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Healing & Alternative Health
Herbs to Change Your Mood
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by Kami McBride |
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Often when we think of mood altering herbs, kava kava and St. John’s wort are the first to come to mind. Indeed these are wonderful herbs that have many soothing and calming properties. More than twenty five scientific studies confirm St. John’s worts’ ability to help people with mild to moderate depression and associated symptoms of anxiety and insomnia. St. John’s wort is often my first choice to help with tension and nervousness. Plain and simple it is a great herb for helping to take the edge off.
Kava kava is one of the world’s most researched plants. It has passed many tests, including its ability to calm the mind without affecting productivity or concentration. Kava kava is the herb to take if you are stressed out with tests, finals and deadlines. It allows you to relax while maintaining your ability to study and perform well under duress. Kava kava is also one of the best herbs for helping to relieve insomnia and muscle tension. It is considered a mild euphoric and is known as the ‘talk talk’ herb. Traditionally it is made into a drink for social gatherings. I like serving it at parties because it helps people to just relax a little and let go of the stress of the day.
In any health food store you can find these herbs in pill form along with their recommended dosage. What I really love about herbs though is how they also heal me with their taste, texture, color, and smell. When making tea with these herbs, you not only benefit from the constituents you would find in the capsules, but you also have rich aromas wafting through your office or house. Various flavors dance on your taste buds for as long as you sip on the tea. The taste and smell of the herbs enliven your senses and play a part in bringing you into the present moment. Indeed awakening your senses to the present is so much a part of what it takes to reduce stress and enhance your mood.
Hurrying and worrying is stressful on the body and keeps us too busy to notice the miracle of what is happening right now. Observing the mystery of each moment allows us to take a deep breath and perhaps even drop down into a heart space or more feeling state. Biofeedback and scientific study tell us that deep breathing and feeling gratitude reduces stress and increases our ability to solve problems more creatively. When something captures your senses like the smell of fresh air or the beauty of nature, for that moment you are brought into the present and stress fades away. The stress may come rushing back in within a few seconds, but even brief interludes of sensory pleasure can help to reduce your overall stress load.
Take a moment to think about how being in nature is healing for you; walking in a forest or being in a garden full of flowers and lush plants. Herbs are part of nature. Herbal medicine is the place where we bring the abundance of the natural world into our homes and use nature in a concentrated form to heal ourselves. A part of the collective interest in herbs is our desire to be more connected to the earth. The modality of how we use herbs for healing plays a role in the breadth of how they affect us. When we take herbs in tea form, bathe or cook with them, we have an opportunity to experience a connection with nature through the sensory experience of the herb itself.
This is one aspect of what the plants do for us. They are full of possibilities for sensory awakening. We miss this opportunity when we pop them in pill form and take our herbs as one more thing on our ‘to do’ list. In our fast paced world, we destroy so much partially because we are out of touch with our sensory perception of life and nature. An aspect of the explosion of interest in herbal medicine is that we hear the call of the green world speaking to an old part of ourselves that remembers living more in harmony with nature.
Taking time to drink an afternoon tea or evening herbal cordial is part of the stress-busting effect of the herb. I have beautiful tea cups and cordial glasses that I love to drink from. Unwinding from different aspects of my day involves ritual drinking and the sensory experience that entails. In the winter we always have a warming cordial around the evening meal and in the heat of the summer we sip on cool herbal fruit drinks after the sun goes down.
Peace and Calm Evening Cordial
1 cup brandy
2 tablespoons St. John’s wort flowers
2 tablespoons lavender flowers
One half cup honey
Put herbs and brandy into a jar and let sit for one month. Strain and discard the herbs. Add honey to the brandy and you now have a cordial. Sip on an once before or after dinner to help with relaxation and digestion.
Find pleasure in taking your herbal medicines. Let them awaken your senses and change your mood!
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Kami McBride,
Teacher of Herbal Medicine
& Women's Health
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Kami McBride has taught herbal medicine and women’s health since 1988. She has studied medicinal plants for almost 20 years and has taught Herbology at the University of California School of Nursing and Stanford Hospital. Her popular course, Cultivating the Herbal Medicine Woman Within is an experiential earth awareness and herbal studies program that is taught at her beautiful school and herb gardens in Vacaville, California.
An intuitive and inspiring teacher, Kami has helped thousands of people learn to use healing plants in their daily lives in ways that are healthy, safe and fun. Her extensive knowledge of herbal medicine along with a focus on teaching herbology as a relationship with the Earth and a way of life, help to fulfill her mission of reviving the cultural art of home herbal care.
Kami is an herbal consultant and an expert in the field of holistic health specializing in women’s issues. Her herbal consultations empower women to discover sacredness and pleasure in their healing process. Her educational courses provide a sanctuary for women to transform their relationship with their body and reclaim their heritage as healers and herbalists.
Kami is the author of 105 Ways to Celebrate Menstruation, available at www.amazon.com.
Visit Kami’s website at:
www.livingawareness.
com
Sign up for her free quarterly herbal e-newsletter.
kami@livingawarness.
com
For Classes, Books & Consultations:
Phone: 707-446-1290
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