Nature is approaching the fall season and the last fruits are ripening. The leaves are changing into brilliant, vivid colors, and nature’s metamorphosis gives off its wonderful fragrant earthy scent. It is also harvest time, which for me generates questions, like:
• What do I harvest from this year so far?
• What are my inner and outer fruits that nurture me these days?
• What am I thankful for?
Naturally we retreat more into our inner realms as the days grow shorter and nature’s energy contracts slowly. It is a phase similar to the passed midpoint of life, when similar questions rise up to be revived. We get a stronger sense of an end to our life and that we are on the way home. It’s the time of ‘letting go’, getting clear and become freer. This process includes many moments of grieving. A deepening inquiry might help to assess and re-evaluate:
• Where I am at this point in my life?
• What are open issues I want to complete and clear?
• What is obsolete and I want to let go off?
• What needs to be communicated to whom?
On a physical level the lungs and large intestine are corresponding with this process. Both have to do with communication and the exchange of our environment: one through inhalation and exhalation and the other through the digestion of food. They show us a beautiful analogy of assimilation, absorption, digestion and elimination of what we let in and out or hold onto.
If you are balanced in these virtues, you can speak up or be silent when appropriate. You are gifted with precise thinking and open to new thoughts and ideas. If there is too little energy you are a quiet person, cautious, and careful. Too much energy makes you talkative, righteous, overly enthusiastic, and impulsive in speech and behavior. On an emotional level an imbalance shows up as an ongoing grief, the inability to organize thoughts and resources, scattered attention and lack of focus. Physically it may manifest as constipation, shortness of breath, asthma, coughing, skin condi- tions, and continuous feelings of sadness.
Diet Suggestions and Immune System Support
In the transition into a cold season and for protection, you might use these simple tips, like drinking Ginger tea, using hot spices, eating more radish, leek, onions, horseradish, garlic, mustard, especially eating rice and oats, peanuts, walnuts and particularly the vegetable celery, cauliflower, turnip, and cabbage.
Try also the immunity boost created by Dr. Debra Brammer (recommended by the Bastyr Center health information) to strengthen your immune system and/or help combat a cold or flu:
Immune Support Soup (Courtesy of Dr. Debra Brammer)
• 1 small yellow onion, chopped
• 1-5 cloves of garlic, chopped or crushed (to taste)
• 1 teaspoon – 3 tablespoons grated ginger (to taste)
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• 1/4 – 1/2 cup shitake mushrooms
• 1 quart miso broth, chicken broth or mushroom broth
• 3 tablespoon fresh minced parsley
• 1 grated carrot
Preparation: Combine broth, onion, ginger, garlic, mushrooms and carrot and simmer for 15-20 minutes. Remove from heat and add lemon juice and parsley. Cover pan and steam for 5 minutes, then serve.
Other possible nutrients that support your immune function are Echinacea, the Chinese herb Astragalus, Ginseng, or Burdock. In an acute case:
• try a facial steam and breathe in with herbal mist of mint, rosemary, chamomile, or lemon verbena.
• chew several garlic cloves dipped in honey (or press several cloves of garlic into a bowl of hot soup). Garlic is a natural antibiotic.
• use Echinacea, Goldenseal and/or Olive Leaf extract.
Use generally a lot of spices for their warming energy and stimulating the digestion.
HEALING PLANTS
WILLOW (Salix vitellina)
The Destiny Flower – From resenting fate to taking personal responsibility
Key Symptoms:
• Do you feel life is unfair and find yourself taking less and less interest in the things you used to enjoy?
• Do you feel resentful and bitter?
• Do you have difficulty forgiving and forgetting?
We all have days when we don’t feel at all com-fortable with ourselves. But what can you do, if this state continues? You might feel that you have not deserved it, that it is unjust, you feel embittered and soured by life. You feel less activity in things of life, which you have previously enjoyed.
In a blocked Willow state we feel as a victim of circumstances. We complain a lot. Our disappointments and resentment are strongly projected onto the outside world, onto others, God, or life in general. We are holding against the way life has gone and what happened. We feel powerless. Our thoughts are spiteful and grudging due to the bitterness we feel in our hearts. It becomes a pattern and might be with us for month, years, or even decades. We judge life by the success it brings and see only the empty or half empty glass. We blame and it ishard to consider and accept that the law of cause and effect may function in our life.
If you experience such emotions, have suffered adversity or misfortune, find it difficult to accept and are looking for inner peace, forgiveness and letting go, Willow can help shifting the energy into its potential. Willow:
• helps us to take our life back into our own hands.
• supports us in letting go of the past experience.
• encourages the rebirth of optimism and faith.
• re-connects us with our generosity towards others.
• helps us to take full responsibility for our life.
• sharpens our awareness that negative thinking can attract the very ill-fortune of which we complain.
Empowering Statements
• I have power
• I’m in control
• I take responsibility
This quote from Andrew Cohen seems to represent the Willow energy:
Unconditional Responsibility
“It is so important to come to that point in our own spiritual evolution where we are finally ready and willing to be wholeheartedly accountable for ourselves—for who we are and how we are. Heroically, we must be ready to accept unconditional responsibility for the seen and unseen consequences of everything that has ever happened to us.” Andrew Cohen
Empowering metaphor of the Willow tree
Just as some animals have been domesticated by men while others remain wild, so plants and trees have been pressed into service wherever they offer a particular use to industry or agriculture. Some plants modified through that interference, while others remained true to their form and pattern, like the Willow tree. It remained unchanged though it received cuttings for many centuries. The
process of pollarding, cutting the branches back to a stump to force new growth, was once widely practiced. Every year the vigorous young shoots were taken as wattle for building walls, as withies for basket-making, while other branches were cut in the following years for fencing and as poles. The Willow tree is ideal for such purposes as it is this flexible tolerance that characterizes the tree. Although it has been so mistreated it stayed in its original strength and gives its best with resilient new growth and a constant effort to grow back as a full tree.
The strength of the tree is also visible in the branches. Any branch will strike roots without difficulty; cut a Willow pole, drive it into the ground and it will become a tree. Willow has such a will to grow! Its chosen habitat is in wet ground by a river. Here it thrives in dampness where other trees may rot or become choked by mosses.
Wishing you a colorful fall and a joyous letting go of old leaves. With warm greetings, Lisa
