Nervous & Emotional Healing with Cardio-Restorative Herbs

I’m a veteran of heart problems having had cardiac insufficiency due to trauma since the age of 8 and actually had two cardiac arrests at the age of 19. I was told then that there was no chance of a normal life ahead for me. They said I’d live only with the help of drugs to keep my heart beating regularly enough, and things like having a baby would be at the risk of death, unlikely anyway as I wouldn’t be able to cope with the increased heart rate that’s part of sex.

My Great-Great Grandad John Waltham didn’t even hear me out when I started telling him all that. He put me on the path to healing my heart and in the process over the years I used what I’d learned to help others – people and animals.

I’ve learned that if someone has a problem with their emotions – whether their heart is broken by a tragedy or a loss, or whether they experience un-explainable sorrow, or whether they feel emotionless and blocked up – a common experience for those with depression, all these can be helped in big ways with herbs that have traditionally been used to support and heal the physical heart.

Of course, just as there’s no point filling up your car’s tank with fuel if you don’t actually turn it on and go somewhere, so there’s no point taking herbs for healing, if you don’t use that support to find out what’s troubling you emotionally and face it. I wish they’d taught us that skill in school or at home growing up – it would’ve saved so many such pain.

But coming back to the herbs. The following are some of my most favorite herbs that not only heal the heart, but help the nervous system frequency get back to normal and help the person emotionally.

St. Ignatius Bean – Strychnos ignatii

or Ignatia is considered first aid because it sort of shocks the heart and the nervous system (taken in a tiny dose of course). The resulting effect has been called similar to Prozac.

What it does is deliver a tiny shock that stimulates the body into reacting to the shock with natural calming and soothing processes.

Now if someone had actually shocked our physically heart, the body would respond to that with all our natural healing processes starting up.

But the need for botanicals like Ignatia arise when the ‘hit’ or the ‘shock’ is an emotional one, and we suppress that from our awareness for whatever reason. In that case, for a long while the tissues of our body hold the tension, the nerves around the tissues stay magnetized in a particular high-tension frequency waiting for relaxation and release.

If that does not happen in a timely fashion, the tension everywhere gets conveyed to the heart through the blood and the heart – a healthy one at least does try to make the person aware that something’s wrong.

The feeling of tightness in the chest, the feeling of the heart fluttering, the feeling of the heart beating faster, all these are not just things for people with heart problems, they are the every day experience of humans of all ages everywhere. They are part of our inbuilt life experience, to help us make sense of what’s happening with us, to show us the paths to take in life.

And they have powerful effects on the rest of our body as well.

But all that is numbed down if we have an attitude of emotional suppression.

And that’s when we need plants like St. Ignatius Bean, that TELL the heart, “You, Yes You”. And then deliver a much required SLAP.

It won’t replace actual emotional awareness, but it does make the body react bringing relief to the entire system at least in the moment.

Lily of the Valley – Convallaria

Lily of the Valley causes a sort of spasm in the muscles of the body – remember the heart IS a muscle – because it gets the tiny little nerve endings on the muscles to change their frequency – a frequency brought on by trauma.

I have used it as first aid several times to relieve the pain after an emotional drama makes the nervous system and the heart all clenched up and tense and painful.

One drop of Lily of the Valley to 100ml of water, and that taken one drop, is enough to give considerable pain relief almost immediately just because of the relaxation of the nerve endings around the heart. Used with other heart support herbs it’s just wonderful altogether.

Cactus Grandiflora

Cactus stabilizes the nervous frequency and with it the heart beat.

Just like everything in nature moves to a beat, so our bodies move to the beat of our heart.

Imagine what would happen if in an orchestra, the conductor, the person who keeps beat so that the violins can play in harmony with the trumpets and the pianist and all the other players, forgets a beat or two, or just loses it and jerks about.

Cactus is medicine for the conductor of the music of our bodies and souls- the Heart. It soothes, inspires stability and calm.

You see the Cactus is a plant that doesn’t exactly grow in the most eay places to grow. A desert plant, it knows to wait. It feels the heat in the day without the drama plants from the temperate zones would go through, and it feels the cold desert nights just as calmly. When it has resources, it uses them frugally, storing up the rest. As if to prove that drama is not required to produce the most beautiful things, it puts out beautiful flowers and fruit that is food for living beings all around, just like those plants that grow with plenty of water and in rich soil. Such a wonderful gift to mankind, is Cactus, and such wonderful medicine for the heart and the whole body.

If you go through emotional extremes, Cactus will help you, it knows how to deal with extremes.

Rosehips

The Rose is about courage. Plain and simple. Physically, emotionally, everyone’s got a different experience, and there’s a lot written about the Vitamin C in Rosehips and all that. It all however comes down to one thing, it gives the heart and the body strength, and it gives the soul the feeling of being able to do what the person wants to do.

A lot of our emotional problems, depression and so on stem from feeling unable to do what we have to do to get where we want to get. It’s sad when a peson believes they just don’t have it in them to do what their soul longs to more than anything else. Life itself seems pointless unless we’re moving towards our dream.

Hawthorn or Crategeus

The Heart deeply and powerfully affects the hormonal situation in the body, influencing the balance (or imbalance) between male-female, hot-cold, active-resting hormones in the body.

Hawthorn helps those who have had trauma in the long term that has resulted in hormonal imbalance of any sort. Depression, inability to enjoy every day life, sexual deficiency, sensory deficiency, are all rooted in the heart’s not being able to play its role in the hormonal processes of the body well enough.

Hawthorn helps clear up blocked pathways, making blood flow easier. It balances flow of rhythm and circulation between the various compartments of the heart itself.

It strengthens the heart, toning its very tissue and with a stronger heartbeat so much in the body feels better already.

Both as first aid and as part of long term rehabilitation, Hawthorn is just wonderful.

Nettle – Urticaria

Nettle doesn’t have to be taken in big doses – which can have laxative effects – to support a heart that’s weak or inefficient because of sluggishness.

How does a heart go sluggish? A life of not getting enough real holistic stimulation can make the heart disinterested and withdrawing to the point of stopping responding to sensory stimulus even.

Our world is full of ways to stimulate the mind, the senses, the body, but these ignore the heart and the emotions for the most part. Exposure to this on a daily basis, leaving the heart behind, makes it withdraw and atrophy.

A whole lot of circulatory problems ensue which further cause all kinds of problems as so much in the body depends on the highways – the blood circulation.

Emotional stimulation – a life that you FEEL, that moves your heart, is the only LIFE really.

Nettle can support the heart in coming out again and from there you you have to be brave and let your self feel, and follow those feelings.

Lavender flowers – Lavandula Augustifolia

The connection between the heart and the brain is obviously one of the most important highways of the body. Tension and congestion here is bound to create trouble everywhere.

Lavender relaxes the nerves all over but especially in this area and therefore should be considered first aid for those facing problems stemming from deficient blood circulation to the head.

Most sleep trauma conditions, skin problems that are restricted to or most visible on the face and neck, scalp imbalances, chronic ENT issues that are emotionally or stress triggered are all helped by Lavender.

Herb Robert – Geranium Robertiana

This little flower grows in radiation hit zones because of it’s ability to maintain its own energy system independent of the surroundings. As such it is support in recovery from radiation induced sickness – nausea and the like.

For the heart specifically it is of great help in our times, as the Heart is affected by the frequency of every sorts of ‘radiation’ and a lot of what shows up as disinterest in life, the inability to taste well with the tongue, sluggish lymphatic draining etc. is the Heart’s needing a bit of a detox and comeback to regular frequency.

Passionflower – Passiflora Officinalis

Passionflower relaxes the nerves. It supports the various connective nerves of the body making life so much easier for the heart as it has to pump blood around.

Passionflower makes the environment around the heart to relax so the heart can relax too.

Best of all Passionflower helps break the habits our nervous system forms through stress, so for those who have had heart disease for along time, this can help break the habit of holding the heart muscle tight and cramped and furthering the problem.

Mistletoe – Viscum Album

The great balancer herb, and associated with romance around Christmas, Mistletoe balances the blood flow within the heart reducing the risk of a heart attack, reducing the risk of nervous breakdowns, emotional meltdowns and flare-ups and all that drama.

Think of it as a sort of buffering system. For those with atrial fibrillation and heart beat irregularity (arrhythmia), and ventricular disorders Mistletoe lends a sort of buffering so everything feels better almost immediately.

If you’re an emotional tight-rope walker, with great demands made on your heart every day, Mistletoe is the one for you.

Jujube – Zizyphus

This berry has all the nutrition the body needs for recovery from both short term and long term nervous and cardiac fatigue.

Tiredness of the mind, of the heart, and of the physical parts of us can be relieved in many ways, still this one is a cut above the others because it’s got a little of everything in a beautiful simple combination.

It’s just refreshing.