Herbal Treatments

Herbal medicines are produced by mother-earth. In scientific zeal for control and domination of nature, many useful medicines have been created. Some of them, like aspirin, were discovered in nature (willow bark), isolated and synthesized. This natural scientific reductionist approach assumes that one ingredient is all that is important for the healing properties of the natural substance.

Herbal medicines have been used for thousands of years in the West and the East. Our natural preference to take an herb as opposed to a pharmaceutical comes out of our innate connection with nature. With or without awareness, we intuitively perceive this connection and understand that the wisdom of nature far surpasses the intellectual achievement of man.

I feel that use of herbal remedies, by bringing us more in touch with nature, also brings us closer in touch with our own natures. It is then a shorter step to start seeing the connections between our approach to life and our ills.

Herbal medicines have their therapeutic effects, and may have side-effects (as well as interactions with medications), but the side effects are rare and nothing near the severity of the side effects of man-made pharmaceuticals.

I use traditional French herbal practice, the practice that has been around in Europe for hundreds of years, brought there, among others, by the Persian scholar of the early 11th century—Avicenna.

In addition, I use Bach’s flower remedies—homeopathically prepared medicinal flower essences developed by the British physician Dr Edward Bach in 1930s.

I do not use herbs in isolation but as part of a holistic phenomenological approach to health. While the herb does its work, the person is guided in addressing the issues in life that have brought him or her to the point of illness, which, in most cases, is simply an expression of an imbalance on physical, mental, emotional, social, moral or spiritual levels.