Kava: Herbal Stories From My Heart to Yours

Yesterday, something profound happened to me.

I was driving into town for an appointment with my therapist when I felt this overwhelming physical and emotional sense of panic come over me.

“Whoa. Is something bad about to happen?” I thought to myself. “Just keep your hands on the steering wheel and breathe.”

I felt this constriction in my chest. My breathing and heart rate felt normal, and then I can only describe what happened next as having a stress response on top of my stress response. My mouth was dry, and I felt that surge of adrenaline spread throughout my arms and legs.

“Just breathe and keep your hands on the wheel. The exit is almost here…”

This isn’t the first time I have had such an intense experience. It had happened once before. Instead of being in it fully with no coping mechanisms at all, I kept my observer in place and just continued to breathe.

A part of me wanted to pull my car off the road and dial 911, but then I was hit with a scene from the movie Something’s Gotta Give when Jack Nicholson goes to the hospital and he’s lying there thinking that he is having a heart attack, when the doctor comes in and says, “Nope. This is stress.”

That little voice inside me said, “Charlotte, this is your wake up call. You need to change something in your life.”

When I got to my therapist’s office (great timing or what?!), I immediately told her that I was going to chew a kava tablet that I had in my purse. So I chewed it, drank some water, and within about 10 minutes burst into tears. Kava is a skeletal muscle relaxant. I was holding so much tension in my body that as soon as my body relaxed, water started to flow in the form of sobbing tears.

Then, it hit me. As a mother and business owner, I have just kept on moving over the last few months. Something happens, and I want to cry but I don’t. I haven’t been going to bed early enough; I am weary, and the tension has just kept building in my body. And this presidential election...good Lord, the things I hear coming out of people’s mouths, hurt my heart.

As the kava worked on me, I had a safe place to let go and simply sob. Within about an hour, the heaviness in my chest and my sense of impending doom was gone. I literally felt it leave my body in a big whoosh. Bye. Bye.

Good quality herbal medicine astounds me in the way that it interacts with our spirits. Yes, I love science, too. In fact, if you want to read more about kava from this perspective, get your hands on the latest edition of Principles and Practice of Phytotherapy by Kerry Bone and Simon Mills p699-718.

Today, I want to bring you my visceral experience of this plant. While phytochemistry is real and important and explains a lot about how plants work, it is also true that herbal medicine brings forth the mystery of life. Real food and whole herbs is more than its chemistry, it has an energy to it.

The whole is greater than its parts, 1+1=3 and to me, that is the realm of Spirit.

Of Nature.

Of God.

Of the Universe.

Use whatever language you want to.

The bottom line is that anti-anxiety drugs like benzodiazepines may temporarily take away an uncomfortable feeling, but they don’t touch the Spiritual component of being alive. You see, in my experience of kava, it brings me back to myself. If Spirit or God or Source or Being or Universe had a feeling it would be one of presence saying, "I am here with you.”

So when I say that kava brings me back to myself. It gets me out of my ego and out of survival mode. For me, it is an herb of connection. I come back to myself, so that I can be more present to you and all of life.

So when I lose myself, how do I feel? Like some version of the panic I described earlier. It might manifest as butterflies in my stomach, lots of mental chatter, the inability to find words, an upset stomach, a rising feeling of not being in my body or I just might feel global tension in my body.

Or worst of all: that feeling where everything becomes an emergency? Just that morning before the stress of driving into town, I literally could not figure out what to do next. I kept dragging myself from one task to another: pay the bill, answer the phone, reply to the email, send the text message, but the thing under that was this feeling of being paralyzed: is this REALLY what I need to be doing right now? I dunno! Ugh. It’s so awful, everything pulling on me.

Does anyone know what I am describing here?

Then, I chew a kava tablet and a sense of normalcy returns. I become a more grounded, higher version of myself. Open, and yet, contained. As a sensitive woman living in an insensitive world, kava is my herbal ally.

A river can’t flow when the water is dammed up. It gets stagnant. Kava entered my body yesterday and removed the dam. Life began to move through me again. My physical and spiritual heart relaxed and order was restored. I have recommitted myself to going to bed as close to 9PM as possible, knowing that enough is enough. Whatever it is that is undone will be there in the morning.

Let’s face it…people have lots of unhealthy coping mechanisms, like alcohol, recreational drugs, pharmaceutical drugs, working, exercise, food, sugar, fill-in-the-blank. These are devices we use to numb ourselves from the pain of being alive. None of those coping strategies work in the body like an herb. Kava seems to facilitate some sort visceral feeling of enlightenment. It doesn’t numb me; it allows me to be MORE present while not feeling alone.

Fascinating.

Here’s another kava story for you.

A few years ago, our entire family had the flu. My husband was sick. My one-year-old son was sick. And I was really, really sick, but it’s the same dynamic at work that was in the previous story: what’s a mother to do because I had to take care of my son, right?

Well, the aches and pains of the inflammatory cascade going on my body were keeping me awake. I hurt so bad that I was literally bracing against the pain. I was really concerned about my son, so now I wasn’t sleeping well at all and a fever was setting in. I finally got Drake to sleep one night when I found myself sitting at the bar in our kitchen with my head in my hands, weeping, wondering, “Is there anything else I can do here? Anything?” And, then, one word came to me – kava.

So then I did what any good herbalist would do. I chewed a tablet. Within minutes, I took a deep breath. I hadn’t been breathing. I felt my shoulders come down from my ears. I thought, “Yes, tonight I will sleep.” And I did…all night long. I woke up that morning drenched in sweat. My fever had broken and I could feel that I had turned a corner with the infection. I was on the mends. Instead of thwarting the healing process, like a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug would have done, kava facilitated my healing process.

When I reflect on these experiences, the commonality is that under very different circumstances, kava restores flow. Remember, life is movement. Restoring flow in the physical, spiritual and emotional dimensions of being alive is NOT a little thing. It is a really, really BIG deal.

I salute you, kava, for bringing me back to myself over and over and over and over again. Thank you.

Before I go, it’s getting hot outside now here in Austin, so I want to leave you with one of my favorite recipes, which is the ultimate beverage of relaxation and restoration. From my heart to yours…

Kava Coladas

1 can organic, full fat coconut milk

1 banana

1 bag frozen organic pineapple

8 Kava Forte tablets from MediHerb*, ground into a powder in a coffee grinder or crushed by hand with a mortar and pestle

1 Tablespoon organic vanilla extract (optional)

Combine all ingredients in a blender. Pour into a wine glass and garnish with fresh strawberries. This will make about one quart.

*This is the brand of kava that I use. If you want understand why, then please read my previous blog Herbal Knowledge is Power.

You can adjust the amount of kava tablets for the portion sizes you serve (This proportion is 1 kava tablet in 4 ounces of the beverage. That’s ½ cup.) I have experimented with adding 1 cup of frozen strawberries, blueberries, and mangos to the recipe and all were delicious.

Drink in peace.

Love,

Charlotte

P.S. If you're not already a subscriber, be sure to sign up and get more recipes and in-depth advice to help you reclaim your vitality.

Charlotte,

5 Ways Social Media Healed My Soul

“For every hour spent with technology, one needs to spend an hour outside in nature.” -Richard Louv

Healing is never just about one thing. The progression of chronic disease involves numerous factors and so does healing from it.

I teach wellness because I want to give people the holistic tools to feel more alive. I like to think of eating real food as a gateway to a more vibrant life, not the end all, be all. Taking care of your body is the first step towards fulfilling your destiny.

As Stephen Pressfield says in his book titled Turning Pro, “The physical leads to the spiritual” (p103).

The thing that kept me going through the ups and downs of my own healing process was that I wanted to contribute something to the world. I think we all do. It’s difficult to feel motivated in a body is that is sick. I know because I used to have bouts of inflammatory-induced depression to the point of sobbing on my bathroom floor, wondering what this life was for.

Suicide would cross my mind. I just kept going through the motions, hoping for more. My spirit was trapped in my body that just wanted to lie in bed all day. In fact, that’s one of the questions I ask my clients: what will you do when you feel better? What will you do with newfound energy?

Well, I will tell you about one of the things I did after coming out of my last round of depression…I started using social media as a creative platform.

I just turned 40 years old, so my generation didn’t grow up with email and the internet. I had my first email account in college, along with my first laptop. When social media started showing itself, I just wasn’t interested. I was “too busy for that shit.” I signed up for a Facebook and LinkedIn account and never participated.

Shortly after giving birth to my son in 2012, I literally deleted these two accounts. Bye. Bye. If I got one more insincere happy birthday message from my Facebook “friends” I was going to scream. I was disgusted with it. As an outsider looking in, I saw only the dark side: people depicting nothing but the “happy, happy joy, joy times” of life or their latest accomplishments, along with their beautiful faces or hot bodies. All the while, observing people unable to look each other in their eyes in real time. I did not want to have anything to do with any of it.

If you know me, you will feel my passion for life (that’s the thing that got me off the bathroom floor), but that passion has another side to it - righteousness. I like to think that I have educated opinions about topics that I study, but I made a mistake with social media. I had an uneducated opinion. I thought I knew the “right way” but I didn’t.

One potent form of healing is admitting when you are wrong.

I started to realize that I had made a mistake when a colleague told me to read Tribes by Seth Godin. I didn’t purchase the book until I went to a functional medicine conference, and I heard about it again. Fascinating read about how the world has changed and that this “thing” that I hated with all of my being was here to stay.

Ha! Well, that book and a few conversations with colleagues lit a fire under my ass that isn’t burning out anytime soon. Thank you, Universe!

Up until recently, my motto had been Go Local. Now it is Go Local AND Go Global.

Three years into motherhood I was ready to enter a bigger game. I set up numerous social media accounts, checked them out and decided to put my efforts into Instagram as eatinpeacewc where I now have 3,000+ followers, which means nothing and something at the same time. While I hope my posts are useful to my readers, my journey with social media journey has changed me in a positive way. It has literally healed my soul on an unexpected, deep level. Here is what I mean by that:

#1. I am getting more comfortable living with fear and a sensitive nervous system. I am learning to trust.

When I got involved with Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, I was so scared that I came up with a plan. I would pay Drake’s babysitter to post my content. That way if something sucked or offended someone, while I may have created the content, hey, she posted it. It took about a week to realize that this thing called social media was safe to explore! And yes, I have stepped into controversy at times. I have stirred the pot. I have made mistakes. I have learned something. And I am still here – alive and well.

In his new book How to Be Here, the author Rob Bell says this:

“If you are working on something, about to deliver it, moments from opening the doors, an hour from everybody arriving, a week from the release date, two minutes from getting the results back, and you have butterflies in your stomach, be grateful. You are in a wonderful place. Nerves are God’s gift to you, reminding you that your life is not passing you by. Make friends with the butterflies. Welcome them when they come, revel in them, enjoy them, and if they ever go away, do whatever it takes to put yourself in a position where they return. Better to have a stomach full of butterflies than to feel like your life is passing you by” (p106).

YES!

#2. I have reignited my love of sharing ideas and connecting with people, and that’s the upside of social media.

I enjoy networking and consider myself a perpetual student. Now I get to do this on the world- wide web, expanding my reach far beyond the people I am physically with. One of my first virtual friends was the Forest Wyfe. She’s a wonderful herbalist! Her family gave up the city life to go live in the Appalachian Mountains, and she’s documenting this transition for herself, writing of falling in love with the land and the seasons. Her Instagram account is amazing. I wouldn’t know her if I wasn’t here in the virtual world. Reconnecting with old friends is great, too.

Sure, social media has a dark side. EVERYTHING does. You see what you focus on. Some things I witness on social media astound me. I ask myself: how can that be useful to anyone?! Delete. Some people do the same thing to my posts. GREAT! I want to find the people who are truly interested in vitality and wellness.

The ability for the small business owner to promote their product, services and ideas on social media blows me away. I feel like a kid again. My sense of awe for life is returning through this technology that I used to make fun of! Isn’t life funny?

#3. Posts turn the ordinary into art.

If you’re not familiar with Instagram, it is based on pictures. When whatever I’m experiencing strikes me as being worthy or beautiful, I snap a photo and then I say something about it. I don’t always know what I’m going to say, but if I just sit with it, something comes and sometimes that something blows me away. Wow! I didn’t see that coming. I am accessing a part of myself as a creative being that I didn’t know I had, and it’s so much fun to watch it unfold.

I got a call the other day from an old friend following my Facebook account and she said, “Who are you?!”

I said, “I’m me! You are seeing my internal world that I keep hidden. And there’s this creative force moving through me that is so damn fun.”

I just started a book titled Improv Wisdom: Don’t Prepare Just Show Up by Patricia Ryan Madsen. The author takes all the wisdom she has learned from improvisation and applies it to life. Brilliant book. She writes this, “You don’t need to do anything at all. Trust that the gift is already there. Then discover what it is...Ideas, songs, poems, paintings come through the individual but are not thought to be of him. In Bali everyone is considered an artist. Art is simply what one does, not who one is” (p39).

Is this thing called social media really ART, instead of the demonic force that I thought it was? I think it is probably both, as it reveals the best and worst of mankind. It turns out I’ve been prejudiced against social media; lumping it into a category of uselessness and excessive vanity. What a turnaround for me.

#4. I am so over perfectionism.

One time when I was in college, I called home and I told my mom, “Hey, can you do me a favor and bring me a shirt that’s in my closet when you come to visit?” She agreed and I said, “Ok, great. When you go into my closet. Turn to the left. Third stack of clothes from the right, there should be a peach shirt, second from the bottom.” She said something to the effect of, “Shit, Char, are you a serial killer?” I said, “No, I’m just a perfectionist.”

I thought perfectionism was noble, but it is really fear, in disguise. I had to get over the desire to be perfect in this realm of social media. I take a picture. I say something about it. I hit the post button. Later, sometimes I realize that I needed to say it differently. Sometimes I make mistakes.

People are more forgiving than we think.

Most people are too busy with their own lives to care about yours. They may have a fleeting thought, but then they move on. As one of my mentors used to say, “Everyone’s worried about what their neighbor thinks. Trust me. He or she isn’t thinking at all. Thinking is hard work.”

#5. I am finding my voice in the world.

There are a lot of issues that are important to me, like how we feed our families, childhood vaccinations, how we birth babies, getting people to understand the value of sleep, the value of a fever during acute infections, how food allergies are a causative factor in many chronic diseases…I could go on and on. Many of these topics are controversial and need a voice. Bottom line: I am finding my voice, and it feels soooo damn good.

It feels so good that I am writing a book titled Eat in Peace to Live in Peace: 7 Secrets to Claim Your Vitality. Writing a book has been a long-term dream of mine that didn’t find me until I reached a new level of vitality.

I am starting to see that art comes in many different forms and has the potential to expand the artist’s consciousness. Participating in art and the creative process, rather than just being a spectator, can make you a better, more compassionate human being. At least, that’s what has happened for me. I feel less judgmental of both myself and others.

I am sharing my passion with less righteousness.

I could say to myself, “Oh, wow, I have been missing out all these years!” But the truth is that I have been doing exactly what I needed to be doing, and so have you. We are always where we need to be until our souls desire another level of expansion.

So here I am, folks, in this strange and welcoming virtual world where every post and every blog is like throwing a pebble into a pond and watching the water ripple out, never knowing who I am going to reach and how my writing will affect them, but trusting that I am doing exactly what I need to be doing.

Thanks for being here with me! And if you know someone who judged social media, like I did, pass this on to them (print it if you need to). Healing can come in the most unexpected ways, even through technology – hope to see you on Instagram. Once again, you can find me at eatinpeacewc!

And please sign up for my newsletter, so that you can keep learning and increasing your vitality.

Meanwhile, stay tuned for my next post where I will talk about holistic ways to deal with rejection. Once you start putting yourself out there, your coping mechanisms for rejection will define you, not your successes.

Parents, Eat Food, Don’t Drink It: A Call to Action!

Many of our food and drink choices are so deeply engrained into our culture that we don’t ever question them. Unfortunately our “norm” is what’s killing us and making our children sick.

I was blown away about a year and a half ago when we went out to eat and had the following conversation with the waiter.

The waiter said, “Would your kid like a coke or orange juice?”

I said, “No, thank you. Water will do.”

He said, “Are you sure? It’s free.”

I said, “Both of those beverages are different forms of poison. Water is good. Thank you.” And that effectively ended our conversation.

Yes, the fatigue of parenting has made me more blunt, but that’s not a bad thing when it comes to maintaining the boundaries necessary for my child to flourish. The entire exchange agitated me because clearly, I was not the norm. Most parents do not see any harm in giving these drinks to their kids and perhaps are operating under the illusion that they are healthy.

Let’s begin by pointing out that our ancestors did not juice their fruit. Most fruit has a substantial amount of fiber, which performs three distinct functions. The most well known is its ability to facilitate awesome bowel movements. Fiber also slows the release of sugar into the blood stream. Third, it acts as a prebiotic, which feeds the healthy bacteria in our digestive tracts.

Mother Nature packages foods perfectly for us. Let’s respect her wisdom and strive to eat fruit in its whole food form.

Speaking of Nature, soda is clearly a modern, man-made, processed beverage that our bodies have never seen before. It has no place in an adult’s body or a child’s and really deserves no further explanation. It is toxic and addictive.

Every one of us has to face the fact that we live in a carbohydrate-addicted society. We are wired for sweet taste. As a result of our carbohydrate-dependent bodies and sedentary lifestyles, we have epidemics of obesity and diabetes. These two phenomena often develop in childhood.

Parents have a huge responsibility to ensure that their child can taste the sweetness of a blueberry or even a cashew. The taste of concentrated fruit sugars, white sugar, and artificial sweeteners pervert our taste buds, and we then lose perception of Nature’s sweetness.

Bottom line: your kids mimic you. Eat your calories; don’t drink them!

I was amazed early on with how our son would walk up to us and want a drink of whatever it is we were consuming. “Wow,” I would think to myself. “How tragic would it be if I was drinking a Coke filled with high fructose corn syrup?” Let’s end at least one tragedy in the world. You are in control of the beverages and foods in your house. Act like it.

Processed foods exist because we buy them. Put your money where your mouth is and take all that money that you use to buy juice, sodas, and other man-made beverages and buy real food instead.

Eating well may not be easy, but it is VERY simple…so simple that we miss it. My wish for you: stop missing it. Pay attention. Think before you put something into your body or your child’s. Embrace your power as a consumer and as a parent and stop this madness.

Whew…I just had to get that message out! I’m sorry I had to yell, but I love you and sometimes we have to have the tough talks. Eat (and drink) in Peace, my friends.

Love,

Charlotte