My neighbors have two beautiful ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba) trees in their front yard. Honestly, I didn’t really notice them until our first fall living here, when suddenly the trees and ground were covered in gorgeous golden leaves that seemed to glow in the autumn sunlight. I quickly looked into these stunning trees to learn more about them.
Cupping, as defined by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, is “a traditional Chinese medicine practice that involves placing cups on the skin to create suction.” Suction cups are left on the skin to draw fluid into the area, thereby speeding the healing process. Cupping follows the Chinese philosophy: “Where there’s stagnation, there will be pain.
Oyster mushrooms (Pleurotis) and others are both a delicious edible mushroom and a great medicinal as well. The wild ones are the tastiest, if you’re lucky enough to find them, though you can often find them at the grocery store or even grow your own with one of the many commercial growing kits available. I found a small cluster this summer during what was an otherwise dismal mushroom season here in the Southern Rockies. They smelled like aniseed…something
Frankincense (Boswellia) is best known as incense to most folks. It’s been used for thousands of years as a wonderful aid for mood, medication, ritual, and prayer. As such, frankincense was extremely valuable in the ancient world and was a key part of the spice trade 2000 years ago, making the folks who controlled frankincense trees in the Southern Arabian Peninsula and East Africa extremely wealthy (1).
Frankincense is also great support for the digestive tract. More on this in a moment…
Ticks might seem like fairly innocuous, if annoying, insects, but these arachnids often carry dangerous diseases that can lead to chronic illness.
Mugwort (Artemesia vulgaris and A. douglasiana) has a magical feel to it: The silvery green leaves that shine in the moonlight; the distinctive scent used for dream time. Then there’s the botanical name “Artemesia,” for Artemis with her silver bow and arrow, goddess of the hunt associated with the moon and things wild. Mugwort seems to put one into a different space.
The May Tree in the Celtic calendar, Hawthorn is the powerful grandmother of the Rose family and was thought in Europe to be the home of faeries. “Haw” means berry and “thorn”—well, that’s pretty self-explanatory. “Crataegus” derives from Greek…”kratos” means strength and “akis,” sharp. The thorns can be an inch long. Ouch!
In Chinese medicine, different parts of the tongue reflect what’s going on in different Organ systems. In the first 3 parts of this series on the basics of tongue diagnosis, we got into what tongue body color, tongue shape, and tongue coat ha
Mallows are great plant allies for our health. You may be familiar with marshmallow root, but did you know that the flowers and leaves are also good medicine? And that other mallows are equally useful? These include Hollyhock (Alcea rosea), that beautiful and easy-to-grow ornamental plant; Globe Mallow (Sphaeralcea species), a denizen of more desert-type areas; and Wild or Common Mallow (Malva neglecta & M.
We’ve already looked at how to interpret tongue shape and tongue color. Next in the tongue diagnosis series…how to interpret tongue coat! Tongue coat is another important feature used to read the tongue.