We intuitively understand that life is natural it springs up anywhere it can. Natural health care is an attempt to remain in harmony with these essential forces that promote life. It is in essence being in harmony with life itself. Just as life has many forms so does natural health care.
Because of it's closeness to natural life forces, it is often most effectively portrayed by the various historical and indigenous medicines of the world.
As our scientific understanding grows we face a significant challenge to our ability to maintain this contact with nature. We are at serious risk of becoming disconnected from the forces that create life, at risk of losing ourselves in a maze of disconnected information.
One of the benefits of natural health care is that it's focus on nature as a whole and it's historical indigenous development, has provided a framework to allow us to maintain a connection with nature. It gives an overview of life and its natural processes.
Science itself is not the problem, science is perhaps natures greatest gift to us. It is after all “Natural Science” it is the study of the “natural world”.
The challenge comes from how that science is conducted and the nature of scientific method. Scientific method requires the use isolation and control. All scientific experiments try to isolate what they are studying and control all other variables.
Unfortunately as any loving couple can tell you isolation and control is not the way to create life. An unavoidable consequence of this scientific method, is the generation of huge amounts of facts, usually disconnected from each other and true only in the studied circumstance.
To draw conclusions from these facts is very difficult and leads to constantly changing ideas of what is correct. For example look at the constant bombardment of changing diet advice, eat margarine it's good for - you don't eat margarine it contains trans-fatty acids. Don't eat fats, their bad for you - eat fish oil, it's good your heart.
We could go on forever and thats the problem. Medicine is not mechanical engineering. As much as we might like to believe that we can just swap parts it's not true. If you replace the engine in a car it has little if any consequence elsewhere. This is never true of replacing a human heart.
The point is that modern scientific medicine is unbalanced. It constantly misses the forest for the trees.
Natural health care draws on traditions that attempt to restore the balance and let you understand and appreciate the forest.
Most systems of natural care have these common traits:
the use of complex interventions often involving multiple botanical products, or physical techniques;
individualized diagnosis and treatment of patients;
an emphasis on disease prevention versus disease treatment;
maximizing the body’s inherent healing ability; and
treatment of the “whole” patient (physical, mental, emotional and spiritual) versus a single pathology.
One important thing to realize is that natural does not mean safe. An earth quake is natural but not a safe place to be. A hungry lion is natural but you would not want to play with him. And Ricin one of the worlds most deadly toxins comes from the Castor bean a swallowed bean will most likely pass through without harm but just one that is chewed could kill.
What makes natural health care safe is the accumulated knowledge and experience of the system. Which is why you should always form a relationship with a good therapist to help guide you.
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