The Best Medicines

The Best Medicines are the ones that nourish our bodies, have little or no side effects, are available to all of us, and prevent as well as soothe symptoms and restore our bodies back to our natural balance of health.

Laughter-Love-Positive Energy: For me these three are a given. When you surround yourself with these three things beautiful there is a special kind of healing that is more powerful than we give credit to.

Touch: As a massage therapist one of the first things we learned in school was the Gate Control Theory: this is the simple idea that touch, makes everything feel better. Its the reason why we immediately touch a wound or place of pain. It’s why mom rubs our tummies! I recently had a friend I care very much about tell me, his mother never rubbed his tummy when he was sick! I was astounded and sad! The power of touch is a force to be reckoned with.

Herbs: mmmmmmmmmmm Over the past 9 months the deep beliefs I had held onto became validated. There is an herb that can help our bodies in almost any way that common drugs can.  little to 0 side effects and the pleasure of meeting the plant spirits that come with them. while I still feel new to this modality  of healing it seems as though I have been doing it for centuries. There is an ancient ache that calls me to this practice, it is the eyes of my classmates and the heart in my chest that I find a deep knowing that Mother Nature is our best Medicine.

The flower that lives above the clouds

Long Long ago when the flowers first awoke to life on dear Mother Earth, each got to choose the color of it’s petals and live wherever it chose.

          “I will cover the ground and make the bare soil happy with bright green blades” Cried the Grass

“I will live in the fields and by Roadsides” laughed the Daisy.

“I too” Echooed the buttercup, the cornflower, the poppy and the clover.

“Oh give me the ponds and the lakes” the water lilly called

“and let us have the streams and the marshes” begged the Irises & Cowslips

“We love the shaded woodland spots near our friends the ferns”lisped the shy forget-me-nots and violets

“And we wish to be loved within the gardens” declared the Roes, and the pansies.

“I love the warm dry sun, So I will go to the sandy desert” Called out the cactus.

Soon all places within mother nature had been filled with the beauty and medicine of the flowers and herbs except the bare ridges of the high Mountains. For no plants wished to venture to such cold and desolate places. “there is not enough warmth, there is not enough food, it is so bare and chilly” They all decided “ let the gray moss go and cover the rocks”

The gray moss did not like this idea “ How can I live without moisture, warmth or nourishment? Surely the bleak places of the mountains must do without flowers. How foolish it would be to try and make the ragged mountain tops lovely?”

But the Gray moss had not yet chosen a place to live and everything else was taken.

So the gray moss climbed over the bare rocks and beyond the places where the forests ceased to grow. All was desolate and silent up there. Up higher and higher he crept until he reached the jagged rocks above the clouds covered in ice and snow. There he stopped short in amazement.

For quietly clinging to the crags and blossoming was a gentle star shaped flower. It was as white as the snow and its heart was soft and yellow. So cold was it atop the mountain the little flower had covered its leaves in soft wool to keep warm and alive despite the bleakness.

“Oh!” Cried the gray moss in surprise. “ Who are you? What are you doing here where there is no warmth, no moisture, no nourishment? We are high above the forests, even higher than the clouds. Did the others make you come here like they have made me?”

The little starry flower nodded in the chill wind “welcome, I am Edelweiss, I came here on my own, quietly. I came because the mountains needed me. A blossom that might brighten this solitude, for there are no flowers up here but me.”

The edelweiss is closer to a star than to the daisy, the buttercup, or the rose.  It holds a special place in the hearts of those who have courage, those who dare to seek it out high above the clouds, where it grows ever gladly. They call it Nobel White- Edelweiss! Love, like Edelweiss, knows self-sacrifice.

A special note: I did not write this story, I merely adapted a version that I found. I have yet to find out who the real author of the story is or if this is just a legend passed down to children. Should you know the original author, please let me know so that i can give proper credit.

Herbal Intuition~ The importance of your own journey

“It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover.” – Henri Poincare

I was recently asked how I knew that herbalism worked. Was I certain it wasn’t all just hocus pocus, and how did I know? My first instinct was to get all of my facts together, to try and find all of the research and scientific studies about the chemical components that made up each plant and how they reacted with our bodies. I started typing up the information about how many of our modern medicines really came from the herbs and plants I now keep in my kitchenn, but then…… Then I realized that wasn’t my answer. That was not how I knew that all of the plants I had just fallen in love with was not hocus pocus. Sure there are studies, but the person asking could have very easily looked them up herself, so to answer how I knew, meant I had to throw all of that information to the side for a moment.

The truth is I know because I know. I have not just read about these herbs from a text book, or listened to a lecture about their ability to raise my vibration. It is much more simple than that. I have sat with these herbs, I have invited them into my home, which is my body, and I have asked them for guidance. I have drank them, ate them, smelled them, covered my body with them, soaked in them, prayed to them and with them, meditated with them, and watched others as they had done the same. I have witnessed others find joy in and connect with these herbs in such powerful and intimate ways. Some of us connecting strongly with particular herbs while others finding their medicine with herbs my body is not ready for, or does not need. I remember the first time that as a class we had experienced pine resin. Each of us reading back from your journals “It feels like coming home” almost like clockwork the majority of our group had written down the same phrase individually/privately about the herb. I think of Nettles who some people fell in love with right away, yet I couldn’t get passed the first few sips. This medicine was NOT for me, NOT YET, according to my intuition. While everyone balked at the bitterness of Blue Vervain, my father who was in much need of her medicine, didn’t find it bitter at all.

It seems as though each of us are different, we all experience things in different ways, and we all are in need of different medicines. We may indeed use the same herb for very different reasons, and it is here where the importance of knowing our own bodies becomes evident. Using our own intuition, listening to the needs of our own bodies and how they react to a particular plant is paramount in our own healing. All healing is self healing and therefore we, our individual selves must play a part in our own journey to wellness.