The Plant Powders
A Traditional Ayurveda Method Of Using The Plants With Healing Proprieties
By Andrei Gamulea
As a millenary science known and practiced for more then 5000 years – Ayurveda – provides simple and natural methods, extremely efficient, of using therapeutic plants with healing proprieties. One of these consists in using the medicinal and aromatic plants as powder.
Most of the plants with healing proprieties can be administrated as powder. Actually this method it is not unknown. For example the using of the ground spices, represents a practical way that we often use, when we prepare soups, or other food, that we wish to be quite delicious and pleasant.
To tell the truth we may have often found ourselves tasting a bit from the coloured powders of spices that we have in the kitchen. Whether it’s the well known powders of pepper or salt, or the aromatic powders of some spices as the coriander, mustard, paprika, dill, lovage or parsley, either we want to taste the aromatic powder of cinnamon, vanilla, nutlet, or anise, or we are captivated by the mint, sweet basil, or salvia, every time that we taste a bit from this aromatic spices, something special, pleasant and refreshing occurs, both to our appetite and to senses. Rousing the appetite and improving the digestion, enchanting our senses and mind, the powders from seasoning plants make us discover the healing power hidden in them.
Any time we desire a dish to be quite pleasant, delicious and flavoured, we find a reason to sprinkle a bit of one or more from the many aromas we know and like. Sometimes curiosity pushes us to put a bit of vanilla or cinnamon powder on our tongue, or we chew a few pieces of basil leaves to anticipate the aroma that they will offer to the food. We are often amazed and in the same time enchanted by the warmth, savour and their aroma. Other times we are urged to taste a bit of mint leaves dust and immediately we are covered by a pleasant coolness and in the same time a refreshing aroma floods our entire being.
Certainly the flavours of the fined or ground plants taken with caution improve both the state of the body and mind. Thus why not use this extremely simple method – the powder plants – to enforce thereby, lots of beneficial medicinal plants that we know as having certain healing proprieties?
In the ancient ayurvedic science there are lots of formulas, more or less simple, based on ground dried plants, used on purpose of enhancing and healing some disorders or diseases.
In order to obtain the plant powder we need some dried plants, of the same kind, the useful parts of them previously selected, as for example, the root in the case of the bur, the leaves of mint, flowers of camomile, fruits of anise, seeds of fenugreek, buds of fir. The plant powder can be easily obtained either with the help of a grinding mortar or an electric grinder, grinding finely the selected parts previously crushed. The obtained powder can be used immediately or kept in a closed container, to be used later on.
The administration method is extremely simple: an amount of plants, between a knife tip and a tea spoon is taken under the tongue, then maybe a bit wet with water and then the powder is kept under the tongue for 3 up to 20 minutes, depending on the plants we use. Practice showed that this method is extremely efficient to quickly enhance a great number of disorders, because not only does it point out the physical proprieties of the plants but also their subtle-energetic, invisible proprieties, even if this aspect is less known to most of the people.
To set an example, if we are caught in a state of excitement after an agitated and exhausting day and we cannot commit ourselves to sleep and rest, we can chose certain plants that help us restore silence and inner peace, as lime flowers, poppy seeds or melilot flowers. The powder from these plants can be blended in equal shares, then taken under the tongue for 10-15 minutes. This simple formula has a calming effect, also reducing propensities to insomnia.
