For Part 3 of “An Ode to Ginger,” let’s look at the properties and actions of plants and play with contrast of something simple: ginger tea vs mint tea. Mint and ginger tea are the same basic preparation, but they are a totally different experience. This is where herbalism starts to feel less formulaic and more of an art.
When someone has an upset stomach or gas there are two digestive and gentle plants that come to mind first: ginger and mint.
Ginger is warming, stimulating, and moving: it increases circulation and digestion, helps with nausea, and brings heat into a system that feels sluggish or chilled. Mint, on the other hand, is generally cooling, carminative, and gently antispasmodic - soothing to hot, tense, or overfull digestion, helpful for gas and cramping, and often calming to the mind as well.
Brew a cup of each and pay attention: how does your body temperature shift? What is happening in your mouth, chest and belly? How does your mood respond? Describe the sensations.
Traditional humoral medicine (made popular in the West by doctors like Galen and later woven into medieval European medicine) described people and imbalances in terms of hot, cold, damp, and dry. Through that lens, someone with sluggish, gassy digestion might be understood as tending toward cool/damp; a warming, pungent plant like ginger can help “light the digestive fire.” In contrast, someone who just overdid it on rich or spicy food may feel hot, heavy, or irritated - here, mint’s cooling, relaxing nature might be more appropriate than adding more heat.
Of course, it’s not always as simple as “hot vs cold.” Sometimes we treat “like with like,” and sometimes we reach for the opposite quality. This is the artistry: getting curious, understanding the nature of the plant, the person, and the imbalance, and then experimenting to see what actually shifts.
Herbalism is a relationship and a practice of paying attention. If you try this experiment I’d love to hear what you notice!! Comment below.