In modern Western culture, people often disregard dreams as mere fluff that our brains discard as we slumber. But throughout history and cultures, humans have valued dreaming in different ways. Dreams are seen as a door or bridge to the spirit world or the subconscious. They are often full of symbology from our lives, become outlets for our deepest concerns and fears, or offer us tools for self-reflection and a map to our current state of mind and heart. Although we can dream at any stage of sleep, our most vivid dreams occur during our REM (rapid eye movement) sleep cycle, so depending on how well we sleep, we may spend more than two hours each night in some form of dream state. Sleep researchers tell us that deep non-REM sleep rests our bodies and refills our tanks to start another day and REM sleep is crucial for dreaming, memory consolidation, emotional processing, and healthy brain development.

I love a good cup of tea and I love that there is literally a tea for any circumstance I may find myself in. Thus, my tea collection is just as varied as the many different experiences that I go through each day. When I first began drinking tea, I knew it mainly as something to ease my cold symptoms. I remember standing in the tea aisle in the grocery store, all stuffed up, staring blearily (and somewhat blankly) at the various tea boxes. Since then, I have learned a lot about the wonderful world of tea. I have tried them all— bright and fruity, deep and sultry, and nutritive and soothing, each offering something uniquely wonderful. My biggest tea lesson to date came when I tried loose leaf tea for the first time. There was no comparison in flavor. After that, it was not long before the boxed teas disappeared from my shelves at home and were replaced by meticulously hand-labeled jars filled with all my favorite teas.

Mountain Rose Herbs was built on uncompromising principles of ethical and sustainable sourcing of botanicals, but our purpose extends beyond that in the ways we give back. As many of you already know, we donate extensively to environmental nonprofits. But we’ve also created ways for our employees to support local causes that are important to them. In 2011, we launched a Workplace Giving Program in partnership with EarthShare. This employee-led program has generated thousands of dollars in charitable giving to community groups via donations from our employees, which we helped to facilitate through easy and convenient monthly paycheck deductions.

I’ll admit it, I have some big, sappy feelings about lemon balm. You might even say that I have an herbal crush on the plant, and let’s be honest, I don’t think I’m the only one. This herb tends to evoke that feeling in its fans. We don’t just use lemon balm we also hold a deep and abiding affection for it. When we decided to write blog posts about our favorite herbs, it made me pause and ask myself just what it is about lemon balm that I love so much? I am a creature guided by my gut feelings and intuition. Which can be wonderful, but admittedly, not the most scientific approach. So, I sat down to do some research on my beloved Melissa officinalis.

I have been on a big “DIY swap” kick lately. It all started with a growing interest in leading a more sustainable lifestyle, which for me, meant finding ways to eliminate single-use and non-recyclable packaging. The DIY aspect of this project was born out of necessity. I knew the easiest way to avoid purchasing products packaged unsustainably was to just make them myself. There were some growing pains of course. I will be the first to admit that I am not always the best at planning ahead, so adjusting from simply buying an item in a store to carving out the time to make the product did not always go smoothly. However, since I have embraced the process, I’m finding it deeply gratifying to craft my own products, especially my own body-care products.

Lately I have been thinking a lot about how to reduce the presence of plastic in my life. With the recyclability of plastics becoming more and more of a question mark, and a disheartening one at that, the place that I keep arriving at is to just try as hard as I can to remove plastics from the equation altogether. The kitchen was the first place I started with my sustainability makeover. I slowly began to change my shopping habits so that I would wind up with less leftover single-use plastics at the end of the week. It wasn’t easy but it was incredibly liberating; it eased my conscience a bit to know that I was able to take steps toward a greener lifestyle. As my interest in living more sustainably snowballed, I began seeing problems everywhere I looked in my house, particularly with my cleaning products, and especially with my bathroom cleansers.

There has been a lot of talk about self-care lately, and with good reason. With this last year weighing heavily on many of us, there is a renewed focus on the ways in which we can offer ourselves some TLC. One of my favorite ways of having a quiet moment with myself this time of year is to go on long walks and hikes. Nothing brings me a sense of calm more than adventuring outside with my pup. Unfortunately, my feet do not seem to feel that same serenity after a long walk, and recently my attention was brought to one area of my body that I routinely neglect—my feet!

Each year as Mother’s Day approaches, I start to think about what I can offer the women that occupy the mother role in my life. This year my thoughts keep coming back to self-care. Self-care has been such an important topic this year. Gentle care of the self is so paramount in times when life feels overwhelming or stressful, and yet those moments can be the hardest to find the time to do so. For those of us that have good mother figures in our lives, we’ve often seen their daily self-sacrifice. Whether they are our parent, partner, or friend, we witness many times when they make the choice to put the care of others ahead of themselves. Mother’s Day begs us to ask the questions, “How can we best offer our love and support? How can we show our appreciation?” This year my answer is self-care. So, with that in mind I decided that I would try my hand at putting together some personalized self-care inspired gift baskets!