It is a common practice among male shamans in primitive cultures to dress as women during healing rituals. They believe that women are more able to connect with the healing forces of the spirits that lie within the psyche. In the practice of male dominated western medicine, extremely aggressive “masculine” techniques are applied to body and mind to exterminate the evil presence. The evil presence in modern terms would include germs, bacteria, virus, tumors, depression, schizophrenia, and disease of unknown etiology. Drugs, knives, invisible burning rays, electric shock, electric drills, and plastic artificial implanted organs are among the weapons used in a nationally bankrupting 300 billion dollar per year frontal assault on disease.

In their intuitive unscientific way, the shamans are seeking to create a space in the patient into which can be summoned integrative forces. The modern medical doctor is seeking to destroy the presence of the disease.

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In our time, a great rise of the feminine principle is being recognized. Actually, this has less to do with sex, than a deeper understanding of the male/female essences that reside within the individual, man or woman. Where tradition or cultural habit have limited the view, the female nurtures and allows an atmosphere for creation. She represents a fertile, safe place for emergence and new life form … Being. The man has represented an aggressive achieving nature; a builder and developer, always doing and quantifying his work. The imbalance of this gender oriented dualistic view has created great internal stress for those whose sex belied their natural tendencies in living. Jung and others have shown that the male/female nature of a human being lies side by side within each, though one aspect appears dominant in expression due to predominant factors such as sex. Finding the balance in each individual is the ever changing, ongoing process of a lifetime.

The point of this paper is to offer the view that, except in certain situations where aggressive intervention is clearly required, it is the feminine principle, characterized as the healing heart, that is required for promoting the healing process.

Before we look at the practice of health care with people, perhaps it will be easier to see all this in metaphor with agriculture, where the aim is for something to grow healthy and whole. The modern farmer treats the plant, the true farmer treats the soil. Both seek to extract living whole forms through the planting of seeds in the feminine earth mother. Her fertility is paramount. An organic farmer friend named Robert Stoney, who treats the soil in County Meath, Ireland, told me,” We should live as if we will not be here tomorrow, but farm as if we will be here forever.” Over his delicious whole wheat scones, we were lamenting the fact that in modern agriculture the role of soil has been reduced to that of a substance of convenient texture that holds plants in the verticle position while chemicals are forced up their shaft.

This fact emphasized itself to me while driving through back roads in Mississippi. Lost, I stopped to ask a farmer directions. Then I asked him why he was burning the remains of his harvested field rather than turning the tailings under to create more tilth in the soil. He frowned as he told me that the soil was sterilized through years of chemical applications and that there was not enough microbial life in the soil to break down the fiber before the next spring planting. Rotting and composting could not occur. The place of which I write was one of the most naturally. God blessed regions on earth, the Mississippi Delta.

The earth is exploited and raped through agressive artificial means with heavy machinery and expensive synthetic petrochemicals. The farmer, seeing some symptom or insect on the crop, simply applies various chemicals to the plant to exterminate the symptom. The symptom was there for a reason. As said in Proverbs, “The curse causeless shall not come.” “Kill the curse, forget the cause,” is the modern reply. The skill of the farmer to read the signs of his soil and crops, know the seasons, anticipate the stress of the environment on the soil and crops, naturally fertilize and return substance to the soil, skillfully rotate the crops, use trees for wind breaks and to hold the water table high are among the true healing rituals of the successful farmer. Through the plant, the fertility of the earth is drawn up powerfully from the darkness below the surface (the unconscious) upward through the plant responding to the light and air above the surface (the conscious).

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All the nutrient mineral substance that appears at harvest above ground has been drawn and processed from below. In this way, the lower mineral kingdom is raised to the higher vegetable kingdom, where it can have opportunity to rise again to the animal and human kingdom, unless it is diseased. If what is being drawn from below is deficient, what appears above is prone to disease. Thus, nature’s sanitation department-insects, bacteria, fungus, etc. comes to remove from the scene forms unfit for higher consumption. Chemical poisons block this natural defense against deficient life forms. As the soil becomes weaker, the masculine aggressive approach must be applied increasingly in a struggle to tear from the womb of earth the abundance she would otherwise freely yield.
The feminizing of agriculture (currently called “organic gardening”) does not picture women plowing the fields, but sees a process of cooperation with the growth and development cycles of life at the level of soil and plants.

We call ourselves “human beings.” The “human” draws from the word humus, the prime element in healthy top soil. The “being” draws from the invisible cosmic presence in the soul. Now see the health professional as a farmer and the patient as the plant. The patient is ill. What does the doctor treat, the symptom or the person? Prince Charles said it so well in a speech to the British Medical Association:

“By concentration on smaller and smaller fragments of the body, modern medicine perhaps loses sight of the patient as a whole human being, and by reducing health to mechanical functioning it is no longer able to deal with the phenomenon of healing…”

“Through the centuries healing has been practiced by folk-healers who are guided by traditional wisdom that sees illness as a disorder of the whole person, involving not only the patient’s body, but his mind, his self-image, his dependence on the physical and social environment, as well as his relation to the cosmos…?

Later in the address, Prince Charles asks how the doctor responds to an ill psyche disguised as a sick body. I believe what the Prince is saying is “treat the soil not the plant.”

In crisis medicine, a patient enters the emergency room with a deep physical wound. Something heroic and aggressive must be done to stop the hemorrhage and threat of infection right now. Obviously, how the patient got on with his mother or what his diet is like is not quite relevant. Something aggressive is applied to the passive body. But in creative medicine, where the healing crisis is not momentary life and death, the more classical concept of healing now has time to be implemented, dealing with the cause not the curse. This is the feminine side of health care. It is the origin of the word “nurse,” which means “to nourish.” The soil of the patient’s body and mind must be fertile with essential factors which when processed internally can then be drawn out, causing health, displacing disease. Diet and nutrition is a key factor in this, akin to the shape of the soil. Nutrients fertilize the flesh. The vitamin, mineral, enzyme, amino acid composition of each cell provides the feminine receptive potency for the life forces moving from the inner realms of the spirit and psyche. All physical healing can be seen actually as spiritual healing; no healing can occur in a corpse. What is vacant in a corpse if not the spirit or being of the person? One cancer specialist calls love a medicine. Unscientific? Romantic? Only because scientists cannot measure love, and therefore miss the heart of the matter. Let them study the kiss of a mother to her child’s scraped knee, and the instant relief afforded. Did the response of the child trigger release of endorphins from the living drugstore of the brain and endocrine system? Could a mother’s kiss be prepackaged and sold over the counter? The mother put nothing into the child, but drew something from the child. That which was drawn was able to be drawn by the feminine principle of response, rather than the masculine principle of action. Understanding and living this principle, Dr. William Bahan once said, “There is no such thing as an incurable illness, only incurable people”, ie: people in whom the feminine aspect of response was not internally cultivated.

“Among the most encouraging examples in the rise of the feminine principle in healing that I see today, is the growth and acceptance of the classical laying on of hands, currently being dubbed “therapeutic touch.” Not surprisingly, this is currently emerging through nurses, representing the feminine, or heart of medicine.”

As stress tears the fabric of consciousness like never before, a look here at the feminine/masculine approach seems vital. Chemical tranquilizers can artificially calm people down. The phone still rings, but you can’t hear it. Calcium, magnesium and potassium also have this effect but without mental blurring, toxic side effects and physical addiction. The right kind of music can also be a salve for stressed nerves, as many are finding out. The chemical approach is the aggressive male dominant one. From there we move across the spectrum with minerals and music (elements from the earth mother and vibrational tones). In the story of David and Saul, only the harp of David could sooth the vexed spirit in Saul. But David was no pansy with his music and soulful psalms. He conquered all the enemies of Israel and became king. What he had developed was balance so that his male and female aspects could appropriately dominate as needs arose.

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“I took these photos in the Punjab of India. (See image below) This is an example of the powerful feminine principle in healing. Here Dr. Bahan is offering therapeutic touch, attunement, with a 108 year old Sikh holy man. When we entered the room the man was in a deep coma like sleep, quite ill, and consciously unaware of our presence. After about 10 minutes of quiet intensity he awoke and turned with prayerful hands of thanks. He was refreshed and alert, indicating that he felt the energy of a “wonderful presence.” His years of developing a receptive tranquil heart and Dr. Bahan’s years of developing a non-aggressive radiant form of energy-release allowed the life chemistry for east to meet west with healing. The feminine principle relies upon the heart’s ability to receive and release. We then moved to another room to offer attunement with the Sikh’s 85 year old son.”

Among the most encouraging examples in the rise of the feminine principle in healing that I see today, is the growth and acceptance of the classical laying on of hands, currently being dubbed “therapeutic touch.” Not surprisingly, this is currently emerging through nurses, representing the feminine, or heart of medicine. Laboratory tests in several hospitals show that among the benefits of this non-invasive technique are increase in blood hemoglobin, relief of pain, decrease in anxiety and alteration of brain waves which show deep states of relaxation. Those involved are receiving much training in the areas of perception and sensitivity. Though natural and inherent within, in our present masculine high tech madness we have lost almost all touch with the physician within. We are embarrassed by the simplicity involved, believing instead that only the applications of our mind through technology can make it so. Why has the feminine side been so dishonored? In an age when we can guide atomic warheads through the heavens to destroy the earth, simple solutions have been overshadowed by our love for high tech fascinations. But if we pause to look at it, the most advanced expressions of high tech are going on inside the living organism we call ourselves, transforming energy into life and matter into living flesh. The unrealized power and perfection of the alive and whole individual is the measure of our greatest failure. But for a life-saving quality of the feminine principle, all is certainly lost: forgiveness. This is not mere human circumstantial forgiveness, but an ever radiating giving of the healing energies of life-renewing, regenerating and reborn in the moment. Men and women have much internal gardening to do in this area.

Mark Anderson is President of Standard Process, West and a nutritional consultant to doctors. Mr. Anderson has written and lectured extensively on nutrition and related fields, and is a Trustee of The Whole Health Institute.The Feminine Principle in Healing