Lavender Fields
“Natural” is the buzzword of the decade. Just go to the grocery store. Everything claims to be Natural these days. Natural Coconut Water… Natural Creamy Peanut Butter (with lots of extra ingredients like Hydrogenated Oils, sugar, etc. ) The Health and Beauty section shows the same, only there are usually more chemicals than in the food.
Suffice to say, “natural” is not always really natural.
But then there are some “natural” things that truly are natural and yet they still aren’t good for you. The obvious ones are poisonous substances found in nature, such as arsenic, mercury, etc. Poison Ivy is completely natural, but 85 percent of the population will have an allergic reaction to the urushiol in the Poison Ivy.
Finally, there are the natural things that work well for some people, but not necessarily for others. Some items in this category can be helpful for some people and not so helpful for others. Homeopathic remedies fall into this category. Not every remedy works for every person.
I had a recent experience with the essential oil Lavender. I have always loved the smell of Lavender. It also used to work wonder for my children when I would put it in the bath tub when they were little. In fact, I recall when my oldest son was little, he asked me to put in the “stuff that makes me sleepy. Not the stuff that gets me all excited.” When he mentioned getting excited, he was referring to the Lemon/Orange oil I would put in the bath if they took morning baths. The “stuff” that calmed him down was lavender oil. He recognized this on his own, without any hints from me.
Fast forward to this past winter. I have some cream I have been using for years. It is scented with the essential oil of Lavender. I would use it at night and it had the added bonus of making me sleepy. But with the especially cold winter this year, my skin was dry and itchy. The coconut oil in the cream was just what I needed. So I started using it morning and evening.
I found as the winter went on that I was having a really hard time staying up past 7 or 7:30 p.m. All I wanted to do was go to bed early. It was nearly impossible for me to stay up as late as I needed to in order to complete my tasks for the day.
I decided to look up the symptom, “Desires to go to bed early” in my repertory or symptoms related to homeopathic remedies. The one and only remedy in there was, you guessed it, Lavender. Only it was homeopathic lavender, referred to as Lavendula. As I read more about this remedy, I found that it actually suited me pretty well. I took a dose. It turned out that I was really sensitive to it, but it was not a correct remedy for me.
But I learned that my sensitivity to Lavender was actually causing problems for me. It wasn’t dangerous, but it was troubling.
The other important lesson I learned is that sometimes things you have been eating, or drinking, or using in some way for years, could in fact, be the source of the problem.
Some of you know me, others of you may have heard of me. And for most, you probably have no clue about me or my business. So I wanted to take a few minutes to introduce myself, my family, my business, why I am a homeopath and how I became a homeopath—not necessarily in that order.