“all healing comes from within and the body heals itself.”

The first thing to emerge in the classification of herbs was a recognition of their cooling or heating properties. Thus it was noted that everything was encompassed by a cycle of polarity of night and day, sun and moon, wet and dry, male and female, hot and cold, full and empty, light and heavy smooth and rough, etc. It was further observed that there was in fact a relationship between these obvious characteristic qualities and certain disease conditions of the body. An individual with a hot disease such as a high fever was treated with a cooling, detoxifying medicine such as a cool fruit or the tender leaves or petals of a flower such as hibiscus, elder, yarrow, red clover blossoms, mint, etc. Diseases characterized by coldness, weak digestion, poor circulation, etc., would be treated with deep rooted herbs and plants or barks of certain trees that would affect the deeper organs and secretions of the body, such as ginseng, dandelion, prickly ash bark, bayberry bark, burdock root, etc. …As ancient as this discovery was, this basic hot and cold relationship of plants and diseases is still a fundamental principle of all natural healing. “
- From the Introduction in The Way of Herbs by Michael Tierra, C.A., N.D.

It seems the same facination which led me to a regular yoga practice is enticing me to expand my knowledge in new directions. Having some intimation that I might be interested in herbalism or perhaps accupuncture, I happened across the above-quoted book on the shelves of the library I share with my sister. Smiling to myself at the clever trick the Universe played on me by providing me a step in the direction of my curiosity, and immediately engrossed, I felt somewhat foolishly suprised to discover how similar the use of medicinal plants (ie. herbs) is to the philosophy of hatha yoga. Hatha yoga, in Sanskrit, translates to Sun (Ha) and Moon (Tha) yoga. Much like the philospophies embraced by Aryuveda, Chinese  and Native American medicine (including herbalism or plant medicine), Hatha yoga seeks to balance the opposing spectrums of energy that are constantly in flux within the body. The two polarities begin masculine/feminine, aggressive/passive, extroverted/introverted, firey/watery, hot/cold, etc. all the same descriptions I found in the introduction to my book on herbal science. And similarly to the aforementioned traditions, hatha yoga recognises that to treat an imbalance of one energy requires more of the opposite.  How wise our human ancestors were to observe and develop a method for healing that modern white Western science is only now beginning to understand and validate, 2000 years into its regular use and application!

It is moments like this that I am humbly, incredibly grateful for the privilege of information sharing across cultures and continents. I am grateful that these ancient traditions are being shared that, although i may not descend from this wisdoms’ lineage, I am still permitted to access the incredible magic it holds.  What a wonderous plane of existence where humans have been given the tools to heal the whole self- body, mind and spirit through will and environment. I thank those who have passed on this knowledge and allowed it to be shared beyond cultural difference that we might all have to opportunity to heal and evolve.

Unfit to Drink

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/us/17water.html?_r=1&hp

Amazing nature

incredible story that will blast preconceptions while amazing your pants off.

 

autumn call

leaves drop off the trees

little ghosts
lighter than paper bags
no longer accepting light
they sicken and sweeten
syrup drawing sluggishly alone the veins
the skin turns brown
and slowly they let go
their branches and drift
hardening into flakey sheathes
of crunchy paper flesh
to crackle and decay
warming the ground
with death.

the trees recede into their hearts
they turn to stone and grow quiet
until the gound thaws again a half year from now.
To let the new shoots made warm by decay of old life emerge
there must be a little death.

i shed summer tan, the dead cells clumping and rolling off in little pills to collect in the drain
it is change i can see
suddenly desiring to pull into my heart all the things i am
i turn my mind toward god.
i turn my mind toward god.
i pull back into my heart
and stoke a furnace there until the weather changes.

Child of the Americas

 

I am a child of the Americas,
a light-skinned mestiza of the Caribbean,
a child of many diaspora, born into this continent at a crossroads.
I am a U.S. Puerto Rican Jew,
a product of the ghettos of New York I have never known.
An immigrant and the daughter and granddaughter of immigrants.
I speak English with passion: it’s the tongue of my consciousness,
a flashing knife blade of cristal, my tool, my craft.

 

I am Caribeña, island grown. Spanish is my flesh,
Ripples from my tongue, lodges in my hips:
the language of garlic and mangoes,
the singing of poetry, the flying gestures of my hands.
I am of Latinoamerica, rooted in the history of my continent:
I speak from that body.

 

I am not African. Africa is in me, but I cannot return.
I am not taína. Taíno is in me, but there is no way back.
I am not European. Europe lives in me, but I have no home there.

 

I am new. History made me. My first language was spanglish.
I was born at the crossroads
and I am whole.

 

 By Aurora Levins Morales

 

 

 

 

 

 

My mother’s house

My mother wants everything in her house to be beautiful,
every experience an opus of the senses
she conducts the environment
in subtle and meticulous ways
taking what melodies already exist
and augmenting;
From the fragrant rosemeary bush
that overruns the garden
(that began in back and now spills down the side of the house)
which the drivers' side door of the vehicle bearing
NY liscense plates can't fail to brush against
as it pulls up outside,
taints the first whiffs of the suburbs with
memories of home-cooked meals.
Her house is an amalgamation of old and newly-laid quirk-
The same wallpaper I scrawled newly-learned-print promises-
"all my things belong to you"
still clings to the dining room walls.
The livingroom couch, although outfitted in a differently hued slip cover
is still the same one my grandfather died upon
that Independence day in 1998
as fireworks seared the evening skies over our town.
In every room there is a diferrent smell,
a certain shade,
a sudden mellowing of the light
that brings to mind and unites both legacy and presence.
In or out nothing is arbitrary,
nothing is forced,
the past makes peace with time.
The front yard is dominated by a Holly tree that now
in late Autumn is again beginning to bellow
it's presence-
the other trees turn and begin to shed their leaves
as it's berries grow ripe and red,
the fullness of the Holly stark in contrast
with the bitter bark trunks of sugar gums,
tears against the feathered sky.
I like to be reminded as I chase a mischeivous cat underneath
and am stopped short by an abundance of thistles
That this tree is my family-
planted by my grandfather's hands
on the day my infant mother came to be.
That was 1947 and here I am walking
the same plot of soggy land two generations after,
the holly tree may not know how much it has grown save for perhaps
a vague sense of an increased volume and activity
of the heterogeneous species it supports
But we
know that Holly is our link to our loved ones.
And perhaps that is why, to the chagrin of our neighbors
my mother leaves it overgrown
to swallow up the sidewalk as it will-
because that tree is Us
and we are It
As is the sofa, the wallpaper
and the smell of the leaky basement -
these are the ways her secrets work-
if we add a coat of paint she must remember
to leave a corner of the old color peeking through

that will remind us
to again pick up the tune
of who we are
and how we came to be.

specific to sex

even satisfied
i begin to reach into cupboards
where i’ve stored jars of sweet preserves
to open and fondle on a too dry day-
that silk cream slope of a neck to a collar bone
interrupted somewhere south
by the nipple i took between my lips-
the tempation
of a rolling landscape beneath my fingertips
interrupted by the elastic fence of your green pantyline-
taking life into my hands, i dared beneath that barbed wire corral
to take your lips between mine.
listening for the sudden release
of vibration with breath to let me know
i had found a place to graze

a sex based mostly on insinuation
until the terrain became too slick
to suggest any longer
wet lips
slick fingers
hot breath
a rain dance which ritually shook the world by force of hot and cold fronts colliding between bedsheets each night.

Dining Alone

i hardly find it fair
twice daily i must remember your form before me,
devouring the fruits of your labor.

Laboriously I endeavor to drag my thoughts away
from you eyes held in my minds’
while mastecating the fiberous flesh
of green your toil wrought

Your hands plunged into earth to deposit the kernel that would become this sprout,
carressed the bulb that simmers in sweet maple
as i salivate
anticipating each burst of flavor
rolling my eyes in my head, your name on my tongue
as i sample the savory and the sweet.

Deliver me
no more autumn squash
                  bitter greens
                   russet yellows
my heart pumps with the violet blood
of the beets
you painstakingly cultivated,
but i am left to eat
alone.

From slavery to the head of the American Government within 5 generations

“Melvinia Shields, the enslaved and illiterate young girl, and the unknown white man who impregnated her are the great-great-great-grandparents of Michelle Obama, the first lady.”

Read the rest of this moving article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/us/politics/08genealogy.html?pagewanted=1&hp

From “In Defense of Food” by Michael Pollan

Nutritionism might be the best thing ever to happen to the food industry, which historically has labored under the limits to growth imposed by a population of eaters that isn’t expanding nearly as fast as the fod makers need it to if they are to satisfy the expectations of Wall Street. Nutritinism solves the problem of he fixed somach, as it used to be called in the business: the fact  that compared to other consumer products, demand for food has in the past been failry inelastic. People could only eat so much , and beause tradition and habit ruled thei rchoices, they tended to eat the same old things. Not anymore! Not only does nutritinoism favor ever more novel kinds of hightly porcessed foods (which are by far themost profitable kind to make), it actually enlists the medical establishment and the government in the promotion of thos products. Play your cards right and you can even get the American Heart Association to endorese your new breakfast cereal as “heart healthy.” As i write, the FDA has just signed off on a new health claim for Frito-Lay chips on the grounds that eating chips fried in polyunsaturated fats can help you reduce your consumption of saturated fats, thereby conferring blessings on your cardiovascular system so can a notorious jumk food pass through the needle eye of nutrinoist logic and come out the other side looking like a health food.