Rosemary Gladstar | 8 Herbs To Calm Your Mind | Stress Relief Plant Medicine

So we live in a time that is, it feels tumultuous. People are scared. People are, if it's not one thing, it's the other. If it's not hurricane, give it the first name and all the damage it's going to do, then it's, you know, whether or not we're going to be, there's going to be nuclear war or things like that. Everyone's got so much to be afraid of, it seems, especially if you're, if you're connected to the news and just kind of feeding yourself that every day. And with it is this sense, I believe, it seems to me, of dread, some undercurrents of stress, some undercurrents of anxiety. So I know that you, that you work with certain herbs to kind of help with some of that, not necessarily get a, you know, not like the Western medicine approach, where it's like, oh, take this away from me. I don't want to have to deal with it or look at myself, but just things that might aid someone in grounding themselves and connecting more to who they are and what this, what this existence is really about in those moments of stress. Would you, would you be open to sharing some of that? Yeah, well, I think, I think there are herbs that present themselves at different times because they, there's a need for them. You know, like when our communities need the plant, they show up. And so there are certain plants that have become very well researched and used right now. I mean, they're traditional, they've been used a long time, but where we weren't really studying or using them, I would say in the last 30 or 40 years, they've become very popular. One being kava. I consider kava an herb for our time. You know, it's a little controversial. There's some countries where you can't buy it. And it was taken off of our, off the market for a short while in the United States as well. There really is very little research that shows that it's bad. And thankfully it's being used. Like any herb, if it's used abusively, it can have side effects, but kava used judiciously and as it's meant to be used is a very incredible herb for the nervous system. And it specifically addresses anxiety. It just, it's kind of remarkable when you take it, you know, you feel your mind alert, but your body relaxes. It's kind of like, you feel like, ah, I can breathe again. So that's a really specially good one. And then there's the traditional herbs like lemon balm and chamomile, valerian and hops. All of those herbs are used for stress and anxiety. I also love using herbs that are hard herbs because so oftentimes our fears originate, I feel in our heart, you know, it's this scariness, our hearts start palpitating, you know, we get very nervous. And so herbs like hawthorn is actually one of my favorite herbs for, for anxiety and grief and sorrow and depression. I, you know, I combined it oftentimes with lemon balm and St. John's wort and oats. Oats in particular for men, by the way, it's good for everybody, but oats has a way of really making the male system or the more masculine system calmer. It's a specific herb for men. So yeah, there's a whole group of herbs that are used and then there's all the, all the support therapies that include herbs like the flower essences and water bathing, I think in the forest bathing, you know, I think the biggest problem right now, it's the world seems more stressful to us because we're alive. This is our world. But believe me, if you live, you know, in World War II and the whole world was aflame or in World War I or, you know, basically any time in history, if you were alive, it would be stressful. I always think, imagine, you know, living in the dinosaur days, you know, being chased by Tyrannosaurus Rex or something, you know, it's our time. It's just when we're alive and it's how we want to navigate through it. It becomes not only a personal choice, but a choice of our societies that we live in. And I think one of the biggest reasons that we're seeing this tremendous anxiety and stress is, yes, we do have a lot of big issues that are facing us, but even more so, we have a global awareness of what's happening to us. And never before in history, like, have we had the ability to hear so much bad news and good news, by the way, there's more good news than bad, but we just seem to have this innate curiosity to want to hear the bad news. And right now, I don't think our nervous systems are programmed to take in that amount of bad information. So, you know, you sit down every morning to have your cup of coffee that's really stimulating. It's over, it's creating overstimulation in your body. And then you feel your heart in your mind with pages and pages of screen tools of bad information. It's enough to make the strongest, most connected person be stressful. So I think a lot of it is us managing. We want to be conscious. I mean, that's partly why this information is available. We need to be conscious of it, but we need to have a greater maturity of how we manage all that bad news. And we need to take care of ourselves enough that we can take that bad news and create it into good news. I think that's really what our mission is. It's to be conscious and aware of it, and to be conscious and aware of how we take it in, and then what we do for ourselves that creates creativity and light out of the darkness. I think it's that simple.