When I share the potential health benefits of the herbal teas I blend, I do so with a bit of hesitation.
Sometimes I choose to share the practical, physical attributes of a plant. Other times I mention its energy personality, or focus on how it has featured in stories and mythology. None of it is set in stone, but it all plays a part.
It’s the tendency of our western culture, which values productivity above all else, to look at a plant with scientific criticism, or the capitalist eye. We want to see the facts. We want a list of lab-verified vitamins and minerals. We want recommended dosages and case studies that show how this plant heals a certain health condition and when it will do so. We want guarantees.
We apply our intellect to the plant world, extracting high levels of a plant’s matter and injecting it into test subjects at dosage rates that could never be replicated if the plant were left in its original form. Then we announce that this certain herb may cause toxicity or damage or death. Thusly painted with the brush of fear, Herb XYZ is relegated to its place in the corner, face to the wall and dunce hat firmly in place.
I don’t say this with disregard for caution.
It’s critical to consult a trusted doctor before any foray into the world of plant-based healing, especially if you are pregnant or nursing, or if you are taking medication for a current health condition. Plant medicine can be a powerful ally in our search for wellness and vitality.
Other times, however, it seems as though it does nothing. What gives?
There are a few things that play into how much wellness we can find through plants: our lifestyle, our level of crisis, and our mind.
A holistic lifestyle
Health and wellness depends on an interplay of nourishing choices, including the food we eat and the water we drink. The way we breathe. Wether we have a way of supporting ourselves and our families that gives us a measure of security. A work or hobby that gives us purpose and passion. Connecting with nature regularly. Relationships that are supportive and kind. Respect and compassion for ourselves and others, and for an Earth that needs healing as much as we do.
It goes without saying that if the rest of our lifestyle is not a nourishing one, one cup of tea won’t fix a sick body overnight. Plant healing is not a quick fix.
Also, the body’s ability to heal is related to how deeply the damage has entered into our body system. Which brings me to the story of the Titanic.
How much damage has the iceberg done?
When the iceberg loomed dead ahead of the speeding Titanic, it took more than one thing to attempt to change the huge ship’s trajectory. The wheel was wrenched sideways, the paddles were halted, and then reversed. When the hit came, the compartments were sealed in an attempt to keep the water from filling the ship. The last resorts were the SOS signals, the flares, and the lifeboats.
As we all know, none of it was enough, and the violins played as death became certainty.
It’s the same with us. The force needed to reverse the damage that leaves us feeling sick – whether that sickness is physical or emotional or both – will depend on how deeply our core is damaged. How much damage has the iceberg done?
If we’re just a little off in our authentic purpose or way of being, the energy that needs to be applied to shift our direction is light. Sometimes it’s just a feeling of being unwell that drives us to seek healing – a nagging restlessness, a feeling of boredom or tiredness. We may find that the healing of plants provides the energy for the subtle shift in direction we need. Something simple like instituting a daily tea ritual may give us the space we need to make a change that will take us in the direction our soul is yearning to go.
However, if we are in a place of crisis, the healing approach will need much more energy. Perhaps our body and soul are crying for help in the forms of deep depression, chronic pain, or fatigue. Perhaps we feel completely lost. During these times, a varied healing approach is needed – one that touches all areas of life. This may include plant medicine, and nourishing herbal teas, but it asks more. It may ask for a change in food choices. It may ask for therapy or medication. Perhaps it means physically removing ourselves from toxic situations – whether they be jobs or relationships or places of living. Our surroundings matter, and if we are in suppressive situations that will not allow healing to fully come no amount of tea will fix it.
We are all the same, yet different.
We are all the same regarding the potential of our bodies to respond to plant medicine. We are all different regarding the timing, and our body’s ability to respond.
Mind-Body Awareness
The body is in constant communication with the soul, if we can only learn to read its signals.
Think of that tense feeling in your stomach, or the tension in your neck and shoulders, when you are around someone who is deeply negative, or angry and threatening. The reverse is also true. Think of the lightness in your body when you are with someone who is calm, grounded, and full of quiet joy.
Depression is the cry of the soul for growth, wrote Carl Jung. If a plant is forced to stay in a pot that is too small for its roots, it will droop and wilt and eventually die. It’s the same with the soul. If our soul is starved, it will get our attention any way it can, and this is often through the body.
If our mind – or awareness, or consciousness, whatever you want to call it – could learn to decode the signals the body is sending, perhaps we would have an inroad to understanding our core health needs that would defy any imaging equipment yet to be invented.
Mind matters. Agreement matters.
I think what herbalist-minded folks love about plant-based healing is that the energy of live plant matter is highly accessible to their body. Plants are living energy, and they do different things in different bodies, because they respond to the energy of the field into which they are entering.
Our physical body represents layers of being-ness. We are more than physical matter, more than skin and bones and organs. We are energy and spirit, mind and intention. Our mental allowance, and our willingness to embrace what the plant can do, plays a big part in determining whether or not it will align with what our body needs.
Doctoring in the West generally chooses to dismiss this; however, it can’t be completely ignored. We call it “the placebo effect” and we don’t know exactly how to explain it other than to say that, sometimes, if you expect to be healed you will be. Do you want to be healed? was the enigmatic question of the Christ to the blind man, as the story is told in the biblical book of John. Does this hint at the importance of the mind in healing?
And now, back to tea.
Sometimes it begins with one cup of tea.
I am fully aware that one cup of tea won’t fix me.
No one plant, much less one cup of tea, will fix something that goes deeper than we are willing to go.
But sometimes that small step of making a nourishing herbal infusion, or taking an adaptogenic herb, is the helping hand we need to find our footing again. Sometimes all that plant medicine does is give us support so we can go within and find the root cause of our pain or illness or fatigue.
One cup of tea won’t suddenly cure chronic fatigue or depression or IBS. One cup of tea represents something more.
The warm aroma rising from a cup that is held near tear-filled eyes can be the prayer we can’t put into words. The steam touching our face can be the tangible, warm touch of Spirit when we’ve been burned out on religion and its printed words.
One cup of tea can remind us of the cycle of seed and dirt and sun and rain that is so much bigger than this pain and this moment. As all things return to the earth through water, so too shall this moment, this pain, leave us and return.
This is the healing of tea.
All things return to soul through water.
-Steven Eisenstadt
