As a mother, educator, wife, writer and budding herbalist I often feel the pressure to go full steam ahead even when I don’t have the energy to. I think part of this has to do with buying into the idea that we always have to be “on”. Another part of this though, is not taking my cues from nature. I remember a long time ago I told my friend Bruce that sometimes I wanted to be out socializing but just as often I wanted to be home writing and being quiet. He replied “Well the moon is not always full.” That wisdom provided the first huge shift in my thinking about my energy and how I used it. Watching the seasons and celebrating them has provided me with my second huge shift.

As a lifelong city dweller I’ve lived much of my life divorced from nature and her cycles. I can eat strawberries in December, write in well-lit rooms at 2am, and work the same schedule year round in an office where I barely catch glimpses of the sunlight or rain. Nothing in the city encourages me to take my cues from nature and we are expected to be as “on” in December as we are in June. But notice: most of the flowers are gone in December. The trees shed their leaves and instead flaunt their elegant bones. The vibrant greens, reds, pinks, and yellows give way to deep browns. Animals hibernate. In the natural world there is stillness. Darkness is abundant at this time and just as the seeds in the earth rest, we too are invited to bask in a long, dark, delicious sleep. This is what winter is for. Going underground to nourish and replenish ourselves.

During fall and winter I make a conscious effort to slow down, rest more, gather my energy and reflect on what I am grateful for. I notice that the more I imitate the energy of the season, the better I feel.

How do you honor the energy of winter?

Artemisia growing through the concrete

Has artemisia come to help us unlock the deep dreams that day to day living has swept seemingly out of reach? Has she come to guard us and protect us while we realign ourselves with the strength of feminine energy? Has she come–with her liver cleansing and digestive tonic– to help ease the pain of those sisters who can not honor their monthly cycle by calling “time-out”? I think she has.

Artemisia is an emmenagogue which means it stimulates menstruation. I combined mugwort (artemisia’s other name) with ginger once to get my flow started a little earlier than usual. I was planning to go on a road trip and attend a conference and I wanted to be at the end of my cycle instead of the beginning when I got there. Imagine my surprise when my cycle came within days of taking this brew regularly. My moon cycle was easy and by the time I got on the road–it was over!

I know many women–myself included– who enjoy more comfortable periods as a result of this herb. Mugwort is strong enough that just a pinch added to an infusion is enough. I combine mugwort with red raspberry leaf, nettle leaf, or dandelion leaf during menstruation.

My husband watched a special on Bob Marley and was moved that his life, and the lives of those around him, were so guided by dream and vision. He asked me what herb would be good to help him dream and I suggested artemisia. He drank a tea made of the herb. Not only did my husband dream, his dream contained a vision for my herbal work, and he actually remembered it in detail–this is something that rarely happens.

Sewing a little pillow with lavender, white sage and a pinch of artemisia can carry you into deep, delicious dreamwork and sleep.

Artemisia smoke is is wonderful for guided meditation and visualization. You can use it as a smudge or smoke it if you choose. Whenever I have burned artemisia a tangible sense of calm has come over the room and the people in it.

I learned about the power of this herb while standing in an area of a park where the artemisia was as tall as I am. The stalks of artemisia were dry and brown but they were still wonderfully fragrant. A little goes a long way. Some people–myself included–can not use large amounts of this herb as the dreams it brings on are so real we wake up feeling as if we did not sleep. Start with small doses of artemisia when you begin working with it. But do work with this wonderful, abundant herb. I believe artemisia vulgaris is here for many reasons. If you get close to her, she just might share some of those reasons with you.

What have your adventures with artemisia been like?

My Good Friend, Oak

I have a feeling that different trees provide us with different medicines just as plants do. In my experience, we don’t even have to create anything from trees to receive their healing benefits. We can just sit with them and have positive shifts in our energy or receive insights.

Baba Rahsan Abdul Hakim, herbalist and Founder of Sundial, once told me “Trees have a healing spirit. You know herbs have a healing spirit. You don’t have to pluck it or pick it for it to work with you.” He explained that many of our ancestors would simply sit with nature to receive healing; but “after we lost the knowledge (through colonization and enslavement) we have to make tea and thing like that, we never had to do that before. That’s just come (recent) business.”

Trees have allowed me to experience this older form of healing. Every time I sit with one, I come away changed. 

This oak I’m with always surrounds me with an energy of support long after I leave the park. It reminds me that I can only grow when I nourish and nurture my roots. It helps me be unabashed in my love for nature–even when I am alone, I have no issue walking up to the tree to lean on it or even give it a hug. My friend the oak says that there is a time for everything: from quiet growth to abundant sharing.

As the leaves fall and change color this Autumn, please don’t forget to sit and listen to the wisdom of the trees and plants.

What has nature told you lately?

Brook Park in the South Bronx

I was headed to teach a workshop on creating herbal honeys at Brook Park. I would be reconnecting with youth who were taking part in the Padre Plaza Success Garden Summer Camp.

I’d last seen the kids and their garden in June when I taught a class on some of the herbs at Padre Plaza. I also met Jada then, an amazing ten year old gardener who planted most of the herbs we’d be working with. Imagine my joy when upon return, I found that the youths’ adoration of the herbs had grown as much as the plants had. Click here to see Jada’s interview.

Aresh Javadi, my friend and the inspired co-founder of More Gardens, and Kate Temple-West, a wise-woman, poet and gifted herbalist, brought huge jars of delicious honeys, lavender, sage, lemon balm, and wild mint. We then gathered some more fresh herbs from the garden. We returned to our gorgeous outdoor workshop space with armfulls of lemon balm, lettuce leaf basil, marigolds, mullein, and chocolate mint.

It was time to make herbal honey!

Little Honey Hands

Why make herbal honey? Because honey alone is one of the most delicious medicines I know of. It is antibiotic, antibacterial, mineral rich and able to ease coughs better than commercial cough syrup in a single bound. It’s also great on scrapes, burns and cuts. Once you team honey up with an herb, you have a fantastically healing combination. Honey preserves many of the medicinal properties of herbs and you can add it to teas, spread it on bread, take it by the teaspoon, add it to elixirs or use it on your skin. I’ve done all of the above with herbal honeys and have a cabinet full of them to testify to their goodness.

So here is what you need to make an herbal honey:

• a jar
• fresh herbs
• honey
• a chopstick or strong plant stems or a spoon.

You rip the plant material into small pieces and pack the jar with it. Then you slowly cover the plant with honey. It is important to use the chopstick or the plant stem (we used those in our workshop and had great success) to push the plant material down after you have poured honey over it.We do this to release air bubbles in the medicine and ensure that the jar is full of honey and herbs instead of air!

Once you have filled your jar with honey, cover it and put it away for six weeks. When you encounter your honey again it will taste like whatever herb you infused it with. I can’t describe how delectable this can be. You’ll probably forget it is supposed to be good for you.

A few of my favorite herbal honeys are: sassafras (leaf and/or bark), lemon balm, lavender,rose hip,and sage.

By the time our workshop was over, everyone was a happy, sticky mess. The beautiful jars of honey soaked herbs were cradled in the palms of the children. I left the Bronx elated: the future of healing is in wonderful hands.

This change reminds me of how after taking my first herbal class, something in my world seemed to shift.

Me and my friend Oak

Suddenly I wanted to know the names of trees. I was fascinated by the plants growing in the cracks of the sidewalk. I could not go to the woods without coming back with something to make tea or a tincture from.  I had no clue that herbs would become as important to me as they have.

Recently a beautiful film crew of two came to my home to interview me about my surprise journey into herbalism. This is the video they made:

http://mondoblack.com/2011/08/black-roots-episode-8/

Please check it out and let me know what you think.

World Fellowship Gothic

The more time I spend here the more convinced I am that just as some of our ailments can be cured in the kitchen by our food choices, other illnesses might be healed by spending more time connecting with nature and community.

My new friend, Ellen, recently told me about a study done on hospital patients. Some patients were placed in rooms where they could look out on a parking lot and others faced nature. Which group do you think healed faster? The ones facing nature. Well, since being at The World Fellowship Center I’ve witnessed nature work her healing magic on someone very close to me: my husband.

My husband, Dominique, has been waking up sneezing and going to bed coughing practically every day for about a year. The doctor could not determine a physical cause. She checked Dominique’s throat and prescribed him cough syrup. This suppressed the cough for a short time but it came back.  When I gave my husband herbs for coughs or colds, they had no effect on him. But when I gave him herbs relating to the nervous system, they helped. This let me know that the coughing was a symptom of something beyond the chest or throat. 

My teacher, Robin Rose Bennett, always says “as healers we treat people, not symptoms.” It took me a moment to fully grasp this, but when I did it changed the way I looked at herbs. Two people who visit a healer with the same ailment might need totally different treatments. Our health is impacted by so many things: sleeping habits, dietary choices, environment, social life. One person might have caught a cough because she can’t sleep and her immunity is down and another might have spent a weekend in a colder climate than she is used to. These two people would need different treatments although they are experiencing the same symptom. But the only way a doctor  could find this out would be by sitting and listening to each woman’s story.

So what would a healer prescribe to my husband? A big dose of green and community.

The World Fellowship Center

Apparently this was just what the doctor should have ordered because my husband has not had a bout of sneezing or coughing since we’ve been at The World Fellowship Center.

All this to say that sometimes instead of reaching for medicine, we might need to reach for a friend or a group of friends or a map that leads to the woods.

Have your symptoms ever been signals? What directions did they point you in?

Well it was too late to turn back. My family and I had traveled eight hours to Conway, New Hampshire to work on the farm of The World Fellowship Center for two weeks. The desire to get my hands in the earth and learn more about food and farming far outweighed my fear of bears.

My longing to get my hands dirty started coming to the fore during my last year as an herbal apprentice with Robin Rose Bennett. Robin emphasizes the importance of learning about the plants by seeing them in their natural environments. Knowing that mullein thrives in rocky soil can help you figure out that it can clear hard, dry conditions in your body. Seeing how deeply resilient dandelions are might clue you in that a part of their medicine helps to energize and strengthen our bodies so that we can grow under any circumstances.

Beloved herbalist and midwife Tioma Allison taught me that this way of learning about the healing medicines of plants is part of The Doctrine of  Signatures. She and Robin both encouraged me to look closely at a plant, sit with it and consider the shape and texture of the leaves, the hair (or lack thereof) on the stalks, the colors of the fruit, the appearance of the flowers–everything can offer information about the plants if we are willing to observe them and listen. And if there ever was a place to observe and listen to plants, it is where they grow. So visiting the plants became important to me.

After I spent a season managing two local farmers’ markets, my need to get closer to the earth became irrepressible. At the markets I could barely recognize some of my favorite foods sometimes! Food came in colors and shapes I’d never seen in the supermarket.  I was amazed by the huge difference in taste between a vegetable picked six hours earlier in a town two hours away and one picked in a city across the country–or in a town way across the ocean. The flavor of farm fresh food made me want to see how things grew and play a role (however small) in nurturing that growth.

So here I am almost two weeks later in rural New Hampshire harvesting mustard greens, radishes, and snap peas; planting scallions, chard, kohlrabi and pulling lots of my favorite medicinal plants out of the ground ( I’ve learned that an herbalist’s dream is often a farmer’s nightmare). I’ve petted a pig named Sassafras, milked a goat named Merry, tasted pine resin, and taken multiple rides in the back of an ancient green Ford pick up truck.

I’ve also fallen in love with The World Fellowship Center, the beauty of the people this place attracts,  and the dedication of the Center’s Directors to environmentalism, peace and social justice. I am starting to feel as though I have found another place my soul can call home. And no, I haven’t seen any bears yet…let’s keep our fingers crossed on that one.

What are you growing this summer?

Then my midwife put my first daughter on my breast and that little girl latched on for dear life; I was immediately put on notice that we were embarking on another powerful journey. In all my preparation for birth I had barely read a word about breastfeeding. I took for granted that since it was natural it would be easy. But I learned that breastfeeding was work. I think half of the work of breastfeeding is making sure that we are well-rested, well-fed and hydrated. Many of us have a hard time taking good care of ourselves before we have children and after we have them…well, the center of our worlds shift.

Below is my list of seven herbs that supported me through over four years of nursing. Most of these herbs are not specifically related to breastfeeding, they are about making sure that we get the nutrients and nourishment that we need.  Then while we are taking our first steps in a new dance with a newborn, our bodies can go about the work of producing good breast milk.

Nursing Mother’s Care Package:

Fenugreek (Trigonellaum foenumgraecum)-These bitter seeds did such a great job at boosting my milk supply that I had to stop taking them at one point! I prepared them by putting a teaspoon of them in a cup and pouring just-boiled water over them. I let this sit for about 15 minutes.

Oat Straw (Avena sativa)- In her book, Family Herbal, Rosemary Gladstar writes “Oats provide energy by increasing our overall health and vitality.” Indeed. Oat straw does wonders for our nervous systems, it’s mineral rich and deeply nourishing.  It’s great for the skin and hair and has a reputation for boosting the libido. It’s one of my favorite herbs to drink. I prepare this as an infusion, using one part herb to five parts just-boiled water and letting it sit overnight. (I do this with the next three herbs on the list as well.)

Stinging Nettles (Urtica Dioica)-This herb has been my best friend ever since I started drinking it. Packed with iron, calcium, protein, potassium and more vitamins than I can name, nettles are a busy woman’s best friend. This plant works wonders for our entire bodies and I can’t extol its healing virtues enough. I know that my energy level has been profoundly changed by the presence of nettles in my life.

Dandelion leaves and blossoms (Taraxacum Officianale)-I adore dandelion. I think I had the energy to care for two young children, run a household, take herbal classes and write a booklet on mothering largely because of my regular infusions of dandelion and nettle leaves. Dandelion leaves contain potassium, iron, clacium and are rich in vitamins A,B,C,D. Dandelion also helps keep things moving in our lymph systems.

I once had an incredible experience using home made dandelion blossom oil on a blocked duct. I had been following the standard advice for dealing with a blocked duct: I nursed my daughter on the blocked breast first, I showered with warm water and tried to unblock the area with massage but to no avail. The breast was still hard and still hurting. Finally, I massaged a small amount of dandelion blossom oil on the swollen part of my breast and lay down to rest. When I woke up and nursed my daughter again, the swelling and pain went away. Just like that!

Red Clover Blossoms (Trifolium Pratense)-This herb is well-known for its anti-cancer properties. It is also refreshing, hormone balancing, rich in calcium and protein. These cheerful blossoms were a sweet ally for me when I was nursing. But under no circumstances should anyone with thin blood or on blood thinners use it.

Fennel (Foenicullum vulgare)- I added this tasty seed to my rotation of herbal teas when my baby was colicky. Not only was it  a delicious digestive aid,  it also helped increase my milk supply. I made fennel tea the same way I did the fenugreek tea.

Sage (Salvia officinalis)-Drinking simple tea from sage or using it as a ticnture will decrease or dry up your milk supply. I used a sage tincture when I was going to be away from my daughter for almost three days. Although she was two, she was still nursing frquently. My teacher, Robin, suggested I take sage tincture every few hours to keep the milk supply in check until I got home. It worked fantastically! No engorgement or painful breasts and when I got home my milk flowed as usual. This experience taught me a lot about the power of intentions when using herbs as well.

Mamas, I wish you deep joy, abundant rest and flowing breastmilk.

What herbs have you used during breastfeeding?

Last year I managed two farmers’ markets. During that time I ate what was in season, tried vegetables and fruit that I’d never heard of, tasted fresh tomatoes, took home greens that didn’t pass out as soon as they hit the refrigerator, and saw what broccoli looks like before all its leaves are cut away. It was an incredible education. I worked with the very people who planted, harvested, transported and  sold the food my neighbors and I were eating. I was amazed by their hard work, in awe of the flavors of the food, and saddened by how divorced I had been from the entire process of how food gets from the soil to our plates.

What does this have to do with herbs? Well, so many of our ailments have their roots in the supermarket. When I started paying more attention to what I ate, my first rule was that if I couldn’t pronounce something on the label, I’d put it back. Now I tend to say that if it has a label, I probably won’t pick it up.

Having children makes me even more conscious of the foods I buy. How can I expect my child to behave in a classroom if she had a bowl full of sugar with milk for breakfast? Why are people shocked at childhood obesity and early onset of pubery when the children are being fed regular doses of hormones in their meat? And what about the drinks labeled juice? Just water, high fructose corn syrup and red #40. This stuff is piled high on the aisles of the supermarkets in my neighborhood.

I’ve watched folks in my family turn to doctors for help although healing could have been found in the kitchen. Maybe the cure was at the farmers’ market. The prescription might have been planting seeds in a community garden.

A few weeks ago I was in a greenhouse carefully planting basil and bok choy seeds. I walked back and forth getting water from a creek to water newly emerging plants. It felt like a homecoming. That night I ate kale and bok choy harvested from a friend’s garden. She is able to feed her family because she has a close relationship with the earth and this seems to me like one of the ultimate freedoms.

So this year while I vow to keep learning about herbs and have my hands in the earth more, I also want to figure out how to help improve the health of  my community. My local farmers’ market is located between two fast food joints. I guess there is more than one way to plant a seed.

How do you plant seeds of health in your community?

My love affair with lavender started long ago.  It began with lavender’s intoxicating scent. This calming, complex, sensual fragrance is not one that is easily forgotten. The scent of lavender has followed me from New York where I first encountered it in an essential oil, to the South of Spain where I saw dried lavender buds in a market, bought a bag and placed buds in my pillowcase nightly. Lavender’s scent is a lullaby, the herb is known for inducing sleep, sweet dreams and relaxation. Lavender’s small delicate buds are surprisingly powerful, they have a way of smoothing rough emotional edges and soothing tense physical ones. The essential oil, or an infused one, is a popular addition to many massage oils because of these qualities.

When I was in Spain a poet friend told me that lavender could also help heal cuts and burns. I had first-hand experience with this when I scalded my eyelid with just boiled water (long story). I used a lavender infused honey to soothe the pain and an hour or so later when friends came to visit, no one could see any evidence that I’d burned my eyelid!  Of course you don’t have to be in dire straits to enjoy this herb. Lavender infused honey is delicious in tea and on bread. My good friend, Lorenza, even makes a delectable cake using dried lavender buds.

Recipe: Lavender Infused Honey

• Harvest or buy fresh lavender (summer)
• Put the buds in a glass jar, cover them with the best honey you can get your hands on.
• Cover and let this sit for four weeks.
• Enjoy!

When I have a headache, particularly one caused by nervous tension, I’ll rub a bit of lavender oil on my temples or my wrists. A lavender bath is also a wonderful way to get rid of a tension headache.

And did you know you can make delicious tea with lavender?  I learned this when my sister gave me a lavender travel kit. (yes, my family knows me) Put a half teaspoon of dried buds in a cup, cover with just- boiled water, let it steep about 10 minutes (do not let it sit too long –the bitterness will make the tea impossible to drink). Enjoy. A rose and lavender infusion is also a heavenly mix. Again, make sure not to let the roses steep for more than 60-75 minutes. Add the lavender during the last ten minutes or brew it separately and add to taste.

Now speaking of rose and lavender, These two ingredients feature prominently in my home made cosmetics.  My facial scrub includes lavender, rose and oats. These are all great for the skin, they exfoliate gently and the rose and lavender are toning and delicious smelling. My bath salts are a heady lavender experience with rose petals sprinkled in for good measure.

Homemade lavender bath salts

Lavender is a soothing, powerful, healer in a delicately regal body. Is it any wonder I feel my medicine bag is incomplete without lavender in it? Is it any wonder my love affair with lavender has spanned continents and time and shows no signs of ever ending?

Are you in love with lavender? How do you use it?