Blue Vervain: Keeping Us Calm in Times of Turmoil
Blue Vervain, Verbena Hastata, an herb of use in many challenging female emotional and physical situations.
What does this mean?
It can be complicated, but in practice, I have found this herb to be an asset to changing hormones during peri-menopause and menopause, and beyond.
It’s still hush hush; peri-menopause and menopause. Science doesn’t know much about it because, well, frankly, throughout the past 5,000 years, women and their “problems” haven’t been given much thought. Ouch, that hurts right? Time to grab some Blue Vervain.
With its bitter, acrid taste, it has affinities for digestion, (particularly the liver and the emotions it holds), relaxing the NS, and helping with general irritability, whether it be emotional or hot agitated anxiety.
Although considered mainly neutral in energetics, it is slightly cooling in nature.
I found it to be very gentle as to not aggravate heat already in the body, but help it to dissipate into the air and earth.
It is excellent in both bringing heat up and out of the body (hot flashes, NS Tension. strong emotions) while also having a grounding effect in the body - bringing us into a neutral state of being.
Images below are Blue Vervain in bloom on the left and Blue Vervain drying out from the top down on the right.
The aromatic compounds found in the root (below), which account for the acrid taste, seem to permeate the air around us in a strong physical way. This can help with emotional outbursts when we go through our change of life.
Which, let’s face it ladies, is like being a teenager again hormonally, but, with a bunch of emotional baggage of growing up a woman in a male based society… (and therapy doesn’t really seem to help with this strong emotional craziness as it is based in these cerebral patriarchal templates of society; you know “hysteria,” over sensitivity, unworthiness)
This is the root of Blue Vervain, Verbena Hastata
With this herbs affinity for helping with relaxing the nervous system, we can actually see this signature in the root with our own eyes; the way it has a centralized point and small roots extend outwards from it.
This signature can also be smelled through it’s permeating aromatics! Fascinating right?
When I first worked with the herb, I took 3 drops of a tincture and it brought up heat through my head, dissipating up and outward. I felt as if I was really in my body, not my mind being taken over and filled with excitable emotions.
This really shows us how Vervains acrid taste brings the energy from the head outward and up, creating a secure sense of feeling grounded in the body. A relief, really.
Esoteric Significance/ Fun Tidbits about Blue Vervain (Verbena Hastata)
Ruling Planet: Mercury.
At the core, Mercury teaches us to be receptive, to feel, and to be open to emotions and their flows -
Ruling elements:
Air and Ether
These elements represent tension and dryness in the body and represent movement and change etherically. They are Vata in nature - intense, working hard, feeling hard, moving hard.
Ruling Principle: (What it is here to teach us.)
Mercury is The Communicator. Communicating between the Gods themselves, and in between the Gods and humans. As a God, Mercury was able to go back and forth (as above, so below) between mortals and heavens - to communicate balance, find a balance between body, mind, and spirit (the release of tension!)
He specifically navigated into harmony during times of change, allowing us to be receptive and not only in your heads. ( A NS correlation)
As a result, plants ruled by mercury often have a hollow stem!
This is the stem of Blue Vervain after harvesting the leaves and flowers. As you can see, it is hollow - a mercury signature.
Blue Vervain has a lovely relaxant quality to the Nervous System, helps in the explosiveness of emotions/emotional outbursts that occur during perimenopause and menopause.
The whole plant has been known to bring energy from the head into the body; keeping it steady and neutral in times of stress and emotional disturbances.
It helps to release the perfectionism ingrained into us as to how we’ve been told things “should be”, how we “should” be, act, as women, and assists us to find and balance peace within and without of ourselves.
I’ve been beguiled by the calmness which comes from intensity being distributed up and out of the body by this plant!
Perhaps you have been a bit too?