The holiday season can be intense for many, though it can also be said that we’re living in a time when the demands on our attention and on our capacity to stay emotionally balanced and energetically grounded are consistently high. When stress begins to overwhelm us, and we are tempted to float above our bodies and lives, these loving allies can be deeply of service, strengthening our capacity to be present with grace.
Ashwaganda
Ashwaganda, also known as Witharia Somnifera in Latin and Asgandhi in Sanskrit, is a powerhouse Ayurvedic herb that has become very popular here in the West, and for good reason. Working as both an adaptogen and a tonic, Ashwaganda has many well researched applications for preserving one’s health and balancing the mind and emotions, while increasing vital energy. Adaptogens are critical in our time because they help the body to adapt to stress with less damage to our nervous systems, allowing us to meet daily challenges inside and out with far more clarity and ease. As many of us know, stress can not only lead to escalated anxiety and depression, but also many forms of physical illness as the production of cortisol rises. Powerfully calming and equally potent in rejuvenating youthful vitality, Ashwaganda is considered a ‘rasayana’ herb. From the root words rasa (essence) and ayana (path), this terms means attaining the path of essence, increasing lifespan and vitality, while improving mental clarity and deterring illness, through therapeutic techniques.
Though there are many potent herbs in the Indian system of wellness and medicine known as Ayurveda, Ashwaganda stands apart as particularly relevant to our time and place. Even in the U.S., scientific studies suggest that it’s potential range of beneficial influence include providing relief for anxiety and depression, promoting restful sleep, reducing cortisol production and inflammation, fighting alzheimer’s and some forms of cancer, balancing hormones and increasing estrogen production, increasing libido and combating sexual dysfunction, improving immunity by increasing white blood cell production, improving thyroid health, improving memory, destruction of free radicals, reducing blood sugar levels while improving insulin sensitivity and secretion to prevent or treat diabetes, and countering even the commonplace effects of aging, such as hair loss and greying. Of course, when seeking the physical effects of herbs to treat illness and imbalance dosage matters, as does the complex puzzle of matching one’s particular constitution and nuance of symptoms with the exact appropriate medicine. This is why an herbalist should always be consulted when specific healing and preventative measures are needed. For general wellness and maintaining emotional and physical resilience in the face of stress, however, Ashwaganda can be a fantastic daily ally when taken as a powder mixed with some form of milk, or as a decoction in milk, ghee, and oil, or in the form of a pill. It is one of the primary ingredients of golden milk, along with turmeric and honey. It is also a nourishing food and a natural remedy for anemia. For this purpose, a milk decoction can be added to basmati rice, along with raw sugar, honey, and pippali. In these forms it slows the effects of aging and catalyzes the body’s anabolic processes. Ashwaganda, as a food, it is said to offer support to pregnant women experiencing weakness to help stabilize the fetus, but herbs and pregnancy can be a tricky combination and a doctor or clinical herbalist should definitely be consulted. Beyond internal uses, it can be applied topically for wounds and sores.
When it comes to spiritual benefits, the themes of vitality and resilience follow suit. Ashwaganda can be taken as a flower essence as well, and is particularly helpful when facing stress and adrenal fatigue. The root words ‘Ashwa’ (or Ashva in Sanskrit), meaning horse, and ‘ghanda’, meaning smell, refer to the musky, horse like smell of the root, yet words often reveal deeper associations. Horses are powerful models of stamina, resilience, virility and deep intuition. They maintain a strong and grounded physical presence, while gently perceiving and communication on emotional and psychic levels of awareness. They are sensitives who know how to live within their bodies, as well as how to modulate their strength on both levels. They are fascinating teachers, and are coming to be understood as such with the rise of Equine Therapy. On the energetic levels, Ashwaganda may provide similar teachings and support, helping us to heal the root chakra in order to feel both grounded and in better balance. When our health is flowing in vitality, we are stronger energetically as well. If we can remain rooted within our physical bodies, and connected with the earth, while we access intuitive states of consciousness and expanded awareness, then what we are able to interpret and integrate from those experiences, and what we are capable of accomplishing, greatly improves. Glimpses of magic and divine connection are beautiful food for the soul, but they don’t serve us to the fullest effect unless we can ground them into ourselves, allowing for true growth. Ashwaganda can support us in the clearing of both the third eye and the root chakras, while helping us to maintain balance in our everyday lives. This is a combination that can help create more ideal conditions for increasing psychic receptivity, joy, and personal power.
Suggestions for working with Ashwaganda:
Whether you are looking for physical healing, emotional balance, energetic potency, or all of the above, it is always beneficial to approach herbs with the proper respect, and when appropriate to consider the cultural traditions of supplication associated with them. The following is a Vedic Hymn used in the making of Ayurvedic plant medicines:
Vedic Hymn To The Plants
Plants, which as receptacles of light were born three ages before the gods, I honor your myriad colors and your seven hundred natures.
A hundred, oh Mothers, are your natures and a thousand are your growths. May you of a hundred powers make whole what has been hurt.
Plants, as Mothers and Goddesses, I address you. May I gain energy, light, and sustenance, your soul, you who are a conscious being.
Where the herbs are gathered together like kings in an assembly, there the doctor is called a sage, who destroys evil, and averts disease.
As they fell from Heaven, the plants said, “The living soul we pervade, that man will suffer no harm.
The herbs that are in the kingdom of the Moon, manifold with a hundred eyes, I take this plant as the best of them, for the fulfillment of wishes, as peace to the heart.
Plants that are queens of the Soma, spread over all the Earth, generated by the Lord of Prayer, may your energy combine within this herb.
Rig Veda X.97
Garnet
When we consider how maintaining the ability to be grounded in the earthly realm, while reaching for the expanded awareness of the spiritual, makes us more powerful, we also need to acknowledge that this is not always easy or intuitive. We tend to have an affinity for one side or the other within this spectrum, and the goal of many spiritual traditions is to merge these aspects within us, so that we can reach greater levels of evolution as humans. In a sense, it is what is uniquely beautiful about humans, the interplay of duality within us that allows us the ability to be conscious of the fact that we are a manifestation of Divinity, while remaining sensually alive in our animal nature as well. Perhaps this is why we can dance the essence of a waterfall, sing the song of the rain, write the poetry of fire, and drum the heartbeat of a stone. We can also bring these elements together to weave a spell that co-creates with the larger consciousness that surrounds us and call that communion. But to do this, we need to remain awake to all of ourselves. If we commune by leaving our bodies, and we never learn how to bring that medicine home into our everyday realities, we will remain unbalanced and our creations will be limited. When I was young, before I knew the tenets of my own cultural traditions, I fell in love with Goddess Spirituality because it helped me to learn one thing very deeply: Divinity is not outside of us, and we don’t need to transcend our physical bodies or the Earth in order to reach it. We are it. We are the bridge between the Divine and the physical. We can awaken and enliven it within ourselves. We can perceive it everywhere if we look for it. We draw it into ourselves from above and below us, and we are in connection with the larger dance always, even when we forget.
Sometimes, however, we need help in remembering. We need the experiences that deepen us and awaken us to our own power. We need to learn not to run away from our bodies, leaving them vulnerable. It takes work to fully embody what we have the capacity to be, and our evolution is still in progress. In the tradition of Nahualismo, we have names in the Nahuatl language for the dual aspects of ourselves. We call them the Tonal and Nahual. The Tonal is the waking part of us, who we think we are in the light of day, similar to the ego. The Nahual, is who we really are, the part of us that dreams. It is said that we tend to have a natural propensity for identifying with and accessing the skills of one or the other, yet it is when both are strong and working in union that we have the capacity to dream our lives more intentionally, with heightened awareness and potent manifestation. For those of us who lean towards the Nahual, and have trouble remaining present in the physical body, or with manifesting dreams, creativity, and other inspirations all the way to the physical plane, Garnet may be the sparkling nourishment that is needed.
I think of Persephone often, and have always been obsessed with that myth. There is a lot within it. She begins as a child, the daughter of a Goddess. Through curiosity and then trauma, she enters the Underworld and finds herself lost in fear. She runs in circles, as most of us do, when shock and challenge take us to unknown landscapes, but she does not remain lost or victimized. When she finds the pomegranate tree, the one living thing in a barren land, when Hades appears and offers her its seeds, was she tricked? How do our initiations come to us? When she eats the seeds, she is changed, not only because she must remain there one month for each seed, but because when next she opens her eyes she sees beauty and wealth surrounding her that she was not able to perceive before. The world of the Sun and her mother the Earth will fight for her, but the land of night, dreams, and death has balanced her, Nahual and Tonal, and she becomes a Goddess in her own right. I bring this up because, again, there is power in names, and Garnet comes from the Latin word granatum, which meant pomegranate. Perhaps this is only because the stone we visualize is a deep red, and has a similar appearance, but perhaps not. Garnets can actually form in varying shades of red, orange, green, or black, and there are variations to their properties, yet they share a common theme. Garnets are strong allies for grounding one’s dreams, creative visions, inspirations, and desires into the physical realm. They increase the manifestation of wealth on all levels, including our ability to enjoy the worldly experience and our own embodiment.
In my experience, Garnets awaken the energy of the first and second chakras (or tontonalcayos), so that they support the dreaming side of our nature by allowing us to root ourselves deeply with the power of the Earth and its unseen layers, and from there work in co-creation, using our sexual energy to manifest. This allows us to create more beauty, harmony, security, and magic in our lives, because when we lose connection with those first two centers, our entire energetic system will suffer. We cannot rise to the higher levels of dreaming in a manner that we can contain if we do not have this base in order. Fear, trauma, sexual harm, addiction, and ancestral wounds are among the forces that compromise these first and very important energy centers. Garnet can help to heal, clear and reactivate this foundation within us. When we are healthy in this way, and grounded, we can reach further heights. Sensuality is more than sexual exchange. It is also the ecstatic relationship we are able to have with life, with magic, and with the Earth. Garnet enlivens us, drawing us back down into the body, where our true center of power lies.
As with all stones, the color influences the attributes, and each variety is worth specific investigation. The green varieties, Grossular Garnet and Uvarovite Garnet will have influence on abundance in an earthly sense. The more orange stone, Spessartine Garnet will activate the law of attraction and creativity, harmonizing with the sexual chakra. The black Andradite Garnet brings protection, grounding, and a deepening into the mysterious layers of life and within the collective unconscious. The rose red stones, Rhodolite Garnet, connect the first chakras to the heart and crown chakras, bringing emotional healing and increasing the ability to receive love. The deepest red stone is Almandine Garnet, and the one that has most association with ancient cultures and their legacies within us. It helps us connect with the vital Earth energies, grounding us, enlivening the joy we are capable of, and clearing the Old Winds of ancestral and karmic patterns, so our vital energies can rise, taking us to our flowering.
Suggestions for working with Ashwaganda and Garnet together:
These two allies are nourishing and can bring a thread of comforting self care and nurturing to us on a daily basis, even as they activate powerful healing within us. Garnet is often found in jewelry, and a helpful stone to wear with intention. Ashwaganda, for all its potency, can be made into a delicious, frothy drink. Since both of these allies activate the sensuous within us, enjoy your relationship with them. Allow them to make you feel nurtured, grounded, warm, and beautiful. The cold part of Winter, is the perfect time to invite this kind of inner warmth.
May you enjoy your embodiment and reclaim vitality, as you deepen in your journey!
In Joyful Perseverance,
the eleventh house
-This blog was written by Melusina Gomez. For more information about her work and healing practices please visit www.metzmecatl.com
sources:
Ayurvedic Healing, A Comprehensive Guide, Dr.David Frawley
The Yoga Of Herbs, An Ayurvedic Guide To Herbal Medicine, Dr. David Frawley and Dr. Vasant Lad
www.mekosha.com blog
With insights from Dr. Arinn Testa of Route Five Medicinals
The Book of Stones, Who They Are & What They Teach, Robert Simmons & Naisha Ahsian
crystal channeling with Almandine Garnet