Consciousness is felt to reside in the heart in most traditional cultures around the world. When the heart is nourished, it blossoms, like a rose.
How we show up and what we pay attention to are of the utmost importance. Consider that the heart is the organ of perception to this “how” and “what”. While our other senses work exteriorly by what we take in from outside us, the heart senses our interiority.
In herbal practice, there are many Plants who can help with nourishing our hearts. We can explore a few here, to shelter, to steady, to nourish our tender and perhaps weary hearts.
I am focusing on Plants you can readily find in the grocery store tea aisle. Making a cup of tea in and of itself is healing, nourishing and calming.
Rose
Rose spp.
This familiar plant is a classic remedy for our emotional hearts, our soul-hearts, for any emotional sadness, heartbreak, grief and recovery from trauma. Of course, Rose is sweet smelling, with calming and uplifting energy built in. As a protector of the heart, Rose gently moves around and through our heart center, helping us heal and readying us for change, even when we don’t feel ready. Rose isn’t pushy but does help us move forward. Rose by its very nature dispels the gloom of loss. As a heart opener, Rose supports both the giving and receiving of love. Its nature tends toward integration of stressful and painful situations.
One of my favorite teas is Organic India’s Tulsi Sweet Rose. With the added benefit of Tulsi (Holy Basil), a Plant known as the “Queen of Herbs” in India for its sacred healing powers, this tea has a lovely flavor, is gentle and suitable for all ages. Drink daily over time for best results.
Hawthorn
Craetagus spp.
Hawthorn is another classic heart plant, a bit more suited to the physical heart as well as the emotional heart, and is strengthening, harmonizing and tonic — meaning more like a food than a medicine, so it is considered generally safe to use. As a part of the thorny hedge, including also the rose, blackberry and other thorny plants, Hawthorn historically protected land, fields, meadows and the homestead in the middle, separating cultivated land from wilderness for Celtic and Germanic people. Protective, providing a space for rest and recuperation, safe sleep and good dreams, Hawthorn trees can live to be over 600 years old and its many species grown in all parts of the Northern hemisphere.
Hawthorn Tea made with the flowers and leaves is a wonderful remedy for nervous heart complaints, palpitations, chest pains and tightness in the chest. (Always check out consistent severe or unusual heart pain by calling 911.) The fruits, small red berries, can also be added to the tea leaves, and their bioflavonoids rutin and quercetin help increase the tone of small blood vessels and relax the arteries. Hawthorn is actively used in Europe, particularly Germany, as a herbal medicine for managing mild to moderate cardiovascular conditions including congestive heart failure, hypertension and angina.
Traditional Medicinals Hawthorn Hibiscus tea is very tart and fruity from the Hibiscus. You get the benefits in a very gentle, food-like nourishing way with this tea. For more medicinal benefits, I like using a solid extract, which is more like a syrup. Ask me if you are interested in more details about this.
Lemon Balm
Melissa officianalis
Ahh Lemon Balm, with it’s calming and uplifting presence and delightful warm lemony fragrance, is truly a balm for the heart. The plant absorbs a large amount of heat and light and then passes it on in the form of essential oil. It was brought by monks from the Mediterranean to the northern climes, where it quickly became a known healing plant. Hildegard of Bingen claimed it has the power of fifteen other herbs in it. Paracelsus called it a heart comforter (Herztrost) and writes “of all things the earth produces, lemon balm is the best herb for the heart”.
Emotionally, Lemon Balm helps our hearts when we lose the ability to appreciate even things that once brought us great joy. It is a mood elevator and has a brightening effect. Lemon Balm helps us see the beauty around us, even when things seem very bad indeed — so supportive for personal sadness as well as communal sadness.
If you have a thyroid condition, Lemon Balm is contraindicated due to its ability to inhibit thyroid function.
Sometimes a cup of herbal tea with a friend is enough to shelter our hearts for awhile, keep us moving forward, uplifted enough and resilient within whatever we are experiencing. And sometimes this is definitely not enough. Please ask for help if you need more. I mean it.
Please take time to nourish your heart, your spiritual, emotional, mental and physical heart, the center of our being, our largest organ of perception, with its own hormones and communicative powers. In these times, with all the changes our earth and all living beings are moving through, with all the difficulties that seem more powerful than we are, this email is sent with all my love and care to remind you that you matter, your open heart is needed, and help is available — we just have to ask. And put on the tea kettle.
Increase Your Compassionate Presence by
Learning Healing Touch!
Healing Touch Level 1 Workshop
May 5,7,12,14, 19 & 21
6-9 pm ET
on Zoom
Are you interested in learning the foundational aspects of energy healing and balancing? In this highly experiential workshop, you will learn foundational skills in this holistic approach to health and wellness within the body to facilitate the natural self-healing process. You will leave the 16-hour course with 12 healing modalities for health and well-being that you can begin using immediately on yourself, and with family and friends.
I will be teaching this workshop as my Solo under the supervision of Cindy Palajac HTCI. This is the culminating step on my journey to becoming a Healing Touch Certified Instructor. I would LOVE to have you there.
Here is the brochure with more details. Feel free to email me and we can set up a time to chat if you want to explore more:
https://www.cindypalajac.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/001_050526_Online_Palajac_Brochure_PDF-Fillable.pdf
My energy medicine practice is open.
Please contact me if you are in need of
energy healing and balancing, herbal recommendations,
spiritual companionship and/or end-of-life care.
I have distance sessions available
wherever you are on planet Earth,
and limited in-person sessions available in Bellingham WA.
Schedule online at www.elizabethcombs.com
or reply to this email.
May we all live at ease of heart with whatever comes to us in life.
Many blessings and so much love,
Elizabeth
(sources used in this newsletter: Janet Kent’s Ease Your Mind: Herbs for Mental Health zine 2014 and Wolf Storl’s The Heart and Its Healing Plants 2024)
(also, these teas mentioned above are simply ones I like that are easy to find in your grocery store — no kickbacks!)
“Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.” ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer