Did you get a chance to try The Dancing Herbalist’s spice blend last year? No! Well now is your chance to make it yourself to give as a holiday gift this year. Going to the bulk section of Whole Foods will give you a huge selection of bulk powdered herbs you can use to make…
Month: November 2016
Working off the Holiday Pounds
I am so ready to celebrate holidays this year with friends and family. It has been a long year and I feel like it is time to celebrate love and life as the cycle turns inward once again for the winter season. Unfortunately, with the winter on it’s way and the delicious foods of the…
Holiday Homemade Gifts: Potpourri Sachet
A few years back I started making holiday gifts for my entire family. I am going to continue this again and I wanted to share with you some of my favorite herbal inspired gifts. After finding these lovely hand dyed felts I decided to make potpourri sachets for many relatives. Stuffed inside each of my hand embroidered…
Catnip: Not Just for Cats
By Tricia McCauley M.S. Herbal Medicine ‘If you set it, the cats will eat it, If you sow it, the cats don’t know it.’ (from Maude Grieve’s http://www.Botanical.com) Catnip is a simple, gentle herb that I love for many reasons, one of which is that people are so amazed to learn that it affects humans as…
Skullcap
Skullcap is a plant that is great for me. Everyone has their own challenges and eventually find that right herb that they just keep coming back to use regularly. For me that is skullcap. Skullcap is in the mint family, with peppermint, nettles, and also basil. These plants are denoted because they have a square…
Causes of Inflammation
With all the talk of solving our inflammation problems, do you know what is causing it in the first place? There is a wide variety of things that can cause inflammation in our body. We can roughly separate the causes into three categories, infection, irritation, and injury. When we discuss our immune system we commonly think…
Kava Kava
Betsy Miller, MS, CNS, LDN A Balanced Life Wellness Clinic & Apothecary, LLC When I start a new piece of writing about a plant, I always want to start with “<insert plant> is one of my favorite plants…” Seriously though, kava is truly one of my favorite plants, and I have been exploring my relationship…
Milky Oats-Monograph
Milky oats, oat straw, and your beloved oatmeal, all come from that same plant, Avena sativa in the Poaceae, grass family. Right before the seed becomes fully mature it goes through a 2-3 day stage when the spikelets are milky. This is when they are harvested for medicine. Oats has a sweet taste and…
Alfalfa-Monograph
Alfalfa is one of those herbs that isn’t used a whole lot. It’s scientific name is Medicago sativa and it is from the Fabaceae family, the pea family. Even when not often used for medicine, it is very important for agriculture because it fixes nitrogen, allowing for it to be more available in the…
Homemade Flea Powder
Last weekend, I got into a discussion with the woman vending next to me about natural options for her dog. She didn’t want to go buy chemical treatments and wanted to do it for a low cost. It is not hard to make a homemade flea powder. There are a number of herbs you can…
Nettles-Monograph
Urtica Dioica, the scientific name of stinging nettles, is in the Urticaceae family. Both the leaves, roots, and seeds are used, with the leaves being most common. It is a cooling and drying herb with a salty taste due to it being high in minerals. This plant can grow up to 10 feet tall but…
What is stress doing to us?!?
With the holiday season fast approaching we can all use some reminding of how stress is crazy and ya, we are going to have to deal with it soon. If you want more support than this introduction to how stress effects your body, check out our guidebook A Beginner’s Guide to Wellness. The biochemical mechanism…
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