Strength of the Emotional Heart, Confidence, Balance, Living In Accordance with Our Divine Nature
Genus & species: Leonurus cardiaca – “lion heart”
Family: Lamiaceae – Mint Family
Origin: Southeastern Europe and Asia – spread to North America
Archetype/reputation: Mother’s helper
Planet(s): Venus
Element: fire
Parts used: flower and leaf
Energetics: warming, bitter
Description/Habitat/Doctrine of Signatures:
Motherwort grows wild along the edges of fields and sunny, sandy/dry spaces. With the signature of her growth, one can gather that she holds a strong, warrior archetype. She grows easily from seed and reseeds herself freely in the garden. Her flower stalks grow from 2-8 feet in height and hold a bold presence. When you look at her flowers, they appear similar to the opening of the woman’s vagina, a signature of how she works within the body, helping to heal the woman on many levels—from hormonal imbalances, cramping, postpartum needs, menopause, to trauma to the sexual center.
Ways to Work with Her:
Tincture the leaves and flowers fresh upon harvest, dry them for tea, grow her in your garden, or sit with her for insight and healing.
You can also harvest motherwort any time the flowers have formed and whap your heart and shoulder blades with her prickly flower clusters (in Chinese medicine this is part of the heart meridian) to induce heart healing and to clear tense/anxious energy.
Herbal actions: Relaxing, astringent, warming
Tissue states: Constriction, Atrophy, Cold
Clinical uses: Motherwort can be used to bring on a suppressed or late moon cycle, particularly when it is due to stress or anxiety. Motherwort both strengthens and relaxes the uterine muscles and eases uterine cramping. She is a mild heart tonic and aids in reducing rapid heartbeats brought on by nervous anxiety and heart palpitations during menopause.
Culpepper wrote of motherwort: “Venus owns this herb and it is under Leo. There is no better herb to drive melancholy vapours from the heart, to strengthen it and make the mind cheerful, blithe and merry…It cleanses the chest of cold phlegm… It is of good use to warm and dry up the cold humours, to digest and disperse them that are settled in the veins, joints and sinews of the body and to help cramps and convulsions.”
Spiritual and energetic healing: Motherwort is especially useful for people who need emotional support, who feel isolated or alone, and those who suppress their emotions. She is a healer of the matriarch and brings up and releases trauma we have experienced with our blood mothers (whether it be their passing, their style of upbringing, or anything in-between). Motherwort holds loving compassion, helping us to cultivate the ability to mother ourselves while tending to our heart with gentleness and care. She infuses us with the courage of a lion and the strength of the wild earth.
Motherwort helps us to break our conditioned reactive patterns that hold us back, signified in the way she grows alternate heart-shaped leaves. She balances the hormones, helping us to feel grounded in our sense of self and centered in our creative life center (the womb). I find that motherwort provides us with the courage to do the shadow work, to dive into our deepest depths, and confront the darkness within. She assists in heart-centered awareness and bold self- care.
