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Healthcare Paradigm Shift: Use of Ancient Healing Techniques

A few years ago when I asked an audience how many people did a meditation practice on a daily basis or knew what Reiki was – very few would raise their hands. I am pleasantly surprised to now observe more hands rising when I ask about meditation, or other ancient healing techniques (like Reiki). More people are seeking alternative healing approaches to reduce stress, to relax, to augment their traditional healthcare team for a particular illness and to explore – at a deeper level – the mind-body connection.

Offering Reiki at Four Directions Wellness

Healthcare system is evolving:

How does the song go? You know the one by Bob Dylan that says “the times they are a changing..” There is a slow but quickening interest in ancient healing modalities. Our current healthcare system is excellent. We are so lucky to have expert physicians, physician assistants, nurses, therapists, nurse’s aides and others supporting our healthcare system. As our healthcare system continually evolves, there is an interest to combine the best of all healing approaches. Combining the best of western medicine with eastern medicine. Combining the best of physical health with mental health. Combining the best of ancient healing modalities, including spiritual components, with our current healthcare structure. These changes will mean a new healthcare paradigm. The healthcare system is transitioning to a “whole person” evaluation as more practitioners recognize that our thoughts, emotions, stressors and physical demands are interconnected, requiring us to work with the whole of the individual.

What are some of the reasons that we are exploring alternative approaches?

I will mention that, in part, this is happening because of concerns for opioid addiction and other prescription drugs. People are seeking alternative approaches to drugs to reduce pain and lessen physical symptoms.

There are other reasons too. In our hectic lives, we are finding that people have higher levels of anxiety, depression and other symptoms impacting their ability to be content and happy. The ancient healing modalities – for the most part – help slow us down. Help us to breathe more deeply, to relax, to find peace and calmness and to allow our bodies to innately heal when connecting to that more centering approach.

There are many other reasons as well including care coordination, higher healthcare costs, lower U.S. life expectancy, patient’s personal interest for alternatives and many more. Yet the trend towards adoption of these techniques is increasing each year.

What changes when the healthcare system adopts ancient healing modalities?

One of the best parts of working with the ancient healing modalities is the opportunity to get back to individualized care. The patient or client work in a partnership with all of their practitioners. The practitioner is no longer dictating the next steps but rather it is a joint process with the patient actively involved in his or her healing too. After all, who knows a body better than the actual person inhabiting it?

This process requires consideration of all aspects including body-mind-emotions and spirit. The “whole person” approach is excellent for preventative care as issues get addressed early on such as visible stress impacting emotions and the physical body. The whole person is also excellent for chronic conditions, developing a more extensive plan to support the person and his/her symptoms. The person, our excellent traditional healthcare system and integrative or holistic healthcare is the future!

What type of healing modalities is available?

There are many different types of healing modalities available. It’s fascinating to research various cultures to see what their ancient healing remedy might have been. Once you begin to review various cultures, it becomes apparent that most have similar objectives and goals. (And if you are also interested in learning more, please take a moment to review the Four Directions Wellness weekly blogs that delve into the old healing modalities.)

Here are some popular examples:

China: Acupuncture, Qigong and Tai Chi

Japan: Reiki

Roman/Greek: Meditation and Guided Imagery

India: Chakras and Yoga

Native American: Shamanism

There are so many more. If you have a strong association with your particular lineage or another culture, I would encourage you to investigate to find the culture’s healing perspectives.

Each individual has an opportunity to try one or better yet, work with the practitioner to explore various approaches.

You might find that you like doing a Yoga routine but later want to incorporate Reiki into your daily routine. You can use just one technique or have fun exploring several of them at one time.

I personally have found that I could spend decades learning, training and using each technique. There is so much to explore and to incorporate into our lives for better health and awareness.

What should you consider when choosing a practitioner?

Healthcare providers are currently considering approaches for inclusion into our medical care for health and wholeness. As they do, they are establishing credentials required for the practitioners – not accepting only weekend certifications. It is important to carefully evaluate your practitioner.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

Your Gut Feeling: Check in with your gut. If the practitioner does not seem sincere, honest or able to listen to you, its time to find another practitioner. Trust your gut. If you sense any significant emotional issues or concerns with your practitioner, time to move on. If you feel unsafe or the practitioner is inappropriate, it is absolutely time to move on.

Certifications/Training: Evaluate them. If they only have one weekend training and that’s it, find another practitioner. This is important because the success of the ancient healing modality is contingent on the practitioner doing his or her personal work. (They need to practice walking the walk before talking the talk.) You want to know that they are committed to both their own inner work and that of yours. More importantly, that they have really spent time working on fully encompassing the healing modality.

Integrated with Others: Helpful but not necessarily required. If the practitioner is tied to a recognized group such as a healthcare system or well-known mental health group, that is very good. This is a trend that is just beginning to happen so your practitioner may still be excellent but not integrated with anyone.

How do you feel? The practitioner’s healing technique should feel better not worse when they are working on you. There are some exceptions to this rule but in general, if it does not then you may want to see someone else. (One caveat: If your session was intense, it may bring up uncomfortable emotions. An emotional release may be just what is needed at that moment. Be sure to talk to your practitioner.)

Finally – Your Commitment: With any ancient healing technique, you are an active partner with the practitioner. Be ready to explore, delve deeper, ask questions and be prepared to do homework to support yourself! Awareness and connecting with your personal intuition is all part of the wonderful process.

Australian Bush Medicine: Australian Aboriginal Healing Practices

When you say “the bush” in the United States, you likely think of shrubbery and landscape design. But, the bush in Australian culture is as iconic as the Outback. To Australians, the bush means lush, barely-inhabited regions of their mainland (whereas Outback represents the more dry, interior areas of the continent). And, Aussies have attached bush to many terms over time, including “Bush Music,” “Bush Cricket,” and the topic of here, Australian bush medicine.

Throughout the course of history of the Australian Aboriginal peoples, bush medicine proves itself a competent healthcare system that helped manage wellness for them until the arrival of colonists in the late 18th century. I will cover its history and practices, fundamentals of Australian bush medicine, and where we find the ancient healing practices of the bush today.

History of Australian Bush Medicine

The first convicts arrived in what is now modern-day Sydney, Australia, in January 1788. The first of its kind, Australia started as a “purpose-designed penal colony,” notes the Booker Prize-winning historian and author, Thomas Keneally, in “Convicts and colonisers: the early history of Australia.” And, with these convict-colonizers came exotic diseases to the native people of Australia, the Australian Aborigines.

Throughout the next several generations and hundred plus years, Aborigines went from the kings and queens of their domain to an endangered species. But, it wasn’t always that way. And, it wouldn’t stay that way. While the populations were decimated by conflict and new illnesses brought by these British outcasts, the Australian Aboriginal tribes were resilient in the face of great odds.

Dr. Philip Clarke, anthropologist in the ethnographical collections of the South Australian Museum since the early 1980’s, studies the Aboriginal people and their ethnomedicinal practices in particular over these past 30 years. What he has learned, detailed more fully in his article, “Aboriginal healing practices and Australian bush medicine,” is intriguing, and I’ll summarize the pertinent points next about the framework through which the Australian Aborigines view and practice their Australian bush medicine.

Australian Bush Medicine Was All About Community and Eating Right

These natives of the Australian continent see health, generally, similarly to the way in which we do in the Western world today, in that our mental and physical health are intertwined. But, they go further than that in the way in which they see the health of any given person. It’s not dissimilar to many of the other ancient cultures’ healing practices that we have discussed. The mind, body, emotion and spirit are distinctly connected to the health of the individual and to the community as a whole.

For intents and purposes, there is a general understanding among the Australian Aboriginal tribes that you are as healthy as you eat. Eating right, eating well, is a fundamental component of your health and wellbeing. So, that’s certainly something we can all learn from, in terms of watching what we eat, so that we can prevent illness in the first place and stay healthy throughout our life.

If someone in the Australian Aboriginal community is ill physically or emotionally, a ngangkari (healer) handles the matter, acting as part-doctor, part-shaman and psychiatrist in their culture. Further, ngankeres are charged with diagnosing the community’s health along with that of the individual; if something that affected one person is caused by the community, that needs to be remedied as much as the individual physical or emotional ailment. The importance of keeping the tribe intact and healthy is very important to these people.

And, then there are the treatments of Australian bush medicine, deeply rooted in the herbalism provided by the lush flora and fauna of the Australian bush.

Australian Bush Medicine: Ancient Herbalism Through Today

For nearly a dozen millennia, the Aboriginal leaders learned and developed Australian bush medicine. And, as is customary among the Aboriginal tribes and clans, this knowledge of the plant-based medicines was handed down from generation to generation through ritual song and dance. Unfortunately, as with many cultures that only pass wisdom by oral tradition and not by producing a pharmacopeia, much of Australian bush medicine is being lost to time as culture changes.

The herbal uses of Australian bush medicine are diminishing and it behooves anthropological and medical researchers to study these ancient healing practices. We are learning that there are modern medical breakthroughs coming from it, including the use of turmeric as an anti-inflammatory. So, thankfully, there is a bit of interest around cataloguing and maintaining at least the ethnobotanical parts of bush medicine.

For example, Emu bush leaves, originating from the Northern Territory tribes, have antibacterial and antiseptic properties when applied to the body. As noted in the Australian Geographic, “Top 10 Aboriginal bush medicines,” these leaves are being studied by scientists as a sterilizing agent for implants. Among the other Australian bush medicines, that many of us know about here in the States are tea tree oil (antiseptic properties) and eucalyptus oil (used as mouthwash and cough suppressant).

On the other hand, there are others you may never have heard of from the same article, including:

Billy goat plum (highest source of Vitamin C on the planet),
Snake vine, or Tinospora smilacina (anti-inflammatory used as headache, rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammation-associated issues), and
Kangaroo apple, or Solanum laciniatum / Solanum aviculare (used as a swollen joint covering because it contains a steroid).

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There are many others, and it’s important for us to learn the bush medicinal properties in the complementary, integrative medical field, to perpetuate the Australian Aboriginal wisdom that can help people in and beyond the bush today and tomorrow.

Emotional Wellness Through Ikigai

Japanese Key to Living Longer, Healthier

What is your purpose today? Tomorrow? This month? This year? In life?

These can be tough questions to ask ourselves because they’re even more difficult to answer. But, what if we could answer them more easily, readily? And, with these answers, we could take regular action that would produce greater emotional well-being?

To get there, I believe you need to understand ikigai (pronounced “ee-kee-g-eye”). It stems from two Japanese words: iki (life) plus gai (purpose). However, it is about what you do, not so much about navel-gazing about why you are Earth.

In honor of Emotional Wellness Month, I believe that by understanding ikigai’s roots–and what it is–the Western world can learn from this ancient Japanese principle and gain greater emotional well-being, happiness and productivity along the journey.

Origins of Ikigai

In 2008, Dan Buettner, a National Geographic Fellow and New York Times-bestselling author, published his book, The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest. Thanks to the marketing success of The Blue Zones, we all got a glimpse into the world’s five identified “blue zones,” where the longest-lived people exist and thrive, and why they do.

The five blue zones on Earth are:

Sardinia (Italy)
Ikaria (Greece)
Loma Linda, California
Nicoya Peninsula (Costa Rica)

And…

Holding the title of “most centegenerians on the planet,” most women over the age of 100, and the birthplace of karate is Okinawa, Japan.

And, Buettner argues, among others, that ikigai is one of the primary reasons for Okinawans’ remarkable longevity and emotional well-being.

Throughout the cultural development of Okinawa, during the Heian period (794 to 1185 CE) the word ikigai came into being. This is likely when the components of the ancient well-being framework starts to metamorphose from individual habits and mores of the few, to the cultural norms they are today. And, when Buettner introduced the West to it, thankfully, the notion of its power has begun to spread. Let’s continue on to learn about what these components of ikigai are.

What is Ikigai?

According to the Japanese, every person has ikigai. The noble human purpose is to find and keep finding your reason to get up in the morning. This is your ikigai.

In Awakening Your Ikigai: How the Japanese Wake Up to Joy and Purpose Every Day (2018), Japanese neuroscientist, author and radio host Ken Mogi, PhD, unpacks ikigai for the everyday person. In Japan, ikigai is well-known and everyone knows the term, even if they cannot define it equally.

Mogi’s book introduces the five pillars he believes will help you take each day to the next level:

starting small → focus on the details
releasing yourself → accept who you are
harmony and sustainability → rely on others
the joy of little things → appreciate sensory pleasure
being in the here and now → find your flow.

Another book on the topic is Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life (2017) by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles. In it, the authors explain its ten activities:

Keep moving throughout the day.
Take it slow. Quality over quantity.
Eat less than your stomach demands. (The Japanese use the phrase, hara hachi bu, before meals.)
Surround yourself with friends.
Stay fit.
Smile.
Reconnect with nature.
Give thanks. Show and feel gratitude.
Live in the moment.
Follow your ikigai.

Each of these components, wrapping Mogi and García and Miralles’ lists together, you get a whole picture of the elements that encompass ikigai. But, how do you find yours?

How to Add Ikigai to Your Life

As Tim Tamashiro notes in his lighthearted TEDxYYC talk, “How to Ikigai,” you can start your process with adding ikigai to your life, by starting “part-time.” That is, if you work a nine-to-five job, then you can add ikigai from five to nine o’clock in the morning and evening (the “five-to-nines”). Both periods are your time and allow you to build your life purpose.

Ikigai is often represented with one of two Venn diagrams; above is the lotus version by David McCandless and is the most comprehensive roadmap to finding it that I’ve seen. To find yours, essentially, you ask yourself four questions:

What are you good at?
What does the world need?
What do you love?
What earns you money?

As you branch through these various questions and answers, you find your ikigai. Remember, it changes as you live your life. So, while you may have one now, you may have another later on down the road.

As Tamashiro further explains, you can start a “side hustle” (money-earning endeavor; nothing wrong with making money!), or you can seek a higher well-being through a “side helpful” (giving back to your community, or the world in some way). As Dr. Laurie Santos of Yale University has studied and taught in her popular The Science of Well-Being course (which you can take for free on Coursera), there are four activities/factors for people to consider when choosing something like a “side helpful”: kindness, meditation, time affluence (how much time you have to use the way you want to), and spending time with friends and family. Look at your life and think about how you can add one of the activities, or increase your time affluence in the five-to-nines.

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Ikigai is a powerful paradigm for greater emotional well-being in our Western world focused on short-term fixes, money, and selfies. If we can slow down, embrace the searching journey in our lives, and continually improve our reason for getting up in the morning, we can all enjoy longevity and a bit more happiness.

Care to share: What is your ikigai?

Ancient African Healing Methods, Part 2: Traditional African Medicine

“The future must come and look at the past, to learn from the past.”
~ Erick Gbodossou, MD (traditional healer and Western-trained physician)
from the Andrew J. Young documentary, Strong Medicine: The Secret Power of African Healing.

Dr. Gbodossou’s words ring true today more than any other time in history. Scientific advances have learned (using CRISPR technology) to rewrite our DNA and possibly cure currently incurable medical conditions. At the same time, we have large swaths of the world that live in poverty and those of us in the richest parts of the world still suffering from chronic pain and illnesses that won’t abate.

By looking to the past, especially to ancient African healing practices as we discussed in our last article on African healing methods, we can see how complementary, integrative medicines that look to the wisdom of ancient cultures can be beneficial today.

Santaría

There is sometimes confusion related to the practice of Santaría—a religious practice of Caribbean origin, also known as Regla de Ocha or La Regla de Ifá—and the practice of Traditional African medicine. While it developed from slaves brought from West Africa to the Americas in as early as the 16th century. All that to say, that Santaría may be used throughout Latin America as part of a spiritual healing practice, but it’s not Traditional African Medicine…at all.

Santería, or “worship of saints,” is heavily influenced by Roman Catholicism and its healing traditions stem from spiritual influences of Europe and West Africa. The herbalism of these different continental practices mix together in Santería, while the spiritism and homeopathy of the healing traditions come predominantly from Latin America.

Impact on Illnesses such as Ebola

Without a proper understanding of how Traditional African Medicine healers and the general public understands and communicates with others about such things, real life consequences ensue.

According to The Pan African Medical Journal’s study, as published on the National Institutes of Health’s US National Library of Medicine, “The impact of traditional and religious practices on the spread of Ebola in West Africa: time for a strategic shift,”

Scientifically-based methods of combatting the spread of highly infectious diseases like Ebola are normally preferred, with very little considerations given to the impact of traditional and religious practices on preventive measures [6]. However, recent trends in West Africa have demonstrated that the use of scientific methods alone without a holistic consideration of other contextual factors is not sufficient to control the disease. For example, an analysis of media reports and recent studies [7] in West Africa reveals notable resistance against prescribed scientific ways of combating the transmission of Ebola in some affected communities. …the influence of religious and cultural beliefs cannot be denied. It is, thus, important that we recognize the impact that traditional and religious practices can have on health promotion interventions. It is also important that we acknowledge ethnic and cultural diversity among communities. … Understanding these ethno-social dynamics should help policy-makers with formulation of disease prevention approaches that are culturally tolerated by affected communities.

Given the challenges faced with ongoing efforts to contain the spread of Ebola that arise as a result of incompatibilities between some religious and cultural practices and prescribed scientific methods, it is high time we explore ways in which traditional and religious structures can be effectively implored in combatting the spread of Ebola. … As Alexander et al. [9] argue, a consideration of traditional and religious practices is critical to our understanding of transmission dynamics and subsequent control of highly infectious diseases. … As custodians of the day-to-day cultural values, traditional and religious leaders command more respect and authority in their communities than unfamiliar trained health personnel, who can be easily be viewed as having suspicious agendas.

This paper could not make this point more astutely—the more we try to ignore or reject Traditional African Medicine, the more peoples of the African continent will ignore or reject the injection of Western medicine into their healthcare practices for whatever reasons. We need to learn those reasons and integrate good medicine with good medicine, so we can be more effective in treatments both of the body and mind in all countries.

Healthcare in Africa Today | African Ancient Healing Methods

Image Credit

Briefly, I want to touch on healthcare in Africa today. Africa has a long way to go to resolving its healthcare status on the planet. It’s currently at around 14% of the world’s population while it holds the seeds of 54% of the globe’s communicable disease burden and only two percent of the world’s doctors. This must change for global economic growth, and the safety of everyone on Earth as we all become global citizens.

This is not a “Traditional African Medicine only way to fix this” answer. It will require bringing all medical assets to the table and challenging both traditional healers, affected populations and Western medical researchers and practitioners to come together and find workable solutions.

Modern Usage, Modern Medicine | African Ancient Healing Methods

Ethnopharmacology and ethnomedicine are going medical research fields today with great implications for integrative, complementary medicine in Africa. Back to the 2013-14 ebola epidemic, in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology’s paper, published in 2016, “Ethnomedical and ethnobotanical investigations on the response capacities of Guinean traditional health practitioners in the management of outbreaks of infectious diseases: The case of the Ebola virus epidemic.” it’s noted that “all available knowledge on the traditional [African healers’] management of [Ebola Virus Disease]-like symptoms in order to evaluate systematically the anti-Ebola potential of Guinean plant species.” There is promise and an imperative in looking to the herbalism of ancient Africa to the pharmacological impact on diseases, both mental and biological, today.

From Ancient African healers to modernity, we see a full circle in terms of interest in African’s (and global medical practitioners’) usage of Traditional African Medicine. In Africa, more than Traditional Chinese Medicine in China, Africans use traditional African medicine. Some statistics note that more than 85% of the African nations’ populations seek healing from sangomas and inyangas. For that reason alone, we cannot simply right off their efficacy or impact on global health.

There is misdiagnosis that happens today throughout the African continent. And, if modern medicine and Traditional African Medicine can complement one another, this is an area for great benefit to the traditional healers and their patients.

Herbalism in Africa has been around for more than two hundred millennia. Although the documentation is scarce, the proof of the scientific veracity of these herbal remedies is only limited by medical researchers’ desires to study them.

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Traditional African Medicine is not simply a “Poor Person’s Medicine.” It can provide solutions for people of all means to find health and wellness, if they so choose to seek it out.

Getting to Know…YOU!

Do you remember the musical “The King and I?” If so, you likely remember the song “Getting to Know You.” Remember? The chorus sings “Getting to know you. Getting to know all about you. Getting to like you. Getting to hope you like me…”

Getting to know a person you just met, or even learning more about someone you have known for decades, offers us a chance to see that person through all of life’s ups and downs. We seek information on their family of origin, where they live now, things of common interest and learning how life has taken him or her on a journey. Some days, the person is on top of the world. Other days, he or she might feel as if they just can’t catch a break. We get to know them!

The same is really true for each of us personally. Each person is continually growing, expanding and stretching. Our experiences are constantly molding us. We may not realize it but we are constantly changing, even when we don’t feel there is any change or evolution.

In the wonderful movie, “Runaway Bride,”Julia Roberts is engaged to several men but always runs away on her wedding day. As she considers why she runs, she realizes that she really does not know herself all that well. For instance, she can’t decide how she likes her eggs. With each guy she dated, she would assume how he liked his eggs – scrambled, poached, sunny-side up, etc. To remedy the situation, Julia cooks all types of eggs and gives each a try. In the end, she determines that Eggs Benedict is her favorite type of egg.

So how do you like your eggs?

Life’s Challenges Make Us Look Deeper:

For most of us, we begin to look internally when life throws us significant challenges that can’t be resolved externally. The loss of a loved one, the loss of job, the diagnosis of a chronic illness, a search for a more meaningful life and so many other life challenges may draw us to being more introspective. The looming question of “who am I?” This requires that we separate from the external messages of who we are — the societal views, our family and friend’s perspective, and so on. Strip those away to find who is left standing at your very core.

Getting to Know…YOU

Where do you begin?

The best way to begin is to start with a journal.

Write whatever enters your mind and reflect on the issues, emotions and people that are prominent;
Pay attention to thoughts and issues as they creep into your head and write those down – no judgments on them but rather becoming aware of where your mind wanders;
Write down your dreams and pay attention to the themes and feeling that appear in your dreams;
List those things that you like;
List those things you really do not like;
Ask yourself what you are truly grateful for in this life;
Ask what needs to change in your life;
Watch and honestly record your motivations; and
Begin to delve into YOU!

Through this process, you gain insights into YOU. Who are you really? And more importantly, you begin your intuitive journey – connecting with your internal world and getting to know YOU better.

Ancient African Healing Methods, Part 1: History, Healers and Herbalism

While it’s common for us to discuss (and we will do so here) Africa as a whole, it’s important to remember that the second-largest continent on our planet is home to more than 50 sovereign nations. The African continent is split by the Equator and Prime Meridian, meaning that it is our only continent that sits in all four hemispheres. And, it stretches across both northern and southern temperate zones on the Earth.

We share our ancient human ancestry from those that inhabited the eastern portion of Africa dating back to around 100 to 150 millennia ago. This rich culture comes with it a deep knowledge and use of traditional medicine throughout the ages.

In this (and the next article), I want to share the storied uniqueness and the common, global medicinal threads that weave together ancient African healing methods. We will start with a history of Traditional African Medicine, their healers, and various ways healing takes place on the continent. Next week, we will review the way in which the media portrays African healthcare, and compare and contrast ancient African healing methods with modern medicine. To start, we must look to the past to see Africa’s healing roots.

History | Ancient African Healing Methods

Ancient African healing methods are well into their development before the history of Western civilizations recorded their own histories. As a culture, they predate all known written records, which makes it difficult to ascertain actual dates or knowledge known during specific periods. Oral traditions pass down medical knowledge and practices through the ages, from within one family, clan or tribe to the next generation.

Before colonialism, Africans used spiritual medicine solely as their means for healing. As colonial rule took hold during classical antiquity and later during European colonialism, ancient African healing methods went through a massive assault in favor of foreign medical treatments. While Africans continued to practice Traditional African Medicine for hundreds of years, this happened mostly in secrecy or with great discretion. Anyone practicing these techniques would be prosecuted as a criminal, since the new governments found these techniques to be opposed to their understanding and spiritual ways.

In 1981, South Africa legalizes parts of Traditional African Medicine again. Since then, we see a marked increase in the public reutilization of these ancient healing practices across rural African regions, even as Western medicine gained dominance in urban centers.

In the ancient African healing tradition, medicine is purely a catalyst for the body to heal itself. African healing is a process of the mind, body and spirit combined. To initiate this process, as I am about to explain, the traditional African healers’ roles in society were respected and revered.

Healers | Ancient African Healing Methods

African clans traditionally had faith healers, who managed many aspects of spiritual, political, medical, and legal life for their people. They also handled historical records (orally) for their tribes, passing along this wisdom from one generation of healers to the next.

In South Africa today, these ancient African healing practitioners are called sangomas and inyangas. These terms and roles are not uniform throughout the various African nations, but for continuity here, we’ll use these terms in this discussion.

It is also notable that, as of a 2007 South African law, sangomas/inyangas are recognized legally as “traditional health practitioners” for the purposes of herbalism, surgery, and midwifery.

Sangomas, historically speaking, are primarily spiritual healers and connect with their ancestral spirits to heal patients. Whereas, inyangas are primarily herbalists, who understand the medicinal combinations of regional plants. Mutis are those who source and prepare these spiritually curative medicines, if not done by the inyangas themselves. Today, “sangoma” is used colloquially for both titles of sangoma and inyanga, and frequently a sangoma performs both roles as a healing practitioner.

Uniquely, sangomas are usually chosen by a sickness that brings them to a traditional healer. From there, they begin their training, which can takes years. In almost all the stories I came across in writing this article, the sangomas are those who had fallen ill and couldn’t be healed by Western medicine, or are called by visions in their sleep. By ancient African healing, these sangomas find their calling and then start training to heal others. In this way, it is their belief that sangomas are interpreters of their ancestral spirits’ directions for healing and from these interpretations diagnosis and treatments are prescribed.

Ngoma and Herbalism | Ancient African Healing Methods

One of the ways that sangomas summon their ancestral spirits for diagnosis and treatment of disease is through ngoma. (This is the root of sangoma, the person who practices ngoma.) Ngoma is the ritual drumming and dancing that calls on ancestral spirits with the sangoma and patient, together with family members, or as whole tribes or clans together.

The other primary, and most apt for blending with Western medicine, is herbalism. Over the thousands and thousands of years, these ancient African healing practitioners have identified plants through trial-and-error that have curative properties. As we have discussed in the past with other cultures, Africans have amassed this knowledge in the sangomas. They use this wisdom in providing plant-based medicinal extracts and mixtures that can help patients with common ailments.

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While Traditional African Medicine can be seen as odd to the Western outsider, the fact that so many Africans rely on it as a primary form of medicine shows that more needs to be done in educating Africans about Western medicine that we know works. However, it’s foolhardy to not share in the vast knowledge about the herbalism and cultural understanding that sangomas share cross-culturally to study what we know in complementary and integrative medicine as potentially life-saving across the globe.

In next week’s article, we will continue with how ancient African healing and Western medicine can work together, as we see Africans doing this more and more.

Meditating to Reduce Stress and Anxiety

In the early to mid-1970’s, Dr. Herbert Benson, Harvard Medical School professor of mind/body medicine, founder of the Mind/Body Medical Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital, writes in his book, The Relaxation Response, about a simple practice of counteracting the flight-or-flight response. The Relaxation Response practice in the book outlines nine steps, but the essential elements are the use of a mantra and passive attitude.

By the mid-1980’s, Dr. Benson’s book was the number one best-seller recommended by psychologists to patients. This tells us something powerful about stress and its related ills–we can combat it using simple practices. While Dr. Benson promoted transcendental meditation (or, TM) in his book, there are many types of meditation practices to reduce stress and anxiety available today. As we start National Stress Awareness Month, let’s discuss how meditation can help diffuse stress and anxiety for greater health and productivity.

Does Meditation Reduce Stress and Anxiety? | Meditation Exercises for Reducing Stress and Anxiety

Curiously, Dr. Benson, when discussing The Relaxation Response, states that his work is not claiming any new insight into meditation exercises for reducing stress and anxiety. He is purely confirming the practices known for millennia with modern scientific research.

While you might think meditation would be known and practiced throughout the United States, it is still far from practiced by the general populace, notwithstanding the vast amount of research bearing forth its benefits. As Dr. James Lake writes in the article, “Meditation Reduces Anxiety,” for Psychology Today, “Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) is an integrative approach pioneered by [Dr. Jon] Kabat-Zinn that has been validated as highly effective for reducing the physical, emotional and mental consequences of chronic stress.” Further, he says,

Research findings show that the regular practice of mindfulness meditation, in which the individual practices detached self-observation, significantly reduces generalized anxiety and other anxiety symptoms. Almost 100% of individuals who started a 10-week MBSR program successfully completed it, and the majority reported significantly decreased physical and emotional distress, improved quality of life, a greater sense of general well-being, increased optimism and increased feelings of control.

Meditation works well to reduce stress and anxiety, and all it takes are a few, easy skills and a willingness to try consistently.

How Do I Meditate to Reduce Stress and Anxiety? | Meditation Exercises for Reducing Stress and Anxiety

A most important step in reducing stress and anxiety is to become aware when you are experiencing either emotion. It’s all too easy in our workaday, hyperactive worlds that emotions and our responses are suppressed or ignored in furtherance of short-term productivity gains. Of course, these lead to long-term productivity losses when stress and anxiety build up, coming back to haunt us. One frequent recommendation is to keep a journal where you can note briefly the triggers throughout your weeks when you feel stress and anxiety. Over the course of a few weeks, you start to learn when stress and anxiety are happening.

Next, you can determine when you can meditate to buffer yourself and restore your equilibrium from these stress- and anxiety-inducing events. This is determined by how much time you make to meditate daily or weekly, and what types of meditation practices you choose to try.

While there are a wide variety of meditation exercises for reducing stress and anxiety stemming from religious antiquity in the Eastern World, for your purposes, there are three main categories of meditation today: physical postures to control attention, mindfulness, and mind-silencing (or known also as Sahaja Yoga Meditation). What meditation practices you choose ultimately is based on its effectiveness when you try them earnestly and see which is best for your circumstances and lifestyle. Of all the different meditation techniques, breathing, body-scan, loving-kindness and observing-thought meditation techniques are the most popular that people choose.

As this five-minute video describes, a basic breathing meditation practice for beginners is fairly easy to incorporate into our daily lives, even though there are more complex ways to meditate. The hard part is consistently coming back to your meditation practice.

Finally, it is important to meditate regularly to build up your mind-focusing abilities. The best way to manifest this is to build it into your daily routine. This helps you redirect your attention from stress and anxiety to reframe and choose more positive angles on any given situation. As well, you can meditate (sometimes for as little as a minute or two) in response to a stressful or anxiety-ridden event so that you can productively move forward in your day.

Additional Resources for Stress and Anxiety-Reducing Meditation | Meditation Exercises for Reducing Stress and Anxiety

Kaiser Permanente has provided some really great resources for using meditation and other breathing exercises for a variety of issues, including this great video below (explaining the paced breathing, diaphragmatic breathing and the research behind it) and these podcasts.

Meditation techniques are not the only stress and anxiety reduction tools available to you. There are Reiki, massage, yoga, Tai Chi, Qigong, and many more available to you. But, meditation is one of those ancient healing practices that is undeniably powerful if used regularly.

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Returning to Dr. Benson, he is quoted as saying, “The mind and body communicate constantly. What the mind thinks, perceives, and experiences is sent from our brain to the rest of the body.” So, as important as good nutrition and sleep is to our body, so is mental and emotional hygiene to our body.

Ancient Egyptian Medical Texts, Modern Medical Research

Over 3,500 years ago, Egypt, a country that sits on two continents (northeast corner of Africa and a southwestern portion in Asia), experienced some of the primary forms of literature, agriculture, urban development, and precursors to the sciences we know today. While astrology and religion were among those “sciences” back then, the Ancient Egyptians were renowned for their medical knowledge.

How do we know this? It turns out that Professor H. O. Lange had been gathering an Egyptian papyrus collection as early as the 1930’s. These purchases are known to be funded by the Carlsberg Foundation, later to be call the Papyrus Carlsberg Collection, as it grew in size. The collection has three other major additions in the 1950’s, early 2000’s, and 2012, now holding over 1,400 papyri and the substantial vestiges of ancient Egyptian scientific understanding. While the history and reach of these assembled texts cannot be fully known, they raise new questions about the veracity of Ancient Egypt’s medical sciences and what is to be learned from further study.

Ancient Egyptians knew more about anatomy, we’ve learned

Through the collaboration between academics in universities and museums, translations are being published of the medical texts within the Papyrus Carlsberg Collection. As translations are a tedious process–the papyri can be worn and damaged, must be handled with care, read by experts interpreting an ancient language communicating complex ideas–it’s not surprising it has taken so long for them to be understood.

However, new light is shed on ancient Egyptians’ understanding of human anatomy. One such example is that Egyptologists have long-posited that they were unaware of kidneys’ presence in the human body. But, this is undoubtedly false, as the papyri includes a clear discussion of the kidneys.

Further on in the analysis of the texts, you see that the civilization had an understanding of not just the inner maladies of the body, but also external disorders such as trichiasis, a medical condition where the eyelashes grow invertedly toward the eye.

Ancient Egyptians used urine-based pregnancy tests

If you think that you’re pregnant today, it’s very likely that you might go to a nearby drugstore and pick up a pregnancy test to get an answer. Well, it turns out ancient Egyptians had such a protocol three-and-a-half millennia ago. In 1939, a Danish Egyptologist translated that portion of the text that lays out a pregnancy test using barley and wheat.

The papyrus explains that a woman, in order to determine pregnancy and sex of the would-be child, she is to urinate into barley and emmer (a variety of wheat used back then). If the wheat or emmer grow, its determination is that the woman is pregnant.

If it’s the emmer that grows, the baby is to be a girl. If it’s the wheat growing, it’s a boy.

The importance of this finding is that it stands the test of time throughout antiquity, reaching other global powers’ medicine (including Greeks, Romans, Ottomans and even Europeans in the 17th century). It shows how Ancient Egypt’s medicine was venerated and passed along to other cultures.

Modern research suggests ancient Egyptian medical texts may have some scientific bases

More important than the pregnancy test’s endurance and reach across foreign waters across the ages, is the scientific accuracy of the test. In 1963, 20 or so years after its first translation, medical researchers examined and investigated the method.

As you might guess, it worked! Now, not about the sex of the unborn child, but the ancient Egyptian medical texts’ pregnancy test was able to determine pregnancy 70% of the time. Another decade later, the first home pregnancy tests made it onto the market, monitoring for the hormone, human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), which presents in a woman’s blood after conception.

In laboratory testing, the home pregnancy test provides 97.5% accuracy, but out in the real world, that number is only about 75%, according to a National Institutes of Health’s US National Library of Medicine meta-analysis. So, it turns out that the wheat and emmer urine tests can give almost the same accuracy as what modern medical science has provided. While I’m not advocating trying this at home, it’s important to acknowledge how trial-and-error in the ancient worlds has led to scientifically-validated medical knowledge.

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While medical practitioners today tend to think of the scientific method that has dominated modern medicine, we know that there is more to healing one’s self than merely rational data. These Ancient Egyptian medical texts were steeped in spiritual stories and lore, that we are seeing through to the underlying wisdom of these practices can be beneficial to complementary and integrative medicine.

The Practice of Silence

In every religion and in all ancient healing practices, one of the common themes is the practice of entering into silence....

How does that feel to you? Does the thought of entering into complete silence scare you? Do you think – “how do I even begin to become silent?” Or “no thanks – that’s not how I care to spend my time.” In our modern day life, it is almost impossible to enter into complete silence. We have our TVs, computers, i-phones and more keeping our minds distracted. And if you really shut all of that off, you are still likely to hear the air conditioning unit humming along or voices from outside or traffic. It is truly hard to actually be in complete silence.

Yet, we know that spiritual leaders such as Jesus and Buddha went into silence, while fasting for days, seeking Universal guidance for their own direction. The great spiritual leaders – even in modern day – know that the experience behind the eyes is more powerful than the experience in front of the eyes.

That is a very powerful statement. Does that resonate with you? Is your internal world more powerful than the external world? Are you able to receive direct guidance from the Universe or God or Spirit? Or does your material world have more power over you?

The concept that internal energy, Universal energy, has more significance than the world that we see before our eyes, can be a shocking concept. It sounds blasphemous. Yet in a world where we are challenged to know what is truthful, rather than “fake news,” it requires us to seek our own Truth. Find ways to become centered, and gain our own insights. Discover, explore and make our own powerful decisions from the information download by the Universe.

The time to begin your personal mystical healing journey is now. It begins with that first step of seeking to gain guidance from the Universe. Of not being scared to enter into the silence.

Ancient Celtic Healing

If you do a Google search for druidry, you are as likely to find modern-day discussions of ancient Celtic healing practices as you are to learn the latest tactics for druid characters in an online video game or Dungeons & Dragons. There is as much mystique that surrounds the ancient Celts’ polytheistic priests as there is research being done and archaeological digs going on today about their practices.

Ancient Celtic healing is a mixture of spiritual context and medicinal practices, that can help us learn more about how complementary medicine today can benefit us all.

Who were the Celts? How did the Celts heal? And, what was the role of druidry in Celtic life?

Let us review these questions and how they may help us in our modern integrative medicine.

Many Celtic Languages, Fewer Celtic People | Ancient Celtic Healing

If you travel to parts of Ireland, Wales, Cornwall and Scotland, you can see the vestiges of the ancient language of the Celts spoken in Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic and so on. Historians, linguists and anthropologists see the Celtic family of languages as one of the oldest in existence, dating back to possibly the Neolithic Period. In the Iron Age, regional trade prompt the greater European peoples to develop a lingua franca for all these trading groups and this is how Celtic languages are seen, in context, today. The people who refer to themselves as Celts are a much smaller group than how we define “Celtic” in terms of language.

In that way, the ancient Celtic healing practices are a melange of cultural exchanges and spiritual practices passed down through generations.

Celts and Herbalism | Ancient Celtic Healing

When you speak of the Celts, images of Stonehenge and Pentre Ifan appear in your mind. These stone arrangements of megalithic builders are sprinkled throughout Great Britain and speak to the mythos of Celts.

What we know about the Celts is that they start to coalesce in 1200 BCE, flourish in the 800-450’s BCE, and a cultural and linguistic commonalities that begin to break apart around the 6th century.

During this period, Celts develop a deep spiritual and physical connection to the land. This is possibly because they migrated from all over the region and finally find themselves settling down and cultivating the land on which they live. As the Celts learn about their land, they develop a central set of healing practices using the plants around them, and Celtic herbalism is born. Some of these make it into the Anglo-Saxon healing practices, but the importance here is that these foragers-turned-farmers cultivated plant-based medicine through trial-and-error. Today, we can learn from their herbalism to benefit us in integrative medicine.

Druids, Druidry and Health | Ancient Celtic Healing

Of course, no discussion of ancient Celtic healing practices is complete without the druids. Who are the druids? What is druidry? Druids are a role in the intellectual class of Celtic societies (separate from the other two classes–warrior aristocracy and plebeians), that covered a wide variety of spiritual and communal responsibilities, including priest, poet, healer, judge, political advisor, officiant and more.

In this way, druidry is about observing and passing along the history of the Celtic peoples (orally, as their doctrine forbids the written form for druidic practices). This includes its medicines, and medical and ritual practices, communicated down through the ages from druid to druid.

The Celtic peoples believe in hundreds of deities that possess natural powers (e.g., flowing of a river) and practical skills (e.g., archery or blacksmithing), some known only to a tribe or small region. This belief leads the druids to perform ritual sacrifices to those gods and goddesses for health and restoration of balance when someone falls ill.

But, frequently misunderstood about the druids is that they embrace meditation for well-being, and herbalism (which is proving a modern treasure trove of knowledge for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) researchers and medical schools).

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While the Celts, druids and the many mysteries that surround these ancient cultures’ healing practices, and history more broadly, we see the power of their wisdom throughout the ages today. If we look close enough at the ancient Celtic healing traditions, we know intuitively that there is future medicine buried in their culture. It is up to modern scientists to study and reveal their venerable wisdom for integrative medicine to prosper.

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