Healing plants: mineral rich herbs for nourishment etc -- My primary relationships right now are with the plants that are healing me. It's an all encompassing love affair.
Healing plants: mineral rich herbs for nourishment etc
Medicine brewing
First one on the left is for flushing the lymph (contains self-heal, violet, red root, and calendula), the second is an antifungal/antimicrobial (contains St. John's Wort, Pau D'arco, Lemon Grass, Lemon Balm, Olive Leaf and Tulsi), the third is for flushing bile (fenugreek) and the fourth is a highly mineralized nutrient dense mixture for bone health and the added bonus is it's also profoundly healing to the nervous system. (nettles, oatstraw and horsetail). Most herbs have multiple uses so this is what I happen to be using them for at the moment...it's not the only way to use any of the herbs listed. ...
Folk Counseling
Our modern forms of helping people in emotional distress (talk therapy and medications) have largely supplanted more traditional forms of healing. In some cases this is a continuation of oppression and colonization that has gone on for hundreds of years. -- Indigenous healing practices are denigrated and seen as unscientific, based on superstitions, or as an adjunct to the proper, modern way of helping people in distress. In this way, we have ignored and suppressed folk methods of healing that are often highly effective. … [click on title for the rest of the post]
Healing is relationship, healing is community building
Plants both as food and medicine continue to be an important part of my healing process. I like what Wendell Berry says about herbalism because it's very much in keeping with the "everything matters" meme I often mention. Everything matters because everything is in relationship with everything else in our environments and our lives. Systems of healing that include herbalism understand this fact. Indigenous and shamanistic cultures understand this fact. We need to return to our roots while embracing and safely utilizing all we've learned while we forgot about them too. Herbalism is based on relationship ~ relationship between plant and human, plant and planet, human and planet. Using herbs in the healing process means taking part in an ecological cycle. This offers us the opportunity consciously to be present in the living, vital world of which we are part; to invite wholeness and our world into our lives through awareness of the remedies being used. The herbs can link us into the broader context of planetary wholeness, so that whilst they are doing their physiological/medical job, we can do ours and build an awareness of the links of mutual relationships. ~ Wendell Berry
Herbal medicine, Extreme States and Transformation
By Jon Keyes - Herbal medicine, Extreme States and Transformation. The idea that extreme states are something that requires medical intervention is a relatively new one. Generally indigenous and folk cultures throughout the world have employed a wide variety of interventions that include spiritual, shamanic, herbal and dietary techniques for working with people in crisis and spiritual emergence.
Restoring Balance with the Plant World
Restoring Balance with the Plant World: By Jon Keyes ~~ As an herbalist, I think of how humans interact and relate to plants everyday. Mainly we interact with plants through our diet. Our morning cereal, a sandwich, tea, beans, rice and salad all come from plants. Even meat comes from animals that ate plants. In essence, our very survival comes from plant life. Though plants represent the source of our sustenance, we have become deeply out of balance in our relationship with them. We have shifted from a diverse and varied plant diet to one that includes just a few highly processed plants. This is leading not only to a breakdown in our physical and mental health, it is leading us to ecological catastrophe as well. In the U.S., 25 billion dollars a year is spent to subsidize the production of just a few commodity crops with an overwhelming emphasis on wheat, corn and soy.
Folk Healing, Industrial Agriculture and the Rise of Psychiatry
The idea of food and local herbs as medicine mostly dried up after world war II. Processed foods, microwave dinners, industrialized agriculture and shopping markets filled with food from far away started to dominate the Western landscape. Food became veryimages bland and tasteless. The notion that food was the essential medicine was overwhelmed by the idea that medicine was found in a drug.
The psychiatric revolution really began in earnest in the 50’s at the same time that industrial farming took off. The first antipsychotic known as thorazine was synthesized in 1950 and was given to people who were deemed psychotic or labeled with schizophrenia. Interestingly, this first widely prescribed psychiatric drug was first developed as a pesticide to kill parasites in pigs. … [click on title to read and view more]
What is Mental Health Herbalism?
By Jon Keyes
Mental health herbalism is the practice of working with herbs and other plants to improve well being, develop keener insight into patterns of imbalance and to reduce emotional distress. As a licensed professional counselor and herbalist, I often incorporate the use of herbs for helping people to get stronger and feel better. I have seen herbs improve mental health and I have also seen herbs bring profound insights that help a person work through emotional knots. Plants not only work on a physical level, they are able to transform people emotionally and spiritually as well. … [click on title for the rest of the post]
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