Your,Own,Herbal,Expert,Ancient health Be Your Own Herbal Expert - Pt 7

If the vagina is not offering the firm grip to your male partner, he expresses displeasure in lovemaking. You need to tighten the orifice and regain lost elasticity. You can make use of herbal remedies for loose vagina treatment naturally. H The technology behind listening devices has improved dramatically in recent years, giving new hope to those with impairment. While still far from a perfect replacement for the natural ability to hear, these devices give those with a disabili

Ancient memories arise in you when you begin to use herbal medicine.These lessons are designed to nourish and activate those memories and yourinner herbalist so you can be your own herbal expert. In our first session, we learned how to "listen" to themessages of plant's tastes. In lesson two, about simples and water-based herbalremedies. In the third, I distinguished safe (nourishing and tonifying) herbsfrom more dangerous (stimulating and sedating) herbs. Our fourth lesson focusedon poisons; we made tinctures and an Herbal Medicine Chest. Our fifth dealtwith herbal vinegars, and the sixth with herbal oils. In this, our seventh session, we will think about how we think abouthealing. The ThreeTraditions of Healing There are many ways to use herbs to improve and maintain health. Modernmedicine uses highly refined herbal products known as drugs. Many alternativeor holistic practitioners recommend herbs, usually in less-refined (and lessdangerous) forms such as tinctures or homeopathic remedies. And then there arethe yarb women, the wise women, such as myself, who integrate herbs into theirdaily diet and claim far-reaching results for simple remedies.  I call these three different approaches the Scientific, Heroic, and WiseWoman traditions. These three traditions are ways of thinking, not ways of acting. Andthey are not limited to herbs. Any technique, any substance can be used by ahealer in the Scientific, Heroic, and Wise Woman traditions. There are, forinstance, naturopaths, midwives, and MDs in each tradition, as well asherbalists, educators, therapists, even politicians. Each of these traditions lives within you, too.  As I define the characteristics of each tradition, identify the part ofyourself that thinks that way. ScientificTraditionModern, western medicine is an excellent example of the Scientifictradition, where healing is fixing. The line is its symbol: linear thought,linear time. Truth is fixed and measurable. Truth is that which repeats. Goodand bad, health and sickness are put at opposite ends of the line, where theydo battle with each other. Food and medicine are quite different.  Newton's universal laws and the mechanization of nature are the foundation ofthe Scientific tradition. Bodies are understood to be like machines. Whenmachines run well (stay healthy) they don't deviate. Anything that deviatesfrom normal needs to be fixed or repaired. The Scientific tradition isexcellent for fixing broken things. Measurements must be taken to determinedeviation and insure normalcy. Regular diagnostic tests are critical tomaintaining proper functioning and ensuring utmost longevity in thebody/machine.  In the Scientific tradition, plants are valued as repositories ofpoisons/alkaloids. They are seen as potential drugs, and capable of killing youin their unpredictable crude states. They are helpful and safe only whenrefined into drugs and used by highly-trained experts. In the Scientific tradition the whole is the same as its most activepart, and machines are more trustworthy than people.  HeroicTraditionThere is not one unified Heroic tradition, but many similar traditionscollectively called the Heroic tradition. Alternative health care practitionersgenerally represent the Heroic thought pattern, symbolized by a circle.  This circle defines the rules, which, we are told, must be followed inorder to save ourselves from disease and death. Healing in the Heroic traditionfocuses on cleansing. According to this tradition, disease arises when toxins(dirt, filth, anger, negativity) accumulate. When we are bad, when we eat thewrong food, think the wrong thought, commit a sin, we sicken and the healer isthe savior, offering purification, punishment, and redemption.  In the Heroic traditions, the whole is the sum of its parts. We arebody, mind, and spirit. The spirit is high and worthy; the body is low andgross; the mind is in between. In the Heroic traditions, we are personallyresponsible for everything that happens to us.  Religious beliefs frequently accompany herb use in the Heroic tradition.The Heroic healer uses rare substances, exotic herbs, and complicated formulae.Drug-like herbs in capsules are the favored in this tradition. Most books onherbal medicine are written by men whose thought patterns are those of theHeroic tradition. Wise WomanTraditionThe Wise Woman tradition is the world's oldest healing tradition. Itenvisions good health as openness to change, flexibility, availability totransformation, and groundedness. Its symbol is the spiral. In the Wise Womantradition we do not seek to cure, but focus instead on integrating andnourishing the unique individual's wholeness/holiness. The Wise Woman traditionrelies on compassion, simple ritual, and common dooryard herbs and garden weedsas primary nourishers, but appreciates (and uses) any treatment appropriate tothe specific self-healing in process.  The Wise Woman tradition sees each life as a spiraling, ever-changingcompleteness. Disease and injury are seen as doorways of transformation, andeach person is recognized as a self-healer, earth healer: inherently whole,resonant to the whole, and vital to the whole. Substance, thought, feeling, andspirit are inseparable in the Wise Woman tradition. The whole is more than thesum of its parts.  Spiralic and amazing, the Wise Woman tradition offers self-healingoptions as diverse as the human imagination and as complex as the human psyche.The Wise Woman tradition has no rules, no texts, no rites; it is constantlychanging, constantly being re-invented. It is mostly invisible, hard to see,but easier and easier to find. It is a give-away dance of nourishment, change,and self-love. An invitation to honor yourself and the earth. An admonishmentto trust yourself.  Coming upIn our next sessions we will learn how to make herbal honeys and syrups,and how to take charge of our own health care with the six steps of healing.  I also invite you to study with mein the convenience of your home via correspondence course! Choosefrom one of my four courses: GreenAllies, Spirit & Practice of the Wise Woman Tradition, Green Witch, and ABCof Herbalism with Susun Weed. Learn more at www.susunweed.com or write to me at [email protected] ExperimentNumber OneThe next time you start to feel unwell, ask yourself what each one ofthe three traditions would advise you to do - e.g. You feel a headache comingon. The Scientific tradition says take a pain killer. The Heroic tradition saysgive yourself an enema. The Wise Woman tradition says take a nap.(Formore information on the three traditions, see the chart in my book HealingWise.) ExperimentNumber TwoInstead of doing what you usually do for some problem (e.g. headache),do something different. Choose something from the same tradition you usuallyuse, or from a different tradition. ExperimentNumber Three Become more aware of the "nourishment of your senses" asGurdieff put it. What do you look at? Listen to? Smell? Touch with your skin?Taste?  ExperimentNumber Four Nourish yourself in a new or different way. You might: eat something -or eat somewhere - that you've wanted to try but never dared. Go to a museum,or the opera, or the ballet, or a Broadway show. Visit with a cherished friend.Listen to music that touches your soul. Sit in meditation and burn subtleincense.  ExperimentNumber FiveMake a list of ten things that nourish you that are now in your life.Make a list of ten things that could nourish you if they were in yourlife. Furtherstudy 1.       Become more familiar with theScientific tradition: Read one or more issues of Scientific American and/orScience News. 2.       Become more familiar with theHeroic tradition: Skim through Back to Eden or any current book ondetoxification. 3.       Become more familiar with theWise Woman tradition. Read: HealingWise, the Wise Woman Herbal. SusunWeed. 1987, Ash Tree Publishing.  HerbalRituals. Judith Berger. 1998, St. Martin's Press. HealingMagic, A Green Witch Guidebook. Robin RoseBennett. 2004, Sterling. The SecretTeachings of Plants. Stephen Buhner. 2004, InnerTraditions. TheVillage Herbalist, Sharing Plant Medicines with Family and Community. Nancy and Michael Phillips. 2001, Chelsea Green Publishing. Advancedwork ·       The three traditions ofhealing are not restricted to healing of course. You might have recognizedthese three attitudes in your profession. Wonderful articles have been writtenon the "Three Traditions of Teaching" (the Scientific relies ontests, the Heroic on punishment and reward, the Wise Woman on freedom toexperience and express) and the "Three Traditions of Therapy" (theScientific refers to manuals and prescribes drugs, the Heroic blames theunconscious, the Wise Woman nourishes the spirit and builds wholeness) and eventhe "Three Traditions of Cooking" (the Scientific uses a thermometerand a recipe, the Heroic blackens and heavily spices everything, and the WiseWoman uses what is in season where she lives). ·          Apply the three traditions toyour profession. ·          Read about the history ofherbal medicine. Suggested books: GreenPharmacy, the History and Evolution of Western Herbal Medicine. Barbara Griggs. 1997, Healing Arts.TheMagical Staff, the Vitalist Tradition in Western Medicine. Matthew Wood. 1992, North AtlanticBooks.Witches,Midwives, and Nurses, A History of Women Healers. Barbara Ehrenrich and Deirdre English. 1973, Feminist Press.   I see the wise woman. She carries a blanket of compassion. She wearsrobes of wisdom. Around her throat flutters a veil of shifting shapes. From hershoulders, a mantle of power flows. A story band encircles her forehead. Shestitches a quilt; she spins fibers into yarn; she knits; she sews; she weaves.She ties the threads of our lives together. She forms a web of spiralingthreads: our lives invented and shared.  I see the wise woman at her loom: a loom warped with days of light andnights of dark. White threads, black threads receive the flying shuttle. Ashuttle filled with threads of many colors. Threads the colors of the earth,the common ground; threads the colors of the people of the earth. Some threadsare short; some threads are long; each thread is different, each perfect andsplendid. The threads are alive with sound and color. The threads are mutable;they change at a touch. The threads are crystal antennae; they respond at athought.  And intertwined with each thread, a thread blood red, a thread of suchsensitivity, it seems invisible, a thread of such vitality, it can never behidden. As our blood flows over and under the days and nights of our lives andbinds each moment to the whole, so the red thread of the wise woman binds us inthe tapestried, cosmic web, holds us in our variety, spirals lovingly aroundus, claims us again at death.  I see the wise woman. And she sees me.  (Excerpt from Healing Wise, c. 1987 Susun S Weed. Availablethru www.AshTreePublishing.com)  Susun WeedPO Box 64Woodstock, NY 12498Fax:  1-845-246-8081