I never met Maya. I worked with her long distance over
the telephone and by
e-mail in May and June of 2004. Our first full session
was over a
speakerphone with my second year apprentices present.
Maya was a 27 year-old American woman with East Indian
roots, living far
from home in a totally unfamiliar desert environment.
She considered herself
healthy, biking 100 miles a week, drinking lots of Brita
filtered water, and
eating a mostly vegetarian diet including daily rice
and beans, fresh fruits
and vegetables, and some cooked vegetables, with her
main cooked green being
spinach.
She ate fish about once a month, had almost no dairy
in her diet, and also
ate some sweets such as cookies, ice cream or chocolate
every day. Maya was
5' 2" tall and weighed 130 pounds. She had been
on the birth control pill
for about eight years and off of it for about five years,
and now
menstruated every 6-8 weeks.
She was a busy graduate student - a scientist who noted
that she tended to
carry her physical and emotional stress in her neck,
with extremely tight,
contracted muscles. She also had a history of nauseating,
painful migraine
headaches that went on from ages 5-18 and then came
back when she was 24.
They mostly affected the left side of her head and she
thought they might be
connected to her neck stress, but that wasn't why she
was calling for help.
She had a stone in her salivary gland and it was blocking
the duct. This
problem had recurred periodically over the past 5 or
6 years and been
diagnosed as a build-up of calcium. The first time she
became aware of a
strange, unpleasant sensation and swelling in her mouth,
she was snacking on
a tart apple, a sweet cookie, and drinking tea. Her
salivary gland stayed
swollen for a couple of hours.
This became a familiar annoyance to her, happening
every other month of so.
It never seemed serious, even though the stone, which
would always build up
in the same place, would sometimes last as long as a
month before it was
(presumably) broken down and re-absorbed into her system.
This time, though, a week and a half before her call,
a large stone had
formed. She was terribly swollen and in pain, even her
tongue hurt.
Swallowing was so hard she had had to go off solid food
for a while. She was
told she needed to have surgery to remove the stone.
She was ready to do that if she had to, but was understandably
reluctant to
go under the knife. She came from a medical family so
surgery seemed
"natural" but her sister had recently completed
an apprenticeship with me
and urged Maya to consider herbal medicine.
Upon questioning, we determined some of the information
presented above, as
well as the fact that she had no history of any urinary
trouble, no kidney
pain, no difficulty urinating, no history of bladder
or kidney infections,
so we ruled out the possible concern that stones were
forming in her urinary
system, too. We were also concerned about her liver,
with her years of
hormonal drugs and her migraines, but all aspects of
her digestive system
seemed to be functioning very well, with no other indications
of liver
dysfunction, based on her responses to our questions.
We discussed, too, the possibility of any environmental
factors that could
be exacerbating her condition. There is military- industrial-complex
pollution in her area, which tends to be the most toxic
pollution on the
planet. She was going to need to nourish and strengthen
her lymphatic system
because no matter what was causing it, there was a build-up
of inorganic
calcium inside her salivary gland that was blocking
the duct, stressing all
her systems and causing her great pain and it was her
lymphatic system that
if properly nourished, would take care of her.
Food is our first foundational medicine. I proposed
a naturally
vitamin-and-mineral-rich diet, especially in nervous
system nourishing
calcium because the wisdom of her ancient (and present)
cellular
consciousness will always choose the most biologically
compatible and easy
to assimilate form of calcium (or anything else) offered
to it. In choosing
and making use of this calcium it would then become
easier for her body to
either release and excrete or break down and re-absorb
the unusable build-up
of inorganic calcium, the same type that can manifest
as kidney stones,
plaque on teeth or arteries, or as arthritis.
I suggested eating cooked, dark leafy greens such as
kale, collards, and
especially, liver-gall bladder-kidney-lymph healing
dandelion greens. After
cooking the greens in water she was to add olive oil
and an herbal apple
cider vinegar (dandelion or burdock would be good choices)
or balsamic
vinegar, to help make the calcium and other minerals
more easily available.
She was to avoid the greens high in oxalic acid such
as sorrel, chard,
spinach, and beet greens, as they can bind calcium,
stress the kidneys, and
even encourage stone formation in susceptible people.
We encouraged her to
add organic whole milk yogurt to her diet, both for
the calcium and the
immune nourishing aspects of yogurt, including healthy
fats and digestive
flora.
I wanted her herbal recipe to include herbs to dissolve
the stone, and also
herbs to tone and help the functioning of her kidneys,
liver, and especially
her lymphatic system. It also seemed important for her
to have mineral-rich,
herbal nourishment to ease the stress on her nervous
system, cooling herbs,
anti-infective, and anti-inflammatory herbs, along with
herbs to relieve her
pain.
Raised as I was in the Wise Woman tradition, I wanted
to do this using as
few herbs in her recipe as possible, respecting the
intricate, chemical
complexity of each plant and the great array of medicinal
gifts/properties
contained in each plant, too. It's always possible to
find just a few plant
remedies, or even one that, if well chosen, will greatly
benefit a person.
We hung up with Maya, telling her we would call her
back soon. After much
good discussion, these were the herbs I decided on and
chose for her to use,
some internally, some externally.
Maya was to mix together the following tinctures: viola
odorata/sweet blue
violet leaves, stellaria media/flowering chickweed,
and arctium
lappa/burdock root, putting 1 dropper full of each one
in a cup of boiled
water and drinking three cups daily. She was to drink
as much red clover
blossom infusion as she desired, with a guideline given
of 2-4 cups daily.
She could take the tinctures in her infusion if she
preferred. Red clover
seemed perfect for her with its exquisite array of synergistic
minerals,
profound lymphatic nourishment, its alkaline effect
on the blood (that kind
of calcium build-up indicates an acidic condition, as
in arthritis),
hormonal regulating gifts, and gentle nervous system
nourishment.
Sweet blue violet is one of my favorite herbs and it
is tried and true for
dissolving cysts and tumors and even though I wouldn't
normally think of it
for kidney or gall bladder stones, for this stone, it
seemed right. Violet
is a good, under-rated pain reliever. It has been used
for ulcers and other
pain in the mouth, including pain of cancer, and its
smooth, slippery, lymph
tonic properties, combined with its antiseptic and dissolvent
abilities and
its affinity for both head and heart, made it seem like
a match for Maya,
who struggled between trusting her mind and heart. Violet
brings out the
wisdom of the heart.
Chickweed is another one of my favorite dissolvent
herbs that excels at
drawing out infections with its considerable antibacterial
properties. It
nourishes the glandular system, as well, and since the
stone had built up
repeatedly in her salivary gland, that seemed like a
good idea. Chickweed's
deeply cooling, wet medicine would help the hot inflamed
condition of her
jaw, as would its alkaline effect. Chickweed increases
the permeability of
cellular membranes, aiding the increased absorption
of nutrients, especially
minerals, and the increased ability to remove wastes.
Finally, the burdock root also nourishes the glandular
system. It would help
the blood, liver, and kidneys, and stimulate the lymph
to help break down
and move out (or less likely re-absorb) this stone.
Burdock works well with
red clover. Sometimes I alternate them. Like chickweed,
and red clover,
burdock is an alterative, helping to alter long-standing
conditions with
consistent use over time. It is cooling and soothes
mucous surfaces, like
the tissue inside the mouth.
We asked her to use hot external compresses of apple
cider vinegar, with or
without violet and chickweed tinctures added onto the
washcloth, to help
reduce the pain and swelling. If she couldn't manage
that, than even hot
water compresses would be pain relieving.
I also suggested that she very gently massage her neck
and under and all
around the jaw with St. J's Wort oil (hypericum perforatum).
Another
recommendation was to make a spray bottle of lavender
essential oil and
water, mixed to the strength of fragrance desired) to
calm and refresh and
cool herself.
Finally, we talked about using a sky-blue color as she
visualized her mouth
healing. The mouth, being connected to the throat chakra,
relates to issues
of communication as well as nourishment (physical, mental,
emotional, and
spiritual), and responds well to the color blue.
continued... (Part2)
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