Healthy Living

What is a Master Herbalist?                                                                                       posted May 2008

A Master Herbalist (MH) is an expert trained in every aspect of herbal medicine, including herb identification, harvesting, preparing herbal remedies, dispensing and combining herbal formulations. An MH will involve the client in developing an integrated herbal program addressing specific health conditions and concerns. An MH should possess a holistic philosophy and work on treating the whole person rather than the disease and consider the nutritional needs as well as emotional state of the client being treated.
This means that my job is to provide you with ways to prevent illness and obtain optimum health. While a doctor treats symptoms, I train people in the ways to stay healthy.
Doctors are a valuable resource when emergencies arise, such as car accidents, heart attacks, stitches and broken bones. However, when it comes to maintaining health, they don't have the training. A four year medical education contains only 20 hours on nutrition and how it impacts our health. So when we face bacterial infections and viruses or chronic degenerative diseases like diabetes or heart disease, we need to get to the root of the ailment by healthy and gentle means to improve the bodies own natural processes. Remember this: drugs and surgery stand outside of the bodies processes while herbs, vitamins and even the wholesome foods we eat, work with our own natural ways of securing health.
•Here is an example - Antibiotics
Antibiotic drugs overpower invading bacteria when they are out of control. The idea is to kill everything that resembles bacteria while your body stabilizes your own immune system response. Herbal antibiotics work just the opposite; they flush out and cleanse the lymph glands so your body can process invaders itself, without destroying valuable flora.
•Consider This:
Up until about 100-150 years ago we all had healing gardens. If mom burned herself while cooking supper, she would go outside and pick some marigolds, mash them up, and bind them to the wound. We took care of our own health. About that time, scientists began isolating and synthesizing plant molecules and we started to see the first drugs. Formulas that were patentable and therefore, big money! The AMA was born and they had their "silver bullet" medications. They addressed specific symptoms, instead of the whole body, and they wowed everyone, in America that is. Around the world, the importance of using the whole herb is understood to be most effective. The rest of the world still uses nature to maintain health. In fact, you can't even buy a drug in China. They don't believe in them. And just look at their population! You see, herbs work on your whole system, not just one thing. They work to regulate and maintain, without any disruption of healthy functions.
We Americans are learning this and we're beginning to take our health back into our own hands. I would love to help you gain and maintain control or yours with the information and products available here. If you would like to learn more, or if you have a specific, personal need you would like to discuss, please make an appointment for a comprehensive, private consultation.

                                                                                         In good health,
                                                                                         Dr. Bonnie
                                                                                         Blossom Spring

Excerpts from my book, "Spirit Flight, Combining the Physical and Spiritual for Total Health"

What's keeping you from total health? posted June 2008

You'll probably be able to identify with one of the following client types and decide for yourself what it will take for you to become healthy and truly well.
Basically there are three kinds of clients. The first one has already done her own research on the condition she's suffered from for years and she has all the answers. She knows all the latest findings about this herb or that vitamin and she really only came to me to make sure she was right. She doesn't really want my help. I know this because she'll argue if my advice differs from her own ideas about the situation. The sad thing is that she's had this condition for years and yet she wants to continue to not get well. Usually, this is the person whom you try not to get cornered by at parties because she'll tell you all about her illness… whether you're interested or not. Her ailments are part of who she is and without them she has no identity.
The second kind is what I think of as the typical American client. This is someone who is overweight and really unhealthy from a lifetime of fast food and soft drinks, and just complete ignorance of anything really healthy. This family's kitchen is full of non-fat, pre-packaged products, frozen entrees, margarine, soda, chips, cookies and all kinds of other crap, but very little food. The medicine cabinet is overflowing with little orange bottles with unpronounceable names on the labels for everything from high blood pressure and cholesterol, to 3-5 different antibiotics that were never finished, to a lovely, colorful assortment of supermarket cough syrups, pain pills and suppositories. My favorite thing about this family is that mom is a nurse at the local hospital. She smokes and weighs about 230 pounds. They have little round children with bright red cheeks who have asthma and can't concentrate in school. This client has come to me because he's been hearing about this “natural health movement” and could I recommend some herb for his scaly dry skin condition. To him this is some little annoyance and not the symptom of all the other stuff he's been doing to his body. He doesn't want to change his sedentary lifestyle or change his eating habits. He wants another pill.
The third kind of client I see is usually somewhere in between these two. She's been doing some reading and taking a few herbs and vitamins, knows she should exercise more but really loves her drive-thru dietary habits. What separates her from the above is her open mind and the desire to be really healthy. She is not defensive, in fact she's quite open about her fopah and will tell me about them all because she genuinely wants to increase her health. She knows that she needs advice because increasing health is a process which includes several components, and guidance is the key to avoiding mistakes.
The truth is that health can only come from your determination to be healthy. This means quite literally what it sounds like... You are what and who you think you are. Every issue will boil down to an energetic answer because your higher self is pure energy and it is in complete control. This is the part of you that communes with God and knows what you need. Your belief in health or illness comes from your energetic body which creates your physical body. The foods you eat make energetic imprints on your body, too. Real food will be recognized by your cells both by their molecular composition and by their energy field. Sometimes the very healthy will still succumb to an ailment and then I'll find the answer in this persons energy field or aura. It is very easy to remove an issue from the energy field before it's had a chance to manifest itself physically. Once the realization is made that we can control our own health, caring for it is easier. I can teach you how to make healthy food choices and to read and maintain your own energy field.