Can Chamomile cure racism? Of course not. Can exercise support people who live in fear of their very existence being taken for a crime and a reason to be murdered? Obviously not.

So what’s an herbalist and exercise person doing wading into this? Shouldn’t I stay in my lane?

Well, here’s another question for you- if humanity isn’t ALL our lanes, what are we even doing on this planet?

This morning Kris and Tammi of Heartstone Center read these words: “To feel keenly is our necessary privilege.” (from The Book of Awakening. Watch their IGTV.) Feeling uncomfortable is necessary. Doing this dismantling work is necessary. Saying "I don't want to, it has nothing to do with me" is toxic privilege.

Learn. Talk. Write. Post. Donate. Read. Share. Help.

Don’t know where to start? Get educated. Put some effort into other humans. Open your heart, and examine what’s really in there.

Things to watch out for:

👉Just because someone has a social media account that calls out and educates on racism isn’t a reason for you to hop on the comments and ask for personal recommendations. I guarantee that’s already been covered, so do a little scrolling. Or better yet, check their links to see how you can PAY them to teach you.

👉Buy books from your local bookstore, or someone else’s local bookstore if you don’t have one. Redistribute your money into communities.

👉“Not being racist” isn’t enough. Active anti-racism is needed. The only people who can change this world are the ones who made it this way.

👉But you’re only here for your business? @marciegoldman put it SO. WELL. “You’re not a Wellness Advocate if you’re defending white supremacy.” Get on board with humanity.

​👉Thinking “But I’ve faced difficulties too” doesn’t excuse you. Others are also living those same challenges- financial, emotional, health, pain, grief, loss, all of them- PLUS fearing for their lives because their very existence makes them a target. Your life and experiences are valid, but they aren’t as hard as they could be

​How would you describe the fundamentals of your health?

✔Like the structure of a house, the load bearing walls and ceiling joists, aka your bones?
✔Like the basement walls that hold everything up, aka your feet?
✔Is it it your ability to take in fresh and get rid of waste, like plumbing, aka lymph and circulation and respiration?
✔Is it the ability for your body to electrically communicate all its needs and responses, aka the nervous system?
✔Or is it ALL of these?

If you’re focused on any one of these systems, I’d say you’re massively missing out. The real key to a strong foundation isn’t specializing and microfocusing on one aspect, it’s being a good General Contractor and overseeing the coordination of all of your foundations.

We are holistic, complex beings. Look at those words-

✔Holistic means all of you, at the same time, intermingled
✔Complex means like the difference between a lean-to and a house
✔Beings, as in NOT machines. Not logically or rationally organized, but organically and naturally

Herbalist Tammi Sweet has shared (I’m paraphrasing here) that a researcher at a conference she attended dismissed plant medicines as “messy and chaotic”. Yep, she teaches, just like us.

Herbalist David Winston put it this way when I heard him speak in June 2019: “Show me a standardized human and I’ll consider giving them a standardized remedy.”

Yes yes Paula, but how?? How do I learn this stuff, to practice it? 

Never fear, dear reader! You can start right now, for free, with the Relieve Your Aches & Pains Online Workshop. You've got 2 ways to access it:

1. When you join my Free Resources hub the first thing you'll see is the video and downloadable workbook. Voila! In addition to the Aches & Pains Workshop, you'll also be able to explore all the  other resources available to you as well
2. Just want the workshop for now? Click here to sign up for it directly 

​

Chamomile has a quite personality, and it's the quiet ones you need to watch out for.

​She's gentle but inexorable, quieting our inner whine, easing tension you didn't know you had and some you did- she's particularly helpful with the lower abdomen, and I've used Chamomile tea to great effect when I had pelvic floor area cramping twice (NOT a pain I'd wish on most people!)

Chamomile people have a frozenness to them. Emotionally this can look like petulance- I don't KNOW what I want but it's NOT THIS😤 or physically it can be really stuck muscles that don't give and won't let anyone in to help.

Chamomile also changes her ways when you give her time- a sweet, fragrant tea becomes deep and bitter, encouraging movement in the digestive system. Plants, like people, aren't just one thing.

Chamomile remedies made gently, like a short-steeped tea, preserve the aromatics and work with more surface-level complaints like muscle tension or mental blocks (particularly around transitions.)

Deeper remedies like a long-steeped tea work deeper, easing transitions in that lower abdomen. You'll need to get to know your plants to know when and how to capture their moods!

​I think many of us are regularly having “Near Living Experiences,” nearly living as fully as we can but not quite. We're ignoring these experiences in the face of our busy lives, letting them pass us by, and instead accepting Just Getting By (JGB) as good enough.
 
Near Living Experiences are the chances, opportunities, and openings for us to make the big and the small changes that would wildly improve our quality and appreciation of our lives- but the steps involved usually prove too much:

1. Look up from the crazy-busy of our life
2. Recognize the moment in front of us
3. Accept that whatever the venture is, you can both accomplish it AND benefit from it
4. Take on some amount of extra work to learn some kind of new skill
5. Practice this new skill while it’s still different and separate from your normal reality
6. Absorb this new skill into your very being’s fibers, making it automatic and ordinary SOP for you

 
The route from step 1 to Step 6 is, actually, huge. These are legitimately HARD steps.
 
It’s no wonder we can’t take advantage of our Near Living Experiences, what with all the rest of Life™ going on, and that JGB is the habitual order of things.
 
And it’s also no wonder that a LOT of people come to the realization that they MUST make some kind of change at a crisis point in their life, when JGB has stopped being a viable option.
 
At that point, you realize that any amount of work required between step 1 and step 6 is reasonable, since you simply must get to step 6 to ever feel better.
 
But this JGB habit, it’s not really a comfortable one, is it? It’s like the frog in the pot metaphor- if you put a frog in hot water, it’ll jump out. But if you put a frog in a pot of cold water then put it on low heat, the frog will sit there with its world getting gradually hotter, until it IS the soup.
 
(I have no idea if this story is true. But it illustrates the point!)

​We tend to accept small injuries, small adaptations, small shifts in our patterns as just one more thing that we’re too overwhelmed to deal with.  In the buffet of dumpster fires before us, what’s a sore ankle?
 
Over time, though, that sore ankle causes a limp, that changes your gait and your hip function. This impacts your psoas, which tightens up and tilts your pelvis, impinging circulation in your abdomen. Slow, heavy, uncomfortable periods become the norm, and digestion stagnates too, leading to bloating and pain since lymph can’t drain away. Now your energy is low, because you’re not digesting well to support it, nor are you eating well because you feel like crap and that’s a hard place to make healthy choices from.
 
While you’ve been focusing on the dumpster fires, your own building is burning.

In the Foot to Forehead Fix, we use a 3-pronged approach:

1. Turn down the flames and repair the damage, with inner herbal healing
2. Rebuild the structure, with alignment and movement practices
3. Encourage your re-learning, and taking control and ownership of your health, with multi-media support and reinforcements

 
Those that attended my Aches and Pains workshop got a free Stick Figures of Demonstration fun sheet, to help them learn and practice aligning their pelvis. (You can too, it’s inside my free Resources Hub www.paulasherbals.com/login)
 
These fun sheets are one kind of learning medium we use. There’s also the private and the group learning sessions that are held weekly. And we have a private online community, where I share the replays of our group classes and hold discussions. There’s all kinds of good stuff, really.

I invite you to take a look inside the Foot to Forehead Fix today, because this IS A NEAR LIVING EXPERIENCE. You're nearly living to the fullest extent you can- let's get you there.