Mama's Home Remedies: Discover Time-Tested Secrets of Good Health and the Pleasures of Natural Livin, Svetlana Konnikova [classic fiction .TXT] 📗

In our kitchen we always had a glass pitcher fil ed with rose hips or “Dog Rose” concoction ( otvar). You can make it yourself by fol owing these directions: Boil one tablespoon of fresh rose hips (also called wild roses) in about eight ounces of water for seven or eight minutes. Allow to steep for two hours. Or combine a half-ounce of dried rose hips berries with eight ounces of water. Boil seven or eight minutes and allow to steep for 10 hours. Then drink four to eight ounces of this vitamin tea daily.

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Mama prescribed for me a 24-hour

healing session of rose hips preserves and

black currant preserves, fruit compotes and

kissels, which is a kind of starchy jelly. I took teaspoon after teaspoon of Grandma’s thick

burgundy rose hips preserves. And, with

every sip of tea and every spoonful of cold black currant

preserves, energy poured through my body and I actually felt my blood begin to circulate with intensity through my veins.

I felt much better later as I stood in our kitchen watching the sunlight peep into the window while several branches of a rose bush, encouraged by a gentle breeze, tapped gently on the windowpanes. Each year the roses took full advantage of the sun and blossomed again and again. The sunbeams traveled like a beacon through the kitchen window, rode over the ceiling, and then stopped, blinding me.

A bouquet of velvety scarlet and white roses fol owed the sunbeams and appeared outside the kitchen window. Someone had come to visit. I looked out and saw that my neighbor and long-time friend, Sasha, had come to say hel o. He was always happy to see me when I came home for vacation. I suspected that Grandma had been giving him reports on when I’d return home and how long I would stay. She admired his decency, kindness, and his good looks.

“Hi, Sasha. How have you survived here without me?” I asked him alluringly as always whenever I returned home. And, in turn, he teased me as usual. “Obviously I am doing badly without you!”

“How did you know I was here?” I asked coyly, guessing that he would say that Grandma had told him.

From the doorstep he answered me with a smile, “Do you know that a wireless telegraph company just opened its first office in our town? It helps guys like me find hidden and unsupportive friends.”

Sasha, still smiling, shook a red and white bouquet of fragrant roses at me. He used his charm and gestured to me to come outside to talk for a minute. I wrote him a note that I pressed against the windowpane: “Later. I don’t know when.” I didn’t await his reply, but returned to my room to read a book. I read 188 ^ Mama’s Home Remedies

for a short while and then dropped off to sleep. I don’t know how many hours passed, but when I woke up, I saw on the floor near my bed the same bouquet of roses. I took the bouquet in my hands and breathed in its soft, sweet fragrance. A small note written in old script was tucked inside: “Here are my flowers and here is my heart, which beats only for you.”

That was a day filled with both dis tress and “good” stress. Let’s take a look at how Mama differentiated between the two types of stress. Making stress work for you

We have seen that stress is the impetus behind many neuroses and cardiovascular problems. Mama would have added, “Don’t be afraid of stress. Make it work for you, not against you.”

How can we manage tension in our everyday lives when it results from unhappiness with our jobs or the relationships we have with our children, our friends, or spouse?

Take a look at the way stress influences yourself and others. Heightened tension is common among most of us. It seems that many people do everything with a great amount of unnecessary effort. Even the simple act of listening to others is difficult for most people and often met with anxiousness or uneasiness—the result of too much unmanaged stress, no doubt. Most people do not know how to control stress. Do you know how to recognize stress and how to control it?

Typical symptoms of stress are chronic headaches, high blood pressure, tightness in the chest, sleeplessness, or restless sleep.

Mama always advised her patients, “Don’t be afraid of stress. Learn how to recognize it.” Mama knew that we experience stress on a physical level as well as on mental and psychological levels. She also taught us to differentiate between healthy stress and dis tress. Happiness and even the anticipation of a happy event such as the birth of a baby are stresses, but certainly they are positive stresses. This kind of stress doesn’t promote illness. On the contrary, it brings about and maintains positive emotional and physical strength. Mama called this stress “a good exercise for heart and soul.”

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Distress is different. Distress is experienced in emotional, epigastria, fetal, mental, and respiratory forms. All too often, when people talk about stress, what they are actually referring to is dis tress.

Distress is defined by resulting feelings of discontent, dissatisfaction, and irritation. Distress is caused by many things, including arguments between spouses or lovers or between parents and children.

Ups and downs in our lives are normal, frequent occurrences. At times, though, it can feel as though life demands too much and that we do not have any time to relax and to ease or even eliminate the tension and stress we have stored throughout the week.

As we scurry around tending to our often overwhelming responsibilities, it seems that we have run out