How many times have you walked away from a potential healing practice because the person describing it to you either couldn't really explain it effectively OR explained it in "woo-woo" terms that scared you away?

Now, as a Christian, I understand not wanting to get involved in anything that would offend God or go against His word or plan for me.  So, I've done my share of walking away.  But over the years, I've learned that a lot of truth and valuable information get a bad rap because some people feel the need to describe, explain, or wrap it up in mystical, spiritualistic ("woo-woo") terminology.  That doesn't make the practice bad.  It also does not mean that all that "woo-woo" stuff has anything to do with it AT ALL.  It just means that someone or some people decided to attach that meaning to it and other people repeated it.  Sometimes, you gotta just pry the gemstone out of the dirt.

To put this in another perspective, how many books recognized as scripture to different faiths have been used to justify evil actions?  Just about every one I can think of.  I believe there are a LOT more good people who follow the Bible and the Koran than there are evil people using it to justify their evil activities.  I don't want to get specific, but have you watched the news lately?  I personally believe the Bible and I don't look at those who use it to justify evil and decide to disregard the Bible because of those people.  "Oh, those bad people use the Bible, so that must make it bad; I'll get rid of mine right now!"  Can you imagine?  Yet that's what we sometimes do with new ideas that may be introduced to us in a poor way.

Case in point:  As my friend Manna says, "Reiki is not a religion, but a lot of people try to make it be one."  I believe that many people have fit it into their own personal belief system/religious path and then proselyted it, so to speak, in that context.  Christians claim it, Eastern religions claim it, Wiccans claim it has different meaning and applications, yet.  I think the point is that it doesn't "belong" to any religion.

Several years ago, while receiving acupuncture treatments to eliminate allergies, my mom and I asked our acupuncturist for a book recommendation to help us better understand the whole system of Traditional Chinese Medicine, including acupuncture.  He recommended The Web That Has No Weaver by Ted J. Kaptchuk.  We read it and were fascinated by the concept the ancient Chinese medicine practitioners had that everything is connected like a giant web, but that there is no weaver of the web!  Now, it is my personal belief that there IS a weaver and He is God.  But the fact that they didn't believe that didn't keep it from working.  And that fact that I do believe it doesn't mean I can't benefit from TCM.  It blessed their lives, it blesses my life, and I give gratitude for it to the Source I recognize.

I realize that it is sometimes hard to tell where the baby ends and the bathwater begins.  That's what this website is for.  I want to help you determine where that point is for you, without discounting a whole philosophy or practice that may be the very answer to your prayers.  At Le Leche League meetings, LLL Leaders always make this disclaimer:  "You will hear a lot of ideas today.  Please take what will work for you and your family and leave the rest."  That is my suggestion to you, here.

We all want to be able to explain HOW and WHY things work, but that information is not always available.  So, we often hypothesize and try to fit ideas into our own framework of belief.  Just look at how many theories about how our world works in the realm of science have been entirely rewritten or tossed out as new information comes to light.  Sometimes, we just can't know all the details right now.  Does that mean we shouldn't take advantage of the benefits?  I don't think so.

I don't know precisely how every detail of the electronics in my house work and yet I use and benefit from them daily.  Why is it that we can have that attitude about some things and be fine with it, but other things we shy away from as if they must be tainted in some way?  If someone told you that aliens who want to suck out your brains brought the technology for cell phones to earth to implement their nefarious plans, would you throw yours away and never use another cell phone again?  What if twenty people told you that?  A hundred?  I didn't think so.....

The exciting thing is that Quantum Physics is now starting to offer some real possibilities for explaining how much of this works.  Energy medicine IS that medicine of the future, which is why everyone is quoting Dr. Oz's reference to that concept.  One area this really stands out for me is in relation to homeopathy.  Homeopathy has blessed my family's lives for years, although no one could really explain how or why it works.  It is now becoming increasingly evident that homeopathy is an energetic medicine, and it is the energetic imprint of the substance used to make each remedy that does the work, rather than a chemical response.  This explains a lot, since chemists have long disparaged homeopathy as quackery because the amount of the source ingredient was too minute in their estimation to have any efficacy, including often not containing a full molecule of the original substance.  That would stand to reason, chemically speaking.  But take energy into consideration, attribute THAT to the explanation of how and why homeopathy works, and you have a whole new paradigm.  Just because we don't understand everything about quantum physics doesn't mean it's not truth.

But the bottom line is this:  It works.  And if someone wants to come up with some cockamamie mystical "woo-woo"  explanation about HOW it works, they can go right ahead.  It doesn't affect me.  I'll just keep right on being blessed by it.  (Speaking of which, I believe it's time to go have my son repeat his remedy.  Really!)

So, you might be asking, "Well, doesn't natural health mean we shouldn't have to do all this stuff to be healthy?"  Okay, well, maybe if we were still living in Eden.  But we're not.

Our soil is depleted of nutrients required to grow healthy plants for food and then our produce is sprayed with chemicals and poisons (to kill weeds and bugs), picked before it's ripe, shipped thousands of miles to the consumer, warehoused and sprayed with waxes to make it look pretty.  Livestock raised for food eat this same depleted food, usually not the type they were born to eat, and raised in conditions that are not only not natural, but create unhealthy animals which are then given drugs to ward off or treat disease.  There's also all the stuff that's sold as food, but can only be most kindly referred to as food- like substances because it's made up of chemicals and some things that started out as food but have been chemically altered to make them act differently (and therefore act differently in our bodies).  Have you checked the ingredients in a nacho cheese Dorito, lately?  There's nothing "real" in it; even the corn is genetically modified and the oil chemically altered through hydrogenation.  And then we eat this stuff and expect to be healhy?  Our food is not natural anymore.

Our air and water are polluted, and chemicals are everywhere: in our clothes, our homes, our cookware, the packaging our food comes in, the products we clean our homes and clothes and bodies with.  And don't even get me started on the hair and make-up products we use.  Oh, and then there's the radiation and electromagnetic fields we're constantly exposed to, the artificial lights at hours that interfere with our natural sleep cycles, and on and on.

Our bodies are trying to cope with more and more environmental stressors while being fed with nutritionally-deficient food.  How could that equation possibly work to our advantage?!

I really can't keep from snickering every time someone is discussing a possible nutritional deficiency they have and then says, "Well, what foods contain that vitamin/mineral?  I prefer to get my nutrients from foods rather than supplements."  And this is usually from someone who totally lives on processed foods and fast-food restaurant fare.  Oh, sure, they might cook most nights, but the ingredients primarily come out of a can or a box.  You can't eat enough of those foods to correct a nutritional deficiency and if you try, you'll be as big as a house and still under-nourished.

And let's please be realistic about those "Nutritional Facts" on the side of the box.  Yes, enriched white flour boasts significant amounts of certain nutrients -- because they stripped out everything of value and then added back in some cheap forms of vitamins and nutrients.  There's no way our bodies absorb and metabolize those "nutrients" in the same way they do when it comes in its whole food form.  There are lots of forms of every vitamin and mineral out there and they are NOT all equal.

So, unless you can find a plot of land free of all that pollution and organically grow your own food and shun all the modern conveniences you've been raised to appreciate, YES, actually, you DO have to do some stuff to help your body cope and still be healthy despite the unhealthy environment  you live in.

Of course, the more things you do to give your body real foods and limit your exposure to all the yucky stuff, the less extra things you'll have to do to feel great.  But if you're not feeling totally healthy and energetic, chances are you didn't get this way overnight and it's not going to be fixed overnight.  Obviously, the more healthy changes you make, the healthier you'll be.

So, where do you start and what should you do first?  Well, keep reading.  You're in the right place!