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A unique book to delight plant enthusiasts everywhere!
The benefits of aromatherapy and herbal medicine are well known, but the plant world has so much more to offer. From the life-enhancing experience of being at one with a wild flower meadow to the winter comfort of spiced apple punch, plants can influence your moods and promote a sense of wellbeing the whole year round.
Focusing on the less explored beneficial effects upon mood of common herbs and other healing plants, this book provides thoroughly researched up-to-date information previously unavailable in a single volume.
And you don’t have to be unwell to benefit from mood-enhancing plants. For herbs, fragrant flowers, essential oils and traditional incense can be used to enrich your daily life.
Presents safe alternatives to chemical antidepressants and tranquillisers, including the mood-enhancing benefits of diet, healing music, and contemplation of living plants.
Offers a cornucopia of recipes and ideas for healing disharmonious states of being, preventing the development of stress-related illness and engendering an inner sense of wellbeing.
Promotes the use of herb combinations tailored to individual need, with detailed instruction on preparing your own plant remedies, essential oil blends and inspirational incenses.
Provides botanical, biochemical, pharmacological, and traditional data on around one hundred healing plants with mood-enhancing potential.
Includes an intriguing foray into the realms of sacred entheogens - psychoactive plants used by indigenous peoples throughout the world for sacramental purposes.
Encourages the development of ecological awareness, the reawakening of our deep connection with the living Earth.
With mood-enhancing plants, you can engender tranquillity, revitalisation, mental clarity, romance, creative inspiration, contemplation, and a sense of celebration!
IMPORTANT NOTICE
The extent of this book is far greater than the incorrect page count given on the Amazon USA website. Indeed, it's over 100 pages more extensive!
Extent: 415 pages
Botanical Illustrations: pen and ink, monotone
ISBN: 0 85207 358 5
Discount price, Amazon: £13.99
Click here to order from Amazon USA
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Divided into two parts, Part One explores the many ways in which we may nurture body and soul through diet, herbs and aromatics and by fostering a deeper relationship with Nature. Although the book does not shy away from facing the shadow aspects of life - including the profound effects of the ecological crisis - you will be relieved to hear that there is also much joy and beauty to be found in these pages!
The journey begins with an attempt to define the nature of mood, emotion and soul and how we might nurture these differing aspects of our being. As well as the dietary approach to mood enhancement, we focus on the pleasures of music and gardening as sources of spiritual nourishment and healing. This section concludes with a sojourn into Goethe’s ‘science of qualities’. Using his methodology, we learn to engage the senses in a reciprocal and participatory relationship with plants in order to reveal their soul qualities. Here we recognise strong connections between Goethean science, deep ecology and the budding field of ecopsychology. .
The second chapter explores the complex modes of action of healing plants. As well as taking a close-up view of their chemical components and pharmacological actions, we find ourselves returning to the mysterious forces of Nature as expressed through the phenomenon of synergy. This means the combined effect of the whole herbal preparation exceeds the sum of the individual effects of its constituents. Although gaining in popularity, standardised herbal extracts are quite different in their make-up and lack the inherent vitality of the living plant. Certain of these extracts have been known to cause side-effects which are not associated with traditional use of the herbal remedy. So the chapter concludes with a detailed survey of standardised preparations, which might be better labelled as ‘phyto-pharmaceuticals’ to avoid ambiguity.
Chapter 3 leads us into the shadows and storm clouds of the ecological crisis. Although this chapter makes painful reading, it is important to understand the issues and driving forces behind deforestation, loss of ecosystems, extinction of species and the many other ravages of unbridled industrialisation. The chapter’s focus is the world trade in wild plants and the ecological imbalances caused by indiscriminate harvesting. During the course of writing this book, awareness of the issue has escalated. This is largely due to the efforts of the World Wildlife Fund and other agencies such as United Plant Savers in the USA and the Natural Medicines Society in the UK. For those wishing to find out more about such campaigns, a list of contacts is included at the end of the book.
Moving into the sunlight, the subsequent three chapters are devoted to practicalities and joys. Chapter 4 advises on gathering, drying, storing and preparing herbs for healing and mood-enhancement, and includes a little guidance on lunar gardening.
Despite the plethora of books on essential oils and aromatherapy, chapter 5 includes snippets of information currently unavailable elsewhere.
Then chapter 6 invites you to tread the ancient path of the incense maker. It introduces basic techniques unique to this book, including a smoke-free style of incense suitable for smouldering in confined spaces. The most delightful of these are based on beeswax, aromatic herbs and essences to uplift and inspire.
The next two chapters are symbolic of the waxing and waning Moon respectively and form the core of this book. Chapter 7 waxes lyrical and is an ode to beauty and goodness. Here you will find a cornucopia of recipes, ideas and inspirational quotations for enhancing (or engendering) positive moods and life-enhancing states of being. It comprises a banquet of earthy incenses, ethereal vaporising elixirs, scented tisanes and wines for promoting such benefits as tranquillity, revitalisation, clarity, sacredness, romance and a sense of celebration!
Then chapter 8 explores herbal treatments and coping strategies for disharmonious states of being, including anxiety and depression, seasonal affective disorder (SAD), tension headache, nervous indigestion, insomnia, and other common stress-related ailments.
Part Two of the book is a compendium of botanical profiles. Chapter 9, which is subdivided into two sections, provides a wealth of botanical, biochemical, pharmacological and traditional data on over 70 healing plants with mood-enhancing potential.
What makes this section different from most other sources is that it encourages the use of herb combinations, which is the traditional way. Indeed, few (if any) professional herbalists prescribe herbs singly. The botanical prescription will usually contain several (sometimes many) herbs chosen with skill and sensitivity to harness the power of botanical synergism as well as meeting the specific needs of the individual (this approach is demonstrated in a necessarily generalised way in Chapter 8). Of course, it takes years of hands-on experience to develop these skills to an advanced level. So the first step for those intending to practise professionally is to undergo a thorough training, thus a list of professional associations is included at the end of the book.
Chapter 10 takes us on a magical mystery tour into the realms of entheogens, the ‘forbidden fruits’ or sacred hallucinogens which throughout history have been used by indigenous cultures to engender altered states of consciousness. Of course, information about such plants is not intended as a guide to their use, since ingestion of some of these substances may be harmful or even lethal. Rather, this grand finale is included for historical and cultural interest and to satisfy a natural curiosity!
To summarise: although specifically about mood and psyche, this book attempts to represent a marriage between the scientific approach to botanical medicine with its emphasis on chemical constituents and ‘active principles’, and the holistic approach tailored to individual need and founded on centuries of accumulated herbal knowledge. And yet it also considers the pitfalls of relying too heavily on one approach at the total expense of the other. Written in an accessible style, the work provides thoroughly researched up-to-date information previously unavailable in a single volume.
For ecopsychologists, repression of the ecological consciousness is the deepest root of collusive madness in industrialised society. Indeed, what other creature would systematically tear away at its life support system as evidenced by the wanton destruction of fragile ecosystems throughout the world?
So we must question the archetypal Masculine force that permeates political and corporate power and causes us to dominate Nature in such an extreme way. This same force, when given free rein, is that which also drives warfare, terrorism, racism, misogyny, abuse of animals, and every other perversion of power.
If we are to have any future as a species, there is a desperate need to redress the balance by embracing the archetypal Feminine as expressed through nurture and wisdom. It is imperative that we bring about a marriage between these seemingly opposing forces, so that both aspects may work harmoniously together. In so doing, the rationality and drive of the archetypal Masculine is tempered and enriched through wisdom and humility. This ancient concept of balance is expressed beautifully in the familiar Taoist symbol of the Yin and Yang, where the cosmic Feminine/Masculine energies flow in unison within the circle of wholeness, each polarity expressing its complementary opposite.
Once the small everyday self is expanded to encompass the natural world, there is no longer a sense of separateness, of beholding a picture, of being an outsider looking in. Instead, there is a deep feeling of 'coming home' or belonging. Destruction of this world is experienced as self-destruction, and thus the realisation that human sanity and spiritual wellbeing - and ultimately our very existence - is dependent upon mutually enhancing interactions with the living, breathing planet that sustains us and all other life-forms.
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(c) Chrissie Wildwood, 2003-2004. All rights reserved under the Copyright Design and Patent Act 1988
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