BE YOUR OWN HERBAL EXPERT - PART 7
Herbal medicine is the medicine of the people
by Susun S Weed c. 2004
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.