Traditional Home Remedies – Book

Traditional Home remedies is a guidebook describing some very practical methods to assist people in their path to creating a high level of health. Our health is the single most important tool necessary to complete our life purpose. Ideally, the consistent practices of health-promoting exercise, food, and nourishing relationships keeps us from ever needing remedies....and remedies can be helpful when we allow extremes in our daily living patterns to create warning symptoms - signs that educate us how to live more closely within the natural parameters of one's both inherent and potential abilities. Remedies can perhaps serve as an immediate tune-up - a "heads -up" for us to better direct our lives and lifestyle practices to prevent the need for remedies, medicines, surgeries and degenerative illness. They can also help us to educate others when used as a supplementary tool in the Holistic Health Practitioner's repertoire of recommendations. Most of the remedies herein come from Asian (Japanese, Chinese, East Indian) or Western herbal healing practices. Their applications are based on the movements of nature that are traditionally known as CHI or Lifeforce.
This Lifeforce is found in all phenomena and when understood can be used to recommend remedies and lifestyle practices to anyone. Instead of recommending only for symptoms, we can also base recommendations on people 's individual whole health condition that is regulated by these same forces that manage all life processes.

All relationships are influenced by the forces of nature

Celestial energy (the sun's magnetic field being the strongest), traditionally known as Heaven's Force radiates down to the planet earth and enters through the North and South Poles. Like a magnet with opposite plus/+ and minus/- polarities, the electric current between these poles are attracted to each other. They meet at the core of the earth whereas the earth rotates another complementary electrical field, traditionally called Earth's Force (strongest at the equator) radiates in an upward/outward direction away from the center of the earth towards the heavens. The downward Heaven's Force creates a contracting, consolidating effect.similar to how a meteor entering the earth's atmosphere becomes smaller and more concentrated as gravity propels it to the earth. The up and outward radiating Earth's Force has an expanding effect like a flower opening and blooming to meet the sun's rays. Throughout every life function, we are balancing these forces of contraction and expansion. Muscles contract and expand, thoughts are imaginative or practical and feelings are held in or expressed. If we become too contracted we may feel irritable and our muscles may feel the tension. If we become too expanded, we may become "spacey", ungrounded and our muscles may become flaccid. Any health difficulty arises from an overly extreme expression of these two forces that threaten the safe operation of the body mind spirit. Our remedies will assist us to get back to a more moderate and healthy state of being.

Our modern understanding from quantum physics agrees with this traditional Asian theory: "According to the present understanding, there are four fundamental interactions or forces: gravitation, electromagnetism, the weak interaction that moves particles apart, and the strong interaction that moves particles closer together. Their magnitude and behavior vary greatly. Modern physics attempts to explain every observed physical phenomenon by these fundamental interactions." FOOD SEE - SAW Downward, heavy, contracting and consolidating effect Upward, er, expanding and o ing effect ( 5 The Energetics of Food - How Food Affects Our Life Foods can be classified by the direction of their energies: heaven's force (downward/contracting) and earth's force (upward/expanding). For example, heavy foods such as beef, pork, and eggs create a heavy downward, contracting effect on the body. In contrast, lighter foods such as fruit, sugar, and alcohol create a more upward, expanding effect on the body.

To understand whether a particular food causes a downward/contracting or upward/expanding effect, consider how you would feel if you ate only that food for a week. Hardboiled eggs morning, noon, and night - heavy or light? How about pineapple juice morning, noon, and night - focused or spacey? How will I feel it! eat this food exclusively for one week at every meal? How about almonds every meal every day for a week or pineapple juice every meal, every day for a week - NOTHING ELSE? I am pretty sure you will get a sense of the food's effect on your body. Keep in mind that more extreme foods like alcohol create an initial high but afterward an equally opposite low is experienced. Meats may support the building of tissues and influence people to feel more grounded but in excess will ferment in the intestines, leading to an acidic blood condition and an eventual break down of important body structures and functions. Immediate and long-term effects are important to take into consideration when choosing foods and remedies. Vegetable quality foods and remedies have far fewer side effects than more extreme substances like drugs, medicinal herbs or concentrated food supplements and animal products. Another way that often helps to discover food downward/contracting or upward/expanding effect is to see what happens.when you put the food in water. Does it sink or float? Oil floats and generally has a more expanding effect on the tissues of our body. A steak sinks and has a heavy, contracting effect on our body structures.

One more very reliable way to tell if you are too contracted or expanded is by your food cravings. If you find yourself craving sweet, then your body/mind/spirit is too tight. If you crave heavier foods like chips, baked or animal foods, then you are too expanded and your body is seeking grounding and connection. If you crave spices (expansion), then you are too constricted and are looking for a little passion. To avoid food cravings, pacify your energy needs with life activities. Instead of overheating salsa, go salsa dancing. Find romantic ways to let your partner replace the honey jar.

Another way to look at foods is that some foods create structure and substance while other foods break down structures and dissipate substance.The building of bones requires structure promoting foods like minerals proteins. These heavy consolidating foods contain what quantum physics refers to as the strong force. Break down of cells and elimination require foods that dissipate or dissolve structures like fluids, fruits and vegetables. These lighter, expanding and dispersing foods contain what quantum physics refers to as the weak force. There are foods like grains and beans that do both. The see-saw on the left shows these opposite complementary polarities. Foods on the extreme ends of the see-saw stimulate extreme lifestyles and health conditions while foods closer to center support a more moderate lifestyle and health condition.

All our remedies will incorporate the above principles. For example, as a traditional home remedy, the green tops of carrots were used to nourish and stimulate higher areas in the body (heart, lungs, sinuses). The bottom of a carrot was typically used to effect change in the lower areas of the body (large intestine, bladder). Eating the whole carrot, or any whole food provides all the energetic forces, helping the body in its movement towards a feeling of "wholeness".
FOOD ENERGETICS & HOW WE FEEL The physical and more subtle qualities of what we put into our bodies have an effect on how we feel. The two polarities of expansion/contraction influence us to experience extremes of upward, light, and expanding effects compared to downward, heavy, and constricting effects. The foods that we ingest vibrate at a frequency that reflects and affects us by initiating the feeling of these polarities within us.
Exposure to extreme vibrations will create extreme mood changes. These polarities are at the base of every life activity. By moderating our foods we will find that we can adapt to feelings that come up in a flowing way- in a way that allows us to feel the fuel from any emotions that arise without finding a creative or destructive way to avoid them. Extreme emotions can feel like waves crashing on the shore. They warn us that there is danger underneath those waves. When we look further out from shore the waves are even bigger and more dangerous.

Why would we go any deeper and risk our lives? Similarly, when we sense that a dangerous feeling is materializing within us, we often find a way to avoid it: FEAR: Find a way to numb or run away (drugs, alcohol, desserts, T.V, universal philosophy). ANGER: Scare someone (the supposed source of our trauma) away. CHAOS: Busy ourself to provide options in case random circumstances burn us out BLAME OTHERS: Put the blame on someone else to help us feel ok. BLAME SELF: Blame ourself to isolate, as a way of escaping any new circumstances that may once again bring up our fear.
These are 5 different types of fear that correlate with the 5 movements we are about to discuss. Keep in mind that these are simply variations between the two primal polarities ofexpansion and contraction. WHAT IF EVERY CIRCUMSTANCE IS PERFECT AND HAS ARISEN SO WE CAN HEAL?