When the Immune System Goes Rogue by Dr. Marija Helt  Oyster Mushrooms A healthy immune system distinguishes between what’s safe and what’s potentially dangerous, protecting us from the latter. “Safe” stuff includes our own cells, tissues, and substances that the body makes; normal resident microbes such as those living in the gut; foods; and other things we’re exposed to that aren’t intrinsically dangerous. “Dangerous” stuff includes cancer and precancerous cells along with disease-causing microbes such as influenza virus, Salmonella, and Aspergillus (“black mold”).   The imm ..read more

Dreaming with Plants  by Atava Garcia Swiecicki Loss and grief are an inevitable part of being human, and we all will experience both in our lifetimes.   Modern westernized culture doesn’t offer many tools to support us when we are facing loss, whether it by death of a loved one, a pet, loss of a job, a relationship, or loss of one’s health.   After a major loss, like a death of a family member, at most we are given a few weeks of bereavement time and then expected to be ready to go back to work and back to “normal”.  Grief can be overwhelming, exhausting and ..read more

Mushroom Hunting at the Grocery Store by Dr. Marija Helt Button Mushrooms Not everyone’s keen on foraging for wild mushrooms. The reluctance may be due to concerns about accurate identification, a lack of time, living in an area where foraging isn’t possible, or some other reason. If you’re interested in medicinal fungi but unlikely to mushroom hunt, consider foraging in your local market’s produce aisle. When I was a kid in the 70s and 80s, the choice at the average grocery store was limited to the ubiquitous white button mushroom and, maybe, some canned straw mushrooms. Since then, th ..read more

Accumulation by Jennileen Joseph   When we wash our hair, we don’t expect the shampoo to do all the work. We know the wash is one part shampoo, one part our effort. Without effort, the shampoo is just a waste, without the shampoo, our efforts are for naught. We understand that we play a very significant role in facilitating our own cleanliness.  When it comes to our healing though, we often forget this important fact. We expect a pill or herb to do the heavy lifting, with little to no cooperation on our part. Yet if we can’t get our hair clean without a little elbow grease ..read more

Caring for Our Broken Hearts Herbal Remedies and Practices for Heartbreak and Grief  by Atava Garcia Swiecicki Loss and grief are an inevitable part of being human, and we all will experience both in our lifetimes.   Modern westernized culture doesn’t offer many tools to support us when we are facing loss, whether it by death of a loved one, a pet, loss of a job, a relationship, or loss of one’s health.   After a major loss, like a death of a family member, at most we are given a few weeks of bereavement time and then expected to be ready to go back to work and b ..read more

Calendula: Ally Against Gut Inflammation by Dr. Marija Helt   You may be noticing a lot of talk about gut health lately. There’s a reason for this. The health of the gut is key to the health of the rest of the body. An unhealthy gut is a drag on overall health.   What, exactly, is the gut?    Some refer to the stomach and intestines as the gut. Others consider just the intestines to be the gut. Both function in digestion—the physical and chemical breakdown of food into its constituent nutrients—and absorption, the selective passage of nutrients into circulation to nourish ..read more

The Nerve Of It All  Embodied Self-Care for the Nervous System  by Asha Canalos  A 1543 woodcut by Andreas Vesalius illustrating the human nervous system Ten years ago, in a time of relative personal adversity and general emotional funk, I ran across the following quote, and it sent weird shivers of recognition down my spine. It read: “You’re a ghost driving a meat-coated skeleton made from stardust; what do you have to be scared of?”   Crude, and funny in an absurdist way, this string of words speaks to the ineffable state of being we find ourselves in, as a ne ..read more

The Orientation of Russian Olive by Jennileen Joseph   Russian Olive, Elaeagnus angustifolia This blog post is about orientation. I’m going to talk about who I am, where and who I’m from, and how that particular vantage point factors into all things I do as a plant medicine practitioner. And then I’m going to talk about Russian Olive (Elaeagnus angustifolia) and dive deep into who she is and her particular orientation. But to do that I have to also recognize the orientation of all things New Mexico. My hope is that by reading this, you take away context in the deepest and m ..read more

Herbal Bathing: Maurice Messegue, Master of the Art by Donna O’Donovan   Maurice Messegue, French Herbalist (photo credit) “To know a river you have to know its source.” For Maurice Messegue that source was his father. In his autobiography: Of People & Plants, Maurice describes his father as a cherished wellspring in a land where water was scarce and dowsing for water was commonplace. Maurice describes his father as a wellspring that guided and shaped his life like a river. “He alone shaped the entire course of my life.” He had a deep love and reverence for his father w ..read more

The Tagetes Genus: Two Key Herbs in Mexican Herbal History & Tradition by Atava Garcia Swiecicki Mexican and Mexican-American communities have a rich and vibrant history of herbal medicine traditions.  Mexico has incredible biodiversity, with ecosystems that include both Pacific and Atlantic coasts, deserts, jungles, plains, valleys, and mountains.   This biodiversity provides fertile ground for plants of all kinds to grow, including thousands of medicinal herbs.  Across Mexico (including places in the so-called US Southwest which had been former territories of Mexi ..read more