Human beings have had a tremendous impact on the earth. We’re losing our forests, our oceans, our drinking water, and using up all our resources faster than they can be replenished. But how do we make change? It’s hard to know where to begin.

It’s not just our environment we’re destroying, it’s also our own bodies. The chronic diseases currently on the rise have a striking correlation with the way humans have treated the world. A very brief overview includes skyrocketing asthma occurrences, as the air becomes more polluted; Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, as our lives become full of chemicals; increases in the past 50 years of hormone-influenced problems such as breast and prostate cancer, while in the same time period, animals have been fed more hormones and our food has become filled with hormone-like substances called xeno-estrogens from pesticides and plastics.

Our world is sick and it is making us sick. How do we heal ourselves, heal the world, and create a sustainable future for all beings on this planet?
Perhaps the answer lies in the question. If we see the earth’s problems and our problems as one interconnected whole, this gives us a way to work with it--the paradigm of holistic medicine. Truly holistic healing offers us a way of thinking that can help heal the planet, looking at not just the body-mind-spirit connection, but also the very situation in which we live. How can one be a healthy individual in a sick society, or on a sick planet? We can heal the planet, heal our culture, and heal ourselves in the process. It is a fallacy to think that we are separate from our environment. We are still as much a part of nature as we have always been. We just have more structures to separate us.

We must first recognize our connections, how the fate of our greater community is also our own fate. When we recognize the connection between all living beings, how can we ever be apathetic about their fate again? We then must begin to take responsibility for our health and the health of our home in the broadest sense. This is an act of empowerment and is necessary to become complete human beings. At the same time, we must keep in mind one big question: What is sustainable? The way we are living right now, we are burning through our resources much faster than we can maintain. We need to not just slow the problem; we need to change the mindset from which these problems arise.

CONNECTION AS HEALING
As a practicing herbalist, I find that the truest and deepest healing comes from connection—connection with each other and connection with all that is. First, there is the connection between practitioner and client. I feel that more than half the healing takes place before the client even leaves the room or takes a sip of tea. It is human connection, the opportunity for someone to tell their story, to be listened to.

The second and less obvious connection that takes place is the deepest possible healing of herbal medicine: the knowledge that we are not alone, that nature, the Earth, and life itself will step forward to assist us. Our food and medicine are all around us: the plants right under our feet. Nature is not separate from us; we are a part of the great circle.

Our first act of healing is to build community: to get to know our neighbors, our families, and ultimately to grope our way towards the deepest expression of our own selves that we can. At the same time, we need to become more knowledgeable about the greater community we live in — we should know from where our water comes and to where it goes, what kind of plants and trees grow around us and which are edible or medicinal, which way is north and when the moon is full. All of this will lead to a greater connection to the world beyond the human, the great world that encompasses us all.

BECOMING RESPONSIBLE
In modern medicine, patients look to doctors for the answer and then do “what the doctor orders”. Part of the philosophy of holistic medicine is that the client needs to take responsibility for his or her own health and healing. After all, herbs and drugs and even massage can only stimulate the body in certain ways. What matters is what our bodies do with that stimulus.

Whatever system of medicine we choose to use, we need to take responsibility for our own health: to ask questions, to listen to our own body and intuition, and to be open to the answers. And just as importantly, we need to be willing to take the necessary actions.

Just so in the greater world: we are part of a species that has had a huge effect on the earth and its creatures, including our own species. It is our responsibility to work against the negative effects we have on the earth and to begin creating positive alternatives.

To survive, we must take responsibility for our actions, recognize and honor our connection to all that is, and to think creatively about solutions. Just as holistic medicine treats individuals and not just the disease they have, we must work with each problem on its own terms. This is holistic healing on the grand scale, not just dealing with environmental problems as they arise, but working towards a greater goal of balance in our own lives, for all humans and for the future of the planet.

CoreyPine Shane is a Holistic Clinical Herbalist, Director of the Blue Ridge School of Herbal Medicine, and environmental activist. In his practice, he combines the philosophies of Chinese and Western medicine, using primarily local herbs. His website is www.blueridgeschool.org. He can be contacted at 828-275-6221.

Check out other NLJ articles on this topic:
:Plant Healing, Fire Wisdom

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