I just got back from Ecuador where I was visiting an herbalist with a deep knowledge of healing plants that remain “secrets” from the perspective of North Americans, but which have been used for as long as anyone can remember in South America to heal the sick.
I make a point of getting to know the people who grow or gather the ingredients I use in my natural cure products. I visit them, see their operation, and spend time learning what they are about. My meeting with Richard went a step beyond quality-assurance, as I will explain.
Richard gathers herbs from the valleys and mountains of Ecuador where he lives. During the days we were together, we walked through the countryside and he pointed out plants with particular healing properties. Let me give you an example.
At one point, he suggested we walk over to a bush – but carefully! He said the bush had long sharp spines that could “fly” if you got close to them, and that they contained medicine that was so powerful that if the spine sank too deeply into the body, it could cause trouble. So we went up to the bush and he gingerly clipped a 3-inch spine from it.
He asked me if there was any part of my body that hurt, and as it happened, I’d been having trouble with one of my thumbs. I had strained it weeks before and there was a background ache that had lingered on. He took my thumb and punctured it with the very tip of the spine-needle, and that was it. A few minutes later, a boil appeared, perfectly round, with a little hole in the top where the needle had gone in. Then there was a flow of puss, the boil went down, and so did the ache. I haven’t been bothered by it since.
Richard told me that this is a standard native treatment for pain and inflammation. I’d never heard of it. He has 200 formulations based on local plants, and some products which I will be testing for use in my practice. I’ll have more information about them in coming months. It is extraordinary how little we really know about the healing properties of plants and the healing wisdom of peoples outside of our own culture.
While I was still in Ecuador, I learned a native shaman’s view of why this is so. He told me that the “bird of the north” was the eagle, and the “bird of the south” was the condor, and that the eagle and the condor had, just this year, begun flying together,
I knew better than to interrupt him with questions. The thing to do with a shaman is to sit and let the vision unfold.
He went on to say that in the North, people had become unhappy because they had become “people of the world” and were more interested in things of the world than they were in each other or in the earth that sustains us. That is why the condor could not fly with the eagle.
But now that the chaos has come to a head, the eagle is changing direction and will be able to learn from the condor – meaning that we in the north will be able to relax and appreciate each other, and live by more wise values than greed.
The thing about him was how positively he viewed what was going on. The crisis in the world is, in his view, an opening to a deeper wisdom. It reminded me a lot of how I counsel my patients when they are confronted with a health crisis like cancer or some other life-threatening condition.
First and foremost, it is a huge opportunity for positive transformation. The crisis is an expression of underlying imbalances usually present for decades, that the body just cannot support any longer. If we seize the time, make changes in the direction of a wiser way to treat our basic nature, and develop a profound harmony in the way we eat, drink, live, and think, then so-called “miracles” can occur.
It is not just our world that has been out of balance, but our own bodies and minds. I invite you to participate in your own healing, and to step boldly on your journey to radiant health, irrespective of your current condition. The way to genuine happiness and well-being is through joyful cooperation with our nature and each other, and the message is repeated by the wisdom traditions of every corner of the planet.
It was a good trip to Ecuador and I will be bringing benefits from there to you soon, in the form of medicinal herbs that have previously been unknown to the people of the eagle!
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