A woman’s life cycle consists of: birth, puberty, pre-marriage, pregnancy, giving birth, lactating, menopause, and post menopause, each with its own physical and mental challenges. In Javanese culture, we believe that harmony is paramount to achieve the balance between physical and spiritual health in order to prepare us for these challenges. The Javanese people also believe that nature provides us with all necessary food and medicine to help us prepare our self. Our tradition teaches us how we should combine various plants to make our food and remedies and how we should take charge of our wellbeing. We call this art of herbal healing as Jamu.

 

The ancient Javanese people lives intimately with plants around them and they regard plants as their partners to achieve this physical and spiritual balance. Therefore the knowledge on how to prepare plants as food and as medicine is always in the core Javanese woman’s daily life. Javanese housewives always maintain a good collection of herbs and spices in their kitchen and prepare food for the family members with promoting the family’s health in mind. They also know how to make specific Jamu to treat various illnesses.

 

This knowledge has been around for thousand of years and the formula has been perfected to utilize the progress of science and technology. The Javanese people manage to preserve this knowledge because it is embedded in the culture and it becomes our social rituals. The knowledge of Woman’s Life cycle becomes our most valuable tool to make this ritual alive among our current generation. Our ancestor knows that Woman’s Life cycle will always be relevant to our daily life, regardless of our age, ethnic background or what era we live in.