Diane Stein - All Women Are Healers: A Comprehensive Guide to Natural Healing

Essential Reiki: A Complete Guide to an Ancient Healing Art

Natural Healing for Dogs & Cats

The Natural Remedy Book for Women

Healing Herbs A to Z

Gemstones A to Z

Essential Energy Balancing

Essential Psychic Healing

Text copyright 1990 by Diane Stein

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Crossing Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.tenspeed.com

Crossing Press and the Crossing Press colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the publisher.

eISBN: 978-0-307-78377-6

v3.1

Note to the Reader:

The information in this book does not constitute medical advice. Not every suggestion applies to your particular case. Consult a trusted health professional if questions arise. Neither the author nor the publisher takes responsibility for any ill effects which may be produced as a result of following any suggestions given in this book. The reader does so at her own risk.

I would like to thank some of the people who have helped in the research and editing of this book, contributing their time and expertise to bringing accurate healing information to women. I thank Nett Hart and Lee Lanning for their thoughtful comments and for editing yet another of my books. I thank Rebecca Tallman also, for comments and editing and for help with the chapters on vitamins and herbs, and Sidney Spinster for her expertise and editing of the homeopathy chapter. Pam Martin and Denise Messina I thank for reviewing the chapters on polarity balancing, acupressure and applied kinesiology, and for showing me how positive the skills are by using them on me. I thank Russ Osberg and Ron Augustine for general support and caring, and for their input and help as my healing partners.

The generosity and caring of the women at several bookstores has also a been major help in the referencing and locating of materials for this book. Among them, I thank Sally and Beth of Lodestar Books in Birmingham, AL, Harriet and Len of Sign of Aquarius in Pittsburgh, PA, Cheryl and Dana of Goldenseal in Pittsburgh, and the women of Perelandra Books in Eugene, OR. Without their help and generosity this book could not have been written.

For Nett Hart and Lee Lanning
who have edited all my books.

We are all learning to heal, heal ourselves, heal our bodies, heal our common womanspirits. Healing begins in acute attentionattention to our needs and desires, attention to our manifestations. We heal by knowing our state of being, whether we are hot or cold, wet or dry, soothed or irritated, full or empty, sad or content, restless or energetic. We do not need to find cause for this state. By attending to ourselves we can ask what do I need to feel whole, well? We will know the answer. We affirm we can be whole, can have health. We are each ultimately our own healers.

Nett Hart and Lee Lanning, Awakening, An Almanac of Lesbian Lore and Vision, (Minneapolis, Word-Weavers, 1987).

The suppression of female healers by the medical establishment was a political struggle, first in that it is part of the history of sex struggle in general. The status of women as healers has risen and fallen with the status of women. When women healers were attacked they were attacked as women; when they fought back they fought back in solidarity with all women.

Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, Witches, Midwives andNurses: A History of Women Healers, (Old Westbury, New York, The Feminist Press, 1973).

To administer medicine after an illness begins is like digging a well after becoming thirsty.

The Chinese Nei Jing, 300 BCE.

The term gynecology, applied to a branch of patriarchal medicine invented in the nineteenth century as an oppressive/ repressive response and antidote to the first wave of feminism in the United States and Europe, is firmly ensconced in the reversal world.

Mary Daly, Websters First Inter galactic Wickedary of the English Language, Beacon Press, 1988).

Health is the result of living in harmony with yourself and your environment. Health is to be in sync with life: all the rhythms harmonizing breath with body functions, body functions with life activities, and life activities in rhythm with the cycles of the earth.

Margot Adair, Working Inside Out, Tools for Change, (Berkeley, CA, Wingbow Press, 1984).

I am a woman taking care of myself.

I am a woman who begins the revolution in my own heart, who purges from my life the injustices so I can see clearly.

I am a woman unafraid to proceed with what I now know knowing as I proceed I will not learn what I could not learn without

I am a woman taking care of myself becoming lean but not hard, separate but not apart.

I am a woman who begins the revolution in my own heart.

Nett Hart and Lee Lanning, Awakening, An Almanac of Lesbian Lore and Vision, (Minneapolis, Word Weavers, 1987).

Women were the creators of the world, the Goddess-birthgivers, the inventors of positive/peaceful civilization. In every culture, women invented and developed the skills that made survival of the early people possible, from cooking to basketry, gathering to agriculture, domestication of animals to home building. Women first fed themselves and their children by identifying and seeking out wild plants for food and for medicines. In learning how to grow these plants women began agriculture. They developed early tools to make the farming easier, developed basketry and pottery to carry water and to store and cook their harvests in. Women tamed the young of wild animals for wool, milk, pulling plows, carrying heavy objects and for protection, later using animal products for food, clothing and shelters. They developed the art of building structures in various formsadobe, hides, wood, straw, brickand the art of making clothes. Primary among their skills and inventions, women began the art and science of healing.

In the time of the early matriarchies, healing and religion were deeply connected and religion was female. Healing began with birth and the act of women giving birth was equated closely with the Goddess act of creating the world. Every culture had its beginning-of-the-world stories, and the stories were invariably and inevitably birth stories. The Goddess of various and many names arose from chaos to create the earth and universe. From her womb, she formed or gave birth to every species of living thing:

In the beginning, there was only formless chaos Then chaos settled into form, and that form was the huge Gaea, the deep-breasted one, the earth. (Greece)

Eurynome assumed the form of a dove and laid the Universal Egg on the waves of the sea. She instructed Ophion (the snake also born from her) to coil seven times around this egg until it hatched and split in two. Out tumbled all things that exist. (Greece)