Sumac berries

 Sumac berries (Rhus typhina)

Reach up for the fruit with the highest vitamin C content: the fuzzy red berries of the sumac tree. Not the smooth red sumac berries (Rhus glabra); they taste bitter. And not the white sumac berries (Rhus vernix); those are poisonous. The fuzzy, velvety, ones. The best ones are dark red and leave a lemony taste on your fingers after you handle them. I put four big heads in a half-gallon jar, fill it to the top with cold water, wait 4-6 hours and enjoy sumac-ade. I keep adding water to the jar of berries until there is no more taste; then I start over with fresh berries. Enjoy!

Read more on Susuns Mentorship website: 

www.wisewomanmentor.com/healing-archive/harvest-time!

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Ginger Compress

 Ginger Compress

Easy, effective, inexpensive, pain-relieving, and anti-inflammatory

This recipe is from Susuns book Breast Cancer? Breast Health! 

Ginger compresses are successfully used by many healers and women to reduce and eliminate breast lumps. Women who've dealt with many kinds of breast lumps tell me that ginger compresses reduced benign masses quickly But sometimes irritated cancerous ones. (It doesn't mean you have cancer if your skin gets irritated).

Grate 5 ounces/140 grams of fresh ginger root onto a clean piece of cloth. (I use an old cloth napkin, a handkerchief, a kitchen towel, or a clean diaper.) 

Gather the ends of the cloth together and secure them with a piece of string or a rubber band. 

Put the bundle into a pan with 2 quarts/2 litres water and heat to 158F/70C. 

Boiling will destroy much of the value of the ginger, So if you don't have a thermometer, heat only until you see bubbles forming on the bottom of the pan. 

Keep a low flame under the pot until the water turns a pale yellow, 5-15 minutes. 

Pull the bundle out of the water, and squeeze or press it to extract all its liquid. (Add to pan.)

Soak a small towel in the hot ginger liquid. Wring it out. (This is hard to do; your hands will get red and hot.) 

When you apply the hot wet towel, the breast skin will redden and there will be an intense sensation of heat, But you shouldn't be in pain. 

Cover the compress with layers of towels to retain the heat. When It cools, remove it, soak it again in the hot ginger water, and reapply.

Continue until the skin gets very red and warm. Repeat morning and night. 

If there is no active infection, the towel and ginger water can be used over and over again. If fresh ginger is not available, dried ginger may be used, But it will not be as effective. 

Fresh turmeric may be substituted for fresh ginger, But It stains everything.

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Order Breast Cancer? Breast Health! here:

www.wisewomanbookshop.com/product-page/breast-cancer-breast-health

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Green Goddess Apprentice Week

 Green Goddess Apprentice Week

August 2 - 8, 2021 

A one-week apprenticeship for aspiring shamanic herbalists. My shortest apprentice opportunity. It is deep, intense, uncomfortable, and life-changing.   

During your week-long Green Goddess Apprenticeship you will:

* Learn how to identify plants

* Learn how to use common plants for food and medicine

* Take part in daily talking stick ceremonies

* Learn about plant families and botany

* Make one or more herbal remedies to take home 

* and so much more! 

Learn more:

www.susunweed.com/greengoddess.htm

New Mentorship website!

 Exciting news. 

I have a beautiful, new, custom-built mentor site and it rocks!

As a mentored student, you’ll open the door to exclusive content, special photos, new videos, private talks with me, bi-weekly group zoom meetings, recipes, bonus gifts, and lots more.  

The new site is a basket overflowing with green wisdom from my heart to yours: easy access to new and old workshop talks, lots of plant monographs, my radio show archives (including HealthyLife and Time Monk), and so much more. 

Everything you need to learn your way. 

Let’s explore green blessings together and have fun. 

Susun

Register here:  www.wisewomanmentor.com

Pain-relief Alternatives

 Pain-relief Alternatives

excerpt from: Abundantly Well: Seven Medicines

Generally best not to combine these with drugs.

Serenity Medicine: Meditation alters brain regions that process pain.

Mind Medicine: Acupuncture releases endorphins.

 * Alexander Technique is more effective than massage or exercise in relieving low-back pain.

Lifestyle Medicine: Regular exercise counters chronic pain.

Alternative Medicine: Reflexology releases endorphins.

  * A cold plunge alters pain perceptions, counters chronic pain.

Herbal Medicine (safest first):

* High CBD (Cannabis) - up to five drops of tincture of the fresh flowering plant, taken as often as every fifteen minutes - is my favorite non-addictive pain reliever. Often, a single dose will do. There will be some THC in the tincture, as all plants contain a mix of cannabinols, but this does not, in my experience and the experience of many students and friends, make you “high.” First choice as an ally for transitioning off opiates/opioids.

* Skullcap (Scutellaria lateriflora) - 5 drops of tincture of the fresh flowering plant, taken as often as needed - is my favorite pain relief, especially when I need to sleep.

* Kava kava (Piper methysticum) - sips of the lightly-fermented infusion or dropperful doses of root tincture - offer fast, effective relief of musculo-skeletal pain, traumatic pain, chronic pain from injuries, heartache. Less likely to put you to sleep, too.

* Willow (Salix alba) - 1-2 dropperfuls of tincture as needed - is as effective as aspirin and contains the same active ingredient.

So does meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria).

* Wild lettuce (Lactuca virosa) - tincture of the fresh sap taken by the spoonful - may be as pain-relieving as poppy juice.

* Valerian - up to a teaspoonful of root tincture - counters chronic pain, puts you out, leaves you hung-over and groggy.

* Poppy (Papavera somniflora) is the source of opium, heroin, opiates, and poppy seeds. Opiates are addictive; poppy seeds aren’t.

A tea of the fresh poppy seed heads entices the brain to make natural opiates (endorphins). Do not combine with drugs or alcohol.

excerpt from: Abundantly Well: Seven Medicines

www.wisewomanbookshop.com/product-page/abundantly-well-seven-medicines

Mint Honeys

 Mint Honeys 

Fill a jar with fresh mint, best if you cut it fairly fine. 

Pour real honey over the herb in the jar. 

After you have filled your jar with fresh herb and honey, put a tight lid and a label on it. 

Then the hard part: Wait for six or more weeks.

Once your hardy mint honey is ready, you need only scoop a large spoonful of the herb and honey into a cup, fill with boiling water and drink. Wow! Instant herb tea.

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Emotional Uproar

 Emotional Uproar

excerpt from New Menopausal Years the Wise Woman Way

Step 1. Collect information . . .

Premenstrual, pregnant, premenopausal, and menopausal women rage and weep. Like it or not, you'll probably find your emotions harder to control as you enter your menopausal years. Men given hormone therapy (against prostate cancer) weep and rage too!

Step 2. Engage the energy . . .

* Take time for yourself when you find yourself crying, yelling, raging, depressed, out of control. Create your own sacred space, even in a closet, where you can be alone, without responsibilities, where you can be safe to have every one of your feelings.

* Begin (or deepen your commitment to working with) a journal as a way to care for yourself and your emotions. The Change is an opportunity to value your emotional self and to nourish all of your feelings, from grief to bliss, rage to outrageous.

* Universal healing energy can help when your emotions are roaring. Channel it through your hands to your heart or womb; hold yourself.

Step 3. Nourish and tonify . . .

* My remedy of choice for women dealing with premenstrual emotional uproar is motherwort - the calm, fierce-hearted mother who helps you find your center in the wildest of emotional storms. A dose of 5-15 drops taken several times when you're upset will bring calmer feelings quickly. A dose of 10-30 drops taken twice a day for a month can help prevent mood swings.

* Let a cup of garden sage tea with honey restore your emotional center and soothe your irritated nerves. It is even said to cure insanity and relieve hysteria. In Chinese herbal practice, honey is used (in tea, not cooked) to soften the energy of the liver when it is hardened by rage, frustration, and anger.

* Pamper yourself. Get a massage. Cuddle with someone you love.

* Moods don't swing so much in women who nourish their nerves and even out their blood sugar levels with lots of calcium.

* Slow-acting liferoot flower tincture (5 drops) or slower-acting vitex berry tincture (25-40 drops), taken daily for a week or two premenstrually for several months will help you unravel your emotional snarls.

* Black cohosh root tincture eases menopausal flashes and is said to cure hysteria, too. Try 10-20 drops once or twice a day for a month.

* Keep a piece of licorice or ginseng root handy to chew on when you feel like chewing someone's head off.

Step 4. Stimulate/Sedate . . .

* Valerian root, as a bath or tincture (15-20 drops as needed) is a powerful sleep-inducing sedative that also eases uterine cramps. Avoid long-term use.

Step 5b. Use drugs . . .

* Feeling moody? Mood-altering drugs, legal (tranquilizers, anti-depressants, alcohol, coffee, cigarettes) or illegal (cocaine, opium), create dependence.

Step 6. Break and enter . . .

* Psychoactive plants (such as marijuana, psilocybin mushrooms, and mescaline), when taken in a safe setting, offer radically different results than mood-altering drugs. Instead of dependence, they foster self-worth, helping the individual to break open new neural pathways and establish easier flows of emotions and energy through both the physical and subtle bodies.

excerpt from New Menopausal Years the Wise Woman Way

www.wisewomanbookshop.com/product-page/new-menopausal-years

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Nourish Wholeness

 Nourish Wholeness

excerpt from: Abundantly Well: Seven Medicines

Nourishment is the basis of health and the fuel for healing.

Nourishment is more than what we eat and drink. 

Sights, sounds, smells, sensations, emotions, and energies, meals, stories, ceremony, safe space, affection, honesty, and beauty nourish us. Lifestyle Medicine is choosing what we allow in.

How simple Step 3 would be if we had only to look on the light side and concern ourselves with joy and ease and the absence of problems. 

Abundant health is wholeness. Wholeness includes our shadows, rages, fears, and mourning cries. Opposites intermingle and engage to create health/wholeness/holiness.

We love all of ourselves. We nourish and strengthen all aspects of ourselves: good/bad, positive/negative, attractive/ugly, sane/crazy.

When we encounter “difficult” feelings — abandonment, betrayal, deprivation, inadequacy, jealousy, desire, greed, rage, embarrassment, loss, fear, revenge - Step 3 advises us to “feed the demons.” 

Nourish those emotions, listen to them closely rather than try to shut them down. Respond to their needs.

 If given a safe home in us, unsavory aspects paradoxically nourish the best parts of us and we become abundantly well.

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excerpt from: Abundantly Well: Seven Medicines, pg 91

www.wisewomanbookshop.com/product-page/abundantly-well-seven-medicines

Nettle infusion

 *Nettle*

is amazingly rich in protein, vitamins, and minerals, especially the critical trace minerals: anti-cancer selenium, immune-enhancing sulphur, memory-enhancing zinc, diabetes-chasing chromium, and bone-building boron. A quart of nettle infusion contains more than 1000 milligrams of calcium, 15000 IU of vitamin A, 760 milligrams of vitamin K, 10% protein, and lavish amounts of most B vitamins.

To make a nettle infusion: Measure out one ounce of the dried herb. Boil a quart of water. Put the dried herb into a quart jar and fill to the top with the boiling water. Stir with a wooden spoon and add water until the jar is full to the top. Lid tightly and set aside to brew for at least four hours, or overnight, whichever is easier for you.

To use: Strain and squeeze the liquid out of the herb. Be sure to refrigerate your infusion, as it will go bad at room temperature once it is done brewing. (If that happens, I use it as plant food. And you should see how my roses adore it!)

Nettle infusion is delicious over ice. Its rich green taste is not at its best when served hot. Adding honey can make it taste quite strange. Some folks like to add a little apple juice to sweeten it. Or stir in some miso, for a salty drink. However you consume it, do drink it up within a few days, as nettle infusion doesn't last.

Green blessings surround us, even in the middle of winter. 

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Learn more in Susuns Online course:

Nourishing Herbal Infusions - Drink Your Way to Health

Protect your family simply and safely the Wise Woman Way with natural health remedies that are inexpensive and easy to make. 

www.wisewomanschool.com/p/nourishing-herbal-infusions

Sweet Earth Soup

 Sweet Earth Soup

8-10 servings

A rich hearty soup for a main course.

3 TB olive oil

1 lg onion, chopped, 3 c

3 cloves garlic, chopped, 2 TB

1 lg. burdock root, but into thin rounds, 2 c chopped

1 large handful dried sea palm fronds or kelp, 1 1/2 c soaked

1 lg. potato, chopped, 2 c

1 lg. yam, chopped, 4 c

1 tsp sea salt

2 TB tamari or to taste

5 c water

3 tbp ground fenugreek

1 1/2 tsp ground coriander3 c raw cashews

3 c water

chopped scallions for garnish

Break the sea palm fronds into pieces no longer than 1" Soak in water to cover for 20 minutes, then drain and compost the liquid. Set aside soaked sea palm fronds.

Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a heavy skillet. Saute garlic and onions 5 minutes or until translucent. Add burdock root,and saute until onions are translucent. Add fenugreek and coriander and saute one minute to mix the spices in with the oil. Add sea palm fronds, yams, potatoes, salt and 5 c water. Bring to the boil, and simmer, covered, 30 minutes until the vegetables are cooked.

Blend the 3 c water and 3 c cashews until creamy. No mash will remain. Remove cooked vegetables from heat, add 1 c of the boiling liquid slowly to the cashew cream, stirring constantly. Now add this back to the soup slowly. Taste for salt and/or tamari.

If necessary, return to a very low flame and heat to serving temperature. Take care not to boil. Garnish and serve immediately.

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Learn how to be happy, healthy, and empowered.

No testing, no effort, just watch, listen and learn.

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