The weather is warming up! And while this has many people jumping for joy and heading to the beach after a dreary, long winter/spring, summer heat can also take its toll. This is the perfect opportunity to apply your knowledge in herbal energetics.
The term "energetics" can mean different things. Sometimes we use the term to refer to more etherial, spiritual, or vibrational healing properties. For example, how the dilute remedies called flower essences encourage the body to heal using the vibrational energies of individual flowers. Today, though, I'm using the term to refer to something totally different.
In herbal medicine, more often the term "energetics" refers to tissue states and constitution. Most healing systems have their own methods of dividing up and categorizing energetics -- yin-yang and five element in Chinese medicine, the doshas in Ayurveda. In western herbal medicine, our energetics lineage dates back to Hippocrates and Galen and the four humors. In more modern times, we focus more on tissue states: temperature/activity level (hot, cold), moisture (dry, damp), and sometimes also structure (lax, tense). These energetics can apply to disease states (wet vs dry cough), constitution (people who generally run hot or cold), herbs (hot spicy cayenne vs moistening mucilaginous marshmallow).
Energetics also apply to the local climate and weather, and both our constitution and our disease states can be exacerbated by the excesses of the season. For example, in autumn, things get exceptionally dry. People who are already dry (dry skin, dry mucus membranes, dry cough) will often have a harder time in autumn with more flare ups of their dry conditions. But even people who are not inherently dry might find that the dry weather eventually caches up with them and makes them dry.
Summer brings heat. For someone who has a cold constitution, this can be a welcome change to the cooler, dreary months (like me!). But for someone else who runs hot, they're absolutely miserable when the temps rise above 70 or 80°F (like my husband, mother, several close friends... apparently surround myself with hot people, perhaps so their radiant heat will warm me up). Here in the Northeast, we generally experience damp (humid) heat whereas other areas get dry heat, like the southwest (which is always dry) and the Pacific Northwest (where it's usually wet but dries out in the summer). Summer wildfires? They just make dry heat even worse, as my friends on the West Coast will attest!
So, what do we do when the heat cranks up? We can use cooling herbs and even cooling formats of herbs (like iced tea, infused water, cool baths, water-based mists) to chill us out and balance those excessive energetics of the season!
Cooling herbs tend to be sour (hibiscus, citrus, berries), fruity sweet, melon-y (watermelon, cucumbers), vegetal/green (leafy greens, raw salads, violet leaves, chickweed, plantain), mucilaginous (marshmallow, violet... particularly nice when it's hot and dry).
Listen to this Podcast On Cooling Herbal Energetics for Hot Weather on HerbRally that I recorded with herbalist Missy Rohs during my visit to Oregon last month. Missy Rohs teaches at the Arctos School of Herbal and Botanical Studies in Portland, where her summers bring dry heat. In the podcast we share some of our favorite ways to use herbs to chill out on hot (dry and damp) days including...
- Iced hibiscus tea (like they do in Central America, usually sweetened)
- Iced cooling herbal teas and cold water infusions of herbs like violet leaf/flower, mint, Korean licorice mint
- Cool foot baths with floating herbs
- Herbal mists with rose
- Peach twig and leaf
- and more...
Happy Listening!
Learn More About Western Herbal Energetics
- Katya Swift & Ryn Midura's free podcast introducing Herbal Energetics and their online study course
- David Winston's 10 Tastes Lecture ($65 online course here) as well as in various shorter versions from American Herbalists Guild Symposium Recordings (need to be an AHG member to access) or a really nice $16 recording on Backcountry Recordings
- jim mcdonald’s ~$30 energetics booklet
- Matthew Wood's book The Practice of Traditional Western Herbalism
Clinical herbalist Maria Noël Groves sees clients and teaches classes at Wintergreen Botanicals Herbal Clinic & Education Center in Allenstown, New Hampshire.
The statements made on this blog and podcast have not been evaluated by the FDA and are not intended to diagnose, prescribe, recommend, or offer medical advice. Please see your health care practitioner for help regarding choices and to avoid herb-drug interactions.