with the women who were killed, and with the traditions that were killed off, such as the Native Americans and more recently, Appalachian culture. Yet thankfully much of it has indeed been preserved, and of course much of it is intuitive. Within the last 40 years there has been a huge resurgence in herbal medicine. It again began to emerge as a people's movement and again is quickly becoming co-opted by the market. As soon as an herb becomes popular, it is quickly threatened with extinction. Corporate interests, influenced by reductionist science, market the 'essential oils' or extract the 'active ingredients' as the healing agents of herbs and charge an outrageous price for these heroic remedies. This is not herbalism. This is not people's medicine. Re-gaining knowledge of herbal medicine begins by reconnecting with the wild. Spending time in the woods or starting a garden can be effective medicine in and of itself. The civilized world has forgotten the natural cycles and flows of the earth, and necessarily so. Reconnecting with the earth can be seen then as an act of resistance. Take time to get to know plants, where they grow, what they smell like. Pick a leaf off a plant you don't recognize. Smell it. Taste it. Is it bitter? How does it make you feel? Re-gaining this knowledge will take work and time. There are many people who have been doing this for a while, and they are often willing to teach. There are good books and manuals available, yet the best way to learn is by forging a relationship with plants, getting to know them and how they effect your body. An alternative health care system not only begins with an alternative medicine, but by changing the way we view medicine altogether. Western medicine is based on treating symptoms. This is nonsensical. It's like prescribing a pain reliever to someone who keeps punching walls without telling them to stop, or finding out what is making them do it in the first place. Unfortunately this analogy is not too far off from actuality. An alternative medicine must be preventative. Waiting for problems to flare up is not helpful at all. Health must be maintained by catching problems before they get out of hand. This is only possible if health is viewed in a holistic sense. Maintaining a nourishing diet and keeping stressors to a minimum are then just as important as taking herbs. Some herbs have immediate effects, but most work slowly. They tone the endangered bodily system, nourishing it and keeping it working right, preventing dis-ease from occurring. Re-gaining a knowledge of nutrition and cultivating some sort of mindfulness practice such as prayer or meditation, is just as important, if not more so, as re-gaining a knowledge of healing plants. An alternative medical system will rise up naturally and organically as we learn and spread this knowledge. It will look nothing like what we have. Neighbors and friends will share knowledge and medicines together with each other and nourish each other with food and conversation. Expensive pharmacies and cold sterile doctors offices will be replaced with foraging classes and canning parties. An alternative system must be the peoples medicine. It must be non-hierarchical and holistic. It must honor and respect the healer in all: in plants, in vegetables, in human and non-human animals. As the union slogan goes, we must build a new society in the shell of the old. But we have to also realize that true health is simply not possible in our current industrial society. Corporations cannot grow our food if it is going to nourish us. Exportation and industrial production must stop if we want to live on an unpolluted earth. There are those who make grand claims of clean alternative fuels, yet all the while ignoring the emotional and spiritual pollution that industrial society generates. Bringing down civilization may be the first line of treatment for global health and well-being. Yet the dis-ease of industrial society is really only a symptom of organizing society on such a large scale. This too must be done away with if we are to restore our health. The nutrition of individuals appears often to have declined for any of several reasons: because increasingly complex society placed new barriers between individuals and flexible access to resources, because trade often siphoned resources away, because some segments of the society increasingly had only indirect access to food, because investments in new technology to improve production focused power in the hands of elites so that their benefits were not widely shared, and perhaps because of the outright exploitation and deprivation
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