Healing The Natural Way

It is amazing what one can find among old items stored in an unused place at home that has rarely been visited, if at all. That is what happened the other day to me. Without anything on schedule because of foul weather lately, the sudden thought struck me to air the place tightly closed behind a locked door. No one of the family had entered this dusty, cobweb infested place for ages. The prospect in itself did not in the least entice me, but someone had to do it sometime, I thought. After a time lapse of nearly an hour because no one remembered what key to use from the bunch held together by a large, rusty key ring, I finally made it into the junk room. My eyes had to adjust to the poor light that filtered hesitantly into the place. I recognized old outdated furniture in the shadows, torn in spots of the upholstery which became a lasting memory of our housecats, long dead now. A wave of sadness assailed me momentarily as I had been very fond of them.

As my eyes got used to the lighting I discovered that a corner of the room was filled with old documents, drafts and discarded literature of mine. After all these years, curiosity got the better out of me. Shaking the cobwebs out of mind as well I resolutely made it to the untidy heap in the corner. The books held my interest, some of the titles I had forgotten, let alone its contents. Then my eyes fell on an unassuming looking booklet entitled “HEALING THE NATURAL WAY WITH REFLEXOLOGY” if it would have been translated in English. My mind flashed back some twenty years or more when I was still a member of the working force in the capacity of executive secretary. I remembered the person who strongly recommended the booklet to me. He was a diabetic patient who could not stay away from tarts and cookies. It was no surprise that he succumbed to the complications of the illness several years later.

Anyway, I recalled that at the time I was battling a recurring bladder problem despite the subscribed antibiotic from our office doctor. And this office assistant thought that natural healing might do the trick. I did not really believe that it would do wonders to my health problem. I bought the booklet to do him a favor. Reflexology?? What on earth was that.

It turned out to be a traditional healing method that started some 5000 years ago in China. It was a method practiced by Taoist priests according to literature written by western authors who described it mostly as a pseudoscience… whatever that means. The method consists of pressuring certain zones on the foot sole that would stimulate certain nerve points linked to organs and parts of the body. If the foot zone proves to be sensitive or downright painful when massaged, the person has a health problem. More than half of the pages in the booklet contained sketches of foot soles clearly depicting the pressure zones for massage. It looked easy enough to follow and since the book had been written as a self-help for economy minded people, I decided to give the method a try.

According to the instructions, bladder complaints would be alleviated when the kidney, urinary channel and bladder zones were pressured for about 10-15 minutes. And that was what I did, believing only half the author’s writing. Then I made a shocking discovery on the fourth day of Reflexology practice. It suddenly struck me that I had been free of the uncomfortable feeling in my lower abdomen for most of the day. Still unconvinced, I told myself that it was just one of the things that come and go. The next day, the pain was still away. I then began to believe that my own foot massage had rekindled the nerves of some ailing organ within and that my own system had started the healing process. I stopped massage of the right foot sole after a week and the health problem stayed away. I was delighted of my finding and spread the news among my colleagues in the office.

A retired navy officer has also tried this healing method to improve his blood circulation since he underwent bypass surgery about 10 years ago . The Experience boosted his sense of well being in a big way. His treatment lasted 3 weeks with 6 massage sessions. Each session took up 1 hour in which the reflexogist massaged the heart zone on one of his foot soles. Nowadays there are electronic massage machines priced inexorably on the market. The navy pensioner said that massage prices vary depending on the duration of the session.

Reflexology does not heal every illness the author wrote. Illnesses of bacterial origin or cancer are difficult to heal if at all. It might lessen pain. Reflexology might be ineffective too if the nerves at the pressure zones are dead.

This massaging method easily heals heart complaints, weak bladder, headaches, flu, muscle cramp, hemorrhoids, and more.

Meanwhile, in the backroom the shadows had grown and covered a good deal of the place. Of course, there was no light bulb in the socket overhead. I held tight on the rediscovered booklet and closed up the place. My mind whirled around the thought of medication costs. I was glad I found the booklet that had helped me some twenty years ago in getting rid of a nagging health problem. I would keep it among newer literature in my bookcase. Who knows I might need it one day and that it might once again prevent me from having to spend exorbitant costs on standard medicine.

Apart from Reflexology I also experienced beneficial effects from the use of a certain herb that had kept blood glucose under control. For years, regular diabetes medication had little effect on me despite the rigid sugarless diet I followed. One day, at some birthday party, a friend with the same problem divulged that he had successfully brought his glucose count to normal levels with the use of drinking “bayleaf” tea (daun salam). Again I could not believe my ears.

“Daun salam, eh?”

“Yes,” he said, “try it. If it is compatible with you, your glucose count will soon become normal.”

True to his word, after two months of bayleaf tea I checked my blood sugar level. To my surprise the device read 144, down from a constant reading of 175 or higher. I kept faithfully drinking this tea and after another 8 weeks it was down to 112. A doctor friend of mine who checked my glucose count one day wanted the bayleaf recipe. “No problem,” I said. “Just boil 10 leaves on a normal glass of water and keep a sugarless diet.” Nowadays, my glucose count has reached a normal 95 low which affords a good piece of cake now and then.

My neighbors, longstanding pensioners in their 70s and up, and therefore, unsurprisingly, sufferers of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart complaints and more, have for the most part done away with standard medication to beat their health complaints. Most of them are of the opinion that the cost to keep their health condition under control are just too steep to keep up and proving more dangerous because of its chemical content. For those reasons, many of them have collected a wealth of herbal remedies that had astounded me. My neighborhood chief who is a feisty female, has her backyard dense with papaya trees. She told me that she battles diabetes with tea of papaya roots…

She claims that it does wonders to her glucose blood level which at one time landed her in hospital when it skyrocketed to more than 500.

“I thought I was going to die then. It is so hard to not consume sugar, eh. Sugarless food is so hard to swallow,” she sighed.

At the monthly women get-togethers where everybody submits Rp.50,000 in a collective pot (arisan) she had arranged to hold informative talks by someone in cooperation with the department of health.