Dear Yogis,

Whatever we think, here in Woodend, winter has certainly arrived.  I was stunned when (keeping in mind the temperature was about 9C) my student turned up this morning in cotton trousers, t-shirt and so on, whilst this little bunny was decked out for winter.  I did feel older – but I like to be warm.  Our family came to the Macedon Ranges because mum came here on a Sunday outing and fell in love with it, although she always said she would retire to Queensland for the warmth!  For her it was like going back to England, same vegetation, same weather.

A NEW BOTANICAL HERB DRAWING ZOOM COURSE  ($65.50 for 5 zoom sessions.  Every Saturday 1.30 to 3pm starting Saturday 26th March)

Are you ready to add a whimsical, personal touch to your skills?   Imagine your own vivid illustrations, such as have captured the hearts and imaginations of foragers, cooks and herbalists for centuries, illustrating your newsletters, cards, booklets….and so on.

I am a trained Scientific Illustrator, but you don’t need to be – you don’t have to able to draw for anyone else, just for you.  By the end of the Botanical Drawing for Herbalists (zoom) Course, you will have completed numerous botanical illustrations from start to finish using the many techniques.  You’ll also be equipped with inspiring exercises and ideas for adding your newfound drawing skills into your forays into foraging or in cookery – maybe to illustrate recipes, or build a course around your kitchen adventures   This could be anything from creating your own illustrated flash cards to adding frame-worthy new pages to your materia medica, or posters for your yoga studio or kitchen. 

I have attached an example of fungi drawings I made for a poster.  Just black and white – but very effective.  You could do this too.

 

SCHEDULE:  
ZOOM: Monday 6.30 Gita, Tuesday 7.30 Herbalists Course, Friday 6.45 FREE TAROT SESSION.
                ZOOM HERBAL DRAWING COURSE: Starts Saturday 26th March at 1.30pm
STUDIO YOGA: Monday 1pm, Wednesday, Friday 5.30
                 STUDIO Ion-Ki Spa Cleanse.  If you feel too tired, stressed, “stuck” to do anything new, try a cleanse and change.

 

HERBS ON HAND (New Shipments have arrived)

Turkey Tail Powder –  25g $30 including postage
Reishi Powder – 25g $30 including postage
Reishi Dried Herb Slices 25g $30 including postage (I put mine in a little red wine, honey, spices and ashwagandha to make a tonic wine).

*Herb tea for IBS and Bloating tummy (who doesn’t know that feeling?)
*Herb tea that has a reputation for helping with anaemia.
*Herb tea for sleeplessness.
and *Herbs for HEART HEALTH  (I use Hawthorn, and this is in the Herb tea).

HERB TEAS $53.50 a pack  of 6 including postage.  This will last about 10 days to 2 weeks depending on how often you dip them into your own teas, or water bottle. You can add honey or lemon to taste as you want to.  The little pouches as you can see I make and tag myself, as well as growing, drying and packing the herbs.  They are not like regular teas, you don’t jiggle them to make the water dark – these are herbal teas to have you feel better… one tea bag will last at least one day, with me two, jiggled into any tea or water you are drinking.  After they are finished, I drop them into my drinking water jug…I might have 4 or five in the jug at any one time.  No chemicals are water or lost.

Reishi’s alcohol-soluble triterpenes go a step further.  Scientists have discovered that alcohol extracts from Reishi mushrooms are “the only known source of a particular group of triterpenes, also known as ganodermic acids, which have been found to have direct cancer cell cytotoxicity on a wide variety of cancer cell lines”.

I WILL SEE YOU ON THE MAT

NAMASTE – JAHNE

Reminder: I’ve written this article based on my own research and experience, but I am not a medical professional.  Please do your own research and/or consult a healthcare professional to be sure a reishi tincture/herb/remedy is right for you. Be especially careful when working with wild mushrooms. Every year people are poisoned by eating wild mushrooms that closely resemble edible species.      I am not a mushroom expert, nor do I claim to be.  I’ve written this based on my own research because I enjoy sharing the fruits of my own mycological journey with others.  Do not rely solely on my writings to identify mushroom types, and be sure to cross-reference anything mushroom-related with at least two (preferably more) credible sources. 

Dear yogis,

If you have ever spent time with me, you would have heard me speak about Death Valley in the USA.  It is the most beautiful place I have visited, I have the BEST memories from the number of times I was fortunate enough to go there and teach yoga.

On Saturday I was sent a picture, and it all came flooding back.  Here is the Inn. The hill above the inn on the left hand side is where the original owner/builder used to have afternoon tea EVERY AFTERNOON, not just occasionally.  From this vantage point she could look down on the progress of the build I guess, and admire it when it was finished. Her butler would load up a burro and take the table, umbrella and everything for a formal tea to the peak where she could look down on the Inn as she dined.  Of course the inn was quite a lot smaller originally.  Very Katherine Hepburn. I can imagine that – the entire Inn looked very much like an old film set.

The picture on the right is the balcony where (with tables removed) I used to hold my dawn yoga class as the sun was coming up over the mountains which ring the desert valley,  tipped with snow.  Such a contrast, and so very beautiful.

HERBS, FRUITS AND VEGETABLES…
 Winter is on the way – and if you lived here you would think it had arrived.  It’s “lemon time” and I have been making dried peel to be made into powders, processing and freezing the flesh for lemon butters, syrups and cordials. The same with the plums.  You have to be quite picky about how you cut up the fruit and prepare the peel, there is no easy way – I have tried the easy ways and the result isn’t good.  The picture to the right is dried plum slices, and dried lemon peel.  It took four of these huge lemons to cover one tray entirely in one layer, which dried down to half a jar.  Cut carefully they take a fraction of the time to dry.

To make a meaningful amount of lemon peel and later lemon powder you would need a basket of lemons, which would mean a lot of lemon juice and frozen lemon in the freezer. Not a bad thing.  Freeze in ice block trays and later bag up.

The easiest powders to make are those from greens.  The ideal time to dry and powder your produce is when there is a glut at your greengrocers or in your garden.  You could of course pick a mix of wild greens to add to these and make a jar of green powder to pop in smoothies, soups and stews in the winter for extra nutritional value. An advantage of powders is that you can process an enormous amount of vegetables (even pumpkins or zucchinis) and fruit and the result will fit in one jar, as opposed to slicing and drying where storage space is needed after drying – ask me, I am running short of shelves and storage.

Either way (drying or powdering) helps us to use any glut that we may be fortunate enough to experience, keeping in mind we are all dealing with higher prices for fruit and vegetables, and forget about the tropical fruits,  I think the flooding is going to make this most difficult.

 

PAST LIFE TAROT READINGS:

If you are stuck, and would like another view of where you are and where you are going in your life,  maybe this is the answer or part of the answer.  Instead of a two hour Past Life Therapy Session which is very difficult to do on zoom (and quite expensive), we could do a past Life Tarot Reading.  Think about it and call me to make a booking.  yogafirst2@bigpond.com

THE ION-KI SPA CLEANSE
I forgot to say.  A client recently had a session.  Afterwards she felt lighter and energised, but was sceptical until she got home and took off her bracelet – I always tell my clients to remove all metal items before a treatment but she forgot to remove a little charm about the size of a ten cent piece in the form of a “tree of life”.  When she took it off later that night underneath the charm on her skin was a henna coloured imprint exactly in the shape of the charm.  The residual stuff in the bottom of the tub after the session was the same colour, henna.

To those people who think its a nonsense or can’t understand it – it tells me (and might tell them) that something is changing.  We may not understand it (the scientists among us might skoff) , but it does change the energy in the body.  A treatment eases pain and discomfort, energises, and you feel lighter and happier somehow.

SCHEDULE – Open 6 days a week – closed Thursdays
STUDIO: Monday 1pm yoga, Wednesday/Friday 5.30. ION-KI SPA CLEANSE by appointment, weekends available
ZOOM: Monday 6.30 Teacher Training – Gita.  Tuesday 7.30 herbal Workshop and Friday (free) Tarot class 6.45
TAROT AND PAST LIFE SESSIONS available during the week and weekends.

I WILL SEE YOU ON THE MAT

NAMASTE – JAHNE

Dear Yogis,

I have had a few wins today, not the least solving the problem of how to weigh down my ferments.  

If you have ever put fruit under vodka or any type of liquid, you will know that the fruit will float to the top in no time at all.  Then if you are not watching,  it can go mouldy.  Not nice.  A fermentation weight that you pop into the jar on top of the fruit keeping it under the liquid is the way to go.  Trying to buy one was another thing altogether.

Problem solved by a putting river rock in a plastic bag and popping that in the jar.  I could have made a little macrame net, and perhaps that’s a project for winter, but the plastic bag works.  It keeps the rock away from the fluid, and makes it easy to pull out of the jar when you need to stir the mix.

THE YOGA OF HERBS.
I have been asked to give a talk at The Theosophical Society in Melbourne on Saturday the 28th May at 1.30pm.  If you are close handy to Melbourne (and if Covid is at bay) I would love to see you.  Topic – The Yoga of Herbs”.

“The essence of all things is The Earth.  The essence of The Earth is Water.  The essence of Water is Plants. The essence of plants is the human being”.   “Esam bhutanam prithivi rasha, prthivya apo raso-pam osadhyo rasa, osadhinam puruso rasah” (Chandyoga Upanishad 1.4.2).

HERB TEAS:
*Herb tea for IBS and Bloating tummy (who doesn’t know that feeling?)
*Herb tea that has a reputation for helping with anaemia.
*Herb tea for sleeplessness.
*Herb teas for anxiety and restlessness.
*Herb tea for depression
and *Herbs for HEART HEALTH  (I use Hawthorn, and this is in the Herb tea).

HERB TEAS $53.50 a pack  of 6 including postage.  This will last about 10 days to 2 weeks depending on how often you dip them into your own teas, or water bottle. You can add honey or lemon to taste as you want to.  The little pouches as you can see I make and tag myself, as well as growing, drying and packing the herbs.

SCHEDULE today….
ZOOM: Friday 6.45 TAROT (FREE once you get to the end of your current set of 4 zoom classes)
ION-KI SPA CLEANSE at The Studio.  Please make an appointment

Herbs and books on www.myyogabooks.etsy.com or http://www.jhwilliams.online

I LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU SOON – ON THE MAT OR ZOOM

NAMASTE – JAHNE