21stcenturymed.org
The term "Global Medicine" is about sharing ideas of health and
healing from different cultures of the world. Its an approach
to health that has a global perspective. For example, in the west we
have now embraced health ideas like yoga, meditation, tai chi, food
as medicine, and many other great ideas from outside the west. When
we do this, we are expanding our medicine cabinet and benefiting
from healthful ways and methods from different parts of the
world. Health ideas spread because they work. They help
us feel better, reduce our stress, make us more hopeful, sleep
better, get less angry... Anne Fonfa,
a breast cancer survivor, found ideas from Germany, Japan and other
places that were helpful to her. She is not the only
one. So many people are finding helpful ideas around the globe that
there is now a conference called Annie Appleseed
to share global medicine just about cancer.
A big part of many cultures is the idea of 'self
care'... like exercise, as individuals, we can engage in
self care. It is a way of life. Herb Benson, an MD at
Harvard who studies meditation has said he hopes self care will one
day be part of our medicine cabinet. Here on our
site, we focus on 'self care acupressure.' It is a special
instruction of acupressure where we only need our own hands... so no
need for an appointment, no money is involved, and once you learn
it, you take it with you wherever you are and can use it whenever
you like. There are self care acupressure recipes for
pain, headache, sinusitis, tummy troubles, worry, anxiety, etc.
If you have never heard of acupressure, you're not alone.You
might say acupressure is a cousin of acupuncture. It has
some similar ideas, and relates to the body ... although unlike
acupuncture, we use our hands instead of needles.. There are a
lot of ways we can use our hands. The touch can be tender, or
firm, we can use one finger or our whole hand, we can scratch or
polish or smoosh...when you start to pay attention to how we
all touch ourselves during the day in every day life, you will
notice we are all constantly holding or supporting our selves with
touch... we hold our hands, interlock our fingers, we press on our
forehead, we cross our arms, our legs. You get the
idea. So we already know.
Global medicine is an idea whose time as come. It is growing
because there are treasures in every culture on how to help one
another. You can see people learning yoga, going to
meditation classes and so on. What you might not know is that
for you to learn these practices today, they have been passed down
and shared with you by other people. In some cultures
people have fought hard to preserve knowledge and pass it
down. Good health knowledge is a treasure
when you think about it. Staying healthy, having
good resources for health is what keeps us growing and strong.
When you find someone who can share these kinds of health ideas from
other cultures, think about how many generations have held and
preserved what you are learning and practicing. We are
lucky to be receiving this knowledge.
To learn more, see the Pub Med document, "Global
Medicine Technology"
www.21stcenturymed.org