Bad planning, maybe, to have two trips so close together, but that was just the way it turned out. We'll put on our stoutest traveling shoes...
And, whilst looking at things under magnification of detail,
make sure to stay with the bigger picture! It's been years since I've been to London and I'm excited to see some old friends and have some new experiences. Any recommendations?
Traveling is more stressful for me these days than it used to be, and today I'm going to talk about some of the herbs that help me to stay a little more balanced, as well as some that have an adverse effect. This is, in part, a story of why it's important to be so careful about broad-spectrum recommendations of superherbs to play with: to remember that plants are incredibly potent medicine, even when they come out of a bag or bottle, that we must always be very clear about our intentions in using them, and tune in very carefully to how they're affecting us.
Do you get everything right first time? I don't. Even though I often have blog posts, recipes, poems, etc, largely written up in my head, I'll often wake up in the night - or later that day - and remember that I left something out. Or sometimes wrote something quite incorrect! In my post on Monday, I mentioned my morning herbal tea blend - rhodiola/fo-ti/reishi. Later in the day, I came back convinced that I'd left out the reishi, and discovered that I'd written 'ginseng' instead! Of course, I fixed it, but that was a Freudian slip, alerting me that it's time to talk about herbs and when they are not appropriate.
Rhodiola has been a wonderful helper to me recently. It is the ground up root of a golden-colored flower that grows in the far north (I am going to investigate growing it here), and it is, amongst other things, an adrenal tonic. Since I started drinking the tea, I've generally been less anxious and my energy has also improved. However, about six weeks ago I started adding ashwagandha and ginseng to the rhodiola. Come to find out, these two are usually considered 'male' tonics, but they are definitely supposed to help support (or perhaps, stimulate) energy. And they are two of the herbs that the superfoodists and others dedicated to doing our best often and strongly recommend.
I was excited about the idea of having more energy without having to eat more, so perhaps my motivations were suspect. I mentioned that I was using these to the Naturopath, and he said fine to the Rhodiola but said be careful with the other two: he said that if I felt like I'd had caffeine, or just generally anxious or overstimulated, I should stop them. I'm so grateful we'd had that conversation, as not long afterwards, just before our Oregon trip, I was crawling out of my skin, just crazed with anxiety, and thought that I was just over-reacting to the upcoming trip.
But then, I quit the ashwagandha and ginseng, and guess what? By the end of that day, I'd scraped myself off the ceiling and was able to feel more objective. To me, that's a real magic with the herbs, though, that they evidently hadn't built up in my system - that it just took a day of not using them to have the overstimulating effect removed. So, ashwagandha and ginseng may be great, but if you're a woman with thyroid/adrenal/other hormonal issues, like myself, it might not make you feel so good. (Note: I wasn't using a large amount by any means: just a little in my morning tea/smoothie).
On the other side, when we went down to Oregon, I packed some rhodiola powder, but didn't manage to put it in my tea for the first three or four days. I started feeling very off-balance and panicky, added the rhodiola back in and felt better almost straight away. I don't like the idea of being 'dependent' on herbs, any more than on pharmaceuticals, but when I see the difference in effect on me of rhodiola versus the other two, I'm able to consider it as a friend and helper to me, a supportive being.
Herbs are strong medicine: this isn't just 'making a cup of tea,' folks! (Although real tea, camellia sinensis, would have me sleepless and climbing walls too, for that matter...)
With that in mind, here is another of my recently arrived goodies from the Raw Food World:
Gynostemma leaves. Another prized and much-touted 'longevity tonic' tea. A small bag is not at all cheap, but it turns out a little goes a long way.
Those leaves unfurl in the cup and become quite large.
It is a slightly sweet tea, but quite tannic, with a smoky note also. Reminds me just a little bit of oolong tea, without the palpitations. I've been enjoying it with nettles that I gathered and dried this spring. I know that this is a 'female tonic' tea because of the 'gyno' in its name. However, I am still using caution with it, and will re-evaluate whether it is a good medicine for me after about a week. I only added the nettles after three steepings of the same gynostemma leaves, so I'm not going crazy making combinations just yet, until I know how we work together!
What are superherbs? A lot of them are weeds, really - plants that are adept at sucking the minerals out of the most spare, barren soils, in the most adverse climates, and flourishing where few others can. As our garden, and green things in general, dwindle all around here with the onset of winter, I am savoring every meal that I can make of freshly picked greens. And what's interesting is that I find myself picking just as much from outside the raised beds, if not more, as I do from inside!
Chickweed flourished early and late; nettles did the same. Those little baby plants that we nursed so tenderly indoors and then put out in raised beds were outstripped by orders of magnitude of growth by the nettles, dandelions, chickweed, and other, bigger weeds that had had no such mollycoddling. I really loved my garden this year, as has probably been clear from all my writing about it, but when I'm making a meal just for me, I go so often to the weeds - fresh herbs!
I have to confess that the Vita-Mix has greatly facilitated this.
Do you have a special relationship to herbs and weeds, or any adverse stories?
Have a beautiful weekend.
