal Permeability in Diarrhoea-Predominant Irritable Bowel Syndrome Rats by Inhibiting the NF-κB and Notch Signalling Pathways. BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 19, 337. doi:10.1186/s12906-019-2749-4
5. Cohen, Y. & Park, J. (2025). Hidden River: The Lost Science of Gut Ecology. Available on Amazon