To take a herbal tea is so much more than just having a healthy drink. The focussed desire and intent to embark on our very own healing journey with herbs is a powerful way to understand the true nature of our physical and mental constitution. It can be so much more worthwhile if we perceive this simple act as an opportunity to unlock the powerful, magical and transformative gifts of the plant world and engage in a relationship with our green allies and their medicine. This is when we can get to experience real, life-affirming and holistic herbal therapy that is so easy and accessible to return the body to a state of natural balance so that it can heal itself.

We might have noticed how sometimes we are instinctively drawn to a certain herbal tea blend that an inner voice is urging us to give a try? This could be actually be attentive listening to what our intuition is telling us and will serve us well. We take our special healing herbal tea home and optimistically start on our new healing regime. So how do we go about doing this is in the most optimising way to help overcome a niggling ailment that may have been haunting our days? It might be growing nervous tension, anxiety or a nasty, itchy skin rash, aching, inflamed joints, or perhaps a persistent UTI like cystitis that is disrupting our contentedness and well being. It may be an underlying gut issue that is undermining our vitality, persistent constipation or a challenging phase we are enduring like menopause or prostate problems.  Perhaps it is just a wholesome desire for a good detox to accelerate our wellness program or boost our cerebral capacity or sexual vigour.  One thing for sure, there will be a herbal tea beautifully suited for every individual’s needs. 

We probably all have a plethora of herbal teas in our cupboards and have maybe never given a second thought to how we might use them in the most optimal, healing way to exert the most positive shift to our health. We might have a cup here or there of some teas and other teas whose taste we prefer we might use more prolifically. Indeed some herbal blends are perfect to take now and then for sheer enjoyment and as a more salubrious alternative to caffeinated beverages. 

Sometimes a simple light infusion that has steeped for ten minutes or so is just the go for a sedative nightcap to help quell sleeplessness or a soothing digestive tea or “tisane” to settle nausea, indigestion or a tummy upset. Such situations will respond very nicely to short-term treatments that simply involve taking a cup of specific tea to exact desired results more quickly.

There are other times that we may wonder why we are not rewarded with the kind of beneficial results that we are seeking. For starters, some kinds of health problems are best suited to using herbal teas in a very systematic way. That means going the distance and flushing the body through with large amounts of herbal decoction on a daily basis until we notice the condition improve. This is certainly the case with more entrenched, chronic conditions that will not particularly respond much at all to taking herbal teas sporadically for a short duration of time. Important factors to consider are how strong to make our herbal medicine and how much herbal liquid we consume over a day. If we allow the herbs to steep for longer, preferably over night, we will be creating a cold decoction that has drawn more medicinal actives from the herbs and accordingly will be stronger in its actions. It will be most constructive to use a generous tablespoon of herbs and add to a litre or more of boiled water; this proportioned amount of therapeutic liquid will be our quota for the day to thoroughly cleanse and nourish our body appropriately.

If we diligently and consistently follow a more protracted program of herbal treatment, we will reach a point where we have a solid body of work behind us to better measure our progress and see and experience actual positive outcomes. When we actively take our personal health into our own hands, we can be rewarded with a certain pleasure, not only with having assuaged some ongoing ailment and but also because we may have averted the need to take more intense prescription drugs with associated side effects. As we enjoy the fruits of our herbal efforts we deservedly feel a satisfying sense that we are ultimately being responsible for our own health and well being and this is a good thing.