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?



Not really, when you consider that it's winter where chaga grows for more of the year than it is summer, that forests are quiet places and that chaga - dark brown - is almost pure melanin, that same melanin that darkens our skin, allows us to use sunlight and turn it into Vit. D. in our bodies.

The drawback to this sense of quietude that chaga offers comes when people around us notice that we've become so hushed as to be almost non-verbal. They start to ask if we're depressed! By normal societal standards, someone who is not speaking is a teeny bit suspect.

However, Chaga is a nice ally if you're choosing to quiet yourself down, withdraw a little, be alone, but you're having trouble making the necessary adjustments to solitude. It's been especially useful to me when I catch myself suffering from information overload, when I know I have to take a break from the internet but the part of me that wants to know what's going on just won't let me step away.

This same quietude offered by Chaga enriches the experience of non-verbal companionship with others. In some cultures, chit-chat isn't necessary. I remember when I was a kid and Native friends of my parents would come to visit; even if we hadn't seen each other in years there would be long silences as we just sat happily in each other's physical presence. It was nice. Chaga reminds us that we don't have to speak to be heard. We can just be.

Ask a botanist about Chaga - inonotus obliquus - and they'll tell you that it's a parasitic fungal growth that eventually kills its host tree, usually white or silver birch. Ask anyone who regularly hangs out with chaga/birches and they'll tell you that chaga grows mostly on yellow birches and no, it doesn't kill the trees, it helps them. Chaga works its way outward from the inside of the tree, sealing cracks in the trunk that would otherwise make the tree vulnerable to pests. If chaga is a tree killer, then I'd like it explained to me how it is that I've seen so many yellow birch trees, well over a hundred years old,  in robust health, sporting half a dozen very large chaga!

I've found that this sealing/protecting action extends into the medicine it offers. I have a hunch that in humans (me, at least) it calms auto-immunity type issues. From time to time when I've had auto-immune flare-ups (particularly those involving the skin), one drop of chaga tincture, made from the outer, crusty layer, taken once a day, stops these things in their tracks. Taken for a few weeks I've found my skin doesn't over react to detergents or pressure and it can quell hives caused by nervous energy. Allergies, auto-immunity and overly emotional reactions are linked in my mind (and experience). Chaga in tiny amounts calms the system. It doesn't calm my mind, per se, the way that something like St John'swort or motherwort would, in fact if I take it at night I can't sleep. I haven't yet keyed out how it works, only that it does. Nor does it have to be taken forever, so it's not just palliative, quelling symptoms. Taking it for a few days or a couple of weeks has stopped these sorts of issues for months or a couple of years at a time.

Chaga tea seals the gut. This makes it potentially useful for people with "leaky gut syndrome" but it should be used cautiously here. On the one hand, it helps to stop the leakage of toxins into the blood that can cause so much trouble but on the other hand it can end up hindering the digestion. So chaga is great if you have excess weight that you can't shed due to inflammation in the gut, but if you're already thin I don't recommend taking it for long or in large amounts. High in tannins, it's astringent, tightening "tight junctions" by toning tissues, but it can be a little overly exuberant there. So if you're an overly moist person, sweating too much yet prone to being chilly, with loose stools and maybe an ulcer, it can help with that. But if you're thin already, constipated, and have scanty sweat, saliva or tears or any, irritated tissues, it can make those matters worse. I've seen it recommended that you should rinse your mouth after drinking Chaga tea to avoid excess shrinkage of the gums - that might be good advice.

The above makes Chaga is a good example of the importance of matching the medicine or food to your constitution. We have a system in herbalism that most people aren't aware of, we classify medicines as hot (or warming), cold, dry or moist, in varying degrees. Although I haven't seen Chaga classified in this way yet, my experience with it tells me it's warming and drying. People, too, can be classified in somewhat the same manner (although there are more exceptions than rules when it comes to people!), and so can the illnesses and imbalances that we experience.

Reading about these systems of classification can be eye-crossingly confusing at first, but if you use your taste buds and senses they start to become more obvious. Learning how to sense the goings on in your own body really helps to give a better sense as to what you might need to correct an imbalance or nudge a system into more (or less) activity, too.

I really feel it's a bit misleading to say that chaga "boosts immunity". It may well be that regular consumption of Chaga (in some people) leads to fewer colds or bouts of the flu, but consider this -  the symptoms of a cold or flu are actually the body's defence system mounting an inflammatory response to viruses. What if Chaga is actually dampening that inflammatory response? That's the opposite of boosting ...

Chaga is second to none in the ridiculous claims for it made by those who sell it (okay, claims for "medicinal" cannabis might be worse). It strikes me that for those people who so loudly tout its benefits, it must not have the same quieting affect it has had on me. I have to wonder if that snake oil salesman Daniel Vitalis has ever had a cup of properly made chaga tea in his life, ha!

But seriously, material like the linked article/video above, in failing to mention that Chaga may not always be appropriate, pisses me right off. For some people, it's a life long friend. For others, it's a sometimes needed ally, but for some it has the potential to be disastrous.

The key is in learning to use it according to your own needs, and to do that, you have to begin to understand what those needs are. Chaga itself - in tiny amounts - can help to still the chatter of the mind so you can hear the voice of your heart. So yes, I might recommend it, (maybe ..) if that's your goal. But just being in a forest, especially with birch, which are such lovely, quiet and calming trees to hang out with, can do the same!