Chumash Healing
by Maria Carlenius
How would you like to try a therapeutic bathtub soak that is your own at-home version of coastal California's northern Pacific, healing hot springs? A few easy to find ingredients and minor modifications will bring you the self-indulgence of a five star hotel's most exclusive secret spa with the natural curative wonders that only real plants and minerals can provide. Aching muscles, the pains of arthritis, and mental and physical stress will be drawn away like the flat, foaming fingers of an ocean wave slowly retreating from its shoreline.
What about safe and effective homemade root and leaf teas specifically adapted for home and hospital care? A few minutes of preparation can provide beverages with a wide variety of medicinal benefits. They can help speed recovery from most illness, and some actually reduce symptoms related to the menstrual cycle and menopause. How about a seaweed wrap for edema? Or a homemade poultice for your respiratory ailments?
These are all cures that come to us from a unique indigenous culture with a fascinating history that was almost lost for all time. Find out about them by reading the companion article, "California's Native Chumash People".
White Sage (Salvia apiana) was considered by the Chumash to be integral to all healing, a crucial starter herb that enabled the other herbs to do their work. Smudging helped one contact God through prayer which was an essential aspect of making the herbs and plants effective. Garcia (see sources at bottom of article) recommends white sage every day for the spiritual health of a patient, but as Adams notes it also has anti-inflammatory compounds, antibiotic compounds and anti-anxiety compounds which means the health benefits are physical as well, especially when ingested. So white sage is used to calm and relax the patient, increase the potency of other herbs, and boost the immune system during convalescence. Here's what Garcia does.
White Sage Drink
Take one leaf of white sage, and place it in a room temperature bottle of water for at least 30 minutes. Each sage leaf can be reused up to four times in one day in additional bottles, but a fresh new leaf is needed for each 24 hour period. White sage can also be made into a light and delicate, soothing tea as long as one begins with tepid water and does not allow the water to fully boil which destroys the leaf's active compounds. The patient can drink white sage in either of these fluid forms throughout the entire day. White sage may have been used to alleviate menstrual pain due to problems of heavy flow as well.
Mugwort (Artemisia douglasiana) is a Chumash cure for hot flashes and all other menopausal symptoms, menstrual difficulties and even the severe pain, heavy bleeding and cramps associated with dysmenorrhea.
Root & Leaf Teas for Wise Women’s Moon Cycle
The remedy for hot flashes and other menopausal and menstrual symptoms is a tea made by cutting off a piece of mugwort the length of one's middle finger and placing it into hot water which can be sweetened with sugar if desired. The tea is ingested as needed (according to pain and discomfort), up to several days in a row.
Malosma laurina can be made into a leaf tea, Rubus ursinus can be used as a root tea, and California bay leaf Umbellularia californica can also be used as a leaf tea for the same menstrual and menopausal symptoms. Make according to the same methods above.
Yerba santa (Eriodictyon crassifolium or E. trichocalyx) was used as part of a treatment for all breathing problems, even including the tuburculosis that beset Chumash tribes in later years when they were living at the Spanish missions.
Yerba-Onion-California Bay Leaf Chest Poultice
A poultice is created by soaking the Yerba santa leaves in hot water with any available red skinned onion (which also opens the airways) and crushed California bay leaves (Umbellularia californica). The whole concoction is placed on the chest in order to alleviate the respiratory difficulty. The heat is a vital element in this and many of the other Chumash treatments. It's believed that fire is a spiritual force for renewal and animating life, but it also obviously has medicinal properties including opening restricted passageways and soothing muscle and joint pain.
Bathtub Pacific Paradise Hot Spring Soak
Arthritis and other painful, sore joint conditions were treated by soaking in natural, hot springs treated with the same California bay leaves, and then sprinkled with red maids (Calandrinia ciliata) upon the top of the water. Garcia suggests trying to repeat this in a tub at home.
To really create the effect of a real, Pacific coast hot spring soothing soak one
might go a little further and add Epson salts or sea salt. But why not really make it an experience that will be sensual as well? In other words, to luxuriate in a homemade hot spring try adding your own visual, auditory, and olfactory cues that will bring the ocean and outdoors inside your home. Healing mind and body at the same time.
A benefit to using your own bathroom is you can adjust ambience and temperature by adding candles, including bath salts that have colored dyes with the turquoise, or deep cobalt blues of California's coastal waters.
You can add a hot humidifier to the bathroom for additional steam (taking care to pay attention to your need to rehydrate and that you turn off the humidifier and leave the bathtub if you feel faint or dizzy). Play gentle music or CDs with the sound of ocean waves, and for a real outdoor-indoor treat include the fragrance from a vase full of your favourite freshly cut flowers.
Be really creative - the flat massage rocks that come with an inexpensive Conair hot rock massager can be pre-heated and then held in your hands during your bath to slowly release heat directly into your stiff wrists. The heated rocks can also be placed at the rear of the tub right at the small of an aching back. Any aromatherapies or your own sound, mineral, and color cures can also be added to make this entire experience personal.
Cure-all Kelp Wrap
Brown kelp (Fucus vesiculosus) was used in the treatment of edema, which is the potentially life threatening swelling of the body, particularly legs and feet as a result of the body's inability to regulate its own fluids. Chumash healers took the long brown kelp leaves in natural form, and loosely wrapped them around the afflicted area as long as it was on the lower part of the leg. According to Adams it may be that the phytosterols help the kidneys reabsorb the water to provide relief in the swelled area.
More Seaweed Studies, More Good News
Brown kelp is rich in B vitamins, iodine, and alkili as well. It's already well known as a treatment for hypothyroid disease (underactive thyroid), and has been demonstrated to lower plasma cholesterol levels. The iodine could have even more health benefits as demonstrated by the health of Asian populations who eat this and related seaweeds regularly.
In fact, a 2004 study suggests that brown kelp may reduce risk for estrogen related diseases like breast and ovarian cancer, as well as endometriosis. The study finds regular ingestion of kelp increases the length of the menstrual cycle which might be the mechanism by which it keeps women from getting these cancers in the first place. It's worth pursuing information about brown kelp and other seaweeds from places including the sources below if you or the patient have any menstrual abnormality such as a short cycle, early onset of menses, late onset of menopause, or any history of estrogen related cancers within your immediate family (Miller, 2006; Skibola 2004; Yuan and Walsh 2006).
The Chumash have so much to teach the world and now resources are becoming available from a body of plant knowledge that would not even be known to every member of a Chumash tribe. This is what is so encouraging about living at a time in history when knowledge becomes open to all.
As a whole, however, these and other herbal cures were only one part of the entire Chumash way of life as Garcia and Adams make clear. Healing included an overall active lifestyle, a sense of community and understanding of the real importance of each and every person to the entire village's survival. There was an appreciation for the necessity of rest and comfort during convalescence, a reliance on prayer and the invocation of the spirit, and a diet especially rich in plant and marine resources which was supplemented by hunted animals. Everything was prepared without a lot of added saturated fats.
The Chumash developed an entire body of botanical knowledge about a variety of useful plants over a minimum of 13,000 years in the Santa Barbara Channel area alone, and now they're proudly sharing it with everyone. Why not try a Chumash cure as part of your own healing regimen?
Sources and Suggested Further Reading
*Adams JD Jr. and Garcia C., "The Advantages of Traditional Chumash Healing," Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2005 March 2 (1): 19-23.
*Adams JD Jr. and Garcia C., "Palliative Care among Chumash People," Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2005 Jun 2 (2): 143-147.
*Adams JD Jr. and Garcia C., "Women's Health among the Chumash," Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2006 March 3 (1): 125-131.
Erlandson, Jon M, "CA Forum on Anthropology in Public: The Making of Chumash Tradition: Replies to Haley and Wilcoxon," Current Anthropology, Aug.-Oct. 1998 39 (4): 477-510.
Miller, Donald W., Jr. M.D. "Extrathyroidal Benefits of Iodine," Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. Winter 2006 11 (4): 106-110.
Skibola, Christine, "The Effect of Fucus vesiculosus, an Edible Brown Seaweed, upon the Menstrual Cycle Length and Hormonal Status in Three Pre-menopausal Women: a Case Report." BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Jan. 2004. doi:10.1186/1472-6882-4-10.
Yuan, Yvonne V. and Walsh, Natalie A., "Antioxidant and Antiproliferative Activities of Extracts from a Variety of Edible Seaweeds," Food & Chemical Toxicology. July 2006, 44 (7). 1144-1150.
* Available online