Big Brainy Herb

If you have gotu kola growing in your garden, or you’ve seen it growing in someone else’s garden, you’ll know that it grows like a real life, rooted in the soil chia pet. Crawling along the ground, spidering outward and bushing its short self upward, gotu kola creates a dense and deliciously green carpet of herbaceous splendor. Indeed, when it is harvested it can be difficult to see even where you have cut it because of how thickly it grows. It is tenacious as well, rooting itself along the way as it spreads outward. A friend was recently weeding her garden bed and accidentally ripped out her patch of gotu kola along with some violet leaves; quick thinking told her to snug the roots back into the soil and, sure enough, the plant bounced right back and continued its steady crawl across the ground.

Gotu kola and its sister plant, bacopa, combine well to improve memory and brain function and to heal traumatic head injuries. While not interchangeable, they certainly work closely together to gently support and improve the workings of the brain and mind. They’re sisters in their abilities as plant medicine as much as they are akin in the way that they grow - a magical and reaching way of growing out of the earth, almost like a head of leafy hair sprouting from the soil itself.

Once we see that gotu kola is energetically abundant in its own life, it can come as no surprise that the plant creates an energetic abundance in our bodies as well. Energy simply moves from one place to the next, from one body to another, after all. Maybe a tea from these leaves can become the new “afternoon coffee,” energizing and bolstering our spirits through to the end of the day. Or maybe a tincture of the plant will help you to remember where you put your keys or set down your mug of morning coffee. Really, the possibilities are as abundant as the plant itself.