Medicine Chest - birch bark (saves the day)

Don't read this if you're squeamish about feet. 'Cause this is (partly) about feet stuff. Winter weary feet, to be precise. It's about hair, too. Winter weary hair.

But if you have feet, or hair, or even both, and they're troubling you at all, you might want to read on.

Chakra work, er no, make that chakra play!

For anyone interested in Chakra work, I've just tripped over an excellent page to explore, it's here.

Really nice illustrations.

There's a forum connected to the site as well. You really can learn the most amazing things in forums tucked away in quiet corners of the internet!

Turns out, there's a chakra I've never heard about before, positioned between the heart chakra and the throat chakra. And my goodness, it seems to be the most important one of all! (she says with tongue in cheek)

That middle layer of ick

I sleep really well at night, and I have great dreams. Dreaming is something of a sport to me, I can have a lot of fun there. My waking moments are fun, too. My life is joyful and satisfying.

But sometimes I'll be cozy in my lovely bed, drifting off happily into la-la land, and suddenly some scene of tragedy is playing out before me. A refugee camp. Or an accident scene. Occasionally, when waking up from a perfectly nice sleep, I'll find myself in the midst of swirling thoughts. Worries about loved ones or even just acquaintances from the web.

Has this happened to you?

What the hell is that, anyway?

Once more, with feeling

In this world where information has become currency, words seem to have come to matter more than the meaning behind them.

It's because we miss that meaning that we just keep looking for more words.

We're obsessed with collecting information, horde it in files

                      like pirates with chests of gold doubloons 

only to bring it out and look at it now and then, memorizing terms and phrases we think are important - we call that learning? - never realizing that information, without meaning, is like food without nourishment.

Hands on, how to - alder infused oil; the good, the bad and the ugly

Dammit!!
click to embiggen

We'll start with the bad and the ugly, since that's where the story begins.

I went to refill my trusty little bottle of alder oil and discovered this ----------------------------------->>>>>

My backup jar of alder oil was moldy, throughout!

See now, this is the kind of lesson one learns over and over and over when one is lazy or forgetful. You can leave herbs (almost) indefinitely in vodka, but not in oil. No sir. Normally I would have strained this - heaven knows why I didn't - and I would have put some coarse salt in the bottom of the jar of strained oil, too. Salt pulls any excess water to itself and keeps the oil from going off. Like that. Yuck.

Bad girl, wildcucumber, bad, bad!!

Underground Medicine 2 - practical first steps

You just have to start where you are.

So, where are you?

How do you even figure out where you are?