Deb Friedman: Hi! I'm Deb Friedman. I am a trained clinical herbalist, and I am showing you how to make herbal teas to help you deal with stress. Right now, I am going to show you how to make tea using a common commercially available tea bag. You can get certain herbal teas in the grocery store or in your health food store that are already packaged in tea bags. The teas that you want to drink for stress are called nervine teas because they help to nourish and support the nervous system. They are generally recognized as safe teas, so pretty much anybody can take them.

Chamomile, for example, is a very commonly used herbal tea. It's very nice to take in the evening to help you unwind. Sometimes manufacturers will put several different herbs in the same tea bag. For instance, here we have a tea called Holy Basil, which is a wonderful herb for stress and they have combined it with an herb called Gotu Kola. There are many other herbs: Lavender, St. John's Wort, Valerian, etc. If you want to find out what some of these herbs are, you can look it up on the internet or get a good herb book and find out.

Now, I am going to show you how to make the tea, which sounds very simple, but there are few things to keep in mind. Okay, first, you want to take some boiling water and put it in your cup, and now you want to add the tea bag and put a lid on the tea, or you can just use a saucer. The reason to put the lid on the tea is because the herb has a constituent that's called a volatile oil that evaporates readily and it contains some of the plant's medicine, so you don t want to lose it. Now, you want to wait for about 10 or 15 minutes. This is called an herbal infusion actually. You steep it for longer than you would in ordinary cup of tea because you want it to be medicinal, you want it to have certain qualities, so you wait about 10 or 15 minutes before drinking it. Okay, 10 or 15 minutes are up. You are ready to drink your tea. That s all there is.

Alright, now I am going to show you how to make a tea using loose herbs.