Six steps of healing

by Susun Weed | Nov 18, 2006 | Columns, Magazine, Wise Woman Ways | 0 comments

Hi Susun,

From my memory of your books and website, you always seem to approach healing through specific steps / questions. Can you review what those are? I find it very helpful and would love to print out the steps so I can remember to follow these guidelines when I have issues in my own life or in a client’s. With gratitude.

Susun’s response:

Here are the six steps of healing:

Step 0: Do nothing (sleep, meditate, unplug the clock or the telephone). A vital, invisible step.

Step 1: Collect information (low-tech diagnosis, reference books, support groups, divination).

Step 2: Engage the energy (prayer, homeopathic remedies, crying, visualizations, ritual, aromatherapy, color, laughter).

Step 3: Nourish and tonify (herbal infusions/vinegars, love, some herbal tinctures, life-style changes, physical activities, moxibustion).

Step 4: Stimulate/Sedate (hot/cold water, many herbal tinctures, acupuncture, most massage, alcohol). Risk of developing dependence on step 4 remedies is influenced by frequency (how often), dosage (how much), and duration (how long).

Step 5a: Use supplements (synthesized/concentrated vitamins or minerals, special foods like royal jelly or spirulina). Supple-ments are not step 3. There’s always the risk with synthesized/concentrated substances that they’ll do more harm than good, e.g., the men who took fish liver oil in capsules and had a greater mortality from heart disease (the oil was rancid).

Step 5b: Use drugs (synthesized alkaloids, oral and injectable hormones, high dilution homeopathics). Overdose may cause grave injury or death.

Step 6: Break and enter (fear-inspiring language, surgery, colonics, Rolfing, psychoactive drugs, invasive “diagnostic” tests such as mammograms and biopsies). Side effects are in-evitable and may include permanent injury or death.

Green blessings, Susun Weed

Author

Susun Weed

Susun S. Weed has no official diplomas of any kind; she left high school in her junior year to pursue studies in mathematics and artificial intelligence at UCLA and she left college in her junior year to pursue life.

Susun began studying herbal medicine in 1965 when she was living in Manhattan while pregnant with her daughter, Justine Adelaide Swede.

She wrote her first book -- Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year (now in its 30th printing) -- in 1985 and published it as the first title of Ash Tree Publishing in 1986.

It was followed by Healing Wise (1989), New Menopausal Years the Wise Woman Way (1992 and revised in 2002), Breast Cancer? Breast Health! The Wise Woman Way (1996), Down There: Sexual and Reproductive Health the Wise Woman Way (2011), Abundantly Well - Seven Medicines (2019).

In addition to her writing, Ms Weed trains apprentices, oversees the work of more than 300 correspondence course students, coordinates the activities of the Wise Woman Center, and is a High Priestess of Dianic Wicca, a member of the Sisterhood of the Shields, and a Peace Elder.

Susun Weed is a contributor to the Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women's Studies, peer- reviewed journals, and popular magazines, including a regular column in Sagewoman.

Her worldwide teaching schedule encompasses herbal medicine, ethnobotany, pharmacognosy, psychology of healing, ecoherbalism, nutrition, and women's health issues and her venues include medical schools, hospital wellness centers, breast cancer centers, midwifery schools, naturopathic colleges, and shamanic training centers, as well as many conferences.

Susun appears on many television and radio shows, including National Public Radio and NBC News.
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