The Green Report

by Susun Weed – May 15th, 2012

Greetings!

Come with me into my early garden. I have some lovely plants to share with you. You probably won’t find most of these beauties growing wild where you live, but they are generally easy to grow. Beware! The flowers we choose for our gardens are often poisonous! Some of these garden plants are medicinal and a few are edible, but they are in my garden primarily for their sweet scents and their glorious colors.

Your project this week is to make a wild salad including as many wild flowers as you can. Enjoy!

Green blessings.

Susun

 The Green Report

Lungwort (Pulmonaria species)
This member of the Borage family is related to comfrey and was formerly used in much the same way, especially, as the name indicates, to resolve lung problems. Poisonous alkaloids are found in the roots, leaves, and flowers of all members of this family. Hybrids of comfrey have been created to avoid this problem.  (See plant 16 in this list.)

Frittilary (Fritillaria meleagris) AKA Checkered Lily
This was my favorite flower as a child. I walked to my grade school in Dallas, and a garden with this pressed up against the fence was on my way. Perhaps it was here that I first felt the fairies and allowed them to guide my life into green blessings.

Bleeding heart (Dicentra spectabilis)
This stunning and unusual flower is found wild in shady hollows and forests in Japan and Siberia, making it one hardy beauty in Northern gardens. The wild relatives in my neck of the woods are called Dutchman’s breeches (Dicentra cucullaria) and Squirrel-corn (Dicentra canadensis). They are all part of the poppy family, which is perhaps why I have never been tempted to even sample one of the flowers.

Wild yam shoot  (Discorea villosa)
The root of the wild yam is a valuable source of drugs and widely used in herbal medicine as well. It contains precursors to hormones, including progesterone, but does not contain actual hormones. Whether these precursors are active in the human body is a subject of much debate. United Plant Savers gave me this root, and, to my delight, it has produced a vine that is hardy and quite interesting. I will continue to bring pictures of it to you as it grows.

Lilac (Syringa vulgaris)
I live in lilac country. The gardeners around me love forsythia and lilacs. As the last of the yellow forsythia flowers fall, the lilacs burst into scented bloom. My earliest memory is of this. When I asked my mother about it, she was shocked. A large lilac bloomed under the window of the room where I slept for one month, when I was thirteen months old!

Azalea (Rhododendron species)
Hundreds of wild rhododendrons and azaleas grow wild in North America, Europe, and Asia. The entire plant, including the flowers and the nectar from the flowers, is poisonous. Bees foraging on these plants are said to get drunk. Honey made from the nectar is said to carry the poisonous compounds.


Tulips (Tulipa greigii)

Tulips (Tulipa hybrid)

These edible members of the lily family (which contains some very poisonous groups, like daffodils), bring vivid color to my garden and are a stunning addition to salads. I wait until the tulip petals are drooping before harvesting them to scatter atop my daily wild greens. The darker colored ones are an extra anti-oxidant boost and helpful to the immune system as well.These edible members of the lily family (which contains some very poisonous groups, like daffodils), bring vivid color to my garden and are a stunning addition to salads. I wait until the tulip petals are drooping before harvesting them to scatter atop my daily wild greens. The darker colored ones are an extra anti-oxidant boost and helpful to the immune system as well.

Phlox (Phlox pilosa)
“Phlox” means flame, in honor of the many colors this plant flowers in. From matting, creeping plants, to waist-high stalks, there is a phlox for every garden. They require virtually no care once planted, and will continue to give delight for decades. I have never eaten phlox flowers. Have you?

Queen of the night (Hesperis matronalis) AKA Dame’s rocket
This wildflower is often confused with phlox, for it comes in the same color range and blooms at the same time as the spring blooming phlox. But, as a member of the cabbage/mustard family, Queen of the night has four petals, while phlox has five. I especially enjoy the flowers in my salads. The bigger thrill, however, is to sit by a group of these plants at dusk when they exude a marvelously sweet scent that calls to their pollinator: the hummingbird moth, a moth fully as big as its namesake. Enjoy!

Common blue violet (Viola papilionacea)


Sweet white violet (Viola blanda)

Freckled violet (Viola species)

Broad leafed wood violet (Viola latiuscula)

Violets seem to bloom forever where I live. Not only do the individual plants bloom for a long time, there are so many varieties that one picks up as another is winding down. All of the violets pictured are wildflowers, which I have encouraged in my gardens. I’ve never had to plant them.

The freckled one (and there is only one!) is probably a natural hybrid. The colored flowers of the violets are not reproductive, so we may harvest as many as we like without harm to their continuation in our woods, fields, and gardens. (The reproductive flowers are green and hidden beneath the leaves and come later in the season.)

There are so many ways to use violets and violet flowers. There is no finer early summer breakfast than a piece of home-baked whole wheat bread spread with butter and piled high with fresh violets. I use violet honey to soften the skin and ease away wrinkles. Of course, they bring antioxidants and sighs of delight to our salads.

Violet leaves are also tasty in salads; they provide lavish amounts of vitamins A and C. Violet leaf infusion is a renowned cancer cure; before the price got steep, it was one of my regular infusion herbs. Want more, more, more on violet? Recipes, stories, and medicinal info on violet are all to be found in my green book: Healing Wise.

Rhubarb on top – Comfrey on bottom

Rhubarb (Rheum rhabarbarum) AKA Pie plant
The petioles (leaf stalks) of garden rhubarb are the only part free enough of poisons to be food. Rhubarb root is a powerful cathartic laxative that was an absolute necessity on long ocean voyages of discovery and whaling. Imagine a diet of salted meat and dried beans, where water is strictly rationed, to get an idea of the value of an explosive gut opener. Approach the roots with extreme caution; or do what many herbalists do, and rely on its less aggressive sister, yellow dock, when things need to be moved in the gut.

Comfrey  (Symphytum uplandica x)
Comfrey the comforting is one of the most important healing plants in the world. It strengthens and increases the flexibility of bones (AKA Knit bone), ligaments, tendons, skin, and mucus surfaces, including respiratory, digestive, and reproductive tissues. It also contains proteins used to create short-term memory. I will re-picture comfrey for you when it is flowering and ready to harvest. I have used comfrey leaf infusion as a regular part of my diet for nearly 30 years with no problems. (My liver is very healthy, thank you very much.)

Wild Salad with Wild Flowers

You will need a sharp pair of plant scissors and a few baskets. For safety sake, I harvest each plant into a different container. Keep the chickweed stalks parallel as you cut them and place them in your basket that way, making them much easier to cut into uniform pieces.

Largest basket (about 50% of salad): chickweed leaves, flowers, and stalks

Large basket (about 25% of salad): first year garlic mustard leaves

Medium basket (about 5% of salad): mild leaves, your choice, mallow or five-finger ivy (Virginia creeper)

Smaller baskets (total of 20% of salad): aromatic, strong-tasting plants like lemon balm, wild oregano, bergamot, cronewort, mint, catnip, and thyme

Smallest basket: Mixed flowers. Individual blossoms of Queen of the Night, violets, periwinkle, and wild geranium. Entire flower heads of garlic mustard and barbara’s cress.

Preparation: Cut chickweed into small (1/2 inch) pieces; tear garlic mustard, mallow, and five-finer ivy into bite-sized pieces; finely mince aromatic plants. Combine in a bowl. Add a splash of tamari, a good pour of herbal vinegar, and plenty of extra virgin olive oil (at least one tablespoonful per serving of salad). Toss, artfully arrange flowers or simply toss them on the salad and serve.

I like gomasio (sesame salt) on my salads, so I shall have to teach you how to make it soon! Green blessings.

Salad with gomasio

She Is Enough by Roslyne Sophia Breillat

Throughout the mythology of ancient and Indigenous cultures she is Goddess, deity, cornucopia, spirit, wise and passionate womb of plenty. She is enjoyed as fulsome, celebrated as abundant, respected as wise, awed as untamed. Honoured and revered for her mysterious capacity for transformation, creation and change, her rhythmic dance flows wildly and freely from cycle to cycle, from lunar phase to lunar phase, from season to season, from birth, to death and beyond, an infinite circle swirling within an infinite universe.

The sublime integrity of her ancient wisdom and her wild, wild ways were never challenged, doubted or questioned, for the chaotic yet radiant beauty of her sacred essence was perceived and received in humility, awe and gratitude. Without needing to know anything, without needing to learn anything, the wise heart of her abundant womb always knows how to transform night into day, bring the buds into blossoming, sprout the fragile seedlings of the mighty forests, provide nutritious food, pure water and comfortable shelter for all, orchestrate her magnificent creation, every season, every cycle, every moment. The tribes and cultures who lived in sacredness and harmony with her inherent rhythms did not need satellite and computer technology to interpret her cyclic weather patterns and her seasonal transitions, for they were so deeply attuned with her natural ways. And those who loved her and lived in humble gratitude for her wisdom and her beneficence had no need for more, or for her to become more, for she was enough.

Ever since patriarchal civilisation deemed her as “not enough”, humanity has believed it is better, stronger, more important, more powerful, more resourceful than her. This ignorant belief of a society where knowing is more important than not knowing, thinking is more important than feeling, force is more important than power, doing is more important than being, busyness is more important than rest, mind is more important than mystery, intellect is more important than heart, has now seeped insidiously into the female psyche, creating deep wounding amid myriad layers of fear and doubt. Through forgetfulness and repression of their true nature, too many women now believe this untrue doctrine that emphatically declares, “I am bigger, better and stronger than you, my God is better than your Goddess, my wars are more important than your children, my technology is more potent than your natural healing, my toxic chemicals are more important than your humble herbs, my rape is more powerful than your lovemaking, my intellectual capabilities are far superior to your intuition. For you are not enough unless you become like me and the womb of your beloved Earth is not enough because I can do better than the Earth.”

The natural ebbing and flowing of a woman’s innately lunar cycle and her innately lunar essence is not enough for a world that does not acknowledge her need to turn inwards, to enjoy peace, rest, inner nurturing and the replenishment bestowed by her changing female consciousness during her sacred moon time. For, according to this world, her moon cycles and her womb cycles are not important, they are not worth honouring, they are not enough. Being a mother is not enough, for too many women must work long hours to support their families, because according to this masculine world, being a woman, being female, birthing and nurturing her children are not enough. She is expected to do more, to add to who she is, for she is not honoured as simply being who she is.

Her body, the abundant creative body of the Earth, is not enough, for it must be forced, dieted, starved of her natural flowing curves until she becomes too thin to be who she is and too gaunt to know who she is. Her nurturing outpouring breasts are no longer enough, for they must be enhanced, reduced, enlarged, reshaped and displayed by ugly synthetic underwear. The passionate life-giving wisdom of her female loins is not enough, for it must be suppressed by physical violation, interference, force, rigid timetables and toxic drugs, until she births her babies when and how others decree, instead of sweetly surrendering to this wise life giving and love giving power of her womb consciousness. She must aspire to become more, she must force herself to do more, she must accumulate more, for contemporary society perceives her as less.

The ancient powerful wisdom that choreographs her mighty menopausal metamorphosis from deep within her womb must be suppressed and denied by this mechanical, technological, linear world that thinks it knows more about the intrinsic, healing, cyclic ways of the female body and psyche than she does, for this world sees the menopausal woman as not being enough. She is not young enough, she is not fast enough, she is not beautiful enough, she is not useful enough. And so this world suffers by not receiving and enjoying and being grateful for the power of her wisdom, the passion of her transformational fire, the chaotic dance of her wise, wild ways.

Close your eyes… Remove your shoes, feel your bare feet merge with sand or rocks or dirt or grass or stream or lake or sea… Lie down with your bare belly resting gently against the Earth… Feel your sacred womb pulse as one with the sacred womb pulse of the Earth, feel her support, her power, her love… Breathe deeply and slowly and softly into the vast depths of your womb consciousness, into the stillness and darkness and peace of your deepest womb heart, into this heart and womb of the Earth… For in this vast and true inner place of your exquisite female essence, beneath and beyond the untrue ways of the outer world, you dear woman, like your beloved Earth, are enough… And this is more than enough…

Written and illustrated by Roslyne Sophia Breillat
Copyright ~ Roslyne Sophia Breillat ©
Not to be reproduced without author’s permission

Sophia is a wise woman who lives, writes, and paints from the heart. Her prolific articles and paintings embrace the wisdom and grace of the female essence and the beauty of the earth. She is acknowledged as a powerful and courageous writer whose creative work features throughout many international websites and magazines and she is the author of the book, Womb of Wisdom, The Sacred Journey of Menopause. Her website is an abundant offering of female wisdom that nurtures and inspires and she is available for wildheartwisdom mentoring and counselling  consultations via telephone or skype.

Website ~ www.wildheartwisdom.com

Email ~ sophia@wildheartwisdom.com

Wise Woman University

Being Woman with Roslyne Sophia Breillat

This online course provides a sacred and nurturing space where woman can learn to surrender more deeply to the natural receptivity of the female psyche. Throughout this series of lessons she will learn to trust the innate flow of her intuitive nature and to listen more intimately to the wellspring of her inner source. And we will explore together how to live more fully as the embodiment of the feminine essence within the structures of a masculine civilisation.

Learn More Here …

Dawning of Wisdom with Roslyne Sophia Breillat

This online course provides a sacred and nurturing space where woman can learn to surrender more deeply to the natural receptivity of the female psyche. Throughout this series of lessons she will learn to trust the innate flow of her intuitive nature and to listen more intimately to the wellspring of her inner source. And we will explore together how to live more fully as the embodiment of the feminine essence within the structures of a masculine civilisation.

Learn More Here …

The Wise Woman Center

May 19, 2012 – Herbal First Aid with Susun Weed

The best way to develop confidence in the healing powers of herbs is to use them for first aid. From bruises to burns, cuts to stings, and beyond, we will focus on the herbs to reach for first. We will identify and talk about plantain, comfrey, yarrow, aloe vera, and a variety of plants to help you.    Register Here …

May 20 – 2012: Hands-on Herbal Medicine/Early Summer with Susun Weed

Join Susun for a walk and a talk and hands-on experience identifying, harvesting, and making wild meals and herbal remedies from the lush variety of plants that early summer offers us. We will make a wild food salad and create one or more tinctures, vinegars, or oils.    Register Here …

GODDESS!! Manifesting the Goddess in YOU – Intensive with Z Budapest

Focus the intentions in your life towards creating a better world. Make your dreams and aspirations a reality. It is possible! Think you need more time, more money, more skills to create what you truly desire? Go deeper with Dr. Z! See that your true potential isn’t rooted in those mundane tokens, but within your inner-Goddess.    Learn More Here …

Wise Woman Radio

Susun Weed interviews coach, writer and speaker Sue Rasmussen

Listen Here …

Susun Weed on You Tube

Learn about beautiful Chickweed with Susun

Watch Here …

by Susun Weed – May 8th, 2012

Greetings to all!

Here is the second installment of your Green Report for this month, featuring wildflowers of the fields. (Check out last week’s report for wildflowers of the forest.)

We are delightedly playing with the baby goats and all the baby plants in the gardens. How about you? Are there babies in your life? Do you have a garden? If you don’t, get some sort of plant in a pot to relate with and take care of. Even if it dies (all plants eventually die), you will had been in its company and been enriched thereby.

This week’s project is an herbal wine. Before there were liquor stores for herbalists who wanted vodka for making tinctures, herbal wines extracted the alcohol-soluble constituents. The basic herbal wine recipe I am giving you is one I have used successfully for decades with dozens of different edible flowers.

It is simple, though it does require attention, and some special equipment. It is chemical-free and sulfite-free. And these wines can pack a punch at rituals and celebration dinners.

What wonderful herbal wines will you make this year? Tell me about them!

Green blessings,
Susun

Green Report – Wildflowers of the Fields – by Susun Weed

	Ground ivy AKA Creeping Jenny (Glechoma hederacea) is still blooming, in places carpeting the ground with flowers. We adore the flowering tops in our salads.
	Narrow leaf plantain (Plantago lanceolata) holds its flowers atop long stiff stems. The whole affair reminds me of a flying saucer. Anytime is a fine time to harvest leaves for salads (chop finely) or infused oil.
	Tiny speedwell flowers. Common speedwell (Veronica officinalis) was once a favored remedy for those with respiratory problems. It is edible, but too bitter and too tiny to be worth foraging for salad.
	Corn speedwell (Veronica arvensis) is even smaller than her official sister.
	Celandine poppy (Cheladonium majus) is showing off her stunning, abundant yellow flowers. Not to be confused with mustard family plants, though they do have four petals. The yellow sap of this poisonous plant can be used against skin cancer.
	Yellow rocket or Barbara’s cress (Barbarea vulgaris), our winter friend, now brings the sunlight to earth as she spreads her yellow cheer. The leaves are now too bitter for my taste, but I do like the flowers and flower buds in my salads.
	Yellow rocket flowers – Note the four-petaled mustard family flowers. Both the “H” and the “X” pattern of the four petals are visible in this close-up photo.
	Garlic mustard (Alliaria officinalis) is another mustard-family plant now in bloom. I am still including it in my salads by harvesting the larger lower leaves (without petioles) and the entire tender top (buds and flowers). Sharp and a bit bitter but ever so good!
	Those little cresses we have been snacking on for months are another mustard family plant that is flowering and setting seeds. The end of the line for them, but new plants will grow from those seeds, and continue the cycle. Notice how long the seed pods are.
	Shepherd’s purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris) is also in the mustard family. The seed pods look like little purses. The plant in this photo is just right for making a tincture used to stop uterine hemorrhage, whether from fibroids, menopause, or during the post-partum period. This little plant has saved many lives and has saved many a uterus from the surgeon’s knife. The leaves are delicious in salads.
	Wild strawberries (Fragaria viginiana) are part of the rose family. Don’t tread on the flowers!
	Apples (Malus persica) are also in the rose family and also produce a sweet treat. Note the classic five petals with multiple central stamens. I pick up some of the fallen petals and toss them into my salads for vitamin C, for beauty, for love, for Venus.
	The shoots of Hypericum perforatum (St. Joan’s wort) are over eight inches tall, although blooms, and medicine making, are still months away.
	Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) is such a generous plant. I use the flowers in salads, as fritters, for wine, as a honey, infused in vinegar and in oil, and as a tincture. The leaves and roots are best left alone while the plant is flowering. (See You Tubes and Healing Wise for lots more dandelion info and recipes.)

Herbal Flower Wine

Equipment you will need:

6 or more 750ml wine bottles (reused is fine, no need to buy)

8 or more real corks of a size to fit your bottles (reused is fine, no need to buy)

1 or 2 wire-porcelain-closure beer bottles (reused is fine, no need to buy)

1 food thermometer

1 two-gallon crock or large, non-metallic container

1 thin cotton or linen kitchen towel capable of covering the opening of the container

1 rubber band adequate to the circumference of the container

3-6 filters of some sort, coffee filters will do, as will thin, clean, natural-fiber material

12 balloons

12 sticky-back labels and a water-proof marker (such as a Sharpie)

A cool, still place away from light and heat to age your wine

Instructions:

Pick 3-5 quarts/liters of blossoms and green part appending to them of any edible flower (I have used dandelion, wild carrot, red clover, violet, even yarrow).

As soon as you return with your harvest of flowers, place them in your 2 gallon/8 liter crock and immediately put 5 quarts/liters of water up to boil. Pour the boiling water over the blossoms and cover, holding the cloth in place with the rubber band. Stir daily for three days.

On the fourth day, strain the liquid into a saucepan and put the blossoms in the compost. Add  3 pounds/1.5 kg white sugar and the peel of one organic lemon and one organic orange to the liquid and heat to boiling. (Because organic citrus is often unavailable or very expensive during the summer when I am making wine, I dehydrate the peels of organic citrus and use them in my wine making.)

Simmer for 30-60 minutes. Pour everything into crock. Add the juice of 1 orange and 1 lemon. (I use bottled organic lemon juice. If you can’t get organic citrus, omit the peel in the previous step and use whatever citrus juice you have in this step.)

Cool to blood temperature.  (Use a thermometer; cool to 98-100 degrees Fahrenheit.) (It will take hours.)

Then, soften 1 package/8 grams or one block of live yeast in a little bit of barely warm water, toast 1 piece of whole wheat bread, spread the softened yeast onto the toast, and float the toast on the liquid in the crock. Cover and rubber band.

Every few hours, put your ear against the crock and listen. After a while, you will the yeast making magic, you will hear it working. Let this go on for about two days from the time you first hear it. This is the primary fermentation.

Strain the liquid and return it to the crock. Cover and let it work for one more day.

Filter again and fill your bottles to the bottom of their necks. Put a balloon over the top of the neck of each, even the ones with wire closures. Secondary fermentation will take place in the bottles and can become so intense that it can break the glass of tightly closed bottles.

When the balloons seem limp, anywhere from 1-3 months later, remove them and close the bottles with corks (soak them overnight in water to soften them) or their wire/ceramic stoppers.

Label and store in a cool, dark place for at least six months, better a year or more. I was given some 25 year old dandelion wine ten years ago. As they age, the flower wines become more like sherry.

Enjoy!

The Wise Woman Center

May 19, 2012 – Herbal First Aid with Susun Weed

The best way to develop confidence in the healing powers of herbs is to use them for first aid. From bruises to burns, cuts to stings, and beyond, we will focus on the herbs to reach for first. We will identify and talk about plantain, comfrey, yarrow, aloe vera, and a variety of plants to help you.

This day-long workshop is taught by Susun Weed at the Wise Woman Center in Woodstock NY. Class is from 10 am to 5pm; you will be given directions once you register. Each one-day workshop with Susun Weed at the Wise Woman Center includes talking stick ceremony, a weed walk, wild-food lunch, and instruction.

Register Here …

May 20 – 2012: Hands-on Herbal Medicine/Early Summer with Susun Weed

Join Susun for a walk and a talk and hands-on experience identifying, harvesting, and making wild meals and herbal remedies from the lush variety of plants that early summer offers us. What will we find in addition to nettle, ground ivy, garlic mustard, cronewort, violets, wild leeks, and comfrey?

We will make a pot of nettle soup, a wild food salad, and one or more tinctures, vinegars, or oils. We will harvest herbs and hang them to dry. You’ll receive an “Herbalist’s To Do List” to help you remember all the remedies and meals that early summer plants offer.

Register Here …

Priestess of Sacred Pleasures with Marie Summerwood and Susun Weed

Explore deeper at the Wise Woman Center!

How does sexual energy travel through the body? That beautiful kunda – cunta – lini, how does it move? How can we ride it, work with it, make it healthier? A Priestess knows; it begins on the (pelvic) floor. Come join us for 3 days of insightful information, ecstatic exercises and passionate practices of pleasure. What will benefit? Your bladder, your pelvic floor, your orgasms.

Sexy and sacred too, we’ll explore all this in ritual and take it in on that deeper level. Bring clothing that befits a priestess and prepare to chant together. Priestess Of Your Own Sacred Pleasure. In sacred circle. Yes. Join Marie Summerwood and Susun Weed for this event.

Learn More Here …

Wise Woman Radio

Susun Weed interviews consultant and educator Rebecca Chaplin

Listen Here …

Susun Weed on You Tube

Dandelion Vinegar with Susun

Watch Here …

by Susun Weed – May 1st, 2012

Green greetings!

We finally got some April showers. Hooray!

Now there are so many flowers blooming, we have had to make three installments of the green report this month. First we will present wildflowers of the forest. Next week look for wildflowers of the fields. And the third week of the month will feature some beautiful flowers from my garden.

Each green report also includes a recipe for something herbal as well. It is hard to choose just one to share each week, as we are making remedies daily now.

Enjoy May! Enjoy the flowers.

And enjoy my special Garlic Mustard Root Remedy, too, a superior ally for those with chronic sinus infections, postnasal drip, allergies, or other upper respiratory afflictions.

Green blessings,
Susun

Green Report – Flowers of the Forest – by Susun Weed

Garlic Mustard Root Remedy

Wild horseradish, like cultivated horseradish opens the sinus and nasal passages fast.

Harvest a couple dozen large garlic mustard plants by tenderly pulling them up by the roots.

Soak the plants in cold water to cover to roots.

Remove the leaves and enjoy them in your salad or cook them (recipe last week).

Scrub the roots and rub off any small root hairs. [Photo 1]

Choose large roots that are about the size of a finger. [Photo 2]

Cut them into smallish pieces. [Photo 3]

Process in a mini-food processor, with 1-4 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and ½-1 teaspoons of salt, [Photo 4] until of a suitable consistency. [Photo 5] (The salt helps grind the roots, so don’t stint it.)

Store in a glass jar in the refrigerator. [Photo 6]

Remains effective for about a month if opened often; if left unopened, for up to six months.

[Photo 1]

[Photo 2]

[Photo 3]

[Photo 4]

[Photo 5]

[Photo 6]

Free Teleseminar with Marie Summerwood and Susun Weed

Free Teleseminar – Thursday, May 10th at 8:00pm Eastern

What is great sex? A fabulous orgasm? Do you enjoy them? Come learn about becoming Priestess of your own sacred pleasure. We will chant and explore learning about sustained pleasure and working with sexual energy on a deep and divine level.

Marie Summerwood began her career as a French teacher and now is one of the best French kissers around. She is an author, herbalist and composer of women’s sacred music. Her CDs help women remember the sacredness. Marie is a voice for the earth, and for the women of the earth. She has been teaching about women’s spirituality for many years, including workshops on the sacredness of grief, and deep teachings on the 5 directions.

Register Here …

Priestess of Sacred Pleasures with Marie Summerwood and Susun Weed

Explore deeper at the Wise Woman Center!

How does sexual energy travel through the body? That beautiful kunda – cunta – lini, how does it move? How can we ride it, work with it, make it healthier? A Priestess knows; it begins on the (pelvic) floor. Come join us for 3 days of insightful information, ecstatic exercises and passionate practices of pleasure. What will benefit? Your bladder, your pelvic floor, your orgasms.

Sexy and sacred too, we’ll explore all this in ritual and take it in on that deeper level. Bring clothing that befits a priestess and prepare to chant together. Priestess Of Your Own Sacred Pleasure. In sacred circle. Yes. Join Marie Summerwood and Susun Weed for this event.

Learn More Here …

A Free Webinar with Aviva Romm, M.D.

Aviva Room, M.D., is author of Naturally Healthy Babies for Children, The Natural Pregnancy Book, and Botanical Medicine for Women’s Health. Before graduating Yale Medical School, she was a practicing herbalist and midwife for over 20 years. She is also a former president of the American Herbalist Guild, mom to four kids, and grandma to one.

Learn More Here …

Wise Woman Radio

Susun Weed interviews consultant and educator Sharon Bigger

Listen Here …

Susun Weed on You Tube

Hands – on Herbal Medicine with Susun – Part 1

Watch Here …

Greetings From Susun – April 24, 2012

Green greetings.

The middle of “sweete Aprile” already! Garlic mustard (Allaria off.) is rampant in my gardens. How about in yours? The gardener’s best revenge is to bite back, so let’s cut the mustard, the garlic mustard, that is.

But only figuratively, cut it, that is. In fact, you might as well leave your scissors or knife in the house. We aren’t going to cut the garlic mustard so much as pull it out, roots and all. Garlic mustard acts as a biennial in my region: plants overwinter and flower in their second year. The first year plants are thickly underfoot [photos 1 and 2] and will be ready for salads soon.

[photo 1] Masses of garlic mustard sprouts underfoot

[photo 2] Baby garlic mustard leaves are pointy

It”s the second years plants we’re after. To me, the optimum time to harvest is just before the garlic mustard sends up its flowering stalk, [photo 3] before the greens get too bitter. But the flowering stalks have emerged so quickly this year we have been forced to eat them, too. They are actually very yummy, succulent and delicious, bitter like broccoli rabe, which it resembles when in bud. [photo 4]

[photo 3] Garlic mustard ready to harvest

[photo 4] Garlic mustard in bud

Since I am pulling the plant up by the roots, I am killing it. I communicate silently to the plant, telling each one that I acknowledge that I am giving death to them. I don’t ask permission, but I don’t assume I have the right to take. I am clear about my intention and I invite the plants to be part of what I am doing. I put the garlic mustard plants, roots down, in a large bowl of cold water as I harvest to keep them from wilting and to soak the dirt off the roots. (Do shake off excess soil and leave it in your garden.)

Two dozen large plants is a good amount to start with. Don’t harvest more than you can process.

In the kitchen, I use sturdy scissors to cut the leaves off the roots, leaving most of the leaf stalks (the petioles) on the roots. I toss them into a large bowl of cold water [photo 5], where they can soak for up to two hours with no harm. Keep those roots! We will use them to make vinegar or Wild Horseradish Condiment next week.

[photo 5] Garlic mustard leaves soaking in cold water

Remove garlic mustard leaves from their cold water bath and put them in a colander. Notice that there is dirt in the bottom of the bowl of water. Rinse the bowl out and fill it again with cold water. Put the garlic mustard in the water and swish it around. Pick it over and remove “foreign matter” that you don’t wish to eat. Then put it back in the colander. Is the water in the bowl is clear? You are ready for the next step. If there is still dirt is at the bottom, rinse the bowl and repeat swishing and picking until the water is clear, then proceed with recipe.

This cooked green keeps refrigerated for 5-8 days.

Green blessings,

Susun
www.susunweed.com

Cut the Mustard Greens

One bunch rinsed and picked garlic mustard greens.
1-3 heads of garlic
Olive oil
Heat a little olive oil in a skillet over a brisk flame and add thinly sliced garlic. Saute until the garlic softens, then toss in the garlic mustard greens. [photo 6] Stir and saute over fast fire for a minute or two. Lower heat to a simmer, and stir in a little water. [photo 7] Cover tightly, lower heat, and cook for 45-50 minutes. I like to add a splash of tamari before serving. [photo 8] Enjoy!

[photo 6] Add garlic mustard to garlic in hot pan

[photo 7] Add water to wilted greens

[photo 8] Voila! The liver rejoices! Spring!

Begin Your Year to Heal with Spring Tonics by Kathy Eich

Spring is a seasonal turning point.  People begin to un-layer and thaw, and plants, made stronger in winter hibernation, stretch to freshly re-grow foliage that is unscathed by time. Spring is also an excellent season to begin setting healing goals.  In this article I’ll discuss the aspect of time and tonics in healing, and suggest Spring plant tonics to augment your health conscious plan, or, if you’re new to all of this, for the beginning of your year to heal.

It would be nice if we could set our healing goals and meet our quotas just as we do deadlines for work.  We could plan how long it would take to put our diseases in remission, and predict everything that would cause a flair up.  But healing, illness and disease move in a way that we can’t wrap our brains around.  We find our bodies and our lives stuck in a time warp as we attempt to mitigate our internal short comings.

And so begins our time to heal.  A time that is replete with many firsts. The first time you override a negative thought with a positive one, that first sip of tonic tea or drop of tincture, or that first meal cooked with whole food ingredients all begin a steady and slow process to improving health.  In the beginning it may feel like filling a 10 gallon bucket one single tiny drop at a time.  Eventually, though, one realizes that the days pass more easily, with health and energy improving.

If you can imagine this as a possibility, then you can envision a world that fosters new healthy patterns.  Patterns that are realized and supported internally using plants that are tonics.
What is an Herbal Tonic?

Herbal tonics are a class of plant medicines that nourish, tone and retrain the body. Their effects can be felt immediately, depending on dosage, plant and person, but the best results are seen when ingested over a long period of time.   They work slowly to inspire deep and long standing changes internally.

Tonics can be taken as teas, tinctures, or eaten as food.  And dosages can vary.  I prefer, especially if using tonics for non-disease deficiency, to use small doses.  For example, I may recommend 5 drops of blue vervain, a nervine tonic, 3-4 times daily to a client.  When they first begin, there may be little effect felt.  After a week, however, their muscles might feel less tense and their mood more flexible.  With each passing day,  more improvements will be seen. That is the work of the tonic.  They slowly and surely retrain internal patterns which eventually become more consciously noted by our mind and body.

How do plants do this?  They coax organ systems and tissue to remember balance and function by either stimulating or relaxing, and through one or more of the following qualities: moistening to soften, drying to harden, heating to disperse energy and/or cooling to restrain it.

There are tonics for all the organ systems and body functions.  When an herbalist works with a client, we may assess what people need on an individual basis.  But sometimes, especially when seasons change, there is a general need to improve overall function.

For example, winters rich warm foods, illness and cold, make the tonics of spring a necessary step to maintaining wellness. Spring goals are to tonify the liver, immune and lymphatic system, as well as organs of elimination (colon, kidney, skin, respiratory tract).   It is these systems that support the blood and lymph, and strengthening them, resetting the immune system and supporting the liver can have enormous bearing on our health.  We reduce, over time, our reaction to seasonal allergies, improve and keep digestion strong, and prepare the body for the heat of summer.

My Favorite Tonic Tea

A spring tonic tea should reflect the goals stated above.  The taste should be slightly salty, and bitter.  It should stimulate function but be balanced in regard to cold and heat.  Spring provides many plants to choose from, but my favorite formula this year is nettle leaf, dandelion root and burdock root.  It is a combination of plants that is highly nutritious, and are collectively tonic to these major systems: liver, lymphatic, pancreas, colon, circulatory, urinary and digestive tract.

Note on contraindications: dandelion root is contraindicated for those on lithium.

Stinging Nettle leaf (Urtica dioica): Taste: salty; Energetics: anti-inflammatory, circulatory stimulant, diuretic, urinary tonic, nutritional, antihistamine

Urtica dioica, or stinging nettle, is native to a host of countries and continents, from Europe, to Asia, South Africa to Australia and North America. It’s name is derived from the Latin urere, ‘to burn’. And yes, that is because of the burn received by the stinging hairs. Dioica translates as ‘two houses’ because plants of the same stand are found to have either male or female flowers.

The common name nettle is from the Anglo-Saxon word nodel, or ‘needle’. When touched, the hollow hairs release histamine into the skin, giving rise to a fierce red inflamed patch. But the remedy to this is close by. The yellow dock leaves are astringent and anti-inflammatory. And the two often grow close to each other. There is an old poem I learned which refers to this. It can also be found in Greives herbal.  ‘Nettle in, dock out. Dock rub nettle out.’

Interestingly, nettle leaf tea dried and drunk is anti-histamine and anti-inflammatory, indicated for burning on urination and allergies affecting the respiratory tract.  It is a powerful circulatory stimulant, and potassium sparing diuretic.

Nettle leaf as a tea is highly nutritious.  It has measurable amounts of magnesium, calcium, boron, vitamin C, iron, and caratenoids.  When the fresh young green leaves of spring are cooked (always cook them) and eaten, they also yield a fair amount of protein.  The balance of C and iron makes for easy assimilation, and good support for anemia.  Nettle leaf is, for this reason, considered a blood builder.   It is excellent for malabsorption syndrome as well.

Dandelion root (Taraxacum officinale): Taste of root: bitter, sweet, salty; Energetics: cooling liver and digestive tonic and stimulant, diuretic, anti-inflammatory, nutritive, hypotensive

Taraxacum officinale was a medicine of Ancient Greece. According to Maude Grieve, Taraxacum comes from the Greek taraxos meaning ‘disorder’ or ‘I have excited’, andakos, meaning ‘remedy’ or ‘pain’- ‘disorder remedy’ or ‘I have excited pain’.

The common name dandelion is inspired by the shape of the leaves. They are thought to reflect a lions tooth and jaw. The Latin translation dens leonis being ‘lions tooth’.

Dandelion root is one of the most popular herbal therapies. It is an excellent cooling bitter that stimulates a heated and stagnant stomach to produce hydrochloric acid, thereby assisting the beginning digestive process. The roots also inspire the liver to release bile, improving metabolism of fats and proteins. And as with burdock root, dandelion root is high in fructoligosacharides, or FOS, which is food for good bacteria in the gut.
Dandelion root normalizes pancreatic and small intestine secretions improving digestion of sugars and assimilation of nutrients. This makes it an effective treatment for those with hypoglycemia.

This root also regulates the function of the colon.  The inulin being food for good bacteria (prebiotic), and the tea or tincture taken acts as an excellent non-addictive laxative.  It is specific for those with oily skin.
Dandelion root is not just about nutrient breakdown and absorption, though.  It has been proven effective for PMS, as it is slightly diuretic-though the leaves are more so-and has the ability to assist the livers breakdown and elimination of excess hormones, thereby assisting catabolic functions of the liver as well.
Burdock root (Arctium lappa): Taste: sweet, bitter, pungent, warm, oily; Energetics: cools liver while warms internal function overall, anti-inflammatory, lymphatic tonic.

Burdock roots name embodies its nature as a medicine.  It’s Latin name, Arctium, translates from Greek  to mean ‘bear’, while lappa means ‘to seize’.   And if you’ve ever used the medicine, you know it is excellent support when waking up the body from a winter of hibernation, and that the plants seeds truly do seize one when passing.
Burdock root warms and stimulates lymphatic/immune function.  It is a traditional tonic remedy in Asia for those recovering from acute illness, or from a long and sickly winter.  For this effect, it can be added to soups and stews.  I also like to throw it into stir fries and bake it with other root veggies or meat.  As a food, burdock is also high in fructoligosacharides, or FOS, which is a potent prebiotic that feeds healthy bowel flora.
One of my favorite uses for burdock root is to prevent the proliferation of rogue cells.  In other words, burdock root inspires the body to inactivate and dispose of mutagenic cells, known as cancer-causing agents.

Burdock root also relieves hard swellings in lymphatic ducts, thereby increasing the body’s ability to clean the blood and keep lymph properly circulating.  This has positive effects on the health of the skin where it is specifically indicated for chronic skin disorders that are dry, irritated and inflamed.  I have found it useful for those with eczema, acne, and psoriasis.  It combines well with dandelion root or yellow dock root and sarsaparilla for this.

Recommended Tea

To make a tea with these plants and get the most from them nutritionally, follow these directions.
1.    Add ¼ cup of dried dandelion root and ¼ cup of dried burdock root to 2 quarts of water.
2.    Bring them to a boil then turn off the fire.
3.    Add ½ cup of dried nettle leaf.
4.    Let it sit overnight.
5.    In the morning, strain and store in a mason jar.  This tea will keep in the fridge well covered for
about 5-6 days.

Recommended dose:  Drink 1-2 cups daily for 1-2 months.

Note: drinking this tea before bed may cause one to wake up at night to urinate.

Give Yourself a Year

This year, to improve the health of my spine, I vowed to do 5 minutes of yoga a day.  The reason being I couldn’t get myself to commit to a longer routine.  In my mind, however, I knew that 5 minutes was doable.  At first, my few poses took about 3 minutes.  Months later, my routine clocks in closer to 15 minutes a day, but I still call it my 5 min. of yoga. Why?  Because even though my body has shown me it is capable of more, my mind still does not believe it.  Five minutes has become my mental trick so that I stay committed.

Healing is a bit of the same.  Yes, I’m asking people to liberate themselves from the expectation that we can control healings time, and align with the idea of taking a year to heal.  But the fact remains, this is still a mind game.  We don’t just take a year to heal, we take a lifetime.  It does, however, take a year of 4 complete seasonal changes to begin to attune our body to more natural and healthy patterns.  It takes a year to turn back the time of dysfunction, of eating whole foods with the seasons, of infusing our mind, soul and spirit with good thoughts and feelings, and a year of cycling through tonics.

This article begins a series of 4 to come.  Each will appear at the start of the new season.  They will reflect plants and foods of Summer, Fall and Winter  that support health and vitality.  Warm wishes this Spring!
For more information about Kathy Eich, to see past articles and hear about upcoming herb classes, visit www.redrootmountain.com.

Fireside Chat with Susun Weed and Kathy Eich

Join us for this fireside chat while these two amazing herbalists talk healing, herbs and the Wise Woman Tradition. In association with the Midwest Women’s Herbal Conference.

Learn More Here …

Wise Woman Radio

Susun Weed interviews life coach and relationship expert Kenya Stevens

Listen Here …

Susun on Youtube

Roadside Harvest – Foraging with Susun Weed

Finding nutritious food and healing medicines can be as easy as stepping outside your door.

Watch Susun Here …

Susun Weed’s New Book! ~ Book Review by Corinna Wood

Down There: Sexual and Reproductive Health The Wise Woman Way is the long-awaited new book by Susun Weed, the voice of the Wise Woman Tradition.

It is an extraordinary and comprehensive reference for all that ails either sex below the belt.  Like her Wise Women Herbal for Childbearing Year (a bible for pregnant women) and New Menopausal Years the Wise Woman Way (a favorite of mid-life and elder women), Down There will become, I expect, a classic as well as a best-seller.

This book is incredibly comprehensive, including chapters and wonderful illustrations of the bladder, pelvic floor, vulva, clitoris, vagina, cervix, uterus, ovaries, testes, and penis, and prostate health. Susun organizes each topic into the Six Steps of Healing, which I find to be extremely useful.

This is the medicine of the future: integrative medicine, where we use the best of all worlds. The discussions of the side effects and benefits of higher-risk approaches such as supplements, drugs, and surgery are clearly explicated.

Susun Weed is one of the most important, informative and inspirational writers of our time. We are so lucky and blessed to have such a wealth of information in one book.  Thanks, Susun Weed, for passing on the wisdom of the Wise Woman Tradition with such skill and grace!

Order Down There here!

Corinna Wood is the Director of Red Moon Herbs, making herbal medicines from fresh, local plants, with a focus on women’s health, since 1994.

A gifted teacher and powerful visionary, Corinna has opened the hearts of thousands to the wisdom of the plants and their own bodies. Corinna’s background includes an extensive apprenticeship with Susun Weed in 1993 as well as a B.S. in Biology.

Corinna is certified as an herbalist, a fertility awareness teacher, and also in permaculture design.  Corinna Wood is the Director of the Southeast Women’s Herbal Conference, an annual fall conference in Black Mountain, NC.  She is also on the faculty of the Appalachia School of Holistic Herbalism.

Click here to visit Corinna’s site!

Message from Susun – April 17, 2012

The Goddess lives all around you. Bottle her up with this ancient remedy, reputed to be at least six thousand years old, from The Yellow Emperor, a healing text from China.

Triple Goddess Elixir (my name for it) is said to be curative for any problem that a woman encounters. It can dissolve cysts in the ovaries and breasts, regulate menses, ease menopausal symptoms, strengthen the nerves and the heart, and increase serenity as well.

I love the vinegar on salads. I reserve the tincture for tough cases.

Make it now, before the motherwort leaves get too bitter and the chickweed goes to seed. Yes, go outside right now and harvest your herbs and make it. Timing is of the essence for the herbalist. And while you’re outside, look up and enjoy these trees of the rose family.

Green blessings,

Susun
www.susunweed.com

ps. Next week we cut the mustard!

Up close shad bush flowers

Rose Family: A service berry tree also called shad bush

Rose Family: Wild cherry tree in bloom

Wild cherry flowers up close – note five petals and numerous stamens

Triple Goddess Elixir

Harvest equal parts maidenwort (Stellaria media) [photo 1], motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca) [photo 2], and cronewort (Artemisia vulgaris) [photo 3]. Use stalks and leaves of chickweed and motherwort. Use the white roots of the cronewort as well as the leaves.

Gather your plants [photo 4] and cut into manageable pieces. Fill a jar 1/3 full of the maiden, [photo 5], then 1/3 full of the mother [photo 6], then the final 1/3 with the crone. Add vinegar or 100 proof vodka. [photo 7] Seal, label, and wait six weeks until use.

The dose is a tablespoonful of vinegar in water or on food; or a dropperful of tincture taken two or three times a day.

Photo 1 – Cutting maidenwort

Photo 2 – Young motherwort

Photo 3 – Cronewort amid last year’s stalks

Photo 4 – Maidenwort on left, motherwort on right, cronewort above

Photo 5 – 1/3 full of maidenwort

Photo 6 – And 1/3 full of motherwort

Photo 7 – Completed vinegar

Letting Nature Grow Your Garden by Susun Weed

Dancing with the Fairies

Your garden. What fun — and frustration — await you there! The best mentor you can choose, as far as I’m concerned is Nature herself. Nature likes life everywhere. Have an open field and plants magically appear! This is the way plants grow when left to themselves. We don’t have to struggle so much.

It is wisest to let Nature have Her way. Nature has her own agenda, and your life as a gardener will be easier if you bow to Her desires. Better to dance with the fairies than struggle with eliminating “weeds”. What herbs already grow around you that you can use as teas and seasonings? Most areas are rich in such plants, both native and introduced. Many of them will be happy to grace your garden with very little effort on your part. Some will appear, others may want to be transplanted. Still others are simply there, waiting for you to notice.

For instance, pine trees. Pine needle vinegar is an exquisite treat that is easy to make. I call it homemade “balsamic” vinegar. Fill a jar with pine needles. (I prefer white pine, and pinyon pine is even better, but the needles of any pine are fine.) Cover needles completely with apple cider vinegar, filling the jar to the top and capping with a plastic lid or a piece of plastic wrap held in place with a rubber band. This vinegar, like most that I make, is ready to use in six weeks. Pine vinegar is rich in flavonoids, vitamins, and minerals. It helps keep the immune system strong, and strengthens the lungs as well. I love it on salads.

Your home, like mine in the Catskills, offers rose hips and sumac berries for vitamin-C rich teas; spice bush leaves and berries to suggest the flavors of bay and allspice; and the roots of sweet clover to use as a vanilla substitute.

Grab a local field guide and go looking for all the plants that are native to your area. For example, if you live in the northern states like Minnesota, a great book is “How Indians Use Wild Plants for Food, Medicine, and Crafts”, written in 1926 by Frances Densmore who collected information from the Minnesota Chippewa. There are many similar guides available.

Why use native plants? They are often hardy survivors and naturally adapted to the area, sometimes requiring less watering and care. Whether in the wilds or in your garden, Nature is ever-ready to provide you with all you need with little or no input from you. An abundance of edible and medicinal plants covers every inch of my garden — and I didn’t plant any of them. With only a little help from me (I spread compost several inches deep on my gardens spring and fall, and keep them fenced against my goats and the marauding deer), my gardens grow: garlic mustard, chickweed, violets, dandelion, curly dock, nettles, burdock, wild madder, crone(mug)wort, wild chives, poke, catnip, malva, wild mint, bergamot, cleavers, motherwort, chicory, raspberry, goldenrod, creeping jenny, barbara’s cress, evening primrose, milk weed.

The next best thing to letting Nature plant your herb garden for you is to put in perennials and let Nature take care of them. You will find the best plants for your area at a plant swap at a local church or school. Nurseries, especially the mail order ones, offer lots of different kinds of plants, but only a few of them will be both productive and carefree.

The most dependable perennial herbs are echinacea, comfrey, elecampane, wormwood, and thyme, on the hardiest members of the aromatic mint family.

Cuttings of various mints are easy to come by and easier yet to establish. Chocolate mint and red bergamot are two of my favorites, but don’t be choosy, accept any and all mint cuttings you are given. Perennial aromatic mints — including lemon balm, lavender, rosemary, thyme, sage, oregano. pennyroyal, and catnip as well as spearmint and peppermint — form the “backbone” of most herb gardens. Just grow them in full sun in poor soil and don’t overwater.

Anyone who has a comfrey plant will be glad to give you a “start” (a piece of the root). And, once put in, comfrey is a friend for life. Ditto rhubarb, whose root is a formidable herbal medicine.

Magazines offer gardening knowledge in small doses, and at appropriate times, instead of all at once, and this is usually more helpful than a book that tries to cover all seasons and all reasons. These are some favorites:

The American Gardener, a publication of the American Horticultural Society. Perhaps it is a bit more formal than I am, but it nonetheless has a down-home charm. Check out www.ahs.org or call 1-800-777-7931. When you join, you get the magazine plus the right to join in their annual seed give-away.

The Garden Gate is very practical and covers a wide range of topics in excellent detail: from plants to planters to planting your feet so your back stays strong. Every page counts, as there is no advertising. You can subscribe at www.gardengatemagazine.com or call 1-800-341-4769.
Herbals that include cultural instructions are good additions to your library.

Steven Foster’s Herbal Bounty is a classic on “The Gentle Art of Herb Culture.” Unfortunately, it is now out of print, but you may be able to find one used. (c. 1984, Peregrine Smith Books). He gives detailed information on the culture, and medicinal uses, of over 100 popular herbs.

Park’s Success with Herbs is also out of print but a book that I use constantly. Gertrude Foster and Rosemary Louden fill just under 200 pages with an incredible amount of information on growing and using (lots of recipes) an amazing variety of herbs.

When you try too hard, it doesn’t work. We learn to work with the slow interplay of Yin and Yang. We learn to be in harmony with nature’s laws. Forcing things to fit or going against the grain is an unskillful way. We learn to be flexible like water. We use our intuition. We hold, energetically, a magical spot of ground and watch what grows. In Taoism they call it “Wu Wei”. We walk in the “effortless”, we dance with the fairies, moving in joyful flow with the undulating, magical greenery blowing in the breeze.

Wow! You have a garden! With patience, good weather, and the grace of the Goddess, you and Nature will create a thing of beauty.

Wise Woman Radio

Susun Weed interviews herbalist, author and teacher Isla Burgess

Listen Here …

The Green Report, Part Two by Susun Weed – April 10th, 2012

Welcome to the second installment of the April green report. The plants are coming so quickly now! So many to encounter, learn about, and play with! I hope you had fun adding flowers to your salad last week. This week your challenge is to make a totally wild salad. There are so many sweet tender young leaves to choose from.

Of course, identifying plants just by their leaves can be a bit tricky. And, as you recall, photos are not that reliable when it comes to differentiating poison look-likes from wild edibles. I have attempted to give you some safe look-alikes in this report, as well as a few poisoners you would do well to avoid.

But the very best way to learn is by smelling and tasting the plants. There are Hands-on Herbs workshops at the Wise Woman Center every month. We hope you can join us for one or more classes where we will pick a wild salad, possibly made nettle soup, certainly prepare herbal remedies, and probably answer your questions too.

Baby dandelion (Taraxacum off.) leaves are smooth on the back. They are often confused with chicory, shepherd’s purse, and wild lettuce.

Chicory (Chicorium intybus) leaves are hairy, and much bitterer; few like it in salads.

Shepherd’s purse (Bursa capsella-pastoris) leaves taste like cress.

Wild madder (Galium mollugo) tips are yummy in salads.

Cleavers (Galium aparine) sticks to your tongue; wait a while, until it has seeds on it, then we will tincture some.

Cronewort (Artemisia vulgaris) leaves and roots are still mild enough for salads.

Baby burdock (Arctium lappa) leaves spring up from the overwintering root. Too bitter for me, and definitely not for salad, but they are served as a cooked green by some Italian-Americans.

DO NOT EAT marsh marigold (Caltha palustris). Just admire the beauty, soon gone, of another spring ephemeral.

Spring into Spring Salad

Combine garlic mustard leaves, wild madder tips, minced wild chives, chopped wild carrot leaves, chickweed, and cronewort shoots. Dress with garlic mustard root vinegar, olive oil, and tamari; toss. Garnish with at least three different wild flowers. Enjoy!

This month, April, we are going to “cut the mustard,” no foolin’! And make a Triple Goddess remedy, too. Stay tuned.

Green blessings,

Susun
www.susunweed.com

Making Dandelion Herbal Vinegar

Click here for Video One

Click here for Video Two

Diversity and Difference in Kyrgystan by Isla Burgess

Chon-Kemin Valley, July 2011

The ‘call to prayer’ resonates through this valley long before the first cock crows.

The valley and the Alpine meadows high up in the mountains that rise to awe inspiring heights on either side of the valley are a medicinal plant lover’s paradise.

As I crawl backwards down a steep part of a rocky incline my hands are full of intense fragrances of Artemisias, and marjorams, mountain mints and thyme, calamint and mountain sages. A Kyrgyz tarragon dominates several areas and I walk thigh high in such flowering beauty that each step fills the air with the same heady aromas.

In the valley there is enough burdock to feed the entire country if not the continent and traditionally Kyrgyz people do not use it as food. The roadsides and fields of potatoes, beet greens and corn are edged with several metres of wild medicinal plants. The nettles are less protective than in my garden, cannabis and henbane grow in profusion, elecampane and at least 7 species of Artemisias contribute to the perfect wild garden. I can’t help feeling that all the cultivated plants are benefiting from this ‘wildness’ in their midst.

I am here teaching at a summer school on ‘Exploring Holistic Science’, an eight day participatory experience that reflected the diverse range of plants in the Chon-Kemin landscape, the delicious array of local foods at every meal, the range of expertise and contribution from the participants and the vistas experienced moment by moment from this valley.

I knew little about the country before I arrived, the Kyrgyz people warm, welcoming and determined to add to your waistline before you leave. The culture is strong as the people restore traditional practices and kin-ship connections that were ‘hidden’ during the 80 years of Soviet rule.

I exchange plant knowledge with Janara, a local herbalist, and learn about how she uses hawthorn and dandelion, aconite and white aconite, arnica, St John’s wort and red elder. It is amazing that approximately 75% of the way she uses a plant species is similar to our traditional use. We share a manufacturing session together, making oils and tinctures from local Vodka.

Many of the species of plants we see in our local nurseries are found growing wild here, the memory of the perfume of a small dianthus still lingers in my mind.

The Summer School over and I am sad to leave, I have befriended a small dog and a baby donkey. The next part of this journey was equally as rich as I facilitated and presented at a ‘Ethnobotanical Research Methodology’ workshop in the north east of the country. There is now a Kyrgyzstan Plant Rapid Assessment Tool, developed and adapted from the International Research Group for the Conservation of Medicinal Plants  rapid assessment tool (IRGCMPRAT). Interesting that a group of Professors and Agrarian University lecturers in Kyrgyzstan have embraced this approach to protect their plant diversity compared to the lack of interest and support shown to date by educators, manufacturers and the Herbal Medicine industry in the West.

Kyrgyzstan Alpine Garden Plants:

Marjoram
Columbines
Mountain Sage
Thyme (x2)
Wild Strawberry
Rose
Barberry
Gallium (large white flower)
Skorgonzera
Violet
Artemisias (6-7 species) including a tarragon.
Mountain mints
Calamint
Cornflowers
St John’s wort
Aconite
White aconite
Ladies mantle
Eidleweiss
Rowan
Orange hawkweed
Junipers
Dianthus

In the valleys many of the above also flowering there but in addition:

Chickweed
Dandelion
Burdock
White dead nettle
Nettle
Plantain
Red clover
Sonchus
Wild lettuce
Yellow dock
Elecampane
Sambucus
Cannabis
Shepherd’s purse
Malva ssp
Fathen
Chamomile
Goat’s rue
Mullein
Chicory
Potentilla
Horehound
Hawthorn
Golden rod

And in gardens:

Dill (in abundance)
Calendula
A blue flowering comfrey.

Isla M Burgess MSc  Dip Tchg, Dip HM. FNZAMH.

Isla is currently researching  the development and application of a new methodology for the assessment of the qualities that plants possess. She recently completed a MSc in Holistic Science through Schumacher College, Devon, England as she felt this would offer a deeper understanding of living in relationship with our world and in particular her relationship with the plant world.

An inspiring teacher, Isla has been an educator for the past 40 years, firstly as a teacher of Science and Biology and then as Director of the  International College of Herbal Medicine (2000-2011) and Director of the Waikato Centre for Herbal Medicine, Waikato, New Zealand (1990-2000). She is also an experienced herbal medicine practitioner and has presented at conferences both in New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United States.

More recently the description of ‘Wild and Medicinal Plant Conservationist’ aptly describes her concerns. She is the  interim convener for the International Research Group for the Conservation of Medicinal Plants (www.irgcmp.org) and has appeared in two recent documentaries ‘Earth Whisperers Paptuanuku’ (New Zealand) and Numen (USA). She is the author of ‘Weeds Heal. A Working Herbal’.

Wise Woman Center – Intensive with Isla Burgess

June 23-24, 2012: Plant Immersion, Incubation and Inspiration: The Plant/Person Relationship with Isla Burgess  

Engage fully with the plants. Actively participate in their world. Reweave yourself into the plant/person relationship in healing.

You will be immersed through simple exercises into the pace and vibration of the green nation. Then you will be inspired by the plant’s inner qualities, allowing you to begin to make connections and to actually form a relationship that will benefit you for the rest of you life.

Explore More Here …

Wise Woman Radio – Holly Bellebuono

Susun Weed interviews author, herbalist and speaker, Holly Bellebuono

Listen Here …

The Green Report, Part One by Susun Weed – April 3, 2012

Welcome spring! Welcome viriditas, the greening force. Welcome nettle. Welcome flowers. I missed you. Here’s the first part of the green report for the month of April. And what a beautiful report it is, filled with blossoms, like spring. Let’s celebrate, let’s eat the flowers. Make a salad right now and eat it with a smile.

Violets (and pansies and jump-ups) come in many colors, each with a different taste.

Ground ivy (Glechoma hederacea) flowering tips are delicious in salads.

Peach flowers, cherry blossoms, apple blossoms too; all the rose family trees provide flower petals rich in vitamin C. (I shake them loose after they have been pollinated.)

Forsythia is edible, oh my!

So is periwinkle (Vinca minor) so long as you limit yourself to no more than 2 blossoms a day.

Even tulip petals (but not daffodils, oh my!) can go in the salad

Chickweed (Stellaria media) is ready to harvest for salad, oil, tincture, and pesto.

Wild carrot (Daucus carota) leaves are loaded with potassium and delicious in salads. (They smell like carrot.)

Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) is big enough to harvest for soup.

Sheep sorrel (Rumex acetosella) leaves add a sour tang to salads.

Easy Spring Salad
Pour a bag of organic salad mix into a large bowl. Dress with herbal vinegar, olive oil, and tamari; toss. Sprinkle wild flowers across the top. Enjoy!

More green report to come next week!

green blessings,

Susun
www.susunweed.com

Make Violet Flower Honey with Susun – Click Here

Prevent Memory Loss by Susun Weed

Even a single family member who is senile or afflicted with Alzheimer’s is enough to make anyone dread the possibility. Since women have always lived longer than men, the Ancient Grandmothers have a thing or two to tell us about how to keep our memory sharp until the day we die (at 100+). These remedies are taken from my book New Menopausal Years the Wise Woman Way. They are arranged in order of safety, with the safest first and the most dangerous last.

“Touch my face, granddaughter,” murmurs Grandmother Growth. “Feel the lines that time has worn. Each line tells a story. Feel the lines in my palms. Every line is a memory. Close your eyes and travel with me to your ovaries, real or energetic. They are your memory baskets. When you feel forgetful, close your eyes and journey to the place of memories. Touch your face, your palms, return to this place, and retrieve the memory you want.”

“And, dearest,” Grandmother’s voice sighs with the wind, “Remember yourself.”

Follow these tips to prevent memory loss:

Improve your memory fast with meditation. Start with five minutes a day. You can do it! Breathe out.

Researchers doing double-blind studies on treatments for those with memory loss, dementia, or Alzheimer’s, consistently note that placebos generate a very strong response. In one instance, those on the placebo did so well that it was suspected that they did not have sufficient impairment at the beginning of the study. So get a bottle, label it “Memory Pills,” fill it with candy or nuts, and take one every time you forget to.

Ginkgo biloba tincture has been well studied for the treatment of those dealing with Alzheimer’s and dementia. In one study, of those taking the leaf extract, 27 percent maintained cognitive functioning and memory, while 86 percent of the placebo group lost functioning. CAUTION: Ginkgo increases aspirin’s blood-thinning effects.

Mental exercise (word puzzles, reading, writing) and physical exercise are important aspects of nourishing and tonifying the brain and memory. Memorize poetry and recite it for friends. Volunteer for Community Theater and memorize your part. The more you use your memory, the stronger it will be.

Lower your blood pressure and improve your memory. In a study of 200 men and women, those with even moderately high blood pressure (164/89) had more memory problems than those with normal blood pressures. A dropperful of motherwort tincture (Leonurus cardiaca) daily dependably lowers blood pressure and can generally be used safely with drugs if desired. (Do not use capsules of any herb while you are taking a drug.)

My father has been taking 400 IU of d-alpha tocopherol (supplement form of vitamin E) and 2-3 dropperfuls of ginkgo tincture (not capsules) since his non-Alzheimer’s dementia was first apparent, more than fifteen years ago. His doctors remain amazed at the glacial pace of his losses.

Think taking estrogen will save your memory? Think again. The largest (120 women) scientifically rigorous study (Journal of the American Medical Association, January 23, 2000), found 80 percent of the women taking estrogen replacement (and 74 percent of the women taking a placebo) had less memory, less ability to perform daily tasks, and less cognitive functioning after fifteen months of treatment.

Artwork by Lauren Curtis. See More Here

Learn more with Susun’s book: The New Menopausal Years, the Wise Woman Way

The Wise Woman Bookshop – The Journey Yoga DVD

Whether you are new, a beginning, intermediate or advanced student of the Yoga asana, there is a wonderful place for you in “The Journey”.

The story has 22 asanas (poses). A cinematic background filmed and photographed in the Pacific Northwest with breathtaking vistas helps to make the journey memorable.

With a fast version and a slower paced one, this is a journey for all to enjoy.

Learn More Here …

 Wise Woman Radio – Lauren Curtis

Susun interviews artist Lauren Curtis

Listen Here …

April / May Edition of Aspire Magazine

Aspire Mag has been inspiring women around the world since 2005. Enjoy the beautiful Apr/May “Power of Transformation” issue featuring over 60 pages of love, wisdom & inspiration from today’s leading visionaries. Enjoy immediate access to the current issue.

Read Here …

Greetings from Susun

Flash! The bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) is blooming. By the time you read this, the flowers will be gone. That’s why it is classified as a spring ephemeral (something that passes quickly). Like the coltsfoot (Tussilago farafara) featured last week, bloodroot blooms before the leaves unfurl. It is too late now to dig its roots/rhizomes; but if you intend to, mark where it grows now, when it is easy to spot.

This is the last week of our month devoted to the rose family. So much more could be said about them, so we will return again and again, to make rose petal honey, hawthorn flower wine, apple butter, so much more.

Five-petaled, numerous-stamened flowers are the primary characteristic of the rose family, but herbalists sometimes need to recognize plants when they aren’t in flower. Look closely at the base of the petiole (the leaf stalk) of plants in the rose family and you will see tiny leaf-like shapes called “stipules.”

These stipules, along with compound leaves having an odd number of leaflets, are strong secondary characteristics of the Rosaceae family.

Rosaceae improve health in many ways. For now, let us make a classic astringent tonic that capitalizes on one of the rose family’s most potent powers: the ability to tighten and contract tissues, that is, astringency.

Rosaceae Tonic Tincture

Dig roots* as early in the spring as possible. Soak in cold water to loosen soil and gently remove dirt with your fingers or a gentle brush. Rinse well, chop coarsely, fill your jar with the chopped roots, add 100 proof vodka right up to the top, seal, label, wait six weeks, then use. Dose is a dropperful at a time, repeated as needed to counter diarrhea, tighten gums, and eliminate water retention before menses and during menopause.

* The roots of any rose family member may be used for this remedy, but blackberry, cinquefoil, avens, and agrimony roots are considered the strongest acting and are therefore the best choices.

To distinguish blackberries from raspberries, look for the white bloom on the canes and leaves of the raspberry.

And remember that not all cinquefoils have five-part leaves; some have seven-part leaves, like this marijuana look alike, Potentilla recta, or silverweed (Potentilla anserina) which has nine or more leaflets.

I smile when I think that these weekly messages are helping you accumulate a store of remedies, a head full of ideas, and a heart attuned to the earth’s green blessings. The small events of our days are vital in reweaving the healing cloak of the Ancients.

Green blessings,

Susun
susunweed.com

DRAGONFLY WINGS by JoAnne Dodgson, Ed.D.

Maia woke up with a start, her heart racing. She got out of bed and fumbled through the darkness, trailing her hand along the wall searching for the light. Blinking against the brightness that suddenly filled the room, she brewed herself a cup of chamomile tea, hoping to soothe herself back to sleep and leave behind the troubling dream that kept waking her up in the middle of the night.

The dream was always the same. There she was, standing on a moss-covered cliff watching the ocean waves crash against the rocks far below. A golden dragonfly with glistening wings suddenly appeared. The dragonfly hovered high above the ocean, just beyond her reach, mysteriously calling to her. She felt an irresistible urgency to catch it, to claim it, to keep it for her very own. Staring intently at the dragonfly, Maia took several steps back and then ran forward as fast as she could. She leapt off the cliff, desperately reaching out for the dragonfly. She caught it, cupping it between both of her hands, feeling delicate dragonfly wings fluttering against her palms. Her delight turned to terror when she suddenly realized there was no longer any ground beneath her feet. Flailing her arms in distress, forgetting all about the dragonfly, Maia plummeted toward the ocean. And that’s when she woke up, night after night, in the midst of a free-fall toward the rocky shore far below.

Maia finished sipping her tea and went back to bed, tossing and turning for a few more restless hours. She was relieved when morning finally arrived. In the soft glow of sunrise, she eagerly got dressed and went to the beach, hoping this daily ritual would bring her some relief. Hurrying along the sandy shore, she rushed by the tide pools filled with starfish and seashells which she usually enjoyed taking time to explore. But she was too preoccupied with the dragonfly dream which kept lingering in her mind, even in the daylight hours. Maia couldn’t shake the feeling that had been haunting her for quite some time – her deep yearning to catch and hold onto something beautiful, something enchanting, something to fill up the empty places in her life.

Maia waded into the ocean and jumped over the frothy waves, finally diving in for a swim. Exhilarated by her immersion in the vibrant salty waters, Maia faced the distant horizon and swam as far and as fast as she could. The simple act of taking action, of moving under her own power and holding her own against the ocean tides, filled Maia with a great sense of accomplishment. Her mind raced with seductive imaginings of what it’d be like to just keep on swimming, to never turn back and leave everything behind.

When her arms and legs began to ache, Maia stopped to catch her breath, floating on her back in the rolling waves. She glanced toward the shore, seeking reassurance that she really hadn’t gone too far. From the corner of her eye, she saw something glowing in the water. She swam quickly to catch up with the trail of shimmery lights. Suddenly a searing pain erased Maia’s awareness of anything else. She hadn’t noticed the stinging tentacles dangling below the surface near the jellyfish’s alluring glow. Numbed and disoriented, Maia lay back and floated further out to sea.

Like a leaf on the water, she floated between worlds, in a time beyond time, in a space where the ways of the world, as she knew it, washed away. Embraced in the warm salty waters, Maia sensed shifting shadows of darkness and light beyond her closed eyelids. She felt ocean tides echoing inside the rhythms of her breath. Flocks of pelicans and seagulls guided her safe passage from above. Sea turtles watched over from below as Maia floated out beyond the coral reef, leaving sight of land.

It was boisterous laughter that finally woke Maia up. Disoriented, she tread water and quickly spun around, trying to figure out where she was and who it was she heard laugh. Fear gripped her belly when she discovered there was nobody, nothing, around her except the endless expanse of water which stretched from horizon to horizon in all directions. Panic surged through her veins when she felt something move underwater and brush against her legs.

The rippling surface of the sea suddenly burst open with wild commotion. Countless dolphins leapt toward the sky, spinning, flipping and splashing back to sea. They called out to one another with staccato clicks and melodic whistles, creating a harmony of sound and meaning and movement, filling the air with magic, music and laughter. Maia couldn’t help but smile watching the dolphins. They exuded boundless freedom, thriving in their exuberant play.

Maia soon became aware of an invitation coming her way. She understood without question the dolphins’ messages to her, though no words were spoken aloud. The dolphins had something to say about coming out of hiding, about the ways she kept holding herself back. So with playful abandon, she jumped into the soaring waves of dolphins, naturally synchronizing her movements with theirs. She dove to the depths of the sea, gliding gracefully, reaching out to connect with the diverse flow of life all around. With focused intent, she swam back up toward the surface. Bursting out from the water, she sailed into the sky, spinning, flipping and splashing back into the ocean waves. And on she danced between worlds of water and air, of spirit and physical form.

As the rhythms of the dance slowed, Maia rested contentedly inside a circle of dolphins, floating in the vastness of her joy. One of the dolphins suddenly disappeared beneath the waves, diving toward the ocean floor. A few moments later the great dolphin leapt from the water, clasping a red starfish wrapped in flowing strings of seaweed. The dolphin sailed through the air before diving into the waters beside Maia, hardly making a splash. Maia reached out to touch the elder dolphin’s silvery body, enthralled with her power and grace. Speaking in lyrical clicks and harmonic whistles, the dolphin looped the ribbon of luminaria and kelp around Maia’s neck and placed the starfish on her heart.

Maia immediately sensed the starfish had something she wanted, something precious she thought she’d lost and would never find again. The starfish reminded Maia of the agreement they’d once made, heart to heart, in a time beyond time. The starfish was to be a guardian of her spirit, particularly of those pieces that Maia left behind while navigating the turbulences of human life. Pieces of her joy. Elements of her power. Pictures of her purpose. Rhythms of her creativity and voice. The starfish agreed to tend to those lost soul pieces, to lovingly hold them in safekeeping until Maia was ready to call them back and reclaim them as her very own.

Maia’s tears flowed into the salty sea, releasing the bindings of long-ago losses, opening space to welcome in all that was naturally her. Placing both hands on her heart, she touched the starfish tenderly and breathed deeply, calling herself back home. Subtly at first, she felt a sweet vibration came alive inside her. The sensation expanded, filling her up, like thousands of dragonflies fluttering their wings, drumming the rhythms of her spirit, fanning the song of her soul, inside each and every cell. Maia floated in the spaciousness of her being, holding onto her cherished rememberings – of her beauty, of her passionate enchantment with life, of her own undeniable power and grace.

Flowing with the tides of the great waters, Maia continued her journey home. Pelicans and seagulls guided her safe passage from above. Sea turtles watched over from below. Maia crossed over the coral reef, coming closer to the land. When she opened her eyes, she discovered she’d washed ashore, nestled in the sand among a gathering of shells.

She untied the ribbon of seaweed from around her neck and set the luminaria and kelp free in the ebbing tides. Placing the starfish in a tide pool, Maia shared her gratitude for the sacred safekeeping. She immersed her hands in the ocean waters, wiggling her fingers and splashing around, sending rippling waves of playful greetings to the dolphins out at sea. She walked along the shore, moving in rhythm with her spirit, leaving a trail of her footsteps gently imprinted in the sundrenched sand.

Copyright © JoAnne Dodgson

JoAnne Dodgson, Ed.D. is a healer, teacher and medicine storyteller in ancient Peruvian medicine ways, Ka Ta See.

She has a doctorate in counseling psychology and over twenty years experience offering counseling, ceremonial gatherings, holistic healing and workshops.  JoAnne lives in the enchanted desert mesas of New Mexico.

JoAnne’s writings include medicine stories and five books: Unleashing Love, MoonDance Journal, Walking the Spiral Path, Gifts of the Grandmother, and Cocooning.

 MoonDance Journal

MoonDance Journal is a one-of-a-kind journal ~ a unique sacred space for exploring your inner journeys, spiritual quests and life path throughout thirteen moon cycles of a lunar year. MoonDance Journal invites you to connect with the dynamic energies of each moon phase and your own unfolding process of healing, transformation and change. Write, draw, creatively express who you are ~ your joys, your dreams, your passions!

Order Here …

Wise Woman University

Shaman’s Circle: Earth Spirits and Guides with JoAnne Dodgson
Learn ancient healing ways of the shaman to awaken and enrich your connection with the vast web of life. Each lesson offers discussion of unique aspects of the shaman’s path such as bridging the varied dimensions of reality, living in balance with natural cycles and creating sacred ceremony.
Learn More Here

Manifesting with the Moon with JoAnne Dodgson
Connect with the energies of the Moon and her cycles to awaken your natural ability to manifest your dreams.With the moon as a guide, you will engage in an organic manifestation process which begins with claiming your intent, giving voice to your visions and dreams.
Learn More Here

Wise Woman Radio

Susun Weed interviews author and intuitive healer, Lynnet McKenzie

Listen Here

Greetings from Susun

As I mentioned last week, the rose family, Rosaceae, includes more than roses. Which is not to knock roses. They offer us a bounty: heart-opening beauty, delicious smells, edible fruits/hips, and potent medicine too.

Members of the rose family have compound leaves. That is, their leaves are composed or compounded of several leaflets. And the number of leaflets is always odd: 3, 5, 7, 9 and so on, with opposing pairs up lined up along the leaf stalk (petiole) and one single leaflet at the tip.

Wild strawberries have the least possible number of leaflets: three.

Take a look around and see if there are wild cinquefoils – five or seven leaflets – hugging the ground.

Perhaps you will also find avens smiling up at you – with 9, 11, and more leaflets.

And count the leaves as they emerge on the roses.

Rose leaf buds, newly emerged rose leaves, and rose flower buds contain hormonal precursors. My friend Rina Nissim, author of Natural Healing in Gynecology, and the founder and director of the Wild Rose Clinic in Geneva, Switzerland, taught me to use glycerin as a way to grab those hormonal helpers.

Rose Bud Remedy

Combine two ounces of water with one ounce of glycerin (generally available at the drugstore). Tightly pack a four-ounce jar with rose leaf (or flower) buds and cover completely with the water/glycerin mix. (If necessary, it is fine to add a little more water to cover the buds totally.) Cap, label with date and contents, and let it rest away from heat and direct light, shaking on occasion. Your remedy is ready in six weeks. It is not long lived and needs to be made afresh each year.

Rina uses 1-2 dropperfuls of rose leaf bud glycerin macerate each morning before eating to relieve pituitary and ovarian distresses, and to ease pubertal, menstrual, and menopausal problems.

Next week we’ll explore the astringent powers of the rose family.

Keep on enjoying those green blessings,

Susun
www.susunweed.com

Reflecting on the Nature of ‘Wholeness’ and ‘Holistic’ by Isla Burgess

Image: Amazing Mandelbrot Fractal (Wikimedia Commons:Dr. Wolfgang Beyer, physicist

Those of us involved in the use of herbs for health and healing would most likely say that we are ‘holistic’ in our approach. I wonder how many of us actually reflect regularly on what that means, in our lives, in our practice, in our relationships with the plants we use as medicine and with the earth that grows those plants.

‘Holism’ is defined in the Concise Oxford Dictionary as the “Tendency in nature to form wholes that are more than the sum of the parts by creative evolution”. A definition of ‘Holistic health’ is “..taking into account one’s body, mind, emotions, and spiritual life”, but if we consider the definition, it is about more than the sum of all these.

A question I often ask myself is “where is the ‘whole’ in holistic healing today?

We, in the west, live in an increasingly fragmented world, one in which we see ourselves as outsiders looking in on it rather than participants in it. The word ‘science’ means ‘to know’ and there are many ways of ‘knowing’. Holistic Science could therefore be the study of knowing what is  ‘wholeness’. That is what this  of article is about – knowing what is to be a participant in the experience of ‘wholeness’.

Experiencing/talking about ‘wholeness’ is not an easy task so I will be talking around the issue a lot.  For this article I will begin with what is at the core of our practice – the plant.

There are many ways to know about a plant. When I was very young I learned about how they grow, what they need to grow (food CO2, O2, water) and how good they were to eat. Later in high school I learned about their structure and function and that they had ‘Binomial Nomenclature’. Even later I learned from Culpepper and Juliette de Bairacli-Levy that they could be used as medicine. I began formally studying this but at the same time felt a strong intuitive perceiving, another language to learn. Teaching students caused an erring towards my rational mind, the plant had this action or actions because of certain phytochemical(s), I even got excited when there was ‘scientific’ research to support these actions. I had a measure of success as a practitioner (and still do) but then at 59 I decided to study ‘Holistic Science’ at Schumacher College in Devon, England. It was there that I encountered ‘wholeness’.

I now believe that if we teach people only about what a plant’s actions are and therefore what its medicinal uses are and how to manufacture it or create a formula then we are missing out on experiencing its ‘wholeness’. As we have always been taught, ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’ – I would take that idea further to say that the whole is expressing itself in each part (taken from an understanding of the holographic nature of all things).

An experience of ‘wholeness’ in another life form such as a medicinal plant not only fine tunes our use of that plant as medicine but it creates a participatory relationship that optimalises our facilitation of another person’s healing with respect to the other life form that triggered it. It also sets the scene for a caring respect for the sustainable survival of that plant.

If you take the time and compare the qualities that different plants of the same species possess when they are growing in different environments, their macro- qualities such as those we would look for to distinguish one species from another are the same but are the micro-qualities? These micro-qualities are how they grow, how they feel, intensity of colour and taste etc? In my experience these qualities are not the same. Even the intensity in taste changes. It is easy to understand why the causal model of ‘this plant does that due to a particular constituent’ is increasingly at the core of Herbal Medicine Education and thinking. It is the mainstream medical model and so it poses less challenge to us as we seek credibility through being similar rather than offering something different. If we use ‘biomimicry’ as a guide then diversity is a ‘healthier’ state.

I feel that it is quite disrespectful to a plant to reduce it to a single constituent/action, it is a complex life form and brings that diverse complexity (its ‘wholeness’) when we use it as medicine or food. In a relatively complex paper on ‘Characterising herbs in their Qualitative Consistency’ by Philip Franses and Andrea Lugli, they address the question “Is there such a thing as the whole herb that defies description into its parts?”. They challenge the commonly held view that a pharmaceutical compound (or isolated constituent) is more reliable because it has eliminated redundancy and diversity, or whether the multiple possibilities in a herb contributes to its qualities. (We need to note here that how a plant is extracted will to a greater or lesser degree reduce this complexity.)

What they demonstrated using mathematical formulations was that it is the “…intrinsic quality of the herb that is very robust and independent of any single active constituent.” A lack of variability is shown in this paper to be something “…unnatural.”

What I understand from this is that if we claim to be involved in Holistic Health and healing;
♣  there is more to consider when using a plant for medicine than the sum of its constituents. That we need to take both its primary qualities (those that can be measured) and its secondary qualities into consideration.
♣ that if we only consider the constituents as a causal relationship then we miss the relationship with that plant as a ‘whole’ and reduce its perceived role in healing.
♣ that it is in the variability of the whole plant that its whole potential healing ability arises and not the causal connection of its constituents.

Isla M Burgess MSc  Dip Tchg, Dip HM. FNZAMH.

Isla is currently researching  the development and application of a new methodology for the assessment of the qualities that plants possess. She recently completed a MSc in Holistic Science through Schumacher College, Devon, England as she felt this would offer a deeper understanding of living in relationship with our world and in particular her relationship with the plant world.

An inspiring teacher, Isla has been an educator for the past 40 years, firstly as a teacher of Science and Biology and then as Director of the International College of Herbal Medicine (2000-2011) and Director of the Waikato Centre for Herbal Medicine, Waikato, New Zealand (1990-2000). She is also an experienced herbal medicine practitioner and has presented at conferences both in New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United States.

More recently the description of ‘Wild and Medicinal Plant Conservationist’ aptly describes her concerns. She is the  interim convener for the International Research Group for the Conservation of Medicinal Plants (www.irgcmp.org) and has appeared in two recent documentaries ‘Earth Whisperers Paptuanuku’ (New Zealand) and Numen (USA). She is the author of ‘Weeds Heal. A Working Herbal’.

Upcoming Teleseminar with Isla Burgess and Susun Weed

Register now for this free event!

March 28th, 2012 – 9pm EST

Join us for this fireside chat while these two amazing herbalists talk healing, herbs and the Wise Woman Tradition. In association with the Midwest Women’s Herbal Conference.

Register Here

Plant Immersion with Isla Burgess at the Wise Woman Center

June 23-24, 2012

Engage fully with the plants. Actively participate in their world. Reweave yourself into the plant/person relationship in healing.

You will be immersed through simple exercises into the pace and vibration of the green nation. Then you will be inspired by the plant’s inner qualities, allowing you to begin to make connections and to actually form a relationship that will benefit you for the rest of you life.

Learn More Here …

Wise Woman Radio

Susun Weed interviews herbalist, author and intuitive Thea Summer Deer

Listen Here …

Greeting from Susun

News Flash! The coltsfoot is blooming!

See those many-rayed, small yellow flowers? They aren’t dandelion. Look closely and you’ll see that the stalk is covered with white hairs and little scales, while the stalk of a dandelion flower is smooth. This is coltsfoot, a common roadside plant throughout much of the temperate regions, and often the first yellow of spring. Because it has blossoms before there are leaves, it is also known as “son before the father.”

Later in the year we will harvest some of the leaves for our smoking mixes, but right now is the time to make cough remedies from coltsfoot flowers. The botanical name – Tussilago farafara says it all. “Tussa” is to cough, as in pertussis; “far” is where we want the cough to go, far, far away.

Cough Go Away Herbal Remedy – Learn to Make it Here

And now back to our regularly scheduled program: the rose family. Yes, the Rosaceae family provides plenty of beautiful flowers, and lots of medicinal plants, but did you know that most of the fruit you eat is from the rose family? Apples, cherries, peaches, pears, apricots, plums, raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries are all members of the rose family. (Almonds too!)

Celebrate spring with the rose family by making this delicious marinated fruit dish.

Maple Vanilla Strawberries
Four one-cup servings

Cut one pound of fresh or frozen strawberries in half and immediately stir in one tablespoonful lime juice; mix well. Add 4 tablespoonfuls maple syrup and ½ teaspoon strong vanilla extract; stir until berries are well coated. Let marinate at room temperature for at least 8 hours or overnight before eating. The taste is best if it is not refrigerated.

A word about selection of your ingredients, if you please.

Since many of the rose family fruits, especially strawberries, are grown with heavy-duty chemicals, I opt for organic (frozen) strawberries most of the time, but indulge in the fresh strawberries from Florida (under $2 a pound at my local supermarket) to celebrate spring. You may argue with me, and I am happy to have you do what makes you feel comfortable and safe, but I don’t wash my berries. I sincerely doubt that any chemicals can be washed off of a soft fruit; and I believe that any bacterial contamination will be spread, not eliminated, by washing.

Since citrus fruits are also subjected to strong chemicals, I buy bottled organic lime juice rather than the fresh fruit. And, yes, I use organic maple syrup as well. Grade B, the dark stuff, is my preference. Recent scientific research has found unique, potent antioxidants in maple syrup, so splurge and enjoy the gifts of the sweet trees. My favorite vanilla for this dish is organic Madagascar vanilla extract available from Frontier Herb.

Happy Spring!
Think green blessings, Susun
www.susunweed.com

Womb Heart of Menopause by Roslyne Sophia Breillat

Although women in contemporary society are supposedly liberated and free, in this society the truth of the feminine essence is not truly honoured, acknowledged, perceived or loved as a vast power of creativity, sensuality and sexuality or a profound void of stillness and peace. For much of the feminine essence remains suppressed, remains hidden, remains unseen. A woman’s power arises from the profound depths within the heart of her womb, from the stillness, silence and vastness of the primordial void that births all life. Here, from within the deep darkness of this sacred place, she menstruates, she makes love, she births her babies and pours forth her creativity. And here, from within the deep darkness of this sacred place, she prepares for the inner descent of her menopausal journey, a journey long forgotten by contemporary society as a powerful rite of passage that potentially awakens and deepens her female wisdom and her female truth.

She, this wild, wise being of the moon, when aligned with her physical, psychological,  psychic and spiritual needs, naturally and harmoniously flows with rhythmic lunar phases throughout her monthly moon cycles and throughout her menopausal metamorphosis, for her inherent nature is receptive, yin, lunar, of the darkness, of the night. She is of the Earth, and in the open heart space of her sacred womb, her love is deep and all embracing, her wildness is free and untamed, her strength is natural and powerful, her sensitivity is compassionate and all embracing. And yet, she lives within a patriarchal world that abuses, rapes, pollutes and destroys the sacred beauty of her beloved Earth, causing her to fear, to doubt, to become unsure of who she is, to be led astray, into a world that runs from the profundity of her true power and the vastness of her true nature.

She starves her body because she feels she is not beautiful enough or not thin enough, she works too hard and too many long hours because she feels that the masculine world will accept her, applaud her, tell her she is good enough if she tries, forces, chases, achieves, produces and pursues. She tries to be so very perfect because she no longer knows how to simply be. And while her mind is involved in trying so hard, and while she is pushing her body so hard, she forgets the inherent silence and beauty of her womb, this womb that was once honoured in ancient cultures as the heart of the Earth, the heart of the Universe, the heart of all Life. She forgets that this womb consciousness is her guiding power, her guiding light and the infinite source of her love. For she, like the world, has fallen asleep, has forgotten, has dishonoured and denied the wise ancient mysteries and open hearted power of the womb.

If she truly and deeply and intimately listens to the fine essence and presence of her womb heart during the flowing dance of her lunar cycles, she will fully surrender to her bleeding womb during menstruation and rejoice in the beauty of her moontime and in her inherent place as a woman of this Earth. She will retreat from the busyness of her daily life and listen to her womb consciousness, honour her body’s need for rest, for replenishment, for renewal, and align with her natural cyclic lunar rhythm, for, if she pauses, if she listens, if she opens, if she surrenders, if she rests, her days and nights of bleeding become days and nights of heightened consciousness, of deepening insights, of exquisite dreams that reveal the truth of her innate connection with Mother Earth, of her mystery, of her power.

The patriarchal world is not a world of love, for it is not a world that truly and wholly honours the truth of the feminine. It is a world that corrupts, pollutes and destroys. It is not a world that lives in openhearted gratitude for the sacred presence of the Earth. And so, a woman who is consciously embracing her menopausal journey is learning to live as a woman of the Earth through learning to be in the world, but not of the world. She is facing and relinquishing the myriad untruths she has absorbed from this world, the untruths of her femaleness, the untruths of ageing, the untruth that she must not be who she is, that she must look thinner, must look younger, must look artificial, must look unreal, must not be a  wise menopausal woman. For menopause, like menstruation, offers her a deeper place of consciousness, a deeper presence of love. And yet, her menopausal pilgrimage asks her to dive deeper than all she has experienced as a menstruating woman, for her menopausal wisdom arises from the primordial deep of her inner ocean, of the infinite wellspring within the abyss.

The menopausal metamorphosis is potentially a fire of transformation and a transformational phase of psycho-spiritual disintegration and healing. This transformational fire is raw, it is wild, it is deep. It does not ask for niceness, familiarity or compromise. It does not ask for faintheartedness, pretence or fear. It does not ask to be hidden, to be suppressed, to be seen as an illness in need of treatment or a medical condition in need of a cure. It asks for All. She asks for All. And her wombheart offers her a depth of wisdom and power that is uniquely available during this transformational journey, if she is willing to fully and openheartedly let go of whoever she was before menopause, to release all that she no longer needs, to open to the unfathomable depths of this powerful metamorphosis and receive the power, freedom and wisdom of the Elderwoman, of the Crone.

WOMBHEART of MENOPAUSE ~  written and illustrated by Roslyne Sophia Breillat
Copyright ~ Roslyne Sophia Breillat ©
Not to be reproduced without author’s permission

Sophia is a wise woman who lives, writes, and paints from the heart. Her prolific articles and paintings embrace the wisdom and grace of the female essence and the beauty of the earth. She is acknowledged as a powerful and courageous writer whose creative work features throughout many international websites and magazines and she is the author of the book, Womb of Wisdom, The Sacred Journey of Menopause… Her website is an abundant offering of female wisdom that nurtures and inspires. She is also available for wildheartwisdom mentoring and counselling  consultations via telephone or Skype.

Website ~ www.wildheartwisdom.com
Email ~ sophia@wildheartwisdom.com

WWU – Dawning of Wisdom: Beginning the Journey of Menopause

with Roslyne Sophia Breillat

Are you ready to awaken more deeply to your female power and intuitive wisdom through fully embracing the profound transformation of menopause?

This online course at the Wise Woman University offers gentle encouragement and loving wisdom for the woman who is beginning or approaching her menopausal journey. Open enrollment.

Learn More Here …

Teleseminar – First Aid for Children the Wise Woman Way with Susun Weed

March 13, 2012 – 9pm EST

Join Susun as she discusses herbal, homeopathic, and home remedies for: bruises, scrapes, stings, burns, trauma, digestive upsets, colds, fevers, and other topics.

Register Here …

Susun Weed at Mirabai – Herbal Remedies for the Winter Doldrums

Sat, March 17, 2012. 2 pm – 4:30 pm EST

Don’t worry, be happy. It’s sound advice, but the stress of modern life makes it difficult to apply – not to mention the dark and cold of winter. Come learn about herbs that can stress-proof your life, invigorate your energy and brighten your mood. Join us here at Mirabai for a truly “green” boost with Susun this St. Patrick’s Day.

Learn More Here …

$25 if registered and prepaid by March 15th; $30 if registering after the 15th.

Wise Woman Radio – Daniela Sales

Susun Weed interviews urban herbalist and teacher, Daniela Sales.

Listen Here …

Featured Website – Unfolding Enlightenment

Discover Unfolding Enlightenment and deep soul healing.

Read More Here …

Wise Woman Ezine – we appreciate your support

Thank you to the many who have registered! We appreciate your support!

For others, you can help with a one time registration for a perpetual membership to the weekly ezine for only 11.95. This is a voluntary donation, and not compulsory.

Thank you in advance for supporting the Wise Woman Herbal Ezine and Susun’s generosity – We appreciate you!

Re-register here to get bonus MP3 “Nutritive and Tonic Herbs” $20 value.