What is the Immune System?
The immune system is a complex network of tissues and organs that defend the body against foreign invaders as well as changes within our bodies, such as cancer or other destructive issues.
The Adrenal Glands and That Important Hormone Cortisol
Albert Einstein is reputed to have said that he studied science in order to better ‘understand God’s thoughts’ as He created this wonderful world. As I have studied anatomy and physiology and the healing properties of ‘God’s pharmacy’—for a lifetime—I am, like Einstein, absolutely in awe of the genius of our Creator and of His overwhelming love for each of us!
With plants, in either herb or essential oil form, we have been given wonderful ways to nourish and heal our bodies. I have also been fascinated by and love the study of anatomy (where things are placed in the body) and physiology (what their functions are and why they are where they are)! Placing those little adrenal glands right on top of the kidneys makes perfect, beautiful, harmonious sense! Because of their importance to survival, they are placed with each other in a well-protected spot in the body!
Most of this perhaps too-long article is taken directly from part of what I teach about the Endocrine System during Foot Zone Therapy classes at Butterfly Expressions, LLC in Clifton, Idaho.
The Spleen
A Vital Organ in the Human Body
After a bit of pondering, I chose to discuss the spleen for this month’s Foot Zone Focus. I did this for several reasons. First, I wonder how much the majority of us, including foot zone therapists, people in general, and even medical doctors, really ‘know’ about the spleen. By ‘know’ I mean understand both how important this small organ is to good health, and how much trouble it can cause if it should rupture.
Lymph Care Using Foot Zone Techniques
The lymphatic system is a vital part of our circulatory and immune systems. It consists of a network of lymphatic vessels, lymph nodes, and lymphatic organs, including your spleen and tonsils.
How do I adequately describe the lymphatic system without needing as many pages as I print up when teaching about this body-wide system during the Foot Zone therapy classes that I teach?
Let’s begin today by imagining a team inside your body that is constantly working to keep everything—and I do mean everything!— in balance. That is our lymphatic system!
I find the chosen title of this article, those big bold words above, to be educational all by themselves. WOW! Caring for our lymphatic systems is precisely what we are doing during a ‘cleanse’, even if that cleanse is meant to target the intestinal tract specifically. Every alternative method of eliminating allergies that works recognizes this and works to cleanse and strengthen this vital system.
Energy and Energy Protection
‘Energy and Energy Protection’. What an interesting and fitting topic to discuss with Foot Zone Therapists. Why do I say this? I want to tell three short—very short—stories to explain.
First story: For a short time during my childhood, my mother experienced some very difficult health issues. The severe anemia she suffered, as well as the pain she endured with repeated miscarriages and surgeries, resulted in stress, tension, and—sometimes—irritability and impatience. It didn’t take much self-awareness, even as a child, to realize that tension in the home had a profound effect on the other members of my family! I even asked my father once why I had to behave ‘like an adult’ when my mother didn’t have to. I will always remember his words to me. “Dear daughter,” he said, “Because you can and, right now, with your mother’s health as it is, she cannot.”
What does this first story have to do with energy protection and zoning feet? People come to us seeking answers for health issues they are having. Many times, those issues come with emotional baggage connected to or resulting from the stress they are creating in their lives. As a young zone therapist, I didn’t expect that. I didn’t even recognize, at first, that it was happening. My husband, most helpfully, pointed it out to me!
My dear, patient husband explained to me one day that when he saw a certain car pull into the driveway carrying a young couple for zones, he absolutely avoided coming home until I had finished up with them and they had been gone for some time. That astonished me, especially when he explained that, after this couple left, I was extraordinarily critical of him, discontented, and difficult to live with for a time! They had always seemed so polite to each other to me. I had not recognized the ‘politeness’ for the underlying stress and contention that later led to their not-amicable-in-the-least divorce.
A short while later, my husband pointed out something else to me that I had not recognized or considered either.
My husband pointed out to me that if a client came with a headache (or a cough or just about anything else), they left without it at the end of the Zone session, but that I struggled with it, sometimes even for several days. I realized that he was absolutely right about that a great deal of the time.
I was already playing with (my name for blending) essential oils when I learned to zone feet. I immediately set out to make a blend using essential oils whose aromas were described, around the world, as having ‘energy protecting or ‘repelling’ properties. The Butterfly Express essential oil blend I called LeBenediction was the result. It took several attempts at blending to finally come up with this powerfully effective blend! Why the name LeBenediction? Because, previously, prayer for protection and healing was the way I was coping with whatever I picked up from a zone. (And more than a bit of prayer went into figuring out the proper oils and proportions of those oils for this blend!)
In this article, I will give a description of LeBenediction and of the newer blend, created by a very talented employee, LeGuardian. At the end of the article, I will try to contrast and explain when it might be best to use one or the other of these two blends.
When the words ‘self-care’ or ‘self-improvement’ are heard, people tend to conjure up different trains of thought, especially if they apply them immediately to themselves. For some of us, the idea of ‘caring for ourselves’ may get confused with ‘caring too much for self” and/or “caring too little for others”. But failing to look out for your own health can result in a decline in physical and/or mental health in so many gradual and insidious ways! And your poor health, or even lack of optimal health, can impact those around you in so many ways.
As fall rolls in and the air turns crisp, it also brings along an unwelcome guest—“sickness season.” Cooler weather means respiratory viruses and other illnesses tend to pop up more often. Kids in school are exposed to all kinds of germs (and generously share them at home). Plus, when it’s chilly outside, we spend more time indoors and closer to others, making it easier for germs to spread. To make matters worse, cooler temps and drier air create the perfect environment for viruses to stick around longer, both in the air and on surfaces.
The best way to stay healthy is to give your immune system a boost before sickness season kicks into high gear. That way, you can avoid, or at least lessen, the bugs that come your way. But life happens, and sometimes those best-laid plans don’t pan out. That’s where the products in this blog come in. They can help you stay well, bounce back faster, and make those symptoms a whole lot easier to handle.
Before we begin today’s discussion of essential oils, herbs, and Blessed Waters (homeopathics), I would like to provide a little bit of extraneous, but I feel quite necessary, information. I searched both the Butterfly Express and Butterfly Expressions sites and was disappointed to find that the information I have written and taught in various places over the years on the topic I am about to summarize briefly below is not to be found on either site. It doesn’t seem to be in any of the books I have written, either. (However, I made only a rudimentary search, so . . .) If this oversight is actually real, I intend to remedy the situation as soon as I can find a minute (or a few hours, as it will likely be).
Two key factors in understanding essential oils are recognizing the differences in healing properties among plant families and understanding how various parts of the same plant can offer different therapeutic benefits. It probably doesn’t surprise you that the medicinal properties of the conifer family (spruce trees, for example) are very different from the healing properties of the various herbaceous or ornamental plants (such as the Lauraceae, Labiate, Compositae, and Umbelliferae families).
Even within the same plant family, whether an essential oil has been created from the wood, the seed, the root, or the leaves, dramatically affects the healing properties of that essential oil, and does so to an incredible degree.
A well-built blend allows us to combine, synergistically, the benefits of several plant families as well as the healing capacities of various plant parts, all with the goal of increasing the capabilities of each single essential oil. Just as a chocolate cake is more pleasing—and tastes better—than the varying ingredients separately, an essential oil blend has the potential of being so much more than any of the single oil ingredients by themselves
Let’s keep this information in mind as we discuss various essential oil blends in the pages of this (and every) newsletter.