Ruminations about black pepper

So, I was reading a really great book by Hanna Kroeger the other day, Heal Your Life with Home Remedies and Herbs. Now I have perused this book before many times, but I have honestly never sat down and started to read it like a .. well, like a book before. It has a lot of great information about herbs and whatnot.. and I generally home in on those and compare notes if you will. Well I have also been reading and learning more about Chakras recently. We get these YouTube updates from a guy named Wan.. amazing stuff, really. He is very awesome. He talks a lot about abundance and stuff.. but a lot of other things as well. So he was talking about blocks in our root chakra, how to meditate and use an Asana to release any blocks and all kinds of goodness like that. Very cool. Well about a week ago I was cooking and thinking.. I was making chai and thinking about Ayurvedic herbology. It is a system of herboloby I don't know a lot about.. same with Chinese herbology. My knowledge lies mostly with Western/European herbology and Southwest and Mountain Native American herbology. It's what I've learned and what I have used. I don't have a bias against other herbologies, just haven't availed myself of learning that much about them. I have a point to this.. really. So here I am, making chai, stirring in ginger, and my mind says "a nice carmanitive, warming to the stomach", cinnamon " a great way to lower blood glucose, has fiber, iron, natural preservative, a protector against E coli, helps fight leukemia and mixed with honey.. is good for arthritis", nutmeg, "helps lower blood pressure, good for joint pain and helps eliminate toxins from the liver", cardamon, "carmantive, good for fighting infections and aids the digestion", and black pepper "aids digestion, helps deal with flatulence". Seriously, my mind does do this. I don't look at anything I cook or eat or drink as "just a food". Nor do I take a walk and only see flowers and weeds... my brain is always saying.. "oh, I could eat that, it is nutritious" or "oh that 'weed' is actually really good for this skin condition" or "oh! that flower makes a great tea for heart issues". Yeah.. I'm a little weird, I know. Nature walks are always educational though. :D My point to this though, was the black pepper. The few times I have read anything about Ayurvedic herbology, black pepper plays a fairly large roll. So adding the pepper really makes me think of Ayurvedic herbology. Aside from the fact that the recipe I'm using is Indian. :P But it got me thinking. I wouldn't think about black pepper right off for stomach issues if I was asked. It's not in my internal pharmacopeia so to speak.. But more relevant to my point is, are certain ethnic groups more wired to certain forms of herbology? Does everyone respond similarly to Western herbology? Does everyone respond similarly to Chinese herbology? Or Ayruvedic herbology? Or the herbology of the Zulu? Or the Maya? Are certain herbs and their combinations more beneficial to the natives that have discovered and used them, than to 'alien' cultures? Certainly there are likely benefits seen by people of all ethnicities using different herbs and such throughout the world. But if you are Oriental, do Western herbs work just as well as Chinese? Or does your body prefer Chinese herbology just a bit more? Is it just a bit more beneficial to you? I don't know. But maybe it is one of the reasons why some folks have really severe reactions to certain drugs and herbs while others find benefits. Maybe something in their genetic/ethnic make-up has a little something to do with it.

Now.. why the heck was I talking about chakras in the beginning? Well, because in the beginning of Hanna's book, she talks about them. She says that there are different chakras for different ethnic groups.

The Eastern folks have:
1. Base chakra
2. Sacral chakra
3. Solar plexus chakra
4. Heart chakra
5. Throat chakra
6. Third eye/Forehead chakra
7. Crownn chakra

Balance in these chakras is found in the lotus position, mantra repetition, meditation and incense.

The Native American has eight chakras, the additional chakra being located at the sacrum, accessed from the back. This is where one takes in energy and they are balanced by using; sweat baths, circle dances, sage incense and drumming.

The Westerner has nine chakras:

1. Light chakra (light enters at the seventh vertebra, accessed from the back)
2. Action chakra (allows us to put ideas into action; located at the base, accessed from the back)
3. Base chakra
4. Sacral chakra
5. Solar plexus chakra
6. Heart chakra
7. Third eye/Forehead chakra
8. Crown chakra

The Westerner's methods of energy balance are prayer, singing, action, visualization and contemplation. The Westerner is more apt to get visions and intuition by moving the body, taking a walk, jogging, dishes and cooking (totally me), hiking, shoveling snow, etc.

So.. my thoughts are.. this kinda makes sense to me. But what to do when one is 1/2 and 1/2? :P I mean I am literally 1/2 Native American and 1/2 European descent. Is this why I have had my on again - off again relationship with Qi Gong and never really 'felt' the whole chakra thing was working for me? Because I was missing pieces? Because I was in conflict in my energy system? Interesting thoughts for me especially as I work so much with energy systems in the EFT work. But also, how does this translate to our diets and the herbs we may be using to help ourselves in Wellness? I don't know.. this deserves further thought and exploration. Perhaps getting a drum is in order. :P We'll warn the neighbors the next time we burn sage though. :lol