Medicine chest 5: herbs that reduce tension

I've written about the physical/emotional feedback system elsewhere, in a post I called "Got inflammation? Maybe you're angry."  You might want to go and read that post before you read this one ..

Essentially, the idea is that the effects of stressful emotional states aren't limited to the psychological, they reach into the body, too. The psychological signs of overload bypass our notice because we're just too focused elsewhere to pay attention; when that happens tension can settle into a joint or an organ or a system. It's a bit of a clusterfuck, too, because physical tension anywhere in the body can be so damn stressful!!

Relieving physical tension has the nifty side effect of helping us to think more clearly so we can get to the root of the problem, be it a physical or psychological issue (or both, it's often both). Herbal remedies really shine here because (for the most part) they're curative rather than palliative. I've never found that a steady diet of tylenol cleared anyone's mind .. lol.

Anyway, here are the allies I've found most useful for myself (and other people I've used as guinea pigs) ..

Want to see what winter looks like where we live?

A few days ago, this weird winter of ups and downs we're having provided us with one gorgeous day. The sun shone, the temperature shot up just past the freezing - well, melting - point and so of course we headed out for a ramble. Two rambles, in fact, with a gourmet lunch of poutine at the local general store cum diner in between. This post is about ramble #1.

The winding back roads through the hills and forests around our village are our favourite places in the whole wild world, bar none. Just for fun, Paul handed me his camera and I shot a few short videos as we drove. Now these are not in any way professional, so be warned. For the first one I didn't have my reading glasses so I couldn't see what I was shooting. You're looking through the filthy car windshield half the time (hey, it's winter, the car just will not stay clean, okay?). You're hearing the sound of the auto-focus on the camera. And the bright sun and snow make for some overexposure here and there. But there's some of our favourite tunes for you to tap your toe to, and a whole lot of fresh snow and forest scenery.

So if you like that kind of thing, have fun with these.

woops - monkey wrench in the works

Well, we had a good run for a while there, didn't we?

It looks like circumstances will be keeping me from posting here for a bit. Please take advantage of the index on the side bar if you're hankering for my writing (ha!) and I'll be back .. eventually.

What the heck is the Doctrine of Signatures? (link fixed)

Woops, little blog-hiccup there. The post you're looking for is on the top bar.

Medicine chest 4(c) - the infused oil that isn't an oil after all (comfrey root)

Okay, well this could be embarrassing - if I embarrassed easily. Which I don't, so we're cool, right? Right.

My plan when I sat down to write section 4 of the medicine chest series was to cover the infused oils in one post and slip the real deal about comfrey in at the end. We all know how that turned out, thanks to my extreme wordiness. And I don't even have a whole lot to say about comfrey root infused oil except ..

Medicine chest 4(b) - the 2nd bark (alder) as infused oil and tincture

I'm still just getting to know the tree medicines. Up until the last couple of years I've spent most of my time looking down at annuals and perennials, those green jewels that grow in my yard and in the many wild meadows in our rural area (including hay fields, there's a lot grows on the edge of a hayfield besides hay and hay fields aren't sprayed).

I wander into forests plenty often (with permission from the landowners) (mostly ..), but I do very little harvesting there. Many of the plants that grow on the forest floor of a mature hardwood forest tend to be rare so I leave them be. Mature trees are not easy to harvest from, they're just too damn tall for me to reach their branches!

But on the edges of forests, along streams, along bike paths and trails, there are trees young and small enough that I can (respectfully, carefully) harvest a young branch or some twigs. Young trees are often plentiful in cities, too, and if the area isn't a manicured park, there's no reason why urban folk can't branch out (lol, sorry) into working with bark. Wildcrafting in cities is perfectly acceptable practice.

Medicine chest 4(a) - infused oils, two barks and a root

Since the first two items up today are made into "infused oils", I'll start by describing the method for making them in your kitchen. This will be review for some of you but review never hurts!

It's a pretty straightforward process, especially when working with materials that are fairly dry to begin with, like the barks, and they're unlikely to cause you much trouble. But whoa nelly, it can go really wrong, really quickly with other parts of a plant, in which case it's still simple but not necessarily easy. With moisture laden materials like juicy leaves or gooey roots (I'm looking at you, comfrey!) you have to be on the ball or can go all south pretty badly.

But I was thinking about that not long ago and it strikes me that it's kinda cool that an oil can become so riddled, so quickly, with slimy, scary looking mold; I take it as an indication that the stuff we're working with is teeming with life on the microscopic level.

I'm always comforted to know that life on a microscopic level is teeming somewhere nearby. We'd be in a mess of trouble if it wasn't.