Valentine’s Day is a glowing opportunity to deepen and broaden your experience of authentic intimacy for yourself, your partner, and your tribe (and heck, mother earth!). Get inspired to go old-school pagan and honor your fertility, or go medieval with the gushy romantic love idealized in the middle ages.

Amazingly, you don’t need to evoke all this energy yourself - there is actually a plant for all that. Damiana is the ancient botanical perfect for blossoming modern love.

New Kid on the Super-Plant Block

While Damiana has been treasured for millennia by lucky groups of people from Texas to Brazil, it is a relatively new addition to our modern cadre of apoptogenic botanicals.

At first it sounds like we’re talking about more than one medicine: it elevates mood and releases anxiety while offering mild euphoria, and muscular relaxation. It’s used to treat constipation, digestion issues, diabetes, raspatory ailments, coughs - even bed wetting. It’s also a powerful hormone balancer, so it eases discomfort during female fluxes, from PMS to pregnancy to menopause.

But its claim to fame? In a word: aphrodisiac.

That Wonderful A-Word

There are a few big reasons why Damiana is considered an aphrodisiac – and a superior one, at that. While offering a mild narcotic high and a general sense of wellbeing, it also directly stimulates erogenous nerve cells and increases blood circulation to the genitals in all genders, so all partners or solo participants will feel an elevating effect.

In plain speak, this plant has the ability to relax and arouse anyone, while creating tingling and joyful physical arousal and firmness in sexual organs. These states reinforce and buttress each other, creating an upward-oriented path of excitement.

 “What is special about Damiana is that it is relaxing while simultaneously being invigorating - the perfect recipe for intimacy,” notes Arielle Hayat, a savvy NYC herbalist. “It helps bring bodily awareness to our sex organs, both male and female, increasing blood flow to the pelvic region. That is in part due to the fact that there are alkaloids similar to testosterone in the plant, and those alkaloids impact our nervous system and our sexual functions.”

Disarming the Heart

Of course, the heart space is key for achieving joyful, elevated states. Damiana is described as an “adaptegenic nervous trophorestorative,” which means it is a nutritive herb that guides both over- and underactive nervous systems into mellow alignment. Almost everyone reports feelings of well-being, relaxation, and sensory stimulation, which allows the heart and body to feel both empowered and relaxed at once.

This unique nourishment allows the heart space to release habitual contraction and guarding, which facilitates communication and physical intimacy.

These effects are powerful enough to make Damiana useful in trauma therapy, but gentle and holistic enough to stop at the threshold of forced or imbalanced excitement (which can occur with powerful prescription medicine or stimulants).

By nourishing the nervous system, calming the nerves, and supporting an increase in blood flow throughout the body, including the reproductive organs, many people experience an increased desire for sexual intimacy.

And this isn’t a just a temporary fix: while pleasing effects are usually felt quickly, Damiana can deeply correct and restore the nervous system if taken on a regular basis long term.

You as Fertility God/ Goddess

Damiana is also a well-known hormone balancer and when the sex hormones estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone are flowing properly we feel juicy amounts of sexual desire, arousal, readiness, and ability. And by ability, we mean performance.

While medical trials are few, damiana shows promise for males in achieving and maintaining firmness, abiding in the aroused state without finishing too quickly, and achieving the aroused state swiftly again.

And women, if you’re ready to become that curvy fertility sculpture overflowing with babies and abundance, Damiana can help. While balanced hormones in general will nurture a fertile center, Damiana also provides specific corrections (like boosting aromatase inhibitors that reduce endometriosis) which increase fertility potential.

Regarding dosage, Hayat says: “It's nice when 3 cups of Damiana is steeped in 1oz a day and drank for a period of time, but also working with Damiana in the moment is helpful in my experience too. Damiana imparts a youthful vitality and restores those who feel weakened by the stresses of 21st century lifestyle, to nourish one's natural essence enough to be in the mood.”

While jewelry and sweets are lovely devices for expressing adoration, the fulcrum of your love ceremony could be more radiant.  When all power centers are flowing and glowing, we manifest spiritually and physically – and the bedroom could be your temple.