Didjeridoo Sound Healer, Friday June 17 in Berkeley
Chaga Mushroom Decoction for Anti-Tumor Benefits
Chaga, Inonotus obliquus, called birch bark fungus has many healing benefits. Like many medicinal mushrooms, chaga has special benefits to the immune system and is an important ally for working with cancer. It has been researched to help breast, cervical and lung cancers.
To extract the healing properties of chaga, you need to make a lengthy decoction. Here is a recipe for a chaga decoction adapted from The Fungal Pharmacy, Medicinal Mushrooms of Western Canada by Robert Rogers that comes from a traditional Russian recipe:
Chaga
- Pour 2.5 liters of boiling water over 500 grams of dry chaga.
- Cover & let stand at room temperature for four days.
- Strain & refrigerate the first liquid.
- Take the chaga & grind to a mush.
- Add 2 liters of 50 degree Celsius water to the chaga mush & let stand for 48 hours.
- Strain second decoction.
- Add two chaga liquids together.
- Drink 200 ml 4X/day before meals.
- Optional: Add 25-25% alcohol to the final product so it will last indefinitely, otherwise it must be prepared every 4 days
Herbal Body Care: Brown Sugar Body Scrub
Herbs are great to take internally to improve our overall health and they also can be incorporated in a wide range of body care products. My current favorite is the Brown Sugar Body Scrub that I made for Valentine’s Day last year.
Each shower I take is a delightful and sensual experience with this scrub, plus it leaves my skin feeling smooth and silky. Moreover, it costs only a few dollars to make- a similar sized product by Neiman Marcus retails for $65!!!
The recipe that I used is adapted from the Mountain Rose Blog, which I recommend highly for its fun & creative ideas for all kinds of herbal products.
Ylang Ylang
Edible Brown Sugar Body Scrub
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1 cup white sugar
- ½ cup plus 3 Tbs sunflower oil
- ½ tsp vanilla extract, damiana cordial, or flavoring of your choice OR
- 20-30 drops essential oil (lavender, bergamot, cardamon…)
- Optional: 1 tsp ground spices such as cinnamon, cardamon or ginger (will have a warming effect); or finely ground rose petals, chamomile or calendula.
Mix the sugar & oil. Add herbal extracts, essential oils, ground herbs & mix well. Store in glass jar.
To mine, I added about 20 drops of Floracopeia’s Ylang Ylang essential oil, which smells like heaven in a bottle.
Homeland Food Insecurity and Down to the Ground Food Activism
This entire post was written and shared with permission by Gigi Stafne. For more information about her and her work, see her bio at the end of the post.
Food Insecurity. Maybe I should call it Homeland Food Insecurity. This is the precarious state of disrepair that occurs decades after voracious corporate agriculture has taken big bites out of local communities, leaving behind a trail of economic fallout, poor nutrition and food deserts in urban and rural areas alike. Plus sundry other problems. Food deserts are vacant spaces, felt like hunger pangs in industrialized countries where affordable, nutritious food becomes difficult to obtain, yet should be abundant and bio-secure. The availability of quality healthful local foods, botanicals and value-added products diminishes or dries up totally. Small locally-owned grocery store shelves eventually start looking as sparse as Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard until that fateful day when a Closed for Business sign is sadly stuck in the storefront window. Even mid-size markets are susceptible to this desert disease.
The migration continues: gigantic chain supermarkets encroach rural fringes, moving to outskirts of towns, urban sprawl seeping to ever-morphing edges. When small locally-owned markets disappear, residents are forced to follow, foraging their foods from mega aisles and miles of cereal box choices in the land of plenty. Mass transit is limited, sometimes nomads in food deserts can’t even afford to get to that asphalt parking lot. On the average, townsfolk must travel at least 10-12 miles to get to one of the mega-marts. Seems like everybody loses out–except for the corporations. When mom and pop stores die out, so do other life-blood small businesses, drained into the not so sweet hereafter. That’s what trends indicate. And so it goes. Local economic vitality spoiled, tossed into the dumpster.
Time to face the facts. We spend mega-money importing food from the outside–multinationals that some economists say have actually been a drag on the U.S. economy since 2000. It seems like an irrational road map when you trace the maze of complex food routes. An average meal purchased from a large supermarket gobbles 4 to 17 times more fossil fuel than a locavore meal. Industrial eaters indirectly eat a lot of petroleum. A contributing factor to global warming. Long distance food actually puts a dent in rural economies and the environment. This global interdependence of our complex food system has created unintended losses rather than generating new wealth and security for families, farmers and communities across America the beautiful. Small-scale agriculture and locavore food businesses still remain marginal links in this sprawling food chain.
Ok, this might be a green-rant, but…
Food is important to me. Deep at heart, I’m a locavore. Passionate about the unfurling foodie movement. I just moved back to northern Wisconsin last year after teaching and traveling, from Canada to Mexico, an yerbalista borderlands woman. I’ve been settling back into a new routine of cooking and eating in the north woods. Right now, I live with a hunter; I’m a gatherer. Have been for years. I believe in eating attuned with nature’s cycles, plus teach and write about these pure wild ways in radical herbalism. Eat local, eat seasonal, eat healthful. We’re just coming out of what some indigenous northern ones call, Hungry Moon, the cycle of late winter when food preserves and stocks have dwindled. We know how to survive. This time of the year usually scares the heck out of a lot of people, makes them anxious, cooped up with cabin fever, feeling like they have little margin. Especially when they are desperately dependent upon outer world food and economic systems.
I understand. I mediate between those worlds, too. People do feel insecure about survival during times like these. Yet, I imagine a time with no mega-marts, living down to the ground, creative and resilient, thriving in the wintery northwoods. Every step we take toward independence, whether that is living off-grid or working harmoniously within a truly interdependent sustainable community, we are closer to arriving. As one of the Greenhorns said, I am hellbent on recovering from the age of convenience.
Wisconsin is propagating more CSA’s, farmers markets and small organic farms than ever. That feels good. Yet, upon returning to the Great Lakes region, I witness disturbing signs of rural and small town economies decaying. One of those moments happened the other day at noon when I drove by a busy 4-corner intersection in the seat of Rusk County, population 3577, with several new gas stations and a fast food joint buzzing with cars at each quadrant. There, flapping in the breeze and exhaust of a steady stream of Dodge trucks and sturdy sedans was a whole platoon of signs spiked in curbside, like little political campaign signs. Only this propaganda was enticing busy workers inside for cheap convenience store lunch-on-the-run:
79 cent cheeseburgers, 99 cent Big Gulps. Gassing up, I felt like a food hussy spying on those harried folks dashing in and out with their cheap, crinkly-wrapper sandwiches of mystery meat and sloshy big red Gulps. One by one, they disappeared, driving off in a rush. From a cultural anthropologist’s eye, it looks like we have a nationalized eating disorder.
How sad. Part of the attraction is the affordable price of a quick meal, no doubt. After all, we’re in recovery from a recession. So, folks need to eat cheap crap, right? Not necessarily so.
Back to foraging in the food deserts across America, from small towns to inner city neighborhoods of the urban landscape. Where are people actually buying their food in those gap zones? Gas stations, convenience stores and liquor marts. That’s where. Like the one I drove by with the Burma Shave series of cheapo food signs. What’s on the menu, America? Bags of Cheetos, overcooked nitrate-laden hotdogs from the rotating rotisserie and high octane Rock Star energy drinks boasting Green Tea, Ginseng and Guarana. Food stuffs high in fat, sugar, salt, calories and weird artificial ingredients. Strange ingredients, is right. New York Times journalist, Mark Bittman just wrote about McDonald’s FMO (sounds too much like GMO to me) a new menu item, Fruit-Maple-Oatmeal that busy-bee morning workers can buy at ten times the price of normal oatmeal with its “concoction of 21 ingredients”.
Consumers get kicked in the teeth by fringe food retailers who jack-up the price of processed foods, as much as 30-60% more than grocery stores in such urban and small town deserts. This hits hard in the pocketbooks of the poor–especially during times of economic struggle. In fact, food desert consumers ultimately end up spending an average of 37% more on their food purchases. And they are left feeling empty–nutritionally and spiritually.
Humans suffer from poor nutrition–right here in the Heartland. Land of plenty. Research reveals a psychological factor related to one’s proximity to food; a connection between easy access to processed junk and diseases of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. So, I imagine the opposite is true when people grow gardens. I see radical changes when my botanical medicine students take classes learning how to care deeply for self and family–from herb and food gardens to homegrown apothecaries–they begin to feel very secure and healthful. This green-loving circle spends less money on medicine and junk food. Dirt farmers, wilders and greenhorns seem to be a happy, soul-nourished lot of folks.
If we step back, viewing the community as a whole organism, much as we do in natural medicine with the human body, then we see there is nothing truly affordable about these ‘cheap meals’. Not with the escalating rates of disease and obesity stemming from poor nutrition in the United States. Multinationals have exported this sickly western processed fast food model and other nations are catching up fast with similar preventable diseases. We not only need better nutrition and botanical medicines, we crave spiritual nourishment from our food cosmos.
What really happens when our food is grown regionally, then whisked away, exported via national and international routes into the global food commodity market, rather than staying within our communities? We lose community food security. Our townspeople end up buying food back locally anyway from the international network of giant food intermediaries such as Kraft, ConAgra, Nestle, PepsiCo. Essentially, money spent on importing food takes from the fertility of the local economy. It weakens our economic capacity, just as the mono-cropped landscape loses its rich biodiversity. There’s multifarious fallout: overpriced goods, overprocessed foods, drain on freshness and nutritive value, excess chemicals and preservatives, exorbitant fuel costs for transport, and increases in food-borne diseases.
The landscape of the Heartland has been altered with expanses of corporate owned farms. Monoculture wildfire rages across the plains and prairies. Surviving farmers receive their subsidies for corn, soy, wheat, cotton and rice. King Corn rules. Agribiz is big business. Common folk dredge on, like indentured modern serfs. Remember that farmers really only receive about 20 cents on every food dollar for their hard work. However, what if U.S. farmers were offered subsidies and incentives to diversify, to grow healthful whole foods, cultivating a wide range of organic produce and alternative crops instead? We know small farmers are losing out. So are food consumers. Plenty of money streams out of local farmers’ bank accounts and local community coffers when growers have to pay distant suppliers and creditors that are non-local.
“In short, despite having invested heavily in (farm) technology that enables them to reap immense harvests, and despite spending nearly a billion dollars a year to raise crops and animals to sell to some of the wealthiest corporations in the world, many of the region’s farm families live dangerously close to poverty levels.” (Meter-Rosales report, MN)
One economic analysis indicates that if regional families and communities begin with the small step of purchasing even 5% of their foods locally, that would in turn create an average stream of $5 million in farm income for that region.
Midwest small dairy farms are vanishing and we must support their survival. Their disappearances create more ecological problems. Corporate farms infiltrate and the negative cycle perpetuates: few small independent dairy farms, poor crop rotation, less animal manure, sub-standard soil conditions, more mono-crops, proliferation of GMO’s, chemical-intense use, groundwater contamination, high fuel consumption…on and on it goes.
Recently I conversed with a U.S.D.A. contract grain inspector in the Midwest and he admitted that most farmers feel ‘locked in’ by the contracts they have signed. Another cycle of economic entrapment. He also blew apart another myth when he discussed mono-crops, “There is a misconception that we are feeding the world’s people…but we really are not. We’re feeding the world’s animals…mainly it is feedstock…feed for cattle and dogs.”
True, don’t forget the corn. We’re the corn people of America, Michael Pollen and Aaron Woolf declare in their expose books and films on the truth about ag politics and food in America.
“With an oink-oink here, and a ton of campaign cash there, agribusiness giants are able to dictate America’s food and farm policies in both Republican and Democratic administrations,” chides Jim Hightower.
So, what’s required of us now? A new food literacy campaign.
A cultural conversation about food. And it has begun. Because we hunger for healthful foods. We must shift the very way we think and behave, instead of eating what’s shoved on our plates served in Cafeteria America. Food production and distribution must increasingly include regional, ecological and economic sustainabilty efforts. This new foodie movement will create stronger bonds, trust, security, a sense of community, plus stronger families, communities and business connections.
U.S. citizens are cultivating their own down to the ground food movement. An agro-ecological cultural renaissance is happening. From a spade in the community garden to food co-op aisles, and over tasty organic meals served up at the tables of family and friends. It will take passion, courage, creativity to shift and transform our current cultural food landscape. A true green revival is happening close to home…and there’s room at the table for you!
Here are 30 ways that people can get involved in the down to the ground foodie movement. The author encourages and inspires you to take action.
Do it for the health of the planet, the health of your family…for yourself:
Buy from organic farms
Purchase food shares, join a CSA*
Get active with a local food co-op
Visit & support Farmer’s Markets
Eat whole foods & local produce
Shop for value-added products
Donate healthy food to the Food Pantry
Serve up meals at Community Kitchens
Transform the menu to include local food & organics:
Schools, colleges, nursing homes, employer food services
Eat out at locavore food establishments
Host events with local organic caterers
Read what food bloggers are saying
Transform your backyard: food not lawns
Grow anarchist plots: guerilla garden
Restore native plants
Grow a medicinal herb garden
Take a wild edibles or weed walk with the local herbalist
Volunteer to co-create gardens with kids
Shop local, grow community economy
Save seeds (heirloom, non-GMO, native)
Preserve culturally diverse heritages & traditions
Be active in the small farm revival
Support biodiversity, organics, permaculture, biomimicry projects
Support urban agriculture
Volunteer at a prison garden
Build raised beds for elderly neighbors
Become a wilder, forager!
Ensure egalitarian access to whole foods:
Join a food justice organization
*there’s a trend to rename CSA’s Community Sustaining Agriculture
About the Author…
Gigi Stafne is an educator, writer and activist of 20 years within the realms of natural & botanical medicine, women’s health, environmental health and ecology. She is an yerbalista wilder and borderlands woman, who is teaching this Spring in Wisconsin, Minnesota…then off to the Southwest U.S. and Mexico engaging in cross cultural down to the ground medicine.
To contact the author, take a course or participate in an exchange:
www.greenwisdom.weebly.com & www.wildearthecotours.weebly.com
This is an article meant to be shared, but please contact the author for reprinting, publishing on-line, blogs or in print: gigigreenwisdom@gmail.com
Bibliography:
Bittman, Mark. “How to make oatmeal…wrong“ Feb 22, 2011,
New York Times.
Cook, Christopher. Diet for a Dead Planet: Big business and the coming food crisis, 2005.
Cook, Christopher. “Farming Bill: making America fat and polluted, one subsidy at a time,” (2008) The Christian Science Monitor.
Hightower, Jim. “Agrbiz offends workers, nature, our palates,”
Hightower Lowdown (2002).
Ellis, Curt and Aaron Woolf. King Corn (film), 2006.
Ellis, Curt and Aaron Woolf. Big River (film), 2009.
Kenner, Robert. Food, Inc. (film), 2008.
Mandel, Michael. “Multinationals, are they good for America?” Bloomberg Businessweek (February 2008).
Meter, Ken and Jon Rosales. Finding Food in Farm Country (reports). 1997, 2001, 2005
Pollan, Michael. Omnivore’s Dilemma, 2006.
Stafne, Gigi. “Environmental Health Perspectives: How are pesticides affecting our children?” Global-Local Forum.
Stafne, Gigi. “Holistic Alert: Monsanto Case Dismissed?” Red Clover Gazette (Summer 2005).
Stafne, Gigi. “Immune System Treaty,” Second Opinion:Local Alternative Health & Healing (Sept-Oct. 2009).
Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The dark side of the All-American meal, 2001.
Smith, Jeffrey. Genetic Roulette: The documented health risks of genetically engineered foods, 2007.
Additional websites & blogs:
Report Back from Valentine’s Herbal Love Potion Party
Last month we had a great turnout at the second annual Valentine’s Herbal Love Potion party.
Those attending enjoyed sampling some of the most popular Damiana Delight cordials from last year ( Spicy & Vanilla Cardamon). This year I created a few new exciting flavors including Flower Kiss (rose & jasmine) and Lady Grey’s Delight (vanilla & bergamot).
Happy truffle makers
Liz and her helpers were busy rolling out dozens of chocolate truffles, all infused with special herbs and flower essences to inspire love and
Magic, romantic truffles
romance. They were a big hit and completely sold out.
Each workshop participant had the opportunity to craft their very own love potion by adding flower essences to a base of damiana cordial.
Thanks again to our wonderful host Marie. A good time was had by all.
Herbal Strategies for Dealing with the Flu
This past month, despite my best efforts to stay well, I caught the flu.
As an herbalist, getting sick is always an educational experience. Each time I have a chance to learn first hand what natural remedies are helpful for my condition. Here’s a list of things I found helpful when dealing with the flu:
* If you can catch the flu at the very beginning stages, try taking a hot bath while drinking a hot cup of ginger-cayenne-turmeric tea. After about 20 minutes in the bath, get out, wrap yourself in blankets and sweat.
* A fever is a good thing. Fevers are your body’s natural way of warding off infection. Reducing a fever with aspirin, ibuprofen or acetaminophen may decrease your body’s immune response, prolong the illness, and increase chance of complications. If the fever goes about 104 degrees, seek medical attention.
* For the aches and pains of a flu, try a hot cup of herbal boneset tea, or one of my favorites, lemon balm.
* A flu is caused by a virus and can’t be appropriately treated with antibiotics. Anti-viral herbs include elderberry, echinacea, olive leaf, ginger, shiitake mushrooms & lemon balm.
* Eat lots of raw garlic, which has been a cure for many ailments since ancient times. Garlic helps with many aspects of colds & flu including cough, sore throat, bronchitis & pneumonia. A medicated oil made of garlic and mullein flowers is also helpful for ear aches.
* Decongest your lungs & sinuses with herbal team inhalations. Get a big pot of hot water and add 2-5 drops of Floracopeia essential oil of eucalyptus, thyme, tea tree, fir or peppermint. Cover your head with a towel and inhale deeply. Can repeat several times per day.
* Keep hydrated, drinking lots of water and herb tea. Eat light soups, broths or cooked cereal (congees).
* Rest, rest, rest! It is important to give your body enough time to heal. Pushing yourself to go back to work too soon can result in getting sick again.
* To rebuild your vitality after a flu, try adaptogenic and chi-building herbs like eleuthero, codonopsis, reishi, ashwaghanda, or one of Ancestral Apothecary’s Power Mushroom
Extracts.
* Check out the blog by Mountain Rose about herbal cold and flu remedies.
* For more specialized treatment, make an appointment with an herbalist.
* To help get your body back into harmony, try Acupressure or Jin Shin Jyutsu®.
Mexica New Year is March 12, 2011
From Carlos Aceves, www.xinachtli.com
We are entering Nemontemi, five days of reflection and rest before Yancuic Xihuitl Matlac-ome-uan Acatl (twelve-reed) which arrives at noon on March 12, 2011. This is the year before our Teoxihuitl begins, the Sacred Cycle of 26,000 years.
Next year, thirteen obsedian knife, the first celestial manifestation of Teoxihuitl begins thirteen days after the March 20, 2012 Spring equinox when the seven stars of the Pleiades will align with Venus.
Twelve is community, thirteen are the stars said those who came before us. Reed is symbolic of the state of Creation in which there is always more space than form. The obsedian knife is a symbol of cutting through darkness to expose truth. By that meaning, this coming year is one which our community reflects on the vastness of what we need to learn.
As stars are symbols of consciousness and next year is the time to “cut through the sky and reveal Her truth.” The era of Tlaolli (tlayolli-that which gives life) or Corn will come to end. An era, a civilization, a way of Life that began on August 13, 5,124 years ago will give way.
There is much preparation for a New Era, a New Sun. For this the ancestors told us “restore the ceremonies, renew the convenants, return to the sacred places,” to which an elder once added “and follow the story in the sky.”
Yolohuitzcalotl
www.xinachtli.com
Dream Diet for Optimum Health
Dr. Oz recently did a show on What Dreams Mean About Your Health.
I am glad this important piece about dreams has reached the mainstream. As a holistic health care practitioner, educator and dream worker, I’ve been leading Mind-Body Healing Dreamgroups in Oakland for the past few years.
A simple way to start working with your dreams to improve your health is to pay attention to dreams of food. I recently wrote an article for DreamTribe about how to examine and follow your own dream diet:
http://thedreamtribe.com/dreaming-your-diet-for-optimal-health/
What’s in the Heart, a film about the health crisis among Native Americans
What’s in the Heart -Why Native Americans suffer the worst health in the USA. from Kitty Farmer on Vimeo.
As I was sick and feverish, I had a lot of time to think. One thing I thought about most was all of the people who don’t have access to health care. I thought about people who are ill and who don’t even have a warm dry place to sleep or access to clean water, a hot bath or a steaming cup of tea.
Then, an important Tweet caught my eye. I discovered a film and campaign called What’s In the Heart, which is documenting the alarming health crisis among Native American people. Due to historical trauma and countless broken treaties with the US government, Native people are currently suffering the worst health care situation in the country.
What’s in the Heart aims to educate the American public about the nature of this crisis and also features stories about all the incredible Native people who are working hard in their communities to bring about healing and positive change.
Some alarming statistics:
Death Rates among Native Americans as compared to the general American population:
Suicide: 72% Higher
Diabetes: 249% Higher
Alcoholism: 627% Higher
Please support this important campaign by spreading the word and donating what you can.
Apela Colorado’s Distinctions of Indigenous Science
NINE DISTINCTIONS OF INDIGENOUS SCIENCE by DR. APELA COLORADO
Just like western science, indigenous science relies upon direct observation; there are
tests to insure validity and data are used for forecasting and generating predictions.
Individuals are trained in various forecasting and generating predictions. Individuals are
trained in various specializations, for example, herbal ism, weather observations, mental
health and time keeping. Unlike western science, the data from indigenous science are
not used to control the forces of nature, instead, the data tell us ways and means of
accommodating nature. Other critical distinctions include the following:
1. The indigenous scientist is an integral part of the research process and there is a
defined process for insuring this integrity.
2. All of nature is considered to be intelligent and alive, thus an active research
partner.
3. The purpose of indigenous science is to maintain balance.
4. Compared to western time/space notions, indigenous science collapses time and
space with the result that our fields of inquiry and participation extend into and
overlap with past and present.
5. Indigenous science is concerned with relationships, we try to understand and
complete our relationships with all living things.
6. Indigenous science is holistic, drawing on all the Sense including the spiritual and
psychic.
7. The end point of an indigenous scientific process is a known and recognized place. This
point of balance, referred to by my own tribe as the Great Peace, is both peaceful
and electrifyingly alive. In the joy of exact balance, creativity occurs, which is why
we can think of our way of knowing as a life science.
8. When we reach the moment/place of balance we do not believe that we have
transcended — we say that we are normal! Always we remain embodied in the
natural world.
9. Humor is a critical ingredient of all truth seeking, even in the most powerful rituals.
This is true because humor balances gravity.
Colorado, Pamela. -1994. Indigenous science and westem science: a healing convergence.
Presentation at the World Sciences Dialog I, New York City, April 25-27, 1994
