A ranty piece on subtlety in herbal medicine

(Okay, it's not that ranty. But this is a passionately written piece about concepts I consider essential to the understanding of what's behind herbal medicine. Good herbal medicine.)

I call myself a slow learner. I'm not being derogatory, I choose to learn slowly.

I learn best intimately. I don't do well with facts & figures and nomenclatures, they just sit there on the surface of my brain. I need sensory experience of what I'm learning, that's what gets new ideas down into the interior regions where they can hook onto similars and stand facing opposites and sometimes sing harmony with whatever tune's been popular in the play list of my mind that day.

Mixing metaphors may be grammatically verboten, but, well, fuck the grammarians. If they can't follow a thought through all the twists and turns it might take that's their problem. Tidy, linear, quantitative thinking is well and good if you're looking to corral a concept, and tame it. So you can bob its tail and braid its mane and show it off. Me, I like my thoughts free to get into trouble, raid the neighbour's cornfield.

And I wonder, what are students of herbal medicine learning when they're taught along the lines of "berberine is the active ingredient in goldenseal"? Does molecular weight teach us anything we can use on the ground?

Really?

Tea vs decoction (and everything in between)

Some of us been talking about burdock root in the comments section at Tim's veggiepharm blog and in background emails, too.

But we're getting a little mixed up in our terminology about how we're using it, so here's a quick rundown of the 'official' terms for the various kinds of hot water methods used in herbal medicine.

These guidelines apply to most herbs, not just burdock. And yeah, there are exceptions of course.

A crockpot decoction experiment

This post isn't strictly about mullein, but it begins there.

I've got my slow cooker on the counter and it's on a good simmer. After a few hours cooking last evening and sitting to cool overnight it's been humming along all day. It holds my latest experiment, a couple of days' long deep decoction of 4 or 5 quite small first year mullein plants, roots and leaves together. One doesn't usually decoct (as in simmer for a long time) the leaves of plants because they're too delicate; decoctions are for the tough stuff like barks and roots. But as I said, this is an experiment. Besides, mullein leaves are made of stronger stuff than most leaves, and I want to find out just what they'll offer up this way.

I dug the plants out of the snow yesterday as we were having a bit of a thaw - oh man, that was fun - because, well, I have lots of mullein out there and I could. It's been calling me, mullein has.

Chaga is quieting

Chaga - ah, chaga. Just for the moment, forget anything you're ever read about it boosting immunity or fighting free radicals. Picture, if you will, a forested hillside. Birch. It's winter, the sun slants on an angle through the trees. The air is crisp and all is quiet. Very, very quiet.

It's been my experience - and that of one other person that I know of - that when I take chaga on a regular basis, quiet comes over me. I just don't want to speak. I also really want to be outside, in the sun, and when winter comes I especially want to just stand still in the winter sun and the cold wind feels good to me. Odd, eh?

The lesson of aspen

Windfall!

Flower essences revisited and a few thoughts on dabbling vs serious study (of anything)

The flower essence posts sure are popular, and there have been some questions from readers, so instead of answering them each privately by email, I'll try to cover more ground here in a post.

First off - no, I will not supply them to others. Yes, I did mention to a couple of you that there is a local shop sorta interested in buying my tinctures, oils & essences, but that's a bit different, it's in bulk so I wouldn't have to deal with the time & expense of filling little bottles and mailing things out.

Besides, I haven't yet decided if I could, in good conscience, sell essences at all. Maybe I shouldn't even have opened my mouth to that shop owner that I make them; I still see essences as intensely personal concoctions, best made from one's own flowers. Tinctures & essences are very different animals.

Essences work more on an energetic level than tinctures and since energetic issues are so incredibly variable, I can't say (nor can anyone else, I'd think) with any certainty, what kinds of effects any one flower essence would have for any one person.

I'm beginning to see working with flower essences the same way I see working with something like the Tarot.

Blueberry flowers, gratitude and magic

From this site: (chosen because of its simplicity, low woo-factor and because there's the occasional quote in the chart from Matthew Wood, my current favourite writer/herbalist.)

"Blueberry (low bush)
Vaccinium Angustifolium

This essence brings resiliency on all levels- physical, emotional, psychological. It enables the person who takes it to “bounce back” from illness or adversity. Low Bush Blueberry is a good addition to any healing blend and an important part of the blend Crisis Care."

Who couldn't use a little more resiliency? I know I could, and Paul (my husband, co-conspirator and all around good guy) wouldn't mind a little more himself, so it seemed a good essence for us to try out. And also, blueberries are something we've got plenty o' in this neck of the woods. This is blueberry country.

It's also blackfly season.