urban herbalism: nettle joy

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Mahalia Freed, ND

I live in the city.

10 minutes by public transit and I am in the downtown core. There is a highway very close to my house. And also, there are green spaces, and there are wild plants. Medicinal, weedy, wild plants. The blessing of using medicine from the earth, the beauty of it, is that the medicines we need are very often right in our (metaphorical) backyards.

Today I harvested wild nettles. I truly love nettles. They are not only a medicine I prescribe often – for everything from seasonal allergies to low iron – but they are delicious and nutritious as food. Allergic to spring pollens? Nettle tea to the rescue! Pregnant? Nourish with nettles! Gathering this particular weed, then, brings me great joy.

Urtica dioica (Stinging Nettle)

 

By their sting, nettles teach us to be fully present, fully aware of our bodies in space. If your mind wanders, and your shirtsleeve doesn’t entirely cover your forearm, nettle will bring you back with a sting that lasts and lasts. I was reminded. Thank you, nettle. If you are thinking about gathering nettles yourself: wear long sleeves, long pants, and gardening gloves, and make sure to pull the gloves up over your sleeves!

 

Because I was harvesting near home in a well-used public park, I happily engaged in quite a bit of impromptu herbal education. I answered people’s friendly queries as to why I was choosing to pick a stinging weed with musings on potential recipes I could choose for dinner, and I expanded on some of nettle’s uses in addressing inflammation, seasonal allergies, pregnancy, and more. I learned from one woman passing by that she grew up eating nettles in India (different species, same idea), and another couple paused their workout to tell me about a raw nettle eating competition in England (don’t do it. Remember, it stings!)

 

transporting the urban nettle harvest

 

Wildcrafting guidelines teach that one should never harvest things that are endangered or rare in the area in question. Pick plants that grow abundantly, and then take no more than 30% of the stand in that place. But please, harvest only what you will use. Depending on the plant, a little may go a long way. Lucky for me and the other urban harvesters, nettle is prolific. I harvested nearly the maximum I could fit in my bike’s panniers, which in this patch was maybe 2%.

 

 

Drying Nettle

A Wildcrafting ND’s Office

While in the past I have preferred to dry herbs spread out on a screen, our current space doesn’t allow for this. Hanging herbs in bunches is another easy, reliable way to dry them in any (indoor, ventilated) space. I strung some twine across the bay window in my treatment room, and tied bunches of 5-9 stalks across it. When that row was full, I moved onto the hallway.

 

Prep Tip

Gather any loose leaves and put them aside for dinner. If the loose leaves don’t add up to enough for your pesto or soup or frittata or sauté plans, keep some stalks aside. Wearing your gloves (you always wear gloves when handling raw nettles!), grasp the stalk near the top and strip off the leaves from top to bottom. They should come off easily this way. Strip as many stalks as you & your crisper drawer need. If you aren’t using them all right away, store fresh nettles in the fridge in a plastic bag, like most produce.

 

Wild Nettle Pesto with Rice Linguini

Ingredients

  • ~5 cups fresh raw nettles
  • 2-4 cloves raw garlic, finely chopped or pressed (4 was intensely garlicky)
  • ½ cup olive oil
  • ½ cup walnuts or pine nuts (or sunflower seeds or almonds)
  • 1 tsp celtic sea salt, or to taste
  • juice of ½ a lemon
  • Pasta of choice (I used organic brown rice “linguini-style” noodles, and made enough for two generous servings of pasta. We have pesto leftover)

 

Preparation

Nettle Pesto

Bring a big pot of water to a boil. Wearing gloves, add your nettles to the water to blanch them. Simmer 1-3 minutes, then remove and drain off excess water. Reserve the nettle-blanching water to cook the pasta. Add pasta to the boiling water. While pasta is cooking, roughly chop your squeezed out nettles and measure them. You should have about 2 cups now. If not, adjust other ingredients as needed. Dump nettles into a food processor along with pressed garlic, olive oil, sea salt and nuts/seeds. Process until smooth-ish. Add lemon juice and process again. Taste it. Isn’t it delicious? Adjust seasonings as desired. I ran out of olive oil so I increased the nuts, and then had to add salt to balance out the bitterness in the walnuts. Delicious results, though!

 

Dump cooked, drained pasta into a big bowl, and toss with pesto to generously coat. Add more pesto. People never use enough pesto.

Top with whatever you fancy and have on hand.

Nettle Pesto Linguini with Grilled Chicken & Sun-dried Tomatoes

 

My choice today: chopped leftover grilled organic chicken breast and sliced sundried tomatoes. Would also work with other leftover meat, grilled veggies, marinated tofu.

 

I gathered weeds instead of going grocery shopping today, and I had a delightful day. I highly recommend taking a week-day afternoon off from your to-do list, and getting to know a local weed. And your neighbours :)

 

Flexible Strength: Willow Medicine

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Salix spp

Willow is a distinctive tree that many people recognize, and many more are drawn to.

Willow’s story offers many examples of the power of tree medicines, and the difference between living plant medicines and pharmaceuticals or isolated extracts.

There are over 400 species of Willow, growing all through the Northern Hemisphere. In botanical medicine, White Willow (Salix alba) is most commonly referenced, although other species like Black Willow (Salix nigra) and Crack Willow (Salix fragilis) can be used interchangeably in many cases.

Willow has a long history of medicinal use. Indeed, I first learned about willow at age 12, when I did a science fair project on what was then referred to as “alternative medicine”. Willow was – for me – a gateway plant to the world of plant medicines. Perhaps it has played this role for you as well, or perhaps it still may!

Experience & History
There is a calm elegance to willows. Their comforting, flowing grace draws us to sit beneath them and share their ease. They prefer damp areas, often growing along river banks or lakes’ edges. The notion of flow is reflected in their form and in the water beside them. Willow’s historical use for rheumatism, a condition worse with dampness, mirrors its habitat of choice as well as its chemical action.

The flexible branches have long been used in making baskets, as well as wicker furniture. Elsewhere, willow wood is used for clogs, and for cricket bats.

Phytochemistry
Willow bark contains salicin, the precursor to salicylic acid. When we ingest willow tea or tincture, we convert salicin to salicylic acid in out digestive tract. From salicylic acid you can manufacture acetyl salicylic acid, or ASA, the active ingredient in Aspirin. Willow bark is in fact one of the plants from which Aspirin was originally made! It follows, then that like ASA, salicin has an anti-inflammatory effect in our body, making willow an excellent medicine for muscular and joint pains, fever pains, and gout.

Flower Essence
Willow flower essence helps us to find flexible strength. The essence is used for stiffness in body and mind, helping to address rigidity in thinking as well as in our muscles or joints. Willow helps people to let go, to accept, to forgive, to adapt. It addresses feelings of resentment or victimization. It supports the our feminine – or yin – nature.
From the FES flower essence repertory,
“Willow restores a more “spring-like” disposition, helping the soul to respond with greater resilience and inward mobility to challenges and problems. In this way, the Self takes more responsibility for its condition, and learns to flow more gently and graciously with rather than against the flow of life.”

Actions
Analgesic, anti-inflammatory, astringent, antipyretic

Indications
Arthritis, rheumatism, low back pain & other general muscular aches and pains, period pain, gout, fever, diarrhea

Preparation
Tincture or decoction of bark.

Cautions
Plants are not like drugs, and here is another example. You cannot use willow bark as a substitute for Aspirin if you are taking the drug for blood thinning. Willow does not thin the blood. And while Aspirin is notorious for causing stomach side effects (it increases ulceration & bleeding in the gut), white willow does not.

References:
Conway, Peter. Tree Medicine: A Comprehensive Guide to the Healing Power of Over 170 Trees. London, UK: Judy Piatkus Ltd. 2001.
Godfrey, Anthony & Saunders, Paul (with Kerry Barlow, Matt Gowan, Cyndi Gilbert, Rebecca Blok & Mahalia Freed). Principles and Practices of Naturopathic Botanical Medicine. Volume 1: Botanical Medicine Monographs. Toronto, ON: CCNM Press. 2012.
Hoffman, David. Medical Herbalism: The Science & Practice of Herbal Medicine. Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press. 2003.
Kaminski, Patricia & Katz, Richard. Flower Essence Repertory. Nevada City, CA: Flower Essence Society. 1986/2004.

Sesame Broccoli with Arame & Daikon

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(Mahalia’s Recipe)

This recipe is a simple “side” that integrates a sea vegetable, Arame.  With the classic Japanese flavors of toasted sesame with soy sauce, this broccoli dish will disappear fast. Perfect to accompany broiled/roasted tempeh, fish or chicken with ginger-tamari marinade, this dish is fancy enough for a party and easy enough to be part of a weekday meal.

 

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HPV Facts

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I am in the midst of preparing a lecture on Cervical Dysplasia, Cervical Cancer & HPV for my Women’s & Men’s Health students at the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine. So, I am happily armed with new research to answer your questions.

This is a fact sheet I made up ages ago that never made it onto my website. It was meant to accompany the article on Cervical Dysplasia and HPV. Sometimes having facts like these handy can go a long way to ease anxiety about confusing medical diagnoses like “abnormal pap”.

HPV Facts

  • HPV refers to the Human Papilloma Virus, which is actually a group of over one hundred different viruses. Thirty to forty of these target the anogenital tissues (others cause plantar warts, for instance).
  • HPV is associated with cervical cancer – around 90% of the time.
  • 15 types of HPV are considered “high risk” in terms of their association with cervical cancer.
  • 4 types of HPV cause genital warts. These types are actually classified as “low risk” because they are not associated with cervical cancer.
  • HPV is sexually transmitted – via any skin to skin contact (eg finger-genital, genital-genital, genital-anus). Because it lives on skin, condoms do not prevent transmission (incidentally, neither does the spermicide nonoxynol-9). Also because it lives on skin, transmission occurs between women. Even women who have only ever had female sexual partners test positive for HPV. Oh, and for those of you who worry about these things, the virus CANNOT be transmitted by inanimate objects like toilet seats. Rest assured.
  • HPV infection is usually transient, meaning our bodies can clear the infection. And we might never know we have it. According to one medical reference, “ the overwhelming majority of [HPV] infections are cleared by the host immune system and never present as warts or neoplasia”.
  • HPV is common: Up to 80% of young women (usually defined in the studies as under 30, but sometimes younger) have HPV at any given time. According to the most common estimates, 75-80% of individuals of reproductive age have had an HPV infection. While HPV is most often found in abnormally growing cells, it is also found in healthy normal cells, indicating that the virus is not the entire cause of abnormal cell growth. So, HPV doesn’t always cause cancer, and not all cancer is associated with HPV. This is critical to understanding the complex etiology of dysplasia.
  • Gardasil, the new HPV vaccine, targets only four HPV types: 6, 11, 16, & 18. The former two types are associated with warts, and the latter are the two most commonly associated with cancer out of the 15 high-risk types. So, to clarify, the vaccine, which is based on the over-simplified notion that HPV causes cancer, does not even protect against all the high-risk strains of HPV, and of course does not address the myriad of other factors that contribute to whether or not someone has persistent dysplasia. Clearly, then, this is not a prevent cancer vaccine, exactly.
  • Gardasil, then, is a vaccine against four out of one hundred types of HPV.

Lentil-Walnut Pate

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Red Lentil-Walnut Pate

From Christina Pirello’s fantastic macrobiotic-style cookbook, “Cooking The Whole Food Way”

“This dip is rich and delicious, and will disappear fast at a party.”

“Pan-toasting the nuts instead of oven-roasting them gives a better flavour for this dish.”

 

Ingredients

Lentil Walnut Pate @ Real Food Daily, Los Angeles
Photo by IronChefVegan

  • 2 cups red lentils, sorted and rinsed well
  • 1 (2 inch) piece wakame, soaked and diced (I just crumble it and throw it in)
  • 4 cups spring or filtered water
  • Soy sauce (optional)
  • 1 teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 onion, diced
  • 2-3 cloves garlic, minced
  • Generous pinch dried basil
  • 1 1/2 cups walnut pieces, lightly pan-toasted
  • 1/4 cup minced fresh parsley
  • Umeboshi vinegar
  • Balsamic vinegar

 

Instructions

Place lentils, wakame, and water in a heavy pot over medium heat. Bring to a boil and boil, uncovered, 10 minutes. Reduce heat, cover and simmer 20 minutes, until lentils are very creamy. Season lightly with soy sauce (or sea salt) and simmer 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add onion, garlic, and basil and cook, stirring, 3-4 minutes or until softened. Set aside.

Transfer cooked beans, vegetables, walnuts, parsley and a dash of soy sauce (or salt) to a food processor (or add everything to the lentil pot & use a handblender). Puree until smooth and creamy. Spoon into a serving bowl and lightly sprinkle with umeboshi and balsamic vinegars. Mix well and serve surrounded with crackers or toast points. Delicious on slices of daikon radish.

Makes 6 to 8 servings

 

 

Backyard Medicine: Eating Weeds

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The Wild Spinach Edition

Budget eating, with all the locavore/organic/foodie brownie points you care to collect.

Do People Know About This??

I just discovered that one of the most common garden weeds is also known as Wild Spinach, and indeed, it is edible and delicious. With a deeper & more robust flavor than spinach, and without that squeaky teeth feeling, I can’t believe I didn’t know about this before. I figured if I, as a weed-loving naturopathic doctor didn’t know about this weed, you might not, either.

So, introducing Chenopodium album – Lambs quarters, aka Pigweed aka Wild Spinach. Why the multiple names? Well, more than one plant is referred to as both lamb’s quarters and as pigweed, and this one is actually related to spinach, so the latter name is more functional. The former name is more common, however, so I am presenting you with options.

Nutritional information: good for you! Rich in magnesium and potassium, more fibre, beta carotene (pro-vitamin A), vitamin C, riboflavin, calcium, zinc, copper and manganese than domestic spinach. Domestic spinach has more iron and folic acid. (From Edible Wild Plants”: Wild Foods from Dirt to Plate, by John Kallas, PhD)

In my garden, wild spinach colonized the garlic patch and was happily taking up all the space between the garlic plants. I was waiting for them to get big, and then one day I realized they were starting to shade my garlic. This won’t do, I thought. I must weed. And then I must be an adventurous weed-lover, and cook the weeds for dinner!

I pulled the wild spinach out by the roots, as I couldn’t have it shading my garlic, but you can also selectively harvest to allow your plants to keep producing throughout the summer.

Top reasons to eat weeds:

1)    They are free

2)    They are nutrient dense

3)    They are tasty

4)    You get points for being a locavore and slow foodist

5)    You feel virtuous for being a locavore & slow foodist, as well as for eating really healthy food for cheap.

6)    You get to meet the neighbors (when they ask you what you are doing over in the abandoned lot with your kitchen scissors and colander)

Harvesting:

1)    Step away from your screens, and go outside.

2)    Bring scissors and a large bowl/basket/bag for collecting your greens.

3)    Let go of getting things done. Harvesting and prepping plants for dinner is contemplative and slow.

4)    Always first confirm the identity of the plants you are planning to eat! Consult books and people who know these things.

5)    Make sure the patch you are harvesting from is growing in uncontaminated soil. Ideally, this means it is in your yard, or your friend’s yard, or a green space whose history you know (ie, not a green space that was created over a massive garbage dump or industrial waste site!)

6)    If it is sunny, wear a hat. And sunglasses. Best sun protection there is.

7)    Harvest your greens. If the weed patch is on your property, it is up to you whether you level the whole patch for spanakopita, or save some for sesame-greens next week. If it is a public patch, the general rule for wildcrafting is never remove more than 30% of an area’s growth of that plant. This is a super-common weed, so you shouldn’t have any trouble abiding by these happy harvesting guidelines.

8)    You can cut individual stems, pile them up and do the prep (of removing leaves from stems and setting aside stems for composting) in the kitchen, or you can snip leaves off individually and leave the stems growing.

Now what??

Here’s a simple greens recipe to get you going:

Garlicky-Sesame Greens

One overflowing colander full of wild spinach, washed, big stems removed (or any other greens)

1-4 cloves garlic, minced or chopped

1-3 tbsp Toasted sesame oil

1-3 tbsp Tamari (wheat-free natural soy sauce)

1-2 tbsp Olive oil

3 tbsp Sesame seeds, toasted in a hot, dry pan

½ tsp Sea Salt, or to taste

Water for sautéing

Heat olive oil in a sauté pan, add garlic and stir for a minute or so. Add greens, stirring as you can. Sprinkle with sea salt, and sauté, adding water and putting a lid on the pan if necessary to wilt & cook the greens. Just before they seem done, add tamari and stir to mix through. Remove from heat. Garnish with toasted sesame oil and sesame seeds. Serve with grilled fish/tempeh/chicken etc.

Feel smug and healthy.

The Original Brands

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Nature-literacy, Backyard Medicine

There is an infographic going around on social media that is telling:

*Key at end

We are becoming nature-illiterate, and the consequences reach beyond not being able to identify the trees around us. It is telling that we can identify brands and not leaves. It speaks volumes about the values in modern, so-called ‘Western’ culture. And yet, we know that being outside, being near trees, gardening, being in green spaces are all good for us. There are even studies! (For more on the health benefits of being outside, see http://drmahaliafreed.com/action-in-stillness-stillness-in-motion-inspiration-for-harnessing-the-gifts-of-winter/ for instance).

Clearly, there is a crisis of disconnection.

Luckily, the solution is right outside our doors: right there, in the crack at the edge of the road. Right there in the untended yard. Right here on the café patio where I am writing. Literally.

By not having language for the plants around us, by not being able to name nor sometimes even SEE the individual species, we lose our access to the medicine the plants offer.

I don’t just mean seeing Hawthorn and knowing it is medicine for the heart, though this is valuable if you are into studying herbal medicine. I mean that, by noticing the plants growing around us we can benefit from the OTHER medicine they offer: the calming, uplifting presence of mature trees; the lesser known edible fruit delights that summer offers (mulberries! Service berries! Hackberries!); the subtle medicinal information for a plant that is determined by WHERE it grows, HOW it grows.

We can observe this. Some herbal traditions advocate choosing one single plant to work with for an entire year. One observes the plant through its different stages of growth, touches and tastes the plant’s different parts, talks to the plant, and listens for what the plant wants to say.

There is immense wisdom and value in this approach, and I have seen profound results when I have gotten to know herbs in this way.

And, the funny thing about herbs is that as you learn their names, and what they look like, you will start to notice them everywhere. They were there all along, but we humans make sense of all the sensory input we receive by limiting what we ‘see’.

We only ‘see’ what we can name.

And if we don’t ‘see’ the plants, we can’t connect to their medicine.

Just as it is much harder to have a meaningful conversation with someone new when you don’t remember their name – ahem, when you weren’t present when they told you their name – it is harder to engage with plants when you don’t know one from the other.

Luckily, we can remedy this situation. Easily, and for free.

My reconnection prescription is simple.

  1. Go outside. Stay a while.
  2. Be present (Ahem… look up from your phone. Or, pause the dialogue you are having in your head as you walk down the street.)
  3. Observe with an open mind & heart
  4. Ask questions (of the plants, of yourself, of others)
  5. Interact with the plants: use your senses to see, smell, touch; eat weeds (once you have safely confirmed their identity), make tea, make bouquets for your kitchen table.
  6. Watch what happens to the quality of your lived experience as you walk from house to car, from car to office – noticing and greeting these new friends growing everywhere in this city.
  7. Notice how you notice life differently as you observe its vitality emerging even from between the cracks in the pavement.

First steps:

 

Mullein
(Verbascum thapsus)

Choose one plant.

Make it one that you just keep noticing, everywhere you go, or one that has some medicine that is relevant for you, or one that you learn to be edible and tasty. Eg, red raspberry leaf, a well-known women’s tonic herb; or Dandelion, ubiquitous medicinal friend of mine. (for a snippet more on dandelion, see http://drmahaliafreed.com/weeds-as-nourishing-spring-food-dandelion-greens/).

Get to know it. If it’s edible, like dandelion leaf or burdock root, try it.

If it is a tree that you choose, hang out underneath it. Meditate, journal, daydream with it. Take notes. Watch the plant grow, watch how it responds to sunlight, wind, rain, temperature changes. Smell it, touch it. Share what you learn.

Want more steps, more info? Stay tuned for an article on harvesting and eating wild spinach.

Resources:

Try here  for online tree & shrub identification if you are in Ontario or somewhere with a similar range of ecological zones.

Here are some books I like, and find useful either for field identification or learning more about a plant:

  • Edible wild plants: Wild Foods from Dirt to Plate by John Kallas, PhD . More.
  • Backyard medicine: Harvest & Make Your Own Herbal Remedies by Julie Bruton-Seal & Matthew Seal. More
  • Wildflowers of Riverwood: Field Guide to wildflowers of Mississauga’s garden park and the Greater Toronto Area by Nina Karalin Barabas, PhD, and Eva Sabrina Bruni. http://www.riverwoodconservancy.org/items_for_sale.html
  • Lone pine series:
  • Ontario Wildflowers by Linda Kershaw
  • Trees of Ontario by Linda Kershaw

Image key:

Trees: (from left to right, top to bottom): maple, ash, pine with cone, oak, poplar & white birch

(*note that leaves are best used to identify a tree in context – bark matters, how the leaves are arranged matters, how serrated a leaf is matters, shape of catkins or seeds matters, and so on, thus, some of these identifications from the sketches are up for debate)

Brands: facebook, volkswagon, mcdonalds, lacoste, apple, & nike

Happy Soup (aka Nettle & Fiddlehead Soup)

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Happy Soup

Seriously, this is the happiest soup I’ve ever made or had the pleasure of consuming. There is no other way to describe it. Perhaps it is partially the virtuousness I feel, eating local, wildcrafted herbs & greens in season. Mostly, though, it is just a great, simple soup. Click here to learn more about nettles (and allergies), and here for more about fiddleheads.

Recipe

(Based on the suggestion of the Friendly Happy Guy from Forbes Wild Foods at Dufferin Grove Farmer’s Market)

Ingredients

  • 1/2 pound fresh local fiddleheads, soaked and rinsed in a bowl of water several times, ends cut off.
  • 1 heaping, packed colander full of fresh wild stinging nettles, stems removed (remember to wear your gloves to avoid the sting!). (Sorry, didn’t weigh the nettles)
  • 2 onions, chopped (plus green onion, or the green shoots growing off an old onion if that happens in your house)
  • 4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
  • 2-4 cups stock (I used veggie stock)
  • Water
  • Sea Salt
  • Pepper

Directions

Saute onions & garlic in olive oil until tender. Add water if necessary to prevent sticking. Add cleaned fiddleheads and continue sauteing. Add a bit of stock. Wait a minute or few. Add nettles. Pour stock over nettles, and add water to just barely cover the greens. Bring to a boil and then simmer for about 15 minutes, swirling/stirring to make sure nettles get wilted. About 10 minutes in, add the green onion. Add sea salt and maybe pepper. Blend. (I use a handblender, right into the hot soup in the pot).

Enjoy Happy Soup!

PS: some internet recipes for nettle soup swirl in cream at the end, but i really think this soup needs no enhancement.

Hawthorn: Heart Healing from Physical to Spiritual

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by Dr Mahalia Freed, ND

Crateagus oxycantha, flower

Hawthorn (Crataegus spp.) is medicine for the heart on all levels. Indigenous to countries across the northern hemisphere, this small thorny tree has a long-recorded history of medicinal use in both Europe and China, as well as in North America. Poetically – and significantly – Hawthorn is a member of the Rose family.

Hawthorn’s place as heart medicine was noted by Greek physician, Dioscorides, in the first Century AD. Medical herbal research has validated this use, finding hawthorn to be effective for increasing the strength of heart contractions, increasing blood flow to the heart, decreasing blood lipids (ie decreasing bad cholesterol (LDL), and triglycerides) and modulating blood pressure (AltMedReview, 2010). A Cochrane review of trials on hawthorn for chronic or congestive heart failure found that Crataegus extract decreased fatigue and shortness of breath and improved exercise tolerance relative to placebo. And while the traditional context is different, the Traditional Chinese Medicine use of Hawthorne for fat or rich meal digestion highlights the ability of Haw/berry antioxidants to prevent cholesterol deposits from oxidizing.

Additionally, hawthorn is used in the form of an energy medicine for the heart.
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Flower Essences: A Powerful Healing Tool in Naturopathic Practice

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By Mahalia Freed, ND

Naturopathic Doctor, BodyTalk Practitioner, Writer, Speaker, Educator, Kale Crusader

St John’s Wort in bloom

Flower essences are energetic, or informational, remedies made from the flowers of plants.  They are gentle and deep acting, and are most commonly used to support emotional health and personal growth. One familiar example is Rescue Remedy, a combination of flower essences (from the Bach line) popular for anxiety and shock. Many people carry Rescue Remedy in their bag, finding it effective emotional first aid for calming down enough to drive home after a fender-bender, facing their ex’s divorce lawyer without breaking down, getting through a funeral.

In my practice I use flower essences to support heart healing, move through grief or trauma, overcome tobacco addiction, develop healthy body image, allow for true personal expression, help someone find their life path, and so much more. The subtle, powerful healing of a correctly prescribed flower essence is magical to witness, and gratifying to experience.

These days, I often choose a flower essence as part of someone’s naturopathic treatment plan. It may complement a homeopathic, or fill in the gap between counseling regarding relationship patterns and a custom tincture for a lung infection.

Case example:

“Sally”(JG), a perimenopausal woman in her 50s who came to me for help resolving her hot flashes, digestive discomfort (bloating) and fatigue. When Sally first came to see me, she was depressed, but she had felt like that for so long, it had started to feel like all there was. As is common for people who are used to doing everything themselves rather than trusting others to help, she was not very expressive or open with me at first. We started out by improving her diet, increasing exercise, and ensuring that all her particular nutrient needs were met. For Sally, this meant more leafy green vegetables, less packaged food, and more variety in grains. She decided to begin yoga classes, and start walking more regularly. I prescribed a couple foundational supplements for energy and mood, and custom-formulated a botanical tincture to help decrease her heavy menstrual bleeding and eliminate hot flashes. I also suggested a journaling exercise. She came back and reported that she felt slightly more energy, as well as no more hot flashes, and no more heavy menstrual bleeding. Progress, right? Great, but her mood was still very “up and down”, and in my office she seemed down even while positive about the changes thus far. Next step: botanical formula for mood. Follow-up: helped a bit, but still “up and down”. Meanwhile, her periods continued to improve, and her bloating resolved once we identified and eliminated her particular food sensitivity.

When things are getting better on a physical level, but seem “stuck” on an emotional

Larch branch

level, a flower remedy can help. In Sally’s case, we started with Larch, a Bach essence for self-confidence and speaking your truth, often indicated for women with thyroid concerns as part of their picture. After one month on twice daily Larch drops, the effect was clear: Sally shared more with me than she ever had previously – confidence in speaking your truth. Amazing progress! We continued to incorporate flower essences into the treatment plan over the next 6 months, with consistent healing progress. Recent update: Sally and I are now working on the next level of her health. That is, with the help of the flower essences and the development of trust in our relationship, she is able to access deeper information from within herself regarding her true purpose. Further, Sally is now able to contemplate the changes needed to bring her current life into alignment with her passions and sense of what she meant to be doing. As she integrates this information and begins to make changes, I have seen her physical health concerns shift and lift even further. Witnessing her healing and that of many other clients affirms for me that personal growth is part of health. It is so clear that supporting personal growth must be part of truly holistic care, and flower essences are an ideal tool with which to provide this support.

Flower Essence Q&A

Q: How do flower essences work?

A: There is now solid science – from Einstein on forward – demonstrating that matter is energy. We know that the energy contained in a liquid can be used to influence human energy fields to help resolve ailments. This is what flower essence liquids do. When you take flower essences, the energy they contain affects your energy field, which in turn may shift your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual state.

Q: Is this the same as essential oils?

A: No. Essential oils contain concentrated biochemical components of the plants from which they are extracted, while flower essences are closer to homeopathic remedies in nature, in that they are energetic imprints of their source.

Q: How do you make a flower essence?

A: A flower essence is made by infusing the blossoms of a particular plant, bush, or tree in water in the sun. The liquid is then diluted and “potentized” in a method similar to the preparation of homeopathic remedies, and preserved with brandy (or a nonalcoholic substance, if need be). The result is a highly diluted, “potentized” substance that embodies the energetic patterns of the flower from which it is made.

Q: Is there scientific evidence that flower essences are effective?

A: Yes, there is both clinical and double blind placebo-controlled study evidence that shows clear efficacy of flower essences. For example, this study http://www.flowersociety.org/cram2.html, titled, “Flower essences reduce stress reaction to intense environmental stimulus” found that two flower essence combos outperformed placebo in calming specific areas of the brain that respond to stress.

Q: How do I choose which essence or essences are right for me?

A: There are many flower essence repertories and guidebooks available. My favorite one is here: http://www.fesflowers.com/fes_books.htm#rep

You can choose remedies for yourself, based on the particular emotional state you are working with. In some cases, this can be amazingly effective. However, I strongly suggest working with a practitioner in choosing essences. Prescribing accurately requires a certain amount of objectivity that most of us cannot muster about ourselves. Despite my familiarity with the flower essences, and my training, I do not prescribe to myself, as I know I do not have the best perspective from which to do so.