Nutritive Tonics

Keeping your body healthy is an expression of gratitude to the whole cosmos - the trees, the clouds, everything.
-Thich Nhat Hanh

Most people want to live a long and healthy life. Yet, today, many outside forces - pollution, processed foods, and stresses of every sort - work against the life-promoting forces. One of the simplest and best ways to protect our health and promote longevity is to indulge in tonics, particularly tonic herbs.

Tonic herbs, (like nettles in western tradition, ginseng in eastern tradition, see Tonic Menus) tend to have extraordinary health-enhancing benefits and are revered for their nutritive, life-force enhancing qualities. They are used to nourish and promote the body's natural energy, build vitality, reduce stress, strengthen metabolism, and enhance immunity.

Rich in vital phytonutrients, many tonic herbs are also 'adaptogenic', which means they help our bodies balance and adapt to stresses, of every sort. In essence, tonic herbs can nourish and balance the body's vital systems to promote and restore 'radiant health'.

Taken regularly, nutritive tonic herbs can build and sustain an 'energy savings account', and may be included as a 'fifth food group' in anyone's diet, with little or no negative side-effects. Tonic herbs can provide that valuable 'ounce of protection, worth a pound of cure', we all need to stay well.

'The Art of Longevity', or the art of living a long and healthy life, based on the use of tonic herbs, combined with a balanced lifestyle, has been widely practiced for thousands of years by the people of the East. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, tonic herbs are considered the highest grade of herbs because they are the most 'life-promoting' herbs. The highest grade, or superior tonic herbs - like ginseng - nourish life itself. The lowest grade of herbs only dispel disease; the middle grade corrects imbalances in the body, It is interesting to note that herbs, and drugs, are valued exactly the opposite way in conventional western medicine, despite many adverse side effects.

The appreciation of tonic herbs requires a western 'reorientation of thought - with much less emphasis placed on killing 'germs', and controlling symptoms - to much more emphasis on re-establishing balance, or homeostasis, by increasing the body system's natural defenses and restorative powers.

Wild Sage endorses the 'path of balance' - balance between heart and mind, pleasure and work, art and science, romance and education, dreams and 'reality'. We believe in achievement of both health and pleasure, passion and commitment. Radiant health is our most precious reward!