Results for Category: Live Well
Holiday Home Essential Oil Diffuser Blend Recipe
Whether we’re baking our favorite pies and cookies, decorating with fresh greenery, or making crafts and gifts using herbs and spices, we enjoy the special aromas that accompany these activities during the holidays. There truly is an enchanting, warming scent to the season. This Holiday Home Diffuser Blend recipe we are sharing below is another…
Herbal Support for Pregnancy Nausea
Pregnancy-related nausea and vomiting can affect up to 85% of pregnancies to varying degrees. Although a small amount of people do...
How to Decorate Your Home With Fresh Greenery
Make your home come alive this holiday season by bringing the outdoors in with fresh greenery! The festive and cozy feeling that l...
Cannabis and Adaptogens for Stress
When it comes to modern-day living, it can seem like there is no relief in the frequency of life’s demands and the required fast pace to stay on top of things. This go-go-go way of living can wreak havoc on our nervous system. Over time, it can begin to rewire our brain to be in…
Troubleshooting Fire Cider: Answering Your Questions
Fire cider is a beloved and potent wellness tonic known for giving the immune system a powerful kick. Made from a variety of herbs infused into apple cider vinegar, a classic herbalist’s recipe is easy to make, convenient to dose, and a delight to the tastebuds. Here at the Herbal Academy, we’ve been sharing our…
Greek Olive Oil Traditions + How to Do an Olive Oil Tasting and Identify the Best Variety
Olive oil has a rich and magical history in Greece, where the landscape is dotted with millions of majestic olive trees. Derived f...
The Core Carrier Oils: How to Store Them Properly
This excerpt on core carrier oils is from the book The Carrier Oil Palette by Jade Shutes and Sherilyn Siegmund-Roach and is repri...
Tincture, Decoction, Tea, or Ghee: An Ayurvedic Perspective on Herbal Preparations
We all have our preferred methods of enjoying herbs. Some love hot herbal tea, some like a cool infusion, and others reach for the convenience and potency of tinctures. Or, some may crave the unctuous, nourishing qualities of herb-infused oils and ghee. There are many reasons why one may choose one type of herbal preparation…
Lavender, Lemon, and Peppermint Essential Oils: Boring? Or Powerful Allies?
Do you ever feel that your retailer or favorite essential oil blogger is always touting the benefits of new essential oils you have not heard of or, at least, do not own? We may or may not know much about the oil other than what the retailer or blogger claims, but the advertising makes it…
Summer Solstice: Mark the Changing of Spring Into Summer With Intention
It seems to me as though the more years I accumulate the faster they seem to fly by, each racing past more quickly than the last. ...
Triphala: Time-Honored Digestive Support for All Types
Most herb lovers have their shortlist of herbal essentials. These are the single herbs or formulas that you are sure to keep in st...
Getting Ticked Off: An Essential Oil Blend to Repel Ticks
Ticks are arachnids from the order Ixodida, divided into three families, the Ixodidae (hard ticks), the Argasidae (soft ticks), and Nuttalliellidae, which contains only one species living in southern Africa (Wikipedia, 2022). These parasitic relatives of mites are vectors for numerous human diseases, the most widely recognized being Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever…
Agni: Understanding the Digestive Fire
Digestive fire or digestive strength is discussed with some frequency across different herbalism and wellness traditions. However, oftentimes we don’t take the time to really break down our understanding of what is meant by digestive fire. Ayurveda has a unique, well-articulated, and beautifully poetic model for understanding digestive wellness. In Ayurveda, one’s agni (digestive fire)…
Undercover Women: Historic Botanical Illustrators
In the modern age, the title of “artist” is an acceptable profession for both male and female persons, but it wasn’t always ...
Herbs for Dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease, and the Aging Brain: What the Research Has to Say
Most of us will be touched by the heartbreak of Alzheimer’s disease or dementia. Whether a parent, life partner, friend, or ones...
Hot ‘n’ Spicy Essential Oils for Winter
Winter season…snow season…holiday season…fireplace season…conifer season…cocoa and tea season…cold ‘n’ flu season. For so many of us in the Northern Hemisphere, winter means cooler temperatures, more time indoors, and more concerns about viral respiratory diseases. In this article, we will go over various essential oils for winter. This time of year is perfect for creating…
Ayurvedic Holiday Gift Guide
The holidays can be a wonderful opportunity to show your love and thoughtfulness. Homemade gifts, party favors, and stocking stuffers are a festive way to get crafty, have a little fun in the kitchen, and apply your passion for herbalism and wellness. Making (or purchasing) ayurvedic-inspired gifts is a great way to offer something that…
Essential Oil Perfume: A DIY Gift Idea
The holidays are a wonderful time to give something that the receiver wouldn’t normally indulge themselves in. Something pretty,...
Plant Allies to Prepare Your Immune System for Winter
Winter stirs up nostalgic thoughts of evergreen trees and warm, cozy fires, but it can also cause increased stress and anxiety, wi...
Balance Your Holiday Menu With Ayurvedic Six Tastes
Ayurveda teaches that all things in nature are made up of some combination of the five elements: earth, water, fire, air, and ether. This means that our bodies, the food we eat, the herbs that we benefit from, and even colors and aromas—are made of some combination of the five elements. This five-element paradigm is…
Strange Ways to Heal: Medical Curiosities of Ancient Greece
Throughout history, humans have sought ways to ease many ailments. Some lasted through millennia. Others fell into disuse. The ancient Greek civilization (c. 3,000 BCE-600 CE), practiced a variety of healing methods over centuries influenced by population growth, trade, and conflict throughout the Mediterranean region. Medicine in antiquity shifted and evolved as a result of…
11 Ways to Save Money on Herbal Supplies
As your herbal studies gain momentum, we know how tempting it can be to purchase brand-new herbal supplies: herbs, books, material...
Essential Oils and Pets: How to Use Them Safely
If you use botanicals for your own health and wellness, you have probably wondered about essential oils and pets. How might you us...
Ayurveda and Yoga: Yoga for Your Constitution
“Ayurveda is a paradigm, not a prescription” is a phrase that I commonly emphasize in my introduction to Ayurveda public lectures. Ayurveda is integrated into the medical system in India and if you work with any ayurvedic practitioner anywhere in the world, they will likely suggest herbs, dietary modifications, and other practical measures. However, Ayurveda…
How to Use Dye Plants: Plant Projects for the Home
This book excerpt is taken from A Woman’s Garden: Grow Beautiful Plants and Make Useful Things – Plants and Projects for Home, Health, Beauty, Healing, and More by Tanya Anderson, and is reprinted with permission from Cool Springs Press, an imprint of The Quarto Group. Using Dye Plants From archaeological evidence, we know that people have…
Mood and Mental Support for Pitta Dosha
Pitta dosha, the most fiery of the three ayurvedic types, relates to solar energy and rules the summer season. Pitta types run war...
Strategies for Creating a More Gender-Inclusive Herbal Practice
This post is co-authored by Linden de Voil R.H. You are reading Part 2 of a series on how to make your herbal practice, classes, or books more accessible to transgender clients. In Part 1, we talked about the harms trans people experience in conventional health care and the difficulties in even accessing that care,…
Growing a Gender-Expansive Herbal Practice
This post is co-authored by Linden de Voil R.H. For most trans/non-binary and gender non-conforming folks, medical care is a horror show. It’s hard to overstate the problem, given the long, ugly history of violence done to trans bodies and psyches under the modern medical system. To this day, trans people in need of health…
Cooling Recipes for Managing Pitta Dosha
“The brilliance of a raging fire dragon in the city of sparkling gems—such is the nature of pitta” (Tiwari, 1995, p. 48). Ay...
