Natural Herbal Beauty

You’ll need:

2 deep buckets large enough to hold both of your feet

2 tablespoons powdered ginger rosemary essential oil

Alternating hot and cold foot baths help to stimulate lymphatic flow and also relieve tired, aching feet and legs. Fill one bucket with water as hot as you can tolerate and stir in the powdered ginger, and fill the other with ice cold water. Use buckets large enough to comfortably hold both of your feet with the water at least covering your ankles. If possible, find buckets deep enough so that the water will reach to the middle of your calves. The higher the water reaches, the more it will assist lymphatic flow. (more…)

Herbs have long been valued not only for their benefits when taken internally, but also for their healing and beautifying properties when used externally. For the following facial and bodycare recipes, choose herbs and essential oils according to your skin type.

Dry Skin

Herbs: Chamomile, comfrey, elder flower, rose Essential Oils: Chamomile, sandalwood, lavender (more…)

In days gone by, more people cultivated their own ingredients for healing teas than shopped at the apothecary. Every family had a kitchen garden for vegetables and an herb garden for medicines and seasonings. Today, many people grow culinary herbs—sweet basil and thyme, for example—on a sunny kitchen windowsill. Plucking a few leaves of freSh basil or scissoring off a frond of pungent thyme to throw into a pot bubbling on the stoveadds incomparable flavor.

In this day and age, only a lucky few have the space needed for vegetables or the time required to tend a family-sized plot. On the other hand, almost everyone has room for an herb garden, even if it’s just a small space on the patio or an old bookcase next to a window. This is for those of you who want to try your hand at growing, harvesting, drying, and storing your own herbs. Cultivating the medicinal plants you need to brew your own healing teas can be very rewarding, and it’s easier than you think. (more…)

Essiac is a combination tea consisting of four herbs: sheep’s sorrel, burdock root, slippery elm bark, and turkey rhubarb root. Anecdotal evidence supplied by those who say they have eliminated cancer by taking Essiac tea is very persuasive. True double-blind studies of the formula are lacking, but the benefits of the individual plants used in the formula have long been praised.

Sheep’s sorrel (Rumex acetosella), is a small perennial cousin of the common garden sorrel. This little plant grows abundantly in woodlands and shady places. The leaves, which hold the healing properties of the plant, are thin and delicate, brilliantly green above, faintly purple on their undersides. Sheep’s sorrel is said to brew into a cooling, thirst-quenching tea with notable blood-purifying properties. This herb helps strengthen a weak stomach, can stimulate a convalescent’s appetite, and is useful against nausea and vomiting (more…)