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: Any body have any ideas for stimulating/aiding
: Please respond. Good morning Louis: First, eating macrobiotically, healing food if you're starting out, will begin the process of helping all your organs. Once you have started to do this, then the best thing to do to stimulate fresh blood supply and repel excess yin (stagnations) out of these organs is the ginger compress. An abdominal ginger compress on the area between the pelvic bone, breast bone and two hip bones affects 8 organs. The food you eat, especially the brown rice, miso soup, and root vegetables are all beneficial for the intestines. For the liver, dandelion root tea, leeks, hato mugi barley, burdock, and a teaspoon of lemon juice in your tea every day are some of the things that stimulate the liver. You can't be eating extreme fods like dairy, meat, sugar, etc. I'm giving this information out as part of a whole program and it is meant to be used that way, not as some sort of symptomatic remedy. Liver season is coming up March 21st and this is when the chi from the earth is affecting the chi of the liver in detoxifying and strengthening. Eat according to your local season and food growing in your local area. Here are the directions for doing the ginger compress. Bill Ginger compress: Over the years, poor and out of balance nutritional intake leads to, among other things, a mucous buildup and stagnation in the walls of the intestines, inhibiting proper digestion and toxic elimination. Because of this, the body becomes overloaded with waste and, in a futile attempt to eliminate it, resorts to what we call disease. In other words, the toxins aren’t able to be processed through the normal channels. In some cases, when we react to a symptom such as a cough or nasal discharge by trying to suppress it with drugs, we cause the body to find some other outlet by pushing it deeper inside where it appears to have gone away. Sometimes this is not evident for years, and then suddenly we experience a stroke, a cancer, or some other totally unexpected problem. Once we understand that the body knows how to heal itself of disease better than any outside source and begin to give it healing support through organic (when available), locally grown, in-season, cooked whole grains and vegetables, we need to help it get rid of the stagnations in our organs, especially those of elimination, in order to facilitate the healing process. This is done through the intestinal ginger compress, and additionally in the case of women, the daikon hip bath. The ginger compress is a series of 64 compresses over a period of 16 weeks, 4 times per week with a six week interval before the next one. It will take at least three series and possibly more depending upon your condition. The following is a general procedure: 1. The tools needed are: A decent grater (The one that works best for me is the rectangular one that stands and is approximately six or seven inches tall. Use the finest grate on the wide side.) Cheesecloth or a small bag with a drawstring to put the grated ginger in. A large steel pot and lid that can hold at least a gallon or so of water, the thicker the better so it retains heat. Three large face towels folded in a rectangle the size of the area bounded by your breast bone, pubic bone, and hip bones. A pair of rubber household gloves so you can put your hands in very hot water. 2. Procedure: a. Bring to boil 1 gallon or so of water. b. Grate 1/4 cup of fresh ginger root, if possible, organic. Use a downward motion. c. Put grated ginger in drawstring bag or piece of cheesecloth and tie so ginger won’t mix with water. It should be loose enough so that the water can circulate within the bag. d. Turn off heat when water boils and drop ginger bag in and let sit for a few minutes. e. Squeeze bag gently to disperse ginger. f. Take one towel and submerge it in the hot water and wring it out. Have the other two towels folded nearby ready to put over the hot one. g. Lie down in a comfortable place close to the pot and put the heated towel**over the exposed area mentioned above. If it’s too hot, keep lifting it up and laying it down until you can stand it. The hotter, the better. Put the other two towels on top of the first one to hold in the heat. When you feel it cooling down, repeat the procedure. Do this for 30 minutes. If the water doesn’t remain hot enough, you can turn on the lowest heat, remembering to keep it from boiling. h. The compress is done on an empty stomach, at least 3 hours after eating. The best time is in the early morning before breakfast but some people find it easier to do one compress Tuesday evening, one Wednesday morning, reheating the same water, but not boiling it and then making a new batch for Thursday night and Friday morning. You can only use it again within a 12 hour period. Personally, I think it’s better to make it up every time since it is so important and the fresher it is, the stronger it is. I usually do it Saturday and Sunday morning and Tuesday and Thursday evening before dinner. It should not be done every day, at least in the beginning. It can overwhelm the organs of elimination. It also helps if you’re in peaceful surroundings where you can relax. i. This isn’t the only use for the ginger compress, but it's all you need to know for now. j. Do not do the ginger compress if you’re pregnant (If you’re not sure, have a test), breast feeding, have appendicitis, cancer or swelling in the abdominal area. Do not use a ginger compress directly on a known tumor. (In some cases it may be all right after two to twelve months of the healing process.) It is better to be practicing a macrobiotic way of eating to get the best results. |