Defining Natural Therapies and A Selection of Health Books

Natural Healing Without An Understanding of Nature is neither Natural nor Healing

Philosophical Fundamentals

From its inception, the concept of healing had always been a process that worked within the Laws of Nature because all living things are a product of Nature. This fundamental concept is not that out of step with other completely man made concepts, philosophical structures and institutions. In order for even man made things to exist and work, they must confine themselves to natural limitations and implied overriding order.

Example: If you buy any product from a manufacturer; it would be completely logical to go back to that manufacturer - the creator of the item, if you had a problem with it, to fix it or, to reliably get another of the same items. People all over the world do this every single day. Governments, recognizing this inalienable responsibility on the part of the manufacturer, in the interest of fair trade and commerce, and for the health of an economy, legislate the responsibilities of a manufacturer. In many cases some manufacturers are regulated to conform to specified standards that would benefit and protect the public.

To believe that what happens in Nature is the result of hap-hazard, unorganized, completely random or uncontrolled circumstances would be as naive as believing that all people act without purpose, man made items just materialize without organized human input, corporate bodies act without people guiding them and nations act without government will or popular will. Natural healing is a subject that cannot be intelligently discussed without including Nature and Nature cannot be discussed without accepting, at the very least, that there must be an organizing force or principle that structures, organizes, maintains and sustains it above and beyond physics. Some might disagree.

All natural therapies as well as all skills, professions, sciences and disciplines in general no matter of what origin must have a comprehensive philosophical framework as an organizing principle that makes them useful in a consistently predictable way. Otherwise, there can be no logical premise to anything that is being done and consequently no reliable or predictable outcome from any endeavor that may be undertaken towards whatever end.

Nature is stable and reliable. If it were not nothing could be done, life would be impossible. For instance, if gravity were arbitrary, if the density of the Earth we walk on would change arbitrarily that we might sink into it without warming, if iron would transform itself into water, could anyone plan or execute any plan whatsoever for their lives?

Similarly, the idea that the overall body is defective by design is not only presumptuous, it is also illogical and even completely stupid. This notion is generally being put forth for strictly self serving marketing purposes.

Healing as Art - Natural Therapies

When it comes to knowledge on health matters historically, there have been genuine visionaries who's therapies, principles and procedures are inspired, original, ground breaking and might even be called revelatory. Then there are those who merely try to repeat what the former had already stated or done often without being able to fully emulate it - not all practitioners of the healing arts are equal.

Some healing arts are obvious and self evident while others have been brought into existence through rare insight that can only be called inspired. There is a common thread that ties these type of healers and their therapies. They all use a very similar logic and methodology and come to the same basic conclusions; their methods varying only in their particular healing substance and modality. In principle and in the final analysis these people are all in agreement with each other and their methods overlap and compliment one another without conflict. When ever one modality pushes itself as being the "only" one of any value, it is time to stop and consider the attitude and why it would want to over-ride all others.

Clear, sober, rational and logical knowledge is the keystone to healing, health and general well being on all levels. The great Paracelsus stated over 400 years ago that "healing is an art" and it is given only to someone possessing "the light of nature" to understand this art with fullest awareness. The light of nature comes from the "enlightened heart" that is genuinely interested in healing over profit, rather than the strictly book-educated mind. For this reason there are true healers and their are practitioners of healing. The former have historically been in the minority and persecuted by the latter. As is evident in their writings, healers have always attributed their knowledge and insights to a "Higher Power." It makes sense that in an increasingly more Godless world that the natural approaches to healing are inconvenient to the status quo for the simple reason that they actually work and are very inexpensive.

History has proven that natural health has its foundation in Nature. What deviates from Nature also deviates from health and even reality. Therefore, it should also be noted that by applying the correct principles past down through time, anyone can go into Nature to gather whatever they need for their health needs free of charge. We will try to provide the books that contain this type of information where ever possible.

The inspired logic of the various natural healing methods are sometimes hard to explain because even though their effects are visible, it would involve accepting a few principles that are not entirely quantifiable physically. Some say that the use of herbs came about as the result of blind and unenlightened trial and error. This is a ridiculous unscientific presumption because it presumes an inborn stupidity among all human beings. In order for one to propose such a hypothesis one would have to accept that they themselves have to have been in this sad state before having gone to school. Furthermore, this un-provable hypothesis ignores much of the methodology of human discovery up until about the 1700's suggesting that everyone before then was categorically stupid or naive. Can anyone seriously suggest that the ancient Romans and Egyptians were inept? Can it logically be postulated that everyone who is not scholastically credentialed is utterly so stupid as to be incapable of intelligent thought? To this day, how the Egyptians built their monuments is based on speculation. No one knows for sure now it was done. If they were that advanced in their engineering, they could not have been that far behind in their other sciences either. Even if they have left us a sort of written record of their thoughts and history one has to wonder what has been lost and they felt was not important enough to not have been written down.

Some traditional remedies and therapies have existed for so long that it is impossible to attribute their origins to any one individual but, because of their effectiveness have survived through millennia. Herbalism and many traditional herbal remedies are a good example of this. Every culture on every continent has a traditional herbal lore which at present are in danger of being outlawed on the premise that these methods are unproven, unscrupulous, backward and otherwise unsafe. Yet, annually there are virtually no fatalities due to herbal remedies world wide while official studies by such institutions as Johns Hopkins have shown that there are about 250,000 deaths annually from modern chemically based medications administered according to standard protocol in the United States alone. There is more than enough evidence of this and anyone can substantiate these statements on their own and draw their own conclusions from it.

Pure science is not being belittled here. It must be admitted that the whole world can thank science for removing much of the superstition that existed before it's formalization but, with its coming it would also seem that the "baby has been thrown out with the bath water," as far as its sometimes narrow mindedness is concerned and it becomes more obvious every day that profit motive often trumps scientific reality while using science as it's often or paid-for proof that justifies the often unjustifiable.