Herbal medicine is the medicine of the people. It is
simple, safe, effective, and free. Our ancestors used - and our neighbors
around the world still use - plant medicines for healing and health
maintenance. It’s easy. You can do it too, and you don’t need a degree or any
special training.
Ancient memories arise in you when you begin to use herbal medicine.
These lessons are designed to nourish and activate those memories and your
inner herbalist so you can be your own herbal expert.
In our first session, we learned how to “listen” to the
messages of plant’s tastes. In lesson two, about simples and water-based herbal
remedies. In the third, I distinguished safe (nourishing and tonifying) herbs
from more dangerous (stimulating and sedating) herbs. Our fourth lesson focused
on poisons; we made tinctures and an Herbal Medicine Chest. Our fifth dealt
with herbal vinegars, and the sixth with herbal oils.
In this, our seventh session, we will think about how we think about
healing.
The Three
Traditions of Healing
There are many ways to use herbs to improve and maintain health. Modern
medicine uses highly refined herbal products known as drugs. Many alternative
or holistic practitioners recommend herbs, usually in less-refined (and less
dangerous) forms such as tinctures or homeopathic remedies. And then there are
the yarb women, the wise women, such as myself, who integrate herbs into their
daily diet and claim far-reaching results for simple remedies.
I call these three different approaches the Scientific, Heroic, and Wise
Woman traditions.
These three traditions are ways of thinking, not ways of acting. And
they are not limited to herbs. Any technique, any substance can be used by a
healer in the Scientific, Heroic, and Wise Woman traditions. There are, for
instance, naturopaths, midwives, and MDs in each tradition, as well as
herbalists, educators, therapists, even politicians.
Each of these traditions lives within you, too.
As I define the characteristics of each tradition, identify the part of
yourself that thinks that way.
Scientific
Tradition
Modern, western medicine is an excellent example of the Scientific
tradition, where healing is fixing. The line is its symbol: linear thought,
linear time. Truth is fixed and measurable. Truth is that which repeats. Good
and bad, health and sickness are put at opposite ends of the line, where they
do battle with each other. Food and medicine are quite different.
Newton’s universal laws and the mechanization of nature are the foundation of
the Scientific tradition. Bodies are understood to be like machines. When
machines run well (stay healthy) they don’t deviate. Anything that deviates
from normal needs to be fixed or repaired. The Scientific tradition is
excellent for fixing broken things. Measurements must be taken to determine
deviation and insure normalcy. Regular diagnostic tests are critical to
maintaining proper functioning and ensuring utmost longevity in the
body/machine.
In the Scientific tradition, plants are valued as repositories of
poisons/alkaloids. They are seen as potential drugs, and capable of killing you
in their unpredictable crude states. They are helpful and safe only when
refined into drugs and used by highly-trained experts.
In the Scientific tradition the whole is the same as its most active
part, and machines are more trustworthy than people.
Heroic
Tradition
There is not one unified Heroic tradition, but many similar traditions
collectively called the Heroic tradition. Alternative health care practitioners
generally represent the Heroic thought pattern, symbolized by a circle.
This circle defines the rules, which, we are told, must be followed in
order to save ourselves from disease and death. Healing in the Heroic tradition
focuses on cleansing. According to this tradition, disease arises when toxins
(dirt, filth, anger, negativity) accumulate. When we are bad, when we eat the
wrong food, think the wrong thought, commit a sin, we sicken and the healer is
the savior, offering purification, punishment, and redemption.
In the Heroic traditions, the whole is the sum of its parts. We are
body, mind, and spirit. The spirit is high and worthy; the body is low and
gross; the mind is in between. In the Heroic traditions, we are personally
responsible 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 on
herbal medicine are written by men whose thought patterns are those of the
Heroic tradition.
Wise Woman
Tradition
The Wise Woman tradition is the world’s oldest healing tradition. It
envisions good health as openness to change, flexibility, availability to
transformation, and groundedness. Its symbol is the spiral. In the Wise Woman
tradition we do not seek to cure, but focus instead on integrating and
nourishing the unique individual’s wholeness/holiness. The Wise Woman tradition
relies on compassion, simple ritual, and common dooryard herbs and garden weeds
as primary nourishers, but appreciates (and uses) any treatment appropriate to
the specific self-healing in process.
The Wise Woman tradition sees each life as a spiraling, ever-changing
completeness. Disease and injury are seen as doorways of transformation, and
each person is recognized as a self-healer, earth healer: inherently whole,
resonant to the whole, and vital to the whole. Substance, thought, feeling, and
spirit are inseparable in the Wise Woman tradition. The whole is more than the
sum of its parts.
Spiralic and amazing, the Wise Woman tradition offers self-healing
options 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 constantly
changing, 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 admonishment
to trust yourself.
Coming up
In 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 me
in the convenience of your home via correspondence course! Choose
from one of my four courses: Green
Allies, Spirit & Practice of the Wise Woman Tradition, Green Witch, and ABC
of Herbalism with Susun Weed. Learn more at , NY 12498Fax: 1-845-246-8081
About the author
For
permission to reprint this article, contact us at: susunweed@herbshealing.com
Vibrant,
passionate, and involved, Susun Weed
has garnered an international reputation for her groundbreaking lectures,
teachings, and writings on health and nutrition. She challenges conventional
medical approaches with humor, insight, and her vast encyclopedic knowledge of
herbal medicine. Unabashedly pro-woman, her animated and enthusiastic lectures
are engaging and often profoundly provocative.
Tags: ancient memories, healer, health maintenance, herbal medicine chest, herbal oils, herbal products, herbal remedies, herbal vinegars, herbalist, holistic practitioners, homeopathic remedies, mds, midwives, modern medicine, plant medicines, poisons, those memories, three different approaches, wise woman, wise women
Related Posts
- Schools of Herbal Medicine
- Stop Smoking With Natural Tea Leaves
- Dieting and Living a Healthy Lifestyle Using Herbal Methods
- Improving your sex life
- Natural Remedy For Uti - Proven Natural Cures For Uti
« Effective PDF to Text Conversion | Management by Yelling: Intimidation doesn’t work - Try Empowerment »