hanging herbs

GAEA'S HEART

Examples of herbs growing in my garden

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lobelia_infata
Lobelia Inflata

This kind of lobelia is not at all like the clouds of sweet flowers that we plant for decoration in pots. Herbal lobelia is used in serious health situations such as asthma attacks that just won’t stop. It grows in a luxurious stand behind the pond in my herb garden.

soapwworth
Soapwort

Soapwort (Saponaria officinalis) is also known as Bouncing Bet, named after the old Elizabethan term for laundry woman. Its leaves can be used in poultices for skin ailments, as well as for pain relief. You can soak the leaves or roots in hot water and collect the substance that collects on top to act as soap and shampoo, skin washes, or to wash fine fabrics. A pretty little washerwoman for anyone’s garden!.

lemon_balm
Lemom Balm

Of all the herbs in my garden, Lemon balm (Melissa officinalis) is the most prolific, producing gorgeously for me year after year. I cut it back often, and I save every leaf, because it is so helpful for sleep problems, anxiety, and digestive troubles.

vervain
Vervain

I use European Vervain (Verbena officinalis) to help with pain, inflammation and sleep. There are several different kinds of sleep disorders, as well as at least three different kinds of pain, and so we need a variety of herbs for each different kind. In addition, people are all unique, responding better to one herb and not another. That’s why you’ll see so many different sleep/pain/inflammation herbs in my garden. Vervain is also very useful in menopause for a particular kind of uptightness some women experience.

HOW WE TREAT

How Does an Herbalist Provide Treatments?

Whether they are helping with common ailments, offering preventive care, or providing alternative treatments for chronic conditions, it is the use of plants that differentiates the herbalist from other professionals in natural medicine. But how does the herbalist know what plants to provide, and how do the herbs get where they are needed?

When someone is in good physical and emotional health, the body works so perfectly it seems it can’t really be as incredibly complex as the textbooks say. We might not even notice how comfortable we feel in our own skin. In fact, we hardly pay attention to our bodies at such times, because they work so well without us needing to attend to them!

Besides, our attention is needed by so many other things, isn’t it? We do our tasks and earn our livings and help our families and study and play and don’t get enough sleep and think too much and have too many relationships and eat too many donuts, and one day, suddenly, we wake up and find it’s hard work just to get out of bed.

To an herbalist it doesn’t matter too much if the client can’t pinpoint when it all started. The initial consultation, along with experience and training, tells the herbalist which of the client’s internal systems are most likely to be out of balance biochemically. Since simple chemicals in plants are the same as those in humans, and the more complex sets of chemicals in human systems overlap systemically and functionally with that of certain plants, it is possible for the herbalist to determine a combination of plants that will help to balance a client’s out-of-kilter system. Once the climate of the body is more balanced, the bodt will use its own immune system and its own methods to heal itself

In other words, herbs are less “the cure” than they are an intelligent intervention that allows stabilization to occur. And with stabilization, the very lifeforce of the body will help the person return to a state of wellbeing.

How do herbalists introduce herbs into the body so that they can help stabilize the body?

Herbalists usually provide the client with a mixture of plants. This might be:

  • a. In the form of dry herbs mixed by the herbalist for the client to make into tea. If the herbs need to be stronger, the herbalist will instruct the client to boil them in a pot, then strain the herbs out and drink the liquid, which is called a decoction. Teas and decocttions are most effective for problems in the digestive system, the urinary system, or with sleep.
    pestel
  • b. In the form of a syrup or glycerol, pre-made by the herbalist by cooking it in honey or glycerine or some other sweet substance. This is given in a bottle to the client who will measure it out in doses (usually in a teaspoon) as explained by the herbalist. Syrups and glycerols are useful for children.
    syrup
  • c. In the form of a tincture of herbs steeped by the herbalist for a month or so in alcohol of the right percentage and amount.
    herbs in jars

    The herbs are then strained out and the liquid is put in a dropper bottle.

    tincture bottles

    The client then puts the right number of milliliters into a small glass of water and drinks it down quickly. This (and another alcohol-based remedy known as a fluid extract) is the strongest way to take herbs by mouth. It is also used if the herbs taste bad in tea. If the client cannot take alcohol, it is still possible to take tinctures. All that is needed is to measure out the next day’s doses the night before, and leave it in uncovered containers. The alcohol will evaporate, but the chemicals from the herbs will remain in the container in the water that is left.

  • d. In the form of a scent to be breathed in. The scents are made from the pure essential oils of certain plants and mixed by the herbalist. The client puts the mixture in drops into a bowl of hot water and covers their head with a towel over the bowl to breathe in the formula.
  • aromatherapy
  • Or, if they have a diffuser, the mixture can be put in there. diffuser
  • e. In the form of a capsule. This would almost always not be a combination of herbs, but a single powdered herb or other extract of one herb, meant to support other means of imbibing herbs. capsules
  • f. In the form of creams or salves or oils to be put on the skin in a number of different ways.
    salve1
    salve2

    salve3
    salve4

    Because plant molecules are broken down by heat or maceration by the herbalist beforehand, the herbs’ chemicals are quite small and are then able to be absorbed through the skin into the blood capillaries, where the chemicals then go into the blood vessels to the rest of the body and particularly to the area needing them.