pausing along the way for a month with poppy
We’ve been travelling for a month, have come to a resting place in a beloved retreat on the Cornish coast.
In May, the first round of events for Cinnamon Press’s 20th anniversary, the overwhelm came early and hard. A lupus flare that stopped me attending a much-looked forward to event. This month, I’ve thought a lot about equilibrium.
I noticed over the summer how energy has a new pattern. A spurt followed by feeling flat and wrung out. Push through, a voice in me shouts, but I can no longer sustain this.
I’ve travelled this month with a friend — poppy — who says,you can reframe these days. Not saggy and unproductive, but gentle days. Days to live a different rhythm.
I work with both red poppy (Papaver rhoeas) and California Poppy (Eschscholzia californica).
Red poppy is an especially gentle herb that can be used with children (often in cough syrups). She is full of mucilage, particularly in her petals, giving her ademulcent action for dry coughs and inflammation. And she is beneficial where there is asthma, whooping cough or bronchitis. She softens, physically and emotionally, calming irritation and the nervous system alike. And her emollient properties are lovely for treating dry, itching or scaly skin, including dandruff.
Poppy gently influences the heart and circulation, slowing a rapid heart, relieving palpitations, reducing blood pressure.
A bright soother, poppy eases indigestion, especially if it is caused by anxiety or stress, insomnia and restlessness. She is also helpful for diarrhoea or constipation (a balancer), colic and gas. And all the more so if digestive issues that are nervous in origin. Her seeds have diuretic properties, which support the liver and poppy is similarly helpful with jaundice. Her soothing also makes her an ally for insomnia and tension headaches.
While the white opium poppy (not used in traditional herbalism) is famous for its analgesic properties, red poppy is also pain relieving, supporting conditions like arthritis, rheumatism, sciatica, neuralgia, and lumbago. The seeds infused in oil make soothing balms for joint pain and swelling, muscle aches and headaches.
We tend to think of tiny poppy seeds as not much more than decoration and crunch on bread rolls, but the seeds are rich in fibre and good fats. They are are antioxidant, good for the heart and skin and aid digestion.
Californian poppy has many similarities. She is also analgesic, antispasmodic, and calms the nervous, being relaxant and sedative. She is similarly helpful for respiratory conditions, especially where there is spasm as in asthmatic. California poppy is a heart herb, especially where palpitations are of nervous origin. And she has a particular affinity with the bladder and kidneys so is helpful for urinary tract infections.
Californian poppy supports deeper sleep, especially where PTSD may be impacting sleep. Like red poppy, she provides a sense of emotional protection.
In Druid tradition poppy is associated with redemption, remembrance, motherhood. In Breton legends red poppies are associated with prophetic dreams and with the soul’s journey and immortality. Death, rebirth and fertility.
Her seeds can lie dormant for years. Listen, poppy says, sometimes you have to rest. Really rest.
When I was researching a novel in Spain (the third book in the Casilda trilogy, For Hope is Always Born), there were banks of red poppy on the hillside of the ruined castle at Burgos. They wound themselves into the narrative of a young woman finding her own identity in strange and difficult times. My protagonist, Casilda (based on a 10th century Moorish princess who became a hermit and saint) was someone of enormous softness. She was frail, aneamic, bled constantly. She was a person of enormous resolve, determination and strength. She was chronically ill. She was a healer.
All month poppy has wound herself into my days. The rhythm of this month was always going to be hectic. Twelve places in 30 days. Six literary events. Flourishing days, dormant days. To learn to say — this much I can do, but no more. When our nervous systems, our guts, our inlammation, creis out, we are not broken. We are wise bodies saying, It’s all rhythm. In this poppy agrees with Virginia Woolf.
She has supported sleep, guarded a space for dreams, gentled the days.
Poppy asks us to examine how we relate to pain.
She has cooled heart and gut, held body and emotions together.
But she is not there to keep us going beyond what the body can bear. She doesn’t only whisper permission to take moments of retreat. She insists.
She’s not there to relieve pain that we court with the hubris of keeping on going no matter. She’s not there to bolster some image that the world relies on us, that it will all fall apart if we dare to stop for a while.
A herb for children, a softening herb, she opens to pleasure and joy.
Playful, bright with joy. She knows that joy and sorrow walk together.
Each day I used poppy seed oil before sleep.
Each day I took a few drops of tincture.
She settled in the heart, soothing.
A seed herb, she settled into my thinking, clearing. Airy and light, but not ungrounded.
She walks the edge of imagination, makes space for dreams, but not for numbing ourselves. .
Soft and strong. It’s not a choice. It’s always both/and.
How do you need to gentle your days?
Dreamtea
Combine equal amounts of hawthorn leaf and flowers, Californian poppy, red poppy, passionflower and chamomile.
This is a deeply soothing tea with a lovely scent, colour and flavour and my favourite tea for last thing at night. (Take it sufficiently before sleep that you won;t need to get up in the night to pee). You can add hibiscus and/or a small amount of mugwort (but be aware it can induce vivid dreams. And take care with chamomile if you suffer from acid reflux.)