Natural Remedies and How They Work

An herbal preparation is medicinal, but I always feel a bit ambivalent about calling it a medicine. That word is too often used interchangeably with the word "drug." That's why I prefer the term medicinal. It makes you pause and open your mind to a different sort of concept, and it's a word that hasn't been worn out yet. Another option, "remedy," sounds a little quaint—conjuring up visions of soda fountains and old-fashioned pharmacies. But it has an appeal, too, since it implies correction rather than covering up. To drug someone is one thing; to remedy, on the other hand, is a different matter entirely—it carries a sense of ^"setting right.^"

Interestingly, the word remedy is usually reserved for the more nat­ural agents, such as herbs and homeopathics—and rightly so, I think. In fact, how we use the expressions ^"to drug^" or ^"to remedy^" in casual speech reflects how differently we see the workings of pharmaceutical drugs and natural medicinals. To me, they appear to act in exactly oppo­site ways.

Drugs are most often chemical compounds (usually synthetic) designed to alter metabolic reactions. They interfere with targeted bio­chemical processes in your body. This may reduce or even get rid of cer­tain symptoms, but generally this happens through ^"biochemical manhandling.^" Drugs set out to wrench around a metabolic reaction, when something in the overall system is trying to make it go a different way. That "something" that keeps pushing to make things go the way they were before you took the drug is usually an outmoded way of func­tioning. But since it operates on a level of organization higher than the molecular, it is not set right by this approach and continues to push. You may even feel the conflict between the action of the drug and the impulse within you, so that the drug effect feels "foreign."

Often the drug also disrupts other biochemical processes in your body besides the one that was targeted. Therefore, even though your nose is less stuffy (the intended result), your alertness is diminished (interference with pathways in the brain—not an intended result). Meanwhile, the dis­ease process remains. Only its full expression is thwarted. That is why conventional medical people today rarely speak of "cure." In fact, to do so is often considered suspect. They talk instead of "disease management."

Remedies are quite different in their action. They are natural substances that are chosen with the intent to correct an underlying problem. They prompt and support a "reorganization of the basic operating plan,^" so that the underlying push toward disorder is eliminated. This is often done by bringing the disorder out so that it is more obvious and can be resolved: your fever may go higher, or your anger may become more bla­tant. The higher fever may kill off microbes associated with your illness; the anger may sweep your interpersonal issues out into the open, where they demand attention and resolution. As a result, you attain a fuller sense of well-being and vitality, and the energy and motivation to move enthusiastically to the next challenge in your life. To understand how these miraculous results might be possible, we must dig a bit deeper into the basic nature of natural remedies.

Natural remedies are made from any number of substances plucked out of the complex web of nature: leaves, roots, flowers—even mineral deposits or insects. Each such component of the natural world has some basic quality or essence that sets it apart and makes it unique. Analysis of humans also reveals groups of similars, groupings of functional likeness: we have allergic children, adults with slow metabolism or Type A per­sonalities.

In the Western mind, however, classes of plants and classes of humans belong to separate universes. If I asked about a similarity between the daisy and the hyperactive child, I'd be regarded as confused. One of the least known truths of natural science, however, is that there are basic organizational patterns that cut across our commonly accepted categories. A given quality or essence can underlie both the flower and the hyperactive child. This is based on the fact that both are functional components of a larger, encompassing natural order.

We have libraries of books on botany and even more on human phys­iology and disease, but we have lost all awareness of how these two sci­ences relate to one another, how their objects of study are parts of a whole. Yet two classes of "cells" in the organism called Nature—a par­ticular plant and a specific person—can share a certain pattern of func­tion. When they do, their congruence creates a resonance that can be used therapeutically.

Such patterns may be obvious in the physical appearance of the plant. Their expression in the person, on the other hand, is likely to be subtler, coloring physiological functioning perhaps, or even the way thoughts flow in the mind. For example, the aspen tree has leaves that tremble or "quake" in the wind. Its flower essence is frequently used to calm the anxious mind. Something of the nature of that plant is echoed in the person^''s neurophysiology and in his or her mental processes. Although this principle is quite foreign to what has until recently been considered sci­entific thinking, it may become a key element in the science of the future. It is certainly a fundamental part of the medical wisdom of the past.

Let^'s look at the principle more closely: A bowl is an expression of a circle. So is the edge of a coin or the iris of your eye. Each of these exists in a very mundane, obvious way, but the underlying pattern, the proto­typical circle of which they are all examples, exists somehow in a more subtle and less obvious way. That's the "essence" or pattern of which they are all expressions.

This is not a new idea. Plato talked about it. In fact the circle is his example. It^'s a good one because it^'s one of the simplest patterns in nature. Most of nature's patterns are more complex. The way I'm functioning at this moment is an expression of some complex pattern that is not my sole property, and is likely to be expressed in other places in nature—in a cer­tain plant or mineral, perhaps. The mysterious similarity between the organizational pattern of a person who is unwell and that of a leaf or root is the key to the power of natural medicine, and the search for patterns in nature that match conditions observed in sick people is the essence of the science of healing through natural remedies.

... Meanwhile, as a growing population marches off to the practitioners of alternative care, naturopathic medical schools are springing up around the country to provide academic training in natural medicine. They teach a spectrum of holistic traditions: Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda, homeopathy, nutrition, as well as herbal medicine. They are, we might imagine, the Eclectic medical schools reincarnated.

This reappearance of schools of natural medicine and, indeed, the larger holistic movement of which they are only a small part, suggest that we are witnessing another resurgence of the deep human need to recover our relationship with the healing power of nature. And once again it involves—as it probably always does—a return to reverence for the ther­apeutic potential of plants, an appreciation of that peculiar quality inher­ent in the plant that has the capacity to draw us back into the complex network of interacting forces that we call Nature.

My friend Sally is flushed. She looks anxious and a bit flustered. "What's going on?^" I ask. ^`I^'m not feeling too great, ^"she says. "I went to see my doctor because I had a sore throat. I got worried that maybe it was something serious.^" She pauses, as if for dramatic effect, and lowers her voice. ^"He said I have pharyngitis.^"

Though she is obviously impressed, I'm not. "But, but - "I begin to sputter—too exasperated to stop and explain calmly that pharynx is sim­ply Greek for "throat" and -itis is a suffix meaning "inflamed." "That just means you have a sore throat! And you already knew that!^" She looks at me blankly, as if to say, "What are you talking about?"

Sally wasn't given information that might clarify what was happen­ing in her throat. Input like "Your throat is probably sore from the irri­tation of the postnasal drainage I can see dripping down the back of it" might have been helpful—it would have crystallized the doctor's understanding, and offered the patient a chance to ratify the doctor's hypothe­sis: "Yes. I think that's it! When the pollen came out, I felt the drip start down the back of my throat. It was the following day that my throat got really sore." The doctor thus confirms what he thought - or not - and the patient gets the benefit of the doctor's expertise in furthering her own understanding of what is happening to her and of how it fits into the process of her life.

But Sally had experienced a very different interaction between her doctor and herself. She had been given a simple diagnosis by renaming. This relabeling communicates to the patient not information or insight, but rather the message "You are not in charge of this situation." Renaming is, in effect, a ritual use of words. It formalizes a specific kind of relationship between the doctor and the patient. In an almost magical way, it transforms the doctor into the knower and doer, and the patient into the more passive receiver.

By pronouncing mysterious medical words, the doctor asserts his knowledge, power, and dominion. If the patient accepts the complemen­tary role, a sort of hypnotism might ensue: "By virtue of this ritual, you are now in control, Doctor. I am a helpless and passive recipient of your powerful interventions. By using a term that is not of my world, you have removed this transaction from the realm of what is knowable to me. I will accept your recommendations unquestioningly. If I were to show doubt or reservations, you would be justified in being indignant—for I would have violated this covenant we are now agreeing upon.

Seventy two-year-old Margaret sat before me squirming with dis­comfort. She wanted to get off Mevacor, a drug given to lower her cholesterol, but she was clearly ambivalent. Maybe afraid would be a more correct word. The Great White Father—or at least the father in the great white coat—had handed down his verdict. Could she risk going against that? "Well," she said, shifting around in her chair again and holding her handbag in her lap as though it were her only anchor in this most epic battle of medical philosophies, "My doctor says I should take it."

If this other guy was "her doctor," who was I? To say that I was miffed by her choice of words would be an understatement, and yet I understood her dilemma. After a lifetime of faithfully following the pronouncements of medical orthodoxy—and of feeling that it was one of the few solid, reliable touchstones in a world of growing uncer­tainties—she was now faced with the prospect of rebelling. It wasn't easy. As an elderly woman, she was taking a stand against the world of male authority. Was she putting her life at risk? If she stopped the Mevacor, would she have a heart attack—as "her doctor" had implied?

Yet she was sure that it wasn^'t agreeing with her: In some way that was difficult to articulate, it didn^'t feel right inside of her—she had a tiredness and heaviness since she had started the medication. Those feelings began to lift when she skipped a few doses. This firsthand information was a clear signal from her own body. Which was she to obey—her own sense of truth, or the judgment of the powerful man in the white coat? I think what tipped the balance for her was an off-hand remark made by the doctor at her last visit. He had said casually, "You seem to be doing so well on one tablet a day, why not take two?"

Though this comment was meant to be upbeat and supportive, Margaret didn't take it that way. She had been working very hard to improve her diet and to exercise. She thought that the improvement he had found in her blood cholesterol had been the result of these efforts, and she'd hoped, I think, for some acknowledgment of this. Instead, this official in the white coat not only credited the medication (indi­rectly claiming credit for himself), but seemed to advocate an unnecessary additional dosage as well. I think his attitude represented an extreme of medication-mindedness that went too far for her. She had to declare her independence. And she did.

Margaret stopped the Mevacor. It was a great act of courage. And she felt better - physically, I think, from the elimination of the medication from her system, but also, and more important, psychologically from hav­ing taken back her power as the architect of her own destiny. She sat straighter and acted more decisively about her health matters. She was in the driver's seat now.

Most of us are drawn, at one time or another, into the seductive com­fort and security of giving over our care to the impressive and well established world of conventional medicine. This is not surprising. At those moments when we are sick, when we are most vulnerable, that world is most appealing with its promises of power, reliability, and pro­tection. Psychologists speak of regression at the time of illness—a phenomenon I first learned about when I was a sophomore in college and came down with a sort of flu.

I felt achy, feverish, and confused. My roommate came in from class to find me packing my suitcase. "Where are you going?" he asked. "Home,^" I mumbled." I don't feel well. I'm going home." Never mind that home was 250 miles away and that I didn't have a car or any idea of what public transportation was available on this day or at this time. All those considerations were too rational for me at that moment. I was sick. I felt miserable. It was clear to me that I needed to go home.

Reason and my roommate finally prevailed, and I was persuaded to go to the Student Health Service. But I remember the strong feeling of wanting to fold myself in the arms of parental protection and omni­science—the same impulse that often drives us into the apparent security of reputable hospitals and well-appointed clinics.

In some instances, taking refuge may actually be a valid move toward genuine healing. At times, it is important to acknowledge and simply be with your feelings of helplessness and powerlessness in the face of an illness that you might have been struggling with fruitlessly for so long. At times you simply need to say, "I'm sick. I give up. I need help."

Yet acknowledging your helplessness and accepting that you are in the midst of a major dilemma is only the initial challenge—the first step into the process of healing. You must go on to other steps, dig deep within yourself, find new resources, and come to grapple creatively with the illness at hand. If you linger too long in the Lotus Land of the passive patient and the omnipotent doctor, you might find yourself in serious trouble. Deepening physical pathology, compounded by the side effects of medications, surgery, and an increasing entanglement in a complex med­ical system where being a patient can become a way of life are some of the risks you run when you tarry there.

If you find yourself repeatedly drawn to this passive role, if you find its appeal irresistibly seductive, your best bet is to respond to this tendency with curiosity and observe it with interest. Though getting stuck there is a danger, seeing that it has a pull for you provides valuable information. It may be evidence of an unconscious attraction to a regressive scenario of reunion with an idealized and impossibly Good Mother. This basic psychological stance can underlie many disorders, both emotional and physical, and working with it—whether by means of remedies or energy work directly with the mind—is a fundamental aspect of holistic healing.

So even when letting go is useful in the treatment process, in order to move on in your healing you will need to evolve out of the passive/recipient stage, and take charge of yourself. This is an important step toward the spiritual attunement that might be considered the ultimate goal of healing.

The ideal health practitioner will be alert to the need for a passive period of rest, but will be watching for the recovery of sufficient strength that might signal that it's time to initiate a process of cooperative work. Unfortunately, most clinicians are not sufficiently mature or well enough trained to be capable of such a range of responses, and often they continue to follow their routine—so that if you want to change gears, you have to change doctors.

In any case, the renaming ritual has little to do with diagnosis in the  literal sense of the word. It is not an effort to throw light on the patient^'s trouble. In fact, it is not, in the truest sense of the word, a diagnosis at all. It is, more accurately, a non-diagnosis.

ANOTHER PITFALL WHEN YOU GO THE RENAMING ROUTE

Diagnosis by renaming not only transforms the roles of doctor and patient. It also often creates a new player in this drama: the Disease. This is another aspect to the magic of conferring a Name. The very act of bestowing the name implies the existence of an entity that will receive that name."What do I have, Doctor? I just want to know what it is." We are like children who want to know the name of the monster. Although the unknown and unnamed make us anxious, naming can too. It conjures up an image and that image takes on a reality that has its own power and that also inspires fear.

Arnie Mindell is a psychiatrist who helps people move beyond that  fear. I had an opportunity to experience his work, and here is the scene I encountered:

We are in a huge conference room. Sixty people, mostly psy­chotherapists, are in a large circle that takes up most of the room. After a brief demonstration, we each choose a symptom. Mine is a cough that I have had for four years on and off. First, he says, describe to your partner what this symptom does. I move my hand up the underside of her upstretched arm. I am digging and pushing. This is the way the impulse to cough feels as it moves up my chest. "What does it look like?" asks Arnie. "A mole," I reply instantly. There was no doubt this thing burrowed up my chest like a mole." Give it a name!" "Malicious Mole," I dubbed it.

But Arnie didn't stop there because simply naming the symptom and conferring upon it an independent existence would leave us with an external, unintegrated enemy—something to fear and be assailed by endlessly. He goes another, crucial step: "Now," said Arnie, "ask this being what its message is to you. "My Malicious Mole was urg­ing me to be aggressive, to roar my agony and my indignation when I was pushed around. So I did. Now my monster had become my ally. It was there to remind me when I forgot to speak up for myself. No longer a split-off source of suffering and attack, it was a friend—a part of myself that fought for me.

Diagnosis by renaming—without the further step of analysis and integration—can create an entity outside yourself that can victimize you. So when the patient asks me, "Do you think I have arthritis? My doctor said I have arthritis," she is not asking whether she has inflamed joints. That is, of course, all that the term means in a literal sense: arth = joint, -itis = inflamed. Rather, she is asking whether there is a disease somewhere, separate in a sense from her, that has attacked her: "Do you agree that I am now a victim of this entity called 'Arthritis'—is there a Disease that has taken hold of my body?" If I respond, "Yes, you have arthritis," with the intention of saying, "Yes, your joints are inflamed," this is not what is communicated. Instead, she hears, "Yes, you are now subject to this thing that we call the Arthritis Disease." She may then accede to that and hive out a long and tragic course of deterioration and pain. Or, if she's strong enough, she might fight back: "Well, I don't believe it!"

But if I say, "No, I don't think you have arthritis," she'll most likely be relieved: "Oh, thank you, Doctor!" I have said, in effect, "No, I will not conspire with this effort to give over your power to some imaginary external entity that will systematically destroy your joints and progres­sively cripple you. Instead, I stand beside you as an advocate who believes that you can heal your body, and that it is under your ultimate control." No wonder if she thanks me!

I might have said, "Yes, it's arthritis. Let's see what this arthritis has to say to you." In that case, my aim would have been to get her to listen to this entity^'s message to her and to integrate it back into herself as a pos­itive, contributing aspect of her consciousness. But, unlike my Malicious Mole—an entity I invented—"Arthritis" has a long history of playing on this stage, and my patient is likely to get stuck there. Ideas about disease are so prevalent, and they take on such an immediate legitimacy and power, that I am loath to give them life. Once created, the Arthritis mon­ster may well get out of hand, and my patient may leave my office clear that the Arthritis is a reality, but vague about my efforts to help her inte­grate it back into her consciousness.

We all need to be alert to such pitfalls along the way of "diagnosis by renaming." It is easy to slip into such thinking without realizing it. Maybe this sort of diagnosis shouldn't be termed "diagnosis" at all, a word that literally means "through knowing" (dia = through, gnosis = knowing). When we create an unintegrated entity outside ourselves by renaming, when we create the disease "arthritis,"for example, or "asthma," this is not a way of "knowing." In any case, it's certainly not the kind of "knowing" that is likely to result in healing.

In Eastern thought, "to know" has several possible meanings. One, to know through names, is notoriously subject to deception and confusion. The other, knowing by direct connection or empathic fusion, is regarded as part of the "Royal Path" to enlightenment and wisdom. It is this second sort of knowing that the practitioner of meditation aims to master. It involves an obliteration of the separation between subject and object. The Sanskrit term used for this process is samyama--"to become one with."' This sort of knowing is the essence of healing or "making whole again"—since it can bring back together the parts of the whole that were separate.