Healing Outside the Box

Navigating illness in a world of so many choices: a past blog post and current reflections

photo from my trip to the Amazon

A past blog post:

The Amazonian Rainforest was never on my bucket-list. Fist-sized spiders? No thanks.

But when I was asked to join a shaman and a botanist in the Peruvian rainforest to lead a trip for ACEER (The Amazon Center for Environmental Education and Research), I couldn’t say no.

But I was determined to be fashionable in the jungle.

Why should a gazillion mosquitoes, 95% humidity, and a week without hot water reduce me to slovenliness?

From the comfort of my home in Philadelphia, I carefully considered my options.

Skorts, I decided, were just the thing.

Fast-forward to Day 2 in the Rain Forest.

Did I mention that it was 90 degrees and 95% humidity? Add that to the little lycra bottoms under the skirt of a skort and you get the perfect breeding ground for the bacteria.

I don’t usually get Urinary Tract Infection’s. They’re not my thing. I was prepared for hives, food allergies, migraines, sprained ankles, and colds… but not a UTI.

No matter, I thought, this is the perfect excuse to try out some jungle medicine.

It was a smidge embarrassing to approach our (male) translator to ask him to explain the situation to Antonio, the shaman we were traveling with, and Juan Louis, the Peruvian botanist in the group.

It took about a half a minute for the two men to begin debating. Juan wanted me to use the roots of a particular species of palm tree that are anti-microbial to the kidneys. Antonio was against this plan. Palm roots are heating and, since a UTI is a hot condition, adding more heat was ill-advised.

This is the difference between an energetic system of medicine, like herbalism, and a scientific system, like chemical medicine.

An energetic system asks if a condition is hot or cold, wet or dry. Is it moving or is it stagnant?

Addressing the energy is the key to rebalancing the body.

It’s pretty easy to become enamored with the mystical aspects of shamanism. But the plant medicine practiced by shamans is remarkably similar to the medicine handed down from the Chinese (TCM), the Indians (Ayurveda), and the Greeks (Humoral medicine).

It’s all about balance, harmony, and coming back to center.

Unfortunately, neither Antonio nor Juan Louis thought the plants growing in our particular area of the jungle would provide the balance I needed. And UTI’s are not to be messed with (the bacteria can travel from the bladder up to the kidneys). That left antibiotics.

It felt ironic to be considering an antibiotic in the Amazon rainforest, a place where many of the world’s medicines grow. And beyond the irony was the sour taste of something else: failure? hamstrung idealism?

As I sat in the mess hall contemplating the antibiotic capsule, Antonio joined me. He took the capsule in his hand and focused on it for a few moments before putting the pull in my hands and closing them around it. He put his hands over mine. “You take,” he instructed, smiling his infectious grin.

I knew in that moment it wasn’t about the pill; it was about the energy I put into taking it.

I smiled to myself, thinking of all the times I had told a client that sometimes you have to take a pharmaceutical. Be thankful it exists, bless it, and take it. The pill was, apparently, a taste of my own medicine.

The following morning Antonio showed up at my room bright and early. He gave me a large glass of cucumber juice with a twist of lemon. Cucumber to cool. Lemon to astringe.

The best of both worlds.

Current Reflections
(transcribed from audio)

The university at which I was teaching had a little outpost in the Amazonian jungle where they taught classes. I was thrilled to be asked to be the headteacher for a short program between semesters. “Teaching” in this case meant holding space and managing the group, while a person who worked for the Peruvian government in their eco division (the name of which I don't remember) and a shaman taught the class. It was a pretty incredible experience to learn from both a scientist and someone who was trained in a more mystical modality about the Amazon river, the trees, healing plants, and the efforts to preserve it all. The experience was truly once-in-a-lifetime.

But getting a UTI was not fun, especially while in the jungle. You're hot and sweaty, and it's just drippy and kind of disgusting all the time. My first thought when I got it was, "Oh, good. I'll get to use some Amazonian healing plants. I'll get to experience the power of botanical medicine of the Amazon for myself." That's not actually what happened.

A conversation ensued between the scientist and the shaman about what plants were nearby, in the particular part of the Amazon we were in, that could be harvested. They really couldn't get to any plants that they wanted for a UTI easily. What ended up happening was they advised me to take an antibiotic. I got really upset. I remember crying. It was incredibly upsetting to me that, here I was, having an immersive experience in the jungle, and that the jungle actually couldn't take care of all the things. I had a UTI, and there was really nothing to heal it.

That was a turning point in my thinking. At that point in time, I had studied herbalism for about seven years. I understood that a lot of pharmaceutical medicines mask symptoms instead of heal symptoms, whereas herbs, while slower, often heal what's going on as opposed to masking what's going on. So I had taken a pretty hard line in and didn't really use pharmaceuticals except as extreme emergency medicine. If I was home, there were plenty of things I would do for UTI that would not involve killing off all the microbes in my gut the way an antibiotic does.

This moment of disappointment made me realize that I was treating herbal medicine like a religion. I had faith that plants could heal all things, no matter what and wasn’t letting anything besides herbs and homeopathics into my body. I suddenly had to go a different route, even though I was in the medicine basket of the world. But I think the thing that really struck me and allowed me to reevaluate my own thoughts and realize that I was thinking myself into a box instead of thinking myself into freedom, was when the shaman put the antibiotic pill in my hand. He closed my hands over the pill, and he put his hands over my hands, and he said, "Let's bless the pill."

It was like, "Oh. Oh, Maia. Hello. Of course." I got myself so wound up in the specifics of the material properties of what I was going to use for healing that I totally neglected this energetic link and forgot that it was always there, always available.

When you harvest plants, you say your pleases and thank-yous and offer your energy and your blessings. But it didn't occur to me to shift the energy of other things, like a pharmaceutical. That a pharmaceutical can be a blessing, too. It was a huge awakening. It really let me see how I'd become very stiff and rigid and fixed in something that should have been fluid and joyous.

What do you think? Share your thoughts, comments, and questions below!

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