Truthfinder
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 8512
posted
JimBob,
I apologize. I over-reacted. One of your statements just hit me DEAD WRONG.
Suffice it to say that I don't herx on something because I BELIEVE I will herx, and never have.
Your statement made it sound as if there are a lot of people out there sabotaging their own treatments with some kind of negative mindset.
Maybe in rare cases, that happens.
Most people take the "listen to your body" approach and see where a treatment takes them. Being advised of the possible reactions just helps us know to go slowly at first.
Both the Samento and the Cumanda reactions took me totally by surprise. I thought theynegative effects would resolve themselves with continued use, and I was wrong. They didn't.
In fact, the Cumanda heart issues were still giving me problems 2 weeks after I had STOPPED taking it, much like what Polar Blast experienced with the Artemisinin (maybe you missed all that with Ploar Blast).
Fortunately, I was able to nullify the negative effects with a trick I learned from homeopathy, which by the way, I DIDN'T BELIEVE would work, but it did.
So, if believing or not believing dictates what happens, then there would never be any skeptic who became a believer - of ANYTHING.
I get this kind of baloney from my sister-in-law all the time, and I'm just flat fed up with it. She never applies her principles to herself, mind you, only to others.
Now do you understand?
Anyway, sorry I was such a grouch to you. Didn't mean to be.
Tracy
-------------------- Tracy .... Prayers for the Lyme Community - every day at 6 p.m. Pacific Time and 9 p.m. Eastern Time � just take a few moments to say a prayer wherever you are�. Posts: 2966 | From Colorado | Registered: Dec 2005
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SForsgren
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Member # 7686
posted
Wallace,
If 80% is not good enough for you personally, then every single test you have ever likely done for Lyme disease is not good enough for you either. I don't know of any of them that are accurate in 80% or more of the people that do them. So that leaves you sadly....with nothing to use as a tool for diagnosis and without knowing with certainty, as you apparently must have, you cannot really know what you are treating so your chances of treating the right things to actually get well might be less than average. I am not suggesting that you will not get well if you simply choose not to use ART, but if you apply such restrictions to the options you can pursue, then there is really not much left. Do you also require every person in your life to be perfect 100% of the time?
Actually, what I said about intent was in fact different. I said that intent can play a role but then I gave you an example where I "intended" for the result to be one thing and in fact it was not. So I do not believe that the fact that intent might play a role is an argument in favor of it being fallible.
Good luck finding those perfect solutions.
-------------------- Be well, Scott Posts: 4617 | From San Jose, CA | Registered: Jul 2005
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clairenotes
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 10392
posted
I remember when a relative told me that my illness was all in my head. And not long after that, a doctor proclaimed CFS to be 'the illness du jour.' Implication... just doing it for attention, maybe? To avoid work? To be fashionable???!! Certainly don't want to be ordinary.
No... we can't kill LD bugs with positive thoughts. Trying will only bring more exhaustion and fatigue (and disappointment). Though I have heard some interesting stories about chi gung masters in China...
Okay, Wallace. That does not give you permission to flood us with energy studies from China now, kay?
About heliotherapy... a term which I have never heard of until now... I thought it was called Blasi therapy (after some guy in Italy)? Anyway, I know there are warnings, and sun-screen is advised, but I just know that I always feel better in the sun and my health increases. This is not scientific. This is not medical advice. This is just my own experience after years of time spent outside. And, thankfully, spring is not too far off.
Claire
[ 02. February 2007, 11:40 AM: Message edited by: clairenotes ]
Posts: 1111 | From Colorado | Registered: Oct 2006
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quote:Originally posted by clairenotes: This is not scientific. Claire
Au contrair claire.
Dr Michael Holick,
"Vitamin D prevents osteoporosis, depression, prostate cancer, breast cancer, and even affects diabetes and obesity. Vitamin D is perhaps the single most underrated nutrient in the world of nutrition."
Check out the link for some more facts concerning the "sunshine vitamin".
clairenotes
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 10392
posted
Brent -- thanks for providing more 'science behind the sunlight.' It helps keep everything more respectable. And with the climate here lately... with regard to what constitutes 'real science,' etc., we definitely need that.
Yes... I have heard that it is perhaps one of the most under-rated, and even the most needed vitamin, that is best provided through sunlight. Without my own research at hand, I just didn't want to present myself as an expert.
Hope everyone sees the link for the sunshine vitamin and the article on heliotherapy.
Claire
[ 19. January 2007, 07:06 AM: Message edited by: clairenotes ]
Posts: 1111 | From Colorado | Registered: Oct 2006
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I managed to get through your very LONG post because I was curious about the topic of sun exposure and its benefits (Vitamin D) and general health.
Unfortunately I have a personal problem. Over the years I have developed a TOTAL allergy to the sun. I mean 15 minutes of driving in my car will cause a horrible rash on my hands from holding
on to the steering wheel. I LOVE the sun and the warmth to the bone feeling it gives. But I have had to be extremely careful when outdoors for any reason now.
I love to swim, but must use total sunblock and have to reapply it often. If I miss a spot, the pimply and very itchy rash appears.
BTW, I also have early onset cataracts and I follow a good (not perfect) diet and take vitamin supplements. My PCP thinks I have must have lupus but no tests totally confirm that DX.
I have a friend from my days on fibromyalgia support boards who must cover herself up from head to toe even while INSIDE. Any kind of light is toxic to her.
I realize I am the exception and not the rule, but then, there ARE exceptions, right?
Wishing you and everyone sunny dispositions, Janet
-------------------- DISCLAIMER: No information presented above should be considered medical advice or take the place of advice given by a medical professional. Links to other sites are provided merely for ease of research. Posts: 287 | From Tennessee | Registered: Sep 2006
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oxygenbabe
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 5831
posted
The problem is from October to March in places like New England etc, you don't get enough sun even if you're outdoors, and most of us aren't outdoors enough. I've been thinking about this and investigating full specturm light. Its UV shielded. Meanwhile, tanning lights, mostly have UVA. So I was looking at reptile lights (for iguanas, bearded dragons etc). You can't raise them without proper bulbs that give UVA and UVB. They emulate sunlight. These reptiles have to sun bask. So I'm thinking of getting one of those. Other options are to supplement Vitamin D but its a bit dicey imo as how do you know how much you really need for your body? You could take 1000 units a day. Another is to take cod liver oil. It tastes pretty yucky. I have some in the fridge but I rarely use it because I dislike the taste. It has Vitamin A and D, which are both good for you. I think I am going to try the light, although, judiciously. Fifteen minutes 3 or 4 times a week.
Posts: 2276 | From united states | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
Though I have heard some interesting stories about chi gung masters in China...
Okay, Wallace. That does not give you permission to flood us with energy studies from China now, kay?
Dont give me ideas Claire!...
Hi Jill Holick recommends tanning salons, buy his book for full details. He talks about the problem of absorbing D3 supplements hence maybe the need for tanning machines.
Chi gung masters have noted the importance of early morning sun. If you are allergic to the sun try exposing yourself to the ealy morning sun 6-9am. Great way to get a tan as well I have noticed.
I never use sunscreen just get up early!
That also was what happened at the heliotherapy clinics(See Healing Sun book) exposing patients to early moring sun.
The Lost Language of Plants The Ecological Importance of Plant Medicines to Life on Earth by Stephen Harrod Buhner
Chapter Two: The Two Wounds
Chapter Five: The Environmental Impacts of Technological Medicine
Chapter Seven: ``Plants Are All Chemists''
These Excerpts printed courtesy of Chelsea Green Publishing Co.
Stephen Harrod Buhner is an award-winning author of seven books on nature, indigenous cultures, the environment, and herbal medicine (including Sacred Plant Medicine).
Chapter Two The Two Wounds
The exterior and interior wounds that have come from no longer sharing soul essence with the world around us are pervasive, though the interior one is more difficult to see. The exterior wound, however, is easily perceived. . . . By now it has widened, deepened, become so severe that most people routinely acknowledge its existence. This wound is the logging of the rainforest, the pollution and destruction of rivers . . . all the desecration of our exterior world. It has been talked about so much, and we have become so inured, that it is easy to forget that there is a feeling to this exterior wound. A feeling before words, before thinking. A simple, deep response from somewhere inside us recognizing damage to the fabric of life. We can shut these feelings off. But to understand the impact of the exterior and interior wounds it is important to feel them--even if only briefly--even if it hurts.
I had been invited to New York to give a talk on . . . the process whereby historical indigenous people developed their knowledge of plant medicines and, to some extent, how, in this present time, we could explore that process for ourselves. . . .
I asked the students if they knew anything about herbalism or plant medicines. None of them did. . . . So I asked them, ``Why are you here?''
And they told me the truth. . . .
I turned to the next woman. . . . She looked up shyly, nervously conscious of the women on either side.
``Well,'' she said, ``lately, I have been thinking of becoming a naturopath. So not too long ago I flew out to Portland to the naturopathic college there to see if it was something I wanted to do.'' She paused and moistened her lips, her head tilted slightly down. ``Well, there were ten or fifteen of us on a tour and we were stopped in the middle of this hallway. I wasn't paying attention to what the guide was saying, my mind was wandering, thinking about something else, when out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse as she opened a door to my right. I turned and looked and it was the room where they keep all the plants, all the herbs they use for medicine. And I could hear each one of the plants crying out to me, talking as clearly as I am talking to you now. And there were hundreds of them.'' She paused for a moment, then went on. ``I came today because I thought, that perhaps, something in your talk could help me understand what had happened. I have been thinking, you know,'' and here she moistened her lips again and looked nervously around, ``that maybe I'm crazy.''
Our disconnection from nature and our disavowal of interior depth--of soul--from animals, plants, and landscapes occurs all the time in all of us. But there is more depth in the world than we have come to believe, than we have been taught. Connection with the interior world of nature has been a part of our species' experience for millennia. Contact with it still occurs when we least expect it: In the glance in a loved one's eyes, the shadowed green in an old-growth forest, the primal power in the majestic walk of a bear. Or, unexpectedly, in dreams of our grandmothers or our daily interactions with plants. Since the words to describe this kind of depth are atrophied or no longer present in our language, the experience, when it does extrude itself, is often difficult for people to deal with; they sometimes think they are crazy--crazy and alone, the only intelligent life form on Earth.
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Chapter Five: The Environmental Impacts of Technological Medicine
In their drive to conquer disease, the supporters of technological medicine have created a great many industrial products: pharmaceuticals; personal care products (things like sunscreens and antibiotic soaps); radiopharmaceuticals and chemotherapy; and pharmaceutical delivery and medical practice products (things like hypodermic needles, latex gloves, thermometers). All of them end up in the environment. All of them have significant impacts.
Pharmaceutical Drugs The vast majority of pharmaceutical drugs do not heal diseases--they control symptoms by introducing chemical mediators, at specific levels, into the body. People with high blood pressure, for example, are not cured when they take medication, which is why they have to take it regularly, often for the rest of their life.
Unlike plants, blood pressure medications, and nearly all pharmaceuticals, are not a normal part of the diet nor a food previously encountered in our evolution. So, the human body excretes them throughout the day in urine and feces: 50-95 percent of each drug taken is excreted chemically unchanged or unmetabolized.1 As blood pressure medication is excreted blood pressure begins to rise and more of the drug must be taken. Drugs used for acute conditions, such as antibiotics, are usually taken short term; those used for chronic conditions like high blood pressure are usually taken for years or an entire lifetime. In consequence, enormous quantities of pharmaceuticals are going through people's bodies into the environment, where they are proving to have powerfully negative impacts in ecosystems. And the quantity of drugs and other biologically active medical products that are flowing into the environment is increasing every day.
A recent New York Times article observed that: ``Prescription drugs are now the fastest-growing part of the nation's health care bill. That is not so much because manufacturers are raising prices for existing drugs, but because patients are switching to newly approved medicines that cost more, and more prescriptions are being written than ever before.''2 Retail prescription sales for pharmaceuticals were $42.7 billion in 1991. In 1999, a mere eight years later, sales were $111.3 billion.3 In the next decade, as the knowledge from the unraveling of the human genome makes even more drugs possible, this figure is expected to increase substantially. At present there are some 500 known chemical receptor sites in the human body affected by drugs. With information from the human genome project this number is expected to soar to between 3,000 and 10,000 sites. As Dr. Gillian Woolett of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association excitedly proclaimed, ``The rate of change is absolutely incredible.''4 The two scientists who have done the most research on pharmaceuticals in the environment, Christian Daughton (of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency--EPA) and Thomas Ternes (of the Institute of Water Research and Water Technology in Weisbaden, Germany), comment that ``[This] escalating introduction to the marketplace of new pharmaceuticals is adding exponentially to the already large array of chemical classes, each with distinct modes of biochemical action, many of which are poorly understood.''5
Many excreted pharmaceuticals and their metabolites are not biodegradable and go on producing chemical effects forever. Most that do biodegrade are regularly replenished by the need for continual dosing or by new prescriptions for new people. As pharmaceuticals are excreted in pure and metabolized forms they also intermix in the waste streams that flow into the environment in ways that cannot be predicted, with effects that are not understood. Researchers have found that metabolites, chemicals produced as byproducts of pharmaceutical interaction with the body, tend to be more persistent in the environment, and are sometimes more powerful in their actions, than the drugs from which they are derived.6
In 1999 Americans filled 2.8 billion prescriptions covering roughly sixty-six classes of pharmaceuticals. These include: antidepressants, tranquilizers and psychiatric drugs; cancer (chemotherapy) drugs; pain killers; anti-inflammatories; antihypertensives; antiseptics; fungicides; anti-epileptics; bronchodilators; lipid regulators (e.g., high-cholesterol medication); muscle relaxants; oral contraceptives; anorectics (diet medication); synthetic hormones; and antibiotics.7
These pharmaceutical drugs and the personal care products also manufactured by many pharmaceutical companies (such as sunscreen lotions, lipsticks, deodorants, perfumes, and shampoos) are produced in staggeringly huge quantities; often equaling or surpassing agrochemicals in tonnage. The number of pharmaceuticals Americans consume is simply astounding. All of these go into the ecosystem, most of them through excretion into waste treatment systems.
Chapter Five Notes 1. Christian Daughton and Thomas Ternes, ``Pharmaceuticals and personal care products in the environment: Agents of subtle change?'' Environmental Health Perspectives 107, Supplement 6 (December 1999). 2. Sheryl Gay Stolberg, ``A Drug Plan Sounds Great, but Who Gets to Set Prices?'' New York Times, July, 9, 2000, section 4, 1. 3. Andrew Sullivan, ``Pro pharma,'' New York Times Magazine, October 29, 2000, 21; Kathy O'Connell, ``Pill Poppin' Nation,'' The Inlander, July 22, 1998; Milt Freudenheim, ``Consumers across the Nation Are Facing Sharp Increases in Health Care Costs in 2001,'' New York Times, December 10, 2000, section 1, 40; Sonya Ross, Associated Press ``Clinton: GOP Drug Plant Is `Baloney,''' July 31, 2000--on America On Line (AOL); Eli Ginzberg and Panos Minogiannis, ``Medical care in the U.S.--Who is paying for it?'' Journal of Practice Management, 15, no. 5 (2000); ``Because of the costs many poor Americans and most people in poorer nations are simply out of luck,'' Donald McNeil, ``Do the Poor Have a Right to Cheap Medicine?'' New York Times, June 25, 2000, 18. 4. Peter Montague, ``Headlines: Pay Dirt from the Human Genome,'' Rachel's Environment and Health Weekly, #702, July 6, 2000, online at www.rachel.org. (Hereafter Rachel's). 5. Quoted in ibid. 6. Daughton and Ternes, ``Pharmaceuticals and personal care products in the environment.'' 7. Rx List: The Internet Drug Index (February 24, 2000), online at www.rxlist.com.
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Chapter Seven ``Plants Are All Chemists''
In 1803 Frederich Seturner isolated the first individual plant constituents from opium and named them alkaloids, some 140 million years after complex land plants created them for reasons of their own. Plant chemistry has not been studied very long in the scheme of things; it is still not very well understood.
Consider: Each of the estimated 275,000 different species of plants on Earth contains several hundred to several thousand unique chemicals. The majority of these species manifest as millions of different individuals, all of them generating different variations, sometimes significantly, on their species' chemical theme. A plant with one thousand different chemical constituents can literally combine them in millions of different ways. To compound the complexity, these combinations, added to those of other plants or of other organisms, produce synergistic results that are not predictable. Even a tiny change in dosage or combination can produce significantly different outcomes. Basically, the little that people currently know about plant chemistry is not very much. This ignorance is magnified by our tendency (because of our upbringing) to think of plants as insentient salads or building materials engaging in chemical production processes that just happened by accident and, in consequence, have no purpose or meaning. Phytoexistentialism.
Still, here we are.
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The Dance of Plant Chemistry The carbon atoms that become available from the breakdown of CO2 during photosynthesis form the backbone of all plant chemistry. Plants use this carbon (along with hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen) to make their physical structure (whether a huge redwood or a tiny violet growing along a mountain path); primary compounds such as sugar, starch, and chlorophyll; and hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of other, complex, secondary compounds: ``acids, aldehydes, cyanogenic glycosides, thiocyanates, lactones, coumarins, quinones, flavonoids, tannins, alkaloids, terpenoids, steroids'' and more.2 Adding to the complexity, all these compounds can be made using different metabolic pathways--different construction techniques, as it were--and each family of secondary metabolites can contain incredible numbers of substances. Simply altering the relationship between four sugar molecules, for instance, can create over 35,000 different compounds. Over 10,000 alkaloids, 20,000 terpenes, and 8,000 polyphenols are known. About one new alkaloid is identified each day.3
Even though many of these compounds are present only in parts per million or even parts per billion or trillion, they exert significant bioactivity. Their bioactivity can increase substantially, sometimes by several orders of magnitude, when they are combined.4 Through complex feedback loops, plants constantly sense what is happening in the world around them and, in response, vary the numbers, combinations, and amounts of the phytochemicals they make.
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Plant Compounds as Medicines for the Plant Itself As plants grow, they produce a complex assortment of compounds to maintain and restore health. These include: tannins; antibiotic, antimicrobial, and antifungal compounds; mucilages, gums, and resins; anti-inflammatory compounds; analgesics; and so on. They are stored in different parts of the plant, being released in varying combinations and strengths as needed. Often these compounds are highly reactive when combined or exposed to air and so are kept isolated in holding cells located throughout the plant. The plant can increase the quantity of any of these compounds at the point of need or translocate them extremely rapidly through its tissues.29
Antifungal, antibiotic, or antimicrobial (preinfectious) compounds protect the plant from invading pathogenic organisms. For example: The tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipfera) produces a number of strongly antimicrobial alkaloids (dehydroglaucine and liriodenine) that it stores in its heartwood to protect it from invasion by microorganisms. Chicory (Cichorium intybus) produces a number of strongly antifungal compounds to protect its leaves and roots from pathogenic fungi. The compounds are so potent that even when chicory roots are kept moist on a plate for lengthy periods they will not mold. Other chicory compounds strongly protect against damage or infection from nematodes and other small organisms.30 Plant antimicrobial compounds such as those in chicory are active against microorganisms in exceptionally minute concentrations, ranging from one part per thousand to one part per million.31 During infection other kinds of compounds can be brought into play. Aromatic coumarins in such plants as potatoes increase rapidly at the site in response to any pathogenic organism.32 Cyanogenic compounds are also commonly present in at least a thousand plants where they are released as hydrogen cyanide gas to kill invading organisms.
In many instances invading pathogens release their own compounds that are toxic to the plant. Plants immediately begin to identify these compounds and create chemistries designed to counter them. At the same time, the plant will begin to generate unique compounds--phytoalexins--at the site of infection that are never present in the plant until an infection occurs. When fungal spores take hold on a leaf surface, for instance, and begin inserting growth tubes into the leaf, a plant may begin to synthesize a phytoalexin specific for that fungus. The synthesis begins immediately, can be detected after an hour or two, and reaches its highest concentration in 48 to 72 hours. The phytoalexin is concentrated in leaf cells and pushed out onto the surface of the leaf where the fungus has taken hold.33
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Plants, and their chemistries, do even more, of course. They are intimately interwoven into the lives of all organisms on Earth. And the roles of plants are still more complex. They exist not for themselves alone; they create and maintain the community of life on Earth, they produce the chemistries all life needs to live, and they heal other living organisms that are ill.
Chapter Seven Notes 2. Alan Putnam and Chung-shih Tang, ``Allelopathy: The State of the Science,'' The Science of Allelopathy, ed. Alan Putnam and Chung-shih Tang (N.Y.: John Wiley and Sons, 1986), 4. 3. David Hoffmann, Phytochemistry: Molecular Veriditas, work in progress, 31. 4. Frank Einhellig, ``Mechanisms and Modes of Action of Allelochemicals,'' and Putnam and Tang, ``Allelopathy,'' both in The Science of Allelopathy. 29. J. B. Harborne, Introduction to Ecological Biochemistry (London: Academic Press, 1982), see especially chapter 9, 227-259. 30. Hiroyuki Nishimura, et al., ``Ecochemicals from Chicory Rhizome,'' in Biodiversity and Allelopathy. 31. Harborne, Introduction to Ecological Biochemistry, see 227-259. 32. Ibid, 235. 33. Ibid, 242; Shigeru Tamogami and Osamu Kodamal, ``Jasmonic acid elicits momilactone A production: Physiology and chemistry of jasmonic acid in rice phytoalexin production,'' in Biodiversity and Allelopathy.
Excerpt from The Lost Language of Plants The Ecological Importance of Plant Medicines to Life on Earth by Stephen Harrod Buhner
Posts: 654 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
To give my answer to the question, "Is abx the only treatment option?".
My short answer is, "No, but it's probably a good start...if you're ready for it."
You have to be ready for the abx. "ready" meaning that your body needs to be prepared to utilize the abx.
If you have other conditions in your body at the time you start taking the abx, then its effect will be deminished, possibly to the point where you're taking it in vain, which I did.
If you have conditions such as Babesia, heavy metals, hormone imbalances, stress, poor liver function, poor adrenal system and poor physical condition then you need to address all those things first.
...and people with chronic Lyme typically have several of the above.
Most of the above you can't diagnose by yourself, but you can safely impirically treat every one of them...to some extent. Babesia and hormone imbalance you probably need prx to treat effectively. Thus you need the aid of your LLMD. But there's still some you can do on your own.
So once you have addressed all of the above, then it would be a good time to do a 2-3month course of a high-dose abx plus cyst buster and simultaneously do the Buhner protocol.
After this is done, start living healthy. Drop coffee, sugary food, carb foods, diet sodas, dairy products, etc.
Start eating plenty of raw foods instead, particularly leafy greens, fruits (don't worry too much about the sugar in them), nuts, seeds, whole grains, berries.
Start drinking purposeful herbal teas such as ginger, sage, st. johns wort, valarian, licorice.
Start exercising at least 30min 3 times every week. The more you can do the better. Good stress relief too.
Keep detoxing on a daily basis. Take chlorella, cilantro leaf, red root, milk thistle, sauna, hot baths.
Always dress warmly. Your body temp is probably low. LD likes it cool. Do everything you can to elevate your temp.
Get adequate quality sleep. This is paramount. Take B6 and drink calming tea ~2hrs before sleep time. Use ear plugs and shades if necessary to avoid being disturbed.
Do the things that make you happy. It's time you come first. You need to, if you wanna get well.
And finally, read, read, read about Lyme, mercury, hormones, abx, tests, meditation, and so on.
You must keep your eyes on the ball. Constantly. Don't let your guard down. Lyme can be dormant. Lyme disease is a mighty opponent. Your job is to give Bb an unhappy home. Make it wanna jump out of your skin. And never stop.
It's a lifestyle to fight Lyme...at least that's what I've found.
I'm doing very well following the above protocol...and I'm happier than ever doing it.
My 2c. I'm not a doctor. The above is IMO.
Michael
-------------------- I'm not an MD. The above is IMO and in my experience as well as from health related books.
I've had symptoms consistent with neurological Lyme disease since 1986. Was diagnosed with Lyme in 2004. Am feeling better now than ever before. Posts: 702 | From NY | Registered: Jul 2004
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SML: Gary Snyder said, ``We're all natives here''. We all belong to the Earth. I feel it in my own relationship with plants and using them for healing.
SB: That's absolutely right. Our first religious articulation was Earth spirituality. When people talk about the great world religions they never talk about that, they talk about Hinduism or Christianity or Islam or Buddhism or the Jewish faith but they are a recent overlay on this deep spirituality that goes back to the emergence of our species. We are all very definitely Earth people, and there's a unique Earth spirituality that informs the people who are born and raised on this particular continent.
SML: Because we're here in North America as opposed to somewhere else?
SB: Yes. I believe that the Earth tends to shape the spirituality of people based on where they live. For instance, Native peoples call the North American continent Turtle Island and the North American tribes are different from Central and South American tribes, and the Western hemisphere is different from Africa. Yes, all the Earth's religions overlap to a certain extent, but they're unique, too. We're one thread of Earth spirituality that's shaped by the land here.
SML: In The Lost Language of Plants, you write about the ``taste of wild water''. This really got me because it's something I remember from my own childhood here in the White Mountains. It's something people don't have any more -- you can't drink the wild water.
SB: Yeah, but you see my mother said that even back then. I lived most of my life in the Colorado mountains and I drank the water all the time. People say you can get Giardia and I thought, what's the big deal? If you get it you take some herbs and it goes away. Today people are terrified to walk in the forest because of Lyme disease. There's always some reason for being terrified of the wild, for not letting it inside you. Every generation has its excuse for not letting the wild inside their bodies. Our mothers intuitively knew a great truth -- if you let the wild inside of you it changes you. You start to become uncivilized.
SML: It seems to me that would be a good thing.
SB: That's our prejudice. It's what we believe, but you can be sure George Bush doesn't believe it. The word civilized means ``of the cities'' and cities are a relatively recent invention. Our culture places great importance on taming, getting rid of, or controlling the wild so that we can have a very ordered existence. I think people are intuitively terrified of the wild because once you let it inside, whether it's inside your organization or your marriage or your body or psyche it begins to change you. Of course, to me that's what being human is all about -- letting the wild in.
SML: In the first chapter of Lost Language, you talk about recognition and give the example of a puppy coming over and knowing it's you. I have that feeling when I go in the woods. Sometimes it's a place I've been before, but not always. It's like, ``Oh, there you are.'' And it's mutual. It's not just me. I feel it coming from the tree or whatever it is. And I'm not creating it, I'm a part of it.
SB: That's true. This is participatory awareness. The thing that's so difficult for civilized people to understand is that we're just like trees and ticks and bears. We are a life form that emerged out of the ecosystem of the planet for a specific ecological reason just like everything else. But because we're so carefully indoctrinated to believe that we're unique and separate from nature and superior because we can think, we've come to believe that we're exempt from the ecological consequences of our behavior. Another thing that happens is our natural capacity to experience participatory sharing with nature becomes so deadened that the majority of the people no longer sense it. And when someone does have an experience of it, they feel like they have to apologize for it. You sort of did that yourself when you said, ``It's not just coming from me . . .''. We all have that problem. It's part of what I refer to as the internal wound.
SML: Can you talk about that a bit?
SB: There are two kinds of wounds I write about in Lost Language. They come from no longer sharing soul essence with the world around us. The external wound is easy to see. It's what environmentalists focus their attention on -- the desecration of the Earth. We've talked about it so much it's easy to forget that there's a feeling to it. A feeling before words, a deep response from somewhere inside us that recognizes the damage to the fabric of life. This is the interior wound, and it occurs in the landscape of the human psyche and heart. It's a natural consequence of what we're taught about being human. And it starts as soon as you begin to believe that there's a separation between you and everything else, as soon as you begin to believe that somehow the human intellect is superior to the mind that is present in nature.
SML: What is sacred plant medicine?
SB: Human beings have always had a strong and deeply interdependent relationship with plants. In many ways we are the byproduct of plants' habitation of Earth because they created the atmosphere that allowed for the evolution of oxygen-breathing beings. To understand sacred plant medicine is to understand certain attitudes and perspectives toward the Earth and all things on it. Plants are an expression of Spirit; and the human being, through the developed capacity to travel in sacred territory, makes an alliance with plants in order to gather knowledge and develop the ability to heal. Plants are both medicines and sacred beings. Once upon a time the two were not separate. My work with plants comes out of the western (rather than the Eastern or Asian) model of healing and plant relationship. It's an approach that has roots in Greek, western European, Celtic, and Native American traditions, as well as 18th and 19th century American eclectic folk practice. People tend to forget that there's an approach to herbalism that is uniquely American. It's a blend of ancient western traditions and Native American traditions. What I've been doing is rearticulating that approach in a community-based, folk practice that has been developing, for me, over the last 30 or 40 years.
SML: What are your thoughts on the current trend towards licensing and standardization?
SB: The herbal renaissance that started in the 60s was really a folk-based, intuitive herbalism. People were finding their own way. The whole alternative healing movement -- midwifery, psychotherapy, bodywork, and all -- came out of people with very little formal education. They dove into the material to find what was true for them and created a massive body of wonderful work. But now the dominant system is co-opting it. And the hippies of the 60s and 70s have grown more conservative. Instead of going to the folk herbalist people want standards to supposedly protect the public. But one model or approach to life shouldn't become dominant. We're losing our respect for different cultural perspectives. And the folk-based approach is, in fact, another cultural perspective, as effective, or perhaps more effective, than the perspective encoded in standardization.
SML: It's the same thing with the herbs themselves. People have a tendency to chose the standardized, encapsulated version over the tincture made from the whole herb. Sure, hypericin has been identified as the active ingredient in St. John's Wort, but what about the other constituents? In your book you wrote about yarrow having up to 2,000 different chemicals. They all work together. You can't just separate a couple of those and think you're taking yarrow.
SB: Human beings have been taking these plants for something like a million years. And today we assume that after three or four years of study we've got the whole thing figured out. It's remarkably arrogant.
SML: What about pharmaceutical medicine? For years I've been looking at how we're abusing the Earth but I didn't think much about the consequences of pharmaceutical medicine in the sense of what goes into the waste stream. When I read Lost Language, I was shocked. And of course so many people are on prescription drugs for everything, even normal feelings.
SB: The thing is, no one wants to suffer. Wanting people to feel okay is very seductive, but going down that path can be dangerous. Just because we're doing something to alleviate suffering doesn't mean we're exempt from the ecological consequences of doing it. Everybody assumes that the alleviation of disease is a noble goal, but I'm not so sure. Since the 1920s, basically since the discovery of penicillin, we've been indoctrinated into a technological perspective on healing and disease. But when it comes right down to it there's still going to be a leading cause of death. The most important thing is how we live, not that we live forever.
SML: It's ironic that the things we're doing to cure diseases and make people feel better are actually polluting the environment and causing the diseases in the first place.
SB: So now we have this horrendous problem no one is willing to look at. We're struggling with an unintegrated value system. People who are extremely upset about agricultural pollution and only eat organic food will wholeheartedly support the use of pharmaceuticals to cure or control disease or other maladies. It's like people who eat meat but won't kill an animal and also denigrate the butcher. And of course the pharmaceutical companies are never going to support the widespread dissemination of this information about pharmaceutical pollution.
SML: And they're doing everything they can to get herbs in the same boxes as their drugs.
SB: They're doing the same thing to herbs that the hospital system did to midwives. They're incorporating it into the system so they can control it. They're standardizing as much of it as they can, then they'll have manufacturing requirements for the rest of it which will put most of the mom and pop operations out of business. They won't be able to afford to go through the processes necessary to meet the requirements. The same kind of bureaucratization is happening to organic agriculture now that the USDA has passed its standards.
SML: One thing I've come to believe over the years is that herbs grown where I live are more effective for my healing than herbs from totally different bioregions. Not that something from China or California wouldn't work, it's just that there's a resonance . . .
SB: In general I believe that's so. There are so many plants we know very little or nothing about. For instance, milk thistle, which is excellent for liver disease, doesn't grow everywhere. But as it turns out many thistles are good for liver disease, and other herbs are too. The herbal tradition has become so impoverished, despite the fact that it's getting more and more sophisticated, that we don't have a deep awareness of the full spectrum of herbal medicine. For example, it turns out that pine pollen contains testosterone. Now who knew? So one of the best ways for natural testosterone enhancement during male menopause, that transition in middle age, is for men to take pine pollen tincture. Our knowledge of herbal medicine is so limited and our thinking is so narrow that perhaps the best plants to use do grow around us but we just don't know it.
SML: What's really cool is I've had plants I need just show up in my yard or garden . . . motherwort, red clover, mullein, St. John's Wort. We need to pay attention to plants that call to us -- or that just show up.
SB: That's absolutely true. In my experience, there are three different types of plants we should pay special attention to. The first is the plant you're drawn to, that you just can't resist. There's something about it that compels you. Then there's the plant that, for some reason, you just don't like. If it grows in your garden, you want to get rid of it. But that's just another way of getting your attention. And the third is the kind of coyote medicine that gets hold of you through your enhanced sensitivity and messes with your psychic reality. You don't meet these very often. Another thing that plays into this, that I write about in Lost Language, is the tremendous movement of plant populations across the world over time. On an intellectual level people get the idea and think it's pretty cool. But when they experience it happening, it totally freaks them out. Here in Vermont there's a plant called wild chervil, some people call it raven's wing. It's considered to be an invasive, alien species and people think it should be destroyed because of its impact on native species. Gout weed, which is an amazingly good medicinal herb, is another one. But what I want to know why is the plant moving into a particular area in the first place, and what its medicinal qualities are.
SML: What about purple loosestrife?
SB: (Laughs) Everybody has their ``what about?''. Of everything that I've ever said in public, this has caused the most trouble. It's like going to a nutrition conference and saying there's no such thing as a bad food. But to really understand these plants you have to learn to think from the position of the purple loosestrife. That's what my next book is about -- developing the state of biognosis and perceiving the world through that orientation.
SML: What's biognosis?
SB: It's a process where you move into literally knowing what the purple loosestrife is doing and why -- what its medicine is, and its ecological function. Most people see it from outside rather than relaxing and going into the world perspective of the purple loosestrife. It's difficult for people to stop and ask, ``What's with this plant? What's it about?'', to become the student of the plant. Biognosis is how indigenous peoples got their knowledge of plants. They were literally able to understand the plant's point of view. By that I don't mean opinions but rather the world perspective of the organism itself. Some who have taken ayahuasca have a direct experience of this. They can literally see the molecular structure of the drug that they're taking. But you don't have to take a hallucinogen, everybody has the capacity to experience that depth of meaning. It's what the indigenous relationship to nature was based on -- dropping into that depth of field. For me these things become a meditation that I work with to understand over time.
SML: That reminds me of Barbara McClintock and her studies on genetic transposition of corn plants. She won the Nobel Prize for basically listening to the plants and then translating what she learned into scientific language. I have a sense that, rather than using the violent methods of genetic engineering, that plants evolve naturally as we evolve, and that if we ``need'' a medicine for something, over time the plant itself evolves and provides that need. And it seems to me that you're saying something similar about the movement of plants.
SB: Plants are extremely adept at changing their genetic structure, or even enhancing a particular medicinal component, if they perceive an ecosystem need for a particular chemical. But even beyond that, if they sense an ecosystem need that is of such a form that it requires them to alter their genetic structure, they can do it in a single generation. Barbara McClintock discovered that in the 1950s. This has tremendous implications for everything we do. She was completely ostracized for her work for a long time because it attacked the underpinnings of Darwinian evolutionary theory. For years she wasn't invited to speak or write papers. But her work was too well researched and documented to be ignored. Still, 99 % of the public still believe DNA is a fixed software program. Scientists talk about unlocking the human genome. So what if they unlock it? It can change at any time. It's not a software program that you can play around with to produce different physical forms that have any meaning whatsoever.
SML: How do you feel about genetic engineering?
SB: The concept of GE anything is bad enough, but the area that gets to me the most is agriculture. Corporations getting away with patenting seeds, and life forms, angers me. Indigenous agricultural practices and perspectives are being destroyed to get control for money. And I hate that they're playing politics with hunger. That's how I tend to respond to it. In the long run, though, scientists understand very little about the strength of life on Earth, and I have tremendous respect for the power of the Gaian ecosystem to come to balance when things get out of hand.
SML: It seems as though things are out of hand as we speak.
SB: We're on a one way ticket to nowhere. There is no way technological culture can be made sustainable. Every time we take a piece of nature and transform it to support technology, the thing that we've taken is dead. And we don't have the power to create more. We've already exceeded the restoration capacity of the Earth. We're using up the wild ``capital'' produced by thousands of generations of life for a short-term burst of technological civilization. Then we're basically screwed. The civilization will collapse, which can happen extremely rapidly -- history shows that it's not usually a slow decline. One year is great and then two years later the thing is gone.
SML: It's pretty depressing.
SB: If you totally believe in Gaia, if you truly understand what Gaia does and totally believe and have faith in her, then any short-term blip is just a short-term blip. My life isn't really that important, my culture isn't either. It's the whole Gaian intelligence that's important. Gaia is not endangered, the human species in danger. But the thing is, every single life form on Earth expressed out of Gaia to fulfill an ecological function -- including the human species. And what is that function? If you assume that Gaia doesn't make mistakes, and I assume that, then I have to ask, what if everything the human species is doing right now is in fact fulfilling its ecological function?
SML: In what way?
SB: People say human beings are like a cancer or a virus. . . well there's one other thing that has the exact same growth curve and that's mushroom spores. And if you look at the space probes we send out, they look exactly like bacterial spores or mushroom spores. And there's no way those probes are sterile. Think about it -- the bacterial spores from which all life on Earth originally evolved are being taken into space and dropped everywhere. One of the early critics of James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, Richard Dawkins, argued that Gaia wasn't alive because Gaia doesn't reproduce. But how could a man with an 80 year life span know what a 4.5 billion year old organism is capable of? Gaia learns over time and is always innovating. What if Gaia is reproducing? It took about a billion years for the bacterial membrane to form around the Earth and for Gaia to come into being. That's a long time. Now we humans have used a huge amount of the Earth's resources to get where we are. But think about a plant in the fall when it's setting seed, it begins to look kind of ragged and straggly, right? That's because it's using up all of its resources to set seed. What if Gaia is setting seed? What if we had to use Gaia's stored resources to build the kind of technology (but it's not new so don't think it is, it's all based on patterns already present in the Gaian ecosystem) to launch Earth's bacteria into space, to other planets so it can germinate there? And think about it, all the time we want to go ``up and out''. Even the ancients were fascinated with the solar system. And the whole Christian thing: ``It's out there! That's where we have to go.'' Why are we driven to go up and out? Because it's part of our ecological function to do so. People think that this means some sort of Star Trek future. I'm not so sure. We are, as Bucky Fuller said, only throw away. It's the bacteria we carry within us and from which we come that is important, from that all things are possible, new planetary life is possible.
And so then what happens? After the plant sets seed, winter comes and the plant regenerates itself. We're right on the edge of another ice age, which is winter for the planet so it can regenerate. It's an incredibly elegant pattern. I think one of the reasons we believe we're so special is we have a sense that we're the pollinators for the planet in this period. This concept is not new, it's just that you have to think outside of the box to see it. Bucky Fuller said, and I thought it was a metaphor at the time, ``We're like bees, you see. Bees who go out looking for honey without realizing that they're also performing cross-pollination''. That's what we're doing. Part of the function of people like you and me and the Gaian work we've been given to do is to help maintain the balance while we go through this.
SML: Whoa! I never thought of it that way! Even so, I take what's happening to the Earth personally. How do those of us who feel this loss and sadness on a daily basis live with it?
SB: This is something I've struggled with for a long time myself because I too feel the loss very deeply. A few things come to mind that have helped me deal with this over the years. The first is to keep working, to keep doing the work I have been given to do. The second is to know where my allegiance lies, which is with Gaia. I trust what I know about Gaia and I know that I've been given just one part of the work to do, Gaia is dealing with the rest of it, you see. Gaia deals with the big picture, we deal with our little part. Coming to this understanding was crucial. There is a place for faith in all of this. And beyond this, I had to really allow myself to grieve, to relax to the inevitability of suffering. This was an extremely difficult process because I had to allow myself to feel the pain of the world as long as it took to get to the other side of the experience. I literally sat in devotion to the reality of the experience until I was done with it. At that point I realized that suffering is not optional -- suffering is, suffering has been, suffering shall be, and into every life suffering comes. And so if you can eat that particular meal, what starts to happen is you gain a balance with the suffering human beings experience, of which the pain we feel from the depredations to the Earth is a big part. Then you can respond from a more measured perspective because you know no matter what happens there's still going to be suffering. So you don't try to end all suffering. You just do what is there for you to do now. And I think the final thing is to recognize that the impulses we're given are there for a reason. They're part of our personal ecological function. Everybody is given a different kind of ecological work to do. Mine is to write these books, to teach in this way, to be in this deep relationship with plants. People who feel the presence of Gaia and the sorrow, that's part of their ecological function. It motivates them to stand up and speak on behalf of the Earth which helps bring balance into the world. You begin to realize that you are Gaia speaking on behalf of herself. You're no longer coming from a human-centered perspective and you're also not attached to the outcome because no matter what you do, suffering shall be after you're gone. Together these things lead to a balance of perspective and emotion so that you can experience joy in spite of the sorrow and grief. It's a paradox to feel both so deeply and at the same time, to not mind. But then life itself is an odd proposition to begin with.
posted
Hello everyone who responded to my december post. I've sent this respone to a few privately until realized the multitude of responses. WOW! thanks. Anyway to ensure I reach all of you I am resending as a group rsvp. I want all of you to know I really would have gotten back to ALL of you sooner but actually the day after my post i was rushed to the ER with some kind of cardiac event thing. I was hospitalized. Seems might be lyme carditis and quite possibly the lyme has damaged my heart. Tests are still being performed. I read on a medical site that lyme carditis may be difficult to truly diagnose soley on echocardiogram because the 'vegetation' as they call it might be too small to be picked up yet still be there. While I apprecaite all the informative insights, I am still weak and do not have the 'mindfullness' or the strength to check emails or the forum daily but will do what i can. In light of so many negative some even cynical repsonses to my inability to respond in a timely manner I don't think I will be posting much.
Posts: 3 | From Northern California | Registered: Dec 2006
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Truthfinder
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 8512
posted
Oh, Bogi - so sorry to hear about what happened to you! I do hope you find some additional answers, but at least you found out about the whole Lyme thing before this event occurred. Otherwise, you might think it was ``just a heart problem'' and not be aware of the probable connection to Lyme.
Hey, just for the record, I KNEW you would come back!!
quote:In light of so many negative some even cynical responses to my inability to respond in a timely manner I don't think I will be posting much.
Yeah, but what about those of us who weren't cynical and gave you the benefit of the doubt? Don't we count, too?
Just bear in mind that there are a lot of people on this board who don't feel well most of the time, and sometimes that means that emotions can run high and some negative thinking creeps in.
We don't claim to be perfect here at LymeNet, so I can't promise you anything close to that. We are just a bunch of folks with Lyme Disease trying to find some answers.
When you are feeling some better, I do hope you'll come back and feel comfortable enough to post.
Besides, look what a great topic you started, and all the discussion that followed.
Hope you feel better and stronger real soon -
Tracy
-------------------- Tracy .... Prayers for the Lyme Community - every day at 6 p.m. Pacific Time and 9 p.m. Eastern Time � just take a few moments to say a prayer wherever you are�. Posts: 2966 | From Colorado | Registered: Dec 2005
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Truthfinder
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 8512
posted
**up**
-------------------- Tracy .... Prayers for the Lyme Community - every day at 6 p.m. Pacific Time and 9 p.m. Eastern Time � just take a few moments to say a prayer wherever you are�. Posts: 2966 | From Colorado | Registered: Dec 2005
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Rather than ART I feel much more comfortable with Buhners approach.
wallace
DEPTH DIAGNOSIS IN THE PRACTICE OF SACRED PLANT MEDICINE
By Stephen Harrod Buhner
Copyright � 2003 Stephen Harrod Buhner
As herbalists, all of us have learned great deal during the past decades: about plants, our herbal history, and the use of plant medicines in healing. One of our great weaknesses, however, has been the lack of a comprehensive system of diagnosis. As our knowledge has matured, our practices have grown, this lack has become more demanding of recognition, the hunger for a rigorous system of diagnosis more insistent. Yet many of us want such a system of diagnosis to be grounded in the kind of plant medicine we have come to practice. It needs to be a system that holds within it the deep empathy for all life that so many of us feel, a deep and living connection to the plants and people who come to us for help, a system that is rooted in our peculiar American history, a system that is infused with the indigenous and historical wisdom from so many cultures that continually expresses itself through us and our work. Many of us have attempted to fill this diagnostic vacuum by turning to western allopathic diagnosis or traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). But western allopathic approaches are exceptionally reductionistic, depend more each decade on machines, and, studies show, tend to be right only some fifty percent of the time. Inherent in that model, as well, are attitudes and perspectives that are not only in contrast to the essence of the plant work that so many of us do, but are in fact antagonistic to it. For many of us, using allopathic diagnosis feels distinctly wrong. TCM, while it works for a number of people, is a foreign system to many of us and we find no easy emotional response to it. The language is odd, the concepts alien, the orientation skewed obliquely to the one we naturally possess and in consequence many of those who turn to it as a kind of final resort simply end up with another reductionistic model, albeit an eastern one. Many herbalists use one or both of these forms, sometimes filling in with muscle testing or other approaches found to be of use, but they are often default systems, used because nothing else that feels right is available. So, instead of adopting either of these models, for the past 30 years I have been working on the rediscovery of such a system of diagnosis - for our ancestors through the millennia must have been using something other than TCM or transformed Hippocratic/allopathic reductionism. The ancient approach that underlies the Hippocratic, TCM, and Ayurvedic models is itself preceded by a much older and more deeply personal approach to healing - an approach concerned less with theoretical models than it is with a more immediate and personal understanding of disease, plants, and people. For over 15 years I used a variety of this older system very successfully in a full time psychotherapy practice. For the past decade I have been applying it in the depth-diagnosis of physical illness and healing with plant medicines. It fulfills all the expectations I had for another kind of approach and the results are often exceptional. This article outlines the essential processes of this kind of depth diagnosis. Depth Diagnosis Depth diagnosis depends on shifting the personal mode of cognition from VIA to HID. The process is fairly simple, but mastering it, like any new skill, takes much practice. The steps are as follows: 1. Intending to know With depth diagnosis, you must intend to know - in the deepest sense of that word - about the living, complex phenomenon that is in front of you and what is wrong, what is diseased, how healthy functioning has been interrupted, and what to do about it. While temporary breaks from the process are important, it is important to not waiver in this intention until you actually do know what you have set out to know. It is the focus of your will that will carry the process through. 2. Focusing attention on sensory impressions This shift of consciousness from the VIA mode begins by first focusing on the sensory impressions of any particular phenomenon. With plants or with something highly accessible such as the skin, this occurs through the use of touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound of the thing itself. This simple focusing of attention is the beginning of the shift in modes, for consciousness is shifted away from verbal linguistics to direct perception through the senses. This shift to the senses grounds the person in their body, shifting awareness away from the verbal/analytical mind to the flow of information that is continually coming from the environment to the body through the senses. Our bodies emerged out of this Earth, our senses are meant to perceive it and were in fact shaped by the environment from which we emerged in order to perceive it in particular and meaningful ways. Our bodies possess highly sophisticated mechanisms for processing the communications and information coming to us through our senses and recognizing the patterns embedded within what we are sensing. Because the entire surface of the body comes alive in this process, sensitive to what is touching it, quality of life is enhanced as well. 3. Becoming aware of the primary emotional impression the thing makes upon you. All phenomena, when focused upon, generate an intimation of a particular mood or quality within the perceiver. This is most often experienced as an emotion or feeling. Emotions and feelings in this sense mean much more than the basic psychological feelings of mad, sad, glad or scared - though these have their importance in this process. Emotions in this sense are analogous to smells. There are thousands, perhaps millions, of different smells. This can be easily experienced through smelling a wide range of essential oils or perfumes. Few of these smells have particular names, yet they still exist and possess tremendous impact. We are daily touched by the world within which we are embedded, we feel the touch upon us in the thousands of nameless feelings we experience each day. They flit over the surface of our consciousness like shadows across a grassy meadow. In paying attention to them, they come forward into consciousness and begin to reveal their secrets, for each emotion registers the impact of a particular meaning that has touched us. They are, in fact, transforms of information from the world around us. These transforms contain extremely condensed and elegant communications about what we are encountering. While focusing attention on the sensory surface of a thing begins to shift the mode of cognition, the perception of the emotional flavor emitted by any particular phenomenon anchors it into personal experience. This allows the person to begin to drop below the surface of the thing being studied. Some essential questions to ask yourself that will help this process are:
a. how does this thing you are perceiving feel to you? b. do you like it or not? c. what primary emotional feeling do you have about it/ mad, sad, glad, or scared?
This initial intimation, impression, or mood of the phenomenon is the beginning of your connection to its being. It should be firmly anchored into experience and not forgotten. For it is this initial intimation that is the key to unlocking understanding of the phenomenon itself and it is to this initial impression that you will return over and over as you refine the emerging knowledge of that which you are studying. During this process the human being is establishing a living rapport with the phenomenon itself. We have an innate capacity to entrain ourselves, to establish a harmony of patterning, a rapport, with anything upon which our attention is focused. When you emotionally hook yourself to a living thing, you anchor yourself to the nonlinear flow of its life. As your connection is deepened, you begin to flow with its life patterns, absorb its meanings, its intelligence, and its particular point of view. This includes, of course, its interconnectedness with the life or environment within which it is embedded. Opening up the self to this form of perception and allowing the world in through the senses is, of course, sometimes uncomfortable. Some things simply do not feel good when experienced. Still, it is important to understand that irrespective of your immediate response to any phenomenon, to go further, to complete any depth diagnosis, you must be able to come, eventually, to love whatever you have focused your attention upon. All of nature responds to this primary act of caring, diseased organ systems or ill people not the least. So, loving is critically important but it is often difficult because disease can be so tremendously frightening. This process cannot work unless the caring is genuine - a false niceness will not do. In the deepest sense, to succeed, you must come to truly love what you are perceiving, for nothing will give up its secrets without being loved. (Well, one caveat: nature - or any part of nature - will give up some of its secrets if tortured, which, from this perspective is what many scientific experiments are. Still, the secrets revealed are affected by the manner in which they are obtained and never in the process will the heart of nature be found.) 4. Make conscious the moment of first contact. Continual experiential contemplation of the moment of first contact raises the process - and the thing studied - to a high level of conscious awareness. Experiential contemplation here means sitting with the phenomenon you are developing relationship with, allowing your sensory perceptions and the feelings that occurred from the moment of first contact to increase in intensity until they are all that you feel. The mood generated by the phenomenon, its emotional tone, and, more importantly, the meanings that these reflect, are allowed to deepen until the experience of the phenomenon becomes all encompassing within you. This mode of perception, of cognition, requires total immersion in the experience of the thing being perceived. During this deepening, you, as a participatory consciousness, begin to weave through the phenomenon in an active beholding. In so doing the phenomenon will come alive within you. 5. Oscillation Oscillation means the slight disengagement with the phenomenon, a slight stepping away from immediate experience in order to allow the pattern of meaning within the phenomenon to arise within you in a form that you can consciously understand. Each emotional tone, intimation, or mood that is felt in response to a phenomena is an expression of meaning. And it is this meaning, or series of meanings, that you are working to turn into usable knowledge. To pin it down, to put salt on its tail, means understanding these meanings and their patterns, then capturing them in a verbal, analytical expression in language. This is not a forced process, rather the analytical capacities of the brain are allowed to generate - of themselves - linguistic descriptions that capture the essence of the thing, the meanings of the mood that has been felt. The verbal/analytical mode of consciousness does not invent the linguistic phrases to describe the meaning of the phenomenon, rather the linguistic descriptions of the phenomenon emerge of their own accord out of the store of memories, information, and experiences that the human being has accumulated during his or her lifetime. The emotional tone is felt and held within, you slightly disengage from the phenomenon, and allow the mind to generate linguistic phrases to capture the meanings that give rise to these particular emotional tones, and then you reengage with the thing and emotionally compare that which has been generated to the living phenomenon itself. And so on, back and forth, until the phenomenon stands forth and is understood, the descriptions entirely congruent with the phenomenon you are experiencing. (With practice this process becomes extremely rapid.) This mode of cognition is, as a result, exceptionally personal. It involves, or rather is, a participatory consciousness. This requires a great deal of internal flexibility, for you are allowing concrete knowledge of the thing being studied to naturally emerge within you. Depth knowledge of the phenomenon will express itself through a unique mode of representation, comprised as I have said from everything that is already within you. It is crucial, as the German poet and natural philosopher Goethe comments, "to cultivate as many modes of representation as possible or better, to cultivate the mode of representation that the phenomena themselves demand." You must remain as open as possible and let your seeing be shaped by the phenomenon itself. This requires such a flexibility in your internal world, in order to develop elegance in this ability, that it initiates an unavoidable encounter with personal psychological unclarities. Through this back and forth process, psychological unclarities in the perceiver come forward into conscious experience. If you are doing this kind of depth diagnosis, for example, on someone who rather unpleasantly reminds you of the energy or mood commonly possessed by your alcoholic father, you will be unable to see this new person in their own light. Your analytical mind will generate a mode of representation similar to that possessed by your father and while this is informative, it is the unfinished emotional baggage that accompanies this mode of representation that will interfere with being able to clearly see the person in front of you. All human beings possess these unclarities. It is an inevitable aspect of the human predicament. A dedication to this mode of perception, however, forces personal transformation in order for the process to be mastered. Undifferentiated application of these old memories and unmet needs is what is often referred to as projection (seeing the world exclusively through the VIA mode is another form of projection - mechanomorphism). There must be a drive to see with transparent eye, to have no judgments about or emotional aversions to the mode of representation that arises within you. This calls for tremendous personal awareness. Additionally, because the phenomena upon which we focus our attention penetrate so deeply within us in this process, we are deeply touched by the meanings that they embody. These meanings themselves have tremendous impact on how we perceive ourselves and the living world within which we are embedded. Because of these two aspects of this mode of cognition, perception in this way initiates a soul making process that in and of itself is tremendously moving. During this part of the depth diagnosis process it is no longer necessary to actually be in the presence of the phenomenon being studied. It is carried daily within you in the imagination. This is also why the first moment of contact is so important. That initial perceiving and the moods that it generated remain with a sparkling clarity within the participatory heart. The emergence of the demanded mode of representation takes time. Depth diagnosis, for me, can take from fifteen minutes to a month or more, depending on the person and the problem. (The average is about two weeks.) Because organ systems, in general, are not immediately visible to the external eye, their diagnosis begins first with the sensory impact of the person being diagnosed rather than the organ system itself. The process thereafter is the same. How do you feel upon seeing them? How does their skin feel? How does their breath smell? Do you like them? What is the mood, the emotional tone that they generate? But more. . . what part of their body is your eye, your attention, most powerfully drawn to? Focus on this part of them initially, to the exclusion of all else. Fix the moment of first contact strongly in your experience, then let your consciousness be drawn deeper, to the organ system underlying the place your attention has been drawn. Sit with this in contemplation, allow the organ to emerge in your mind's eye, and follow the process outlined here until the system itself emerges in its own light. To be diagnostically comprehensive the process usually needs to be repeated with the next thing that forces itself upon your attention and so on until the whole person has been diagnosed and understood. 6. The emergence of the phenomenon in its own light. The culmination of this process is the emergence into a unique moment of perception where the phenomenon, in a gesture of acquiescence, unconceals itself. With consistent meditative focus, the forces involved - the will of the perceiver and the life force of the phenomenon - converge; the force of the student's energy matches that of the thing being studied. When this occurs, there is a point of stasis where movement forward is difficult. The force of personal will, the intention to see the phenomenon revealed in its own light, is what carries the perceiver through. If this directed focus is maintained, the will and intention consistently focused, there is a moment of breakthrough where one emerges into a center of understanding. This moment of breakthrough, called the pregnant moment by Goethe, is when, as the philosopher Hegel noted, "the spiritual eye stands immediately at the center of nature." Because of the deep empathy involved, at this moment of breakthrough, the student, in a sense, merges with the thing studied. Perceiver and perceived become linked, unified as an organic whole. The phenomenon then expresses within us the essence of itself. This moment is saturated with empiric content, filled with meaning, possessed of tremendously dynamic tension and is a moment of highly engaged knowing, a moment of unconcealing, a gesture of acquiescence from the phenomenon itself, which allows an entity to come forth and show itself in light of its own truth, to show itself from itself. All previous interactions with the phenomenon, up to this point, were only preliminary. At this moment there is an instantaneous, living dialectic that joins all parts of the phenomenon to the student in a dynamic, interpenetrating whole. The flow of energy from observer to observed and back again becomes a living language in which nothing remains unconcealed. From this vantage point any and all aspects of a phenomenon can be perceived and developed in the mind. From this central point there is no necessity for exhaustive engagement in the minutiae of the phenomenon (e.g. plant chemistry or cellular structure) to understand it. There is only understanding itself, from which all aspects of the thing can be understood if the you only direct your awareness in that direction. If the breakthrough moment eludes you, you become distracted or confused, then you must take yourself back to the initial moment of contact and allow the mood and emotional tones of the thing to once again emerge within you in all their freshness. Your intention to know, the directed focus of your will, and your depth immersion within the feelings that the thing generates within you are what leads eventually to this moment of breakthrough. As Goethe comments, "Individual phenomena must never be torn out of context. Stay with the phenomena, think within them, accede with your intentionality to their patterns, which will gradually open your thinking to an intuition of their structure." The focus of this work upon individual plants reveals, among other things, their medicinal qualities and healing attributes. Over time you create within you an experientially generated data base of knowledge of plants as living medicines. Each plant remains fresh within you, for the moment of first contact is stored away and can be recalled at any time. The knowledge of their power as medicines emerges out of the deep, living dialectic that you and the plant have created together. All indigenous people gathered their knowledge of plant medicines in this way, directly from the heart of the world, from the soul of the plants. All said they could talk to plants, that plants could talk to them, that they were told by the plants their uses as medicines. This manner of perception, of diagnosis and healing, is the most ancient humans have ever known. The knowledge you gather, you will find, will overlap tremendously with that to be found in the plant guides you might later study, but you will also find healing uses for plants that are unique to you and your relationship with them. The plants always know their uses as medicines, and these uses are far more complex than even a thousand years of human use can reveal - there are always more healing attributes to discover when this kind of living dialectic is experienced. The focus on organ systems allows each one of them to emerge out of the living system in which it is embedded. A living dialectic is developed, much like that which occurs with plants, and the organ system will speak to you in its own mode of representation, standing forth unconcealed. From this mode of cognition you will know what is wrong with any particular organ system, you will not think it. That you know so deeply what is wrong will itself be communicated to the person you are working with and plays no small part in their healing. Further, the elegance of understanding that comes from this mode of cognition far surpasses any generated by the verbal/intellectual/analytical mode. From the VIA mode elements stand out, relationships become only a shadowy background, barely perceived. From the HID mode, relationships, intercommunications and interdependencies are vivid. The psychological and spiritual elements to disease stand out sharply, along with the physical. Once the pregnant point is achieved with any disease or organ system and it has given you its gesture of acquiescence, revealing itself to you, the request for a plant or series of plants to help is sent up out of the self. In that moment the database of living plant knowledge within you offers up the one or ones that will help. You, acting as facilitator, bring the living plant, as medicine, together with the living intelligence of the organ system and the living being of the person before you. In that moment, the eyes that you have developed through this mode of cognition can see clearly the restructuring of the body, and the alleviation of suffering takes place. Closing Remarks This form of diagnosis and healing is exceptionally elegant, very deep, and extremely thorough. It offers a living alternative to the reductionistic, dead diagnosis that has been developed within the western allopathic traditions. No particular training in anatomy and physiology is needed, there is no need to break down the body into a collection of parts, nor the person into body, mind, and spirit. For they are perceived as a whole and the mode of expression to understand them emerges from within the practitioner and his or her own life experience. It is a living diagnosis, constantly in flux and movement, like the living systems it is used to understand and heal. As such it is much more realistic and can perceive nuances that a dead reductionism cannot. With this type of depth diagnosis, it is possible to not only see the living reality of Type 3 cervical dysplasia, but see, and experience emotionally, the impact of an unloving husband's ejaculate upon it, in response to which it is malforming. It is possible, once the living dialectic is established, to understand that what the cervix needs is a particular kind of touch. To notice that it has a particular kind of color in the imagination and to find that the plant root that comes when called possesses that exact same color and to suddenly realize that within this woman, the cervix is indeed a special and holy kind of soil. Not one in which a man's seed is to be planted (a metaphor I despise for its inaccuracy - men's ejaculate is more chemically akin to pollen. It is NOT a seed.) but holy Earth from which this woman is intended to flower. The call goes out from the self and the plant needed responds. Powdered and placed against the cervix, it lays the groundwork and heals, teaching the cellular structure of the cervix how to be whole again, bringing into it some of its nature, to feed the lack, to fill the need. And then it is no surprise to see that there is need for light in the darkness and so a plant that holds within it this particular kind of light is used to flow up against the cervix and the mature woman begins to flower, takes root, and finds within herself a strength she did not know she possessed. The story is much longer and more detailed of course, like all stories it goes on and on in all directions, both forward and back. One part of that story is a physician's surprised insistence that the new test results are impossible and they had better be taken again. This kind of depth diagnosis comes from deep within our heritage as human beings and as herbalists. It is a living expression of the plant and human world, a tradition a million years old. Unlike allopathic reductionism it is a living diagnosis, unlike TCM it comes from our own ground of being. It emerges out of the soil of this continent, the heritage we possess, the plants that have healed us and brought us to gladly kneel before them.
Truthfinder
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 8512
posted
Although this thread is nearly a year old now, I wanted to refer to it for some information, so I thought I would bump it up for the newcomers....
While there are some very long posts here, is it a pretty good discussion about some of alternative approaches to Lyme & Co., so the thread still has a lot of value.
Tracy
-------------------- Tracy .... Prayers for the Lyme Community - every day at 6 p.m. Pacific Time and 9 p.m. Eastern Time � just take a few moments to say a prayer wherever you are�. Posts: 2966 | From Colorado | Registered: Dec 2005
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