The Wise Woman Tradition of Herbal Medicine. When we put it all together, is a way to feel more personal power. Herbal medicine as people's medicine, herbal medicine as a away to reclaim the power of your own health. People call me and ask me for advice on health and herbs. And many times I hear people say something like the doctor put me on this drug. And I say to them, Oh, what an amazing doctor you have. He went to the drugstore got the prescription for you and comes to your house three times a day and gives you a pill.
Of course, most people is to react as though, I am an idiot. They say well of course not, the doctor doesn't do that. I say, okay, do you mean that you went to the drugstore and had the prescription fulfilled and they say yes. I said oh and is it you who actually takes the drug and they say, yes.
I said well then let's take step one in personal power, the doctor didn't put you on anything. The doctor wrote a prescription but you using your own power decided to take it and decide every time that you will take it. We can use our personal power in any way that makes us feel the way, we want to feel.
We can get off our drugs in most instances if we wish to, because it is simply a choice from our own personal power. You know when I was young, my momma took me to the doctor and I learned the most important thing that are to learn about health and healing, before I went to school. The doctor examined me and do things that most people didn't do hit my knees, looked in my ears and when the doctor was all done turned to my mother and said your daughter is in perfect health.
And so I knew that I had nothing to do with my own health that it was all in the hands of the experts. How many of us have learned that incorrect message as a very young child? When we grow up we can learn the correct message our health is in our own hands. And after the doctor told my mother that I was in perfect health than the doctor gave me a shot, and so I learned the second, most important thing about being healthy and that is that I needed to take drugs in order to be healthy.
No wonder I felt powerless, no wonder I grew up feeling powerless about my own health. And powerless in terms of staying healthy and powerless in terms of having any help when I felt poorly. And as a child I had a series of bladder infections, I got viral pneumonia; there were some very large things that happened in my life as a child, where the doctors were the ones who were brought in to treat me.
What happened for me was that eventually that string of bladder infections got to the point where the drugs, just weren't being as affective as they had been 20 years previously and that set me off on a personal quest to see if there wasn't some other way of dealing with my bladder infections.
I was fortunate, or wise, or guided enough to find one of the most perfect herbs for any woman bothered by chronic bladder infections and that's uva-ursi, also known as Kinnikinnick. A very common plant growing around the Great Lakes area. Easy to buy as an herb that we can make a tea from and easy to buy as a tincture. I bought some tincture of uva-ursi, and began to take it as soon as I felt the symptoms of a bladder infections, and interestingly enough for me, that was the very less bladder infection that I ever had.
I have talked to other women and some of them have the same story that I did. Doctor visit after doctor visit, drugs and more drugs and it wasn't until they started using uva-ursi, or other herbal medicines such as Yarrow tincture that they were able to completely clear their bladder infection, never to have it come back. That's what self empowerment is about.
Self empowerment comes in so many when we use herbal medicine. Self empowerment comes from knowing that we are actively engaged in preventative medicine that drinking or nourishing herbal infusions empowers us so that we don't have to worry about what's going to happen to our health. We can feel, we can sense we can know when we are feeling healthy and strong and when we need to slow down, take care and maybe take a remedy besides a nourishing herbal infusion.
Self empowerment comes from being self-reliant. Herbal medicine, the Wise Woman Way gives us the ability to be self-reliant from a very young age. And empowerment especially in tough economic times comes from knowing that we are doing something that is cost effective, far better to know that we can get the nourishment that we need from simple herbs not having to buy pills or do things that are very complex. And self empowerment comes from being deeply connected to the earth that we live on and to the planet as a whole.
Herbal medicine, the Wise Women Way is people's medicine, it's nourishing medicine. And it is medicine that empowers you, me and everyone we touch or speak to. This is Susun Weed, the voice of The Wise Woman Tradition sending you green blessings, in these tough economic times, The Wise Woman Tradition is here for you.
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