Nutrition & natural garden remedies
The seasonal garden and nutrition
The seasonal garden offers a range of nutritional food through out the year. In a UK seasonal year the garden in:
Spring brings : spring cabbages, last of winter veg, raddish
Summer brings: beetroot, carrots, beans, lettuace, onions,
potatoes, grains, tomatoe, cucumber, peas
Autumn brings: parsnips, turnips, potato, pumpkin, apples, pears
Winter brings: winter cabbage, sprouts, kale, swede, turnip
Plants provide a nutrition, which promotes a healthy life in people, animals, insects.
The quality of nutrition effected by the way of farming and gardening.
The nutritional quality or vitality of food has been under great scrutiny for many years, with the organic movement being born out of concern for the use of chemicals and mechanisation in agriculture, and its negative effect on the life and health of the land.
Lord Northbourne, inspirer to the organic movement, wrote of the relation between land and people, saying that a land workers relation to the soil and its inhabitants has ‘…become more predatory rather than symbiotic.’, and as a consequence the vibrant, healthy life of the soil has suffered. A symbiotic living with nature, with the processes at work on nature, are described by Northbourne as a need to promote the growth of healthy food, which supports healthy functioning of the human being. How a land worker relates to nature, therefore, not only affects nature itself but also the food that the land worker eats.
A holistic understanding of nutrition and the plant
Back in the early 1900s Rudolf Steiner offered a view to the threefold relationship between plant and person as a way to understand healthy nutrition. To him, the main parts of the plant relate to the main parts of the human being:
This threefold relationship points to the
use of food and natural remedies for healthy
human development.
Maira Geuter, a student to Steiner, worked with these insights from Steiner and her research is reflected in the books Herbs in Nutrition & To those who cook. Other Nutritionalists and naturapaths inspired by Steiner Otto Wollf, Rudolf Hauska, Wilhelm Pelikan, to name a few.
Today Heinz Grill, also offers a holistic view to the connection between human development and nutrition, and in his work we find again the importance of the way of relating and forming an broader conscious insight. In his book 'Nutrition and the giving power of the human being' he writes:
‘In the last decades this saying has been taught
as a basis in most nutritional teachings:
‘You are what you eat.’
The following consideration, however, now leads
to a different point of view and one could change
this leitmotif to something like this:
"The human being is the way they relate to food",…
Nutrition has not only a physical, but also a
metaphysical dimension.’
The metaphysical dimension of nutrition is less known,
the physical dimension, however, lives in abundance.
Grill thus offers insights to soul-spiritual meaning of
food, and ways to perceive living forces, and their meaningful
qualities, which support human life.
In this book are various chapters which anyone
can read and bring into the activity of cooking
or choosing a healthy nutrition.
See this link for translations of chapters from
the edition or refer to the old edition called
Nutrition an the inner sense of giving.
Natural remedies from the garden
The natural medicine of Edward Bach also points to the soul-spiritual quality of plants as a support to healthy human development. He conceived a system of plant remedies, 38 in all, which he proposed met an emotional state of being.
There are many other herbalists and naturaupaths who offer simple natural remedies from the garden,
for example, Juliette de Bairacli Levy, and Wilhelm Pelikan offers a comprehensive overview to healing plants, from an anthroposophical perspective - full of wonderful descriptions of plants. Great readin for this toppic.
From Edward Bach
12 healers and other remedies
describes how one can make
remedies for oneself.
Click on image to access.
From Juliette de Bairacli Levy
Common herbs for natural health
From Wilhelm Pelikan
Healing plants series
