Herbs for Highly Sensitive People: Monthly Herbal Practices for Wellbeing

We've explored daily and weekly practices, now it's time to look at the monthly practices with our herbal allies that can help keep us centered and connected as highly sensitive people. Monthly practices might take a little more effort, but as they are only meant to happen once a month and carry us through to the next month (or lunar cycle as I like to use to mark time) they can be well worth the time. 

For me, these monthly practices are like gifts for my future self as they often involve planning ahead for the next monthly cycle (where my future self is already waiting). They also act like an energetic tuning fork, helping me to retune and reconnect with the subtle practices that help me stay steady and in kinship with all that I love - something which feels more and more needful as we continue through this long season of organizing for a more just and kind world.¹ Ultimately, I try and shape my monthly practices to be something I look forward to and I hope that the following list of ideas will inspire your own monthly places of pause and restoration.

image via @thefinalshot

Through the Herbs for Highly Sensitive People series we'll be exploring ways of creating these little zones of peace throughout our days, weeks, and months, making space for us to reconnect with our sensitivity in ways that feel empowering. Herbalism is a sensory rich healing tradition, full of sights, scents, tastes, and sensations, that draws us back into the collective wisdom pooled in our body and pulled up by our plant allies. Working with plants is one way that we, as sensitive folks, can honor the sensitive ways of our body by strengthening a resilience that reconnects while alleviating the symptoms of overstimulation. 

When I write of the body, I am referring to the body in its most expansive form including the physical, emotional, mental, and mythological body. I'm not trying to describe the emotional body as a separate part from the physical body, but rather that our bodies have emotional experiences intertwined with physical experiences intertwined with mental and mythological  experiences. Part of the practice of highly sensitive people is to explore through our bodies what we have been asked or forced to separate rather than create a healthy boundary. Being called "too sensitive" over and over again, for example, asks us to separate from our very real lived experience instead of creating healthy boundaries that help us feel less overwhelmed by our depth of feeling.

And for those who might balk at the term "highly sensitive" but find yourself reflected in a lot of the descriptions of high sensitivity - I feel you on that - and you might want to check out my first post in this series exploring some of the limitations of the "highly sensitive" moniker and how folks like Chris D. Hooten have proposed more culturally expansive and inclusive terms like highly responsive to your environment or HREs. I really like the term HRE and I highly encourage you to give Hooten's article a read.

I hope that these simple practices will fit in alongside any mental health services, community support groups, and the general network of good company in your friends and family. Plant medicine thrives as a stress-reducing, nervous system reparative, and preventative modality while helping us to return to a more earth-centered and affirming way of being in the world - a great path for any highly sensitive person to be on.

Monthly Herbal Practices for Highly Sensitive People

image via @micmurph12

Take Stock of Your Apothecary

Throughout our Herbs for Highly Sensitive People series I've recommended various types of herbal remedies to consider as part of your regular routine. Hopefully you'll have a few key remedies on hand to bring with you on outings, keep at school or work, or in your home apothecary. These will inevitably run out if they prove useful so having a regular check once-a-month to see if something needs restocking is a good practice to have. It feels much better to have your favorite anxiety-reducing tea on hand when you need it rather than having to scramble to blend together or buy more of it when you really need it.

I'll be honest that I haven't always had a good restocking practice for my home apothecary. For the first few years of my herbal business I made and sold remedies at markets and online, but after closing that part of my business - which required a lot of detailed stock management - it was difficult to find pleasure in maintaining my own personal apothecary. Looking back now I recognize that I was also burnt out after years of intense remedy making, packaging, shipping, and all the administrative work that goes along with it, so it makes sense that this essential part of my personal care would feel overwhelming. Slowly I built up a ritual around it, tying my apothecary check-ins with the lunar cycles and the seasons of the year, lighting candles, singing spell songs, and finding gratefulness in being able to work with these remedies on a daily basis. Some practices need some enchanting to feel sweet again especially if they are necessary but feel a bit tedious. 

I also think that there is a beauty in regularly, consistently pushing back against far too many societal norms that ask us to forever push sensitive selves past exhaustion, by protecting a little bit of time each month to make space for moments of slowness and pause in the month ahead. These monthly restocks are little meetings with our common allies in the effort to reshape personal, familial, and social cultures into something that works for the many and not just enrich the lives of the privileged few. 

Practice Recommendations

The heart of a monthly take-stock practice is to make things easy for yourself. If you have a favorite tea blend that you make, have the recipe written on the jar you store the herbs in or in another easy to find spot (e.g. in your notes app, written on a scrap of paper stuck on your fridge, in your apothecary notebook). A monthly restock is easier when you're not having to spend extra time looking for stuff, whether recipes or supplies, so keep both in the same spot so they are easy to pull out when you need them.

It's a good idea to not only have your essential remedies, but a few types of herbs in your apothecary, especially if you're just starting to work with herbs for your sensitivity and don't know where to start. Below you'll find my recommendations for the kind of herbs that I think highly sensitive people would benefit from always having on hand.

Essential Plant Types for Highly Sensitive People

🌿 Nervines: Also known as nervous system tonics, these are herbs that help to reduce stress, regulate the nervous system, and alleviate the symptoms of sensory overwhelm. Nervines are foundational to most herbal protocols, but they're especially important for folks with extra sensitivity to their physical, emotional, and social environments. There are different kinds of nervines from stimulating nervines (like the caffeinated tea plant Camella sinensis) to relaxing nervines and general nervous system tonics that both stimulate or relax the nervous system given your current needs. In general, I think HSPs benefit from a nervine that can be taken over the long term - Milky Oat (Avena sativa) is one of my favorite nervines to recommend for this exact reason. Other great nervines include Lemon Balm (Melissa officinalis), Linden (Tilia x europaea), Skullcap (Scutellaria lateriflora), Catnip (Nepeta cataria), Chamomile (Matricaria chamomilla), and Vervain (Verbena officinalis). 

🌿 Adaptogens: These are plants that help the body to respond to stress in a balanced and aid the recovery process afterwards. While some adaptogens are going to be far too stimulating for a number of highly sensitive folks, I think adaptogens that are more energetically balancing and stress relieving in their healing gifts are great allies. Some of my favorite neutral to relaxing adaptogens for highly sensitive people are Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera), Reishi (Ganoderma lucidum), and Eleuthero (Eleutherococcus senticosus).

🌿 Ancestral Herbs: There's a lot of interesting science on the epigenetics of trauma, sensitivity, and the ways that generations of (mal)adaptive survival can sit in the bodies of descendants. I believe that there is a useful magick that occurs when we work with one or more herbs that our ancestors would've been familiar with as a way to heal some of those inheritances that may be making our ability to thrive as sensitive people more challenging. If the body remembers the wounds of generations past I believe it also remembers the healing allies like our beloved plants. If you don't know where to start, I recommend looking to your cultural kitchen spaces and the cooking herbs and spices that you find there. 

image via @myr0326

Connect With Your Plant Ally

I stumbled into breathwork and meditation as a kid not because I had any idea what either of those things really were but because I'd read that breathwork could help my asthma and that meditation could help my witchcraft. It's been a multi-decade learning experience ever since and I believe that these simple practices of connecting with my breath, learning to pause and be still with my busy sensory experiences, and embracing the passing nature of whatever it was I was currently feeling saved my life as a young person. Meditation and breathwork is so often portrayed as some strenuous practice at being both immensely peaceful and one with the universe that it can be easy to forget that these are just tools of little adjustments over a long period of time. 

Learning to steady and thrive in your sensitivity is a practice in little adjustments. While there might be big life-changing moments (like quitting your job, ending toxic relationships or dramatically downsizing your belongings) these are meant to be every once in a great while happenings, not regular occurrences. Strength in our sensitivity often relies on much subtler but important adjustments to our inner and outer landscapes - breathwork and meditation are free and accessible tools that we can use to create these adjustments. 

One of the ways we can connect with plants as allies is through meditation and breathwork, where we set aside a reliance on the spoken word and let ourselves communicate through our felt body. Plants are great communicators in the spaces between waking and sleeping - a state that meditation and breathwork brings us into. I hope that if you are interested in working with plants over the long term that you'll consider developing a regular meditation practice with your plant allies - and once a month is a great way to start.  

Practice Recommendations

Building on the sitting with plants practice found in my suggestions for weekly practices for highly sensitive people, the plant ally meditation focuses on a direct connection with a plant you are currently working with. If you are able to sit with your plant ally in a wild or garden space, I recommend starting with the sitting with plants practice before proceeding. Not all of our plant allies are available for all of us to sit with in person, so you can simply begin by preparing whatever remedy you use of your plant ally (such as a cup of Rosa damascena tea if you are working with Rose) and taking a moment to immerse yourself in the sensory experience of that tea from its color, scent, taste, and the feel of holding the cup in your hand. 

For some, sitting is the best position for breathwork and meditation while others find laying down much more practical. When you are ready, take nine slow and steady breaths, letting your chest and belly to comfortably fill with air, pausing at the top of your breath, then exhaling, pausing again when your lungs are empty. You might experiment with breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth - find what feels most comfortable. 

After your cycle of breathwork, imagine a soft light glowing all around you. You might instinctively imagine a certain color, otherwise I recommend visualizing a starry, twinkling milky way white. When you have a good sense of your energy glowing around you, imagine that your plant ally is before you. Visualize that around your plant ally is a soft, sparkling light - It may be a different color, it may be the same color as your own energy. 

Next, let your light extend and curve around your plant ally before coming back to you, forming a lemniscate (which looks like the number eight on its side: ∞). The soft light of the plant ally extends around you in the same way, both of your energies merging into a gently flowing river between and around the both of you. Take some time to be in energetic communion with your plant ally, letting your lights drift and mingle together. Sometimes insights arise in this place, sometimes just pleasant sensations - I encourage you not to try and seek anything out in this space beyond simply staying present to the experience. 

Once you feel ready, let your energy begin to draw back into your body, noticing that your plant ally's energy is drawing back as well. Let your energy settle in the place it feels most comfortable at this time or in a place needing extra love and healing. When you are ready, take a series of deep breaths, stretching and moving your body as you like, settling back into a state of wakefulness.

After your meditation practice it can be helpful to work with grounding and centering plant allies that not only help us integrate any insights we may have had during our practice, but guide us back into steadiness in our bodies for whatever lies ahead of us.

Herbs to Ground & Center With

Hawthorn Berry (Crataegus monogyna): I find the berries of the Hawthorn plant to be particularly grounding. Within traditional western herbalism, Hawthorn is honored for it's cardiotonic gifts as well as the way it helps us to heal after a period of heartbreak. But it also possesses the gift of helping us to feel our wisdom alongside thinking and acting in our wisdom - a great post-meditation ally, indeed!

Common Sage (Salvia officinalis): Practical, grounded Common Sage is a lovely post-meditation and post-breathwork ally, working to connect all of our body systems harmoniously, but especially the path between our head and our heart. All Sages have a clearing quality to them (which is why many varieties across cultures are burned before rituals to cleanse a space) and Common Sage is gently cleansing, but mostly helps to settle energy.

Sacred Basil (Ocimum sanctum): Sacred Basil is one of my favorite herbs for highly sensitive people. The herb helps with the dispersal of stuck energy, promoting a healthy energetic cycle in the body, alleviating the tension and anxiety that can arise from stagnant energy. Stagnant energy doesn't just sit low in the body, it can also sit high creating lots of tension wherever it shows up. Sacred Basil helps us to ground and center by moving energy back to where it should be, bringing relief to worn out systems, and energy to undernourished body systems.

image via @anniespratt

Gather In Community

Perhaps the most broad of my recommendations, but in many ways, the most essential. One of the ways that we learn to embrace our high sensitivity as a gift is by showing up as our sensitive selves in beloved community. Whether a knitting group, a tabletop game campaign, a gossip session at a local cafe, volunteering with your dog at your library's local read-with-dogs program, community events on your block or local park, and so on there are so many ways to gather. There are so many ways because there are so many kinds of people, including some like you with their own high sensitivity and sensory needs. It might take some time to find the group that you want to return to again and again, but the effort is worth it, and with the rapid decline of third spaces (driven by tech oligarchies and capitalist enterprises), gathering together in-person is an increasingly revolutionary act - and one that needs to be practiced regularly.

I have placed this recommendation within the monthly practices list because there is power in setting yourself up for success. Once a month is a relatively small commitment, but it'll result in a dozen gatherings over your year and that's great! It's a good way to get into the flow of gatherings without feeling overwhelmed by them. If this practice leads you into more gatherings on a bi-monthly or weekly basis - great! - but don't think that has to be an end goal. Once a month is a great starting and ending place.  

If you want to start your own gathering, maybe one focused on herbal studies, I have a guide for you.

Practice Recommendations

Before you head out for a gathering, enjoy some nervines and remind yourself why you are choosing to make all this effort to get yourself somewhere. Saying your reason out loud with some encouraging words is a goofy and effective way of encouraging yourself. If you have a partner or friend you can check in with ahead of time that can also encourage you, do that, too. Make sure to bring items that you know will help you regulate your sensory environment whether noise reducing earplugs that still allow you to hear conversation or things like gum, a fidget ring or handcrafts that help you regulate energy.

If you are going to a new-to-you gathering in a new-to-you space, it can help to look up the location ahead of time, including transportation details as well as getting a sense for what the space is going to look like. After your first gathering you'll have a better sense of what it is you might want to bring (like wearing cooler clothes if it is a space that is relatively small and gets warm easily) or prepare ahead of time. Ask questions, take bathroom breaks, and choose to do the self-regulating things you need to do (like taking sensory breaks by stepping outside or in a quieter spot of the venue).  

And remember that gathering is a practice. You found yourself feeling overwhelmed? That's ok, this is practice, and you're practicing what it is going to take to make regular gatherings enjoyable for you (including things like suggesting a venue change to a quieter location). There might be an increase in feeling overwhelmed after returning home from a gathering, even if it's mingled with feelings of excitement or enjoyment, and that's to be expected. Draw on your tools from those stress-alleviating evening tea to sitting with plants to body-honoring and sensory calming routines. Let yourself find a rhythm to monthly gatherings, not trying to rush the process, but also trusting that there are ways for you to gather together with good folk that lets you thrive as a sensitive person.

Plant Allies for Gathering Together

When appropriate, I love bringing herbal remedies for sharing. Most often I bring some sort of freshly brewed tea, but sometimes I'll bring flower essences and I've also been known to bring a bliss-inducing tincture or two. The following herbs are some of my favorite to feature in brews for community events.

Skullcap (Scutellaria lateriflora): Skullcap has a wonderfully calming and centering energy. It's easy to add to blends with its relatively mild flavor and it's featured in one of my favorite tea blends. A great herb for gatherings where chill conversation or even gentle tarot readings will be the focus.

Rose (Rosa spp.): One of my favorite herbs for helping to set the tone of an event as joyfully heart-opening and connecting. Rose has an extraordinary way of bringing people together in a way that feels deep, but not too vulnerable. It helps that it's a wonderful nervine without being too relaxing. 

Lemon Balm (Melissa officinalis): Lemon Balm is a great plant ally for balancing out the energy of the event and helping everyone gathered feel like they are in resonance. It's a great herb for generating easy-going social connections, from game night to coven gatherings. 

🌼

I hope you found these simple monthly suggestions to take care of yourself useful, and that you're feeling inspired to imagine all the ways that working with plants regularly can cultivate an inner gentleness that is profoundly centering and strengthening. If you are interested in finding ways to mark time beyond the school or work week, you might find my series on moon phase rituals and plant allies to be a fun place to start.

For those of you looking for a more in-depth approach to herbalism and high sensitivity or if you work with a highly sensitive client base (including family members), I invite you to join me in Solace: Herbs & Essences for Highly Sensitive People.

Be sure to check out the first post in the series, Herbs for Highly Sensitive People: Daily Herbal Practices for Wellbeing, for more suggestions. As always, may you find the gentle ways of being in the world that strengthen your gifts, your community ties, and the ways that you find and bring beauty to the world.

This post was made possible through patron support.
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Footnotes

1. For those interested in the ways that plant folk organize for change, I have a page full of resources for you.