1. Get Moving
I know you don't feel like it. But the ONLY way to get past this is to encourage your lymph system to get immune cells in, and trash out. 
-Take a hot showers
-Exfoliate
-Use a netti pot
-dry yourself briskly!
-snuggle into warm clothes

2. Take Stock and Make Stock
Start making hot water, on the stove or in a crock pot, and a tea kettle. I am forever freezing chicken bones and this is the time to use them. Dig around in your fridge and freezer to see what you might add to that hot water. If you were thinking ahead, you may have some veggie ends like carrot tips and celery butts and parsley stems frozen against a future soup, in which case toss it all the pot with the bones. Otherwise, just the bones will do fine, with some salt and a wee splash of vinegar. And a few seaweed leaves, if you have them. Then just put the pot on low with a lid and forget about it until tomorrow. 

3. DRINK
Like #1 up there, keeping your lymph moving and thin is super extra important now, so we need to stay hydrated and warm. With that hot tea kettle water from #2, make yourself some tea- I keep it easy with instant dandelion or ginger tea, or one of these mushroom lattes that help your immune function and are DELICIOUS. Also, dig out that container of miso you forgot about in the back of your fridge (I'll share other ways to enjoy miso some other time) and drop a spoonful in a second mug. Add a sprinkle of kelp and poof- you have soup. Drink up. 

4. Feed a cold, starve a fever
Here's my take on this saying, really one of the only thowbacks our culture has left of a traditional medicine system. Colds are low-grade attacks on our bodies, and we pull out all the stops to fight it- mucus to trap and drain, fatigue to conserve energy, aches as destroyed cells pile up in our lymph glands. An army fights on its stomach, so if yours is calling for fuel, go for it. 

Keep in mind, you are working HARD to fight this off, and it takes energy to digest food into that fuel. Choose simple, nutrient-dense, easy to digest options, which are primarily soft, long cooked, and uncomplicated foods. Soups, stews, roasted vegetables, eggs, applesauce, porridges- you know, the really healthy stuff. Dairy, sugar, large quantities of grains, raw foods will all use too many resources or actually feed the bacteria causing the cold. Help your body out. 

If you reach fever stage, I believe your body is throwing all available energy at raising your temperature to basically cook your illness right out of you. Support that with hydration, warm clothes, lots of simple resting, and fasting as you feel you need it. Now's the time to really check in and see what you're up for and in need of. It'll take your stock from #2 at least 24 hours to simmer into a mineral-rich broth that will feed your depleted immune system, so nap your way till then.

5. R.E.S.T.
Don't be surprised if you sleep for 12 hours or more. Don't be surprised when I suggest you go to bed before it's dark out. Give yourself the chance to recover. Just do it, please!

6. Recovery wasn't done in a day
Our culture does NOT value convalescence. But I do! And I get it, it's hard to all for recovery when we're so pressed with obligations and responsibilities from all sides. But if you keep your energy output to 70% MAX for at least 2 days after you start feeling better, you'll actually be able to recover to at least your pre-cold energy levels in record time. 

A woman was recently telling me about a strange rash she developed on her upper back. After a few rounds of doctor visits, she was finally told that it was coming from a virus that gave her an upper respiratory issue 3 months prior to the rash! Enough people had had the hacking cough AND didn't actually recover from it, leading to identical rashes on the outside of their lungs months later, that the local physicians were recognizing the symptoms- and recommending steroids. I recommend recovering fully in the first place. 

Drink your broth, make it into vegetable soup, eat your simple foods, allow for more time to do routine things, take naps, and when your symptoms start to recede start the clock- you still need at least 2 days of this easier pace to be well again.  

Have you ever had an out-of-body moment, when you don't recognize anything but suddenly realize that this is somehow your life? It feels like you're seeing the world like this for the first time, through new eyes, like you just woke up in this body with this life that you didn't have a moment ago.

​This has happened when I'm teaching a Pilates class, and I'm simultaneously confident in my instruction while also amazed at myself for knowing what to do next. It's also happened when I moved house often- 5 times in 5 years at one point. I'd walk into a room and think, "This is my stuff, but what's it doing here?" 

It also happened one morning recently, when I was suddenly struck by the quality of the light and the movement of the breeze in stiff bare trees and I was so sure, just for a minute, that it was a late Autumn evening and not 7am in mid-February. For just that minute, I was both here and there.

I think these experiences are actually practicable. The reality we each experience is created through our own personal sets of life-lenses. But I think we can practice seeing our own reality without involving our life's worth of expectation and experience and habits. Like in physical exercise, the benefits of a practice like this expand past the goal- beyond examining our own lives more objectively, this allows us to listen and learn in ways that might be logically unfathomable but just need an open mind to help you grow a little. 

​Somewhere along my herbal journey, I began to absorb the idea that plants weren't invented for our illnesses, that self-care and healing is labor and discipline and personal responsibility. It was a very gradual paradigm shift, and re-reading my early notes from the beginning of my training reveal that it certainly didn't start right away. 

Generally, we don't recognize that our "simple" health-related questions are based in an expectation of "take a pill for it," that assumes some outside force (person, drug, or plant) can/will/should do the work for us. We're actually told that we must submit to doctors and medications even if we feel worse in their "care."

I suggest, instead, that this is really your responsibility, and that all the "experts" are really just part of your team of advisers and require constant questioning. It's actually not fair to expect someone or something to fix you, because how could they ever know what you're experiencing as well as you do? How could they ever influence your choices and decisions and reactions more than you can?

By now, questions about "what herbs are for [health condition]" and "how much [standardized component] is in there/do I need/works best" no longer get straight answers from me. Should I take Valerian for sleep? becomes a conversation about: 

1. Valerian works by warming you up
2. So you have to know something about yourself and how you work
3. And your temperatures can change
4. So you have to work with Valerian and yourself to figure out if it'll help you
5. (And sleep is not a light switch, it's a state of being, you can practice being better at it, there's other interventions too...)

You see how this gets can-of-worms complex?

I want you to learn what you have influence over, what you don't, and where you stand in relation to the rest of everything. You have both power over and responsibility for your internal state, your reality. It's a huge shift to come to terms with this. Practicing this has made me a more engaged and stronger human, and has taught me things I didn't know I didn't know. 

​This is my challenge to you: practice being responsible for, or in charge of, your own reality. Practice stepping outside of it and seeing what things look like from there. Practice experiencing yourself, instead of accepting what outside messages say you think.

Practice seeing how you feel and react to your food, your medications, your herbs, your exercise, and all the other inputs in your life. Practice being part of the bigger picture, working with the weather, being part of the traffic, rather than outside them as if they are happening to you personally. 

Practice to see what you find, instead of searching for answers you think you want. 

Do you choose a Word of the Year? Do you actually work towards it?

I've had variable success doing this. Last year was mostly a "not so much" year, but in 2017 I was pretty good at remembering and reviewing and adjusting towards my WotY. 

In that spirit, my 2019 WotY is: CONSISTENCY.

There's lots of ideas and half-formed plans and unexecuted proposals banging around in my head. Recently I was listening to an audiobook when a passage struck me: 

Beauvoir was reminded of his grandmother... When Jean Guy had visited they'd collect little new peas together and shell them, sitting on the porch. He now knew his grandmother must have been very busy, but she never gave that impression, just as these monks now gave the impression of working steadily. Working hard even, but working at their own pace. (The Beautiful Mystery, Louise Penny)

Working hard even, but working at their own pace. That captures my goal for the year. Instead of throwing myself headlong into a project and getting distracted by every other thing life needs before I'm finished and never completing anything, Slow and Steady and Consistent are to be my mantra this year. 

​A WotY is a pretty good way to motivate myself towards a common theme or a long-term vision. I have to make it visible, writing it on a notecard for my bulletin board, on my journal cover, in my daily vision imaging. 

How do you keep yourself on track? 

Petaled Sunshine
Calendula is a classic remedy for skin ailments, helping heal in a gentle steady way. She's also a classic lymph mover, with the same energy, I feel. She's the draught horse, getting the deep work done. Or a nurse, kind and gentle but firm and inexorable. 

I have been using her infused oil topically with internal issues too. On the abdomen during difficult periods or over irritated intestines, on the jaw during my tongue-tie pain, on a joint when there's an -itis going on.

Helping to keep the inflammation fluids (aka the healing process) moving, helping repair, bringing brightness & cheer. She's easy to grow, abundant with flowers, and generously reseeds. Her resinous medicine under the petals dissolves best in an oil, but bath or tea water works well too.

Lymphatic Support and Sunshine
Think of Calendula as bringing sunshine into your lymph system. Did you know your lymph doesn't have a pump? Its movement relies on your movement- muscle contractions. When you don't move so much, or have too much trash (from illness) for lymph to move, things can stagnate and congeal- you've seen it happen in the fridge, or overnight in the kitchen sink.

With Calendula, fluid thins and flows, debris is carried away, congestion eases. Shining light into dark corners chases away monsters. (This is a METAPHOR people! If you want to learn about lymph physically check out @stopchasingpain)

Traditionally Europeans called this herb Pot Marigold. A 'pot herb' was a common ingredient in the dinner pot. Calendula helps prepare the immune system for a winter cold by cleaning out the old stuff, so it was harvested and dried all Summer to prepare for this. 

Fresh or dried, flowers and leaves can be made into a tea, or used directly on the skin, or infused into good oil. Dried flowers into tincture, bath mixes, hydrotherapy edema soaks. Also homeopathic creams/gels/tablets.

Read No You Don’t Need A Liver Cleanse! Not A Detox Program Either! I'll wait...

OK, good. We got that straight.

Now, I love this time of year. Everyone has their own special take on traditions, and my family is no exception. We have a Slovak Christmas, a dinner called Vilija with mushroom sauerkraut soup, homemade pierogies, a fish, peas, green jello and pineapple (hey now don't judge) and ohmygosh the cookies. The big focus is on sharing, so yesterday when the exterminator came my mom gave him a baggie of cookies along with his check. Everybody gets included! After I get home there's a couple parties, and some "special" eggnog that'll knock your socks off, and who knows what else. 

​It's a fun, adventurous culinary holiday, lovingly made and generously shared, that is not well suited for daily life. 

After the holidays I'm going to restart some physical and food choices that fell by the wayside this year. My goal is to improve my elimination, heal/repair my nervous and digestive tissues, and feel rested, clear headed, and inspired more often.

Do you want to Overhaul with me? Since I’m planning this out ahead of time and being more methodical, I thought some of you might want to join me for the ride. Here’s what we’ll do, from December 31 to January 20:

• You can follow along as I post online- Instagram (usually shared to Facebook too) will show you the daily journey, and I’ll be writing more in-depth information here on my blog

OR

• Let’s do this together! You’ll get my meal plans, breathing practices, personal development worksheets, self-care strategies, daily and weekly plans, and support from me and the community

I’m offering you the inside scoop on my annual New Year’s Overhaul. You’ll learn what I’ve been doing (abdominal breathing! intermittent fasting!) and all the deets on some new things I want to try (lymph support! meditation!) There will be herbs, fermented foods, exfoliation and dry brushing, digestive support and poop talk, gut health and sweating.

Simply put, we’ll try some new habits on for 3 weeks and see what sticks, while minimizing the demands put on our bodies.

Want to take part? 3 weeks of plans and descriptions, plus my support, delivered early so you have time to prep, is $30.

Sign up HERE, and look for your welcome email. I am traveling this week so you may not get it same day. I look forward to going through this with you!

Welcome to December, the waning of our year. It's not just our calendar that come to an end; we'll pass the Winter Solstice in a few weeks to mark the longest night and the lengthening of our days again. It seems strange to me that as this happens Winter is only beginning- shouldn't this be the middle of the season? But a favorite quote of mine says, "As the days begin to lengthen, the cold begins to strengthen" so let's settle in.

As I write I'm in Florida with my family, and we're celebrating Christmas early with our Slovak tradition called Vilija. It includes sauerkraut soup, pierogies, and lots of cookies. So let's talk about digestive bitters!

Here's a repost from just a little while ago, describing the benefits of digestive supporters like Bitters, Enzymes, Apple Cider Vinegar, Probiotics, and Herbs. I always show up at holiday events with at least a travel-sized bitters spray in my purse, and after just one or two samples at a homemade food fest most of my friends are converts! #herbnerds