Simplicity heals urgency in the human & the civic body

An inquiry into healing, simplicity, urgency,  and shame

Last week I found myself talking with a new group of herbal medicine students about simplicity.

I was sharing with them how I think about certain complex health pictures that clients can present: a mix of chronic infection, auto-immune or other disease with a history of trauma, abuse, or serious injury, a history of addictions or serious mental health challenges like manic-depressive illness. It is not unusual for a client to walk in the door seeking relief from multiple and intricate health challenges.

Each body is a personal history where genetics, behaviors, injuries, abundances and privations of all kinds come to rest. And my first approach to herbal care is often a simple and restorative one.

Not simplistic, but simple. Meaning that there is so much going on in that one body, that calming and nourishing the whole system is where I start. Changes may be noticeable within a week or two on a moderate dose of a small number of herbs that specialize in calming overworked systems, nourishing and toning weak systems, nudging the body towards its innate health. The body settles down, the conditions settle down. Some symptoms tend to be moderately to greatly relieved in frequency, intensity, and the degree to which they impact daily life. Then together we assess the new, slightly more resilient baseline, and continue to rebuild health from there.

It was only later in the week that I made the connection to urgency.

Because all over my life, all over the civic life of our country, urgency was doing what urgency does: putting itself forward, saying: pay attention to me!

And all those various conditions of ill health I spoke about with the herbal students, all the symptoms that accompany each form of dis-ease: all are forms of urgency that point to what Hippocrates viewed as the body’s attempts to repair disturbances of balance.

I am a poet at heart, and I can take a metaphor beyond where I should try. But it seems to me that our nation is that client who is unable to face the truths of our history.

And so we are ever in search of a cure for life-threatening, painful, bothersome, disruptive symptoms (depending on your societal experience). The illness itself remains unassessed and unaddressed.

When an herbal client is unable to be truthful with herself or me about her history, then we may make little progress in restoring health. We may chase down one symptom after another, never able to address the reality of her condition.

Embarrassment and shame are commonly behind this pattern.

In the body of our nation, wounds inflicted and self-inflicted have festered untended since our founding: since we appropriated first the lands of North American indigenous peoples and then appropriated the bodies and labor of African indigenous peoples.

Healing the underlying imbalance in our civic body depends on our capacity to face our national history, where genetics, behaviors, injuries, abundances and privations of all kind have come to rest.

It requires of us an epidemic of simplicity of heart, nuance, skill, courage and kindness to heal the shame that ails us. I can imagine nothing else that will nourish us to health.

Listen to Your Body: It Speaks Truth

My body speaks to me all the time.

It speaks wisdom.

It deeply knows health

It is a system designed for adaptability, resilience, and self-repair. It is designed for health.

Breathing fast and shallow, brow knitted, nervous system buzzing?  Translation: I’m not getting enough oxygen, so how are you going to even think straight?  You’ve got me set on overdrive and I can’t switch into recovery mode. Slow down. Take those three items off your to-do list. Take the whole list way less seriously. Take yourself way less seriously. Take a break and walk around the garden. Look, really look at how the flowers are made. How you are made.

Bloating and distended belly?  Translation: I’m full. Put the other half of that green drink in the fridge for later. And for Lord’s sake, sit down and relax for a few minutes before you even start – give me a chance to get ready for the food, get some saliva and digestive juices going. When you’re standing at the kitchen sink or riding on the highway, I just can’t even get your digestive system going.

These are two of the messages my body delivered today, and I listened.

Some days I am too busy to listen.

Some days I listen and treat the messages as opinions of absolutely no merit or standing. My will To Do Important Stuff triumphs once again.

Spend too many days in one of those unresponsive modes, and I am headed for trouble: I begin to feel ill, when all my body is trying to do is repair its disturbed balance.

In this respect, I share the view of Hippocrates, the 5th century Greek physician often credited as “the father of western medicine.”  He called this faculty the vis medicatrix naturae,  usually translated as “the healing power of nature.” Physician and author Victoria Sweet writes in her extraordinary book  God’s Hotel  that a more accurate translation is “the remedying force of your own nature to be itself, to turn back into itself when it has been wounded.”

Vis medicatrix naturae2

When we listen to the body’s speaking, we know when our vitality is strong and when it is depleted.

We can also be frogs in a pot being gradually heated, not noticing until it is too late to jump out of the boiling water: we play down the body’s messages of fatigue, achiness, funky bowel patterns, aches and pains that come and go or move around, fuzzy mind, irritability or lethargy. We hardly notice that patterns are being laid down.

Or, we may be quite aware of changes and seek medical assessment, only to be told that our lab numbers are fine, or handed an Rx for an anti-depressant.

As a vitalist, I would say there are preclinical changes happening that are not optimal – changes for which we do not have lab tests to measure what is going on. What we do have are sensations and observations, clinical evidence the body is trying to restore its balance. We also have stories that help us make sense of all this information: it is very common to have a sense of your health Before and After an accident, an injury, an acute illness, a disruptive life change. All this evidence can be assessed and translated into practical supports, among them herbal supports

As an herbalist in the vitalist tradition, I know there are plant friends  from the mildest and food-like to the stronger and therapeutic that can:

  • aid and enhance our innate body wisdom rather than suppress its messages or burden it with side-effects
  • nudge our body back towards health
  • restore  our adaptability, enabling us to mobilize a robust response to physical, emotional, and environmental stressors
  • rebuild our resilience, allowing us to rest, repair, and recover from those stressors

So, listen to your body today.

It is speaking to you, and it speaks the truth.

What is it telling you?

Read more about a restorative approach to health HERE.

A Restorative Approach to Health

Do any of these challenges sound familiar?

Exhaustion

Energy that bottoms out during out the day

Swings in mood and appetite

Difficulty falling asleep or Insomnia

Brain Fog

A feeling that you just can’t do what you used to

These are among the most common health challenges women voice when coming to me for herbal support.

If you’re dealing with some of these things right now, I want you to know- as crummy as you feel- your body holds the very healing power of nature itself. I also want you to know,

…there is no quick fix. Healing doesn’t work this way.

Your challenges, or symptoms, are showing you that your body is actually working to repair some state of imbalance, and it is asking for support to do what it knows how to do, what it is built to do: RESTORE health.

This was the view of Hippocrates, the 5th century Greek physician generally considered to be the father of medicine. He understood illness as a way that the body repairs disturbances of balance.

Naturopath James Sensenig views this innate force as “the tendency in nature towards organization, order and purpose,”  which aligns well with contemporary studies of how complex systems such as the body self-organize.

My Approach to Herbal Support

I share the perspective of Hippocrates and Sensenig in my healing work. I look for plant friends and allies who can nudge your body back in the direction of health rather than suppress symptoms or substitute for the body’s own functions.

I work with Restorative herbs that nourish, calm, and tone your body’s  stress response,  nervous and hormonal systems, and  cognitive function.

Early on in my three years of formal studies for a Masters of Science in Herbal Medicine, I was drawn especially to this approach, that now serves as the foundation for my clinical practice.

Ginkgo, pressed leaves
Brain and circulatory tonic: Ginkgo, pressed leaves

Over and over again, I have seen how providing this initial, nourishing systemic support can reset a client’s baseline health.

This is true even for clients living with challenging chronic issues such as fibromyalgia, lifelong asthma, and Parkinson’s.

Such conditions can be managed for greater comfort and quality of life (and alongside conventional medical treatment) as herbs calm stress and anxiety, lift a heavy heart and mood, sharpen attention, focus and recall.

A restorative approach is neither a quick nor a cookie-cutter approach, and it works.

A restorative approach takes time – weeks and months – first, to slow or reverse depletion, and then to nourish a vibrancy lost over months and years.

Many clients do begin to respond in a matter of days or weeks, and then continue to further benefit from a cumulative effect over time.

Each client brings a unique family and personal history, biochemistry, beliefs and knowledge – we unpack this fully in an initial 2-hour session, and the protocol goes like this:

1. You tell me the single change that would make the most difference on a daily basis. 
2. You name your formula for the overall effect you want: Cool down, Kick-Ass, Sweet Dreams are a few that have come up.
3. We choose a form – tea, tincture, powder – that you can most easily incorporate into your daily life.
4.  I draw on knowledge of scientific research and traditional use to select and combine herbs specifically for you, the ones that are the best match for you.

Practice = Optimum Results

When you adopt taking your herbs and observing their effects as a practice, you will see optimum results.

Herbs: Skullcap, Rose Petals, Lavender, Calendula
From top left: Skullcap, Rose petals, Lavender, Calendula

When you return for your follow-up with clear information about how you have responded to the herbs, this information is like gold, guiding the further refinement of selection, preparation or dosing of the herbs as we go forward.

We may work together to discover how you can become more attuned to your body’s responses. To notice and name with more detail and nuance the effects of the herbs, and of your emotional responses and behavioral choices on your body.

A restorative approach is a genuine three-way collaboration between the client, the herbalist, and the herbs themselves, a collaboration guided by the innate intelligence for health that runs through all.

 

The…life that runs through my veins…is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the Earth into the numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of flowers.  ~Rabindranath Tagore

For more about herbalism

For more about an herbal consult with Sara

Photos of Sara’s Herbs: Sean Scheidt, Baltimore Magazine