Stress remedies you can do at home, from bush medicine specialist Vivienne Hansen

“We believe that our Mother Earth, as we call boodja (land) gnarnk (mother), provided for us very well.”

The wellness industry has unlimited options to help us ease the stress of modern life. Driving the $6 trillion global industry is the marketing of supplements, bio-hacking smart rings, and a plethora of practices that keep us on the hamster wheel of consuming – which ironically, can create more stress.

We all want to feel better but sometimes, the answer won’t cost you anything at all. According to Vivienne Hansen, stress relief could be as simple as walking out in nature and letting the bush be your medicine cabinet.

For more perspectives on wellness, head on over to our Health section.

Vivienne is a certified herbalist specialising in Bush and Western herbal medicine, and the co-author of Noongar Bush Medicine: Medicinal Plants of the South-West of Western Australia. A Balladong Whadjuk woman of the Noongar nation, she grew up in a small country town called Brookton, learning from family how to utilise the abundant bush around her.

“My grandfather and two of his brothers spoke the Noongar language fluently and they were able to take us young ones out and show us what was good bush tucker and what was bush medicine. So we were really fortunate to learn all of that from our elders,” she says.

From as young as six, Vivienne would go out digging for vegetables or picking berries and herbs with her cousins (“there was still a lot of uncleared bush around back then”) but as they grew older, “we sort of lost interest as teenagers, like teenagers do.”

It wasn’t until she was much older that she picked it up again. Encouraged by her mother-in-law, who had been diagnosed with cancer, Vivienne decided to enrol in the Aboriginal Health Workers course. “They had this course running at the time, called Bush and Western Herbal Medicine, and I went and enrolled and was accepted. And I just got so involved in it, especially when we were doing the bush medicine, I started remembering a lot of things… We did an aromatherapy section as well and a lot of the smells reminded me of my grandmother, especially the lavender.”

Vivienne was the first indigenous member to take the course. While learning to make various rubs, teas and creams, she was also drawing from the knowledge her grandfather had told her, and she was able to make some special medicine to help her mother-in-law with her pain. “It was also a way for me to, you know, just relax when it became too much.”

These days, Vivienne shares her wealth of knowledge in community workshops – she’s delivered several this NAIDOC week – and she’s passionate about introducing others to the simple (and free!) joys of bush medicine.

Natural remedies for stress

As someone who puts their nervous system through all sorts of abuse, I asked Vivienne if she had any remedies to help deal with stress. “I like using the native lemongrass, that’s great as a cup of tea. The aroma is very similar to the Asian lemongrass, it has that beautiful lemony aroma to it and it grows all around the dry areas of Australia.

“So after a long tiring day, sit back and relax with a cup of lemongrass tea, and you’ll have a nice, restful sleep. It’s also really good for headaches and migraines,” she tells me.

Vivienne is also a firm believer in stopping to smell the roses (or in this case, eucalyptus) any chance you can get. “When you’re walking around the bush, just have a little smell, break a leaf off and crush it and inhale it, the aroma of it, it’s really beautiful. With Eucalyptus, if you get a couple of leaves, squash them up on your hand and rub them together, the heat from your hands helps release the oils contained in the leaves.”

“If you have a headache, just rub it into your temples and the back of your neck… the oils will transfer across and it’ll get into your body and travel through your bloodstream and to whatever point it needs to go to.”

And before you start thinking of shortcuts, the benefits are much greater when you source from nature, not iHerb.

“They all have the eucalyptus aroma but some of them are a little bit stronger. Others, you get the lemon scented gum leaf which is just amazing. And the different colours between the leaves, like they’re all green, but there’s different shades of green. The smell from each of them differs too, just a little, but after a couple of years smelling, you’ll get to know.”

To learn more about Vivienne’s bush medicine, head here.