Wisdom Remedies: Lobelia

Plants share the planet with us symbiotically. This means we supply them with what they need and they supply us with what we need. Neither of us can live well or really live at all without the other. Plants take in our wastes and give us back the very breath of life in the form of clean oxygen. Many of us feel that the symbiotic relationship between plants and animals (humans especially) goes even deeper.

Plants supply not only oxygen, food and medicine that we are perfectly suited to use, but they also supply subtle energies, vital chemistry and wisdom actions that stabilize life, and support healthy thinking, feeling and perception. They can be used to balance our passions and compulsions, and nourish and stabilize our psyche. They even nourish our spirits with other medicines that are as real as the ones that shore up our immune systems, strengthen our mucus membranes, purge our bodies of wastes and toxins, and balance and restore our health in thousands of ways.

The use of plants as wisdom remedies is very old. It is found in every aboriginal culture. Medicine men and women were responsible for using these to help heal individuals under their care and to guide the whole family or group into new and uncertain circumstances. Mental and emotional medicine went right along side physical medicine, and healers knew just as much about it.

In this series of articles we will discuss how to change your energy, heal your compulsions, pacify your passions, blunt your fears, face life anew, break out of old patterns, and establish greater happiness and clarity in your relationships with others and in life.

Here is the first of several wisdom remedies I find very useful that we will be discussing in the next several articles. Usually, the wisdom remedies properties of each plant reflects its physical actions.

Lobelia Inflata: This herb might be a bit controversial, though I have never seen it do an unwanted thing and I have used it plenty. Lobelia is anti-spasmodic to the max. There is no type or location of spasm that it will not at least help minimally and in many cases it is a miracle worker. Thus, it is used for bronchitis, asthma, menstrual cramps, pain of all types, intestinal cramping, etc. It also has the interesting combination of a relaxing nervine (relaxing to the nervous system and healing or altering to it in some useful way) and a vital stimulant (increases all cellular activity and energy flow). This rather rare combination is found in herbs that seem to have an organizing, intelligent effect on other herbs we might use. It is put in many formulas to help them work where needed, when needed, how needed and to help all herbs in each formula work in concert. Lobelia is also a strong emetic that can be used to purge the stomach when needed. Lobelia has many other interesting actions, but they are all more or less an extension of these noted. So, what do we think Lobelia is as a wisdom remedy?

Answer: Lobelia helps you throw off ideas and patterns that are destructive or toxic to you, while helping you to be more active (but not agitated) for the task that holds your focus right now. This greatly enhances efficiency and quality in whatever your focused task or chosen life purpose.

Specifically, this herb as a wisdom remedy is for people who defeat themselves with toxic thinking, and who are stressed about the impact of this defeat on what they really want to accomplish in life.

Lobelia is best taken for this purpose in small doses, usually 2 drops 2 times daily for several weeks or months while the slow, subtle changes take place in the psyche, emotions and life patterns.

A new course on this subject that is available on madherbalist.com inspired this series of articles.

Thanks for reading,

Kal Sellers