🌿 It's Only Natural — #freedomfriday challenge

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The freedom to access natural medicine

A huge thank-you to @eaglespirit for initiating the #freedomfriday challenges each week, to @bifilarcoil for coming up with this week's topic, which of course creates a wonderful crossover with #naturalmedicine with the question of freedom to access natural medicine. For more details, check out this post.

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Originally I was going to write a post about the problems of the mainstream medical system and the inequity of access to natural medicine in the Australian healthcare landscape. I was getting depressed, as I remembered the angst that influenced my decision to retire from the natural medicine profession. Reading @riverflows excellent post confirmed it further.

Instead, I decided to focus on the positive, because it would be easy to simply to bitch about 'Big Pharma' or bureaucratic bullshit.

Because here is the thing:
No one can take away your freedom of choice.

If you want to turn to natural medicine for preventing disease or healing from illness, then go for it.

In any situation regarding healthcare (be it natural or mainstream) the key is informed consent — or denial!

I've already posted on how to utilise the B・R・A・N・D system to become informed about what you are being presented as therapy/medicine. You need to take responsibility of your health, and that also means taking responsibility for your choices.

In the current landscape that means that you may need to see a natural therapist and that you will have to pay for their expertise. It may mean you won't be able to get a health insurance rebate.

What it also means is that you need to be prepared to make changes in your lifestyle, your diet, or your exercise regime.

It may mean being taken out of your comfort zone. It may mean months of treatments or medicines.

Because natural medicine is slow medicine, unlike it's mainstream alternative.

So yes, you have the freedom to choose natural medicine; but will you? Are you willing to take that responsibility?

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You're given a voice
You don't want it
Seems to be the rule of thumb
Don't be tricked by what you see
You've got two ways to go
— A Perfect Circle

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I have seen many amazing natural medicine practitioners go out of business because they simply cannot make a living healing people in this way. The stories are the same: clients are either not prepared to pay money for treatments, or they can't/won't afford the lengthy courses of treatment.

My thinking is maybe we're looking at this all wrong. Is there a way we can utilise cryptocurrencies to change a broken system? I've written a suggestion about this previously, and maybe there are some folk reading this with the technical expertise and know-how to make this happen.

Photo by Piron Guillaume on Unsplash

Unfortunately, even the natural medicine professions are starting to fall under the same spell which is crippling mainstream biomedicine, and that is the need to prove that their treatments work, and placing more emphasis on results in a lab, rather than results in the clinic.

Humans are a chaotic bunch, and human health and illness even more so. The dependence on gadgets and technology are removing the human factor in the clinic. How many doctors still inspect tongues, complexion, and eyes? How many still palpate their patients and feel the pulse beneath their fingertips? How many sit in total presence as you tell them how crap you feel?

This is what natural medicine is all about. It's about connection between humans, and feeling what a person needs to help them.

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The mess and the magic
Triumphant and tragic
A mechanized world, out of hand
Computerized clinic
For superior cynics
Who dance to a synthetic band
In their own image
Their world is fashioned
No wonder they don't understand
— Rush

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Photo by Antonika Chanel on Unsplash

Ever since quitting the profession, I feel a push-me-pull-you about going back into it. Part of me really wants to continue my work as a healer; the other part of me loathes the hoops that being a professional healer involves.

So for the last couple of months, I've been seeing some folk on a purely casual basis. They pay what they feel the session is worth to them, and I have the freedom to allow the session to flow as it needs to, and to give my client what they need in that moment. I wrote about my experience shifting back into the field in this post.

And this is also why I love the work of the herbalist movement that is emerging at the moment; our wonderful #naturalmedicine group here on Steem has many members who I feel are at the forefront of this movement.

Because the moment someone takes away your right to make a tincture, or drink a tea made from freshly grown or picked herbs is the moment we should be concerned about what kind of society we are living in.

So perhaps, not only do we need to release the desire to have instant results in our medicines, maybe we also need to begin to trust that the best healers aren't necessarily going to be found in a flashy office with many degrees hanging on the wall. Maybe we also need to start getting out into nature and learning directly from the plants themselves.

Whatever the case, natural medicine works in many ways... but all leading to the same result. Natural medicine is about bringing you back to your true nature. And that will take as long as it needs to take for you to reach that point.

So for all the wonderful herbalists, therapists, and wisdom-keepers who are part of #naturalmedicine, I invite you to keep your faith and continue to explore, discover, experiment, and share your knowledge and experiences.

And to everyone else, I invite you to seek out these magical folk and trust them to help you.

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Well strip the bark right off a tree
And just hand it this way
Don't even need a drink of water
To make the headache go away
— The White Stripes

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Namaste. Take care, y'all
😊🙏🏽☯️💜🌿

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MADE FOR STEEMIT

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