Ian's April 2022 Newsletter

On International Women’s Day (IWD) a couple of weeks ago, I was reflecting on the amazing lineage of women healers coming through my father’s side from whom I received my love for and connection to the Bush and healing. I am very grateful for being born into and so strongly influenced by this lineage of strong, caring, wonderful women and for the legacy I received from my great-great grandmother, great grandmother and grandmother who were all herbalists. They were also some of the first non-indigenous people to research the healing properties of Australian plants.

I had the very good fortune to grow up next door to my grandmother and both her and my parent’s properties backed onto National Park bushland. As a young boy I tried to spend as much time as I could being with her, helping her make her herbal tinctures and extracts and of course going on bush walks with her, where she would point out all the plants that she was working with. I was very fortunate to have my grandmother spending such a lot of time teaching and being with me.

So, on this IWD I was pondering on how important relationships and communication are for females and how very different that is to that of many males’ experience. One of the best things that a man can do for his health is to be married to a woman, whereas for a woman, one of the best things she can do for her health is to nurture her relationships with her girlfriends.

Women connect with each other differently and provide support systems that help each other to deal with stress and difficult life experiences. Physically, this quality “girlfriend time” helps women to create more serotonin – a neurotransmitter that has been linked to help combat depression and that can create a general feeling of well-being.

Women share feelings, whereas men often form relationships around activities. Men rarely sit down with a mate and talk about how they feel about certain things or how their personal lives are going. Men will often readily discuss jobs, sport and cars, but not so much their feelings with other men. The Men’s Essence we launched last year had both Bluebell and Flannel Flower in it to help men get in touch with what they are feeling and then be able to talk about those feelings.

In numerology, if you are born without the number 5 in your birthdate, then you are more likely to have difficulty knowing what it is that you're actually feeling. Whereas if you are born with no number one or only a single one in your birthday you're likely to have greater difficulty verbalising your feelings. This is even more so in the case for males as is it well documented that girls will spend far more hours in talking and communicating with other girls and older women as they are growing up compared to boys. Numerology will show you the blueprint and while everyone can learn to be able to express their feelings those with only a single one, or as of this Millennium, no ones in their birth chart, will have to work much harder at it to do this compared to those born with two or three ones in their birthdate. Again, both Bluebell and Flannel Flower will make this much easier to do for those lacking a five or a one – or having only a single one, in their birth chart.

Women talk about their feelings all the time; they share from their souls with their sisters, mothers and girlfriends. Recent research shows this is actively good for their health. According to research by the Head of Psychiatry at Stanford University, exploring the mind-body connection and the relationship between stress and disease in women, spending time with a female friend is just as important to a woman’s general health as jogging or working out at a gym.

He made the point that there is a tendency to think that women are aware that when they are “exercising” they are doing something good for our bodies, but believe that they are “wasting time” when they are “hanging out with friends”, and that they should be more productively engaged.

Research shows that this is not true. In fact, the research at Stanford is showing that failure to create and maintain quality personal relationships with other women is as dangerous to physical health as smoking! Quality time with close female friends is very important for a woman’s health. No wonder mental health has suffered so hugely in the last two years where many countries and their citizens have been subjected to prolonged lockdowns.

We are very gregarious creatures and both men and women all need social interaction. Countless studies have shown that when people are isolated and missing contact with other people their health suffers and that they will die much earlier than those who have social interaction. They all die of the same causes, but they die younger. Interestingly today, with the rapid increase in depression, houses in Western countries are getting bigger, but there's less people in them. A generation ago 10% of dwellings had a single occupant, where today that figure is over 30%. Genetically, Asian people and more susceptible to depression, yet their rate is far less than that of European people. One of the reasons given for this is that it's quite common to have many generations of a family all living together, so that an older person will have the young children of their grandson living in the house with them and playing with them. Tall Yellow Top is the remedy for loneliness, alienation and feeling isolated.

Back in the 1940s Hans Seyle, a pioneering Hungarian-Canadian, was conducting his ground-breaking research on stress. As a result of his work, we have the flight and fight response model that is still widely accepted. This theory postulates that when we are confronted by a threat, blood will flow to our muscles so that we can either successfully flee the threat or if we choose to fight it, we will have a better chance of overcoming it. However more recent closer inspection of his work has shown that all the subjects in the trials were male. What we now know is this is not necessarily how women respond to stress. There can be far less stress hormones - cortisol and adrenaline, produced and a decrease in the impact of the stress when women can come together as a group and discuss what's happening with them.

There are in fact many examples of how women's bodies will respond differently biologically and neurologically to that of men. Studies have shown that traumatic stress affects the brains of adolescent boys and girls differently, the insula, a region in the brain that integrates emotions and actions, appears to undergo accelerated maturation in adolescent girls with PTSD, but not in boys with the condition. The insula appears to play a key role in the development of PTSD. This helps to explain why girls who experienced trauma are more likely to develop PTSD than boys who experience trauma. Emergency Essence, Fringed Violet and Hibbertia can also be thought of in helping with some of the emotional responses to the events that triggered the PTSD.

Young girls have fewer neurons than young boys, but the neurons are better connected over both hemispheres of the brain compared to boys. Studies have also found differences in male and female brain activity when it comes to cooperation. Slender Rice Flower is the essence that helps with cooperation and group harmony.

Viva la difference and viva children having loving, caring men and women in their lives whilst growing up.