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Diagnostic Methods |
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Diagnostic Methods |
Source of Ancient Wisdom- Photo: Library at Ephesus, Greek Isles When I was a student in graduate school, our professors used to tell us that practicing the healing professions was both an art and a science. The best healers were those who could blend together these two vastly different disciplines, understanding that an overemphasis of one at the expense of the other could often compromise results. I think we have lost this understanding somewhere along the way, so that now we stress the science and all but discount the art. We rely on computers, MRIs, and laboratory studies almost exclusively, and we have taught ourselves to screen out intuition or information we receive from any other source or manner no longer deemed "scientific". This is unfortunate, because there are some truly interesting and wonderfully revealing alternative techniques available to us, but they are not "scientific". They involve concepts of quantum physics and forces we cannot see or prove, yet consistently provide beneficial results, even in the most difficult cases. I want to discuss what, for me, have been the most consistant and productive of these "non-scientific" methods. For you to benefit from this, you will have to suspend your belief system long enough to learn about techniques that, at first, may defy your reason. When you learn how much value these can be in helping you weed out the chemicals, the contaminants, and the concoctions that are trashing your health, you may become more willing to accept the possibility these methods can actually work to achieve positive improvements in your health- beyond all your expectations. Permit me to tell a small story that I think may get the point across better: Many years ago, I was invited to a conference on Alternative and Complimentary medicine held in Popoyan, Columbia, SA. One day during the conferance, the course director, a conventionally trained physician, brought in a "guest lecturer", a curandero, a medicine man, of great reputation as a healer among the mountain tribespeople in the High Andes Mountains. Through an interpreter, the medicine man asked if there was someone among us with an intractable or undiagnosed condition. A young anestheiologist from Peru came forward and said he had a condition no one of his colleagues had been able to figure out. The curandero came over to this doctor, stood before him, gazed into his eyes, and put his hands on the doctor's shoulders for a moment or two. Then, stepping backwards a little, he removed some bone fragments from a leather pouch hanging at his side. He threw these into a circle he had drawn on the ground beneath us and studied them a moment. Then he picked up the fragments and threw them down again. Then, still speaking through an interpreter, he addressed the issues he was able to determine from all he had just done. As the interpreter translated, the young doctor's face flushed red. When the interpreter finished speaking, the doctor spoke, telling all of us of the accuracy of the curandero's assessment. One of the other students could hardly contain his contempt, and his voice was dripping with anger and sarcasm as he said to the interpreter, "Ask him (the curandero) if this is really so. Can this stuff really work?" As the interpreter turned and spoke to the medicine man, the old man's face softened noticably. Then he went and stood directly in front of the doctor who had asked the question. With a striking gentleness and speaking quite slowly, he said, "I am curandero, my father was curandero, and all the fathers in my family have been curandero as far back as anyone can remember. If it didn't work, I wouldn't be here." |
