JUNE 2015
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Healing Wise ...
with Susun Weed

Natural Scent Therapy

Green blessings to you!

Some people are "super tasters." With many more taste buds than most, they taste things others don't notice. My taste-ability is better than most, because I don't eat pepper, which kills taste buds. And because I have trained myself to be acutely aware of my flavor/taste environment.

My daughter and I are "super sniffers." We have scent-sitivity. Smells that are mild to others knock my socks off. If I eat sardines for breakfast (and I often do), Justine can still smell it on my breath after many hours (and tooth-brushing). If we walk past a laundromat, we have to cross the street. (The scent of those dryer sheets is actually poisonous.) And heaven forbid that someone arrives at the Wise Woman Center wearing essential oil; I must ask them to wash it off.

It is not that I dislike the smell of essential oils. But the smell is not nice enough for me to ignore the burning in my eyes, nose, and throat. Some people who are similarly affected are said to have the disease of "environmental sensitivity." But a body that clearly tells us we are in the presence of something unhealthy is working well; it is not diseased.

Essential oils are drugs, not herbal products. They are made by extraction, concentration, and purification—the same processes used to make aspirin or heroin or any other plant-based drug.

Essential oils are well known to disrupt the hormonal system, especially in children, with boys growing breasts from use of products containing (even organic) lavender oil. They are capable of disabling the immune system with long, continuous exposure, such as massage therapists get. And essential oils use the earth's resources in an alarming fashion: Thousands of pounds of herb are required to produce one ounce of essential oil.

What to do instead? Natural scent therapy, named by Mary Rose, a Wise Woman herbalist and massage therapist, is the answer.

Plants don't contain essential oils; they contain volatile oils. The natural scents of plants, the volatile oils  are extracted, concentrated, and purified to make essential oils. Volatile oils are also antiseptic and antibacterial, and help purify sickrooms as well as the drug-like essentials.

Instead of essential oils, let's use the volatile oils of fresh, dried, and preserved herbs as natural scent therapy. Volatile oils are easily released into the air by stroking the plant or boiling fresh or dried plants in an open pan. Volatile oils can also be captured in low-scent oils like almond oil, pure olive oil, or coconut oil.

If you want accessible natural scent therapy, simply to boil any aromatic plant. Cinnamon sticks, cloves, orange peels, lavender, sage, rosemary, and thyme (fresh or dried) produce wonderful scents when simmered on a low heat.  


Lavender                                                                         Purple Sage

Cloves

If you have a green thumb and a windowsill, you can easily grow almost any scented member of the mint family –  like peppermint, spearmint, catnip, lemon balm, lavender, thyme, oregano, and rosemary – and stroke them to fill your room with their volatile oils.


Catnip                                                                              Rosemary



If you are an aspiring herbalist, try making your own scented oils. 

Blooming right now are wild roses, pinks, mints like ground ivy, and yellow sweet clover, which make delightful fragrant oil. As does cedar. (Watch Susun make comfrey oil here.)


Wild Rose

Pinks                                                                              Ground Ivy

Yellow Clover                                                                 Lily of the Valley

Kuumba made coconut oils are a wonderful example of the deliciously-scented products available without essential oils. (Do read carefully, some of her products do contain essential oils.) 


Susun Weed’s books:




Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year
Author: Susun S. Weed.
Simple, safe remedies for pregnancy, childbirth, lactation, and newborns. Includes herbs for fertility and birth control. Foreword by Jeannine Parvati Baker. 196 pages, index, illustrations.
Retails for $14.95
Order at: www.wisewomanbookshop.com





Healing Wise
Author: Susun S. Weed.
Superb herbal in the feminine-intuitive mode. Complete instructions for using common plants for food, beauty, medicine, and longevity. Introduction by Jean Houston. 312 pages, index, illustrations.
Retails for $21.95
Order
at: www.wisewomanbookshop.com




NEW Menopausal Years the Wise Woman Way

Author: Susun S. Weed.
The best book on menopause is now better. Completely revised with 100 new pages. All the remedies women know and trust plus hundreds of new ones. New sections on thyroid health, fibromyalgia, hairy problems, male menopause, and herbs for women taking hormones. Recommended by Susan Love MD and Christiane Northrup MD. Introduction by Juliette de Bairacli Levy. 304 pages, index, illustrations.
Retails for $22.95
Order
at: www.wisewomanbookshop.com
For excerpts visit: www.menopause-metamorphosis.com



Breast Cancer? Breast Health!

Author: Susun S. Weed.
Foods, exercises, and attitudes to keep your breasts healthy. Supportive complimentary medicines to ease side-effects of surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, or tamoxifen. Foreword by Christiane Northrup, M.D. 380 pages, index, illustrations.
Retails for $21.95
Order
at: www.wisewomanbookshop.com






Down There: Sexual and Reproductive Health the Wise Woman Way
Publication date: June 21, 2011
Author: Susun S. Weed
Simple, successful, strategies cover the entire range of options -- from mainstream to radical -- to help you choose the best, and the safest, ways to optimize sexual and reproductive health. Foreword: Aviva Romm, MD, midwife, 484 pages, Index, illustrations.
Retails for $29.95
Order at: www.wisewomanbookshop.com





Abundantly Well - Seven Medicines The Complementary Integrated Medical Revolution
Publication date: December 2019
Author: Susun S. Weed
Seven Medicines build foundational health and guide you to the best health care when problems arise. Includes case studies, recipes, exentsive references and resources. Introduction by Patch Adams illustrated by Durga Yael Bernhard 352 pages, index, illustrations
Retails for $24.95
Order at: www.wisewomanbookshop.com

 

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