A Brief Overview of Traditional Healing through Herbalism

Traditional healing through food and herbal remedies such as teas, infusions, tinctures, salves, etc., was the standard way of living throughout all of human existence up until about the last 200+ years or so due to colonization.

It was through deep knowledge of the functions of food and herbs that we were able to identify problems within ourselves and create our own solutions using the medicine that grows from the Earth. It was through this learned understanding of one's environment and how to use herbs for healing that many of the enslaved African-Americans survived all of the diseases they encountered in the Americas due to compacted living quarters, and lack of care or resources from slave owners.

Throughout history there have been many superstitious accounts and documented criminalization of the people who connected with herbs spiritually or the agency people derived from practicing herbalism. These people were labeled outcasts and even intentionally silenced by the government like the wise women, witches, midwives, medicine men, root-workers, hoodoo practitioners, curanderas, shamans, etc.

Unfortunately, much of the knowledge about common herbs and how they can be used for everyday healing has been intentionally erased, suppressed, and misrepresented to promote the modern day pharmaceutical industry. A capitalist behemoth that thrives on the compounded sicknesses of millions everyday to sell expensive pills, surgeries, and hospital bills to, while only seldomly being able to restore people to their full health again. Truthfully, the liver struggles to understand what to do with all of the foreign chemicals stuffed into a small little pill. The liver can identify food and water soluble nutrients much more easily.

But, even the tea industry takes advantage of what the original healing purpose of tea was: to extract the nutrients from herbs into a soluble form for digestion and bodily absorption. Most tea sold in tea bags by big companies are selling you the overly processed stems and scraps of the "chamomile"or "elderberry" leaves and it really doesn't have much of the nutritional value leftover. Some of the biggest companies have been tested for using pesticides, toxins, and artificial ingredients in their teas just to name a few.

The truth is, the secret to good health is maintaining your health right now. There will never be a pill that will make us healthier than ever before. We have perfect health (most of us) when we enter this world as children, but Western medicine encourages us to believe that we can seek better health through pharmaceuticals. There’s no such thing. Maintaining your wellness throughout life is the key to health, it’s the key to wellth! We will all age and we will all definitely encounter a bad diet, living here in America, no matter how hard we try. Even our grocery store food isn't the best of quality, and we know they use a lot of carcinogenic pesticides on the produce. That's why it's important that we should be conscious of where we get our groceries, and try to go to places like farmer's markets when we can, but if we can't manage that, it's really important to drink herbal tea too!

Herbal tea allows us to get in the vitamins and nutrients we need and fight off the free radicals and other harmful agents we don't want. Dandelion can basically replace your vitamin supplements with its high content of vitamins A, B, D and minerals iron, potassium, calcium, and zinc. Calendula can help to bring the body back into balance after a bad diet through supporting healthy movement through the lymph nodes and cleansing the blood. That's just two herbs!

My blends have been carefully researched and curated for specific needs. It's important to note that not every herb needs to target the same issue or have the same purpose. My goal is to create blends that complement each other and work in tandem to give the body the ultimate tools to heal itself. Our bodies are the best at that and Mother Earth gives us everything we need to heal ourselves. It's never been more important than now to take that agency back. Thank you for joining me on this journey to holistic wellth with MooreTea.