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Monthly Archives: December 2016

Tending the Embers: Chaga + The Creative Spark

30 Friday Dec 2016

Posted by Asia in Earth Medicine, Wildcrafting & Collecting

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

chaga, creativity, embers, herbalism, meditations, winter, winter wellness

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In winter we stir the embers. A motion of both caretaking and stoking, a gentle coaxing and potent remembering of that which lights our fire. Every winter, as color fades from the outer world, we are invited to journey into the vibrant tableau of our deepest self. To rekindle our inner colors with a gentle dedication to feeding our own sources of warmth. This wintertime enliven your inner embers by simply nourishing yourself, deeply and daily. Take a long bath. Sip good broth. Wrap yourself in quilts and go to bed early. Tend your inner hearth by feeding yourself fuel that burns clean and easy. Good food, warm slippers, laughter. With a bed of good embers, even the soggiest logs can catch fire. In winter we realize that self-care is an act of preparation, a gentle gestation for transformation itself. To tend our embers is to lay the groundwork for bringing new flames to life. Even the smallest acts of self nourishment are like breath on the coals, bringing our inner hearths to active possibility once more. Any good fire begins with a well-tended coal. In order to realize our wildest dreams we must be expert caretakers of these innermost fires. This winter, embrace this lush opportunity to nourish the embers, and by doing so create a warm bed in which any vision can catch fire.

cats-by-woodstove

Sometimes the easiest way to restart your fire is to reintroduce a creative spark. The cold months are deeply generous with the space given to creation. Traditionally, winter was a time for luxuriously slow and meditative tasks. Winding wool and knitting scarves. Carving spoons, dipping candles and hand penning letters. Winter was devoted to the kind of tinkering and creative rekindling that can only happen when ones sole employ is to keep the fire going and stay cozily indoors. This winter, allow yourself the gift of rediscovering an art, or idea, or creative pursuit that brings your own spark alive. What was it that excited you as a child? Poetry or painting? Studying sea creatures or playing make-believe? As the cold months clear the landscape of leaves, give yourself the imaginative space to rekindle your creative spark. Engage in the sheer joy of moving by the unhurried torch of curiosity and experimental living. Use your creativity like a flint box, bravely striking into new creative pursuits to light something anew. With a slow burning curiosity and a house cat’s dedication to comfort, let yourself absorb gradually, learn in-between hearty mouthfuls of hot soup and a long nights sleep. Accept the natural pardon given by a world gone cold to withdraw from the quickness of doing and rest by the warm woodstove of your innermost interests, those things that make you sigh and bring you alive.

There is an alchemical altar inside all of us that aches to be fed. In winter, we are invited to pay homage to the sanctity of self-nourishment and our individual creative sparks, to become devotees of our innermost glow. Winter is an invitation to rediscover our light, for when we give our inner selves the care and attention we need, that ever present altar can burn bright enough to throw light into even the darkest corners of our wintertime world.

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>> Chaga (Inonotus obliquus) <<

** Please note: Chaga is currently listed as an at-risk fungus and is being overharvested in many areas of the world. Please practice ethical wildcrafting and do your research when purchasing from outside sources. And remember, a little goes a long way**

A living embodiment of both the darkness and spark of wintertime, Chaga is a rich and mystical cold weather medicine. In natural hue, this medicinal fungus looks like a hearty slab of rough volcanic stone or a wet hewn chunk of wood. In our area, Chaga flourishes on Yellow Birches (Betula alleghaniensis) but in other northern corners of the world it can be found on White Birch (Betula papyrifera) and Gray Birch (Betula populifolia) as well.

Dense and woody, Chaga needs to be decocted to receive its full medicine, and so is best drunk in the long months of winter when the windows are happy to be fogged by the warm breath of the stove. Chaga is a rich addition to your daily routine of self-nourishment. In the winter I like to keep Chaga in a pot on the woodstove for days, or sometimes weeks, at a time. On first simmer, Chaga will turn your tea dark cacao colored, but you can use the same chunk in your decoction until the brew turns a light caramel.

Medicinally, Chaga is a deeply nourishing immune tonic. Antiviral, immune modulating, and adaptogenic, Chaga has been an indispensible wintertime decoction in the far northern climes of Russia for centuries. I often like to add Chaga to a wintertime adaptogenic tea with Reishi (Ganoderma tsugae, G. lucidum), Eleuthro (Eleutherococcus senticosus) and good handfuls of cardamom and cinnamon for taste. I sip a cup of the tea every morning and the fortifying nourishment of it seems to spread throughout every limb. Chaga tea is also rich in antioxidants and most excellently paired with bitter dark chocolate. Traditionally used in Russia for cancer, Chaga has been shown to have an antitumor effect in contemporary clinical trials.

chaga_8237819883

Often referred to as a mushroom, Chaga is actually an outgrowth of the mycelium of the fungus itself (mushrooms being the “fruiting body” of the mycelium). Mycelium, or the vegetative aspect of fungi, extends underneath the soil of our entire world. Indispensible and vast, mycelium is the unseen web upon which the entire living world is woven. Over time, this magical root-based system works to break down massive amounts of organic material, turning winters leaves into the fertile humus of a forest floor. Mycelium is so adept at breaking down organic compounds that many think these organisms might be the first to adapt to the new chemicals of our world, transmuting radiation and pollutants into something more benign. Mycelium is an undertaker of sorts, turning the opportunity of death into the rich possibility of rebirth. Mycelium also functions as a vast network of organic interconnection. Some scientists believe that trees and other plants are able, not only to communicate, but also send vital nutrients to each other through the infinite strings of this mysterious web. With each sip, Chaga invites us to step into the nourishing weave of interconnection, helping the entire complex system of our being to receive sustenance and opening up new threads of communication between all layers of our self.

Also called tinder fungus, Chaga is as an excellent ally for catching coals of fresh-drilled hand-fires and holding the spark for a miraculous amount of time. Used as tinder for eons, it was even found in the pouches of Otzi, the Copper age man who lived and died in the Alps around 3,300 BCE and was discovered in an ice flow 5,000 years later. A vital companion for sojourners who need to bring the spark of new life with them wherever they go, Chaga is an embodiment of tending our inner embers. This rich medicine reminds us that even in the bleak of winter we can strike new and nourishing sparks to flame, and that it all begins with the slowness of putting a pot of tea to boil.

chaga-cocoa-steaming-square

Chaga Maple Hot Cocoa

Recipe makes two mugs of hot cocoa

½ oz Chaga

1.5 cups water

2 tsp cocoa power

¼ – ½ tsp cinnamon (or to taste)

2 oz coconut milk

2 oz maple syrup

(Optional) Vanilla Extract

 

  1. Decoct Chaga. Combine Chaga with water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer. Cover and let churn for at least 20 minutes (or until your tea turns to the shade of dark wood). When your decoction is done, strain the tea into a separate container.
  2. Sir in cocoa + cinnamon powder until all lumps are dissolved
  3. Add Coconut milk and Maple syrup
  4. Garnish with a cinnamon stick and make a toast to mycelium!

 

Interested in up-leveling this recipe with stone medicine? Check out this post for to learn how Chaga + Hematite like to work together

 

// post originally published in Plant Healer Magazine, Winter 2016 //

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Journey to Santa

19 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by Asia in Inspirations

≈ 3 Comments

shamans-flight

Artwork – “Fly Agaric” by Amanda Clark 

This past week I had brunch with a dear friend. Over scones, she started talking about how difficult it is for her to get into the holiday spirit. As someone who grew up in a family that never celebrated this time, she shared that she is having trouble really feeling the magic. Now that she has young children of her own, however, who are independently jazzed about Christmas (and begging her to get on board), she asked me point blank “how do you get into the magic of the holidays?”

And my answer was — to become a child once more. In so many ways, our ability to feel that holiday cheer is directly tied into our inner resources of child-like wonderment. As children we believe anything is possible. The world of the invisible, the benevolent, the mystical that is just around the corner. It is flying up in the sky with a team of reindeer, lining our stockings with candy canes and leaving us notes of love next to cookie crumbs. As children it is easy to believe in magic. And, in turn, great magic comes about when we can be in such a state of belief!

So if you are having a hard time feeling the magic of the season, it may be time to reconnect with one of the most magical fixtures of our collective childhood imagination — Santa Claus! One of my favorite meditations this time of the year is to undertake a shamanic journey to meet Santa Claus, and the starry-eyed little girl who believed in him so strongly. When we have a hard time feeling the wonderment, sometimes all we need to do is reconnect with our inner child and her wild, imaginative, untethered connection to the magic of Mr (or Ms. Claus).

I love journeying this time of the year in particular because from reindeer to Fir trees, many of the symbols and icons we associate with Christmas celebrations are actually derived from the earliest Pagan traditions of the tribal peoples of per-Christian Europe. Our traditional Santa Clause, in fact, is an amalgamation of characteristics from the early European Shamans of the far North. With coats carefully stitched and tanned from reindeer hides, these ancient mystic, of the frozen north traveled easily between the between realms. From the tundra of snow to the star filled heavens, these profound mystics were accustomed to truly galactic sojourns.

To undertake this journey I suggest starting with this gateway: Imagine yourself in a gorgeous snowy landscape with a single reindeer (or a whole sleigh if that suits your fancy)! You will begin the journey by approaching the reindeer and asking for a ride and then, just let them whisk you away to Santa’s abode. Be open to how this spirit of the season (known as Santa) wants to appear to you and your childlike imagination. Santa might be a dryad, a Goddess, a stag, a pillar of light. However Santa appears to you, just ask him or her to help you reconnect to the deeply believing child inside of you… and open back up an understanding of what this season is truly about!

For me, every time I undertake this journey, I am shown just how precious this season of gratitude + light truly is— and what magic arises from giving in its purest forms.

Try it for yourself! If you’ve never done a Shamanic meditation before, check out my simple guide to journeying. And say hi to Santa for me…

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Infusing Mysticism into the Holidays

13 Tuesday Dec 2016

Posted by Asia in Crafting

≈ 1 Comment

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In between the hours of gift buying and cookie making there is a pause.

Can you feel it?

Between the time spent navigating family politics and trying to get the tree to stand straight in its stand there is a stream of quietude that runs just beneath the surface.

Can you hear it?

Across the world this time has been marked in sacred observance. With monoliths of stone and underground caves, geometric earthworks that all align to the same mystical compass — The Winter Solstice. For thousands of years people have built structures to memorialize the power of this event, the longest night of the year before the return of the light.

To this day we can still watch the dawn flood the underground chambers of Ireland’s Newgrange, the grass-topped temple built over 5,000 years in the past. Or witness the first rays of Solstice light run down the center of the Eqypt’s carefully calculated Temple of Karnak. The lightlines of the Winter’s Solstice still run throughout our lives, with its earth deep promise of rebirth and renewal.

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Winter Solstice at Stone Henge

Today, however, we are called to observe and invoke the stirring magic of this time in perhaps the most profound temple of all – our own selves.

It is easy to tap into the mysticism of this season when sitting in front of a candlelit cathedral or watching the stars wheel like a choir across a pristine sky. It is much harder to feel into the ancient magic of this time when we are in the full-on hustle that is the carpooling, present wrapping, event planning and people pleasing that seems to define our cultural celebration of the season.

The complexities of this time can feel scattering, but this is also their gift. For many of us there may be no central sanctuary (tradition, or church, or otherwise) in which we place our belief during the holiday time, and so we hear the call to become a temple unto ourself. A place in which light is anchored, tended, given as much celebration as the first ray of sun at the temple of Karnak. With each complex fractal of modern life the light becomes, not broken, but multifarious, proliferate. A flame scattered amongst many hearths. An ancient flicker of hope and renewal that we each tend in our turn.

newgrange-irish-times

Solstice Sunrise at Newgrange

And so this video blog below is about tending that flicker, that inner light. Because no matter what tradition we come from, we can all tap into the magic of this time to re-infuse the holiday season with mysticism, meaning and life. Whether it’s with earth magic elixirs or rituals of reconnecting with the natural rhythms of light and dark— it is within our power to reignite our ancestral connection to this time.

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Defined

[wool-gath-er-ing] v.
daydreaming, the gathering of thoughts and dreams as one might collect fallen tufts of wool

[wild-craft-ing] v.
the harvesting of herb, root, flower or inspiration from the wilds

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