Special Announcement: Introducing Isa’s Botanicals

By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.

The Sacred Stream is now offering Isa’s Botanicals, an updated version of our popular space clearing sprays.

I began developing the sprays when our work doing space clearings took us to places where we could not burn dried plants, such as hospitals where oxygen was in use. Although I developed these sprays specifically to help in the process of shamanic space clearings, people find these sprays help them in their everyday lives in unexpected ways.

Every plant has a special gift that nourishes, heals and improves our lives. One of the ways they share their gifts with us is through their essential oils. The sprays are made from the essential oils of plants that have specific healing or clearing properties, plants that help maintain mental and emotional clarity and keep physical spaces clear of interferences and imprints from previous events that have occurred in the space.

Isa’s Blend #1 is an excellent choice if you want help with general maintenance and clearing of a space.

One customer bought a bottle of Blend #1 to clear her office between psychotherapy clients at her home office. One day, she could not find her bottle of Isa’s Blend #1. When she went to look for it, she found her five-year-old spraying it in the living room. When she asked him what he was doing, he said that the living room needed it because the nosy neighbor had just left, and the room needed to feel better.

Isa’s Blend #2 is helpful when something particularly difficult has happened in a space or where people are reporting feeling the presence of foreign energies.

I developed Blend #2 when I was asked to help clear the space in a hospital where there had been some difficult patient outcomes. It works deeply to clear long-standing stagnant energies. I have found it to be invaluable in my Depth Hypnosis and Applied Shamanic Counseling practices when people are dealing with patterns that they have not been able to easily shift. I have found it helps them to re-focus, and maintain the energy they need to keep doing the deeper work.

Isa’s Blend #3 is helpful when you feel a space is just not settling after you have used the other sprays to clear. It is helpful to use in a space where you both work and live.

After working, you can clear with Blend #1, and then use Blend #3 to help set the space for personal activities. One customer bought Blend #3 to clear her daughter’s room before she went to sleep, because her daughter had a hard time settling down for the night, and the mother thought the grounding and settling properties of the spray might help her. It did help her daughter go to sleep more easily, but it also helped her during the day. One day, when the mother was picking up her daughter at school, the teacher asked if she knew anything about “the special spray.” Her daughter had asked for it when the teacher told her to stop disrupting the class. The mother brought a bottle to school for her daughter and soon all the children were requesting a spritz of the special spray to help themselves settle down when the teacher asked them to.

Naturally, these blends are excellent allies if you are a professional shamanic practitioner who clears space on a regular basis. But anyone who works and lives in spaces where lots of interactions occur on a daily basis find these sprays to be very helpful. Many customers would not dream of traveling without them. The scent does not hang in the air, so they can be used to clear airplane seats and the space around them, hotel rooms, rental cars and more.

I first began working actively with plants as a very little girl growing up in Hawaii. I spent hours under the big plumeria tree in our front yard stringing leis of plumeria flowers. Plumeria is known to settle nerves and promote well-being. I also loved braiding ti leaves into open leis. Ti plants are known for their protective qualities throughout the Pacific and are often planted in front of houses to ward off negative energies. So, I guess you could say, I have been tuning into the protective and restorative qualities of plants for a very long time.

Later, when I moved to Mexico, I was often left in the care of the Huichol ranch hands who worked on the horse ranch where I lived. They worked with plants in many different ways. They knew which plants needed to be added to the horses’ feed when they had belly aches, and they showed me where to find them and how to chop them up to add them to the feed. One of my friends would often bring me a ball of resin from one of the big pinon pines that lined the road on the way to the ranch. It was a great treat to suck on it any day, and it would always help me if I had a cough or a sore throat. One day, a bee stung me and one of the ranch hands quickly picked a dusty plant and stuffed it in his mouth, chewed it and slapped it on the sting. I was shocked at first, but as the pain of the sting drained away, I understood what he was teaching me.

As a young adult, I had the good fortune to study more formally with other Native American herbalists from many different traditions. Herbal medicine was much less accepted by mainstream American culture at that time, and it was difficult to find good teachers and dangerous to practice herbal medicine as it was viewed so negatively by the western medicine establishment. I remember going to Germany to study and finding a huge picture of an arnica flower occupying most of the shop window at an allopathic pharmacy with an ad for its use to reduce pain and inflammation. I thought I had died and gone to heaven to have herbal medicine so openly embraced by the mainstream culture.

I have been a practicing herbalist for over 40 years. I have prepared all types of herbal remedies, including specialized teas, salves, oils, tinctures and more. In the 1970’s, I ran a small herbal products company called Weeds of Worth, where I prepared salves, oils and tinctures which I sold to local health food stores. I wildcrafted all the plants I used in these products. I had a lucrative business selling yarrow stalks to New York City’s Weiser’s Book Store, known for its esoterica. The local hay farmers would let me cut the yarrow out of their fields before they took in the harvest. The stalks were used by New Yorkers throughout the city for their I Ching divinations. And the flowers and leaves became part of a sitz bath combination for inflammation.

I raised my children using homeopathic and herbal medicine. I found the plants offered them almost everything they needed when they had colds or when they fell and hurt themselves.

In herbal medicine, the plants are used to heal physical, mental, and sometimes emotional imbalances. Our sprays also work to help people mentally and emotionally. Most specifically, they work with the properties of the plants that may be seen in herbal medicine on a physical level on an energetic or spirit level to foster harmony and equilibrium.

Over the years, my appreciation for the plants has grown and deepened as I have worked with them in healing myself and others. There are so many ways that plants assist us in our lives, and I am humbled and grateful to them for all they offer and provide.

Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.

About Our Ingredients

Here are some of the special qualities of the different plants that we work with in Isa’s Space Clearing Blends.

Bay Laurel
Bay laurel leaves and bark have antiseptic and antibacterial properties. Their tea also helps calm nerves, as does sitting in the shade of these beautiful trees on a hot day. When the sun draws out the oils out of the leaves, their shade is infused with the same calm as our sprays provide.

Bergamot
Bergamot tea is used to treat depression and anxiety, which is why this plant is so helpful in bringing balance to a space that needs clearing on an energetic level. Bergamot also has antiseptic properties which assist in the clearing of space energetically.

Cottonwood
Cottonwood is viewed as a medicine tree by the native people of the Central Plains of North America where it grows in abundance. Cottonwood is also considered to be a ‘mother tree’ by biologists because it creates its own ecological zone wherever it roots that allows other plants to establish themselves more easily.

Eucalyptus
You have probably smelled what makes Eucalyptus so valuable in clearing and cleansing if you have walked through a Eucalyptus grove on a hot day. The oil, which is what you are smelling, releases antibacterial and antifungal qualities when the leaves are crushed or steamed. It is a native of Australia, where aboriginal people call it the ‘fever tree’ because of its ability to heal infections. These qualities make it invaluable on an energetic level in our sprays.

Frankincense and Myrrh
You have undoubtedly heard that Frankincense and Myrrh were among the gifts that the three wise men brought the new born Jesus. Valued for their cleansing and nourishing properties, these two plants have been used in ceremonies in Hinduism, Christianity and other traditions for thousands of years to honor the sacred.

Lime
Beyond its use in cooking that we all know so well, lime has many medicinal uses. Studies have demonstrated its antibacterial and antifungal properties. The scent of lime also has a refreshing, uplifting quality and helps other plants combine well together. These qualities are invaluable when focused energetically in our sprays.

Palo Santo
Palo Santo means ‘holy wood’ in Spanish. The smoke of Palo Santo has been used in ceremonies for millennia throughout South and Central America to clear negative energies and provide visions of wholeness.

Pine and Fir
Pine and fir are used in many ways in herbal medicine in many different cultural settings. The new tips can be boiled in water and the steam can be used to clear mucous from sinuses and chests. We benefit from the powerful movement and clearing that pine provides in our sprays.

Sandalwood
Sandalwood trees are viewed with reverence wherever they grow, which is primarily in India, Australia and Hawaii. In traditional medicines sandalwood is used as an antiseptic and its smoke is used to keep all types of insects at bay. These qualities are also useful on an energetic level in our sprays.

Sage
We use several types of sage in our sprays. There are more than 300 varieties of sage that grow all over the world. Interestingly, whatever region sage grows in, the people of that region use it for clearing and purification.

Tea Tree
Tea tree is a powerful antiviral, antibacterial and antifungal plant. The people of Australia, where it is native, have used it for millennia to treat all types of infections. Its powerful cleansing properties infuse our sprays to purify space on multiple levels.

Disclaimer: Our sprays are meant for external use only. No medical claims of any kind are made in relationship to the sprays or their ingredients.