This entertaining and enlightening guide will show you how to be a true friend to your body. In addition to a wealth of knowledge on using herbs to cleanse your organ systems, it provides eighty-four recipes for herbal preparations, emphasizing their practical use in making food your medicine by integrating herbs into your daily life.

It is an invaluable resource for:

• Health practitioners
• Training centers for the healing arts and herb schools
• Nutritionists and dietitians
• Health resorts and spas
• Anyone who wants to take better care of themselves or their loved ones.

Botanical Body Care: Introduction

The beauty, mystery and power of plants have embraced humankind from the beginning, as plants were here long before we began our walk on earth. Our partnership with plants is a fundamental relationship that continues to evolve. 

We are far more chemically connected to plants than most of us imagine. Plants provide the sustenance for our existence and serve as ever-giving allies whose aid is always there – especially when we listen closely! 

Herbal medicine does not use plants to treat symptoms the way prescription drugs are often used. Plants assist people on many levels at once, so that the underlying pattern of illness is addressed. Many different plants could treat the same symptom, yet only a few of them may pose a good match for the basis of those symptoms. Plant chemistry is intricate: how various chemicals in plants relate to each other, and how that synergy responds to the chemistry of our body, is the mystery of plant-people partnership! 

Communication between the language of plants and our individual cellular intelligence can result in effects that aren’t always predictable, thus there can be differences in response among different people using the same herb or combination of herbs. Matching plants to people takes more than knowledge of the plant: it also requires intuition and awareness of the subtle vibrations between the plant and the person. The healing energy of plants is further increased by the relationship we cultivate as we spend time with plants and use them for our health and well-being. 

In the commercial world, health is often promoted as some ideal state of physical perfection, but upon examining the natural world, we find the true meaning of health to be more dynamic. Health is a process of balancing energy intake to energy output, and that varies from body to body and season to season. The ebb and flow of energy we take in and energy we release can Botanical Body Care result in the experience of excess (accumulation of energy), depletion (loss of energy), or stagnation (stuck energy). Traditional healing practices around the world address the root causes of excess, depletion and stagnation in energy flow, in order to free the body’s own healing potential. 

Taking energy into our bodies is nourishing, and we nourish ourselves with much more than just food and drink. We are nourished by the air we breathe, substances we apply to our skin, images and light through our eyes, sound through our ears, scents through our nose, and sensation through touch and temperature, etc. Our energy intake also consists of personal thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and values. Overall health is influenced by electromagnetic energy, relationships with those around us and the community and culture we live in, earth energies, energies of other planetary bodies, and solar and stellar energies. 

Simply becoming aware of what you take in every day and receiving it consciously, both in food and non-food energies, can be very revealing. What are you allowing in that negatively affects you? What causes you to lose energy or triggers an emotional response? What do you put back into the environment every day, and how do you nourish the world around you? Do you feel a discrepancy between the two? Are you living in balance with your environment?