The bitter side of Love - Summer Chicory flowers story

Initially, it might seem harsh to equate Love with a bitter flavour because of our cultural link between bitterness and displeasure. However, consider how many people enjoy drinking coffee or tea. Both beverages have a bitter taste, with coffee being more bitter than tea. This suggests that our negative perceptions of bitterness may need some reconsideration.

What is the function of bitter in Chinese Medicine? Bitter has the energetic effect of descending. Whether it is to send down a big and heavy meal or calming overly excited Heart, it has a downward directionality.

You might wonder, if love is about elevation and passionate energy, then bitter surely works in the opposite way, correct? Well, let's explore it further.

In Chinese Medicine (and likewise in Classical Greek philosophy) there are Five fundamental elements/energies on which all material and immaterial existence is based. The Five Elements of Chinese Medicine are: Fire, Earth, Metal, Water and Wood; and everything can be associated with these elements.

Fire is associated with the Summer season, with fire, with the red colour, with the Heart, with Love and with the bitter taste. That already suggest that bitter tasting herbs, especially blue-violet Chicory flowers, are going to be beneficial to the Heart and its emotion of love.

Studying Bach flower essences has helped me grasp the significance of this bitter herb in relation to the emotion of Love. Edward Bach wrote about people who need the Chicory essence:

"…people are full of love and care for their families and friends. But they expect to receive love and attention in return, with interest, and feel slighted and unnecessarily hurt if they don’t get all they expect.

Their great love can lead them to hold onto their loved ones and try to keep them dependent and close to hand.

This may stifle the development of other personalities, or simply drive people away.

When we fall into this state the remedy helps bring out the positive side of Chicory: love given unconditionally and in freedom."

Chicory flower essence

To me, the significance lies in how Chicory serves to strengthen and solidify the emotion of love, making it even more lasting. Reflecting on it, in any loving relationships there comes a point where we must acknowledge and accept something about our partner or family member that may not agree perfectly with us and we may attempt to impose our will rather than let the other be. The bitter-tasting Chicory helps us with accepting the other lovingly, sending it down, swallowing the facts, and by doing so our loving feelings are actually anchored down.

This process in Five Elements describes the dynamic of the Fire and the Water element. Water element corresponds to the Winter season, the colour blue, the Kidneys and the emotion of fear. By ancoring the emotion of Love in the depths of Water energy, the Heart may become unsure and insecure. Hence the blue-violet blooms of Chicory serve as a perfect bridge between the Fire and Water element; supporting the Heart and assuring its connection with the enduring and life-sustaining Water element.

In conclusion, enduring, profound and lasting love requires bitterness as a crucial ingredient. Without it, love may remain superficial, self-centered, conditional or fleeting.

Now... I am off to finish my Chicory flower essence I have harvested and infused earlier today, potentiated with crystals.

If you would like to get my Chicory flower essence contact me by clicking below:

Contact for Chicory flower essence

Loving-3-phase-detox for Spring rejuvenation

There needs to be a balance in everything and that includes a detox programme.

Our body is so intelligent it detoxes anyway, daily and seasonally, better still if we give it a helping hand.

There are many obvious reasons for doing a periodic detox: the pollution we are surrounded by, including industrialised food, the medicines we take (including vaccines), the endogenous substances our bodies produce under stress which interrupt smooth elimination and the little physical exercise we do to oxygenate the body, are just a few examples.

No doubt, every now and then, our body requires our loving attention. In fact, the intention of a detox should be the desire to give our body some loving attention. Hence, the loving-3-phase-detox is designed to be gentle on your systems, yet effective. Having convinced you as to "why", let me explain "when" and "how" to detox.

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When? There are only two times of the year when the energy is propense to detox: one is in Spring and the other is in Autumn. Spring is when the activity of Liver is at its peak, Autumn when the Colon helps us to eliminate (especially the parasites). Still the Spring time has no equals for the all-around detox. The energies in our bodies are rising and moving, which aids in the clearing out process.

How? The key words are: in a loving, gentle and phased approach. According to the Chinese Medicine, the first, most external way to eliminate is via the Bladder, the water system. Starting from the water soluble toxins we skim the first layer of debris, eliminate toxic heat, acute inflammations but at the same time warm up and sustain the body in preparation for the next stage: transforming the phlegm. During the second stage we transform the more dense body fluids which form humidity and phlegm (giving the rise to chronic illnesses). We also prepare the intestines, ensuring their proper movement and elimination, setting up the ground for lipid soluble elimination that comes from the Liver filtering in the third stage.

Whereas we could do all of this at the same time, phasing out in three stages, ideally spread over 6 weeks, gives our body time to deal with each stage in turn. You could assign 10 days or minimum 7 days, for each phase.

Another important principle is to gradually eliminate foods that inhibit detoxification and include those that aid each stage of the detox. The gradual elimination is more gentle and the body does not go into the "deprivation" mode. What's more, I suggest when you eliminate a certain food, you replace it with a substitute, at least initially, for your body not to feel the lack, which may make it go into "storage mode" rather than elimination. So, for example a substitute for a coffee could be cacao (100% dark chocolate or hot cacao in the morning with honey to get a boost); a substitute for wine could be apple juice or apple cider vinegar diluted in water. Watch this space #loving3phasedetox for more substitute ideas to come on Facebook or Instagram.

It is important to highlight that the foods eliminated in the phase one and two are not included until the end of the detox programme. Even then, I recommend you to include coffee, alcohol, sugar, gluten, diary and meats as gradually as they were eliminated, one food at the time. As a matter of fact, you are likely to feel so good at the end of the programme you will feel more loving towards your body anyway.

I have created the loving-3-phase-detox with the following balancing principles in mind:

1. flowing with the seasonal cycle of the Nature to start in early Spring;

2. whilst eliminating certain foods from your diet you substitute with others for gentle effects;

3. gradual inclusion of clearing out foods, herbs and/or supplements;

4. gradual increase of physical activity as the Spring energy rises;

5. phased progression including one system at the time: urinary/blood (Kidneys), thick liquids (Spleen & Intestines) and lipids (Liver).
   

Below you find a summary table to aid you in designing your ingredients of the loving-3-phase-detox. Apart from the foods to eliminate, you have the suggestions of the substitutes, as well as foods, herbs and supplements to include in each phase, which help with that particular system involved. The final part of the table suggests routines you will benefit from in particular.

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	Phase I week 1 & 2	Phase II week 3 & 4	Phase III week 5 & 6
System / Organs involved	Urinary and Blood Kidneys & Bladder	Denser body fluids Spleen & Intestines	Blood and lipids Liver & Gallbladder
Elimination	Water	Phlegm	Lipids
Energetic	Warming up	Transforming	Moving
Foods to eliminate	coffee, alcohol	sugar and gluten	meat, diary
Foods as substitutes	barley coffee, cacao, green tea, apple juice, apple cider vinegar in water	some dry fruits and honey, gluten free grains (rice, buckwheat)	pulses, chickpeas, small fish and sweet water fish, eggs, tofu, nuts
Foods to include	algae, alfalfa sprouts, parsley, eggs	millet, linseed, kefir, apples, goji berry	cruciferous veggies, green vegetables, garlic, onion, ginger, whole cereal grains
Herbs to include	cleavers, nettles, horsetail, burdock root, birch sap	cinnamon, cloves, aloe juice, red clover	milk thistle, dandelion, artichoke,
Supplements to include	adaptogens, vit.C, magnesium, spirulina/algae	probiotics, chrome, magnesium, psyllium	magnesium, vit.B complex, Vit.A, omega 3-6-9
In the morning	warm water with lemon, ginger and honey	warm water with bentonite clay or zeolite, oats with cinnamon & cloves	half a grapefruit
In the evening	turmeric milk	miso soup, activated charcoal,	malic acid or apple juice with warm water
Physical activity	min 20min walk a day, thermal or epsom baths 2-3 times a week, a massage or acupuncture detox	min. 30min walk a day + Qi Gong, Yoga or other excercise 30min a day	min. 30min walk a day + 30 min of daily exercise + 2-3x a week one hour of aerobic activity

For any doubts, questions or clarifications contact me here.

For any suggestions, comments or experiences to share, please go to my Facebook or Instagram page and search for #loving3phasedetox.

"Honourable Harvest" - Earth Element's higher octave of consciousness

What does the book “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer and the Five Elements, especially the Earth Element, have got in common? Having read the book this summer I have found out that actually the two speak of each other.

This marvellous book is written in prose but reading it is like poetry. To me it was totally music to my ears and probably not only to me, as Elizabeth Gilbert describes the book as “a hymn of love to the world”.

There would be so much to share about this book, so I only would like to concentrate on the main three reflections and insights I have had, that infuse Robin's tradition with what I know and practice in Chinese Medicine. All quotations below come from Robin's book.

The first reflection made me realise that all ancient and indigenous people, whether they are from the East or the West, had one thing in common: their relationship with the Nature. They observed the Nature attentively, its processes, cycles, in order to understand self and to understand the place which a man occupies in relationship with what is around him/her. In those times, human beings felt an integral part of an eco-system they lived in. Everything that surrounded them had a meaning and they took note of the cyclical nature of all process of the Earth. So, be it indigenous Americans, or Australians or ancient Chinese, they all lived with the same reverence in the relationship to the Nature. That means that some of the bases of the Classical Chinese Medicine (especially Taoism) are common to all other ancient and indigenous cultures.

The second insight I have had relates to Robin's call for going beyond gratitude and infusing more reciprocity in all our relationships. Reciprocity in Chinese Medicine is related to the Earth Element energetic quality. Robin explains reciprocity so well. It isn't only about "if I give you, then you will give me back" but rather "when I give you I create a relationship with you". The lack of attention to reciprocity in our-day-world has created anonymity and indifference in which reciprocal relationships are often considered more a burden than richness. So, "we are called to go beyond cultures of gratitude to once again become cultures of reciprocity". In the Chinese Classics that is the Earth Element energetics within us. Losing that sense of reciprocity we lose touch with our Earth Element, which we need for grounding and bonding with the place we live in.

My third insight into timeless and ancient wisdom is about "honourable harvest". Harvest is again related to the energy of Earth Element in Chinese medicine and philosophy. "Honourable Harvest" is an "exchange of live for life"... yes, their sensitivity whether to animals or plants, was the same. People living in true communion with the Nature knew that all harvest is taking away some form of life. Therefore, they were propenced to actions that gave that life back or to "take only what you are given and not what you need".

I know that ancient Chinese practitioners collected their herbs in the same "honourable" way as Robin describes indigenous Americans did, in order for the herbs to have that pure energy and be granted the Nature's healing potency. We practice honourable harvest every day by making choices in our daily consumptions. Whenever we buy something new think about the life that's been taken away. In return, try to give that life back somehow.

The ancients' way of living was treading so lightly as if "longing to hear the land give thanks for the people in return". Wow! Do we ever ask ourselves that question? Is the Earth actually happy with me living on Her surface? Do we realise that with each gift we were born we also hold our responsibilities for that gift? It is the Earth that makes the "paste" of our bodies, the Earth creates our gifts and we have the responsibility to use them to create hers. The plants "can't meet their responsibilities unless we meet ours". Once we realise that we live in such interdependence with the Nature, we start wondering why we moved so far away from Her.

It is that consciousness that we need to truly understand our power. As if describing the Yin and Yang of Chinese Medicine, Robin quotes: "all powers have two sides, the power to create and the power to destroy. We must recognise them both, but invest our gifts on the side of creation".

These and other insights I have had thanks to Robin Wall Kimmerer's book, confirm to me that much of the bases of the Classical Chinese Medicine do not pertain to Chinese or Oriental cultures only, they have been lived and followed by most, if not all, of the indigenous populations worldwide. The Nature's language is truly global!

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Braiding Sweetgrass - "Honourable Harvest"