Purifying the Sick Room with Herbs
During the seasons of common cold and flu, we often think about herbs in terms of how they can help keep us well, support us while we’re sick, and help us get back on our feet again once the illness has passed. This perspective of preventative herbal medicine is exceptional- and I think it’s one of the best ways we can work with herbs to stay healthy and happy all season long; but it’s far from the only way herbs can be part of our wellness process. The spaces we inhabit are influenced by our health- and after we’ve been sick, those spaces deserve a little extra herbal love!
In this week’s class I’m chatting about why we might want to purify a room during and after illness, which herbs might be a good fit for us, and the rituals we can employ to call in the plant spirit magic we need. At the end of this post you can watch the class in its entirety for free on my YouTube channel.
There are many reasons why aligning ourselves to the magic and medicine of the plants to create safer, more relaxed, and more nourishing spaces is a good idea- but these things become especially important as we recover from illness.
Physical Disinfecting
We can work with many herbs to physically cleanse and disinfect a space after we’ve been sick. You can create your own cleaning products with plants, use essential oils in smart ways, and even buy commercial products that have plant extracts as their active ingredient- thymol being one of the most popular.
Energetic Disinfecting
While the physical spaces around us need to be kept clean, we should also consider the energetic health of any space- how it feels to be in that room, how we are able to relax and nourish ourselves in those spaces, and how we’re in good relationship with place.
Righting a Space
After illness, be it cold, flu, or something more serious, a space can often feel off. Many times we’ve not been able to do cleaning properly, there hasn’t been much sunshine or air flow, we’ve accumulated a pile of tissues and maybe even a pile of dishes. Getting right with a space means that we honor that place enough to bring it back to a feeling of peace and a sense of beauty and harmony.
Supporting the Ill & Their Caretakers
Cleansing a space is good for us. It helps prevent the buildup of toxic energy patterns and can help us heal faster and prevent future illness. While we’re cleansing a space for the ill person, we can also consider how to care for that space so that it’s healthier for those people who are caretaking for the sick person.
Patterns & Associations
After an illness or death, sometimes a room or even a whole house can take on challenging associations. I often find that an intentional cleansing and blessing of the space is just what’s needed to help all involved find their peace.
Honoring Spirits of Place
Last but certainly not least, we must acknowledge that the spaces we dwell may also be inhabited by other non-human persons including insects and animals as well as ancestors, land spirits, and deities. Our illnesses and the energies we carry during those phases have an impact on these shared spaces and so it’s good kinship to acknowledge our effect on a place and clean up after ourselves- both physically and energetically. Yes, this includes things happening in your own home- nothing in this world is ever truly just ours.
In this class I cover six herbs- a small selection of a truly vast number of options. I chose these herbs for a few reasons…
they are generally safer herbs for most people to work with
they are often the most accessible and easy to grow herbs
they are plants that most people will be able to find locally
they are forgiving, easy to harvest, simple to preserve, and interested in helping us
The list of herbs we cover in-depth in this class includes Lavender, Hyssop, Juniper, Echinacea, Sage, and Thyme.
If you caught yourself thinking '‘these basic herbs?’, then this class is really for you! I am always looking for ways to show people how the herbs we think of as basic, beginner, and ubiquitous are all of those things for good reason. These are the plants that show up for us, work with us in special ways, and have a vested interest in our wellness. When in doubt, plants from the Mint family (Lamiaceae) are always a good choice!
We’ll look at how each herb can be worked with for purifying spaces and cleansing areas- but also how we can invoke them as ‘spirits of’ specific functions based on their medicinal and magical virtues and the way they show up in ancestral plant lore.
We will wrap up this class with an exploration of four rituals of purification that involve the plants we chatted about earlier. These rituals are simple yet incredibly powerful- and they invite us to drop deeper into our connection with the plant spirits and our engagement with herb magic and the ways of green sorcery.
The four rituals I will teach you include:
suffumigation of space using botanical incense
steaming to call in the power of the herbs along with the elements of water and fire
strewing rituals to soak up ill energy from spaces to be ritually exited from the home
sweeping rituals to cleanse the body and any physical spaces with the help of specific herbal allies
Each of these rituals will create immediate and profound effects on the space involved as well as all being who inhabit that space. Doing this work is a true blessing for all!
Here’s the class… if you enjoy this one, please leave a comment and make sure to subscribe to the channel for you don’t miss anything!
