The Three Traditions Of Healing by Susun S. Weed
Herbalist, Author and Voice of the Wise Woman Way
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.
EXPERIMENT NUMBER ONE
The next time you start to feel unwell, ask yourself what each one of the three traditions would advise you to do - e.g. You feel a headache coming on. The Scientific tradition says take a pain killer. The Heroic tradition says give yourself an enema. The Wise Woman tradition says take a nap.
EXPERIMENT NUMBER TWO
Instead of doing what you usually do for some problem (e.g. headache), do something different. Choose something from the same tradition you usually use, or from a different tradition.
EXPERIMENT NUMBER THREE
Become more aware of the "nourishment of your senses" as Gurdieff put it. What do you look at? Listen to? Smell? Touch with your skin? Taste?
EXPERIMENT NUMBER 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 subtle incense.
EXPERIMENT NUMBER FIVE
Make 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 your life.
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. She is Founder of the Wise Woman Center, and also advises the California Institute of Integral Studies and the Pottenger Foundation for Wise Traditions. Her work has inspired millions of women world-wide to respect their inner wisdom and to trust the healing power of common weeds, simple ceremony, and compassionate listening. Susun is a Peace Elder and a member of the Wolf Clan.
Look for lots more tips for keeping your breasts healthy in her book Breast Cancer? Breast Health! The Wise Woman Way, recommended by many oncologists and breast health specialists including Dr. Susan Love. And please visit her special breast health website: www.breasthealthbook.com
Visit her site http://www.susunweed.com for information on her workshops, apprenticeships, correspondence courses and more! Browse the publishing site http://www.ashtreepublishing.com to learn more about her alternative health books. Venture into the NEW Menopause site http://www.menopause-metamorphosis.com to learn all about the Menopausal Years the Wise Woman Way. Email Susun Weed at susunweed@hvc.rr.com, write to PO Box 64, Woodstock, NY 12498 or call 845-246-8081.
Susun Weed's books include: Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year
Author: Susun S. Weed. Simple, safe remedies for pregnancy, childbirth, lactation, and newborns. Includes herbs for fertility and birth control. Foreword by Jeannine Parvati Baker. 196 pages, index, illustrations. Retails for $9.95 Get 20% off at: http://www.ash-tree-publishing.com
Healing Wise
Author: Susun S. Weed. Superb herbal in the feminine-intuitive mode. Complete instructions for using common plants for food, beauty, medicine, and longevity. Introduction by Jean Houston. 312 pages, index, illustrations. Retails for $12.95 Get 20% off at: http://www.ash-tree-publishing.com
NEW Menopausal Years the Wise Woman Way
Author: Susun S. Weed. The best book on menopause is now better. Completely revised with 100 new pages. All the remedies women know and trust plus hundreds of new ones. New sections on thyroid health, fibromyalgia, hairy problems, male menopause, and herbs for women taking hormones. Recommended by Susan Love MD and Christiane Northrup MD. Foreword by Juliette de Bairacli Levy. 304 pages, index, illustrations. Retails for $12.95 order at: http://www.ash-tree-publishing.com.
For more great info on menopause, visit: http://www.menopause-metamorphosis.com
Breast Cancer? Breast Health!
Author: Susun S. Weed. Foods, exercises, and attitudes to keep your breasts healthy. Supportive complimentary medicines to ease side-effects of surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, or tamoxifen. Foreword by Christiane Northrup, M.D. 380 pages, index, illustrations. Retails for $14.95 Get 20% off at: http://www.ash-tree-publishing.com