A Book From The Heart

by Lynnette Walther, Columnist

Svetlana Konnikova grew up on Moldavia among medical professionals who were active in natural and folk medicine and herbalism. She has put together a power-packed volume of the wisdom of ages placing generations of knowledge and practice into everyone’s hands.

“Mama’s Home Remedies: Discover Time-Tested Secrets of Good Health and the Pleasures of Natural Living delivers a healthy dose of common sense and common remedies touched with folklore, quotes and even superstitions.

As the healthful and healing value of everyday foods continues to be discovered, in her amazingly inclusive book, Konnikova explains how to benefit from a wide variety of common food items. Herbs are another arm of the body of knowledge this useful book imparts, disclosing long-used practices and benefits. Comfort and cures for common ailments from colds to headaches and body aches and pains can be discovered in the pages of her book, which is told in story form relating her own childhood and family experiences. Charming folktales illustrate a variety of cures and those in turn are followed by lists of remedies to concoct or conduct.

Got a headache? Konnikova suggests you try this:

• “Drink fresh carrot juice.”
• Apply a hot water or vinegar compress to the forehead.”
• “Drink green tea with jasmine.”
• “With both hands, massage your head from forehead to the base of your skull.”
• “Boil two tablespoons of cherries in two cups water for five to seven minutes. Add a pinch of sugar and drink as a hot tea.”
• “Drink one ounce of fresh potato juice.”

And those are just a taste of “Mama’s” remedies.

One of the most useful chapters in “Mama’s Home Remedies” is the last, with lists of herbs and foods featured throughout, offering a quick reference guide to diagnose and treat a wide variety of common ailments. A comprehensive index adds to this most handy guide.

“Mama’s Home Remedies” is available in paperback, and is from Aurora Publishers. The paperback book includes vintage line drawings and is 328 pages at $19.95

Copyright 2009 Village Soup

Source: The Herald Gazette, Village Soup, Knox County Opinions, http://knox.villagesoup.com/print/Print.cfm?StoryID=145602;   http://knox.villagesoup/opinion/story.cfm?storyID+145602

Daylle Deanna Schwatrz, founder of self-empowerment blog, posted recently a very intersting List of healthy eco-friendly and motivational products under the title “Nurturing Yourself and Your Environment in 2009.” Daylle frequently appears in national TV and radio, including Oprah, Inside Edition and Howard Stern to provide expertise on issues related to relationships, personal growth and empowering yourself. In December she also published a great gift list in her post, Giving Gifts that Nurture People and Our Planet. In her latest post in January 2009 she is recommending gifts that can enrich your life. She’s tried all products and has read books that she said made her happier, all good products with a healthy, green slant. You can find in this list some products that will make your happier and healthier if you’ll give them a try as a gift to YOU.

For a guided relaxation that leads you through a full-body massage Daylle recommends The Virtual Massage CD created by Hali Chambers, a nationally certified graduate of the Baltimore School of Massage. If you are tired at the end of your working day or you travel and cannot get to the spa, listen to this CD and relax. You can hear a sample at www.CDBaby.com

 In this list are included some special CDs, Insight and Focus by Immrama Institute. The soothing sound of rain falling and other peaceful sounds will help you focus on your work and will give your brain relaxation it needed. 

If you want to keep your body in healthy shape, here is The Rotater, a therapeutic tool working as stretching and a shoulder rehab device that also helps improve flexibility. And this tool comes with a DVD with instructions how to use it to your benefit. The most important is that The Rotater also helps breast cancer survivors after surgery in recovery period, and 10% of its sales are donated for breast cancer research.  And it is highly recommended by doctors, physical therapists, athletes, and Daylle herself, who tried it and found a few ways to useit, since she works out with weights regularly.

I like to try another product in the list, Fibre. A new fiber based product, created by cardiologist Elizabeth Klodas, MD., F.A.C.C. Daylle believes “that eating healthy is a strong component of self-love.” That’s why she was so delighted to learn about this organic, whole grain sprinkle because it can contribute to better heart and digestive health, lower the risk of developing diabetes and help control your appetite. If it helps to control your appetite, use it and forget about useless diets. You can use Fibre on different foods you eat  and they will taste better.  Daylle writes that she loves having the added nutty, chewy sprinkles in her cereal. Just 2 tablespoons a day of this product works wonders for her. Good health products = self-love.

As Daylle said, “Knowledge is always power.” She included in her list two books that can teach you ways to progress into 2009 on a healthier, happier path:

• Mothers Need Time-Outs, Too (McGraw-Hill, 2008 by Susan Callahan, Anne Nolen, and Katrin Schumann. As you guess, this book is for stressed-out mothers who try to find more joy and satisfaction in their lives.
• Mama’s Home Remedies: Discover Time-Tested Secrets of Good Health and the Pleasures of Natural Living (Aurora Publishers), by Svetlana Konnikova. This book is a collection of natural,  healing recipes for common ailments and illnesses, that Svetlana learned as a child in her Mama’s tea garden. This book isn’t just a guide to remedies. It’s a loving tribute to the women who taught her, including legends, her grandmother’s fairy tales, family vignettes, and herbal lore woven through the details of the remedies. There are hundreds of remedies covering almost every ailment. You may not know many of the herbs or may not want to spend too much time brewing some. But the variety of suggestions for the same problem allows you to pick the ones that best suit you. This is a lovely book to read for pleasure, and your health!

Thank you, Daylle for your kind review of the award-winning book, Mama’s Home Remedies.

She also included in the List three books-guides on living a healthier, greener lifestyle that she enjoy to reading:

• Harmonius Environment: Beatify: Detoxify & Energize Your Life, Your Home & Your Planet (Lingham Press, 2008), by Norma Lehmeier Hartle. This book is the Grand Prize winner of Writer’s Digest Book Awards. It explains in great details how to create a beautiful, non-toxic and natural home and workplace, a healthier lifestyle and enjoying your life.
• The Green Year: 365 Small Things You Can Do to Make a Big Difference (Alpha, 2008), by Jodi Helmer: Want to be more eco-friendly? Read this book that offers 365 ways, one for each day of the year how to live a greener lifestyle and make a difference in our environment.
• Eco-Friendly Families (Alpha, 2008) by Helen Coronato: Full of activities and tips how to create a healthier environment, this guide is for families who want to live in a more environmentally friendly way, and greener and  healthier lifestyle.

Try some of these products. Give a gift of healthier, greener life to youself or your loved ones. You and them are worth it!

Copyright 2009.

Mrs. Green, who is founder of Little Green Blog, says that she is commited to a greener way of life and just starting out on the path of eco awareness. In her blog  she writes about ethical living and self sufficiency, environmental issues, gardening, organic foods, natural healing and other interesting things that many families care and passionate about. Inspirational motto, “It’s a beautiful world. Let’s keep it that way!” the blog starts with, tells you clearly about her own passions.

Any green ideas? Of course, Mrs. Green works with great enthusiasm on the projects how to keep clean our planet, efficiently dispose waste and use safe,  friendly green products. “So many medications arrive in blister packs and plastic packaging,” she says. “Even herbal teas have cellophane wrap around the cardboard box! In your book, full of wisdom, you talk about the same, and about natural living and healing that I am only too eager for others to hear about and utilise the knowledge in their lives.” Here is Mrs. Green’s detailed review.

“Svetlana Konnikova’s “Mama’s Home Remedies” should be on everyone’s bookshelf. The lovely Lana, as she calls herself, sent me a review copy of this book and I’ve been hooked since receiving it! Empowerment is one of my passions and this book delivers empowerment and more.

I was expecting 100 pages of ideas, but this book is over 300 pages long containing around 800 simple, safe and natural remedies so that you can take responsibility for yours and your family’s health.

 It is beautifully written and , as well as being a reference book, you get a glorious insight into  Lana’s life. She owes her knowledge and reverence of the natural world to her Grandmother and  Mother and talks with animation about her memories, experiences and conversations as a child.

In this book you will find recommendations for treating common ailments such as colds, cough, fevers and headaches, plus selection of ’superfoods’ and how to use them.

One of my personal beliefs is Hippocrates ‘Let food be thy medicine.’ You’ll learn how to use this saying in your own life when you read this book.

Learn which vegetable will treat anaemia, which one to apply to the forehead to ease a headache and which herb to drink to aid relaxation and promote sleep. Find the answer to fatigue in the juice of one delicious fruit!

As you would expect from someone who grew up with the wisdom of the ages imparted to her, this book is littered with interesting interesting folklore, stories and ancient legends. This brings the world of body-mind-spirit healing alive!

As you read, you’ll find yourself transported to a room full of wise women where you start to feel your own cells stirring with memories of forgotten truths. Use this book to discover the secrets of nature, restore your faith in your body’s ability to heal and allow your intuitiuon to guide you towards health and wholeness.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated.

Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.

The author, ”Mrs. Green,” was kind enough to post about both this blog and my book.  An excerpt:

Following on from my three natural remedies for burns yesterday, I came across a great blog by Svetlana Konnikova, who is author of a great book ‘Mama’s Home remedies’.

Home remedies and the healing powers contained witin some of nature’s gifts is one of my passions. Did you know that Little Miss Green has never taken any prescribed or over-the-counter medication in her life?  [ Read the rest of her post on the LGB website. ]

Many thanks to Mrs. Green, not just for the kind words about MHR, but also for maintaining such a lively, invaluable blog filled with useful information and delightful anecdotes.

Nolina lives in a small town in the Rio Grande Valley south of Albuquerque. She goes to Albuquerque several days a week to work at Bookworks. She calls it as ”the most marvelous independent bookstore!” Nolina manages successfully her certified Organic farm where she grows with love and care many medicinal herbs. These organic herbs are sold by herb shops around the state and also by local DOM. She lovingly grows beautiful flowers too. Nolina believes that joy radiates from these marvellous masterpieces of Mother Nature and the colors heal your body and soul. As Nolina continued, she absolutely believes in organics, and is concerned about many toxic substances used on our precious planet. She creates and uses hersef only natural products and lives in a straw bale house (100% natural too!), since she is very sensitive to environmental toxins. I can tell you that millions of people are sensitive too, but many just look for a rapid relief from allergies or other ills and buy modern “miracles”– synthetic medicines off Wal-Mart shelves. Here is an excerpt from Nolina’s descriptive review of the book. I did not edit it because I would like to preserve her voice (100% natural).

Mama’s Home Remedies is a book to be cherished for a lifetime. It is my favorite herb, health, healing secrets-of-healthy-and-joyful living book since Jeanne Rose’s Herbal. I am certain my copy of your book will become as tattered as that in no time!

I am absolutely enamoured of the way in which you wove herbal remedies with pearls of wisdom and small illustrative stories. And, the design of the book, small bits cradled by lovely illustrations. Thank you especially for Mama’s philosophy which opens the book. If each person on our planet awoke each day with intent to choose kindness and love, imagine the world we would live in! I do believe, rather it is not a belief but a deep knowing, that this book will contribute to more goodness in the world through living with awareness and feeling good from being healthy.

The foods, thank you for including foods. The properties contained in fruits and vegetables are so often unappreciated in today’s society. It all begins with what we put in our bodies.

The book is filled with wisdom and knowledge, some new and some familiar, but more than I could possibly use in my lifetime. My favorite new world is tree signs!!!! I live in the bosque of New Mexico sourrounded by enormous old cottonwood trees, and we love each other! So, from natural cleaning recipes to healing teas and soothing baths, presented in a friendly design, gently encompassed by facts and cautions, highlighted by the most charming tales and illustrated so artfully, this book is a magnificent work!! The compilation of your research is astounding, and the organization is impressive.

And, I am pleased to read the introduction. My childhood was punctuated with the scent of the low growing plant where we played, chamomile! Tiny stars dropped from the sky!!! And I too have lived my life without prescription drugs. My affinity to plants cares for my health. Each disease surely does have its healing herb, and each spot on the planet provides such. For example, the fruit of the prickly pear cactus in the Chihuahuan desert of New Mexico is filled with healing properties, like the pomegranate! I think our local herb, Yerba Mansa, probably doesn’t grow in Moldova or Russia, but then who knows.

I can highly recommend this book to anyone interested in health, natural living, herbal remedies, or even perhaps someone looking for relief from headache pain not provided by conventional methods. Or even folk tales, the stories are marvellous. And, your grandmother’s herbal remedy for beauty sounds fascinating!

Copyright 2008 All rights reserved.

Dr. Peter Gail’s  blog is called Doc Weed’s Doin’s. It is an account of the continuing adventures of Dr. Peter Gail as he goes around the country sharing what he has learned over the years about how various cultures use backyard weeds for food and medicine. His blog address is http://goosefootacres.blogspot.com

We hope Dr. Peter Gail review will help you to make an informed decision in buying Mama’s Home Remedies for your home library.

by Peter A. Gail, PhD

 To me there is nothing more fun and satisfying than reading a well-written and entertaining how-to-do-it autobiography — you know, the kind where the author takes you through her life story and, when she comes to a favorite recipe or a skill, stops and takes time to walk you through how-to-do-it that you can do it too.

When the author is a good story teller and can make her stories come to life, especially if they are stories from another culture so you can get a glimpse of how these people lived and though as well, it is even better still.

And, finally, it approaches greatness when she weaves lots of other facts, folklore, fairy tales and information, from a deep, diverse and rich academic and personal background, spanning Old and Modern worlds, into it as well.

That’s what you get in Mama’s Home Remedies, a keeper of a book that may just end up on your bookshelf next to your computer, like it has on mine, so that you can reach it quickly when you need a quick diversion from the daily regimen, or answers to specific health questions.

This is one book you will go back to time after time as a “comfort book” (like comfort food!)–one that will variously provide information, stimulate your thinking, give you peace, and entertain you. It is, for example.

• a great cure for stress. Turn to any page and be taken out of your life and transported into the fables and stories of life in the Russian culture, many of which emphasize an oneness with the natural world around you.

• a great healthy living reference, with a twist!If you have a health problem or want to know what a particular plant is good for, just go to the index. As you search for answers you will be transported into a world where common foods become effective medicines. Vegetables such as beets, potatoes, onions, grapes and radishes are used to whisk away ills, and plants we call “weeds” such as nettles, dandelions, burdock and coltsfoot, rather than synthetic medicines off Wal-Mart shelves, play an everyday role in the healthy stable life of normal families.

• an excellent source of natural history insights and lore with practical examples about how animals fit into their environment, including a great story about how a badger instinctively knew to bury its burned nose into a moldy tree trunk to alleviate the pain and heal the problem.

• a reminder of the value of our elders–our grandmothers and grandfathers–as founts of valuable knowledge and wisdom that should be lovingly mined lest it become lost.

After reading the prefatory and introductory chapters which set the stage, you can pick up the book and start reading just about from anywhere. For example, if you want to know how to make stress a positive force in your life, you can turn to Chapter 10 and find 18 pages of ideas. Or if allergies are a problem, check out Chapters 5 and 6 for over 42 pages of helpful insight and suggestions. A favorite of mine — Chapter 2: “Even the Badger Knows”–reminds us that our body really knows how to heal itself and will direct us to the cures, if we will listen to it and follow where it leads. But we can’t really do this very well without exposure to the natural world from whence most of the healing balms will come. As parents it is our opportunity to take our children into nature and expose them to her treasures. If we don’t already know them, it is great opportunity to learn them together.

 Of all nature, Svetlana seems most enamored with trees. Her treatise, titled “dialogue with the Trees of Strength and Everlasting Life” (Chapter 12-32 pages) makes up the longest chapter in the book. It may be the one chapter that best exhibits her personality, and her belief, in agreement with the Druids, that trees transfer vital energy to us and a close association with them is crucial for a healthy life.

The book itself is a work of art. The design and layout is hugely attractive and makes the various components of each chapter easy to find. The first thing you notice is the richly detailed black and white line drawings illustrating chapter headings, scattered among the pages, and bordering the boxes.

The next thing that registers in your mind is the boxes. Just about everything is contained in illustrated boxes–fairy tales, folk stories, warnings, cautions, numbered listings of potential remedies for the particular concern, pertinent quotes–they all jump out at you as you peruse the pages, making it easy to choose smething to read. And when you are trying to find it again, you don’t have to try remember what page it is on, and where on the page. You have visual references in your mind. If you know what chapter it was in, you can go to the chapter and just flip the pages till you find it.

You can tell by the intelligence and care that went into crafting the text and designing this book that it wasn’t done by an inexperienced amateur. Ms. Konnikova knew from a very early age that she wanted to be a journalist. She grew up in Moldova, a wine-producing region of Southeastern Europe adjacent to the Black sea, and was nurtured through her youth by an extended family of winemakers, naturalists, healers and academics. Grandfather was a vintner, grandmother an accomplished naturalist, gardener, folk healer and practical philosopher, and her mother an academically-trained medical professional. Father and mother had an extensive library that intellectually curious Svetlana consumed voraciously from her teens onward. A rich mine of information for this book also came from quietly documenting, from age 12 omward, the medical experiences shared in regular Friday afternoon teas her mother hosted for her female medical collegues over a number of years.

After college, where she earned a master’s degree in Journalism and an Associate degree in Nursing, she went to become a writer, broadcaster and educator in Russia, but never forgot her roots, employing her knowledge of healing in treating her husband and two sons and gradually gathering together the wealth of material and lifetime of memories that has ended up as Mama’s Home Remedies.

The bottom line is that Svetlana created far more than just a home remedy book in Mama’s Home Remedies. It is a look at an entire culture from a perspective we seldom see. It is a rich diversity of stories, recollections, practical philosophy and advice, and lots of ways of making life better using the common wild things growing all around us, and even more common foodstuffs found in our cupboards every day–things Europeans do every day as a matte of habit, but which have been lost to the American family for the last 60 years. Here they are all brought together in one place.

Mama’s Home Remedies is never boring. Every page you turn brings another rich surprise to delight your senses.

It is important to remember, however, that this book is a collection of folk remedies which may or may not work in every case. There is always a place for professional health care. Money spent on diagnosis is never misspent. It is nice to know that you are treating for the right thing.

With Mama’s Home Remedies, you end up with much more than a folk remedy reference book. You end up with a damn good read!

Copyright 2008 All rights reserved.

“It is snowing outside right now and I am writing a book review for a wonderful volume that I can highly recommend. It is called Mama’s Home Remedies, and is written by Svetlana Konnikova, formerly a journalist in the Soviet Union.

It in many ways is like Plain and Happy Living, in that it is a How-to-Autobiography that recounts not only a wide variety of natural remedies, but how they were learned at the feet of her mother and grandmother, with a wonderful potpourri of folk and fairy tales, and modern and ancient natural science interpersed between.

Most books like this, when something is wrong, you go into them, find the subject in the index, and then look up the suggestions for helping alleviate it. This book does that too, but in addition, when life is stressful and you are looking for relief, you can open this book and escape into the fairy tales, folk stories and life’s adventures of Svetlana and her family, along with fascinating explorations of such things as ancient Druid beliefs about trees or the instincts animals have for healing themselves that we can learn to emulate in our lives as well.

Mama’s Home Remedies is so well organized, with everything arranged in bullitted boxes, numbered lists, (also boxed,)  and boxed sidebars containing the stories, that everything is ridiculously easy to find. Usually you have to dig through a book to find a fact remembered but not bookmarked. Not so here. All you need to do is remember the topic, or chapter. Once there, a quick thumbing through the pages will take you directly to the right box, and there you are. It is a model for the way I am going to lay out my upcoming books.

In the few short weeks I have had the book, it has earned a place on the bookshelf right next to my computer, so that when I need a break, it is right at hand. It is a marvelous vehicle for stress relief. She has a whole chapter on stress, but nowhere does she mention picking up her book and reading a few pages as one of the ways. She should.”

Read the full article.

Thank you Dr. Gail for your thoughtful and descriptive review!

Despite the mantra of the 1950’s when Father Knew Best, we all know Mama’s the one holding the apron strings. The wisdom of mothers’ hands has been passed down from one generation to the next, through food, spices, herbs and home-made medicines better than any pharmaceutical solution. If you’ve ever tasted my mother-in-law’s homemade chicken soup with the ickiest cold since time memorial, you’ll know –Mama really does know best.

Mama’s Home Remedies: Discover Time-Tested Secrets of Good Health and the Pleasures of Natural Living is a tribute to the old wives’ wisdom that transcends modernity. It will inspire you to reach for your vegetable pantry before you head for the pharmacy. Among other things, the instrinsic magic of beets, potatoes, and wine grape leaves are revealed in these pages. Written by Svetlana Konnikova who grew up in the vineyards of Moldova, this book tells us to return to our roots – literally.

Thanks, Christine!  Read more of the review, and don’t miss the rest of Christine’s charming writing by visiting Mama’s Musings.