Practical Luxury What to do with herbal marc and a Discount Code for you!

Greetings plant lovers!

Today through January 26, I'm offering a thank you discount code for 10% off anything in my shop. 

Enjoy this week's newsletter to find the code! 

~~ How to use herbal marc, a sexy poem, and lovely photos from my hearth to yours ~~

My Photos in Februarys Herbal Roots

I'm simply delighted that my photographs of Willow will be featured in the upcoming edition of Herbal Roots Zine.

If you have not yet encountered this enchanting, all-ages, magic portal into the world of herbs and herbal healing, well get on it! You will NOT find this quality and quantity of grassroots herbal learning anywhere else for this price.

Kristine your work in the world is beautiful and invaluable. I'm lucky to share my Willow photos with you!

Why I offer the Ladys Slipper Ring Home Study course Herbal CSM

Marketing is so annoying.

I was talking to my close girlfriend last night and found myself in an honest kind of rant. 

She asked me about my Lady's Slipper Ring.....

"Hey! Your membership is open again for another year!"

"Yep :) it is!", I reply.

"Are you excited, or nervous?" She inquires.

"Both" (of course)

You see, there's a world of fancy marketing plans out there, and many of them are very slick, very savvy, and very effective. 

They are also designed by folks who know all about marketing and get paid to do that with their time, and can tell everyone all about it. 

I raise kids. I harvest plants. I make medicines and oils and fragrant delights - instead  of weaving a string of drip campaigns into your email box every day, laced with this deadline and this incentive and this push and shove. 

I bend time in order to make dinner for my family, and escape soccer practices to get into the woods. I move mountains in order to keep homeschooling my kids, and I try like hell to make sure that every way I choose to spend my time is in alignment with my values. 

Perhaps I should apologize, because I'm not giving you a proper spiel to be properly coaxed and convinced. I don't actually want to sell you something that requires lubrication. 

Perhaps you want more information, or more insight and my lack of big showy buttons and videos make me small and hard to find.

And maybe you just want the truth from the horses mouth, without the airbrushed words and glittery splash pages. Maybe you just want to hear what I really think, and why the Lady's Slipper Ring is what I choose to put out in the world. 

So here it is, black and white:

I offer this work because I've been to hell and back. A few times. I know the fight to remain heart centered.

This is the work, the insight and loving kind of contemplation that got me through my dark nights of the soul.

These are the affirmations I needed when I wanted to throw in the towel. 

Mornings when I wished with all my heart, that I didn't even wake up, the thread of life was held to my heart by the smell of the plants. By the grounding of vetiver and cinnamon on my feet, I was able to walk that hard day. I was able to let the tears fall with a little more compassion. 

I do this work because honesty can set us free, but sometimes the truth is hiding under a pile of shit.

I do this work because I'm in service to the plants - it is my duty to share their sensual, intuitive powers. It's my thank you to them for resuscitating me time after time after time.

It's the Echinacea roots that carried my grief when I could no longer. 

It's the Bloodroot that called me a medicine woman before I could. 

It's the Pine tree that climbed my bones first. 

It's the Oats that sowed me. 

I'm not a doctor, I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a naturopath. 

I'm not a therapist.

I am a woman 

who's been to hell and back

and these are the tools that carry me through

the challenges of being woman, authentically and wholly

beautifully and dynamically

and I want women to 

not only

know these tools, 

but always have a fragrant oil to put on before bed

to have a healing salve in their bag

and feel the support of the plants

in their bodies and lives

and know you are not alone

as you give

and give

and give

to your families, 

your lovers

your communities

your work

it is you that shines greatness and sweetness

and cannot bear fruit without water 

at your feet.

And so I have not spent time and labor on fancy technological email patterns, and perhaps this is a mistake. 

But instead I have gathered primrose and mullein and artemisia for you, for your body, your pleasure, for your health and joy. 

I have climbed trunks for resins so that you may soothe your weary ankles, and collected the tiniest of skullcap flowers from nearly invisible patches of meadow. I splash through swampy frog streams to reach the bluest of the vervain, and balance precariously on the shoulders of my girlfriend in the thick of the forest so that I can reach enough Elder flowers to last the winter. 

And I will continue to fill my baskets with unruly beauty so that you may always know yours ... your beauty, and your basket full with nourishment. 

In service of the Green Goddess that is in all,

Ananda Lakshmi

for the

Lady's Slipper Ring, Pleasure Medicine Membership UPDATE - LSR 2012-2013 is FULL. Please sign up for the newsletter to stay connected.

beauty blessings

xoxo

Summer Herbal Intensive

I am offering an Herbal Intensive for adults this Summer. It will be once a week (Wednesdays) for seven weeks, 9am - 3pm. I am very excited and I hope some of you can join me.

It will take place where I work, Great Hollow Wilderness School, in New Fairfield, CT. The land is enchanted and we will get to see plenty of it, since this course will not take place indoors. We will be on the land for the entire time aside from snippets where we may need a kitchen. All other heating will be over a campfire.

We will learn first hand from the plants, and use all our senses to gain information. We will hike through different habitats and examine them. We will learn some simple botany, plant families, and practical herbal wisdom. We will teach each other, get wet in the river, harvest and prepare medicinal and edible plants growing in abundance. We will cover a lot of material, yet it will be simple, digestible and applicable in everyday life. Indexing, journaling, and homework will be implemented. We will also be exploring herbal energetics, vocabulary for the herbalist, and probably a few unknown surprises too. :)

Herbal Intensive for beginners, ages 18 + 

Wednesdays June 24 - August 5, 9 am - 3 pm

Fee $ 450, deposit required

For registration go here

To learn more about Great Hollow Homeschool go here

To learn about all of Great Hollow go here

Green Blessings!

Corydalis Yanhusuo Herbal Remedy For Neuropathic Pain

Today's post from news.uci.edu (see link below) talks about a compound derived from the Corydalis plant that is both effective against neuropathic pain and non-addictive. Everybody is looking for alternatives to opioids as nerve pain analgesics and as such, there has been more investigation into Chinese medicine, where herbal drugs such as Corydalis have been used for a great deal of time. As far as the West is concerned, they are accepting the analgesic qualities but looking for a more 'refined' and scientifically acceptable way of presenting the compound. In the meantime, the herb is available in health shops. However, many health shop preparations are not fully tested and the customer takes a risk if they use them. Maybe it's a question of doing as much research as possible and trying it out for yourself, for a reasonable but relatively short period of time but again...let the buyer beware.

Chinese herbal compound relieves inflammatory and neuropathic pain
 Irvine, Calif., Jan. 2, 2014 
 
UCI study also shows novel analgesic to be nonaddictive

— A compound derived from a traditional Chinese herbal medicine has been found effective at alleviating pain, pointing the way to a new nonaddictive analgesic for acute inflammatory and nerve pain, according to UC Irvine pharmacology researchers.

Working with Chinese scientists, Olivier Civelli and his UC Irvine colleagues isolated a compound called dehydrocorybulbine (DHCB) from the roots of the Corydalis yanhusuo plant. In tests on rodents, DHCB proved to diminish both inflammatory pain, which is associated with tissue damage and the infiltration of immune cells, and injury-induced neuropathic pain, which is caused by damage to the nervous system. This is important because there are no current adequate treatments for neuropathic pain.

Moreover, the researchers found that DHCB did not generate the tolerance seen with continued use of most conventional pain relievers, such as morphine.

“Today the pharmaceutical industry struggles to find new drugs. Yet for centuries people have used herbal remedies to address myriad health conditions, including pain. Our objective was to identify compounds in these herbal remedies that may help us discover new ways to treat health problems,” said Civelli, the Eric L. ; Lila D. Nelson Chair in Neuropharmacology. “We’re excited that this one shows promise as an effective pharmaceutical. It also shows a different way to understand the pain mechanism.”

Study results appear in the Jan. 20 issue of Current Biology.

They are the product of a collaboration between two teams separated by the Pacific Ocean. As traditional Chinese medicine gains greater acceptance in Western medical practice, Xinmiao Liang at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics in China and his group have been working to create an “herbalome” of all the compounds in plant extracts that display pharmacological properties. The UC Irvine team suggested applying “reverse pharmacology” – a novel drug discovery approach that Civelli devised about 25 years ago – to the herbalome project.

Together they screened 10 traditional Chinese medicines known as analgesics, testing nearly 500 compounds for their pain-relief abilities. Only DHCB in corydalis induced a reproducible effect.

Corydalis is a flowering herbal plant that grows in Siberia, Northern China and Japan. People utilize its root extract to alleviate menstrual cramps, chest pain and abdominal pain. It’s been previously studied for its analgesic properties, but this is the first time DHCB has been identified, extracted and tested.

Chronic neuropathic pain affects more than 50 million Americans, yet management of this pain remains a major clinical challenge due to the poor results and severe side effects of conventional analgesics. Civelli said that drawing upon traditional Chinese medical-herbal products could lead to a breakthrough treatment for these patients.

DHCB needs to be evaluated for any toxicity before it can be developed as a drug. It’s also possible that if the compound is chemically modified, a more potent pharmaceutical may be found. While DHCB is not currently available, it is part of the Corydalis yanhusuo root or extracts that can be purchased in health stores or online.

Yan Zhang, Lien Wang, Gregory Scott Parks, Kang-Wu Li, Mi Kyeong Kim, Benjamin Vo, Emiliana Borrelli, Zhiwei Wang, M. Julia Garcia-Fuster and Z. David Luo of UC Irvine;

Chaoran Wang, Xiuli Zhang, Zhimou Guo, Guangbo Ge and Ling Yang of the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics in China; and Yanxiong Ke of the East China University of Science & Technology also contributed to the study, which was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grants MH60231 and DA024746), the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia & Depression (now the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation), the Tourette Syndrome Association, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the National High-Tech Research & Development Program of China.

About the University of California, Irvine: Located in coastal Orange County, near a thriving employment hub in one of the nation’s safest cities, UC Irvine was founded in 1965. One of only 62 members of the Association of American Universities, it’s ranked first among U.S. universities under 50 years old by the London-based Times Higher Education. The campus has produced three Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Michael Drake since 2005, UC Irvine has more than 28,000 students and offers 192 degree programs. It’s Orange County’s second-largest employer, contributing $4.3 billion annually to the local economy.

Media access: UC Irvine maintains an online directory of faculty available as experts to the media at communications.uci.edu/for-journalists/experts/. Radio programs/stations may, for a fee, use an on-campus ISDN line to interview UC Irvine faculty and experts, subject to availability and university approval. For more UC Irvine news, visit news.uci.edu. Additional resources for journalists may be found at communications.uci.edu/for-journalists.

http://news.uci.edu/press-releases/chinese-herbal-compound-relieves-inflammatory-and-neuropathic-pain/