The Remedy Practice
Create an Herbal Bitters Blend
Herbal bitters strengthen the digestive powers of the body - our own forest floor of nutrients in an ever-moving process of decay, absorption, and transformation. Depending on what cuisine you grew up with, the bitter taste may or may not have been absent from your daily dishes. The bitter taste itself is vital to supporting digestive health, helping to stimulate the digestive processes of the body, and it's important to incorporate bitter foods, especially bitter leafy greens, into your diet to support overall metabolic health. For times when you need extra support, such as recovering from illness, after a period of eating richer-than-normal foods (such as around the winter holidays), or from chronic digestive complaints, herbal bitters can be pretty transformative to digestive health.
Most herbal bitters are alcohol-based either coming in tincture form or sometimes in an herbal spray. You can also make alcohol-free bitters substituting apple cider vinegar for alcohol - vinegar is especially useful when heartburn is present. Vegetable glycerin is also an option but often milder and sweeter in flavor which can be a great introduction to bitters when developing your palate for bitter tastes. Herbal bitters are prepared in the same way as herbal extracts and can be made with fresh or dried herbs or a combination of both.
I like adding flower essences to most of my bitter blends because just as herbal bitters help us to process nutrients, flower essences help us to process emotions. Admittedly, flower essences are a bit of an odd form of remedy - they fall into the mysterious bit of herbal practice - but I think they act, in part, within the realm of neuroplasticity and psychoneuroimmunology or what is sometimes referred to (often dismissively) as the "placebo effect."¹ When we respect flower essences as an interesting non-medicine bit of magick, they can be a lot of fun to experiment with, and I've seen enough really interesting results with flower essences and the emotional body to continue to work with them over the years. If anything, they invite us to explore the layers of our emotional soil to better understand what it is that we are growing or struggling to support in our lives and an invitation to engage with life's mysteries with gentle plants as our guides. So, if there is a particular emotional state you're trying to process and transform, add the corresponding flower essences to your herbal bitters for that extra plant magick.
Wildwood Meadow Bitters
The following bitter blend is on the milder side, but still plenty effective. They are restorative in nature, helping to balance gut flora and support general digestive health.
Blend together the following herbs:
4 parts Hawthorn Leaf and Flower (Crataegus monogyna)
2 parts Dandelion Root (Taraxacum officinale)
1 part Rose (Rosa spp.)
1 part Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare)
1 part Ginger (Zingiber officinale)
Prepare as an herbal extract using alcohol, vinegar, and/or vegetable glycerin as your menstruum. Recommended dosage is 5 - 10 drops about 30 minutes before meals.
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Remediations: There is a lot of variation to be found with this blend. If you need extra kidney support add Dandelion leaf along with the root. If you're looking for more heart-opening support from dealing with some intense emotions that you're trying to process through, add Hawthorn berry in addition to the leaf and flower. If you have a fast digestion, consider leaving out Fennel or reducing the amount. If you need bitters that are more cooling, substitute Lemon Balm (Melissa officinalis) for Ginger (Zingiber officinale).
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Footnotes
1. Of course, neuroplasticity and neuropsychoimunnology are far more complex than just the study of the so-called placebo effect, but I think that flower essences fall into that realm of these two areas of study.
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