The Wise Woman Tradition is the world's oldest healing tradition. It’s symbol is the spiral, which depicts life in it’s spiraling, ever-changing completeness.
This perspective honors each being an inherently whole, healthy and sacred. Recognizing that all challenges, including disease are opportunities for growth and transformation.
Health is understood as more than simply being free from illness, and includes cultivating the mental, emotional, spiritual vitality and wellbeing. In this tradition the focus is not the elimination of what is not wanted, but a nourishing of our innate wholeness, health and holiness.
This tradition gives us a framework to reference when health challenges arise, known as the Six Steps of Healing. This guide is based on the concept "First do no harm.”
Healing and alignment tools are as diverse as the human imagination. This is one way to prioritize our response to an issue as it arises…
The Six Healing Steps
Step 0 - Do Nothing
Give space, sleep, meditate, open to receive.
Communicates to yourself and your body that there is no rush.
Be present with it.
Consider- is the really a problem?
Step 1 - Collect Information
This includes both inner and outer information and resources.
Step 2 - Engage the Energy
Prayer, frequency, homeopathy, ceremony, affirmation, sounds, dance, breath.
Step 3 - Nourish and Tonify
With food, herbs, exercise, massage.
Ask- What does the body need?
Step 4 - Stimulate & Sedate
Acupuncture, acupressure, heat, cold.
Step 5 - Use Drugs
Supplements and medications.
Step 6 - Break & Enter
Invasive tests, interventons and surgery.
Each step could last minutes to days to weeks. your intuition will tell you if and when one route is effective or not.
How many drugs or surgeries could be avoided by taking all of these steps in earnest?
Conclusion
True health is the byproduct of honoring our needs, nourishing our bodies, connecting to spirit and having a place in the community or family.
In birthkeeping, the pregnant woman is at the center of the spiral with her care team spiraling out at varying distances of support around her. We must remember that the medicine she needs is unique to her and always evolving.
My hope is that we return to these foundations of health as well as our intuition in our approach to care of self and others.
This tradition is a beautiful gateway into a more conscious way of being in pregnancy and beyond.
Will you try it next time you have something that is asking to be healed?