Yarrow and the Body of the Warrior
| by Yaya |
5 am, after our kang 炕 (bed-stove) cooled down like a dish at the end of dinner, Dai Shi and our aunt took us to the foggy grassland, covered in pools left from yesterday’s rain. It looked like sailing to the Ocean. The Land was now a body of water, a collection of living bodies swimming or making shores. In the nest of the soft wet grass, mushrooms to pick. Those times were really calm. I didn’t know back then that I might never come back. Because the Land seemed so calm, I had no idea it was already aching. The grass was made to only speak Mandarin, no more Oroqen.
I remember islands with tiny patches of yarrow – both spirally wreaths and ones opening to the sky like stars on grass with stems like millipedes of tiny hands waving at each other, trying to grab one another. Our bodies travel across, connecting patches like building bridges or constellations. Archipelago. Their tiny hands are drawing a Map.
Yarrow attunes to surrounding space and increases energetic awareness. It’s for the kid that disobeys, the troublemaker that disrupts and the fighter that revolts. Yarrow protects the divergent voices from state violence. You hold one before taking to the street.
Resilience: a word I have difficulties with. Yarrow is what they dipped Achilles in to make him invulnerable, except his mother had to hold him by the ankle. But today, I found out another comrade has died. Why is it that trans youth cannot ever make it to old age?
It is only, in a very vulnerable moment with myself, worn away by exhaustion and heartbreak, that I heard someone say “I never consented to feel this angry” and it struck me. Reminded of a consent within myself when I didn’t even know what that consent meant in my body.
Confused, I took refuge in dream-space. In my dreams, I want to grow old. I want to become someone’s elder one day. Milfoil, shī 蓍, is one name of Yarrow, and it has another name, 蚰蜒草, millipede grass. Millipedes connect us back to our ancestors, for wisdom and protection, like bridges between the bodily realm and the spiritual. I want to be elder to walk new youth through the grassland when the time comes.
My heart keeps breaking because how are we supposed to age and get older if exhaustion kills us first? If we die alone? If we can’t reach out for help? We are like yarrow, reaching as far as those tiny hands can, but we’re also made of flesh and our skin will crawl, tickled by those millipede-shaped roots and leaves. Porous skin and yet skin that can embody hardened soil and become thick brick: Not To Feel.
Bodies warred at by toxic food, terror, isolation, surveillance. And sometimes our own fears, passed down from being hunted and haunted for generations. And inflammation occurs.
Inflamed by a rush of blood, intense heat, dry burn underneath skin. Repair becomes urgent and urgency creates reactive responses. A misbehave that’s gonna be held against us. Estrangement from our own body or does it actually brings us closer to oneself?: Triggers. What repair can you seek from a body that does not feel and can you even account?
Yarrow is both warming and cooling. I’m always so impressed by plants that can do that. They can tell apart the different fires that inhabit us. Yarrow stops bleeding yet flows the Qi 氣 that vapours in our body and connects regions, like they are pools into creeks and Qi is the stream. Yarrow supports a sore throat. We know how much power a throat may hold, from how often we are historically silenced. The throat chakra aches when we do not let it truth-speak. What would happen in that body if you let more truths circulate? Their tiny hands are drawing a Map. Mapping a fractured body. Mapping a collective body.
I imagine it would take some effort for those tiny hands to reach out, and other ones to reach back. I picture some might need to grow a longer reach to let your arm attain someone else’s. And then, there are those for whom the stretch might be to make your other arm long enough to rest on your own heart, while you can easily hold someone else’s hand.
I find it challenging to ask for permission. Today, I went on a walk to process my loss. I agreed a few weeks ago to take my anger out on a daily walk. In the Marshes near my new home, I found a yarrow on the way. If their leaves look like our body’s circulatory system, their roots also act as mining vessels to the soil, for potassium, calcium and magnesium. Does it stop the bleeding in the ground when the Land aches? At least it makes everything circulate. Maybe healing us is part of the circulation. Maybe there is the “yes” and a permission graciously granted.
Recipe for Yarrow
(Note: yarrow should not be taken by a pregnant person)
Fresh leaves and flowers of yarrow, foraged from somewhere you can trace the soil content preferably. I suggest a medicine garden from any local community garden or green space available to you, and to avoid road sides.
A clear colored alcohol with a light/neutral flavor. I like to use rice wine or anything close to Vodka.
Alternatively, vegetable glycerine that is food-grade can also extract the plant’s properties without having to make it alcohol-based
A glass jar with a good seal
Use one part plant for about three part glycerine/or alcohol. Seal the jar and place it in a dry, cool place, with no draft. Let it extract for four to six weeks. Strain into jars with droppers or any container you’d like.
This extract, in either tincture (alcohol-based) or glycerite form, can serve as a topical first aid if you get bug bites or injury with bleeding.
It can also be taken internally, by taking a few drops of it up to 6-8 times a day when needed. You can also dilute it in warm water and drink it. Glycerites are naturally sweet and syrupy and can be used as topper for any food you’d like.
Figure 1:
Yarrow in Walthamstow Marshes– Nov 2024
Figure 2:
Yarrow leaf, tripinnate - milfoil: long stems and a lot of small, delicate leaves – Nov 2024
Figure 3:
Selfie with a Yarrow from Walthamstow marshes – Nov 2024
Figure 4:
Yarrow in Walthamstow Marshes– Nov 2024
Figure 5:
The grassland in Inner Mongolia with a native yarrow in the shot – Aug 2019
Figure 6:
A drawing of yarrow I drew for a friend's book – Nov 2024
