Meditation and mindfulness

Plants accompany meditation in all traditions, but almost never as something drunk: incense that marks the beginning, a scent tied to the place, tea prepared slowly that is itself the practice. The herb is a frame here, not a tool.

The catalogue lists two species from the Indian tradition under this topic, brahmi and patchouli — the first as the 'herb of Brahma' for students, the second as the scent of incense. The list is short on purpose: the Central European herbal tradition does not speak of meditation, and the catalogue attributes nothing to it.

Mindfulness itself has clinical trials — programmes such as MBSR have a documented influence on stress and the recurrence of depression, with an effect comparable to other psychological approaches. Herbs do not figure in those programmes, and no study shows that they improve the practice.

A scent can help build a habit; that is the psychology of habit, not pharmacology. For patchouli and brahmi alike the pharmacological data are laboratory-based and do not concern contemplation.

Meditation is not a substitute for psychotherapy or treatment, and for some people — after trauma, in psychosis, in severe depression — intensive practice can make things worse: returning images, estrangement from the body, anxiety with closed eyes. That is a reason to pause the practice and talk to a therapist, not to add a herb.

Courses that promise to treat illness, to heal 'without medication' or that require stopping medication are not meditation but a risk. Medication is changed only by the doctor who prescribed it.