Hey hey hey, ho ho ho - it's the last curation before Christmas!!! What a year it's been!! I've learnt so much from all the awesome folk writing natural healing posts - from mushrooms to kefir, yogic breathing to kick ass potent Thai tinctures, to ayurveda and herbal salves, we've seen it all - almost! I'm sure we're going to see a lot more amazing things in the new year!! And of course Natural Medicine is continuing to find ways to support you all.

To all our wonderful delegators - we love you - without you, none of this is possible. We work hard behind the scenes and appreciate the gestures of support.

For this special Christmas curation, we're dividing the ENTIRE curation to every person whose post is featured below. Happy Christmas!

I totally loved this piece - not only has @vikingventures INVENTED medicinal plants for a fictional world, she's figured out antidotes for poison, psychoactives, painkillers - everything you'd need to survive! Very clever!

Check it out here - I promise you will love it! Fireweed, swamp smoke or frilled ferns anyone??

Oh, @artemislives - I wish we were neighbours. I think I'd come to you with any ailment, as I know you'd have something on your shelves to cure me! In this post this NM GODDESS talks about a kick ass tincture she'd let brew on her shelf for a good 24 months! If that doesn't cure what ails ya, I don't know what will! She writes:

0n October 3rd, 2017, I prepared a tincture. 500g of pure wild Thai-Burmese jungle honeycomb, complete with propolis, bee pollen, raw jungle honey and very young wax. I added 500g of shredded 2 year old ginger, 500g fresh yellow turmeric root, 500g of sliced red onion and 500g of fresh garlic. I covered the whole lot in approximately 3 liters of Lao Khao - local Thai, clear, rice spirit. And I put it aside for what I thought would only be 4-6 weeks. And yet every single time I have thought about pressing and decanting, my intuitive self has screamed No!! Not Yet!!. And so I have waited. And waited. 26 months actually. Put it out in the moonlight, under the Solstice Full Moon, the Blue Moon, sang to it while I cooked, and occasionally wondered.

There must be a vibe of creativity here this week. @owasco shared this stunning poem by @laurenbell about motherhood. Check out it's entirety here. She writes about the dark side of being treated for mental health.

the darkness of the treatment industry was never lost on me.
I never fought to supress all the memories.
I felt every slice of pain that was etched onto my soul.
The souls of the ones passed, I can still remember their smiles.

It was a system that could have been better.
It was a system that could have been less damaging.
It was a system that promised families everything
--- and gave back shells of girls they promised to protect.

The systems set up, geared to help the mentally ill.
geared to help addiction
is an illusion of "successful" "curative" "redeemable"
it's so easy to place blame on the mentally ill.
it's so easy to place the blame on the addict.
when medicine has no answers.

Yes, you read that right.
It's been a truth I've been holding back.

Modern medicine has no answers for mental health or addiction.
they don't know what causes it
And actually as time progresses, mental health just keeps getting worse
addiction just keeps getting worse.

In this post @consciousangel gives us a recipe for a revitalising, remineralizing bath soak - yum!

Some other interesting happenings, snippets and conversation starters on the blockchain and in our Discord. We encourage and invite you to go support at least one of these Steemians, giving them a little boost in their day.

@porters wrote about the health benefits of oranges with a few seasonal recipes
@madushanka wrote about cinnamon
@vincentnijman has been finding out a lot about ayurveda, and sharing podcasts in our Discord channel for that purpose
@samstonehill has grown some hair back - if you want to know how, check out his blog!
@elamental had his birthday, musing on angels & the spiritual growth he is going through
@sayee cooked with turmeric
@consciousangel7 showed us her altar

What have you been up to this month? We hope you get a good rest this Christmas season,and return to us well rested. Much love to you and your loved ones!!

Wishing all our delegators too, and extra special Christmas!! May we continue to support you in the new year.

Oh, and if you're wondering what tags to curate? Our curators look at most of these tags and much more! Check out www.naturalmedicine.io for a full list of supported tags.

naturalmedicine	health	healing	yoga
spirituality	herbalism	homesteading	innerblocks
vegan	meditation	wellness	cbd
qi gong	keto	tai chi	herbs

Thinking about writing a #naturalmedicine post this week? We have upvotes to burn and will resteem the best of you to nearly 1,000 followers! Go you! We're also resteeming on our @uplotus account, so go give that a follow too! That's the one where you'll see the LOTUS rewards.

All the curation and author rewards in LOTUS for this post will be burnt to help the ecosystem.

We need YOU! Please consider delegating to help keep this collective going. The minimum entry for membership is 20SP (free for members under 150SP), and helps give YOU upvotes, contests, meditation sessions, an awesome discord support group, and so much more!

50SPII100SPII200II300SPII500SPII1000SP