Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Herbalism - Where to Start?

These past couple of years, I've been getting more and more interested in gardening, growing my own food, sustainability, all that. Last year was my first attempt at my own garden, with some successes and some abysmal failures. Point being, I have a little - even if very little - experience growing things. (one of my greatest accomplishments was starting my own tomato plants from seedlings)

I've become very interested in herbalism and herb lore. I'd love to learn how to grow my own herbs, but more importantly, I want to learn how to use herbs for health. Knowing what I want to learn is the easy part - the amount of information out there on herbs and their many uses is ridiculously extensive, and I don't want to jump in blind. I think finding this group at the start of my spiritual journey would have saved me a lot of money spent on books and resources that turned out to be unreliable, hogwash, and ultimately wastes of time. The amount of holistic healing and natural health books out there is astonishing to me, and I take things with grains of salt, not wanting to follow a red herring, and if I do, at least not very far. Also, most of the herbal encyclopedias or dictionaries I've come across, while undoubtedly useful as references, are pretty much Greek to me because I don't know where or how to start.

So my question...where to begin? I'm a book person, if anyone knows any good, reliable books regarding herbs and/or natural healing practices, I'd love to know them! Also, unlike this last summer, I will be moving into an apartment this spring, so I'll no longer have access to a nice garden plot and will be restricted to outdoor pots and window boxes.

In addition to herbs, I'm very interested in essential oils and aromatherapy. I want to burn essential oils and kind of want to try my hand at making my own oil burner, but out of what? I Googled homemade oil burners and, well, that wasn't very fruitful.

Thank you in advance for any help!

Template by - Abdul Munir | Daya Earth Blogger Template