Checking in, briefly.

It's still very much (goddamn) winter here. It's sunny, so that's nice, but it's been really freaking cold lately (-20C at night ffs!!).

The last few weeks of winter can be hard to take.

click to embiggen. or not.

So although I've got my kitchen table writing space back, I haven't quite regained the headspace, so to speak, that I need to write about "heartled wildcrafting, gardening and medicine making". When the world is one big glacier, writing and thinking about green things can set off some downright painful longings!

I'll probably be back at it when the river ice breaks up and the geese start to come back. Late April, maybe? We'll see. I'll still check comments and answer emails, of course. And those of you who follow my other blog might see me there once in a while.

Later, gang!

Pain relief, the doshas & lymph

It's a long story, but the short version is that I temporarily lost my writing space at the kitchen table. That's been resolved (inshallah) so let's get back on track, shall we? I missed you, did you miss me? When I don't write here, the emails dry up. I gets lonesome! 

lol.

This is a post I found half written in draft and finished today .. 

Here's another example of how different the treatment of pain from the herbalists' perspective is from what we're used to; there isn't really such a thing as an everyday, overall pain reliever - that I know of - in herbal medicine. It seems there's no equivalent to popping a Tylenol.

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 ..