Lemon Balm Tincture

Lemon Balm, or Melissa officinalis, is one of the first plants I learned about on my herbal journey.  As luck would have it, I was already growing some in my herb garden when I began to learn about all of the magnificent properties of this beautiful herbal ally - and it seems to be the case that I’ve always had lemon balm in my garden! I have always liked to grow it because it’s fragrant and attracts bees that pollinate other plants around it. Given that I had plenty of it growing in my garden, and already felt like I had a friendly relationship with this plant, I decided to be brave and make my very first herbal remedy with it.

One of the first things that I learned from my herbalism teacher, Sajah Popham, was that when you begin to work with a plant you will turn into a medicine, you need to develop a relationship with the plant. He describes “sitting with the plant” as literally sitting in close proximity to the plant you want to learn about, and paying very close attention to your senses, noting anything you may feel, hear, see, or smell. I follow a regular meditation practice, and I spend a lot of time in my garden, so it wasn’t a stretch to sit near my Lemon Balm and listen to what it “had to say to me.” During my time with Lemon Balm, I felt a calm and uplifted mood, and a sweet, gentle, shy spirit. I also felt a strength in my belly which I later related to its affinity with the digestive system. Not everyone who creates herbal remedies feels the pull to relate to the plants they work with in this way. I wanted to develop a deeper knowledge so that felt right for me. However, since I’m a Sagittarian, I need to balance feeling out nature with intellectual learning, so I did some research for a little more grounded data.

Lemon Balm Tincture made with plants from my garden

Lemon Balm is originally from the Middle East and North Africa. It moved to Southern Europe and Europe in the 1500s, and then to North America by 1700. The name “Melissa” comes from the Greek word for “honey bee” and still has a significant place in Greek culture. They believed that it helped the bees find their way back to their hive and even rubbed the hive with Lemon Balm to help the bees feel welcome. Other cultures believed that drinking the tea of Lemon Balm promoted longevity and had mystical soothing powers. Traditional uses, dating back centuries, were for dog and scorpion bites, staunching blood flow, earache, toothache, morning sickness, preventing baldness, and straightening crooked necks. It has also been used as a surgical dressing to guard against infection, and aids the healing of wounds. Of all of the qualities of this plant, the one that piqued my interest the most was the “mystical soothing powers,” and was the quality that my research indicated Melissa was best known for.

Next, I asked Lemon Balm for permission to harvest it. I told the plant that I intended to make a remedy that I wanted to take so that I could learn about more about how it helps people, and to understand how it affected me. I sprinkled a little bit of cornmeal as an offering on the ground near the roots and snipped about a third of the plant growing in my garden.  I consulted a YouTube video which suggested stuffing a large mason jar with fresh plant material, then pouring 80 proof vodka over it and waiting six weeks before straining out the plant material. I had also read that one should cut up the plant material very finely, so the alcohol has more surface area to work with.

I didn’t want to choose, so I combined both methods. I put the plant material in the jar, poured in the vodka, and used a hand blender to chop up the plant in the jar with the vodka. This worked pretty well but was kind of messy. By which I mean, it was VERY MESSY. There were green vodka splotches on the kitchen counter, the backsplash, and the floor. My daughter and husband were conveniently occupied and not very hungry when they saw the mess (and the look on my face when I saw it). I’ve since refined my technique!

Six weeks later, I strained out the plant material and put what was now a dark green vodka back into a clean mason jar. I now had my first tincture! It was another week or two until I put it into a small bottle with a dropper so I could take it more easily. I remember taking a dropperful of the tincture on my tongue, and anxiously waiting to see how it affected me. I felt nothing. I did the same thing for a few days in a row with the same result. I was disappointed, and assumed that I had made a mistake during the medicine making process. Was my mistake why it “didn’t work?” Or worse, was everything I had learned had learned untrue? Did Lemon Balm not really work like people said it did?

I continued to commune with the plant, and to make a summer time iced tea with the leaves to keep me cool, or to combine it with other herbs and vegetables for flavor when making vegetable stock. Fall and Winter came and went, with a bottle of lemon balm tincture sitting in my cabinet. Around the time of the winter solstice, a familiar uneasiness crept over me. It is something unique to my constitution, and something that I have come to recognize over the years. Some years it’s worse than others. Seasonal Affective Disorder is a type of depression that affects people when there is less daylight during the late autumn and winter. I was doing my best to power through the episode that year, but it was a particularly bad one for me. 

Finally, in the middle of January, faced with the need to be fully present and functional for my family, I was desperate. I saw the Lemon Balm tincture that I had made the spring before in my cabinet, like I did every morning, and it caught my eye.  I remembered that I had read that Lemon Balm is “sunshine in a bottle,” can aid depression and anxiety, and lift the mood and spirit.  I took some of the tincture and felt the bitter tanginess roll down my throat.  It tasted “different” than it had before. It seemed tastier and sweeter… less bitter and “medicine-y” than before. I took a dropperful in a cup of tea in the morning and at night. I gradually began to feel less despondent and began to have more energy. I wasn’t hyper and giddy by any stretch, simply less tired, more hopeful, and a far more willingly functional than I had been, not to mention relieved. I began to feel that shy, sweet, steady energy that I felt when I first “sat” with the Lemon Balm.  I continued to take the remedy into the summer, and incorporated the fresh plant and tincture into my daily water. I was able to maintain a level of steadiness that I found incredibly grounding. I attribute all of that to the healing properties of Lemon Balm.

Today, I have made several different iterations of the Lemon Balm tincture. My current favorite is an elixir made with some honey to sweeten it a bit. I also feel that the elixir harkens back to Lemons Balm’s history with honey bees. Lemon Balm was, and continues to be, my “sunshine in a bottle.” I have a different relationship to Lemon Balm than I did a few years ago, and it continues to grow and change as I do. This back and forth, give and take, growth and change… isn’t that what relationships are all about anyway?