Description
By Guido Mase
Trade paperback book
ISBN 9781620550847
306 pages, 6.00 x 9.00″
As people moved into cities and suburbs and embraced modern medicine and industrialized food, they lost their connection to nature, in particular to the plants with which humanity coevolved. These plants are essential components of our physiologies – tangible reminders of cross-kingdom signaling – and key not only to vibrant physical health and prevention of illness but also to soothing and awakening the troubled spirit.
Blending traditional herbal medicine with history, mythology, clinical practice, and recent findings in physiology and biochemistry, herbalist Guido Masé explores the three classes of plants necessary for the healthy functioning of our bodies and minds–aromatics, bitters, and tonics. He explains how bitter plants ignite digestion, balance blood sugar, buffer toxicity, and improve metabolism; how tonic plants normalize the functions of our cells and nourish the immune system; and how aromatic plants relax tense organs, nerves, and muscles and stimulate sluggish systems, whether physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual. He reveals how wild plants regulate our heart variability rate and adjust the way DNA is read by our cells, controlling the self-destructive tendencies that lead to chronic inflammation or cancer.
Offering examples of ancient and modern uses of wild plants in each of these three groups–from aromatic peppermint to bitter dandelion to tonic chocolate–Masé provides easy recipes to integrate them into meals as seasonings and as central ingredients in soups, stocks, salads, and main dishes as well as including formulas for teas, spirits, and tinctures. Providing a framework for safe and effective use as well as new insights to enrich the practice of advanced herbalists, he shows how healing “wild plant deficiency syndrome”–by adding wild plants back into our diets–is vital to our health and also to our spiritual development.
About the Author:
Guido Masé is a clinical herbalist, herbal educator, and garden steward. The co-founder and co-director of the Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism, he is a professional member of the American Herbalists Guild, the American Botanical Council, and United Plant Savers. He lives in South Burlington, Vermont.
Praise for The Wild Medicine Solution
“Guido has written a classic. What is most masterful about Guido’s teachings and writing is the way he weaves folklore, tradition, and science flawlessly together, making a sensable, cohesive argument fro the daily use of these common and important plants.”
-Rosemary Gladstar, herbalist and founder of United Plant Savers and author of Rosemary Gladstar’s Family Herbal and Planting the Future.
“I highly recommend this book not only for its content but also because, like Michael Pollan’s Botany of Desire, Guido Mase’s book is a joy to read and is interspersed with exquisite herb photographs that capture the spiritual essence of the plants he describes.”
-Michael Tierra, author of Way of Herbs and Planetary Herbology and founder of the American Herbalists Guidelines
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