Be Your Own Herbal Expert - Part 7
Herbal medicine is the medicine of the people
by Susun S Weed c. 2004
(part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4 - part 5 - part 6 - part 8)
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 session 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 session 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.
For permission to reprint this article, contact
us at: susunweed@herbshealing.com
Learn
more about Wise Woman classes with Susun Weed
Study
with Susun Weed in the convenience of your home! Choose from
four Correspondence Courses: Green Allies, Spirit & Practice
of the Wise Woman Tradition, Green Witch, and ABC
of Herbalism - includes audio/video tapes, books,
assignments, special mailings, plus personal time.
Learn more at www.susunweed.com
or write to:
Susun Weed
PO Box 64
Woodstock, NY 12498
Fax: 1-845-246-8081
Visit Susun Weed at: www.susunweed.com
and www.ashtreepublishing.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.
Susun is one of America's best-known authorities
on herbal medicine and natural approaches to women's health.
Her four best-selling books are recommended by expert herbalists
and well-known physicians and are used and cherished by millions
of women around the world. Learn more at www.susunweed.com
Introducing a brand new
course:
ABC
of Herbalism
A Correspondence Course with Susun Weed
A special course for the aspiring herbalist
who would like to have me "by your side" teaching
you how to identify, harvest, and buy 52 healing herbs. I'll
"watch over your shoulder" as you make nourishing
herbal infusions, tinctures, vinegars, oils, honeys, poultices,
soups, and beauty aids.
Your studies will be both experiential and intellectual.
You will make and use herbal remedies as well as reading about
them in a variety of sources. You will try out my
favorite remedies.
Your course materials include:
* Fifty-two herbal projects and twenty health projects to
complete at your own pace. (Value $100)
* Guidance in developing a green ally.
* Six herbals: 1. A City Herbal; 2. Common Herbs for Natural
Health; 3. Healing Wise; 4. The Herb Book; 5. Natural Health
Bible; 6. Opening Our Wild Hearts to the Healing Herbs. (Value
$80)
* Up to four more books -- your choice from the enclosed list.
(Value up to $65)
* Four of my audiotapes or one of my videotapes -- your choice
from the enclosed list. (Value $40)
* Three hours of phone time to talk with me personally. (Value
$300)
* Initiation and completion gifts.
* Erratic mailings several times a year for two years. (Value
$50)
* A 50% discount on three days of classes with me. (Value
up to $150)
* A graduation certificate for you to frame and hang. (Priceless)
Total price for ABC of Herbalism is $500. (Total value exceeds
$750). Pay in ten $50 installments and receive your course
materials as you pay. Or pay in full and receive all your
course materials at once.
Register online at www.ashtreepublishing.com
or via mail:
Susun Weed PO Box 64, Woodstock, NY 12498 ~ phone/fax: (845)
246-8081
click here to learn more about the ABC's
of Herbalism Correspondence Course
Learn
more about Wise Woman classes with Susun Weed
