Piñon Resin

We first learned about Piñon Pine when we were living in the Southwest, where this tough, scrubby tree is revered as as source of food and medicine. We always enjoyed eating pine nuts when we would encounter them while hiking or at a local market, and we learned about the medicinal aspects of its resin, locally called “trementina”, from Medicinal Plants of the Desert and Canyon West by Michael Moore.

In that book, Michael talks about using pine pitch externally to pull out splinters and prevent infection from them and other skin damage, as well as its internal uses as a syrup, tea, and steam for respiratory illnesses. The needles are also brewed as a tea, which is mildly expectorant, with the resin being a strong and reliable mover of lung and sinus congestion.

Piñon resin is also used in ceremony to clear the air of negativity and bring about a peaceful, protected state of meditation, and we have been enjoying its warm, vanilla sweetness in our censers all winter. It’s the smell of the Southwest, one we remember fondly from sunny days in Taos, and it always brings me to a happy state.

As an Initiatic, Piñon resin is inwardly comforting, bringing a loose and languid flow to the energy, opening the breath and bringing release of tension with every exhale. I found it releasing a tightness and heaviness around my heart that I didn’t know I had until it was gone, and in place of the tension there was a movement and building vitality. It reminded me of sitting in the mountains above Santa Fe, breathing in the warm life-giving Spring air that is personified as Kokopelli, whose flute brings life to the awakening land.

It has a Mercury quality which is not energizing and active like other plants of this planet, but which carries an intelligence of things always becoming and unfolding. Its emotional release properties would be enhanced by combining it with our Bee Balm Spiritualized, and we also think it would be lovely with our Yerba Santa Essence for respiratory balance.