#botanical health

[wormyorchids]

A page spread from the zine I’m working on- Brain School 2: Some Things I Learned 🖤

[thomas--bombadil]

Hemp Flower, Ready to Harvest.

These potent varieties have been brought to their utmost potential. Once dried, they can be enjoyed for their calming and pain-relieving properties.

Top-to-Bottom:

Siesta (Good for relaxing and sleep)

Miss B. (A good daytime blend, with high-yielding oils)

Mustard Berry (A flower with exotic, rare terpenes)

[owlfrommars]

Covered my sh-scrars with this cute spider lily 🌿

My friends joking that I'm becoming a greenhouse cause half of my body is covered with plants-tattoos

(it was a mess, plenty of scars are still visible, but we covered the biggest one so I'm excited anyway)

[jeanambrojo]

[histhoughtslately]

Sayen House Botanical Garden in Hamilton, NJ

[peaches-an-tea]

So if mycelium is like the Wi-Fi and plants talk to each other, does that mean my house plants are lonely

[danielflemingart]

Green.

18x24"

Acrylic on canvas.

[t0bi44]

Botanical Garden today⚡️⚡️⚡️

[anguispoetica]

Latest mood: Just stay alive! I recommend the song Amy AKA Spent Gladiator 1 by the Mountain Goats! I'm actually thinking of doing a bigger piece inspired by the lyrics. (Reference photo from Pexels, photographer: Marta Dzedyshko)

[hollybotanic]

Eyebright (Euphrasia officinalis)

Eyebright is astringent, antibacterial, and anti-inflammatory and can be used to treat conjunctivitis. It's also helpful for runny noses and brilliant as an extract in an eye cream.

Spotted in the Valley of Rocks in Lynton in August. First time I’ve ever found eyebright!

[sunflowersanddaydreamsingreen]

Rest

It occurs to me that once the punches slow, maybe it’s time to catch my breath and to write again. I haven’t updated in forever. I forgot I had something to say. I forgot what I had to offer. That’s how it goes isn’t it? We forget who we are and our deities bring us back to our own heart time and time again — if I let them. (And I don’t always let them)

I may give an overview of what’s happened since I’ve not been updating, but right now I feel it’s so important to talk about rest. It’s winter here and in NE Ohio, that means dreary weather, no sun which means drastic drops in vitamin D, seasonal depression, grey skies during the day, and early night and late morning. I’m eager for spring, but it also occurs to me that maybe I’m not ready for spring.

Since Christmas Eve, there has been one breakthrough after another after another after another. I’m exhausted. Even healing is hard work. At the time, I was high on the spiritual experience. I was high on prayer and companionship with Spirit and my ka-tet. I knelt in prayer and wept and I stood and I felt better. Sometimes I would sit in the shower under the hot water and cry and pray. There was always an answer, and usually one I didn’t expect or one that caught me by surprise. It was the great purge, cleansing and packing the wound so it could heal and the healing has been coming in waves. And now, I’m tired.

The thing about any high, spiritual or otherwise, is that we have to come down eventually. I keep my head in the clouds, but it’s time for my feet to return to the ground. The last month may have revolutionized my heart and mind and spirit, but I still have to cook dinner, and go to work and doctor’s appointments, and pick my daughter up from school, and all of everyday life.

For the last week or so, I’ve felt like I’ve been doing something wrong. I didn’t feel the 24/7 spiritual connection, my prayer has been falling away, I don’t feel like I’m being propelled forward by some unseen hand. The answers aren’t strong and punchy and life-altering. They’re quiet now if they come, like whispers instead of screams. Well I assumed that was because I wasn’t listening hard enough. I was distracted. I wasn’t praying enough or praying wrong. What happened? Where did God go? Where did my deities go? What did I do wrong and how do I get it back? Sound familiar?

I was laying down wrapped up tight in a blanket the other day just paying attention to my breathing and thinking of the morning I had spent with my friend. We had tea and breakfast together and then prayed and meditated together and it was wonderful, the recalibration that I needed, but it still wasn’t *the same.* I hadn’t had any earth-shattering realizations, hadn’t cried in a while. I felt that my healing had stalled — then I realized… this was my chance to breathe. I had been begging the Universe for weeks to slow down and give me a chance to catch my breath and I’m usually given what I ask for. The problem is I don’t always recognize, acknowledge, or accept when it comes.

So perhaps I don’t need to pray in such a prescribed and structured way multiple times a day at set times, pouring my heart out with my face pressed to the ground right now. Maybe it’s enough for now to keep Spirit on my mind and say a prayer of thanks and ask for direction. Right now I don’t need to figure out who and what I am on this side of all this healing. I don’t need to plan my life, define my vision, implement strict spiritual routines, and generally be ON all the time. I asked for a chance to catch my breath, and here it is.

So I’m going with it, or doing my best. Rest takes practice just like anything else, especially in this American capitalist dystopian nightmare where we’re brainwashed into believing that we’re only of value when producing. Anything else is a waste of time, we’re taught. I’m a rebel though, so I take naps. I take bubble baths. I read for pleasure. I cuddle my wife and friends and just exist. Rest is a rebellious action, and somehow knowing that makes it a little easier to justify to my brain.

I haven’t given anything up. I’m still studying and praying and doing magic and lighting candles and all, but I’m doing it in such a more gentle way. Instead of trying to work myself into a perscribed structure, I let the patterns work themselves out around me. They’re still forming and falling into place. Some will stick and some won’t and that’s ok. I don’t need all of that to be “spiritually successful” whatever the fuck that means. If my deities and my God have not left me these last 33 years, they’re not going to leave me if I take a nap after work instead of praying.

I’m telling you, listening to your body is rebellious. If I’m tired, I sleep, so much as I am able. When I’m hungry, I eat. When I feel a little lost, I pray. When I need comfort, I ask for it. I make time to play. And I have faith. I have faith that my deities don’t have to be in my face in order to be present. I have faith that if I reach out to them at any time, that they will still be there. They aren’t going to leave me. In fact, at a time when I didn’t have to capacity to commit to my deities, Loki and Sigyn committed to me. Sigyn told me shortly after starting to work with them that there was no place I could go, no distance that I could run that they wouldn’t find me and bring me home. I needed that then, so so much, and I need it now in a different way. It gives me permission to take a break and just breathe.

I may drift a little off course, but I’m not going to fall off the edge of the world, back into the darkness and emptiness. I’m just — I’m floating. That’s what I’m doing. Ok let me explain that. My family camps at a nearby lake over the summer and we do a ton of swimming. There’s a bunch of little cousins splashing around in the water, some of the older cousins on the boat deck grilling and drinking beer, or sitting in the water gossiping. Now, I do love to swim, but I don’t breath well and I get tired easily. My *favorite* thing to do is to swim out a little ways from the group and lay on my back with my eyes closed and float on top of the water. Sometimes a small wave will wash over my face and I’ll sputter and stand up, but I wipe my face and go back to floating. On occasion, I have to come up to make sure I’m not drifting too far from the group, or far enough out that I can’t safely swim back. But I just love the peace of hearing the water and the birds and the laughter and feeling the sun over my body while I float on top of the water.

So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to take a break from the deep diving that wears me out so much and I’m going to take advantage of the dark, sleepy, dreary time and the snow and cold that drives us inside, and this time when nature is resting and waiting for green and sun again, and I’m going to float and rest and breathe and have faith that my deities will hold me in that safe place.

🙏🏻

Here is a poem I wrote in the shower last night

Prayer

This poem is a thank you.

Thank you, Spirit, for turning me upside down.

It’s easier to write about love now

than it is to write about fear,

easier to write about mending hearts

than old scars.

Everything I once held near

seems so far removed now,

flung out into the depths of the cosmos,

beyond the stars I still cannot dream of reaching for,

farther than the east is from the west.

It will never be fully gone,

but it doesn’t gut me

every time I take a step forward anymore.

Still, I forget to pause and thank you.

See, I’ve always loved circles.

I love how they have no beginning and no ending,

no corners to try to peer around in the dark,

no jagged edges to make me bleed.

Everything is laid out bare, right in front of me

over, and over, and over,

and over, and over,

and over again, so it’s no wonder

how I got trapped in them for 33 years.

I’m still running in some of those same old circles,

afraid to cut ties, because if I cut too many of my heartstrings

I may just unravel again

and I’m tired of surviving my own heartbreak.

I don’t know who I am anymore,

but I know this freedom is well worth

the uncertainty of identity.

Thank you for turning me inside out,

that is to say everything inside me

that I kept tucked away

is now on display for the world —

my face, my song, my stance, my poise,

my bright eyes and covered hair,

an open hand pouring out.

Everything that once shielded me

has been brought back inside for healing.

These brick walls have been disassembled.

I’m using the old stone to build bridges and platforms now.

This poem is the closest thing I have to a prayer, so thank you.

Thank you for holding my hands

while my beloved and I searched for the right words.

In church as a child,

they taught me to talk to God

like he was my best friend,

but I don’t know how when my best friend is a stranger

wearing 7.8 billion of their favorite masks

as we all fumble along to their music in the firelight.

This poem is the closest thing I have to a prayer,

so please, take it and take *me*.

I don’t know who or what I am anymore.

I’m okay with that most days,

but it means that I don’t know what to offer you

because I don’t know what I’m made of.

This is the closest thing I have to a prayer.

I know it’s really just a poem,

but at least we got a couple of the letters right.

So take it, and take me.

Wherever you’re going, I will follow.

[botan-kiri]

I’d like to say I’m concerned for Rando.

me too

[wholelottabotany]

TIL that gardening makes you happy.

No, really.

By exposing you to certain types of microbes that increase Serotonin levels and level depression.

So go touch some dirt.

[bzedan]

I am very grateful that this particular sinus infection was bacterial so I could get antibiotics and speed the process up, but also it’s been so long since I’ve had a real fucker of a sinus infection that I’m in angry awe of how long I lived getting these once or twice a year.

[cat-eye-nebula]

No toxic Petrochemical perfume allowed on my body or in my lungs! Only the best of the best is allowed on my skin -> botanical perfume/essential oils!💧🌸🌿

[cutejennydawson]

A Scrub Above the Rest: The Luxurious Experience of Table Shower Asian Massage in Miami

Table shower massage, also known as body scrub massage, is a type of Asian massage that involves the use of a table with a built-in shower system. During the massage, the client lies on the table while the therapist uses warm water to cleanse and exfoliate the skin, followed by a massage with oils or lotions. The combination of the warm water and gentle exfoliation helps to remove dead skin cells, leaving the skin feeling smooth and refreshed.

One of the main benefits of table shower asian massage is that it can help to improve the appearance and health of the skin. The warm water and gentle exfoliation can help to unclog pores, remove impurities, and stimulate blood flow to the skin, which can help to improve the overall tone and texture of the skin. Additionally, the use of oils or lotions during the massage can help to nourish and hydrate the skin, leaving it feeling soft and smooth.

Another benefit of table shower massage is that it can help to relieve stress and tension in the muscles and joints. The massage therapist will use a combination of techniques such as Swedish massage, deep tissue massage, and acupressure to target specific areas of tension and pain. Warm water and gentle massage can also help to promote relaxation and improve sleep quality.

Table shower massage is often performed with the use of special oils or lotions that are infused with herbs and botanicals. These oils can help to provide an additional layer of therapeutic benefits, such as improved circulation, reduced inflammation, and even aromatherapy benefits.

When looking for a table shower massage, it's important to look for a massage clinic or spa that offers this type of massage and make sure the therapist is licensed and trained in this type of massage. Additionally, it's important to let the therapist know about any health conditions you have, as well as any medications you're taking, so that they can tailor the massage to your needs.

In conclusion, table shower massage is a unique and luxurious form of Asian massage that can provide a wide range of physical and mental health benefits. It's a great way to improve the appearance and health of the skin, relieve stress and tension in the muscles and joints, and improve overall relaxation and well-being. With many options available in Florida, it's easy to find a massage therapist who can help you experience the benefits of this invigorating and rejuvenating massage technique.