Join us November 28 at 7pm in the ACAC Alcove!
To launch our programming surrounding this year’s common read, OCH is eager to host a tinctures workshop on campus. It will be led by Chanista Karns, who is an expert in homeopathic healing and operates Wild Fairy Apothecary, which is an All Organic – Wild Crafted Herbal Business.
Wild Fairy Apothecary’s mission is to educate and inspire citizens of Tulsa to take healing into their own hands by creating accessible, high quality herbal products. Wild Fairy Apothecary offers custom made teas, tinctures, elixirs, body products, kombucha & Bone Broth. Wild Fairy Apothecary is currently operating online and through many local markets in the Tulsa Surrounding Area.
The workshop will begin with an overview of homeopathic remedies and then will transition into a guided workshop where students can create a tincture of their own from an assortment of herbs, roots, and other plants.
In TU’s common read, Educated, Tara Westover illustrates her upbringing in a household where homeopathic remedies and tinctures were the norm for healing. Her mother uses them throughout the book and crafts an intuitive approach to use them. Westover writes of her mother’s process:
“[t]o create her formulas, Mother took up something called ‘muscle testing,’ which she explained to me as ‘asking the body what it needs and letting it answer.’ Mother would say to herself, aloud, ‘I have a migraine. What will make it better?’ Then she would pick up a bottle of oil, press it to her chest and, with her eyes closed, say ‘Do I need this?’ If her body swayed forward it meant yes, the oil would help her headache. If her body swayed backward it meant no, and she would test something else” (58).
Moreover, members of Westover’s family in part attribute their unlikely recoveries from gruesome injuries to the tinctures that are a staple in the home. Later in the memoir, her mother’s tinctures gain traction outside of the family and even become a source of income for the Westovers.
Humans all over the world craft and use tinctures, and have done so since antiquity. While studies on their effects remain mixed, some suggest tinctures (especially those made with certain plants such as feverfew, dune wormwood, and St. John’s wort) to be viable treatments for a broad range of ailments: from headaches, to asthma and depression.
As the event will take place just before the holidays, you may even consider crafting a tincture as a gift for a loved one. Join OCH and the Apothecary Fairy in the alcove at ACAC on November 28 at 7pm to take part in the long and fascinating tradition of tincture-making!