How Holistic Healing Arts Work:
Conventional medicine uses tools that are fast acting, through the use of harsh chemical compounds (drugs) and radical physical treatments (surgery, radiation and chemotherapy). Holistic healing arts take a kinder, gentler approach, using nutrition, herbs and simple natural therapies, such as earth, water, air and sun.
Where the course of regular drug treatment might be seven, 10 or 14 days, holistic treatment usually runs a course of 12 weeks and sometimes a year or more.
Holistic treatment can act as quickly as 24 to 72 hours when dealing with acute health problems, such as the flu. The treatments for chronic, long-term problems usually take 12 weeks or more.
While conventional medicine deals primarily with treating and alleviating acute and chronic diseases, holistic healing arts “gets to the cause” of health challenges and “rebuilds” body tissues and systems to insure continued good health.
One Thing at a Time:
We sometimes hear of individuals who are concurrently taking as many as 20 prescription medications in order to control all of their symptoms of disease. Holistic healing arts assess our body’s health priorities and works only on the one or two most critical areas of concern at the moment. Therefore, frequent monitoring and adjustments in nutritional foods, including herbs, and simple natural therapies is often necessary. Once significant progress has been made on those initial health priorities, the body’s priorities may change, and work can begin on the next level of health.
What Are “Simple Natural Therapies?”
Simple Natural Therapies use the elements of the earth to affect healing, through restoring the body’s balance in the areas needed.
An example of a powerful, yet simple, natural therapy is that of walking barefoot through the grass or sand for 10 to 20 minutes each evening. Getting in touch with mother earth in this manner is, “grounding.” By that we mean that walking barefoot in the grass or on the sand grounds the electrical circuits in the body.
Many illnesses, including things such as, “jumpy, nervous legs,” migraine headaches and many others, may be caused, in part, by an accumulation of excess static electricity in the body. This “negative static energy” as it may be called can collect in weakened areas of the body, anywhere from head to foot. If the body is unable to discharge this energy, it builds up to a health-threatening level.
Simply walking barefoot, in contact with the earth, drains off excess static energy, by grounding the body, electrically. The consistent practice of walking barefoot for 10 to 20 minutes each evening, besides giving one a time of quiet relaxation each day, results in the release of this excess static energy and affects the healing processes of the body.
Another example of a simple natural therapy would be that of deep breathing.
All of our body’s natural energies derive from the burning of glucose, simple sugar, in our bodies. The burning of glucose is fueled by oxygen. Without an ample supply of oxygen, to every cell in the body, we cannot maintain proper health. One of the primary contributing factors to health problems such as cancer and other chronic illnesses is lack of oxygen in the area of distress due to some blockage in the body.
Learning to breathe deeply and fully is a vital but simple natural therapy that has been used in nearly every holistic healing art in every culture of the world since the dawn of time. Learning to breathe correctly and direct the healing energies of the oxygen that we bring in, while using the exhalation to eliminate stagnant, toxic gases from our bodies, is an example of the type of teaching affected by a competent holistic healing arts practitioner.
Combining therapies, such as breathing while walking barefoot, for instance, is a very efficient and enjoyable way to employ simple natural therapies in our lives.
The list of Simple Natural Therapies at our disposal is extensive, employing many of the elements of earth, water, air and sun.
Not a Quick Fix:
Holistic healing arts are very effective, dealing with the person as a “whole,” (body, mind, spirit, emotion) and though health may be quickly restored, we are in it for the “long haul.” A real commitment to ones good health must be made in order to achieve the desired goal.