Chamomile — Matricaria recutita

Chamomile is poignantly first encountered through smell, a sweet and instantaneously relaxing fragrance, and yet it is stimulating. While the scent itself cools all inflammation and aggression, it is far from passive, it is a reprieve of excessive vital force through active engagement. A strong infusion is a completely intertwined combination of bitterness and sweetness, and all the while with aromatic movement underpinning it all. The bitterness is most dominant and brings an immediate downbearing sensation, a slight shiver, a dropping inward, a relaxation, an easefullness. My mouth waters and my appetite is stimulated, a bitter tonic. It is so comforting and warm and home-like, ‘ground-apple’ it is named for. It is sweet, and yet it is not still, it allows, it opens, it ensures that this sense of home is attained through the overall action of the plant; it is not a simple pure relaxant like many relaxant nervines, nor does it function like a hypnotic nervine, just sedating and suppressing the experience of life. Most notable is a strong relaxation of tension, more expensiveness, a bit of a re-embodiment and a heart opening, it opens an awareness of the actual state of my fatigue. The delicious sweetness mixed with this relaxation is perhaps an illumination of chamomile’s aid with nervous system tonification and repair, rebuilding can only occur within a state that allows for such. This potent medicine acts through a gentle yet consistently profound shift in the tension of the body that regulates all processes, a healthy balance of orienting from a present and stress free seat of consciousness, gentle and yet extremely strong in its action. There is also a mildly astringency, helping restoring this sense of self and balancing, of regulating the tension to ensure healthy flow, not simply pure relaxation.

This is a medicine for the modern world, for strain and stress, for coffee and alcohol, for taking in insane amounts of information to processes, for trying to do more than is possible to do in a day, every single day. This is a medicine for teaching one how to engage with life, how to meet life, how to be in the constant unfolding present moment with all of oneself. To see the rising, the random, the chaos, and to not be overwhelmed, to just be with the curiosity of the next bend in the river with all of oneself, to learn how to be in the river of life, navigating completely from a place of truth and stillness. To learn to put a paddle in and respond from a fully rooted place of love by being in relationship with oneself, with all of oneself, with both the joy and celebration and with the pain and suffering. Chamomile helps in learning how to orient from love despite the constant change that is demanded every moment, despite the endlessly accumulating trauma of life’s experiences. It is only from this place that we may understand, integrate, and truly be with the meanings of the events of this earthly existence. 

While it is commonly viewed as a gentle plant and simply a “sleepytime tea”, a strong cup of chamomile is sincerely profound. In Chinese medicine it is the liver which guides and directs the source qi, the vital force, the meeting of our unique articulation of consciousness with our unique combination of essence. It is this meeting of fire and water that creates the source qi which allows for the potential to engage with destiny in this mortal life, it is just that, only potential. This force still has to be applied to life, to be willed into direction, destiny does not engage effortlessly, we must constantly choose to be on the true path. We do not learn the lessons of this life without getting our feet wet, it takes trust and curiosity, wonder, risk, seeing what is by letting go and learning to be guided by creation. The liver qi guides and directs and orients all the processes of life, and the connective tissues are the liver and gallbladder zangfu in manifest form, the wood element, the fifth element, the element of ether and consciousness, of engaging and responding with life, the unfolding dance, the seamless reaction, the beautiful collaboration of all pieces of oneself with this precious moment. The wood element is one walking down the steep mountain path without thinking about it and yet constantly choosing; it is the coordination of all the pieces that allows for one to walk in the world. It is movement and aliveness, it is choice. The fundamental truth of existence in these bodies is movement, constant change. Breathing is the primordial movement that defines the human body, a dynamic dance of so many pieces and parts, continually choosing each next breath, continually choosing to take in and be in relationship with the world around us, and it is through the breath that we may directly regulate the tension held in our bodies.

In this directing of all the pieces there is the earth and the muscles and physical body, the heart and the blood and awareness, the waters and the yin of the body, the air the qi and the capacity to do everything, but all of this has to be organized and coordinated through the passages of the body, the fascia, the connective tissue. Consciousness pulls upon the sinews and the passageways of possibility either open or close. Energy flows just as a river does, confined by the river banks that hold it, it is either wide or narrow, deep or shallow, and this determines how energy moves through a space and what it feeds, what other lifeforms the flowing energy is in contact with. Pain is resistance, it is blockage of energy, it is obstructions on the path of life, it is feedback that tells us that something is not right, something is not smoothly flowing in the rivers of our being. When liver qi stagnates, the source qi does not flow smoothly, tension increases, and constriction of the channels of all of the body result. The connective tissues are the passageways and the conduit for life, they are the web and the field within us and beyond; the fascia is the container that is the universe, it holds the extracellular environment, the place where all qi transformations at every moment are occurring, how we are in contact and relationship with life at every moment. We take in the world through fluids and into our blood where we feel the world as it comes into relationship with our cells, the cellular metabolic wastes return via the lymphatic fluids — everything is regulated via the waters of the body. And there must be free and easy movement within this environment. That which holds the passageways of life therefore are conduits for information. Fascia and ‘ground substance’ is a liquid crystalline matrix of connective tissue and the extracellular fluids continually and instantaneously hold awareness of all parts of self at once via tension that moves faster than the speed of light.

When an obstacle, a challenge, a confrontation is met this is an asking for change and adaptation to the way that things are. This is being asked of us in each moment, a constant reorientation to the way that things truly are. When a boulder rolls into the river, the water must find a way around it, it must find a new path. So too we must constantly be with what is, we do not have control of much and we must make peace with this. This is the art, and when there is this restriction, there is tension as the channels become more narrow, there is less space for resilience and flexibility, this leads to pain and heat. It is the unwillingness to change and adapt through the connective tissues, the consciousness, the nervous system which controls these smooth muscle passageways that is the source of suffering.

This holding on is rooted in fear, in expectation of the way we think things are supposed to be, but this futile attempt of control turns into stagnation which turns into heat which creates a buildup of vital force, the increased pressure of the river damages the walls around it. The body must still do all the processes to maintain our being, it just has to function in narrower spaces, less room for the healthy balanced yin of relaxation and lubrication along the channels, it must push harder and faster to do the same tasks. There is a lack of harmony of the inner and outer world, the inner belief and outer action. Emotions are the guides of existence that inform us of how life feels, they offer insight of how to respond to the world. When there is resistance, when one is irritable, angry about the state of things, it is a feeling that informs us something needs changing. An adaptation, a shift, a change is required before the inner waters can once again be still, we are confronted with responsibility of being, of being alive and in relationship with the world around us, there is no separation and there is no avoiding. A reckoning of what is must come, a tolling of the grand balance, a judgement. At the root of this anger, pain, pressure, and frustration are feelings that offer motivation for a more harmonious alignment, for a more easeful experience, less filled with constant friction and resistance. When one is continually wining, complaining, hypersensitive and hyper-reactive, one is not orienting from clear objective perception.

Chamomile relaxes and calms, a profound shift into parasympathetic, to first just be with what is, into a state where healing is possible. It clears that initial build up of all of the pain and heat and inflammation that has come from this lack of willingness to adapt that creates this damage itself. First off the chaos and trauma must be cleared, then the channels must be open and relaxed, the relaxing nervine and spasmolytic actions gently yet continually and profoundly lets go, allows the capacity of meeting and finding a new way come to the dashboard of now. Then through its bitter and carminative properties it strongly encourages the flow, it processes the unintegrated yin and engages to allow for healthy receiving and then changing, for constant reorientation to what is. So it does absolutely everything that is in opposition change. Clear, calm, open, flow. This is the perfect remedy for strain and stress and heat, liver qi stagnation, liver fire, liver heat, the liver must process everything and it easy gets overwhelmed. It is for vata tension and pitta heat. It is for responsibility and ownership of our lives, for changing and meeting the unfolding moment, allowing in what it is that needs to change, to help us see this change and act upon it. Every moment of every day we are confronted with the results of our actions across our lives. Life isn’t about what happens to us, it’s about how we choose to respond to life. Life’s events offer an opportunity to realize the state of ourselves; how much are we reactive and orienting from habitual conditioning and obscured reality, and how much are we purely experiencing from raw unfiltered innocent child-like perception. Chamomile helps our consciousness into exactly this state, into peaceful still waters so we may more clearly be with what truly is, to engage and learn, to love and share, to have the courage to do what is being asked of each in each moment, to be, to surrender into wild abandon with complete trust, trust and flow.