The Relaxing Power of Linden

During my first year of college, I took a field botany class for identifying trees and shrubs. One of the trees I learned to identify was the linden, which is fairly easy to spot, especially when it is in bloom. As shown in the picture, you’ll see several small, yellow, or yellowish-white flowers hanging from a winged bract. The leaves are heart-shaped. Linden trees are often found in parks because they’re beautiful shade trees.

Linden is an old European remedy. The parts used are the flowers and bracts. They are pleasant-tasting, slightly sweet and mildly aromatic with cooling, moistening, and soothing properties.

The Calming Effects of Linden

Linden is a nervine that helps to soothe and sedate nervous irritation and calm stress. It’s useful for anxiety, nervousness, panic attacks, and hyperactivity. It calms the mind and helps to relieve stress-related headaches. It also helps indigestion due to stress and can help relieve neuralgia and dizziness.

Linden makes a pleasant-tasting tea and it can be helpful to drink it in the evening to aid sleep. Being mildly antispasmodic, it can also be used for various types of conditions associated with cramps and tense muscles, including back and neck pain, dysmenorrhea, and colic.

Julia Graves claimed that nearly every German town had a linden tree and that townsmen would meet under them to conduct business. Matthew Wood says that “whoever has attended a small town meeting can understand the need for a sedative.” Maybe meeting under the calming linden tree is similar to Polynesians serving kava kava before negotiations to help everyone be clear-headed and relaxed.

Linden and Circulation

In modern herbalism, linden is frequently used to combat mild essential hypertension. It’s particularly helpful for high systolic pressure associated with hardening of the arteries. It may also be helpful for palpitations induced by stress.

Linden isn’t a stand-alone remedy for high blood pressure, but it combines well with other herbs that help hypertension, so you’ll often find it in formulas for that purpose. It is typically combined with other relaxing and cooling herbs, such as mistletoe, hawthorn, olive, and skullcap, rather than pungent remedies like capsicum and garlic.

Looking at the tongue can help determine whether cooling or pungent herbs will combine better with linden to help someone suffering from high blood pressure. Matthew Wood says the tongue indication for linden is a red, flame-shaped tongue that is slightly moist, indicating a hot, slightly damp condition. A person with a more pale tongue with excessive dampness or a heavy mucus coat would be an indication for the more pungent herbs.

Other Applications

Taken as a hot tea, linden has a diaphoretic action, which makes it a useful remedy for fevers, particularly in children. It also acts as a mild decongestant.

Linden flowers are soothing and emollient and have been used to make lotions for itchy, irritated skin. Linden is also helpful for burns, rashes, and abscesses. The tea can be used as a wash for sore, red eyes.

Linden is also a homeopathic remedy named for the Latin genus, Tilla. Tilla homeopathic is used to ease muscle tension and weakness. The person who needs it may be depressed, sad or lovesick, and possibly reclusive and shy. It may also be helpful for heart pains, pressure in the chest, rapid pulse, and palpitations. Another use is for pelvic inflammation and post-partum infection in women.

Linden as an Emotional Remedy

Historically, linden trees have been associated with beauty, happiness, love, and affection. They grow slowly and steadily and live for centuries. They are beautiful shade trees, which offer rest to the weary. The bracts over the flower is like a wing, protecting the flowers. The heart-shaped leaves are associated with matters of the heart. All these signatures point to linden as a remedy that helps people become more calm, stable, and steady.

In emotional healing, unresolved emotional wounds lead to a hardening of the heart and tension in the body that increases blood pressure, which makes a person physically cold and causes them to have difficulty relaxing and being affectionate. Linden as a flower remedy helps a person let go of the painful experiences of the past and open themselves up to receiving love and affection. It helps people connect with others in a peaceful, happy, sweet, and loving way.

These qualities are likely to be found in the remedy whether you use the herb, homeopathic, or flower essence. Linden relaxes the inner tension, both physically and emotionally, lowering blood pressure, easing tense muscles, and helping the person lead a more relaxed and happy life.