Awakening the "Miraculous" in Chamomile
The soothing flower Chamomile distributes its medicine throughout the world with great generosity; however, many of us have written off Chamomile off as a serious medicine. We simply drink a cup every now and then quite rotely before bed and occasionally when we are so worn down that coffee is doing more harm than good.
Familiarity breeds contempt, Chaucer very wisely observed of the human condition in his Tale of Melibee in the 14th century. Alas, noble Chamomile has become too familiar to us.
Due to the loss of folk healing traditions imposed on us by the corporate medical establishment, we no longer have access to the wisdom of how to work with our plant medicines in a way that brings about transformative healing.
Even our old friend Chamomile, when properly prepared and treated as a powerful consciousness deserving of respect, can heal a whole host of serious mental, physical, and emotional conditions.
The conditions that Chamomile can address range from IBS to insomnia, ulcers to chronic anxiety, arthritis to nightmares, eczema to heart conditions, seizures to diabetes, and osteoporosis to vaginitis.
Chamomile additionally boasts powerful anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory compounds that could save lives and radically increase the quality of life for many.
Most of us never receive Chamomile's full medicinal potency for a number of practical, as well as energetic reasons.
On a practical level many of us never had the privilege of learning from our elders how to properly prepare plant medicines to fully receive their medicinal properties.
Instead, we have had to rely on tea boxes and tea bag dosage for instructions. Yet, most of us need to use three or more tea bags of Chamomile, depending on our constitution and weight, in order to treat our conditions.
Secondly, many of us were never taught how to keep the most potent medicinal properties of Chamomile in tact. Modeling our parents and grandparents, we simply bring a pot of water to boil and place the tea bag in a cup to steep.
However, by doing so we then lose the delicate volatile oils that produce the majority (but not all) of Chamomile's medicinal power.
On a more esoteric and energetic level, our culture teaches us to interact with herbs and plants as objects rather than beings with whom you can communicate.
The good news is that we can learn to build friendships with plants.
Just like human friendships require care, attention, respect, and the exchange of energy, the same is true of our relationships with healing plants.
In my healing work, we focus on building relationships with herbs through a practice called plant dieting. Plant dieting has nothing to do with losing weight (though that may come as a fringe benefit should you desire it) and everything to do with learning to work with a plant as an ally.
During these plant diets we form a relationship with the plants by performing small rituals and working on altering our day-to-day modes of perception in order to communicate on the same frequency as plants.
In this way we can begin to truly commune with plants as allies.
As you may be beginning to understand, the practice of plant dieting absolutely shifts our paradigm of herbal healing away from materialism and towards the lived experience of the miraculous.
Once this relationship is established, you will find that all plants, including Chamomile, can act as entheogens, taking us on profound healing journeys.
Chamomile can even serve as a potent hypnotic capable of showing us scenes of incredible beauty, revealing hidden parts of our souls, and showing us the path towards our very highest potential.
In fact, Chamomile can even take us by the hand and walk us there, clearing obstacles, and lending us it's warm golden light the whole way.