Find Your Flow: Mind, Body, & Spirit
Spiraling through the medicine wheel
We have arrived in the season of Spring, of the East, of the Air, of a new Dawn, of rising energy… and we give thanks to trillium who is currently guiding us on our way!
Photo by Linda Cook
Trillium, a plant whose medicine can deepen connection to many body systems, and as a precious wildflower, asks that we consider the terrain and circumstance before moving forward. Also called birthroot, birthwort, wake robin, tri-flower this majestic beauty grows low to the ground near water. Used by Native Americans to cure bowel disorders, topically to ease headaches and sunburn and the raw root utilized as a poultice to reduce swelling and point aches, this medicine is still distinctly relevant, though we don’t see it in commerce often. The bulb was once ground into a powder and made into “love medicine”, it’s three leaf and petal arrangement representative of feminine lore. It is indicated with the proper application in easing childbirth, balancing hormones, and has uses in the digestive, respiratory, immune, reproductive and gastrointestinal systems.
Trillium flower essence roots us connection, reorganizing the personal energy grid and assisting in tending the balance between the spiritual and material realities. It can link us back to areas where we are feeling disconnected while aiding in the opening of heart. Growing in a threes, Trillium leaf and petals reflect the trinity in sacred geometry, reconnecting us with the bounty of love and abundance.
Trillium, a plant whose medicine can deepen connection to many body systems, and as a precious wildflower, asks that we consider the terrain and circumstance before moving forward. Also called birthroot, birthwort, wake robin, tri-flower this majestic beauty grows low to the ground near water. Used by Native Americans to cure bowel disorders, topically to ease headaches and sunburn and the raw root utilized as a poultice to reduce swelling and point aches, this medicine is still distinctly relevant, though we don’t see it in commerce often. The bulb was once ground into a powder and made into “love medicine”, it’s three leaf and petal arrangement representative of feminine lore. It is indicated with the proper application in easing childbirth, balancing hormones, and has uses in the digestive, respiratory, immune, reproductive and gastrointestinal systems.
Trillium flower essence roots us connection, reorganizing the personal energy grid and assisting in tending the balance between the spiritual and material realities. It can link us back to areas where we are feeling disconnected while aiding in the opening of heart. Growing in a threes, Trillium leaf and petals reflect the trinity in sacred geometry, reconnecting us with the bounty of love and abundance.
Experience Trillium for yourself with our Spring Season Herbal Box.
Finding Your Flow
The Wisdom of Willow
If you read the newsletter you might have seen our almost egregious act of overlooking our April plant spirit medicine, willow. We can chalk it up to distraction (trillium and the energy of spring definitely captivated us), but personally I believe this was also a direct teaching from willow. As a team we rallied and adapted, dove in with a lot of grace a flexibility, and recommitted to properly honoring this extraordinary medicine. Essentially, we had to “go with the flow” which is most certainly the lesson of willow.
Willow goes by many names and has too many species to name here. It comes in a variety of shapes and sizes, but is unmistakably a water way tree. It is a tree used for a variety of medicines by most all who have encountered it. Willow has been trusted to aid in the treatment of all manor of illness, but is most often know to treat throat, respiratory, head, and body aches. Barks and leaves are traditional, but there is also a history suggesting a decoction of roots to “treat the blood.” Conventional medicine has come to understand that a key component of this tree, salicylates (a type of glycoside), have significant actions on blood and tissue in the body.
Considered one of the seven noble trees in Celtic tradition, willow is heavily associated with the moon and water. So strong is this association that American herbalist Michael Moore tested that if you did not have a stream to plant will by then you should not grow it. And what we actually see is that willow hold space and creates balance between all other elements and the water. It enhances flow and reduces stagnation of all varieties. Willow invites us simply to feel what we feel, to let it move through us like a quick running stream, to not be too attached, lest we get stuck and then stagnant in the energy.
As we step into spring we step into the opportunities not only to start new things, but to start a new way of being with old things.
Our bodies and selves moves in cycles, our needs shifting as we interact with the rhythms of the world. Questions of balance, trust, commitment and exploration permeate our most prized relationships, including those we hold with our medicine, as we hunger to love and be loved wholly. Coveting worthiness and nurturing our authentic expression requires the right support for evolution, the source both broad and specific. The feeling of love absorbed in ourselves, others and in what we create can be the sweetest, most sacred medicine. The rough edges, bent corners, skewed compositions of connection is inevitably special, wonderfully unique, intensifying our intimacy with healing.
Willow has joined us on this new April moon in Aries, inviting us to find a flow, to shift into our quick growing selves, to engage with flexibility as we navigate external and internal realities, our physical and emotional forms. Willow welcomes the movement of pain and bitterness as we mindfully release, receive, and above all else (especially as we partner with trillium) clear stagnation so that we may birth our own harmony, peace, and ease.
Ready to get a new flow going, or just want to spend some sweet time with Willow? Check our this month’s Plant Spirit Medicine Box. It contains a beautiful bath tea/face steam, willow essence in rose syrup, 2oz uplift spray, 2oz Willow Tumeric Formula, and a water ritual with writing prompts to aid your emotional flow.
New Moon in Aries
“Heat is the name of the season. Get moving. The sun is pleased to be in Aries with the moon today. It’s at it’s prime. This is a hot dark moon! Honor the spring and move with ecstatic dynamism! Dance till you sweat, Hula Hoop, down dog till you drop, play tag til the kids need a nap! Laugh! The cardinal fire of Aries ignites our metabolism, our detoxification, our creativity, our eroticism. This New Moon is separating from a sextile to Saturn and approaching a sextile with Mars. That’s a good thing! While Saturn and Mars are considered ‘malefic’ or challenging they are making a positive aspect, a sextile, to the Moon. Saturn is characterized as a cold, hard, old, lonely planet and in our lives that can show up as indigestion, isolation, toxicity, depression, fatigue, strictness, or intolerance. With the Sun in his exaltation in Aries conjunct the moon and in a sextile to Mars we are given a chance to get some heat, light and energy into the dark crevices of our lives, bodies and minds. So get wiggling. This is the season to eat bitter greens and get your bile pumping out of your gall bladder and liver so we can get all the nutrients we need and get rid of whatever we don’t. Eat Dandelions! Eat the Flowers! Eat the Leaves! Be spring clean!”
-Bethany Anne Stamey