[Nancy]

Hi Janet,

Your question about Ginger Compresses and Breast Feeding is a good one. I think the answer will have to be your own judgement call, if you are indeed presently breastfeeding.

The detoxification involved in a Ginger Compress routine has to do with your current condition, your age, your previous eating patterns, and your general health previous to becoming macrobiotic.

For anyone who has imbibed tons of toxic substances: excessive prescription drugs and medications --or possibly street drugs, excessive vitamin pills, excessive fast foods and packaged foods with chemical additives and dyes, excessive alcohol consumption, possibly a lot of dental work with mercury amalgam fillings or root canals, excessive use of dairy foods and hard cheese, excessive consumption of red meats and poultry treated with hormones and antibiotics (we now also have to worry about farmed fish in this category), --if you are dealing with an excessively overfat condition (obesity) in which the body's ability to eliminate healthfully through natural eliminatory organs begins to break down and deposits periphery accumulations (lumps and growths in periphery locations -- arms, legs, etc.), then you may suffer a time of toxic discharges that result in flu-like symptoms, aches and pains, headaches, skin rashes, itches, etc.

---The Ginger Compress serves to help eliminate and detoxify all of the above poisons and restore our bodies to clean and functional health again. This is a long process best done in conjunction with the Healing Macrobiotic Diet. In fact, it is moot to arduously do one without the other. This means maintain a pure diet of organic grains and vegetables, cooked the correct way for one's own condition.

Some who have used macrobiotics to correct their health condition with Ginger Compresses and the Healing Macrobiotic Diet, particulary those in obese condition who have lots of stored toxins, develop the flu-like symptoms described above and worse while undergoing the routine -with intensity-. This is mucus expelling from the body, chemicals, heavy metals, and even more of a toxic nature. If there is a chance of many toxins, as described, actively going into breast milk, it would be best to hold off on such an effective detoxification. Then whatever toxins that would be expelled by the Ginger Compress, will be held in the tissues as they are now, until such time that one is not breastfeeding.

Others who do the Ginger Compress are not in a horrifically toxified condition, and simply do not have sickly discharges. As mentioned earlier in this thread, the Ginger Compress penetrates to a deep cellular level and instead of chemical poisons being released (if one is relatively young and healthy), --emotional baggage lets loose as the main discharge. In this case, while doing the compresses obscure memories are brought to the surface, meditated upon, and dispelled. One never knows what might come up. This is the Ginger Compress penetrating to these deep levels of held fear, insecurity, bitterness and wounding. It is just as important to discharge emotional toxins as it is to discharge physical toxins. Both situations prevent us from being healthy individuals able to live life as we should in complete freedom. It has to do with healing at the level of -cell memory-.

The Ginger Compress is an awesome and incomparable tool in its healing power as one of the techniques able to penetrate so very deep.

Nancy