Natural Herbal Beauty

Creating a nontoxic environment and lifestyle are essential for optimal health. At the same time, no matter how pristine your environment, your body still needs to detoxify on daily basis. There are a number of powerful and effective ways of assisting your body in the process of purification. These practices will support your overall health and well-being, while helping you to feel younger and more vibrantly alive. (more…)

Cooling Diaphoretic Tea

This tea is excellent for relieving a cold or flu. It is especially helpful for “hot” symptoms such as a fever, as it helps the body to naturally cool down by inducing perspiration, thus eliminating the virus.

2 teaspoons yarrow

2 teaspoons elder flower

2 teaspoons peppermint (more…)

Make time in your life each week to create your own at-home spa experience. Set aside at least 2 hours if you can, but even if you have only I hour, you can indulge in a variety of bodycare treatments that will refresh and renew your body, mind, and spirit.

Gather together everything you will need; your skin, hair, and bodycare products and a thick bathtowel and robe are essentials. Some nice extras include a bath pillow, candles, incense, and soothing music. (more…)

Much of the body’s healing work takes place while you sleep. Without the need to attend to all of the functions of daily life, your immune system and organs of detoxification can focus attention on cleansing and restoration. This is the time when your body does major housecleaning, taking care of wastes that have accumulated during the day and repairing cellular damage. Cultivate the habit of going to bed early, before 10 P.M. (more…)

Hawthorn Crataegus oxycantha

Description: a common deciduous shrub or small tree, often used in hedging, with deeply lobed obovate leaves and pink or white scented flowers in late spring. Dark red oval fruits form in early autumn and are usually eaten by birds.

Parts used: flowering tops, collected in spring, and berries, collected when ripe in autumn

Actions: antispasmodic, astringent, heart tonic and restorative, normalises blood pressure, peripheral vasodilator, sedative (more…)

Description: common plantain (P major) is characterised by its rat tail-like flower spikes and basal rosette of fleshy, rounded or ovate leaves. It grows to around 15 cm high and is commonly found in gardens and pavement cracks. Ribwort plantain (Planceolata) is taller, up to 75 cm, with more pointed, lance-shaped leaves with three to five prominent ribs. Its flowers are dark rust with clear white feathery stamens and appear from late spring to early autumn.

Part used: leaves (more…)

Yellow dock Rumex crispus

Description: a biennial growing to around I 50 cm in height with a robust tap root and long-stalked ovate leaves up to 50 cm in length.The flowers are purple and thistle-like, appearing from early summer to mid- autumn and followed by hooked fruits.

Part used: root

Actions: alterative, bitter tonic, bile stimulant, laxative

Yellow dock is generally found growing in wild, grassy places, waste land and along the road side.The plant is able to concentrate iron from the soil in its roots thus making a valuable iron tonic in anaemia: in the past herbalists sprinkled iron filings around their yellow dock plants to produce iron-enriched specimens. (more…)

Marsh woundwort Stachys palustris

Description: hardy perennial with tuberous roots and hairy, lanceolate leaves. It has dark red or purple flowers in summer borne on tall spikes flowering from the base. It has an unpleasant smell when crushed. Parts used: aerial parts, collected while flowering Actions: antiseptic, antispasmodic, astringent, styptic, tissue healer

Country names often provide a clue to a plant’s healing action and marsh woundwort is no exception. Gerard called it “clown’s woundwort” with the “clown” suggesting that the herb was widely used by the common people. (more…)

Modern medicine tends to consider “catarrh” as a uniform problem; however, for the herbalist it can be either “hot” or “cold”. Cold catarrh is copious, thin and watery; hot catarrh is thick, scanty and yellow with more inflammation of the mucous membranes. Those with a tendency for “cold” catarrh are often the cold, damp, “phlegmatic” types, with a sluggish digestion. Hot catarrh is a characteristic of more active, tense, “choleric” personalities. While cold catarrh is more characteristic of common colds, some types of sinusitis would come into the “hot” category with thick, yellow mucous that stubbornly refuses to move. (more…)

Coughing is the body’s natural response to any blockage of the airway which may be due to dust and traffic fumes or mucous resulting from infection. Coughing can also be a symptom of a number of more serious illnesses, so professional medical attention is needed for any cough which persists for more than a few days or for which there is no obvious cause.

Coughs can be dry and irritating or “productive” with phlegm which can vary in shade from white to green — darker colours generally indicating an infection. Dry coughs can often linger for weeks following a cold and in some cases coughing can become a nervous habit. (more…)