These are remedies you can use for your problem in order from safest to most dangerous: Step 0 is the safest; Step 6 the most dangerous. Use Steps 0, 1, 2 and 3 as preventive medicine. Prevention is an important, though often invisible, way of healing/wholing in the Wise Woman tradition. Deep relaxation, information exchange, energetic engagement, optimum nourishment (including touch) and exercise promote health with little or no side effects.

Examples are in parenthesis: (with a few of the modalities available at each step)

Step 0: Do Nothing
(sleep, meditate, unplug the clock or the telephone)

A vital, invisible step.

Step 1: Collect Information
(low-tech diagnosis, books, support groups, divination)

Step 2: Engage the Energy
(prayer, homeopathy, ceremony, affirmations, color, laughter)

Step 3: Nourish and Tonify
(herbal infusions and vinegars, hugs, exercise, food choices, gentle massage, yoga stretches)

Note: Healing with Steps 4, 5, and 6 always causes some harm.

Step 4: Stimulate/Sedate
(hot or cold water, many herbal tinctures, acupuncture)

For every stimulation/sedation, there is an opposite sedation/stimulation, sooner or later. Addiction is possible if this step is overused.

Step 5a: Use Supplements
(synthesized or concentrated vitamins, minerals, and food substances such as nutritional yeast, blue-green algae, bran, royal jelly or spirulina)

Supplements are not Step 3. There’s always a risk with synthesized concentrated substances that they’ll do more harm than good.

Step 5b: Use Drugs
(chemotherapy, tamoxifen, hormones, high dilution homeopathics, and potentially toxic herbs)

Overdose may cause grave injury or death.

Step 6: Break and Enter
(threatening language, surgery, colonics, radiation therapies, psychoactive drugs, invasive diagnostic tests such as mammograms and C-T scans)

Side effects are inevitable and may include permanent injury or death.

HOW TO USE THE SIX STEPS OF HEALING

If you want to remedy your problem with the least possible side effects and danger, start at Step 1. After reading Step 1, pick one remedy from Step 2 and set a time limit for working with it. If your problem is unresolved within that time, decide if the time limit needs expanding or if you are ready to go to Step 3. Continue in this manner, moving to Steps 4, 5 or 6 as needed, until your problem is solved.

Each step up increases the possibility of side effects and their severity so try at least one of the Step 2 techniques, even if they seem strange to you, before going onto the remedies of Step 3 and beyond (note also that time spent at Step 2 will help you choose appropriate remedies at Step 3 and so on). When your problem is resolved don’t stop. Go back through the steps, in reverse, before resting at Step 0.

You can continue to take remedies from a previous Step after moving on, but be cautious about the use of Step 4 remedies in combination with Step 5 remedies.

If you deem it necessary to heal through Step 5 and/or 6 (and real healing can and does take place with the aid of drugs and surgery) and have not yet tried any techniques from Steps 2 and 3, do so immediately. Engaging the energy, nourishing and tonifying will aid and abet the healing powers of the more dangerous healing ways and help prevent or moderate their side effects.