Apothecary

the apothecary is now online!

Plant Medicine

When used in right relationship, plants can be remarkable allies in healing work. All preparations are handmade by me with loving intention and spend time charging on the Community Altar at Madrona House.

I work with plants in many ways both during session work and as take home self-care to support clients through physical and emotional healing:

Infused Herbal Oil application
Smoldering Aromatic Herbs for clearing and blessing
Lustral Waters* for anointing
Aromatic mists for clearing and blessing
Essential Oil application
Blended Teas
Tinctures
Herbal Salt Baths
Flower Essences

*Using Lustral Water is an ancient Greek practice of making holy water to clear miasma, or the "energetic dust" we accumulate by moving through the world. It's made by ritually burning a small plant sprig or leaf, saying a prayer of blessing, and extinguishing the flame in water. This invokes all four elements to bless and consecrate the water. Depending on the use, I will also add salt, essential oils, herbs, and flower essences to use as anointing waters, clearing sprays and for asperging during space clearing ceremonies.

my approach

I believe engaging with the healing power of plant medicine is an active form self-care. I also believe that returning to the land for healing is an act of anti-capitalist resistance. I have begun my own medicinal garden from which I will be harvesting some of the herbs I use. For the rest of the herbs I use, they most often come from Star West Botanicals or Banyan Botanicals. It is my intention to seek local suppliers or harvest from my own small but growing medicinal garden wherever possible.

When we work with the spirit and energy of plants we are building an intimate relationship with them. It’s important to consider that the wisdom and healing energies of plants do not exist simply for us to use for our own evolution. The path to our evolution does not equate to commodifying what is accessible to us, rather, it is the process and journey of discovering and fostering a relationship to the plants you work with. They enjoy and gain as much in working with us as we do with them -- when in right relationship.

“Take me on a journey with you and we will tell each other of the earth, return me changed that I may tell the earth of you.”
-pyrocanthis

my beginnings

My love for nature and crafting magical potions began at a very early age. As a child, I would drape myself in all of my grandmothers scarves and sashes, adorning myself and all my tree friends with her costume jewellery. Taking a blanket to lay on the grass, I would set up a crafting station filled with all the fanciest bowls and decanters I could find, filling them with oils, herbs, spices and rainwater. I remember fondly going out to the greenbelt behind our house to forage for ingredients to make my potions. Looking back now, I see that ritual has always been within me.

Most of my knowledge is self taught, however, part of my certification as an Ayurvedic Practitioner included herbology. While I use many western plants in my practice, the Ayurvedic lens of individual elemental constitutions and subtle energetics of the plants informs the work I do.

I studied under Dr. Jayarajan Kodikannath, an Ayurvedic doctor from Kerala India and Nickole Gonzales Thornton, a Seattle resident who studied under Vasant Lad, an Indian Doctor who runs the Ayurvedic Institute in New Mexico.

SOME HISTORY

In the 18th century, when the British colonized India, Ayurveda, India’s prevailing sources of science, medicine, and spirituality, was oppressed and relegated to the outskirts of rural areas where it was still practiced. In very recent years, Ayurveda made its way to America in two different ways. Many westerners, feeling the loss and severance of their own cultures, traveled to India in search of deeper meanings to life. At the same time, Ayurveda has been brought to the states by Ayurvedic doctors in an attempt to popularize and bring back this ancient science of healing and is offered freely for Americans to use.

From NAMA (national ayurvedic medical association) in History of Ayurveda:

In the mid- to late-20th century, seekers from the West began to travel to India. The teachings of Yoga and Ayurveda were rediscovered by a generation disenchanted with the reductionism and materialism that had come to characterize Western thought, initiating an explosion of interest that continues to this very day. By the early 1980s, Dr. Vasant Lad, Dr. Robert Svoboda, and David Frawley were spreading the teachings of Ayurveda throughout the United States. The publication of "Perfect Health: The Complete Mind/Body Guide", by Deepak Chopra, served to popularize Ayurveda among the general public. Spurred on the by the work of these pioneers, now NAMA’s Advisory Board members, schools, and clinics began springing up across the country, giving rise to the need for solidarity and professionalization that gave birth to NAMA. Rooted in remote antiquity, and having survived and grown through the vicissitudes of time, Ayurveda now faces a bright future in India, the United States and across the world.

I want to take a moment to recognize the problematic nature of this, as I always encourage people to begin any practice from their own roots. I also want to acknowledge that, for many, our roots are unclear and/or lost to us. When I first began my journey as an Ayurvedic practitioner, I had not yet begun my own work of ancestral reconnection, so I reached for the closest and seemingly more accessible way to connect with the deep yearning for information and education of the natural world and healing. Once I'd begun doing the work of ancestral reconnection, I used what I'd learned about Ayurveda as a launching pad to begin studying Humorism, a Greek (my own lineage) system of medicine associating the metabolic agents of the four elements in the human body, and how it compares with the five element tridoshic theory of Ayurveda.

Although I continue my comparative research, I cannot speak from a place of mastery within those studies and will often reference my Ayurvedic knowledge and training in working with clients.

Madrona House Apothecary

The beginning of my Apothecary, as seen in the image below, started as a small collection of herbs and handmade products I myself found helpful in my own healing journey that I wanted to share with others. Eventually this grew into what is now the Madrona House Apothecary, which, if I'm honest, happened completely by accident!