So here we are mired in the heart of winter. The shortest day has gone past, and another Christmas celebration has been and gone, but the sun does not seem yet to be coming back. So what about warming herbs, to warm and nourish us at this time of year?

In winter we can think about herbs that will help us to keep our internal fire or yangqi alive. As we know, in Jing Fang, warming and nourishing often go together, since it is our own yangqi that essentially helps the body to produce the yin fluids and blood.

Just to remind you, the Shang Han Za Bing Lun of Zhang Zhong-Jing is the Treatise on Cold Damage. This cold can easily enter the body and damage it – the Chinese say that we die from the feet up, so if you have ongoing cold feet, or if the cold is not only in the feet but creeps up the legs, then you need to do something to warm the interior of your body and get that cold to creep right back down and out.

How do we approach warming cold with herbs?

Well, there is a whole section on taiyin cold in Jing Fang theory, and if you want to learn more about that you can listen to the lecture on taiyin cold in the Jing Fang Lecture Series, Part IV lecture 1.

But you don’t have to be a herbalist to use warming herbs, and there are quite a number that are used not only medicinally but also as culinary herbs. Rou gui, cinnamon bark, for example is a good one – you can add cinnamon to your porridge, or drink cinnamon tea.

Gan jiang too, dried ginger, is a marvellous herb – extremely warming to drink or add to food. Ginger is such a common herb we forget the amazing properties that it has medicinally to warm the interior of the body. Hua jiao, Sichuan pepper, is another herb you can use in cooking. It is wonderful dry fried – and makes the most glorious scent while frying – and you can then grind it and use it as a condiment much like regular ground pepper. Mmmmm…

I recommend bone broths made with these warming herbs, lamb stews made with onion, winter squash, ginger and garlic, porridge sprinkled with liberal amounts of powdered ginger and cinnamon, and deserts made with apple or other cooked fruits, spiced up not only with cinnamon and ginger, but also cloves, allspice, and fennel seeds. So in this age of soaring fuel costs, these are things you can do to warm yourself from the inside.

I also, possibly paradoxically, recommend cold showers. These seem to consolidate the exterior and help us to keep our warmth inside. In addition, we need to be outside in nature, well wrapped up of course, and not too much sitting in a chilly room in front of the computer…