for the love of infusions

When I was in college, I read about an interesting study on the effects of being positive...with water. It was a study originally done by a man named Masaru Emoto and his findings had a lasting impression on me. He believed that the structure of water could be changed by positive or negative words...and his theory had amazing results. Emoto's research focused on labeling jars of water with either positive or negative words, symbols or intentions, freezing the water and then photographing the crystals. What he found was quite remarkable...the jars that were originally labeled with positive intentions had beautiful, symmetrical crystals and the negative ones...well the crystals became distorted, discolored and well...ugly.

When I taught psychology in college, we duplicated this study with rice and water. We put a cup of rice and water in a bowl, labeled some of the bowls with words like love, beautiful, hearts, etc...and the other bowls with negative words, like hate, ugly and violence. The results were dramatic...the positive bowls of rice, after a two week period, were still white and had a fragrant aroma. The negative rice bowls...well...they turned black and moldy.

What does this mean for us?

Our bodies are comprised of about 60% water. It goes to point out that changing our internal thoughts, can change our water chemistry within our body, and in turn, change the way we feel.

That's powerful. We can physiologically change how we feel just by changing our thinking and our intentions about ourselves and others.

But what does this have to do with infusions, you ask? Everything.

In our household, there is not much that goes left 'uninfused'. We infuse our drinking water (oh...cucumbers and mint), alcohol (try grapefruit and basil), cooking oils (fresh or dried rosemary) and of course, our body care oils. All of our locally harvested medicinal plants go into skin loving oils that marinate for 12 weeks until they work their magic...drawing out what is really useful for our bodies before mixing it into our suncreams, lotions and scrubs. And it is not just the plants themselves that are magic....but the intentions we use when creating them...similar to Emoto's water study on positive intentions.

What we filter through our body, whether it be our thoughts, our food (including the way our food was raised) and what we put on our skin, it all matters. It all contributes to how we feel.

So for us, that means we are conscious when harvesting our fresh plants. We are patient and careful when drying them. And we are loving with are intentions when we infuse them. In turn, the finished product has an enormously healing effect on your body with each use. Because this matters to us.

But for me, the process is also a great reminder of how I want to live my life...

These infusions remind me of the importance of keeping an open heart in my day to day interactions. They remind me to be kind and compassionate in my intentions with others, to let go of old hurts and anger, to forgive, forgive and forgive. Because if we don't, we only hurt ourselves. These plants have the power to heal, just like we do. We have the power to transform our lives just by changing our thoughts. Just by watching how we think about ourselves...how we think of others...

and really...there is nothing more powerful than that.