The Most POWERFUL Sleep Tea (Medical Herbalist Guide & Recipe)


today I'm going to show you how to 
make the best herbal tea for the   deepest night's sleep so coming up in this 
episode I'm going to take you through the   whole process of creating this Sleepytime 
herbal tea I'm going to be showing you   which herbs we're going to use and why 
I'm going to show you how to put them   together and blend them and of course how 
to make them up into your nice bedtime tea so what we're going to do here is to make up 
about enough for one person for a week or if   there are two of you and you both have trouble 
sleeping then we can do that for maybe three or   four days with the amounts that we've got here 
so first of all introducing our herbs the main   herb in the mix is going to be passion flour 
lots of scientific evidence to back up passion   flower as a sleep tea and the nice thing about 
passion flower and the reason it's our main herb   is because it's effective for almost everyone so 
it's a good General herb tea for sleep to that   we're going to add our second herb which is skull 
cap skullcap is I've chosen basically because as   well as being relaxing and a good sleep remedy 
it's also strengthening regenerating and restoring   to the nerve system so while you are merrily 
sleeping away it will be working to strengthen   up nourish and restore your nerves as well as just 
relaxing them next up we have California poppy now   this is quite a strong herb it's not the sort of 
thing that you you would want to take just before   getting in a car so we're going to use moderate 
quantities of this any of these herbs by the   way by themselves would make great sleep teas why 
we're blending them is because the causes of poor   sleep are different from different individuals 
we're all different so whilst we could in the   right circumstances use any of them for anybody 
what we're going to do is blend them so that   they're more generally appropriate to pretty much 
anybody who would like this kind of assistance   so we've got our California poppy again a 
well-known sleep relaxant slightly sedative   herb this one so as I said we need to be careful 
about the qualities we don't want to knock people   out next to that we've got chamomile obviously 
a very well known remedy very good for children   for example but maybe not strong enough for the 
average stressed out adult so we're going to put a   little bit of that in it's a kind of warming herb 
it's comforting it has a nice taste obviously so   it's going to contribute not only because of its 
relaxing properties but also because of its color   which is always nice to look at something colorful 
and its taste as well next herb to that is quite   similar this is lavender and again lavender 
would make a great sleepy time tea all of its   own but if you want to make it a really strong 
tea too much lavender has a very bitter taste so   you maybe wouldn't be the best thing to be going 
for just before you go to bed so we're going to   use a moderate quality of lavender just for that 
lovely Aroma that lavender can give and of course   Lavender is also very well known for helping 
us sleep just by its smell so it's going to   contribute in that way as well next to it this is 
my secret ingredient this is rose petals now rose   petals have an absolutely phenomenal fragrance as 
you probably know and my students at the college   also refer to rose petals as the hug a herbal 
hug so this is kind of a warming and kind of   comforting mood enhancing ingredient that we've 
got going here and lastly but not least we have   Valerian now this is a herb you've probably heard 
something about it's a very powerful sleep aid but   again we don't want to use too much of it one of 
the reasons for that is that in herbal medicine   we say this is a heating herb so it's very warming 
so if you have a cold or chilly Constitution it's   fantastic for you but if you're a little bit hot 
yourself then it's probably going to be working   in the wrong direction in fact if I have too much 
Valerian before I go to sleep it's going to keep   me awake so very moderate quantities of that 
as we'll see now we've got exactly 20 grams of   passion flour here and that's as I said is going 
to be our base herb we've got exactly 10 grams   of skull cap here and that's about right so I'm 
going to start by adding the skull cap straight   into the passion flower and then we're going to 
go for our other herbs starting with California   poppy now we've got five grams of California poppy 
in here so half of the skull cap and as I said we   don't want too much of it but five grams is fine 
so we're going to tip the whole lot into the mix   but when we come to our next herbs we're going to 
be measuring them a little more precisely so here   we've got our chamomile herb our chamomile flowers 
and that I reckon we're going to need about two   teaspoons so just two fairly fairly full teaspoons 
just like that and now we come to Lavender now   lavender again has these very strong essential 
oils of volatile oil properties so it's quite a   strong plant you can smell it you know the smell 
of lavender it's quite powerful very powerful for   Sleep actually you don't need all that much of 
it again so we're going to just take one heaped   teaspoon of lavender flowers and that's going to 
be quite enough and when we come to Rose we've   got a similar thing going on very fragrant but we 
don't want it to totally overpower the mix so the   one thing about rose petals is they are extremely 
light so if I take a teaspoon of that's probably   going to be about half a gram so I'm going to put 
a little bit more than that here we're going to   get a teaspoon and maybe a half in there and our 
final herb is Valerian and this again is quite   powerful again you can smell if you know Valerian 
you know it has a very very powerful smell again   we don't want it to overpower our herbal mix so 
we're going to use just about a level teaspoon   or half a teaspoon of valerian in that mix 
and that's all we need so let's mix this up   need to do this several times because as you 
can see it can tend to sort of Clump together   what we're trying to achieve here is a really even 
mix and there we have our finished sleepy time tea   blend so as you see we've stored our Sleepytime 
tea in a sealable glass jar you could in fact use   a brown paper bag if you wanted it's very easy to 
get very simple just pack it up nice and tight put   it in the back of a cupboard cool dark place so 
we're going to go forward and make our infusion   now so we've got a kettle freshly boiled and our 
infuser teapot now this is a special design for   making herbal teas very very useful for a herbal 
therapy and it has this mesh which goes into the   middle which allows the herbs to Steep and also 
release their properties into the water so we're   going to make just one cup so this is a one 
person dose when we're making a herbal tea we   want a medicinal tea we want a medicinal action 
we want more than just the amount that we would   dispense for a normal beverage so we're going to 
use a couple of teaspoons and by the way some of   the ingredients of this may settle in time so 
just give it a quick stir round before you put   any of the herbs in the teapot so now dosage I'd 
say two teaspoons but you could use more if you   have a real problem so you can get judge that on 
how bad your sleep problem is but I'd say between   two and four teaspoons is about right we're going 
to use two heaped teaspoons in here there we go   that's for one cup and then about half the teapot 
would be around the right size uh the right amount   of water here there we go now the other thing 
about making a herbal tea is that we steep it a   little bit longer than we would for an ordinary 
beverage so this is going to stay here now for   about a minimum 10 minutes maximum 15 minutes 
so let's see what this tastes like we're going   to pour ourselves a mug right here this has been 
brewing for 15 minutes now so it's nice and strong absolutely beautiful a really 
nice blend so there we have it   my ultimate sleepy time herbal tea 
don't forget to subscribe to our   channel for future episodes and I'll join 
you on one very soon meantime sleep well

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