Conquering Insulin Resistance Naturally with Nutrition and Herbs: Online Intensive

Conquering Insulin Resistance Naturally with Nutrition and Herbs: Online Intensive

Are you concerned about any of the following modern diseases: Type 2 diabetes, pre-diabetes, trouble losing weight, cardiovascular health concerns, inflammation, cancer. Did you know that all of these are signs and or symptoms of what is called Syndrome X, or Metabolic Syndrome. Underlying the syndrome/symptoms is a metabolic dysregulation called Insulin Resistance. Much to our dismay, this is rampant in the United States, and is causing health problems for millions of people, some without even knowing! Fortunately for us, there are many natural ways of dealing with and controlling insulin resistance through food, nutrition, herbalism and lifestyle changes. Western medicine will tell you have high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes or cancer and throw you a medication to control the symptom, but very rarely does the underlying cause of the symptom get addressed.

Join Herbalist and Nutritionist, Darcey Blue, for an 8 week long online intensive covering all aspects of Insulin Resistance and how to manage it naturally through food, herbs and lifestyle changes. We will cover the following topics.

*Physiology of insulin resistance
*Sugar/carbohydrate cravings and addiction
*Nutrient dense foods and meals that control insulin resistance
*Herbs and Supplements
*appropriate and effective exercise specifically for managing IR
*stress and sleep
*the role of inflammation

This course is specifically helpful for those who are working to manage Insulin Resistance in their own lives, but is appropriate for anyone who wants to learn more about health and the roots of many of today's chronic and rampant diseases, or those working with clients or family members with Insuslin resistance.

You will receive bi-weekly lessons and reading material, suggestions for additional resources, assignments which focus on experiencing first hand the ways you can use the suggestions for Insulin Resistance in your own life, personal attention and coaching from Darcey, a supportive group community all working towards the same goal! Classes are run via e-mail mailing list, and weekly computer access is a requirement for the course.

Class runs from July 5- Aug 30
Cost: Sliding scale $150-$200- payments plans are available
Some additional materials (books, herbs) will be needed for the course.

For more details or questions, or to register contact Darcey (shamana.flora@gmail.com or 520-429-2654)
Payments may be made via check/money order or paypal.


About the Instructor:
Darcey Blue French is an herbalist and food lover, who has over the years explored various ways of eating, interacting with food and preparing food. Educated as a Clinical Herbalist and Nutritionist at the North American Institute of Medical Herbalism in 2008, she has been in private practice since that time. She has experience in Ayurvedic Cooking, Vegetarian, Allergen Free, Insulin Resistance diets and the philosophies of Dr. Weston Price. Food is far more than fuel, and Darcey is passionate about food that not only nourishes the body, but also the spirit, and tastes wonderful too. She works closely with plants, both wild and cultivated that provide both food and medicine. She is an avid forager of wild foods, gardener of organic vegetables, and is passionate about local and sustainable food systems, and how our relationship with the land, nature and wilderness impacts our physical and spiritual health and wellbeing. She truly believes that one cannot separate the health of the people from the health of the ecosystem in which they live.

Intense, vibrantly wild and alive!

Herbal Lemonade: A new way to enjoy your herbal infusions

Today I made lavender lemonade. It is a warm early summer sunday, and I was craving a refreshing and relaxing tonic, so out came the herbs and I concocted Lavender lemonade.
Everyone loves a glass of lemonade, and what better way to enjoy your herbal infusions in summer! This will work with almost any aromatic herb you may want to use. But even other non aromatic herbs make a lovely lemonade base.
I like to use such herbs as Lavender, Rose, Mint, Lemon Balm, Tulsi, Rosemary, Lemon Verbena, Birch, Hibiscus, Schisandra, Violet flowers, Elderberry or Elderflower, Hawthorn, St Johns Wort, Nettle and Marshmallow.

To start you will want to make sure you have plenty of fresh lemons, local raw honey, fresh water and herbs on hand. The following proportions make approximately 1 gal of lemonade. Adjust to taste and your needs.

1 qt strong herbal infusion - Boil 1 qt water, and pour over herbs in a glass jar. Make sure you make it strong enough for the flavors to come through in the lemonade. For lavender- 1 c dried lavender flowers for a 1 qt of infusion. Best to let these sit for 30 min or more, depending on your herb choice. 4-6 hrs is better for hardier herbs like fruits, roots or barks, or if you want to take advantage of mineral rich infusions of nettle or oatstraw. Always cover aromatic infusions to keep the flavors in the infusion!

4 lemons- Juice four fresh lemons. I like to use a citrus juice reamer, but other juice squeezers or your hands work well. Catch the seeds in a mesh strainer.

1/2- 1 cup raw honey- I like to use raw honey as a sweetener. Yes it will still have the effects of sugar on the body, and may not be appropriate for all people. You can use stevia if you wish, to sweeten and avoid sugar. Or use a little honey and little stevia. Experiment with how sweet you like it.

3 qts Clean cool water

In a gallon container, strain your herbal infusion, add your honey or stevia and mix well. Add juice of 4 lemons, and fill to the top with additional water. Cool, and serve with a garnish of sliced lemon!

Try this with limes too- mmmm minty limeade!

Bring into the World, That Beautiful Idea

Tadd and I were living in Arlington, Washington about ten years ago. The house we were renting was an old, old Victorian farmhouse that was falling apart. I had returned from my apprenticeship with Susun Weed in New York about a year before that and was beginning the integration period of this life changing experience. I was also just beginning menopause and I felt like I was falling apart also.

I had quit my job as a teacher and was living off of some savings I had and then off of Tadd's income. I already had started a small herbal products business and was selling at farmer's markets and a bit through mail order. I had started writing a column for The Beltane Papers, Journal of Women's Mysteries and discovered I could write about plants.

There was a very, very large managed forest to the east of us. I would climb up behind our house and walk and walk through it. I spent my days walking in the woods and gardening, talking to the plants and wondering what I was going to do with the rest of my life. Tadd wondered that also.

I began to cook all our food from scratch at that time and also made nourishing herbal infusions for us to drink. I grew lots of food for us and made medicines from the plants that were near. I grew very close to one of the Douglas Fir tree up in the woods and visited her almost everyday.
I also remember the Herb Robert and how it helped me feel welcome on the forest trail.



I had some problems with my self esteem at this time. My body was changing and I gained quite a bit of weight. I had shaved my head to celebrate my transformation upon finishing my shamanic apprenticeship and I hated the way my hair looked for a long time.

I sought shamanic healing to help me navigate this strange new life and trained with the Foundation for Shamanic Studies. I started a shamanic practice in my little delapidated house near the woods. In the unseen world of my journeys, I found the home base for my shamanic herbal practice. I began to teach and enrolled a couple of apprentices to come explore the way of the wise woman with me.

Then the world trade towers came down. This marked a significant change in both Tadd and myself. Tadd began to struggle a bit with finding enough work and well, I was hardly making any money at what I was doing. Our chiropractor told Tadd about a woman from Vermont, Toni Stone, who had helped his wife double her income. Tadd gave her a call and started to receive coaching from her.

Within the next year, we had moved to Whidbey Island to rent a little house on the beach. I started to receive coaching also. And within a couple of years we bought a beautiful farm where we now live and work.

It has been almost six years since we moved here to our little farm. My herbal school, Crow's Laughter Mystery School is very successful and my products are helping to heal many people all over the US and even internationally. I have always had within me a beautiful idea of how I wanted everything to be. When I started studying prosperity with Toni Stone and now Gifford Booth and many others, I learned that I could bring into the world, that beautiful idea. And I have done that and continue to paint a greater picture of it.



I have learned that sharing my gifts even when I don't think I have them to give has opened me to a greater sense of life. I have learned that being thankful for what I have been given over and over has trained me to see possibility. And I have learned to give up the easy road and instead, I have found a deeply engaging path that is rich and embodied.

I look forward to growing deeper and stronger into the richness of life and invite any and all of you to join me in celebration of our passionate abundance.

May it be in Beauty.

Traditional Healing for a Modern World: A Week-Long Herbal Intensive

August 2-8 -- Boston, MA
www.commonwealthherbs.com
with Katja Swift, Sean Donahue, Darcey Blue French, Ryan Midura, and Mischa Schuler

Throughout history, most people around the world have depended on the plants around them as medicine for their bodies, minds, and spirits.

Here in New England, we have our own living herbal traditions, drawing from the knowledge and practices of Native American and European herbalists. Each new generation adds its own insights and experiences to the mix.

Come spend a week in Boston learning from practicing herbalists whose work is rooted in Traditional Western Herbalism, informed by science, inspired by the beauty and magic of the living Earth, and grounded in their own direct experience working with the medicine of the wild, feral, and cultivated plants that grow around them.

This intensive will provide beginners with a solid foundation in the fundamentals of herbalism as well as providing more experienced herbalists with an opportunity to deepen their knowledge and sharpen their skills.

Topics will include:

-- Herbal energetics and herbal actions
-- Plant identification and ethical wild crafting
-- Nutrition, food allergies, and food as medicine
-- Techniques for making and using tinctures, elixirs, decoctions, infusions, oils, and salves.
-- Clinical skills
-- The language and intelligence of plants

Tuition for the week is $950. Participants will bring a bag lunch and will be responsible for their own lodging.

Teachers include:

Katja Swift -- Katja Swift is an herbalist and teacher working to help adults, children, and families rebuild their relationships with their bodies and with their own ability to heal. By teaching people how to eat real food and use plants as medicine, she helps them to reestablish their connectivity to the earth, to themselves, and to one another. Katja believes that traditional medicine and modern medical practices can coexist as allies, and works to help people make good choices about which methods to use to bring about better health in their own lives. Katja trained with Rosemary Gladstar and later with Guido Masé, and presently runs a family practice in Brookline, MA. She has a beautiful seven-year-old daughter who would like to tell you all about linden, plantain, and dandelion.

Darcey Blue French -- Darcey Blue French is an herbalist & nutritionist, wildcrafter, gardener, food lover, Earth lover and wild woman. She was trained as a Clinical Herbalist & Nutritionist at the North American Institute of Medical Herbalism under Paul Bergner, and studied under Rosemary Gladstar and Charlie Kane. Darcey has been using and learning from the plants, both wild and cultivated since childhood, and it is her deep love of the wild Earth and its creatures that fuels her passion for healing and teaching about plants, wilderness, spirit, nourishment and healing. She spends her time leading Edible and Medicinal Wild Plant walks, Plant Spirit Medicine groups, teaching herbal and nutritional classes and intensives both in person and online, creating nourishing and delicious meals, wildcrafting and making medicines from the plants, seeing clients and enjoying the wild places on the earth.

Sean Donahue -- Sean Donahue is an herbalist, poet, activist, and witch committed to healing and transformation through connection with the living Earth. As an herbalist, Sean works primarily with the wild plants of the forests and fields of New England. He views the plants as teachers, helping the body, mind, and spirit learn to correct imbalances that stand in the way of health. As a teacher, poet, and ritualist, Sean works to connect people with their own wild nature and with the life of the world around them. He believes that personal, community, and cultural healing are all deeply intertwined with the healing of our planet.

Ryan Midura -- Ryan Midura began his formal herbal training with the apprenticeship progam at the Boston School of Herbal Studies, with Katja Swift and Mischa Schuler. He continued with the advanced training program, led by Tommy Priester and Madelon Hope. He's become good friends with sage, solomon's seal, and the salamander living inside ginger; he's learned to feel the kidneys' fire in the pulsing of a wrist. As he develops his attunement to the world green and growing, he looks forward to sharing its gifts with the people all around who are in need of care and compassion, and those who seek to understand the connections from all things to all things.

Mischa Schuler -- Mischa Schuler is a community herbalist specializing in women's reproductive and sexual health . She also counsels on choices around natural contraception and general emotional and physiological health. She works with adolescents to support the menstrual cycle, ease allergies, and improve skin concerns and with children and infants to support the immune system in cold and flu. She has an M.S. in Herbal Medicine from the Tai Sophia Institute and has also studied and worked with Rosemary Gladstar, Deb Soule, and Dr. Mary Bove. She is Adjunct Faculty at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy. And she is currently working with Robin Rose Bennett on a national study on the use of Wild Carrot as a contraceptive.

I am sure I am headed into the mystery again.

I have been out in the garden everyday recently. Sometimes I am overwhelmed with all the weeds. This happens mostly when I take just a bit of time, when I am in a hurry. If I take the time to breathe and listen I begin to notice more and appreciate what I am witnessing.



Today I spent 3 hours weeding the Goddess Garden. This is a space within our garden shaped like a goddess. I created this just over two years ago from stones. She's about 20 feet long.
In this garden we planted oatstraw. And today I found, little plants, lamb's quarters, shephard's purse, chamomile, borage, burdock, red and yellow dock, catch-fly, couch grass and every other kind of grass.



When I stepped out of the classroom just over 13 years ago and stepped onto
the spiral path, I discovered my wildness. I was a little frightened of it and to
be honest sometimes very frightened of it. But I also loved it.
I remember discovering a weed that was growing in my garden in Ballard (Seattle)
was Nipplewort, Lapsana communis and that this plant was utilized as a poultice for
dried, cracked nipples on breast-feeding moms.
This plant that I had thought was a problem, was actually a solution.



It has only gotten better from here. Tadd and I moved from our lovely Ballard home to
a place in South West Washington called Enchanted Valley. I apprenticed with Susun Weed and
returned to our little cabin in the woods where I began my journeys into my wildness. I certainly
did cultivate plants there and in the next places I lived, but I started a practice of never weeding a plant until I knew what it was. And some wild plants that I wanted to eat in my salad and put in my soups, well, I let them grow all over the garden.



I have learned about a lot of wild plants over the last 13 years, and I have grown very fond of my wildness. I have allowed it to flourish and I have grown comfortable with those places in me
that were so frightening long ago.



Just about a week ago, I noticed that I have a strong desire to cultivate, to weed and remove many of the wild plants so that I can grow more medicinals herbs and vegetables. I have a vision of strong-rooted fruit trees as well as lindens and Hawthornes and a old growth forest of cedar and hemlock. I would love to invite, Meadowsweet, Pleurisy Root, more lavenders and thymes, and garden roses of all kinds into the garden. It is time for me to fully cultivate the garden and land here.



And as I begin this quest, this journey, I feel a little nervous that I will tame the wild, wise woman and she won't be any fun, won't know the voices of the unseen world anymore. I am sure I am headed into the mystery again. I am excited this time as I step into the wilds of cultivation and begin to plant seeds there.
Goddess only know what can happen now.

May it be in beauty.

Plant Walk ! May 30 in Keene, NH

I could actually say I am in love with the taste of wild rose honey.

One of the most delicious and deeply sensual gifts of life is Wild Rose Honey Electuary. It's taste is exquisite and its healing unfathomable. It is so simple to make. You can make it with the wild roses which are beginning their bloom right now and you can make it with any rose.

Here is how.... Venture off to a place where the wild rose grows. As you come into its presence, begin to pay attention to your breath. Detect the smell of rose, perhaps subtle at first. And then put you nose right into the bloom. (Watch for bees. :<)

Smell this delectable fragrance and give thanks for it. Now, ask the rose if you may harvest. Yes? Well then, look for the blooms who's stamens are still pale yellow. Harvest as many as you can get in a jar just about to the top. Offer gratitude once again.

Saying thank you is a practice in itself and cannot be done too much. You can harvest the roses right into your jar if you like, but when you place them in a basket, they are so beautiful. Place these beautiful roses in your jar and drizzle local, raw honey over them. This is a slow process and can be rather messy evoking the wild wise woman in you.

You will want enough honey to cover the roses. Put a lid on your jar and label this with name and date. And wait...its hard to wait for rose honey, but oh, so worth it. Six weeks is long enough, but you could actually start to taste the rose in the honey after just one day.

You can strain this with a seive and a cloth. And....you can just eat it right out of the jar. And offer gratitude again for such precious medicine. I could actually say I am in love with the taste of wild rose honey. I must just surrender to this fact.

May it be in Beauty.

Ancient Heart, Modern World

Wherever did my insides go

away so far with laughing leaves

on turning winds of Autumn air

oh where could my desires be

inside so deep, asleep?

No. They stir

they squirm inside their

circumstantial shackles

hard they push but quietly

In leaves they dare not make a rustle

in the snow they dare not crunch

Lest I wake the bossy world.

I stalk my dreams in camouflage

I track them silently.

I watch them from a shadowed cave

a purgatory's slave.

Sit still my dear and watch these plants

it makes no difference - your dresses or your pants

watch this plant until it shows

you where inside your soul

you lost

your heartache nerves

and chose to be this numb, this scared

and ask how you can be repaired

And get up off your ass and act

with sharpened blades of Self

Just do

what matters to you. If you see

the dance in a song and you want to move,

move

if you see the medicine in movement,

then heal

if you are sick and tired of redundant linear grace

the pirouettes of symmetrical faces

then be the grit. The noise. The mismatched perfection.

Disgrace to us our pigeonholes of women's lines and curves defined

if we accept these roles - these holes - then we are still confined

I spit on billboards hot with exploit

I spit on mini skirts

I shit on all your subjugation, all your secret tabloid worlds.

I shit on all your tampon governments.

Inside

I scream

to be recklessly beautiful

to let my thighs dance free and wild and ripped with muscle

to show the leaves I know their route

from life to yellow flight and forest floor death

Uncurl like ferns and fingers

Ripen like flesh and fruit.

I hurt inside, to love without

rules.

My back aches to bend in arcs

like rose canes drenched in blossoms

Fastened by roots.

But I lack the thorns.

All those eyes of expectation

all those red pens marking

yes or no, good or bad, right or sin.

All those chasing egos on my skin

and ropes of judgment cast.

These artist shackles keep me locked

in bars of iron, barbs of heart. Inside I wait

for freedom's gate.

For safety's key

and fearless walk.