BUT – is it safe?
I feel to practice East Asian medicine, we may need to go back to the cultural assumptions that would have underpinned this medicine. Also work from the intuitive to the ‘scientific’. Also be baby centred. The question – ‘is it safe?’ is asked of anything that is not current ‘best practice’ in mainstream medicine – irrespective of whether what they are doing even is. ‘Is it safe?’ is a strange place to start. Please see my work on Mammalian Maternity .. nature does not set us up to kill us when pregnant. Survival of the fittest is what is needed by her.
‘Safety’ depends upon your definition – and ‘safe’ for mum and baby bonding is a far cry from ‘safe’ for the hospital and their accountants, and what is thus ‘safe’ for the bottom line of a medical centre. You may perhaps look no further than why it took so long for the childbed/ puerperal fever cause to be ‘best practice’. It was inconvenient to seek the answer as it turned upon its head all that current ‘best then’ practice was comfy with. . (The then doctors had a monopoly, and wanted to keep delving into dead bodies, and without washing their hands even – often used the same tools within a living, breathing, birthing women’s body as they had a few short hours ago in the week old corpse dug up and investigated to see how anatomy worked). With very obvious to us consequences. Again and again the cause of this terrible misery and death was found, and was shelved – with tens of thousands of women dying needlessly.
Now this is known, there are other less fatal but not more dangerous procedures that have slipped through. ‘Safety’ for the medical profession is still coming at huge cost to bubs and mums. We all pay for this as a culture. Disrespecting mums and babies is not sustainable – as more and more dislocated and disconnected and uncaring children arrive and grow up – and often they are not even seen as lovable – unless conditionally – by their parents.
This is presenting a very large burden to the tribe that must carry them. Perhaps look no further than the epidemic of parents not knowing what to nourish their children with as food and the cost to all as the obesity hits even babies.
There is no reference to the epidemic of unbonded babies, psychotic mums and a stream of what has been predicted by Dr Michel Odent – violence in birthing leads to a primal instinctual outpouring of violence for all of life. Frederick le Boyer.
Babies are getting overlooked in the birthing process, ahead of other more vested interests. Many are now rediscovering Dr Le Boyer’s wisdoms. Mums all knew this. Women were the birth attendants as they were the ones who watched, tended and cared for all. Can we afford to ignore this as a society? I would argue that we can’t. We need mum and baby bonded.
It may be already too late – as the knowledge base of what was handed down through the oral traditions of the older women is being quickly lost, as these are replaced by the youngsters whose uni training came from what is in text books – not what has always worked in the past. Minus refrigeration, electricity and running water, anything other than breastfeeding infants would (and did) result in their death.
Who is driving this?
Why is this now happening, when in the past the elders were revered and knew what to do? What was directly obvious in all agrarian societies – where nature must be respected – paying attention to detail and what had happened always dictated survival or death. No excuses, no welfare and no second chances afforded in nature. The old people used to know, and were counseled, and knew to pass on their knowledge for the ongoing survival of all. This is not just about health – but all of life.
All people prior to antibiotics knew to take care of themselves – as they knew from experience that a weakened body would not be resilient. Herbs and herbal gardens /apothecaries and wise women abounded.
Now, in the face of ‘science’ ‘old wives’ tales are relegated to superstition and antiquity – science and chemicals being seen as being superior. They were effective and quick – in the past. In a written form a few thousands years ago – as Asian medicine is well ahead of the ‘modern’ peoples – were the wisdoms that had been passed down, no doubt originally orally. Chinese/Asian medicine – shows the beginnings of understanding through observation – and in a simplified/agrarian language – still pertinent today.
In today’s world, almost no one is living as their grandparents were, or could even could possibly conceive we would be now. In modern colleges, the teachings of students of Asian medicine (through the emulation of biomedicine) are not providing age old wisdoms, but modern theories. Missing is the cultural foundation. Acupuncture and East Asian medicine has crossed from here it was just embedded, through language, location and time barriers.
People lived the knowledge as all their relations also knew the foundations as it was totally old people’s wisdoms. Not spelt out in the transmission of facts in theory lessons was the reality of real causes of disease, as now we can be clever with needles and herbs. Life returning to the Way of the Tao was part of the more classical trainings.
With the Chinese Mao times, the ‘Four Old’s’ (ideas/culture/customs and habits) were stamped out where possible. Incalculable information was lost – similar to the loss of well over a thousand universities in Tibet when ‘liberated’ by the Chinese. The loss of the wisdoms that were shared we can do nothing about now. We can however look to what is left with the still alive older healers whose own teachers had parts of the mastership/eldership and oral traditions.
I would argue that retaining these is vital to us all. From the throw away words of one healer, I have researched and renovated what this practice may mean in the modern world – so very far away from China, yet so very pertinent as a short cut to explain, and to also assist all in their healing journeys.
Many examples can be seen of how this process is fraught with beliefs, inconvenience as to what will be altered from common practice if it were true . . and with vested interest. (If in doubt – look to the hand-washing history for what is currently seen as ‘modern’ medicine. We could ask – who owns the gate to allow those in the ‘clan’.
We could ask what are we doing in front of a person who is suffering and has been lead to believe that we have answers? Do we have any understanding of the role this problem has in their life’s journey? Is it even appropriate we intervene?
My first pregnant patient was a heroin addict who had asthma, who was unsure of how to be well and pregnant. I reasoned that although I had been taught not to treat pregnancy (just out from college – it was a specialist field) if I proceeded within guidelines, surely the baby would be better off with me than what she had been doing so far.
After a few sessions, she rang to say that she would not be returning, although was feeling so much better – as she heard from an acupuncture student that acupuncture in pregnancy was ‘unsafe’.
Heroin in pregnancy is also not a good idea. . .
I was adhering to what became my focus – thinking through what was happening and enhancing her body’s journey back to self-healing/homeostasis. Paying attention to the five imbalances needed in a well pregnancy, I was encouraging her body to discover itself a new balance within this.
An increase in blood, heat, dampness and liver energy and a decline in maternally available Kidney Qi meant I was working to provide all that was needed – and calming her Shen was central to this. Of course if she then felt ‘safe’ away from life affirming assistance, it was her choice.
Maybe this is asked from the fear based dogma bio-mediicne carries with it inherently. I go with nature – what does she demand? The best possible. Here is a technique that has not much in the way of written resources that I have been able to source in English. As it was a home remedy that the elders just passed on, the political round up of all who followed what had always worked, in favour of the new politically correct version of life and how it was to be may mean there is little even in Chinese let to explore.
Cupping the cold from a pregnant women’s belly
I start where the middle heater has to support life, and where maternal Jing has to be transformed for the new life and the continuation of her reserves. Mum has to support her own life whilst founding a new one. She often is starting from way behind the health ball, needing to repair and restore herself.
As Dr John Shen discovered, women can improve or wreck their rest of life at the pregnancy interface, so all this work I present is in the knowledge that we are moving her to a new normal, not just doing a U-turn from where biomedicine may have predicted (without any assistance past watchful waiting/medical monitoring) she could go.
Returning the body to optimal is the endeavour of all treatments in natural medicine. Not forcing, not destabilising and definitely not disempowering/ feeding fears, or giving false hope.
Let us work WITH nature to make the best baby/life possible.
‘Is it safe?’ Part 2
I answer this with another set of questions – that are infrequently asked.
- Is it safe to interfere with a natural process? (Birthing)
- Is it safe to ignore maternal multi nutritional deficiencies even before conception?
Is it safe to allow subfertile men to father possible babies without investigating why they cannot make babies the natural way? - Is it safe to have (men and) women without normal BBT’s to start down the path of assisted reproductive technologies in any form without helping them back to perfect health first – in order to make the best beginning possible for their intended babies? (Fertility is a measure of health) – see Jing markers
- Is it safe for dad to have any caffeinated drinks in his system (3 months prior to conception)?
- Is it safe for mums to be to drink any caffeinated drinks in pregnancy?
Is it safe for mums to have any alcohol on board at all even leading up to pregnancy, let alone during gestation? - Is it safe for mum to have any access to any aspartame or ‘diet’ drinks in pregnancy?
Is it safe for mum to avoid ‘high fat’, even that her and baby’s neurological systems, hormones and lives themselves are dependent upon saturated dietary fats as a substrate, and plenty of nutrient dense foods to grow perfection? - Is it safe to allow any dental work (especially with mercury contamination) at any stage leading up to or in pregnancy?
- Is it safe to use an ultrasound at any stage in pregnancy?
- Is it safe to vaccinate mum at any time in pregnancy?
- Is it safe to use whatever latest medical technology without exhaustive safety checks to ensure all future generations are not impacted negatively through the essentially untested ‘improvements’ as they appear to those who reap rewards from their use?
Is it safe to vaccinate baby – especially when the tiny recipient is not designed to have an active immune system at the age this is now being enforced? - Is it safe to not breastfeed exclusively at east till six months of age?
- Is it safe to not follow all research that clearly shows modern obstetric practices are not based on results, but premises that are yet to be found to be safe at all?
- Is it safe to induce, hassle and otherwise worry a pregnant woman at any stage of her pregnancy and imminent birth?
- Is it safe for those using natural health methods and models to study the biomedical one as that is contrary to nature and natural processes?
- Is it safe to follow the expected end results of a diagnosis rather than work back towards health as all natural health care models can?
With medical ignorance of the causal nature of the role of diet and nutritional deficiencies in all matters reproductive – that all farmers would be aware of – why is it seen to be safe to allow those who are making the next generation to do whatever they feel inclined to – in essence not be conscious of the effect they are having on all generations to come? (See Pottenger’s cats – at 3.09 minutes into the clip).
Nature works perfectly when we follow her dictates.
