✨On Ritual & Incense ⎸ October newsletter

 

As cultures around the world gather to celebrate our ancestors in autumn, we can consider our own small rituals, such as making incense.

I love small rituals. Having lived out of a backpack for most of my twenties and still traveling a lot in my thirties, small yet potent packages of transportable sweetness help me create a sense of belonging no matter where I land. On most adventures, I commune with the landscape of my inner and outer terrain with my traveling trifecta of tea, journal, and incense.

You can create a traveling incense box from upcycled matchboxes or mint tins. Consider adding:

• Matches or lighter
• Small incense holder
• Other aromatic incense plants, such as sages, cedar, or palo santo
• A meaningful poem or picture 

Walk, bike, or drive to a special spot outdoors. Bring a little tea, incense, and perhaps some poetry. Laozi's “Dao De Jing” (老子道德經) is perfect. Sit solo, or with a friend. Watch the landscape, sip tea, and savor aromas. Meditate on dancing smoke, commune with your ancestors and the spirits of the land, and wiggle your toes. Feed your free and easy wanderer self with beauty and breathe. 

Read more about how to...

MAKE INCENSE

Labrador tea (Rhododendron columbianum, Ericaceae). Sierra Nevada, CA

Coming up

• ✨Acupressure Meditations✨ class at Ema's Herbs by donation. 10/8, 3-4 pm
• Samhain Ecstatic Dance at Bodhi Salt with community-DJ Karlos Benavides! 10/20
• Ojai Herbal Symposium in Ojai, CA and online. Offering 12 CEUs for acupuncturists! 11/11 - 11/12
• Elemental Creativity at Green Gulch Farm— art, movement, and meditation with Zen Monk Fu Schroeder, Art Monk Abbess Suiko McCall, and me! 11/29 - 12/3
• The Five Elements of Yoga & Chinese Medicine retreat at Esalen with Paula Wild and me, 12/11 - 12/15

Recommendations

• Facial Guasha tutorial, my newest blog & video for Mountain Rose Herbs
• Ketamine Assisted Therapy Training with Horizon Healing, two weekends in November
• Upcoming Tea Talks interview with Robin Rose Bennett, author of the upcoming Green Witch's Pocket Book Of Wisdom! (Releasing 10/31)
• Celebrate your ancestors with Waves of Grief, a free year-round Ocean & Surf Therapy program. Second Sundays at Solimar with Dr. Anna of Hydrotheory

❤️ With gratitude,

Jiling Lin, L.Ac. 林基玲

acupuncture . herbs . yoga

JILINGLIN.COM

INSTAGRAM

FACEBOOK

Book your acupuncture appointment here

BOOK NOW

If someone forwarded you this email & you loved it, then subscribe here!

SUBSCRIBE

ACU-WAITLIST │ Having trouble booking an appointment? Get on my waitlist here. I will only message if spaces open (maximum once a week). If necessary, please remember to reschedule your appointments at least 48 hours in advance, to prevent being charged for the full rate of your appointment. This allows others the opportunity to receive treatment. Thank you!

Free & Easy Wanderer Incense Recipe

Learn how to make Free & Easy Wanderer Incense (逍遙散香) on my Mountain Rose Herbs blog, YouTube video, and/ or podcast. Enjoy!     

🌻 Learn more about Jiling's acupuncture, herbs & yoga offerings at JilingLin.com

🌻 Sign up for our monthly newsletter at Sendfox.com/Jiling

Energetic/ Ritualistic Plant Medicine

Energetic/ Ritualistic Plant Medicine

Jiling Lin - www.LinJiling.blogspot.com - 2015

Different types of Incense

- Loose leaf                        - Smudge bundles

- Powder                             - Kyphi/ incense cakes

- Incense cones/ sticks     - Smoking blends

Making Kyphi

Proportions

- Berries 1 (powder)               - Resin 1 (powder)

- Leaves/ flowers 3 (chopped fine)

- Roots/ bark 1/2 (chopped fine)

- Beeswax 1/2                         - Honey/ wine

Directions

- Mix dry ingredients (first powdered, then chopped)

- Slowly add honey/ wine until it binds, (but isn’t wet)

- Coat parchment paper with 1-2 inches of mix

- Warm until it all coagulates

- Press flat to dry for up to a week

- Cut into small pieces to store

- Burn on charcoal

Making Flower Essences

It’s best to make flower essences when the flower is at the peak of its blossoming, or right before the peak. Go out in the morning with pruners, undistilled spring water, and a glass bowl or jar. Approach the flower or plant that you wish to make an essence of. Ask for permission to extract its essence, in whatever way feels the best to you. I like to make a prayer of gratitude, and sit with the plant for a while, before doing anything. Maybe I’ll observe the plant, draw it, photograph it, or just meditate with it. Do whatever feels the best for you, but it’s integral to establish a healthy relationship with the plant, before you try and make medicine with it. And, do not physically touch the plant that you are planning to make medicine with.

Once you are both ready for the next step, you can fill your glass bowl with water. Once again, make sure that you do not touch the plant with your hands, through this entire process. If you do touch the plant, your own energy may affect the flower essence. You can either clip the flower directly into the water, or you can just place the flower head into the water. I like to move around the flowers with tweezers. The traditional method is to clip the flowers directly into water, and cover the surface of the water with the flowers. Do what feels the best for you, in the moment. You can even experiment with both methods, and see how the different medicines feel.

Let the flowers sit in the water, in the sunlight, uncovered in a safe and lovely spot, for 4-6 hours. This amount of time depends upon your personal preferences, belief system, and the plant itself. Herbalist Mimi Kamp suggests leaving the flower in the water until the energetic feeling of the flower essence is stronger than the energetic feeling of the plant itself. She tests this by placing her hand over the plant and feeling its energy, then placing her hand over the essence and feeling that energy. Sometimes, people can be energetically sensitive and feel these subtle differences. Sometimes, this is difficult to experience. Do what feels best for you. The one rule with making flower essences is that there is no real rule. It’s an energetic medicine, and an intuitive art.

Once your essence is ready, carefully remove the flowers from the essence. Return them back to the Earth, giving thanks for their gifts. Dilute the water essence 1:1 with brandy, or 40% alcohol. (This can be substituted with vinegar too, but alcohol lasts longer.) Now, you have your mother essence!

Bottle and label your mother essence. Preserved in alcohol, she should last for a long time, if not indefinitely. Make sure you share! We tend to make too much flower essences, for a little goes a long way.

When you are ready to use your flower essence, fill a 1 ounce tincture bottle with 1:1 spring water to brandy. Add 10-30 drops of the mother essence to your bottle. Now, you have your stock essence. This is what is usually sold in the store.

Do the same thing again to make your dosage bottle. Fill a 1 ounce tincture bottle with 1:1 spring water to brandy. This time, just add 1 drop of the stock essence into this bottle. This is the final product. This is what you will carry around in your pocket, and take 4 drops 4 times a day, or as needed.

To effect long-lasting subtle change, take 4 drops of your dosage bottle flower essence, 4 times a day. It is like a constant subtle reminder to your self, to effect long-lasting change. Flower essences can also just be taken one drop at a time, for an experience, or to help relieve acute symptoms.

Some local CT “Dreaming Herbs”

- Mugwort               - Mullein              - Monarda

- Motherwort          - Mints                  - Horehound

- Coltsfoot               - Catnip               - Nettles

- Raspberry lf         - Juniper             - Pine

Plant Connection exercises

- Plant meditation               - Draw

- Botanize                            - Breath exercise

- Sense exploration

- Plant spirit journeying (see Eliot Cowan)

- Inner child work (see Julie McIntyre)

- Oneness exercise (see Tamarack Song)

- Experiment: sleep/ dream with, ingest in all forms...

~

Resources

The amazing Kiva Rose, on kyphi: 

http://bearmedicineherbals.com/incense.html

A previous post, on dreamwork: 

http://linjiling.blogspot.com/2014/05/dreams.html

A previous post, on different forms of meditation: 

http://linjiling.blogspot.com/2015/05/meditation.html

Howie Brounstein, on herbal smokes: 

http://botanicalstudies.net/herbalism/smoking.php