Mama's Home Remedies: Discover Time-Tested Secrets of Good Health and the Pleasures of Natural Living

by Svetlana Konnikova

  larger and larger until she became whole and full. And that happens every time the Moon enters the sky.

  “That is the end of my story,” said Papa.

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  We listened to the sound of waves crested in white foam rolling slowly to the shore. As if on cue, the midnight-blue sea suddenly

  became antique gold in the middle as the full

  moon blazed her path through the sea.

  “It is known that at such times of full moonlight great writers were inspired to create their best romantic poems,” added Papa. “Tomorrow will probably be a beautiful, romantic day.”

  The next morning the gentle sound of the blue sea woke me up. It always seemed as if it beckoned to me to come and swim in its grandeur. I enjoyed a refreshing swim every morning at sunrise and then carried renewed energy throughout the day ahead. I felt ready to absorb new and exciting impressions from the beautiful surroundings.

  Clusters of oleander rustled their narrow green leaves, and pink cyclamen flowers basked in the sun, raising their heads to the sky as Yalta awakened slowly and lazily. Under the rising sun vacationers began to fill the soft, golden sand beaches. But we had already enjoyed the water and were ready to explore new areas of Crimea.

  Often Mama and Papa would entertain my sister and me after the beach with promenades in the magnificent Crimean Mountain Forest Preserve. There we had unforgettable journeys in oak, pine, and beech forests surrounded by mountains. This huge park was founded in 1923 as the Crimean Hunting Preserve. There people hunted and enjoyed the thick forests in a climate that healed body and soul.

  On the northwestern side of the Crimean peninsula were the Swan’s Islands, where we walked through alpine meadows and emerald groves of pines, oaks, and hornbeams. Giant pines stood in all their mighty power and noble beauty. Their ruddy trunks and deep green needles towered above the other trees. They appeared to be close, but at the same time far away, wrapped up around the Crimean Mountains. Rocking gently under a warm breeze from the Black Sea, they witnessed through many sunny springs and summers the dreams and hopes of all the different people who visited the park. The energy of the pine tree, according to the Druid’s horoscope, corresponds to people who are born from February 19-28 and from August 24September 2. The Latin name for pine is Pinus, which means a rock, and like a rock, the pine is strong with a firm trunk and roots and does not demand any special treatment. The same can be said for “pine people.”

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  My youngest son, Yuri, was born on August 29.

  Now he is 24 years old. He is a young “pine” man. When he was a baby, I would give him baths infused with pine needles. Pine baths invigorate the body and can

  be a blessing when we are overtired at the end of a workday. It can be especially beneficial to people who work in the sports and fitness fields.

  Bathing in fragrant aromatic pine water can make you feel

  alert, cheerful, and refreshed while restoring your energy. The aroma of pine comes from its essential oils, which act as a pain reliever, a disinfectant, and an anti-inflammatory agent. They stimulate the immune system and improve the metabolism.

  If you are overtired, suffer from a headache, or want to improve your mood, try a pine bath:

  r 1. Fil the bathtub with warm water and dissolve in it 3½ ounces of liquid pine concentrate or two ounces of pine powder. You can also use an infusion of pine needles. Take a warm, but not hot, pine bath for 10–15 minutes.

  A pine bath is beneficial to us because the essential oils of this tree evaporate easily and fill the air with the smallest high-energy particles carrying an electric charge. When we breathe in ionized air, it greatly heals our body and it acts as a calming, natural remedy. This is important to know because many of us don’t realize that we are always undergoing a so-called green phytoncide starvation because we live far away from the forests. Only on occasion do we take a walk in a forest. People who live close to forests are more often able to walk in them. It is unfortunate that many of us rarely have the opportunity and pleasure to communicate with pines, our green giants.

  Grandma kept on the window sill an opened, small glass bottle with essential oils of pine, linden, birch, lavender, or peppermint. It increased the biological activity of the air in our house and it made positive changes in our health. It helped to propel the hidden reserves of our bodies toward wellbeing. I try to live the way that Grandma did, and so bottles of these essential oils are a permanent fixture in my house.

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  One summer my husband, Greg, Yuri, and I went to Pitsunda, a small town on the shore of the Black Sea at the foot of a steep mountain in the high Caucasian Mountains. He was three years old and it was the first trip of his life. We enjoyed the month we spent there. It was a month filled with swimming and breathing fresh air or “heliotherapy,” as we like to call it. We relaxed on sandy beaches, bordered by huge boulders that resembled knights from a fairy tale. We took trips and walked in the shadowy grove of ancient pines in Pitsunda, which supplied shipbuilders for many centuries with the strongest wood.

  This small town on the cape was founded by the ancient Greeks as a Middle Age city together with Port Piteous, in Greek Pityus. It still maintains parts of its ancient fort walls, which house the Byzantine era basilica, a cathedral built in the tenth century. We made the trip again and again through this ancient, sacred place that keeps the secrets and myths of one of the small parts of Europe from the Middle Ages.

  We walked with Yuri every day underneath a canopy of lofty branches in this centuries-old pine grove. It was warm, cozy, and quiet. Yuri walked slowly, his tiny feet treading carefully on dried pine needles that formed a thick cushion on the ground. “Mama, I want to live here forever!” Yuri said. This had been his first meeting with a tree-friend that was predetermined by Nature on the day he was born. Yuri wanted to visit the pine grove everyday. As a small boy, he couldn’t explain why he wanted to go to the pines, but a connection already had been made.

  The following year we went to Yaremcha, a small town in the Carpathian Mountains. On a sunny winter day we took our skis into a forest that shone with radiant downy snow and smelled deliciously of powerful pines and beeches. Fresh air flowed into our lungs and filled us with joy. The forest was quiet. The snow looked like beautiful lace tatting of diamond stars and sunbeams. The trees were dressed in the snow’s bright, white diaphanous coat, and the silver-green pines had faded into the milky atmosphere.

  “Are we in a fairy tale kingdom, Mama?” my son asked me.

  “Yes, we are,” I whispered. “Do you remember when I read you a poem written by Alexander Pushkin about the forest in winter and your favorite pines?”

  “Yes, I remember,” Yuri said with great inspiration. “I’ll begin, but you continue, because I am not sure I know all of it.” He turned towards the pines and began:

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  There is a forest in front of us.

  I remember the pines

  And their divine beauty.

  All of their branches are hidden

  By the sheds of snow to the tops

  Of the asps, birches and naked lindens.

  It shines a ray of the night luminaries.

  There is no road; the shrubs, the rapids,

  All snow-bound by a snow storm,

  Deeply in the snow tucked in.

  We spent three hours in the forest on the mountain. Afterwards we rushed off to the Russian steaming banya (sauna). The banya was built of logs that absorbed the fragrances of various aromatic and resinous matters and phytoncides. We could chose from among besoms of oak, linden, birch, eucalyptus, silver fir, nettle, and pine. The besoms clean the air in the banya and act as an antibacterial agent, helping our skin and lungs stay healthy. The fresh fragrance of a forest permeated this woody steaming chamber when we used silver fir besom, rich in resins
, essential oil, phytoncides, and vitamin C. The aroma of pine or silver fir needles in a besom for the sauna contain bactericidal phytoncides. It is considered to be an excellent remedy for treating lethargy, catarrh, bronchitis, laryngitis, and pharyngytis. After steaming with pine besoms, our skin had a sweet, fresh smell and a healthy glow for a long time. Essential oils act as a bactericidal on the skin. If you take a smear from any external part of your body for microscopic examination after steaming with these besoms, you will not find even one microbe on your skin. We felt refreshed and had tons of energy. The explanation is simple: This method of cleaning opened the pores of our skin, and toxins were expelled. Toxins are hidden enemies and poison the blood. When we remove them on a regular basis, we can keep ourselves well. After you steam in a sauna, it is beneficial to drink one of the following four vitamin teas:

  r 2. Mix one tablespoon each of rose hips berries and black currants. 238 ^ Mama’s Home Remedies

  r3. Mix one tablespoon cranberries and three tablespoons each of rose hips and nettle leaves.

  r 4. Mix one tablespoon each of plantain leaves and mountain ash berries.

  r 5. Mix one tablespoon wild marjoram (Mountain Mint), three tablespoons rose hips berries, and two tablespoons nettle leaves. Put two tablespoons of the mixture in a glass jar. Add 16 ounces of boiling water and let steep for one hour. Strain and drink ½

  glass three to four times a day after a sauna.

  We took two branches of a one-year-old pine back to our hotel room. One branch we put in a vase with water to refresh the air. The second, we used to make a special vitamin drink.

  r 6. Preparation of this drink is simple and quick, but only the needles of a one-year-old pine should be used. Wash two ounces of pine needles and grind them in a porcelain mortar. Then add two to three glasses of boiling water and let steep in a cool, dark place for two hours. Add honey and lemon, according to taste. Strain and drink immediately. If the drink is stored, it wil lose vitamins.

  One glass of pine drink contains the same amount of vitamin C as a glass of tomato juice. It outranks lemon juice, promoted by sailors and travelers from around the world, in that pine drink has five times more vitamin C than lemon juice.

  The branches of the trees in the forest played a nice melody as they swished under the light wind of a frosty winter night. My little son was in bed and I told him a story about my pine.

  I was 10 years old, and for the first time in my life, I had climbed up to the top of the pine growing near our house. I imagined that I was atop the mast of a flagship. The wind was shaking the tree. My pine vessel was rocking in unison with all other trees around. The rustle of the leaves resembled the Dialogue with the Trees of Strength and Everlasting Life @ 239

  sound of broiling ocean waves before a storm. From atop the tree I saw how the forest opened its boundless space to many other green trees. The spacious green distance, gold light and shadow, and a caressing play of the brightest greens and sunbeams mixed with the solemn tranquility of Nature. I knocked three times on the trunk of the pine. “Do you hear me, my friend? Please take away forever any il nesses and misfortunes from my family!”

  My grandma believed that if you knock on a tree, no one can bewitch you with the “evil eye.” She was sure that if you pass a tree and touch a branch of it, any harmful aspects of your life are sifted through the tree’s chlorophyll and the tree then gives off a fresh flow of energy that transforms any negative energy affecting your life into positive energy.

  One day when I was a child, our next-door neighbor came to our house to consult with Mama. While she was waiting, she spoke with me about my crafts. Suddenly Grandma came into the house and right away took this woman from me, asking how she could help her. When our neighbor left, Grandma said, “Go outside and knock on the tree!”

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “This lady has ‘bad eyes,’” Grandma answered. “Do you understand me?”

  I went outside to our pine and knocked on it three times. My grandma trusted in the power of thought. She believed that if you feel that you can do something to prevent harmful things in your life from happening; you just might be able to do it.

  Grandma felt closely tied to the trees, and the same day she explained to me what she meant when she said the woman had “bad” eyes. She felt that some people are born with the ability to bewitch others by looking at them and thereby passing on to them negative, destructive energy, which at some time could adversely affect their life. She believed passionately that trees can save us from it and she could tell many stories to prove her theory. I began to observe people’s eyes in a different way. I look at the expression in their eyes. Are they cool or warm, kind or wild, caressing or loving, romantic, thoughtful, smart, or foggy? Are these eyes strong, powerful, or quickly running from one subject to another, like checking everybody and everything?

  Are they slow moving and pensive?

  “People’s eyes are the mirror of their soul,” Grandma liked to say. She was absolutely right. I have noticed that when people are happy, their eyes shine. 240 ^ Mama’s Home Remedies

  If they are unhappy, their eyes have no light within. I

  adopted Grandma’s practice of knocking on a tree to

  drive away the evil eye. And again and again I have

  noticed that trees seem to come to the rescue. When

  I asked Grandma when she started to believe that

  trees could rid us of troubles, she told me that she

  had read about this centuries-old tradition in old

  books, inherited from her grandma. She trusted this simple human wisdom and experienced the healing

  energy from trees that she touched in her own life.

  She became confident that it worked for her.

  Grandma told me that in ancient times soldiers would search for a tree to touch to draw from its energy source for faster recovery from battle

  wounds. The Druids, the wise priests of the forests

  in Great Britain, were some of the first to believe this. Pine and oak were considered the most effective

  in “green therapy.” Ancient soldiers tried to “drink” a

  tree’s energy before they took part in fighting on the battlefields of bloody wars. Trees helped them because they are sacred creatures—Nature’s messengers.

  I was so inspired by the soldiers’ story that I painted a picture in watercolors of how I believed that scene might have looked. I never was a great artist, but Grandma loved it and hung in our house. She was proud that teaching me about the world of Nature often brought positive results. I tried to show her how grateful I was.

  Grandma often talked to her plants. She told me she always knew what kind of mood they were in. I watched her sometimes. She would speak to her plants as if they were human.

  “Why do you speak with flowers, Grandma?” I asked her one day. I was careful not to be unkind to her. I didn’t want to say, “Hey, Grandma, that looks and sounds crazy!”

  Grandma answered, “It is difficult to explain, but I tamed (domesticated) them and they always remind me to be cheerful.”

  Then Grandma broke into a story, which she called “Three Daughters, Three Trees.”

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  A “fisherman lived with his wife on the seashore, nine miles from the small town of Alushta in Crimea,” Grandma began. “They were kind, honest, and hard-working people and always ready to give

  shelter to occasional travelers and share their last piece of bread with people less fortunate.

  “It is said that the locals highly respected the fisherman and his wife. But the people’s good opinions were countered by the bad opinions of the couple harbored by their own children, their three daughters.

  “The oldest daughter, Poplar, was unattractive, short and clumsy, and hostile in nature. To disparage her parents, she would listen in on their private conversations and repeat what they had said to everyone in the seaside
village.

  “The second daughter, Pomegranate, was obsessed with the color pink. She criticized her parents because she was not beautiful with rosy cheeks. She imagined that if she became a rose, passersby would stop and look at her with admiration.

  “The youngest daughter, Cypress, was beautiful and possessed a merry personality. But under the influence of her older sisters she also thought negatively about her father and mother. She was unhappy that her parents gave birth to her at night instead of day, which explained why she was so quick and easily amused.

  “It was hard for the parents to be ridiculed by their children, but what could be done? Their love was blind and helpless. They tolerated their children’s taunts and rude behavior. To avoid attention, they often traveled to the mountains and lived there for days at a time.

  “One day while the parents were at home, all three daughters, angered by an event outside, broke into the cabin and attacked their mother and father.

  “‘Oh, skies!’ the parents prayed. ‘Is there any power that can defend us from our children?’

  “Before they could finish their prayers, a voice sounded, ‘Poplar!

  You forsake your parents because you are a dwarf, so become a towering 242 ^ Mama’s Home Remedies

  tree with no fruits or flowers. Not one bird, except the crow, will nest in you.’

  “‘Pomegranate! Your wish will also come true. You’ll become a tree with pink flowers, and everyone will stop and look at them in admiration, but no one will lean over to smell these beautiful flowers because they won’t have a scent. Your fruits, bright red in the middle, will not satiate anyone’s hunger or quench anyone’s thirst because they will not ripen.’