On self-care

Contents:
1. Before 'self care' became about looking like a photo in a Mind-Body-Online article, it was simply that: self. care.
2. A great essay I found on self-care.
3. Herbs that can help you care for yourself

1. Before 'self care' became about looking like a photo in a Mind-Body-Online article, it was simply that: self. care.

As in, caring for yourself.

Which can look like so many things, depending on who you are:

it can be working out more; or working out less.
It can be working more; or working less.
It can be staying up late and going to a party once in a while; or it can be going to bed at 6pm and sleeping for 13 hours straight.
it can be cleaning your house from top to bottom; it can be leaving the dishes in the sink.

Often, the messages that we're given in society (and very much also in our 'health-driven' communities) start to interfere with what our own bodies are telling us. We hear that we *should* be working out regularly, eating super 'healthy'*, getting a certain amount of sleep. The information that we have about what can make us healthier can actually backfire completely if we are not, at the time, doing those things.

For example: do any of you have kids? I don't, but most of my friends have young babies right now, and I have heard the horror stories about lack of sleep, and brain fog, and never-ending jet lag. That in itself is bad enough, but what if, on top of that, you knew about all the horrible things that can happen to you as a result of being sleep-deprived? In the herbalist community, we talk about sleep and how important it is, and so even I (child-less and self-employed) will get stressed out if I start to lose too much sleep. Losing sleep never feels good, but losing sleep PLUS the information about how bad sleep deprivation is for you will just compound the issue. There was a study I read about the effects of stress, and how the people who thought stress was bad for them had a shorter life span than the people who thought stress was good for them (sorry I can't remember the study or the article, or I'd link it). Think about that in terms of what we know about health: everything we think we *should* be doing, that's counter to what's actually happening, is actually creating more stress, which in turn, is NOT REMOTELY caring for ourselves.

Which is to say, that sometimes, self care doesn't look like a Mind-Body-Online article: sometimes its sleep deprived nights and feeding your kids and paying your rent and getting by, but the actual CARE part of it is that you're actually surviving and not stressing out about what you can't do at that time. Sometimes, self care is putting one foot in front of the other and knowing that you are worth the fight of the survival dance, even knowing what it's 'costing' your body. If its worth it (and I bet it is), then what does the 'cost' matter?

Sometimes, self care is asking for help. Even if it feels like failing, it's reaching out and grasping in the dark for a hand and the feeling of relief and of being held when someone reaches back.

And do you see how, with all of this, nobody can tell you what it looks like for you? It might even change day to day, depending on how your energy levels are and what's going on in your life. Only you can know what caring for yourself is. But sometimes in order to know what that thing is, we need to learn to quiet all the crap we're being bombarded with (and bombarding ourselves with: how we 'should' be perfect and 'should' be working harder and 'should' be fighting uphill alone every day) to see what's actually there: what we really want, and what we really need.

To start: I recommend a simple exercise. Ask yourself at any given time what you truly want. Ask what you truly need. Listen to the answers, and find a way to give yourself both. Obviously this is a bit of a simplification but it works: for example...

"What I want is to rest. What I need is to go to the DMV and get a new drivers license."

How about a 10 minute lie down and fully 1o0% committed to resting rest. The restiest rest that ever was. And then go to the DMV?

"What I want is chocolate. What I need is salad."

How about a bit of chocolate and a bit of salad?

See where I'm going with this? Try it :).

After listening to yourself for a while, often 'want' and 'need' start to line up with each other. It becomes a natural thing, your own natural way of existing in the world.

*whatever that looks like based on whatever dietary information is circulating at the time.

2. A great essay on self care by Brianna Wiest.

"Self-care is often a very unbeautiful thing.

It is making a spreadsheet of your debt and enforcing a morning routine and cooking yourself healthy meals and no longer just running from your problems and calling the distraction a solution.

It is often doing the ugliest thing that you have to do, like sweat through another workout or tell a toxic friend you don’t want to see them anymore or get a second job so you can have a savings account or figure out a way to accept yourself so that you’re not constantly exhausted from trying to be everything, all the time and then needing to take deliberate, mandated breaks from living to do basic things like drop some oil into a bath and read Marie Claire and turn your phone off for the day.

A world in which self-care has to be such a trendy topic is a world that is sick. Self-care should not be something we resort to because we are so absolutely exhausted that we need some reprieve from our own relentless internal pressure.

True self-care is not salt baths and chocolate cake, it is making the choice to build a life you don’t need to regularly escape from.

And that often takes doing the thing you least want to do.

It often means looking your failures and disappointments square in the eye and re-strategizing. It is not satiating your immediate desires. It is letting go. It is choosing new. It is disappointing some people. It is making sacrifices for others. It is living a way that other people won’t, so maybe you can live in a way that other people can’t.

It is letting yourself be normal. Regular. Unexceptional. It is sometimes having a dirty kitchen and deciding your ultimate goal in life isn’t going to be having abs and keeping up with your fake friends. It is deciding how much of your anxiety comes from not actualizing your latent potential, and how much comes from the way you were being trained to think before you even knew what was happening.

If you find yourself having to regularly indulge in consumer self-care, it’s because you are disconnected from actual self-care, which has very little to do with “treating yourself” and a whole lot do with parenting yourself and making choices for your long-term wellness.

It is no longer using your hectic and unreasonable life as justification for self-sabotage in the form of liquor and procrastination. It is learning how to stop trying to “fix yourself” and start trying to take care of yourself… and maybe finding that taking care lovingly attends to a lot of the problems you were trying to fix in the first place.

It means being the hero of your life, not the victim. It means rewiring what you have until your everyday life isn’t something you need therapy to recover from. It is no longer choosing a life that looks good over a life that feels good. It is giving the hell up on some goals so you can care about others. It is being honest even if that means you aren’t universally liked. It is meeting your own needs so you aren’t anxious and dependent on other people.

It is becoming the person you know you want and are meant to be. Someone who knows that salt baths and chocolate cake are ways to enjoy life – not escape from it."

-Brianna Wiest, in Thought Catalog

3. Herbs that can help you take care of yourself:

Oplopanax horridus // devil's club

(image credit: Leslie Lekos)

See those thorns up there? Devil's club knows about self-protection. Growing in the deep, dark forests where moisture abounds, and where said moisture seeps into everything, boundaries are so necessary. This is the world of mycelium, where everything is a part of everything else, where the one-ness of the place combined with the moisture, the fog, the moss, the sponginess of it all, makes for one seeping massive organism. How to be an individual surrounded by that? How to stand tall in your self-hood and be not soft and spongy but a sharp beacon of individual strength? Giant thorns, that's how. I consider devil's club to be an archetypal plant of self-hood and inner strength because of this.

One of the reasons I think oplopanax is so incredibly powerful is that it's connection in our energy is to our deepest sense of who we are-- the part of ourself that has no words to describe it, but just *is*. It's the us when we were born, the us that is free of constraint and 'shoulds' and trauma and fear. It's our past and our potential, all wrapped into one. That part of ourselves is always there, but for most people it's buried quite deeply. It's an energy that exists deep at our core, and emerges from our ancestry and our blood, and it blossoms in our chests, driving us forward even if we can no longer feel or hear it speaking to us. Devil's club connects us to that part of ourselves.

One of the nice side effects of this connection is that things can no longer hurt us as much. My friend Sean Donahue uses it often in a similar way, saying "Devil's Club brings me the protection to concentrate on raising and standing in my own power without the distraction of worrying about judgements and ill intentions being directed toward me." (from here).

On a more physical level, oplopanax is used to balance blood sugar levels, to treat infections, to help raise energy levels over time in exhaustion. Among many other things. It's an amazing, powerful plant, and one I feel very grateful to receive boxes of in the mail.

Read more: Ryan Drum's article
Found in: Root + Heart, Forest Soak

Rose // Rosa

Rose // Rosa spp.

Wild rose softens the areas that we tense to protect ourselves, unraveling emotional tension patterns that get locked in the body. Rose naturally works in places where 'flow' is impeded. The roses I gather grow along the sides of mountain streams, so I love to picture this: their roots tapping into that which flows steadily, this water which is utterly free flowing. The roses (in my mind) somehow imprint this expression because it's what they're exposed to. Or maybe they grow by the water because that's what they are drawn to in the first place. Who knows how these magics work. Regardless, that's what rose brings to the body: a softness, a flow. And with that softness, the world, held at bay by all that tension and all that protection, can finally flow in-- we can interact with the world around us, experience it through our senses.

Of course, one of the things that often happens when we soften our hard bits is that we start to feel the things that made us want to harden ourselves in the first place. It’s not that wild rose makes people cry, or makes them angry, its that if you’ve been protecting yourself from a deep well of grief, or a deep well of anger, then rose, in softening that protection, will bring to the surface what was there all along. So keep in mind that a person has to WANT to experience this-- its not our place to force feed wild roses to everyone who’s a bit thorny...

Wild rose excels at moving stuck anger. Imagine how you feel if you’re angry about something but don’t express it.Anger as an energy is that of boundaries and of forwards movement: you get angry because something violates your boundaries, and then anger has you moving TOWARDS that which violated you. Except even in situations where we are actually safe to express our anger, we live in a society where very few people are actually raised and taught to do so healthily, so we don’t express it. And then it festers, digs deeper, becomes something different, darker, less mutable. Anger that’s held inside and not expressed becomes a hard lump over time. But it’s the same with anything that’s meant to be moving and can’t: it has to go somewhere, and when locked in the body it turns into a festering stagnation.

Similarly, when you have a stress reaction, your body is flooded with adrenaline, and the purpose of that adrenaline is to give you the energy to MOVE (away from the tiger, away from the source of stress; towards the tiger to fight, because you’re a badass). Except, in modern life, the source of stress is not always something we can run away from or fight. Stuck in traffic, we get stressed because we want to be somewhere: we might be late, we might have ice cream melting in the shopping bag. We are flooded with the adrenaline to make us move and then we have to sit still. This happens at work, when you have a deadline and you’re aware of this ticking clock behind you metering out the time that is running out (in fact, just thinking about time running out at all makes me start to feel this tension rise up, which is one of the reasons I cover the clock on my computer!). This movement energy has nowhere to go and so we hold it in our bodies, and it makes us feel like we’re going to explode.

Rose unwinds the stuck-ness that is often rooted in old grief, old trauma. These are things that get locked in our body when they happen, because we don't know how to process them, or are unable to process them: feeling pain is rotten; why wouldn’t we block it off to hold it at bay? Every time these patterns are triggered, however, we live them out, again and again. I've seen rose help with this so many times: to slowly and gently start to ease the tension holding these traumas in place.

With trauma, we grow up not really able to trust the world around us, and not really able to trust ourselves either. This creates a deep underlying sense of fear that comes out in lots of ways (panic attacks, anxiety, depression being the most common). It doesn’t even need to be the kinds of trauma that most people think of as deep trauma. Losing our favourite teddy bear at just the right age for it to damage you can damage you, and our own traumas are our own. But when we do, you create this low-level underlying tension, like we’re constantly bracing for the next blow. This tension makes us alert, but at a cost, because it uses a LOT of energy and we end up feeling unsafe all the time. And rose, gently, patiently, softens it. At its core, rose is a medicine of deep trust, deep vulnerability and deep softening—allowing us to deeply trust ourselves and our bodies, and to trust the world around us. As a result, we can reach out and touch the world around us, but even more importantly, let it in to touch us back.

Rose calms a fluttery chest-- the anxiety flutters. Depending on the cause, I like to combine it with something incredibly grounding like devil's club and hawthorn (here), or something soothing like oat (here). Once again, it's because of that ability to relax and relieve tension. While some things calm the fear of anxiety by grounding, and some do by supporting the system allowing it to feel safe, rose does it by allowing the stuck energy to flow to where it needs to be. Look for people who have a hard time expressing themselves, or who hold themselves in check and in tight control, as if, if they were to let go the whole world would fall down and a few drops of wild rose elixir will work wonders for them.

Gathering roses is an exercise in awareness. The thorns catch on your clothes and your skin and if you're not careful tear you to shreds. Rose helps to release stagnant emotions, especially grief and anger. By clearing out the muddy waters of your emotional history, you are able to establish more of a sense of who you are, and what isn't you. It helps to establish strong boundaries in the sense that when you release the old stuff underneath, you can see a situation with more clarity and know what’s what.

Hawthorn // Crataegus spp.

Heart-friend and support for the grief state, hawthorn is like the hug you receive when you've been holding yourself together, feeling alone and unstable, that finally allows you to let yourself fall apart. When you have to go in and delve into the deepest, darkest parts of yourself, hawthorn is a supportive anchor saying 'You've got this; I won't let you fall apart completely'.

How it does this, I have no idea, but I have an analogy that I like. When we fall apart due to grief, it's like most of our entirety gets swept away in a tsunami of it. It swallows us, breaks us into pieces, dashes us against the rocks, and washes us up on the shore, battered and broken. But as we're being pulled to pieces, there's always that constant thrum in the background that's 'you' there. I mean, it's the constant that most of us aren't even aware of because we're so caught up with the surface stuff (I am my job, I am what I wear, I am my reactions, I am my gender, I am my sexuality, I am gay/straight/poly/queer/neurodivergent/cis/trans/alawyer/adoctor/adeskjockey/acashier/ajock/anartist/aniceperson/abadperson/lonely/confident/cool/aplantperson/rich/poor/inarelationship/loved/etcetcetc.) Except, if we were to chip away at every single self-identifier we have, we'd still be there, still exist, still be *us*. When our lives fall apart, either in grand explosive fashion or in little pieces, and when WE fall apart as a result, that nugget of 'us' at the center of our being remains constant. And it's that nugget of 'us'ness that hawthorn connects to and strengthens, so that the rest of us can fall to pieces around it. If our entire being was a map and the 'you are here' sign moved around on said map depending on how we feel on any given day, hawthorn points to the land itself so that the lines on the paper can dissolve and rearrange themselves.

Protector of the heart, protector of the faerie realm, which in our own psyches is the tender young part of ourselves that still sees the world with innocence and possibility. Hawthorn wraps itself around this like a protective shield allowing it to blossom again. Hawthorn's thorns are hard and sharp, sticking out at (at least what feels like) random angles to catch you unawares. It's interesting to me that these plants that are so so easy to love are the ones that protect themselves so well-- my first instinct with all of them is to fling myself on them and hug them, and yet you can't do that at all. I have tried it with a big pile of hawthorn twigs and leaves and flowers, and, well it hurts. One of the things you learn is that you can experience something just by hanging with it, being near it-- you don't need to fling yourself on it and try to hug the daylights out of it. For those of us who sometimes lack boundaries, this is an important lesson, and it's a lesson that hawthorn especially can teach us well: to experience something deeply you don't need to lose yourself, but actually to inhabit yourself more fully.

Hawthorn helps us soften by strengthening the parts that burn brightly through the darkness. That is, hawthorn affects the core of who we are, our hearts, not just physical but that little spark of awareness that was you before you knew what an 'I' was. Hawthorn wraps itself around it like a protective shield, whispering things like 'you've got this' and 'you can fall apart now I'll hold you up' and 'a little restructuring is ok but we'll hold it together here' and for those of us who are afraid to soften, afraid that to let go a little bit means the entire world will cave in or fall down, or rush in like a deluge, hawthorn is the beacon in the storm.

Read more about hawthorn: Sean Donahue's article
Found in: Heart + Happy, Deep forest tea, ocotillo + Rose heart center elixir

(aralia growing in the mountains outside Santa Fe)

Aralia spp. // spikenard

Aralia is a woody, aromatic, oily root that grows in the deep shaded woodlands. Here in California we have aralia californica, and in New Mexico the main species is aralia racemosa (I think) and in other parts of the country people use aralia nudicaulis.

Aralia root is used as an adaptogen-- that is, it helps bolster the body's ability to handle stressful situations. It has a strong affinity for the lungs, I personally think, the gut too. Under the surface, I see aralia similarly to how I see tulsi-- they're both plants that help strengthen the sense of self in the face of 'that which is other'.

In the case of the lungs, where the lungs take air into the body, if people have weakened respiratory systems, taking aralia over the long term can help to strengthen that. I've given it to people who get seasonal asthma issues and it's helped them avoid symptoms entirely, or for long-term respiratory issues (say, lingering coughs, and general weakness) taken daily it'll help to restore respiratory function. I use it in general immune formulas when people tend to feel things in their lungs first (you know-- that person who ALWAYS ends up with walking pneumonia when they get the flu), and personally, I used it for a few weeks in combination with elderberry elixir when I was feeling very run down, uninspired and exhausted, but had a constant tight feeling in my lungs, as if I was fighting some sort of virus.

For the gut, aralia does a similar thing-- helps to strengthen what it can handle. So, say you have a tendency towards reacting to foods you eat. I wouldn't say that aralia 'fixes food allergies' because obviously these things are much more complex than that. I'd say this though-- if you're going to be in a situation where you're not eating your normal foods and that in itself starts to stress you out, start taking aralia in advance. Yes, it'll help to restore the strength and integrity to the gut, but on a deeper level I think it helps to strengthen that sense of 'what is self' under the surface so that the FEAR of the foods is lessened. Have you ever noticed how our perception of a situation so often determines how we react to it? If something seems like it'll take us down it does, and if we say 'I'm fine' and mean it to our cores we often are? Aralia can be the thing that tips that balance between 'is this going to hurt me?' and 'that isn't going to hurt me', which, for those of us who sometimes walk through the world a little scared of all the things out there, can be a life-changer.

Read more: Michael Cottingham's writings
Found in: Maple + Roots Restorative

Asparagus racemosa // Shatavari root

Juicy. This is the word that comes to mind when thinking about shatavari. Some people might have issues with the word juicy (I'm personally more grossed out by the word 'moist'), so I apologise for using it so many times in one short sentence but it perfectly describes shatavari's action in the body. A classic and quintessential 'yin' tonic, shatavari gets the body in touch with the deep, moist (gak!) forest aspects of our own bodies. For those of us who tend to be fiery and driven, who prefer to 'do' than to 'be', who need to be moving forwards constantly, and who are (and this is key) a bit exhausted by this, try shatavari. Most people who have this 'fire' pattern constitutionally are utterly fine like that, but there are many of us for whom that fire is just a layer and what's underneath that layer is a slow loris dying to be given attention, and the space to soak in the world around it. It's called a 'female' herb, something that grates on my nerves almost in the way a pink bic does, because really, are we not past this idea of gender binaries yet? But, there is a set of principles in the universe that tend to be more moist (GAK!), receptive, slow, passive, reflective. In Chinese medicine the word 'yin' is used but here in the west we don't have a word for it and call it 'feminine'. We all contain it, we all have access to it, and we all use it, it's just that in society it's not really seen as a good thing to be any of these things, so we train ourselves to hide it and find our energy elsewhere. If you're the type of person for whom this 'feminine' energy is your primary fuel source, getting in touch with it and learning to operate from that place is going to be of immense importance to you, lest you burn out horribly and start to hate life. Shatavari does that. Slow, moistening, nutritive, nurturing. It increases milk supply (if you are in need of milk), it increases energy flow to the depths of the body, and in doing so helps digestive processes, and reproductive processes, and all of the stuff that our body doesn't have time to focus on when we shunt all our energy to our nervous systems to 'get more stuff done'. One of the side effects of this balancing is that people feel calmer, more grounded, balanced, happier, and more loving.

It makes the body more juicy, as a whole, and if you're the type of person in need of that juiciness, in need of that 'yin' or 'feminine' then it's utterly magic.

Read more: Asia Suler's article
Found in: Maple + Roots, Tulsi + Ashwagandha Chai

Rebecca AltmanMarch 4, 2020Comment