Why herbs?

My fascination with all things herby came about in a rather unusual way. I had been feeling extremely unwell and lacking in motivation or energy when one day feeling completely upset I asked out loud in pure frustration ...."What is wrong with me?"

Strangely, I heard a voice in my head say matter of factly "Potassium" To say I was shocked would be a bit of an understatement but I ran straight for the computer to google it! At the risk of sounding like a dumb ass, I did not know what it was. (Karisma hangs head in shame and goes and stands in the corner!) In my own defense I left school at age 15 over 25 years ago and I only did science till I was 13 when I dropped it. It was not a compulsory subject at our high school back then and as I was far more interested in music and art, I dropped it completely.

In short, I ended up diagnosing and treating myself until I was well and then that little voice once again told me when it was time to stop with the potassium supplements and get on with the healthy eating.

This was of course only the first prompt. The next one came when my youngest daughter  had a severe case of hives that was driving her nuts. We had tried the anti-histamines the doctors gave her along with various other standard methods of dealing with hives. When once again as I held her and asked "what can I do for her?" The answer came out straight away........Chamomile! This time it came with a more pronounced "feeling" that it would work both ingested AND as a poultice to soothe the rash.

As I did not have any fresh chamomile handy, I had her drink a cup of chamomile tea with honey and we saved the cold tea bags for dabbing on the worst bits. IT WORKED  Chamomile really became the first herb that got me really interested in healing herbs. Fluke? Maybe......I am familiar with Chamomile as a nice calming tea. Maybe my instinct just reminded me?

I remember then telling a friend online about what had happened and she asked me to do the same for her husband who was unwell. I was a little/okay a lot dubious. I knew nothing, had no back ground or experience so in a sense it was more a bit of fun or a game to try it. She sent me a picture and I sat and "asked" .......YARROW   (Me: Ummmm Whats Yarrow? I had honestly never heard of it at the time, it does not grow randomly around here) Google google google....Well, the reason I was getting for him to have it was nothing to do with the most common reasons I could find for ingesting it. I had to dig deep but lo and behold I worked out why and sent on the information of course with the whole.....consult your doctor if he has any serious problems. I don't remember all the facts, it was a few years ago, but I do remember saying "Does he by any chance have a cold?" He did, along with other health issues which the yarrow would help with.

I started buying books about herbs but found most not as in par with these strange urges to use them when people were sick. I started to really "judge" certain books as being useless or inaccurate! And how would I know? For about a year, I filled my garden with herbs I could get hold of, learning quite a bit about the ones I had, then for some reason I started to doubt myself and stopped. I did however in my searchings end up with my favourite herbal "How to use herbs in my daily Life" by Isabell Shipard. This book was like a bible to me with all the old wives tales and different accounts of uses not recommended today in most books. And yes, it often backed me up when my voices told me stuff.

I guess I was worried about what people thought more than anything. I must be nuts right? This sort of stuff continued to happen to me but I mostly kept it to myself. Unless it was my immediate family, I did not intervene. With them, I used this strange gift a lot.

Also I guess I should explain about "feeling" others pain. Mainly with my kids, if they are sick I can feel their pain. Its worse if I put my hands on them but I often still feel it when I am not touching them as well. One daughter in particular seems to project her headaches outward when she gets them. I can distinguish the difference if it is my headache or hers. I have been known to call out...."OK who has a headache?" "Sorry mum!".... She will call out. So as you see, if more than one of them gets sick at once it can be down right exhausting for me.

There are many many stories I could tell you but I would be stuck here all day. I often disagree with the doctors, the hospital and even the vet when treating my family! I think sometimes they would rather not see me coming.

So there you have it in a nutshell. I am trying in my own way to actually back up some of my reasoning through "educating the mind" (no easy feat for me, I am terrible at keeping my mind focussed for very long) I guess with scientific back up. I cannot claim to be a herbalist, I have no training. I guess I cannot claim to be a healer technically either. I practice hands on healing but again have no training. I believe that there is a power much greater than myself that does the actual healing. I am just a channel on this side to pass it through.

Now at a risk of scaring away my friends who do not believe in this sort of stuff I am going to shut up for now. I may share some more experiences later if anyone is interested in hearing them.

Namaste xoxo