Experience as Teacher

I like herbs.

I’m fascinated by them really. Finding a new plant and learning what it is.

“Hey that one with disky yellow flowers is Tansy!”

Learning what they are is used for

“Has a peppery taste. Used to keep flies and other bugs away. So they work like those little clips that people wear to scare off bugs with their what appears to be pocket fan.”

And then learning what other people have to say.

“Don’t eat it. It’s ok, you can eat it. Etc.”

I love learning about the different ways of preserving them. Drying, Infusions, Tinctures.

Just the names wells up bright colors and spicy scents of Arabic Bazaars in my head with shawled and gauzed women making infusions. All the while men and women bustle about in near a cacophony of noise bartering and trading. Some infusions for healing, some for wealth, and the most popular of all. Love.

Images for tinctures conjure a lonely hunch backed Irish herb wife, bent over their peat moss fire places preparing tinctures to turn little boys into toads, and back again. Or force changelings to go back to their colony, returning their real child in the meantime.

Take away the warm fluffy “I love herbs because they are pretty, and smell good” and there is another very practical reason I love herbs.

They work.

Uncle Sam’s gift to me upon graduating with my Bachelors was to revoke my health insurance.

Thanks.

So for the last two years I’ve been getting creative about avoiding the need to go to hospitals and doctors. Don’t get me wrong, if I shatter my leg, I’m going to the hospital, and fast! But if I’m starting to come down with a bug, even a hard to identify bug, I’m taking care of it myself, thank you very much.

And there is no better way to learn than by living. And so, while it’s one thing to sit and skim through an herb book reading that this is good for this and that is good for that. It’s another thing to live it. And that is what I am currently doing.

I have a cold.

And you know what I found? The more I keep my body well stocked in nutrients, they better off it is. Nutrients are not the same as food. I can go to McDonalds and get food. I also get calories, lots of them. Fuel for your cells to burn up as it moves and lives. Gasoline.

But what about all those other important fluids that keeps a car running. The ones that we ladies sometimes want to pretend it doesn’t exist. What about your engine oil, your transmission fluid, and all the others. You don’t need a lot of it. And if your machine is working well, you only occasionally have to continually refill it.

So do we.

And that is what nutrients do for us.

Vitamins, that somehow or another provide out cells with some vital thing to make the difference between a healthy, running cell, and a weak, sick one. Antioxidants, Enzymes, Minerals, all the stuff that a cell needs to survive,

Real vitamins can be found in food. Real food can sometimes be found in grocery stores.

*Warning* Not all food in grocery stores are real, with real nutrients, and stuff your body, as an engine, needs to function highly. And lets face it, as Americans we demand that our bodies function highly.

On the first real day of my cold, I took a few tablespoons of elderberry syrup, to try my best to nip it in the bud. I felt it coming a few days before. But this was the first time I did anything to counter it. I also made myself Ginger Tea. It was made for me before and did wonders. I just hoped it would again.

I finished my ginger tea at work. A coworker mentioned to another that I was drinking Ginger tea to fix my cold. She meant no harm by it, but I wanted to correct her.

“Actually my body, being the wonderful organism it is, and always seeking its own equilibrium and vitality doesn’t need me to ‘fix’ this virus. What it does need is me boosting up my immune system as much as I can. Eating oranges, and spinach for vitamin C. Drinking lots of water. Making sure I’m taking my vitamins. Anything positive I can do to help by body fight this thing. I’m there. I’ll look it up. Try it and see what helps in supporting my body and returning it back to the balance of health.

And so this blog is about learning new things. Trying them out, and the process of going from looking at The Complete Medical Herbal by Penelopy Ody when you are 14, to where I am now, at 25. And the learning how to be a (mainly) self-taught herbalist.

One other very important thing is sleep. Which I have been getting precious little of recently, which is my own fault.

Sleep. And so I will bid you adieu.