letter eight: rest

early winter/lìdōng 立冬, preserving resources, seeking warmth, and deep rest.

Nov 13, 2022

I hope you all are well, keeping warm, drinking your favorite tea, hugging those you love. I’m sending you all of my best, as I write you this evening—tucked away in my new yellow loft surrounded by mountains, next to a river. I’m burning dried cypress and rosemary in an old silver dish from my mom, listening to the sounds of my clothes tumble about in the dryer, dropping an elixir of rose hips, wild grapes, bay laurel, oak leaf, fig leaf, sweet marjoram, fennel essence, alpine forest honey, and brandy behind my tongue.

PS: don’t forget that if something in this newsletter is bold and italicized, it’s a hyperlink to encourage you to dig deeper into the given topic.

Anatomía vegetal (in English: “plant anatomy”) illustrations by Fredric Elfving.

Music for this letter:

GREEN by Hiroshi Yoshimura, Japanese musician and composer, considered a pioneer of ambient music in Japan. Yoshimura’s music mostly falls under the minimalist genre of kankyō ongaku / environment music; natural sounds steeped in melodic electronic music.

One user comment on the YouTube upload of the album aptly captures the distinct feeling Yoshimura’s GREEN wraps listeners in:

“this album makes me feel like an insect living inside some sort of a greenhouse on another planet or dimension and my mind is so limited that everything feels good and sublime no matter what..,”

Hiroshi Yoshimura at ’86 Hinoemata Performance Festival.

5 days ago, on November 7th, we entered the beginning of winter according to the Chinese Lunar-Solar Calendar—lìdōng 立冬, the 19th of the 24 solar terms. Lìdōng marks a period of transition as the natural world returns to rest.

Ancient Daoist medicine encourages conservation of our energy from the beginning of winter (lìdōng 立冬,) until spring comes. Daoism teaches us that our human existence directly reflects the pattern of nature—like the environment, in winter, our bodily processes slow and we seek warmth and store fat. Winter—very literally—is a season of living off of our preserves (food and energy). Animals move into hibernation and plant life dies down, returning to the earth to turn over and begin preserving energy for the coming spring. (PS: please leave the leaves.) The sun sets earlier, and rises later, asking the body to do the same—to seek rest as much as possible.

Similarly in spring we sow seeds, in summer we nurture the growth of those seeds, and in autumn we harvest.

If you’re interested in the 24 solar terms from the classics of Daoist medicine & cosmology, here’s a quick UNESCO video with a bit more information for you:

Illustration of Japanese Algae, Codium divaricatum

Here’s some soothing nature footage from BBC Studios on a couple of critters and how they go about hibernating through the winter season.

When I think of rest, winter, seeking warmth, there’s a specific plant ally that immediately comes to mind: Valerian.

Valeriana officinalis, Valerian root, is one of the strongest sedative herbs available to us. With a deep, stinky scent, this special root has a number of active ingredients that work synergistically to relax the nervous system. If you’re someone who tends to run cold—with cold fingers, toes, etc. Valerian root is probably well suited for you as it tends to be extremely warming, increasing blood flow throughout the body.

However, if you tend to run warm, Valerian may agitate you, stimulating you and keeping you from resting. (If this is you, see skullcap, another one of my favorite plant friends, instead.)

This herb is often combined with other sedative nervine herbs, such as passionflower or skullcap, that have more cooling constitution in order to balance its warming properties.

Here’s a quick video of one of my favorite Appalachian herbalists, Joe Hollis, showing his Valerian plants and explaining its properties a bit. By the way, Joe’s YouTube channel is a gardening-gold mine. I can’t recommend it enough—chock-full of information and extremely soothing at the same time.

From The Dirt Gems herbal oracle deck guide (card pictured above):

Valeriana Officinalis
Swampy Dreamer

“Valerian is the dank musk of deep sleep, wandering the caves and recesses of the dream world, the starry abyss of the mind. Valerian takes us to the center of the world, the heart of the matter, to our very core. For some Valerian is a relaxing, melting surrender. For others the experience is hot, agitated, and stimulating. Perhaps this paradoxical presentation has to do with your relationship to these underground, underbelly places.

Valerian taps into the currents in our body that regulate heat, both in physical temperature and in energetic states like anger, irritation and unresolved negativity. Valerian may cause the heat to rise and surface, making possible to dissipate and resolve as steam does. Valerian may also lead you into the damp and sputtering places that need heat to come ignite our smoldering debris into action.

For those that are lacking the depths of sleep to integrate daily experiences and process memory, Valerian is a true aid. But engage this powerful plant with caution as they may request that you first burn it all down, finding this sleep through a startling release with sweat and shakes. For some Valerian can cause great discomfort and a relationship with Valerian must begin on the most subtle level. We cannot always dive headlong into our challenges or areas of growth, we must court them, whisper, guide, and coax. Valerian offers us a honeyed starting line, with their fan of sweet white flowers. Approach softly, breath in and begin.

Valerian is a guardian of water and swamp lover. Shimmy into your waders and look the alligator in the eye.”

There are just 2 spots left for my Shelter level patron membership—this month, Patrons will be receiving an herbal formulation for deep rest and warmth, including none other than, you got it, Valerian.

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Artist unknown — if you know who made this, please reach out!

I now live in a region that bears inhabit! In line with this month’s theme, here’s a short, informative video on bear hibernation:

With that, I’ll leave you with one of my all-time favorite albums, Joni Mitchell’s Hejira. Something about the colder weather makes me crave this album like none other.

Thank you, as always, for being here this month. I feel so grateful for each and every one of you who take the time to read my ramblings and indulge in my strange little interests. This newsletter means so much to me, and I’m so happy to have you here.

Sending you warmth, rest, and slowness,

Morgan