Photoshoot with Musician Denya LeVine

Denya LeVine is a Cape Cod musician and WOMR Deejay from The Fiddle and the Harp. She plays an eclectic mix of music including Klezmer, Celtic and The Beachboys. Denya's traveled extensively in the Middle East and Europe. She spent time living in Afghanstan in the 1960s, a true troubadour.

Tick Larvae May Carry Illness

Tick larvae which are about half the size of a period, may carry an illness more severe than Lyme disease, but which is caused by a similar bacterium. The medical community is still divided on the existence of chronic Lyme. Chronic Lyme is characterized by bouts of fatigue, fever, stiffness, and joint pain. The rare few have experienced severe Lupus-like or Alzheimer's-like symptoms. You can read the article on borrelia-miyamotoi here.. We shouldn't all go around worrying about things we can barely control, but misting ourselves with lemongrass, lavender, or cedarwood essential oils and drinking astragalus tea can't hurt. A friend of mine has a theory that astragalus prevents the transmission of Lyme. It's just a wild theory I won't try to explain. Astragalus pieces are used in Chinese cooking to flavor rice. It's woodsy and very mild.

"Known symptoms of miyamotoi infection include neurological disease, disorientation and memory loss as well as loss of appetite and loss of coordination."

With the rise in tick populations we have also been seeing a rise in Alzheimer's diagnoses. That in itself doesn't mean much at all, but read about their correlation from a leading pathologist. Article Here.

Pandora's Jukebox Sunday Night

Tune in tomorrow night from 9pm to midnight for Pandora's Jukebox on WOMR, where I'll be spinning such unlikely combinations as Mae West and The Pet Shop Boys. We will venture into the mouth of the beast with Devo, tightrope walk the line of good taste with a tune from The Frogs and zoom around in a clown car with Abba in addition to the usually intergalactic madness.

White Noise and Vintage Noise

Had an epic dream about tracking down and interviewing author Don DeLillo who was mooonlighting as a preacher and patiently building a model village of Victorian England on the edge of a swampland, shingle by shingle.

Looky what I found: Steppenwolf Does DeLillo

Look what else I found: me and some others at the Provincetown International Film Festival's HBO Audience Awards suffering from Saki's bad audio and a whole second delay.

VINTAGE TROUBLE is coming to Provincetown Town Hall, Friday July 11th in a benefit for WOMR! Jenny Dee & The Deelinquents opening! ALL info and tickets right here: http://womr.org/vintage-trouble/! Don't miss it! As seen on Letterman, The Tonight Show, and on stages at sold out stadiums.

Lots of great angel work this week, bunches of transcripts to type up, teas to make, protocols to deliver, but this weekend I gotta write, bitch, write. As much as I love working for the people, I also must fulfill my dream to live in a symbiotic harmony with the Universal Intelligence...or it will cannibalize me I'm quite certain.

Shaman author Serge Kahili King, PHD on Healing Wisdom

My interview with shaman author Serge Kahili King, Ph.D. airs tomorrow morning at 9am EST. He talks with me about his work, from organizing community aid projects in Senegal to the philosophy behind the Hawaiian healing tradition. Serge Kahili King has published the world's largest selection of books and tapes on Huna, the Polynesian philosophy and practice of effective living, and on the spirit of Aloha, the attitude of love and peace for which the Hawaiian Islands are so famous. He shares extensively on Hawaiian culture through his fiction, nonfiction, his audio tapes, and his articles. Tune in to WOMR 92.1 fm Provincetown, WFMR 91.3 fm Orleans or streaming globally at http://womr.org!

In the next several months, we have Joan Rivers, John Waters, David Sedaris AND Amy Goodman doing benefits for Cape Cod's Outermost Radio WOMR! Pretty freaking amazing. I love these people. And honestly, I'd love to do dueling Billie Holiday impressions with David Sedaris. We shall see, we shall see.

We're All Channeling the Phantom, We Just Don't Know it Yet

Ate the first wild strawberries of the season on a hike this morning with my beloved husband. Enjoyed our small son's first very cinéma vérité "film short" about cops and robbers, called, "Timothy Jepson and the Chase". Looking forward to channeling some family members who have passed on for my clients today. It's a week of readings, mind-body-spirit herbal consultations, a photoshoot with Cape Cod musician Denya LeVine, writing about the sacred feminine, and I'm topping it off with Pandora's Jukebox streaming online at womr.org this Sunday night from 9 to midnight. Another night of smokin' hot vinyl.

I'm a very happy woman. I enjoyed dancing at the closing party for the Provincetown International Film Festival. Happily, unknown forces of the universe and my subsequent pushiness allowed me to take a more active role in the evening, than as planned. Although, being an assistant is pretty dignified, more so with a French accent. Sadly, the background noise made it impossible for me to be an effective co-host. There was in fact a full second delay, between what was said in the mic and what was heard on the sound system. Couldn't hear what DJ Matty Dread was saying two feet away from me, let alone hear what I was saying. I found no sweet spot on the mic, and there was too much distortion. Makes me appreciate the sound clarity at The Station even more. Reverb is disorienting, but the delay is worse. I have dealt with bad reverb before in what I found to be more painful situations. Sound wise, this is what the ghosts of the Titanic must have felt like, when they discovered their instruments were harder to play underwater, and from a disembodied vantage point.

PIFF is such a wonderful festival, because it underscores documentaries, non-commercial enterprises, the work of female directors, and honors the spectrum of sexuality. Cape Cod has impressed me so much with its salt-of-the-earth attitude. There were also many gorgeous women and men there. Which was nice! Moving from Los Angeles, I've found it absolutely refreshing and emotionally cathartic on the deepest of levels. Should have been more schmoozey with all of the lovely folks kind folks, but in a way I'm a music geek who just loves to dance. Didn't even think to get one photo of me there. Perhaps, my extrasensory perception has its handicaps, because to me it seemed like everyone and their (dead) mother and spirit guide were there. Let's face it, gay spirit guides are even chattier. And, perhaps more significantly, I gotta dance! Another thing I can blame my father for. [Side note: (He left his PHD-in-Philosophy track at Oxford shortly after receiving his MS, even though his professors were EXCITED, ENTHUSIASTIC about him taking residence as professor there. Why, you ask? So he could pursue an education in ballet, of course! Gotta Dance! I could blame his first encounter with those crazy marijuana cigarettes, but I blame Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. Please, someone teach me to tap dance, because most of the time I feel like a tap-dancing fool anyway.]

My Interview with Multiple Grammy Winner Sharon Isbin

Hear my interview with Multiple Grammy Award Winning guitarist Sharon Isbin here: Sharon!! She is the subject of a new documentary being screened at The Old School House WOMR's Davis Space this Friday at 2:15pm and at the Water's Edge Cinema on Sunday at 4:45pm in Provincetown as part of the Provincetown International Film Festival. Sharon Isbin: Troubadour is a one-hour documentary produced by Susan Dangel. The film includes appearances from Michelle Obama, Joan Baez, Steve Vai, Garrison Keillor, David Hyde Pierce, Janis Ian, Lesley Gore, and more, with Isbin’s performances showcased from international concert stages to the GRAMMYs and White House.

My interview with prolific author and eminent shaman Serge Kahili King, PHD, will air the following Thursday morning.

The Condor and the Eagle Will Again Fly Together

My husband and I wrote a screenplay about a guy who goes home to get his mom off prescription drugs. The first version was a bit epic with Big Pharma villains. It's essentially the origin stories of a shamanic superhero who begins to expose the shadowy underbellies of various institutions using indigenous wisdom and superpowers. (Yes, everything I write incorporates shamans, ancient prophecies, mythology, and indigenous people. Go figure.) Subsequent drafts were more romantic-comedy. It made it through some rounds of screenplay contests. Along the way we got helpful coverage, perhaps some of it was, unintentionally so. In any case, I get pangs of missing those characters unlike other ones in other screenplays we've written, because I so want to see my kids come to life. Most especially the girl, because she's a pet-psychic and orinthologist who is a predatory bird specialist at the zoo and cares for a very special condor. We're keeping the shaman spirit guide too, I don't care what the naysayers may think. These people might as well already exist in some parallel dimension somewhere, as far as I'm concerned. And even though we took out her beekeeping scene, she's a freaking beekeeper too, dammit. And an avid reader and her house is fucking nuts, like a bird hotel because she has to keep her avian clientele overnight for observation.

During our class meditation tonight (I like to do the guided meditation myself as I facilitate), I came away with some very interesting insights in the human psyche I think. Also, during my past life journey* tonight I was living inside other people's heads, kinda Being John Malkovich style. Holy shit! I thought. No wonder I have such strong telepathy with some people. What if that film resonated with so many people because it's a cosmic joke to our collective unconscious mind? Energy is never created or destroyed. What if the same amount of people have always been alive, we just had fewer bodies between us back then. Now as our global population has grown, we have a smaller slice of god consciousness (a fragment of understanding which needs to join forces to bring a raised awareness and vibration). Maybe this is why we've become so individuated and separate from a feeling of oneness, so much so that we've collectively lost our compassion and empathy to the point that we've nearly destroyed the earth.

For about ten years, I've toyed with the idea that maybe people shared souls in the past, meaning that two or three individual people in this life, may have inhabited one body with one higher self/over-soul. Maybe those three people weren't individuals, (like some creepy three headed beast), but their consciousness was just woven together? What if our current level of individuation is relatively new to human consciousness and human experience? What if at one time, we could FEEL everyone and THINK communicate with everyone no matter where they were in the world? Could this account for simultaneous art work and inventions created by isolated tribes in early history? It certainly would be helpful to feel the ground rumbling as a troupe of warriors approaches your camp before daybreak, or to sense where the wild deer roam before a hunt. But that's just my inner rebel talking. Questioning our basic understanding of reality. What is happening on the planet for the most part isn't working, and pretty much all of it defies logic (the exploitation, the justification of violence, the derision, the obfuscation, the exploitation, the criminality and cruelty of corporate greed and war profiteering.... The way modern people have become attached to pointless, meaningless, non-earth based, non-heart-based, non-spiritual methods, ideas, and approaches to life is for the birds. Scratch that, birds deserve more respect.

*Past lives can also be seen as cosmic collective storylines and archetypes which feed our personal psyches.

We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Program...

Heating up around the globe:
the icecaps are melting making for better jet skiing over and around what remains of the K2 peak; children are going into puberty earlier than ever before causing a peculiar jump in google image searches for "sexy toothfairy selfie"; GMOs are morphing human DNA causing pro-lifers to become bug rights activists; and a jump in bee casualties is causing the cosmetic industry to tap into this formerly unexploited resource in a new campaign challenging junior high scientists across the country to make safe and effective bee venom Botox alternatives.

Feel Good Animal Story!!>>> Rumor has it that the runaway Provincetown Bear may make a surprise appearance at the Provincetown International Film Festival to present an award for Best ForBEARance in Hollywood. Locals and out-of-towners alike can rejoice whether the famed bear returns or not, knowing that there will be sure to be oodles of pumped up and dapper Ptown bears on this side of town regardless. Har har har. Sorry folks, I just watched Marc Maron's one man show, Thinky Pain, last night.

This news reel moment has been brought to you by Coffin Nail Cigarettes, for the Realist and the Rayndian.

This Sunday night from 9 to midnight, Pandora's Jukebox will not air on WOMR, due to our live coverage of the Provincetown International Film Festival closing party/ HBO Awards Ceremony. WOMR's deejay Matty Dread of the Soul Funky Train will be hosting. I'll be greeting and mingling with folks as a WOMR deejay/talk host. I may or may not wind up babysitting people's kids, being mistaken for Lady Gaga, or channeling someone's dead grandmother. I'm sure to feel a bit Dada with my lack of familiarity with who's who...so I'll just use my radar to chat with heartfelt people.

Ptown is all ablush in the summer sun. I'll be back the following Sunday June 29th with Pandora's Jukebox, channeling intergalactic music straight from the cosmos. We will venture through interstellar dimensions of shamanic rock, leap through portals of electroswing, hip hop through supernovas of alien frequencies and swim globally in new wave surf, dressed in our indie alternative midnight soul suits. Tune in globally on http://womr.ORG for sonic solutions, melodic prophesies, and raging rhapsodies. You will likely hear lil' ditties like this.

Dream Rendezvous

I love dreaming. So much insight into your own psyche, relationships, and your unique soul purpose can be gained from analyzing dreams. This is especially true when you consciously ask messages or guidance right before you drift off to sleep. Something to be aware of though, is that people in your dreams are often symbolic, and represent an aspect of yourself. In my opinion, it's not often that people are actually visiting you in the spirit world, and when they are more often they are visiting you as a soul, rather than a personality. People in your dreams may be people with whom you connect on a soul level, but not so much on a mental or egoic level in this lifetime. Sometimes clients tell me that they are confused by their dreams, because they'll get the ozone from someone in the physical world, but have profound communications in the dream world. Although, the dreams have validity, I caution against being attached to living people who are non-communicative. Dreams can help process emotions, speak to deep metaphorical truths, or bring resolution to matters that cannot or will not be resolved in the corporeal world.

Dreams can teach us so much about what is happening in our subconscious. What marvelous gifts. Guided meditation can have the same effect, but can bring even more into conscious awareness. For that reason, I LOVE facilitating guided meditation with my students.They often lay down for 5-10 minutes afterward processing their deep inward spirit journeys.

Father's Day

My husband is an amazing father to our little boy. I'm grateful my son has such a wonderful loving dad.

He's decided to start eating healthier as he draws one year nearer to a special birthday. Yesterday, Raven was dismayed about some extra hair in my hair brush. He doesn't have his own brush, lest he's tempted to brush his hair, although sometimes brushing proves necessary, like it did this morning. He's concerned about over-stimulating his follicles, especially after two seasons of daily hat-wearing. I think this is a common fear people have when they lose hair. From my perspective, massaging the scalp and tapping with a brush can help encourage blood flow beneath the surface. That's why topical applications of cayenne pepper which acts as a rubafacient, stimulating blood flow beneath the surface, have helped grow hair with some of my clients. Brushing also clears away dead skin covering emerging follicles.

This picture was taken 14 years ago. Raven looks pretty much the same, younger perhaps. I think all of the ho shou wu root over the years has done a lot of good. It's easy to forget what works when you get out of the habit. I said, "Can I tell you what I'd tell my clients? Add several drops of rosemary essential oil into a couple tablespoons of olive oil and couple of rub into your scalp, drink a smoothie with barley grass and powdered alfalfa, and start juicing greens like kale, dandelion greens, and Swiss chard every day. I asked him if he could give up acidifying foods like wheat, coffee and red meat. I wrote him a special grocery list for his new diet, and he was off. He's been inspired by his vegan friend and Weird Al Yankovic.

My Huitaca coffee substitute made a fabulous iced beverage all day long. It grows hair, builds muscle, cleanses the blood, seems to reverse wrinkles, and cleanses the liver and kidneys. It's also delicious. It has ho shou wu (polygonium multiflorum), roasted dandelion root, roasted chicory, cooked rehmannia and some secret ingredients. He's still eating fish and some cheese, but is limiting dairy. We're drinking hemp milk, coconut milk and the like. We had salmon salad with feta, kale and lentils last night. Hero loved it.

For breakfast, I made both a raw and cooked version of improvisational mushroom-onion-walnut-cheddar-and-zuchini croquettes. He wound up eating five raw ones and three cooked ones. I didn't have quite enough rice flour, and so the cooked eggy ones turned out crumbly. I made a spicy garlic-cauliflower-lime-hummus with red bell pepper and served it with garlic-honey cucumber 'chips', avocado slices, more bell pepper, tomatoes, and feta. I made rosemary french fries for the kid, which we all ate. And we enjoyed a nice lemon-and-limeade with blueberries and ice sweetened with honey.

For lunch I made, my Satin Skin beetslaw (with beet, apple, broccoli, carrot, raisins, walnuts, lemon, honey, apple cider vinegar, mayonnaise, fresh ginger and garlic) and a Quinoa Risotto with finely chopped fennel bulb, purple onion, mushroom, coconut milk, cow milk, and cheddar cheese.

My husband has always been very loving and supportive of my various forms of self-expression. It's things like that which were good clues as to what kind of kind, supportive and open-minded dad he would later become. W

Mission: Dessert

Family Food Mission: Wonder Woman 's Rocket Pops. Overcame dearth in shredded coconut, wheat germ, carob bar, cow milk, and peanuts with coconut milk, raw sesame seed, 85% cacao bar, raw walnuts, raw almonds, and organic raspberries. Bananas were involved too. I love following recipes, but using substitutions and varying the proportions.

Another Kind of Guardian Angel

Been channeling many clear messages from a multitude of people who have passed on, on behalf of my clients. Always blows my mind. Really amazing. Sometimes, relationships seem to remain just as complicated and multifaceted when people cross over as they were in this physical life. Always so intense when people pass over, but hold on to the sadness of missing their beloveds. And sometimes their missing and loving is so profound and palpable that I wind up crying with the loved ones who are so adoring of the people whom they have left behind. (My clients.) When my clients are with me and their people come to speak during the reading, I try not to get overly emotional. A challenge for an empath, I try to let the words speak to the emotion of those beloved departed without letting the waterworks flow.

Brigitte Mars Interview

My interview with raw food chef, herbalist, professor and author Brigitte Mars...

http://womr.org/podcast/raw-food-chef-brigitte-mars/

Angel quote of the night: "Electricity is karma in the city." Another angel referred to texting as us being part of "an envelope society". Brilliant!

The Oxnard Hippie or the Honey Do Do

An excellent mostly fruit drink for writers who should be living in reclusive yurts, but are finding time to write while their handsome, adorable, distracting and hypnotizing families are catching awesome rockshows with nifty new groups like The Daggers.

[Update: Music was too loud for my husband and our wee six-year-old. Hubby doesn't know how he escaped punkrock band years unscathed. Ptown playground was creepy...too many unattended adults working it out on monkey bars and making bench presses of slides.]

The Oxnard Hippie, or the Honey Do Do...hitchhike the galaxy, glean low hanging fruit, extract fresh honey from a beehive, snuggle up in a jungle of ripe melons for an afternoon nap, play a game of shuffleboard with a nice old lady down the street wearing a moomoo, and make a yurt your second home,...all in a tall refreshing glass.

Instructions:

* Chop 1/2 a ripe honey dew melon. Place into a large glass vessel.

* Add 4 ounces of clover honey

* Add 3-8 50 ml shots of bottom shelf rum (You're a writer, remember? Start with 3 if you usually get zoinked inhaling sage smoke or Indian temple incense alone. 8 shots is a sharing portion, people!

* In a blender, place the mixture of honey dew, clover honey, rum and 5 sprigs of fresh spearmint

* Add 5 ice cubes, blend until smooth. To a clean glass pitcher add several ice cubes, and your blended mixture. Pour the Oxnard Hippie into a wine glass or your best mason jar! Garnish with fresh spearmint, and serve immediately before separation occurs.

If you want a non-alcoholic, mood-enhancing beverage try adding a strong infusion of damiana, saw palmetto berries, or a combo of lemongrass and horny goat weed. Pretty decent flavor! Steep 4 ounces of herb or herbs in one cup of boiling water until it cools. Strain. Add this instead of the rum.

The Valley Grrrl

This lightweight-cheapdate-Pandora-cocktail employs the remaining essence of late Spring Lilies of the Valley. No longer fragrant for your bouquets, late Spring lilies of the Valley still got plenty of plant spirit mojo left in their delicate little blossoms. Valley Grrrl utilizes contrary flavors in a creative blend of opposing philosophical viewpoints. Peppermint Schnapps, Tazo Passion and Tazo Chamomile Calm tea show up to the debate, with a peanut gallery of wild blueberries and Mathilde Raspberry Framboise as the impartial mediator.

If you enjoy crisp mouthwash kisses, you'll love my Kitchen Nightmares-ready lovejoy. Meet The Valley Grrrl: part riot grrrl, part valley mall rat. A walking contradiction. Almost a Cosmo, not quite Sangria.

Move over highly trained mixologists with delicate palates, this herbalist-shaman is in wild-cocktail-making mode.


This is how I made it: (The safety of Lilies of the Valley is now questioned. It has been used as a cardiac tonic in Europe for thousands of years prior. Those crazy monks...)

1). First, I brewed my Passion-Calm Tazo sun-tea. (See earlier brewing instructions, and refrigerate tea over night.)

2). Next, I picked 2 cups of fresh Lilies of the Valley, and trimmed the sprigs to cut excess stems. I added these flowers to a mad-scientist beaker, poured in two shots of peppermint Schnaps, covered with a lid and shook for 20 seconds.

3). I strained the Lilies of the Valley through a cheesecloth. Added one flower-essence-imbued shot to each of two wine glasses.

4). Added a tablespoon of frozen blueberries to each glass. Poured 6 oz of chilled Passion-Calm Sun-Tea into each glass. Added 1/2 ounce Raspberry Framboise.

5). Couldn't resist the flapper headdresses! Sliced one orange. Added one orange slice to each glass and garnished with a slice of ripe pear and a sprig of Lilies.

For an alcohol-free version, add pear-juice or sliced ripe pears sliced to your glass for a sweet drink. Alternatively, brew a decoction of ginseng. (Do not use ginseng unless you have high blood pressure or blood sugar. Boil 2 ounces of ginseng root and 2 ounces of cut and sifted muira puama for 30 minutes on low heat in a covered pot with 4 cups of pear juice. Cool decoction-syrup until room temperature. Use this syrup instead of Peppermint-flavored Schnapps in the above recipe.

Steampunk Apothecary

My dear friend told me something very interesting about sheep. They don't get ticks. The lanolin wax secreted naturally by their sebaceous glands protects their coats and skin from weather and tick bites. Ticks are a big concern for Cape Codders and people from this region, because ticks spread Lyme Disease and several types of bacteria which cause illness. Knotweed, an invasive Japanese botanical, has been problematic for indigenous plants enthusiasts, but it brings with it a potential treasure for islanders. It is the only known herb which can track down those shifty spirochetes and other bacteria organisms spread by Lyme Disease. I'm using my son's new favorite word. I'll be attempting another root harvest in the fall.

Lanolin is extracted from sheep's wool humanely, in the first stages of wool or felt processing. A quick check of the internet shows that lanolin is included in some tick repellents for pets, but not for humans. Before veganism became popular, commercial beauty products with lanolin had a long history of use. Why not get your epidermus souped up with sheep's wax before venturing into the garden? (Lanolin isn't technically an oil because it doesn't have enough fat to be classified as such.)

Poets, pagans, and steampunks wouldn't mind getting messy, they like living knee-deep in their animalistic ways.

People who make emu oil bath beads and ostrich jerky in their backyards, put fertile chicken eggs in their sprouted-chia-hemp-chlorella-cacao smoothies, air-dry their bloomers on parasols in the back of their curiosity shops, and aspire to live-off-the-grid, but have thriving online businesses...Those People are My People. And, I may need a new DBA.

STEAMPUNK APOTHECARY(TM) all-natural Tick Repellent...made with real sebaceous gland excretions.

Here's what cheesecloth is good for...besides making your own cheese. This is one of my pain relief liniments (a topical pain rub). Herbs pictured are about half of the herbs that go into creating this volume of liquid.

Author Brigitte Mars on Healing Wisdom

Thursday June 12th at 9am EST, author herbalist Brigitte Mars will be on Healing Wisdom next week talking aphrodisiacs, psychedelic plants and pain relief. From her website: "Brigitte Mars is an herbalist from Boulder, Colorado, with over 40 years’ experience in natural lifestyles. She lived for two and a half years, on wild edible plants while living in a tipi in the Ozarks, in the early seventies. She is the author of The Desktop Guide to Herbal Medicine, Country Almanac of Home Remedies, Addiction Free Naturally, The Sexual Herbal, The HempNut Cookbook, Rawsome!, and Healing Herbal Teas. Brigitte teaches at Naropa University, Bauman College of Holistic Health and Natural Chef, The School of Natural Medicine, Just for the Health of It School of Reflexology and Healing Arts, Boulder College of Massage Therapy, Esalen Institute, Kripalu, and at an Icelandic healing arts school called Heilsumeistraskolinn." Tune in to WOMR 92.1 fm Provincetown, WFMR 91.3 fm Orleans or streaming at globally at Cape Cod's Outermost Radio streaming globally. Real Radio for Real People!

Raspberry Hibiscus Elixir with Sage Notes

This shamanic drink will have you nesting with perfect strangers like you're long time moondrunk warbuddy Pinochle partners, purring like cats who adopt baby rabbits with their six fuzzy nipples, and toasting to the Indian medicine men of the early American frontier like they done gone and saved your first born. With your glass held high and mighty, libate the living and the dead. Imbibe in the delicious doowop tralalas and the clucky undertones of the Waltzing Raspberry Lush. Its transcendent overtures of radiant post-apocalyptic zen animalism will charm the pants off of you.

Hibiscus Sun Tea and Honey Sage Tonic:

Hibiscus: lowers cholesterol, helpful in weight loss, a diuretic (helps in cases of fluid retention), soothes stomach and respiratory inflammation, a mild laxative, and astringent (dissolves phlegmatic conditions due to allergies, colds, and sinus congestion). Hibiscus is used in traditional impotence remedies for men. Side effects for men may include prolonged erections and multiple orgasms. Just saying, buyer beware.

Sage: analgesic (pain relieving), diaphoretic (increases perspiration), astringent (breaks up congestion), rejuvenative (anti-aging), high in antioxidants (fights free radicals)

Lemongrass: opens psychic awareness/intuition, relieves stomachache, slightly lowers blood pressure, anti-plogistic (fever reducing), and may help to relieve tension headaches

Chamomile: mild sedative, calms and tones nervous system



Instructions:

* First brew a sun tea with six Passion Tazo tea bags (or a hibiscus and lemongrass infusion of approximately 4 oz of dried herbs) and 3 Tazo Chamomile Calm tea bags for a whole afternoon (approximately six hours in one gallon of spring water). Refrigerate.

* Next, add 4 stems of dried white sage to 2 pints of water in medium sauce pan.

* Simmer on low heat covered with a lid until the liquid is reduced by half. Strain.

* Add 1/4-1/2 cup clover honey. Dilute 1 part spring water to one part sage reduction. Cool mixture.

* Combine sage honey tea with hibiscus chamomile sun tea to make a medicinal tonic.

* To make it a mild cocktail: add 1-2 ounces of Mathilde's Raspberry Framboise to 2 ounces of combined tea in a chilled glass.

And now you have your self a Waltzing Raspberry Lush! A Pandora special. Especially lovely after a day of readings and talking with dead people. If you skip the Raspberry liqueur, you can add fresh ripe raspberries and a sprig of spearmint.



Other potential drink names that are coming to me but may already exist somewhere: The Diaspora, The Diaphanous Punk, Punch N' Judy, Gypsy Thieves, The Rabbi's Razor, The Dirty Priest, Primping Rituals of Animals...I could go on all night.

Interview with Author Tom North

Hear my interview with author Tom North. He's a Transcendental Meditation advocate and former financial adviser, author of, True North: The Shocking Truth Behind "Yours, Mine and Ours" a 1968 film starring Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda. Listen here.

Healing Wisdom airs every Thursday morning at 9am EST on WOMR 92.1 fm, WFMR 91.3 fm, and streams at globally at womr.org Tom North talks PTSD, surviving and overcoming childhood abuse and the story behind the story.

Liniments, Tinctures, Vinegars and Oils

It's glorious Spring time! There are fresh azaleas, lilies of the valley, and rhododendrons for every room. I bought some mason jars to make my lilies of the valley tincture. It's an old remedy for the heart, very old fashioned, which has fallen into disuse in America, probably because of its efficacy and the competitive pharmaceutical market. For that reason, I can't recommend it. It's especially not recommended for arrhythmic conditions. Although, in very small doses....a sip at a time...I believe it could be tonifying to those with arrhythmia as well. I have a slippery pulse myself.

I've just placed an order for a bunch of herbs by the pound. Always exciting. As some of my less used herbs are getting a bit older, I've decided it is time to make tinctures, liniments, and vinegars out of them. I'm not a fan of glycerine tinctures, because of how ineffective at extraction and they are sugary and make me feel bloated to boot, instead I use apple cider vinegar to make a vinegar tinctures. Apple cider vinegar in itself makes a wonderful weight loss, skin clearing, and digestive tonic. Two tablespoons a day is all you need.

Today, I made a yarrow vinegar, not for salads, just to add to fruit juices to bring down a fever, treat colds, diarrhea, or indigestion. It's also useful in rubbing on the body after sweating out a fever. Herbal vinegars make good detoxifying warm footbaths. Add 4 to 8 ounces with the herbs after soaking a week or longer, add 10 drops of a relaxing essential oil, and some warm water, and voila, you have a wonderful foot soak. Or, alternatively, use 4 tablespoons of your vinegar in 2 pints of hot water with a dozen or more stems of hedge nettle, steeped for 15-20 minutes. Yarrow leaves are also good for nosebleeds, when wrapped in the nose.

I made another vinegar for colds, ear aches, and sinus infections with mullein, goldenseal and coltsfoot. Mullein is good for sinus congestion, ear aches, and sore throats. Goldenseal is a digestive, good for UTIs, constipation, CFS, skin impurities, ear infections, and the common cold. Coltsfoot, I use for sore throats.

My anti-inflammatory pain liniments have avocado seeds, chilli, safflower, white sage and either helichrysum or du zhong. Helichrysum is an amazing flower. It's analgesic, anti-arthritic, anti-allergenic, anti-phlogistic, diaphoretic, nervine, antitussive, and antispasmodic. So, it helps with pain relief, allergies, fevers, coughs, nervous tension and spasms.

I made an odd looking gugul gum tincture. Gugul is related to myrrh, and is in the Ayurvedic lexicon. It's anti-arthritic, lowers cholesterol, softens hardened arteries, reduces acne and helps with weight loss. Drinking it is a very odd sensation because it coats the mouth. Very aromatic and pungent like chewing oris root for bad breath or drinking elecampane for respiration, but the way it coats the tongue is unique to gum resins, I think. Myrrh makes an excellent tincture for gum health, and mouthwashes, so perhaps gugul could have the same effect.

And looking at my herbs last night, I got excited about rodiola and red sage again. Rodiola is a wonderful herb to take to improve a workout (like ashwagandha and goji berries). It relieves depression like St. John's wort and like epimedium it's side effects can include increased sexual appetite and longevity in the bedroom. Speaking of male vitality herbs, hibiscus can improve erections and stamina in some men, but ephedra seems to be much more effective. It brings blood to every part of the body, and if one doesn't have a heart condition and isn't prone to panic attacks, it is very good for deep breathing and clearing out the lungs. It is also helpful to women sexually, increasing appetite and drive. Be careful with ephedra though, it can lead to dehydration and headaches, even irregular heartbeats. Not to be taken when drinking coffee or in the case of heart conditions. I find that 1/8 to 1 teaspoon in a cup of ho shou wu or roasted dandelion tea is plenty, be great with saw palmetto too...you probably don't need to drink a tablespoon plus...just increase your water intake if you don't feel results in the first half hour. Best on an empty stomach.

Red Sage is used in formulas in Traditional Chinese Medicine, for heart and liver conditions. It is used to improve circulation, regulate irregular and painful menses, reduce inflammation and calm the mind. The liver is part of the lymphatic system, but it plays a role in breaking down sugars and fats. If the liver is congested and full of toxins, it has a harder time cleaning the blood of impurities. It also helps to regulate hormones, so at the root of hormone imbalance is checking the liver and often a good liver cleanse. For this reason, any time the hormones are out-of-wack, herbalists will often use milk thistle. I do in my Juno Estrogen Booster for wise women and my Athena PMS Pain Relief combination.

Just made a rum-based ovulation tonic, a rum-based respiration and heart tonic, a rum-based weight loss tincture with amla, and a cinnamon-whiskey-based analgesic arthritis tincture. Now, I feel like I should have tattoos, be brewing my own beer in my basement, playing music with a saw while wearing a vest, a derby and a pocket watch...First things first.