Listening to the body, living with the season.

I collected some elderflowers at my parents’ place during the summer. Elderflower tea is a mild, warming herbal tea that is especially nice to drink during winter. It can support the immune system and ease cold symptoms. It's also rich in antioxidants and can gently help clear the airways. Its soft, floral taste makes it a comforting tea, mix it with real honey and lemon, and it becomes a deeply nourishing drink for the body. You can also make an elderflower tincture and because it is alcohol-based, the body absorbs the beneficial effects more quickly. You can place a few drops directly in the mouth, or mix it into a cup of tea, for example. Isn’t it interesting how such simple and easy things can be so beneficial? Two winters ago, I made elderflower tinctures and gave them away as gifts. They were truly appreciated. There’s something special about giving something you’ve made yourself, so now I’m happy to share how I made them. How to make your own elderflower tincture You will need:

Fresh or dried elderflowers organic vodka clean glass jar with a lid strainer dark glass dropper bottle (for storage)

• Harvest the elderflowers (pick flowers from a clean area, preferably on a sunny day) Gently shake off insects but avoid rinsing if possible (or let them dry completely if you do rinse)
  

• Place the flowers loosely in the jar: – fresh flowers: fill the jar to about ¾ – dried flowers: fill about ½ of the jar
  

• Pour alcohol over the flowers until they are completely submerged. Make sure no plant material is sticking out.
  

• Close the lid and label the jar with the date and contents. Store in a dark place for 4–6 weeks, gently shaking every other day.
  

• Strain out the flowers and pour the tincture into a dark glass bottle. Store in a cool, dark place.
  

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Modern medicine is often celebrated as one of humanity’s greatest achievements. And in moments of crisis, it truly is. Emergency surgery, trauma care, and acute interventions save countless lives. But when we step back, a larger truth appears: what we call “healthcare” today is mostly sick care. It focuses on fixing problems, not supporting daily health.

Modern Western medicine is very young. Its pharmaceutical-driven model has existed for just over a century. Yet it dominates not only hospitals and clinics, but also how we think about health. We often notice health only when it is gone.

For most of human history, health was part of daily life. It was not something we turned to only when the body failed. People cared for themselves through food, rest, movement, emotional balance, and attention to the seasons. Plants and herbs were one way to support the body, but the bigger picture was about living in rhythm with nature. Health was actively cultivated, not outsourced. Modern life makes it easy to lose touch with ourselves. We are constantly moving, thinking, and reacting, often without pausing to notice how our body feels. Stress has become normal, not the exception, and we rarely give ourselves permission to rest or slow down.

Holistic traditions understood something modern medicine sometimes forgets: the body does not suddenly “break.” Imbalance grows quietly. Fatigue becomes normal. Stress becomes the usual state. Small signals from the body are ignored or silenced. By the time illness appears, the body has often been communicating for years, first in whispers, then louder and louder.

Modern medicine grew alongside industrialization. Treatments that could be standardized, patented, and sold became the gold standard. Prevention, by contrast, is hard to sell. Teaching people to rest well, eat in tune with the seasons, move naturally, and care for their nervous system does not generate long-term profits like prescriptions do.

This reality has shaped priorities. We are advanced at managing illness, but often poor at preventing it. We measure success in symptom relief rather than vitality. We treat the body as a machine with replaceable parts, instead of a living system where mind, emotions, environment, and body interact continuously.

Many modern medicines come from plants and natural compounds that were used in traditional care for centuries. The knowledge was there long before it was isolated, refined, and renamed. In a holistic approach, herbs are part of a larger picture: lifestyle, environment, emotional health, and personal responsibility all connect in one system.

Holistic health does not promise quick fixes. It asks for participation. It requires listening, patience, and attention. Through movement, food, rest, or gentle plant support, we learn to notice subtle changes in energy, digestion, sleep, and mood, and respond before imbalance grows. In a culture obsessed with speed, this slowness is seen as weakness. But in fact, it is where strength and resilience are built.

To question modern medicine is not to deny its value, but to see that a system focused on intervention after illness cannot create a healthy society alone. True health comes from daily choices, supportive environments, and respect for the body and nature. The principles holistic traditions have honored for thousands of years. For me, living in rhythm with the seasons has been a learning journey. The past few years have been full of travel and new experiences, and that has been wonderful. But sometimes, moving from place to place made the natural rhythm of winter hard to feel. Some winters barely arrived, others shifted quickly, and I often felt a little ungrounded, as if my body’s natural pace had been scattered.

Now I feel myself in a different place. I have learned that health is not about forcing the body to stay the same, but about listening, noticing, and moving in tune with both the body and the season. Growth and action have their time, and so does rest and recovery. Even after years of traveling and changing seasons, winter asks for quiet, and I am learning to honor that again.

Winter is here now. It invites us to slow down, rest, and simplify. This is not weakness. It is part of caring for ourselves, a gentle form of prevention. When we allow our bodies to slow down with the season, we give them space to restore balance and build resilience.

Health is not only created through effort. Often, it grows quietly in rest, in attention, in small daily choices. This is what holistic health looks like for me now: not fixing, not forcing, but listening and noticing. True healing begins when we stop asking to be fixed and start choosing to participate.