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| Opening Awareness with Herbs |
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Herbs do not make good medicine.
Now this may seem to be a most contrary statement coming from one so passionately in love with plants, daily chopping them to bits to make foul-tasting brews to press up
every poor soul within her reach. But I ask you, just for a few moments, to set
aside your beliefs about herbs as medicines and consider another possibility.
Medicine,
according to the dictionary, is a remedy for treating illness, a broken state of
health. In our culture, the term 'medicine' has evolved to also include the use
of substances or activities to numb oneself to the unpleasant sensations of
illness and unhappiness. And, unfortunately, the results of medication often
falls far short of our expectations, and in some cases, leads us into even
greater difficulties.
As I first began my study of herbal medicine,
sitting through mind-numbing lectures at school and scrambling around the
Colorado mountainsides studying and collecting plants, I was eager to learn the
ancient secrets that would relieve the suffering of the world. I took copious
notes and treasured each teacher's pronouncements about which herb was the
'right' one for each disease.
When I finally landed my first client, I
collected information about her physical health and with great care formulated a
mixture of herbs that would miraculously heal her body from the discomforts she
was experiencing as a result of a major surgery. Two weeks later I called her
and asked how things were progressing. She responded, "Well, I've been having
these dreams . . ." She was reporting her progress in terms of emotional healing
and spiritual opening, not in physical body terms. As she continued, my
puzzlement turned to the gradual awareness that the herbs were coaching her
through a truly wholistic healing process far beyond what I could have imagined.
In
the years since that time my relationship with the Plants has grown in
understanding of the deeper gifts they offer us. In the same way that crystals
and animals do, each variety of plant offers us a window into the Divine, a way
back to our true self. Some healers of old used herbs to 'stimulate the Vital
force', which might be interpreted as stimulating energy and bodily healing
processes. But I think they knew that herbs also stimulate our evolutionary
process at every level.
Rather than numbing our senses or interfering
with our natural body processes, herbs tend to stimulate our awareness and
invite us to go deeper, to examine the inner workings and energy for which the
outer physical symptoms are just clues. When we think we've reached a dead end,
the Plants can point us to look again, look a little further for new
possibilities that previously seemed just beyond our reach. Herbal remedies
encourage us to be fully present in our physical bodies, increase our awareness
rather than anesthetize our pain and discomfort.
We have many
opportunities to experience and interact with plants by gardening, walking in
Nature, sniffing the flowers and applying them to our skin, but the most
intimate form of connecting to the wisdom of the Plants is in eating them in our
diet and taking herbal remedies. By this we invite them to become a part of us
and teach us at the deepest level.
The next time you have cold, headache
or indigestion, you can choose to complain, medicate the symptom, or stoically
about your life ignoring the symptoms. Or you might choose to take an herb and
allow it to bring presence to your misalignments, to show you the power within
yourself to regain your natural wholeness.By Sharon Moncrief, Herbalist
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