The Foundation of Alternative Healing

by Maggie McCarey

holistic |hōˈlistik|

characterized by comprehension of the parts of something as intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole. • Medicine characterized by the treatment of the whole person, taking into account mental and social factors, rather than just the physical symptoms of a disease.

Alternative medicine is also known as holistic healing.  Alternative medicine is the polar opposite of allopathic medicine, which is defined as the use of surgery and prescription medications or drugs to alleviate symptoms and thus to control a specific disease. Understanding alternative medicine as a philosophy is easy.  If you nourish the body, it will heal itself.  Alternative healing does not treat symptoms; it treats systems within the body: heart, blood, digestive system, liver, and colon, etc.  It is commonly believed that if these systems can be strengthened and repaired, the body will heal itself. But, it does so very s-l-o-w-l-y over a lifetime. Most people don’t have the patience for it long term and so get dismal results trying one herb after another without understanding how they work.

The commonly held belief among alternative healthcare practitioners is that a healthy body is an arid or dry body.  In contrast, a moist body is acidic and therefore a host for Candida, free radicals, and parasites: beach front property for vacationers. An arid body is alkaline and a moist body is acidic. All diseases thrive in acidic bodies.  To be alkaline is to be in process of living; to be acidic is to be in the process of dying. Your goal, then, if you wish to be healed, is to stay alkaline.  This is not something an allopathic doctor can treat you for even though s/he agrees with its universal truth.

Your body functions best when the pH of your blood is 7.35. If your blood pH gets below 7 or above 7.45, your body cannot function…. Typical characteristics of an acid person are: low energy, no enthusiasm, tires quickly, irritable or poor sleep. Acid people are often sensitive to cold, brittle teeth, weak nails or dry skin. The immune system weakens which makes your prone to viruses (cold and  flu) and recurring infections (bronchitis, urinary tract infection). If acidity becomes chronic, an  amazing variety of illnesses may occur and shows up in your body’s weakest spots. The  result is cancer, diabetes, PMS, arthritis or allergies. (http://www.thebestofrawfood.com/ph-scale.html)    

Many people do not realize that herbs (plant life) have been the foundation of medicine throughout human history. AND THAT HASN'T CHANGED. Even now, one-quarter of all prescription drugs comes directly from or is derivatives of plants. Additionally, four out of five people around the world today rely on plants for primary health care.  (http://www.bgci.org/plantconservationday/whyplantsimportant/).  If you consider this statement, you realize that allopathic medicine is the new kid on the block, not alternative medicine, and that at its foundation, it, too, is dependent on plants for healing, even as it studies plant life to recreate with chemicals. 

If you have ever been to a health food store, you know how daunting it is to find “the herb” that will help you.  When you look at all the different herbs and combinations of herbs, choosing one seems insurmountable and random, and the bottles appear to be in a foreign language only to you, not the other happy shoppers.   So how do you step into the world of alternative healing?  Many arrive after a devastating diagnosis and often too late for herbs to help their bodies heal themselves.  Others arrive after a prescribed pharmaceutical like a statin drug has done reversible organ damage.  Some like to have more control over their health than allopathic medicine offers with its one-size-often-fits- all diagnoses and pretty much cookie cutter treatment, i.e. 1000 calorie diet, antibiotics without testing viral or bacterial, and so they enter the world of holistic medicine.  In my case, my first near death experience was at age 3 after receiving a penicillin shot.  That left my mother and grandmother to seek alternative medications for me.  So when I was 23 and diagnosed incorrectly with rheumatoid arthritis, the medicine my doctor gave me to treat it, sat on a medicine cabinet shelf unopened.  A few years later, that arthritis drug was linked to numerous deaths, as have many since.

A recent Michigan State research concluded that “….4 million Americans experience adverse reactions to prescription medications every year. Some are relatively mild, such as minor rashes, but others can be fatal.” (http://www.protectpatientsblog.com/2012/06/drug_labels_you_dont_read_can.html)

Some of us heed these factual warnings against allopathic medication and so turn to other healing methods. You may trust your doctor to know what each drug prescribed can potentially do to and for you, but generally s/he knows little because your doctor often trusts the pharmaceutical rep with a business degree to determine your health needs. Your doctor may have been brainwashed into believing the pharmaceutical mantra that, even with drugs known to kill, blind, and damage vital organs, “the benefit outweighs the risk.”  For example,  Celebrex, a drug reportedly responsible for the deaths of 25,000 people before 2003, has never been pulled from the market.  Why? The benefit outweighs the risk????

If you are 1 of 5 people who never reads the risk factors you receive with your script, you are not a candidate for herbal medicine.  If you have no awareness or concern regarding modern health care and its insurance-controlled decisions over your doctor’s ability to order necessary tests; if you haven’t caught up to speed on over-use of antibiotics, if you are looking for a quick fix that overrides your symptoms and your body’s ability to do what it was created to do—fix itself-- or if you don’t mind an insurance carrier making ultimate decisions about your health care with your physician’s receptionist, then don’t bother with herbs.  If you can look in the mirror after a by-pass or lap band surgery and see that it works for you with no new medical issues to contend with—and that is very possible, then stay with what works for you. I f you are satisfied with your doctor and your care, then, seriously, don’t rush out and buy a herb experiencing its ten minute of fame on Dr. Oz. Don’t bother to mix and match.  Herbs don’t heal. They simply act in support of the body so that it is more able to heal itself. Taking one herb that promotes healing of a specific condition is like spitting into the wind. That’s why medicine cabinets are filled with half-used bottle of herbs.  They don’t work for you; they work with you and in tandem with other herbs, diet, exercise, vitamins, healthy environments, stress reduction.   They are natural.

                      The Story of Essiac to Illustrate the Ability of Herbs to Support the Body

In 1922, a native visiting a clinic in Ontario gave nurse Rene M. Caisse an Ojibwa herbal formula.  She used it in her clinic for the next five decades with amazing results.  I first heard about it in my herb classes in 1990.  At that time, the recipe was kept secret so I couldn't make my own.  I went to a huge health food store in Chicago and found everything but Essiac.  I asked a clerk if the store carried it, and with an immediate look of compassion (assuming I had cancer), she said “Yes, dear.  We keep it locked.  With that, she took me to the Essiac vault.  At that time, Essiac was being sold for upwards to $400 a quart on the brand new Internet and was so powerful in the minds of people that even a conspiracy theory of government interference evolved from its use.

Essiac tea contains four simple herbs: 1) burdock, a blood cleanser that farmers hate because it is so abundant in their fields; 2) slippery elm, an herb that is so drying I often used it to instantly cure poison ivy, and in the tea was used as an anti-inflammatory that made a dry host inhospitable for parasites; 3) turkey rhubarb which aids the body in eliminating long-held toxins in the bowels, and thus, is an excellent colon cleanse; and, 4) sheep sorrel, commonly found in ditches, and included in this blend because of its cancer-fighting properties.  Sheep Sorrel also has anthraquinones, including emodin, rhein, and physcian- to stimulate peristalsis (wavelike movement of waste out of the intestine) that increase the secretion of mucous, or inflammation, and water into the intestine.

Now, nearly a century later, Essiac is known far and wide in holistic medicine as a wonderful brew that strengthens the blood, liver, colon, and digestive system with astounding testimonies of cures.  I have recommended it to numerous people in the last 20 years with heartening results BUT the most important use came for me in an unexpected way when one of my daughters was diagnosed with cervical cancer.  I admit that I immediately fell back into the fearful notion that allopathic medicine was her only hope of cure, but, my daughter informed me that she had no intention of going for chemo because she had seen what Essiac could do for people.  She drank Essiac and every afternoon a state away from her I put on Spirit of the Zither by Carmelite Nun and did remote visual imagery healing on her uterus.  That was 15 years ago and she is alive and well.

Do I recommend you leave your doctors? No. I always have a physician for annual blood work and check ups.  But the last time I had an antibiotic was 1997 because there are natural alternatives that do not rob me of good bacteria needed for healthy flora. As you know, I take Wellbutrin because it works to reduce inflammation in my legs so I am not adverse to anything that works without threatening to do more harm than good but you must be the one who ultimately determines that for yourself because your life depends on it.  This belief is the foundation of alternative medicine.

Healing Energy

by Maggie McCarey

Three Lessons in Alternative Healing

My first experience of being healed with energy medicine transformed my thinking about healing and started me on a path of study that continues today.  In the mid 1990’s, I studied massage therapy in Vermont because weekly massages helped to keep me out of a full-force inflammatory episode. The medical profession might describe this as lipedema going in and out of remission.

I learned about a particular energy medicine modality, Cranial Sacral Therapy, during my course work in massage therapy school. Dr. John Upledger, who discovered that a cranial pulse exists, pioneered cranial Sacral Therapy.  It is referred to sometimes as the Breath of Life, or the center of our breathing.

     

The students in my class watched a 20-minute video on CS and were then partnered in twos.  I partnered with a 19 yr old who was not particularly engaged in our studies.  She went first.  She closed her eyes, held my arm and followed along my upper arm searching for something that might appear…a knowing, a hunch, a feeling.  When she got to a certain part, I burst into tears but felt nothing.  In the old stiff upper lip manner of my Brit heritage, I never showed emotion and yet here I was weeping.  

She dropped my arm and the minute she did, the tears stopped.  She picked my arm up again and tears streamed down my cheeks.  She dropped my arm a second time and magically the tears stopped.  I had experienced pain and, at times, limited motion in that exact spot of my upper arm for years but so what?  I was a tomboy paying for an adventurous childhood as my grandmother predicted.  I twisted my neck the third time she picked my arm and gentle held it slightly above the “spot.”  

I felt like a cork was being sucked out of my arm and then I saw a flash of light, like the old blue camera bulbs, blast against the inside of my partner’s hand.  She yelped and jumped back as my brain swiftly and accurately played back a complete memory of the death and funeral of my best friend who was struck by lightening 27 years earlier.  The tears stopped; that pain in my arm left forever.  In CS, this is called an energy cyst, which occurs when we experience any kind of trauma, physical or emotionally. 

I was hooked. I had to learn everything I could about healing.  I took several courses in cranial therapy, a personal internship with a brilliant Upledger structuralist, John, in Montreal, course work in reiki, sound vibration, bio-sonic repatterning, and polarity.  If that seems like a lot of energy study, let me tell you over 160 kinds of energy medicine are being studied and practiced all over the world.

So what does this have to do with lipedema?  So many of our lipese complain of having no energy, years even of intense fatigue.  I have had those bouts with fatigue as well, and I know of no way to move through that fatigue without energy work. Energy medicine moves to release the blocks that underlie and govern patterns of chronic pain, disease, trauma, and even accidents.  During the years that I faithfully received cranial sacral treatments, my body changed from a painful, stiff drag-a-long to a body that could hike and climb mountains for hours painlessly and with ease.  I parked far away from stores just so I could walk.  I walked for hours and ran up down escalators in airports while waiting for delayed planes. Amazingly, I was the most fit and the least pained I had ever been, even in childhood.  I was 48 and in charge of my body for the first time.

CS has been a way of survival when conventional methods failed.  A decade ago, my Woody dog took off after a squirrel just as I stepped onto a curb and I felt my ankle snap.  My sister, thankfully, was visiting with me in Vermont. She had become a CS therapist after years of physical pain was lifted when, during a session, her long held childhood memory of her dog’s death left her body.  She quickly bent over where I lay on the ground wailing and thrashing.  She did something called “unwinding.”  When a person falls, his or her energy field immediately fights that motion, and tangles up like twisted wire.  A good therapist can actually get a body to unwind like a clock and in ways you have never seen a body shaped.

I literally felt the energy unwind as she worked.  Heat and pain left my body.  I walked home with no trouble.   I was terrified to have a broken ankle because of what that would mean to me, as I got older so I went to ER the next day.  Indeed, my ankle was broken but, and I will never forget the look of disgust on the ER doctor’s face when he told me, there was no orthopedic devise big enough to reach around my calf and it couldn't be set any other way because of my leg size and the fat around my ankles.  I was then a 12 on top.  I walked to my car by myself, without crutches, drove to a shoe store, and purchased a leather mountain boot that went well above the ankle.  I laced it up and tightened it around my ankle like an orthopedic walking cast, and went on my way.  I have never had a twinge of pain in that ankle.

  

Lesson Two. I am sure you have heard when a student is ready, a teacher will come. Traditionally, in healing studies people intern from masters who most often are very spiritual rather then theoretical.  When I needed to know about herbs, the Amish woman came. She helped me to stop the inflammation cascade I described previously, but I was still chronically inflamed, in pain, and afraid of my body.  It was hard to walk and to breathe.  I was tired.  Even so, the student in me never stopped believing there was a way out of my illness, and so another teacher came.   She was the Grandmother of the Abenaki Nation.  In native way, she had expected me to arrive at her door one day and I did.  The three years I was her student she began each session with the following words.  “Never give your power away to anyone or anything.”

Perhaps, her words would have had less effect on me had I known her before she became ill many years before.  When I met her, she had contracted a virus in her lungs that caused her to almost drown in her own mucous many times a day.  She lay most days in a hospital bed while people from all over the world, and from every walk of life, came to visit her, to be healed, and to pay homage to this great teacher.  Grandmother never charged anyone for her instruction or her healing.  She lived only on the gifts she received from students. Her lesson learned: Never give your power over to lipedema.

Finally, the third teacher who came to heal me, was the Upledger structuralist John who lives in Montreal.  He literally rebuilt my energy field, and restored my life force,  but more importantly, he mended my wounded soul by speaking to it rather than me about how to facilitate healing in my body.

     

Everyone suffers.  Everyone either sooner or later gets a disease or a tragic and sudden death.  This final chapter has never been a surprise ending to any of us but John made me understand the power I have over my physical body in the meantime.  Not that I will ever dance again—even so, I must believe it is possible.  That is finally the last lesson in healing:  If you believe yet will you see. To see ourselves healed we must live ultimately in perpetual hope that our lives are exactly as they are meant to be each moment or as the composer wrote: Let this blessed assurance control…It is Well with My Soul.