Leaves Of Life - - - Botanicals

Herbal medicine is now globally accepted as a valid alternative system of therapy. About 80% of people living in developing countries are almost completely dependent on traditional medical practices for their primary health care needs. Higher plants are known to be the main source of drug therapy in traditional medicine.[1] It is further claimed that 64% of the total population of the world utilizes plants as drugs, i.e. 3.2 billion people.[2] Approximately, 119 plant based derived chemical compounds of known structure and derived from ninety species of plants are currently used as drugs or as biodynamic agents that affect human health.[3]  

Nearly one-third of Americans engage in alternative medicine practices. 25% of all prescriptions dispensed from community pharmacies contained active principles that were extracted from higher plants. In 1980, consumers in the United States paid more than 8 billion dollars for prescriptions containing active principles obtained from higher plants.[4] Therefore, the potential for interactions with conventional medicine exists. 

Health is influenced by religion, society and environment. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as not only the absence of disease and malnutrition but also the positive wellbeing of the person.   Ra Un Nefer Amen writes “all functions of the body, mind and spirit—and in all departments of nature are composed and regulated by two interdependent and seemingly opposite factors.”[5]  In the West, we call these structures positive and negative currents.  In medical terms, it is known as anabolism (yin) and catabolism (yang). Anabolism corresponds to all the supportive nutrients and structural substances (blood, water, hormones, nutrients, etc.).  Catabolism (yang) corresponds to the forces (electricity, magnetism, etc.) through which activity takes place.  Diseases therefore arise as the result of the underlying malfunctions of the organs or imbalance of the yin and yang of the body, anabolic and catabolic. 

Activity (yang) requires nutrition (fuel/yin) and the transformation and mobilization of yin agents require force (yang).  An additional correspondence is heat (yang), which facilitates activity, and cold (relative less heat), which facilitates the formation and function of yin. To rest, the body must cool down, while to act, it must heat up. Thinking is facilitated by coolness and communication by warmth, etc. The electromagnetic energy in life’s vital force is called Qi, which activates all organ functions and chemical processes of the body. Ra Un Nefer Amen states this best in his summary:

“Nothing happens without energy. All activities in our being, every thought that we have, every breath that we take, are carried out by our life force. The Ancient Egyptians referred to it as Ra-the Spirit/life-force (not the "Sun God,”) and the Taoist Sages referred to it as Qi. We will later see that the Egyptians and the Chinese have as much knowledge about man's life force as the present day scientists have about biology, biochemistry, physics, etc. If we want to understand the energy that is in charge of all activities in our being it is to our advantage to reclaim the vast ocean of knowledge on the subject that was developed by these ancient people during a span of several thousands of years of investigation and practice.”[6] 

The Obeah man uses a combination of herbs and ritual to restore balance in the body, mind and spirit.  Specifically, the herbs are used to assist in removing the stagnation that prevents the healing to fully take place. Healing can only take place when the underlying condition that causes the disturbance in the life force is removed.  Establishing and maintaining the balance between the general yin and yang of the body, mind and spirit is the goal of healing, according to traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).  Health is the balance of all yin and yang functions.  It is ultimately manifested in happiness, which is the balanced interplay of peace (yin) and pleasure (yang). 

This is in contrast to the allopathic system of medicine in which the diseases are identified first and then the healing therapies are applied. When one system or organ of the body is affected, all other systems of the body are similarly affected (For example, an infection in the stomach weakens the circulatory, urino-genital, respiratory system and even affects the psyche of the patient).  The body becomes weak, immunity declines and this paves the way for secondary infections.  But normally a remedy in the form of a laxative is meant only for the alimentary canal and does not take care of the other affected systems.  Therefore, even when a patient is cured of a stomach problem, he or she remains weak. In contrast, with a traditional herbal formula, a number of plants are involved in the formula that reflect the multitude of components, including a large amount of metabolites, are available to the body to repair the systems. That is the reason why a person becomes healthy and remains so after herbal treatment.

[1] Chadwick, Derek J., and Joan Mash. Bioactive Compounds from Plants: A Wiley-Interscience Publication. Chichester [etc.: John Wiley & Sons, 1990; 3.
[2] Ibid., 3.
[3] Ibid., 3.
[4] Ibid., 4.
[5] Amen, Ra Un Nefer. Healing is in the Spirit. Brooklyn: Khamit Media Trans Vision, Inc. 2010; 10.
[6] Ibid., 10,11.

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