M Ljin

I am not sure if I fit the autistic label per se (it is debatable) but may have some challenges along those lines.

Whatever the label may be, I do find that I do poorly with stress unless that stress is strong enough to break through the fog of the mind, which is interesting. I also have issues with fatigue and am easily drained. After a sickness that began about a year ago and took a while to run itself out, I began investigating and supporting my body’s different systems through various herbal medicines and food changes. I started with the kidneys and found good remedies for them. Then I helped my liver to clear itself and return to a healthy state, and now I have been focused on the heart, which has been the most challenging so far.

I will mention that the head/brain was my focus before this sickness, where I worked at meditation very intensely. I was forced to stop because during the sickness, meditating made me feel nasty and gave me intense vertigo and partial blindness when I tried to get up.

To the heart again… the heart responds to our emotions, provides blood throughout the whole body. Interestingly, I read something about how in Chinese medicine, “phlegm fogging the heart” is considered to be the cause of some emotional and neurodevelopmental disorders. Stephen Buhner also made a case that the heart is not a pump in the middle of the body but something of much greater significance, the center of perception and feeling. I haven’t read too much about it, but from my own experience I would say that the heart is also the center of “self” and the strength of the heart has much to do with how much you are able to see yourself as a being in the world rather than a detached observer or passive victim. Actually Buhner said that too so I guess we’re on the same page.

One of my persistent issues is a lack of sense of self and hollow or detached feeling which apparently is more a trauma sort of thing. This was more common in my younger days, but it remains that my heart had been battered down and is not able to easily rouse the body to action (“shutdown” in psychiatric speak. A “meltdown” would be a stressful stimulus with an inability of the heart to take it in and respond to it, thus panic results.) So this in particular is heart qi deficiency rather than a manifestation of phlegm (drawing on my very superficial knowledge of TCM). Nevertheless perhaps one could say that autism might involve some sort of injury or constitutional weakness of the heart-mind that makes one less able to respond to and deal with stress.

As for Buhner’s “heart as the primary organ of perception” and the extrasensory perception I would not find any reason for disagreement in my personal experience. I believe in extrasensory perception and have witnessed it many times, so if some of this sounds crazy or illogical know that that’s where I am coming from. Buhner also mentions that our society is set up horribly for respecting the needs of the heart, with people being expected to suppress the heart and move on. He credits this as being part of why heart disease is so prevalent in modern society. People are supposed to beat down their heart with their head and move on. One time, I was feeling like I needed to feel good and responsible and go where my heart was telling me not to go to help someone with a task. This person was radiating stress and my heart was telling me to lay low and leave the person in peace, but I felt horrible. Not long after I started, I was feeling dizzy and getting pain in the heart! So I went away, holding compassion for my own heart, sat down somewhere comfortable and secluded and the pain went away. I felt fine afterward.

The point of this story being how awful and unnatural the present culture is about the issues of the heart. There is this culture where stomping on your heart and doing what you’re supposed to is the right and responsible way to go through life. Maybe instead of battering the heart around we could listen to it, nourish it, and in so doing work effectively and joyously and for the good of ourselves, other people, and Nature. The mind gets very focused on doing and deciding and seeing and thinking and reacting (including creativity and all the right brain sorts of things.) The heart of course is essential to all these processes and it is up to the heart to send blood to the brain, but the heart has a nervous system all of its own (and so does the gut). But if we lived our lives from the heart, the heart doesn’t miss anything—we would be working from what is truly important and our minds would be working in service to that.

At least for myself I have found that the herbs that work with the heart and blood have done the most for the fatigue, sluggishness, and for feelings of despondency and powerlessness—in other words strengthening the heart (and working with any underlying blood issues) seems to help with being less overwhelmed. So perhaps that is somewhere to investigate further. I have a few herbs that seem to have some benefit in this regard—motherwort is a well regarded heart herb that I have found to help. There are others that I am investigating, some of which I consider helpful and very safe, but need to think and possibly investigate more before sharing further. There really is a large overlap between herbs that affect the mind and those that affect the heart—take coffee and motherwort for some examples that I can mention—they have opposing effects on both the brain and the heart. I have not had a chance to try hawthorn in any substantial quantity. Hedge bindweed is also in this category as some preparations are very sedative (though this quality may be associated with headache and diarrhea!)

One other herb worth remarking on is nettle, which Pam Montgomery notes is good and well suited for someone who is excessively timid or afraid of everything (like how I feel not too infrequently!) It would seem to be that nettle has a strengthening and nourishing effect on the body-mind as a whole.

(Well I am up late, may have to do with drinking a blood purifying honeysuckle infusion.  according to Gerard it “removeth wearisomeness” which I definitely have noticed…)

I have an ambition to capture and sink 100% of rainwater that falls in a particular area of land.

In Hurricane Irene, five to ten inches of rain fell in two days. This was traumatic and terrifying for my part of the world, with many houses being carried away in floods. But Ben Falk didn’t think it was the storm’s fault.



Do you have any no runoff areas you’d like to share about, or ideas, or plans?

I have started by making swales (over the course of a few years I’ve made three thus far) and ponds. The third was started this fall—it’s small right now, no bigger than the last, but it is an important one as it is near the major source of drainage to the land.

Truthfully, every water catchment I have made so far fills up completely during snowmelt. This is similar in magnitude to a big rain storm, and there are few plants around to drink up the water on its course to the rivers. Not only that, but at snowmelt time, the first few inches of soil are thawed out, but everything underneath is still frozen so there can be minimal infiltration at this time. Everything needs to be held in a porous matrix (such as duff, rotting wood, etc.) or water catchment or it will definitely run off.

Not only snowmelt is there to ponder, but also the rain that comes with it and begins washing the snow down into the river! We generally get a big flood every spring and maybe again in summer.

On top of all this we have been in a state of drought for some years now, as the aquifer is depleted. People were worried about not having water in their wells this summer. Let’s turn this around!

I do notice that in the forests, the earth is unlikely to freeze as much as in an open meadow. Even a small amount of tree cover such as some young black locusts, has kept the ground thawed in one area. So clearly trees are helpful not only for evapotranspiration, mulch, hugels and biological water holding, but also for making a good infiltration microclimate!

I would say a good sweet pumpkin breaks the monotony with something fruity-tasting.

Summer is actually rather unproductive in my bioregion! We don’t have too many fruits here in the valley so it’s mostly green vegetables and mushrooms. Sometimes there will be a good flush of fruit—black raspberries, at least, can always be counted upon. Maybe I just need to get out more, though.

I tried rock tripe recently and it tasted like mushrooms. They also probably have lots of Vitamin D3 as a lichen, so helpful for warding off winter health issues. I am hoping to try more different species of lichen too but unsure where to start. Rock tripe is relatively uncommon and slow growing so I’d be careful of harvesting too much. There are plenty of greenshield lichens around and I’d love to know whether those could be made edible.

Homemade hominy is always tasty too and has a particular freshness.

Herr

Is that English enough?

Fear

I agree with Mary that it can he necessary to add compost. I think that compost is what made my garden soils deep and black, and now they’re still deep and black every year ehen in patches where no compost is added. I also let weeds grow where perennials aren’t established, so no ground is bare for long.

Also, grasses are very good fertility-creating and preserving plants. They let you keep soil on the land better than any other sort of plant except trees.

I am suspicious, however, of importing fertility from elsewhere because I think at a landscape scale. Of course, if it’s a waste product like sawdust or bagged leaves, that can be a very helpful source.

It would be interesting to hear what people think of the difference between mulching (dry decomposition) versus piling together as a compost heap or in the digestive system of animals (wet decomposition). I have a suspicion that the more effective option for soil improvement is the wet decomposition in an appropriate microclimate with food scraps, humanure, etc., and then working that into the soil—as it seems like it would mimic best the way that grassland ecosystems are supposed to build their excellent soils.

Bent

Lent

Bunt

Hart