At the Root

I've been working to strengthen my Root Chakra lately. (Strength is important-- particularly when you've got a cat lying on your arms and you're trying to type.) It has been a roller-coaster couple of weeks, and the timing for having my Root Chakra nice and strong couldn't be better.

Calamity comes in all shapes and sizes, and a bunch of my dear friends have been faced with one calamity or another in the past week or two. And it's a relief to support them all without having to also feel all their pain for them. I used to take on other folks' emotions-- still do sometimes-- but at this point, I've done enough work as a Life Coach/Tarot Reader to be able to separate what *I* am feeling on my own behalf from what I am feeling on SOMEONE ELSE'S behalf.

And so I was tired from all the energy I (gladly) used in support of my friends coping with life-crisis stuff... but I wasn't emotionally overwhelmed or incapacitated by all the grief. And I'm really proud of myself for that.

The Root Chakra, by the way, is the one in charge of our connection with the Earth, our sense of security and belonging, our financial and physical well-being, our safety, our solidity in whatever we are trying to accomplish with our lives, and how well-grounded we are in the way we cope with challenges and with daily life. The Root Chakra is set up and nourished the most strongly in the first two years of our lives. It is the First Chakra, and it is the foundation on which all other Chakra work is done. If your Root Chakra isn't strong, its hard for the rest of you to be strong. Each chakra has a purpose in relation to the others-- and in relation to our life-patterns. And each chakra has a specific "right" attached to it-- like the right to fair representation, only that isn't one of them. For the Root Chakra, you have the right to be here; and the right to have.

It was a weird sort of awareness for me to realize that I've spent most of my life working really hard to make other people look good, and help other people achieve their dreams/goals/successes. And I've spent the last several years not really believing I had a right to my own success, or to use my skills and experiences and abilities to make MYSELF look good. No wonder it's been so hard to find a good-paying job. I never felt like I deserved one!

This whole awareness process started with my SisterSpirit Journaling Group. This session, we are devoting a whole month to each of our chakras. So we started by journaling about our interaction with the Root Chakra's particular meaning and how it shows up in our lives... And since my Instructor says that the Root Chakra is the most solid, and thus takes the most time to really shift or change out of its current form, she gave us the homework of thinking/writing/doing yoga in connection with our Root Chakra every day for the whole month until our next Journaling Group meeting in May.

Now, I know I've been having Root Chakra issues. And reading about my right to have (as in-- have respect, have a safe & secure home, have a good-paying job that I love, have a relationship with someone who really appreciates me, etc) well, it really sank in that I have some foundation work to do-- some Root work, if you will. I've made a point of focusing on that stuff for a few minutes every day. And I can feel the difference. I'm a lot better grounded than I was a few weeks ago. Thank goodness, considering all the challenges that have come up since then.

Even the visit to the Family Farm couldn't have been better-timed. OH-- and I finally broke down and bought some freeze-dried nettle leaf capsules (instead of relying solely on my home-brew nettle tincture)-- and they are SO controlling my allergies with NO side effects!!! YAY for uninterrupted sleep!! (Except of course, that Abbigale continues to throw up a little too frequently this week, and I had to jump out of bed an hour before my alarm so I could give her some tummy meds-- which did work this time, thank goodness!)

May your Way be strewn with fulfillment, and the blessings of a life well-lived.

Water

It's been a water weekend for me. Tea, drinking water, some flooding in my neighborhood, lots of rain, and a very runny nose (I have a bad head cold)...

Here are a few of the things I've been putting in my tea to help treat my cold:
-lavendar (antibacterial, soothing, tastes good)
-peppermint (helps with congestion, apparently)
-calendula (good for soothing membranes-- like the throat, nasal passages, skin, etc)
-mullien (this actually decreases swelling and encourages the expelling of mucus)
-slippery elm (soothes sore throats)

And it's definitely helped. But I'm still ready to be healthy again. Plus, I've got two home made cupcakes staring at me from the kitchen counter. I know that while I'm sick, eating sugar like that is B-A-D bad for me to do... but they are SO TEMPTING. sigh.

Sorry to be out of touch for over a month. It's the end of my semester, and I graduate soon. Also, my lease agreement runs out in a month or two, so I've been trying to plan for the next move. I'm a bit distracted, as a result. I'll try to be a bit more regular. I know it's disconcerting not to have regular updates.

Be well.
S.

Hopps

A friend asked me to make her husband some tea to help him sleep. He's a chronic insomniac, and it's getting ridiculous. I'm very excited to do this, and although I don't know how successful I will be, I'm giving it a try.

So I used Melissa (Lemon Balm) for its calming and sleep-encouraging properties, and some Nettle to help him breathe. I put in St. John's Wort because it relaxes the nerves, and Feverfew because it is sometimes said to relax the mind. I also put in Peppermint to help with digestive problems and Stivia to help with the taste. Then, I put in almost as much Hopps as I'd put in all the other ingredients combined. Hopps are for sleeping.

Because my Hopps came in their dried "flower" form, I used my mortar and pestle to grind them into individual leaves, if not into a bit of powder. Not very many Hopps makes a lot of Hopp Petals, you see. And about 20 minutes after I did that, I took a nap. Which convinced me of the sleep-inducing powers of the Hopps. See, I slept in this morning. Late. And I'd only been up and about for maybe an hour when I ground the Hopps, breathed them in as I did so (no choice there, really), and used my fingers to dust off my grinding tool. Then I slept quite peacefully for about two or three hours. Imagine if I'd tried a cup of the tea!

So I'm going to try my Sleepy Tea blend tonight at bedtime to see how it tastes and how I react-- Hopps are supposed to taste pretty bitter-- and then I'm going to pass it along to my friend, with instructions.

You see, medicinal tea needs to be steeped for at least ten to twenty minutes. Without a tea bag. And I want him to stop eating, watching TV, and using a computer about 30 minutes before he wants to sleep-- right when he should start sipping his tea. I also want him to make a big mug of it each night, and only drink half. I want the other half by his bed, so when he wakes at 2am, he can drink it down, maybe use some alternative breathing/relaxing exercises, and go back to sleep. I also want to explain that most experts suggest it can take as much as 2 weeks to a month to get the full results of a medicinal tea. I don't want him to give up if there is no improvement the first night he tries this.

In the meantime, I'll be grinding the rest of my stash of Hopps into a tea blend for ME to get better sleep (on an as-needed basis)... but I'll wait until right before bedtime to do it. Apparently, Hopps can be very effective.

Birch Bark and St John

I've recently discovered (as many before me have done) two wonderful herbs for managing nerve and joint pain. That pain that the headache medicines like Tylenol don't touch, because it is not a muscle, it is a nerve getting pinched or pulled or twisted or bruised-- you know that pain? Sometimes it tingles like you hit your funny bone, and sometimes it aches like the blood flow to the whole limb has been cut off, and sometimes you just WANT to cut the limb off and be done with it...

Well, adding a little birch bark and some St. John's Wort to your tea can help with that. Willow bark is where aspirin came from 2,000 years ago, so it's good for headaches and cramps and muscles-- but birch bark helps arthritis and joints and all those places that your nerve can get caught and tweaked. And while we all know that St. John's Wort is good for memory-- its original purpose was actually to alleviate pain. And it still works for that, too. Just don't use too much at a time. You probably want to consult an experienced herbalist or check out an herbal healing book from the library to consult before you decide what is right for you... but I thought you might like to know what's possible. I sure do.

Comfrey Ointment

Wanted to update all my loyal readers (I know, at that stage, I'm dreaming) about my forays into herbal healing. The comfrey ointment I made is a big success. My mom is so happy to have her own little container of it because she was always asking to use some of mine every time I visited. And it is good for so many different things!

• Sprains, strains and bruises
• very shallow cuts and scrapes
• poor circulation
• bug bites (as a cream, it would be great for poison oak, too, I think)
• mixed with lavender EO it helps with scarring, too, if you catch it early enough
• and of course, dry cracked skin
  

Comfrey itself has gotten a bad rap and is now no longer recommended for internal use, or use on broken skin because of its carcinogen content. So I looked into this, because comfrey was once excellent for healing tea, too. Yeah-- it has the same carcinogen content as a peanut butter sandwich. So I use it in tea, too. It really seems to calm my digestive track quite well, and is very yummy in a green nutritious sort of way.

Next up? Calendula Ointment!
Blessings Be
to You, from Me.