Embracing Wholeness: Exploring the Path to Holistic Living
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| Embracing Wholeness: Exploring the Path to Holistic Living |
No herbalist enters the world with all there is to know about plant medicine. We learn from one another. We learn from experience. We learn from the plants. I’m immensely thankful to the numerous individuals who inspired my studies and helped put this book together.
My most significant instructor is herbalist Michael Moore, with whom I studied at the Southwest School of Botanical Medicine. He opened my eyes to the bodily systems and helped me understand how completely intriguing the intersection of herbal medicine and the human body can be. Although I have acquired remedy-making skills from many different herbalists, Michael’s unique approaches remain my favorites and may be found in this book. Though we lost this herbal legend in 2009, his tremendous contributions to the herbal community continue on via his books, courses, wife, and pupils.
In my life, I’m thankful for the loving support of my parents, my grandparents, and my spouse. I must confess that Shannon was a bit hesitant to have his wife leave her “day job” after our honeymoon to be a full-time herbalist, but we made it happen! I also appreciate everyone who kept asking when I would write a book, particularly Susanna Hargreaves, who finally made it “click” and helped fire my vision and passion for these pages. Thank you, too, to friends and colleagues Mimi Alberu (the animal herbalist), Dr. Cora Rivard (the naturopath), and Tiffany Coroka (my first-pass editor) for their vital advice on my book.
Lastly, my warmest appreciation to the team at Storey, without whom this book wouldn’t be possible: Deborah Balmuth, Nancy Ringer, Michaela Jebb, Kimberly Peck, and Sarah Armour. Thank you for believing in me and bringing the book into existence.
Achieving a Natural Balance
1) Good health develops naturally2) Enter herbal and natural medicine3) Herbal Wisdom: Simplifying Life's Journey4) Empowered Living: Navigating Major Health Challenges
1) Good health develops naturally
We thrive in nature. We feel better and healthier when we depend on genuine food, spend lots of time outdoors, incorporate the elements of nature into our everyday lives, and utilize herbs as our main form of medication. Many of the common disorders and diseases we encounter in contemporary life arise from the fact that we have drifted away from our fundamental connection to nature. Health and sickness in the body interact in interesting linked patterns, and when we make use of our connection to nature—utilizing herbs and natural treatments—we may modify those patterns to bring the body into better balance and vigor. Plants heal. Nature heals.
Whether you have several dangerous ailments or you’re quite healthy with only a few minor complaints, your symptoms are not anything to conquer. Instead, they’re your body’s way of warning you that something is out of balance. These symptoms are your taskmasters—that is, the warning system for your body and signs about the underlying imbalance. This book will teach you how to listen to your body. It may require some investigative work and a varied healing strategy, but it’s worth it. The sooner you understand your body’s distress signs, the simpler it will be to repair sickness naturally. However, no matter where you are in your health, you can make gains using herbs and alternative therapy.
Americans are progressively learning that our existing allopathic medical system—its attitude and its drugs—frequently makes us ill (not to mention bankrupt) in the long term. In this profit-driven system, we spend more on health care than any other country, but we come in at a dismal number 38 internationally for our real health and well-being. Doctors depend largely on an arsenal of medications, yet side effects from these potent drugs kill more than 100,000 Americans a year. Even if you survive the therapy, you’ll frequently face a plethora of unpleasant side effects. With this myopic approach to addressing symptoms, the body continues to cry for assistance, and new concerns (backup alarms) ring off. Side effects emerge. You could be taking a dozen medicines each day, yet you still don’t feel good.
2) Enter herbal and natural medicine
Natural treatments are often less costly, much safer, more adapted to self-care, and more holistic than allopathic medication, and they offer a plethora of side benefits. In fact, just one plant may contain hundreds of components that work together in synergy to treat a variety of health issues. So the hawthorn you’re taking for blood pressure may eventually also boost your brain clarity, energy levels, and mood.
What’s truly amazing is how they accomplish this. Herbs seldom drive the body in a certain direction or offer a single isolated chemical with a specific impact on the body. Instead, herbs help your body to mend and balance itself. For example, the reproductive herb vitex doesn’t contain progesterone; instead, it promotes your brain and ovaries to create healthy quantities of this hormone over time. Most immune-system herbs don’t function directly as antibiotics or antivirals; they reinforce your body’s natural immunological response so that white blood cells and disease-fighting processes perform better. What’s more, many herbs have a modulating influence on the body, not a one-way activity. For example, astragalus and medicinal mushrooms (fungi are honorary “herbs” in this book) balance overactive and underactive immune systems. Modest dosages of eleuthero boost low blood pressure or lower high blood pressure, depending on what’s required. Holy basil and other adaptogenic plants amp up or turn down the production of stress hormones, such as cortisol, as required. It’s actually fairly wonderful.
Don’t think of herbs as simply alternatives to medications. Herbs serve like training wheels to assist your body in remembering habits of health, breaking away from patterns of sickness, and enhancing day-to-day functioning. For this reason, this book is not an A-to-Z collection of useful plants. I want you to understand your body, what it needs to be healthy, and the common themes of illness. You’ll learn how to listen to your body and comprehend what it’s telling you. You’ll comprehend how the herbs function so that you can put together the ideal combination of herbs and natural treatments to push your body back into balance, no matter what your starting place.
We’ll look at the core causes of sickness, patterns of imbalance, and how to dig out clues to locate the most suitable herbs and treatments for you.
First, it’s crucial to understand your body’s fundamental demands. When those demands aren’t addressed, your body can’t remain in balance. When these are satisfied, many illnesses and symptoms simply vanish. A whole-foods diet and proper nutrition, appropriate sleep, stress management, and regular exercise and movement—how well you adhere to the pillars of health—have a huge influence on how well or sick you will be. If you’ve got a long way to go, don't worry. Take small steps, make incremental improvements, and target the exact areas that appear to have the biggest influence on you. Achieving vitality and a healthy lifestyle is a lifetime process.
3) Herbal Wisdom: Simplifying Life's Journey
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Herbs make the trip simpler. Plant medicine helps your body transition into healthy routines. But herbal medicine is more than simply consuming plant treatments. Any herbal or holistic practitioner will tell you that herbs function best when paired with a balanced diet and lifestyle. As we go into the different bodily systems, you’ll encounter Protocol Points sections that highlight techniques for managing common health conditions. These sections will summarize the precise dietary patterns, lifestyle habits, and herbs that tend to work best for the health issue in question.
The majority of this book will study various bodily systems and patterns of health and sickness. The initial bodily systems it examines produce the most influence for most people: nervous-endocrine (stress, sleep, mood), digestion, and detoxification. These bodily systems impact everything else, and as you bring them into balance, it becomes simpler to overcome apparently diverse health conditions.
In herbal medicine, we analyze underlying illness patterns and choose herbs and other natural remedies that address those patterns. For example, many individuals suffer from poor digestion (particularly poor fat digestion), paired with constipation, high cholesterol, cardiovascular inflammation, chronic pain, diabetes, and occasionally even skin disorders. These people tend to run hot, eat badly, and not get enough exercise. Cooling, digestion-enhancing, detoxifying, and anti-inflammatory herbs like artichoke, turmeric, dandelion, and schizandra perform brilliantly as the foundation of a recipe for changing the tide. In another pattern (typically connected to food sensitivities), migraines, allergies, intestinal problems, rashes, sinusitis, and asthma frequently run together, and only one comprehensive treatment strategy may eradicate all of them.
4) Empowered Living: Navigating Major Health Challenges
Even if you have major health problems or are taking pharmaceutical medicines, you can still use the herbal remedies presented in this book to improve your condition. These treatments are not an either/or choice, and herbs frequently perform beautifully with conventional therapy, helping you receive greater outcomes with fewer side effects. If you’re using medications, you will want to proceed carefully when picking herbs and work closely with your health practitioner; check here for further discussion of herb-drug safety.
Conclusion
You’ll receive a herbal vocabulary education as you browse this book, learning to know the exact key herbal activities, what they imply, how to apply them, and which plants contain them. You’ll rapidly come to grasp what nutritives and adaptogens are and why they provide a fantastic basis for practically any recipe, why demulcent and astringent herbs treat damaged tissue, and exactly how antioxidants fight against age-related ailments. Though herbs have many, many synergistic effects on the body, these major acts are worth reading about in detail, and you’ll see them mentioned throughout the book because they have significant value for many different bodily systems.
