The Olamina Herbal Quartet
After a season of medicine-making that found us in even deeper gratitude for the stillness and wisdom of plant teachers, we bring you our new quartet: Fret Not, our nerve support formula, Brain Food, our cognitive function tincture, Happy Tummy, our digestive bitters and Sweet Dreams, our sleep tonic. Lovingly crafted by hand with local, foraged and organic materials, these formulas address some of the four biggest challenges we found ourselves facing this year.
➪ With alerts that brought us heartbreaking news of late capitalism’s overlapping crises and quarantine blurring the lines between work and home, focus felt impossibly out of reach for many stretches of time this year. Enter Brain Food. For this formula, we called in brain tonics Gotu Kola and Bacopa to support you in bringing all of yourself to the task at hand
➪ Because of the gut-brain connection, worry, stress and other states of inner turmoil can show up as stomach knots, bloating and other forms of digestive upset. Happy Tummy is our grounding and delicious offering for those needing support in this arena, featuring weedy, abundant and bitter friend Yellow Dock
➪ Adrenaline and cortisol are hormones that give us the energy to power through the day. Among other functions, they served the evolutionary role of keeping our ancestors alert to address potential threats. The threats we face as a species are of an epochal scale, but if we are to do the work the planet is asking of us, we must take our rest. In Sweet Dreams we bring together comrades Passiflora incarnata, Hops, Skullcap and Valerian to create space for restful sleep
➪ This year we and our beloveds encountered countless moments when the mountain of our worries felt impossible to surmount. We made Fret Not as a balm for the heavy, incapacitating anxiety that can accumulate while walking with consciousness in an unfree world. Calling together beautiful friends Milky Oats, which help to rebuild nervous systems damaged by worry, Holy Basil, a calming and uplifting adaptogen and California Poppy, which can bring immediate aid in heightened states, this formula is meant to enable one to heal from the damage that trauma, stress and anxiety enact on the nervous system
We offer these formulas in deep respect to you, to aid the work you are doing to fashion a new world out of the shell of the old. May they lighten your load and create space for you to witness the wonder of the more-than-human beings with whom we share this planet.
Adelante!