This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

I am Mike Galligan with the law offices of Galligan and Newman in McMinnville, Tennessee.

I support WCTE, the Upper Cumberland's own PBS station, because I believe it is important to create entertaining TV programs that also promote lifelong learning and understanding.

When I support WCTE, I know that I am helping our Upper Cumberland community for generations to come.

The law offices of Galligan and Newman provide clients with large firm expertise and small, firm, personalized care and service.

♪ In this episode, we journey beyond conventional medicine and into the peaceful rhythm of spiritual practices.

To the time honored wisdom of herbal remedies.

We explore how people are rediscovering ancient paths to wellness rooted in nature, culture, and connection.

Along the way, we meet local healers who open up about their deeply personal journey, the mentors who inspired them, and life changing moments that led them to embrace holistic healing.

Learning all the natural ways to do things.

Personally, it's helped me be more healthy.

It gives me more energy.

It helps me connect with spirit on a deeper level.

What I do is I take in several different modalities, and I bring them together to create the mind body, spirit connection for healing.

So I have different aspects that I've trained in, to bring them together to be able to do that.

I take our radiology.

I was trained as a shaman for ceremony purposes and a Reiki practitioner for energy work.

When I was younger what got me into the more natural aspect of healing is I seen a lot of suffering with elderly.

I was a CNA in home health, and I just couldn't figure out why there was so much suffering for their age, and that led me to find other ways to cope with sickness.

I'm a native Floridian, and my grandmother was what many people call a witchy woman.

People would come to the back door and ask her for cures, potions, salves, whatever they thought they needed, and she would provide it.

I'm only sorry that I didn't pay more attention to her and learn more from her.

So when we moved up here to Tennessee from Florida, I became very interested in the Cherokee way of life, and that's what I focused my studies on.

I started doing these things because of injuries that I've had, and I was very ill as a child, very ill as a child.

I had lead poisoning and heavy metal poisoning.

And, about 27 years ago, I was told that I'd be in a wheelchair and I just couldn't accept that.

I was like, I'm not going to do that.

And I tried the typical, you know, Western way, and I'm allergic to almost all pharmaceutical drugs.

It's really interesting.

But yet these plants, I don't have any reaction to any type of plant.

So I first was introduced to natural things growing up.

I ran the woods.

I, my grandfather would take me for walks in the woods and identify trees by the bark with me.

And, and so we had, I had that kind of a rich, like, upbringing.

Just a stir, I guess.

Excitement for those types of things.

And then so I started just like, okay, let me just look at herbs and try to, like, just nature and, start, just looking and seeing what I could do naturally for myself and my family.

I would say a healer is a person who helps other people with, the conditions and ailments that they suffer with.

And most healers use alternative means to do that.

I mean, there are medical doctors, there are healers as well, of course, and they're more of the Western medicine.

An herbalist is someone who uses plants and energy in order to bring about the same affect that perhaps drugs would.

An herbalist can entail.

You don't have to be go through school and get a whole lot of schooling to be considered an herbalist.

If even if the knowledge is passed down to you, you're an herbalist.

If you know how to use herbs and, heal the body.

So what Big Pharma does is they will take, they'll isolate constituents from nature.

And what an herbalist does.

What I do with extracts is I'm not isolating.

So I'm taking the whole herb and I'm getting a variety of constituents in the extract.

And that variety actually has a safety feature to it, because when you isolate something down, it becomes very pure and very strong.

And so you can have a lot of side effect and a lot of symptoms where when you do a botanical and you take the extract out of it, you have all the other things that kind of are safety measures as well.

It's a nice way to give some, tincture, give something to somebody and have a good therapeutic effect on things without having a lot of extra side effects that are not not healthy.

Today's alternative medicine isn't a trend.

It's a legacy rooted in ancient traditions, from the Cherokee Nation to Eastern cultures.

These healing practices have stood the test of time, from the energy flow of Reiki to the sacred smoke of smudging.

Spiritual Rituals have long nurtured the soul.

Paired with generations of herbal wisdom, they continue to offer powerful natural remedies.

This is more than medicine.

It's a living history of healing that connects us to the past and guides us into the future.

Cherokee healing traditions.

Like most of the indigenous peoples around the world, healing Traditions is based on the entire body and spirit, not just a particular illness.

So if you have a fever and you're a Cherokee with the Cherokee healer, then he's going to focus on what caused that fever, what part of your body is really in need, and then perform a ceremony, including chanting, and administering of medicine.

I think each tribe has certain practices that are unique to them, but many of these traditions and practices are across many tribes, not only here in the United States, but around the world as well.

The Cherokees believe that the mind, body, and spirit are all connected, so you can't heal one without the other two also being healed.

It's very important to to find out the root cause of the illness and then heal it, whether it's for the mind or the body or the spirit.

As far as like Native American or Cherokee influence and stuff, with herbalism, there are different when you start diving into that, and there's different traditions, and different people learn from different herbal backgrounds.

And a lot of times with the Native Americans, if you and I do have some Cherokee, but like if you are there a lot of times you learn from your elders.

So like somebody that was practicing Cherokee who would actually be part of like the Cherokee Nation, and they would be like the tradition would be that they would be practicing and learning from an elder that was like passed that on.

My great grandmother, she passed away when I was in my mid 20s, and I wasn't, the person that I am now, obviously.

And she tried to share things with me.

She was a nurse, during the Civil War, they had, different things.

Like she taught me about garlic, you know, simple, simple things that turn out to be Native American practices.

And she was Cherokee.

So it was, really interesting to me to kind of carry her message on.

And then I had, adopted grandmother, Grandmother June out of Florida, and she's a Cherokee medicine woman, and she taught me a lot of what the Cherokee believe.

When the Europeans arrived, based on the histories, William Bartram, James Mooney, and a couple of other historians, the Cherokees knew and used 300 different plants.

They use those for medicines and for food in some cases, and they use some of them just for ceremony.

Now there's only about 75 that they use.

So the knowledge of all of those others 200 plus has been lost.

Smudging among the Cherokees was usually done with either cedar or sweet ebony, because those were the native herbs and or plants that they used here.

Smudging was really to purify the area around the ill person, or in many cases, to purify the healer before the healer performed the healing.

You know, you smudge that, you push the smoke away from you.

You push the smoke on to the person that you're trying to heal.

And if you're doing it in an enclosed area, then you need to have a door open or a window open for all the evil bad things to get out.

If you're smudging with almost every healing, there's always a ceremony, there's a chant, there's, drumming that might be used to heal a person depending on what the illness or the ailment is.

So it just depends on on what they're trying to cure.

Everything is part of the natural world.

We're not above it.

We're part of it.

So I think all of those things smudging, drumming, being part of the natural world, all of those things are pretty much standard across all of the indigenous peoples.

Reiki was the first thing that brought me into, natural medicine.

It was more of the energy work, and connecting with spirit.

And then that led me into more of the herbals for the actual physical aspect of healing being certified.

Reiki practitioner, they teach you, it where it comes from, where it originates, and it, it goes back farther than the founder for Reiki.

More the Buddhist used it, in their practices, but it was refounded, we'll say, by Michael Suri.

And, he put his name on it and made it to where I believe he made it to where it was available to the public, more or less, instead of having to train for years to to reach that.

It's used for healing.

Reiki can heal emotionally, physically.

It's just energy work to help clear out the bodies and the energy centers, the chakras of the body.

I'm a little bit unique as far as like what clinical herbalists do, because I practice with a natural path.

And so I do some Chinese medicine in practice, we look at tongue diagnosis, we do pulse diagnosis, we do do some Iridology as far as your eyes go.

But basically what I do when people come in is I do a full case history and I look for imbalances in their system.

And then I utilize, the things that I have learned from, many years of practice.

And then just even like getting to the point where I am and some of those things could be, diet and lifestyle.

That's a huge one.

Some of those things could be some homeopathy, but I'm not like a homeopathic practitioner.

But I know just a little bit.

We do a lot with nutrition, with supplementation.

A lot of the supplementation that I use is more towards food based, because I feel like we want things to be sustainable for people.

So when they first come in, they, they might be on a little bit more, but we really want them to like, learn to eat, to have good nutrition and to get a lot of the things that they need from their food.

I do tinctures, we we have a whole apothecary that I have.

It's like my life's work in many ways, because it has taken me a long time to build the apothecary.

There's over 200 different herbal, tinctures.

One of the unique things that I do that other people can't do is I can use those tinctures, and I can create, like, custom formulas that are very specific for that person that, like, comes in.

So I can, like, look at the imbalances and then I can fill in and I can work with many body systems with one formula, which is kind of cool to be able to do that.

I would say herbs are my passion and they are my passion for numerous reasons.

One, they grow in the earth, then there just amazing.

If you've ever walked through a garden, you you have to feel that.

I mean, who couldn't feel that?

For me, herbs are so important because they're my medicine.

They're my personal medicine.

They've allowed me to eliminate so many illnesses that I was diagnosed with and totally eliminate them.

You know, I'm going to be 60 years old, and I'm healthier than I was at 20.

For me, herbs are the basis of everything.

Because even in hypnosis, I get meditation, I do meditations, and I get information that, you know, I can just be talking to somebody and I'm like, have you ever tried comfrey?

And they'll be like, yeah, you like so-and-so just told me about comfrey.

Why do you say that?

And I'm like, I just get a sense that maybe you need comfrey and then they usually share and it usually comes out that that's what it is.

So for me, for my healing journey and for what I share with people, it always comes back to the plants, always.

Alternative medicine is gaining recognition.

But let's be honest, the stigma still lingers.

In this episode, we dive into the doubts, misconceptions, and hesitation people still have when it comes to trying these healing practices.

Our experts break it down.

What's fact and what's fear?

and why stepping outside your comfort zone might be exactly what your body and mind need.

We also explore a powerful question what's the difference between religion and spirituality?

Understanding that could be the key to unlocking a more open minded approach to wellness.

In my belief, religion is a big part of a person's life and it will make a big difference in everybody choosing a certain religion based on how they need to connect with God.

So what I do is not religious, it's spiritual, so it's open to all religions.

It doesn't matter what you believe when you come in, you're connecting with spirit and the way you connect.

That way you can open up and allow for healing.

One of the things that I was taught when I was trying to be a Reiki practitioner is that it's not religious, it's a spiritual aspect of healing.

And you can be Christian, Muslim or whatever.

It's you connecting with your spirit and bringing the healing.

Reiki just allows for you to.

It teaches you how to connect and to bring that in.

But it is not religious in any aspect.

Yes, I have been judged a bit just because you're an herbalist, and then they assume that you're, you're a witch or my neighbor.

One time I was trying to explain to him what I did, and he's like, oh, you're one of them.

They're green witches.

And I'm like, okay, no, I'm not a green witch.

But there is some stigma around that.

People think like you're into, like, really weird things and like New Age and stuff like that.

But there's different people that practice for a different reasons.

As far as that, in the herbal field, there are so many clinical herbalists out there that practice.

They're looking at body physiology and they're really using herbs to like, we're not clinic like clinical like a doctor because we don't diagnose and treat.

But we're looking at those things and we're we're using the person's body and then the herb and matching it up to kind of help the physiology.

And so it is very natural, very holistic because you are using herbs that have all the constituents, like I said.

And when you do that, instead of using pills, a lot of times if you actually did studies with pharmaceuticals, once somebody starts on one pill, there's symptoms and then they have to have another, some kind of medicine added on.

And with herbs , we can navigate that without having to like keep adding on more and more.

Initially, Sometimes people have to do a little bit more, but once they follow the protocols and stuff like that and like listen to their body, then a lot of times they can just move on with good lifestyle nutrition.

And if you like magnesium or, you know, a few supplements, I think shamanism got to be popular in this country in the 60s & 70s when people were going off to India to, to to sit and spend weeks in, week guru and then they brought that back to America and tried to make money off of it essentially, I think is what, what happened.

Shamanism is essentially a religion in many eastern cultures, just like spirituality or the Great Spirit is to indigenous cultures on this planet, on this continent.

But they're they are completely different things.

Shamanism is like a religion, spirituality is not a religion.

And in fact, the Cherokees did not have an organized religion, nor did they have an organized government.

They believe in a creator and then everything else is tied to that creator.

They have a story of creation, as almost all indigenous peoples do.

But it's not centered around laws and a book or a church, because nature is their church, if you will.

So they were spiritual, but not religious, I truly believe, and I was taught this by one of my teachers.

So there's only two true emotions.

There's love and fear.

And don't get me wrong, I love the church.

I really do.

I think the church is.

It's the core.

It is the core for so many people without their religion, they couldn't maintain, they couldn't stay here.

Really, honestly.

And I've run into this in my lifetime.

People get their faith broken.

They're destroyed.

A lot of them are leaning on texts that are pretty new.

When you go, you know, there's texts that are thousands and thousands and thousands of years old, and that's really not our Bible, you know, and I grew up on the King James Bible, and that ain't that old.

Now they got all these new versions I was taught they tried to teach me to fear God in church, and I never I never fear God.

I never feared anything because I had God.

But, well, you know, the devil's under your bed when you go home.

If you lie, you go to sleep.

Devil's going to get you.

I mean, crazy things.

And so I think it's fear based.

I think when you're coming from a place of love, you don't have that fear.

So you're open.

You know, I feel bad when hardcore Christians come to me and they're like, yeah, don't tell anybody I was here.

And I'm like, why?

You know, we didn't do anything that's negative on any level.

Yeah, well, they just wouldn't understand.

And that breaks my heart because I feel like it puts a division between them and their church.

And you should be able to walk in your church and just be you, dress the way you want, be who you are, say what you want and be accepted.

You know, because I am Christian, like I think sometimes like in the herbal field, like people think that you're not a Christian, you're an herbalist.

We're all have different religions.

And when people come in, and people sometimes think when you're a Christian, you're like judging or you're like, you know, you've got to believe what I believe and stuff like that.

And my philosophy was that, you know, like moving out with this is that the Lord gave me a gift and I would use it for anybody.

And so when people come in, I'm not like, I don't like people tell me things that, you know, and they come from everywhere, like just whatever their beliefs, you know, agnostic, atheist, which is, you know, people that are like actually practicing witchcraft and stuff like that.

And I try to do is just be like, a light to them and like to guide them.

And so, like, I'm just looking at their I'm still treating them the same way.

We're going to look at imbalances.

We're going to like move them forward, But when it comes to the spiritual aspect of it, then what we're doing is I'm just like, I'm speaking truth to them about who they are, and everybody needs to hear who they are.

Their identity is like it.

A lot of times people are just like wounded and it doesn't matter where they come from.

It's just like, I have this wound.

And so if I can change the narrative for them and have them believe in the truth about, who they are, then they can move forward, whether they're, you know, whatever religion that they're, they're from.

Interest in alternative medicine has steadily grown in recent years, sparking curiosity and conversation across communities.

As awareness spreads, so does the opportunity to share knowledge and explore new paths to wellness.

The effort to inform and engage those who may be unfamiliar with these practices can open doors to deeper understanding.

And with that, the potential to pass healing traditions forward and discover a new path to wellness.

When I think about what people think about these more natural modalities, I see a lot of fear.

Whether it's a fear of what society might think about them if they do this type of thing, or, society has a natural flow and this is not in the natural flow of our society.

Our, so there's a lot of fear, I believe, when it comes to this.

So you really have to step out of the box and, and be like, you know, I'm ready to heal and really just look in deep within myself.

There's more community.

I think people are, like, starting to like, form communities.

And so because of those communities, people are hearing more about natural health and things and supporting one another.

And that and there is an explosion.

I would say what I'm seeing is an explosion in people that are interested in holistic health and natural things and, wanting to like, care for their bodies better.

And I, I don't really see it stopping anytime soon.

I would say even clients that I've had that are like older clients, like, are you kind of think with that demographic sometimes it's a younger group, but even older clients that have been on medications and stuff like that, they're realizing that like the medications aren't helping or inflation and some of the things that are going on in the world today, like their medications are increasing and they can't afford them, or they don't take them because they can't afford them and they're having issues.

And so those people too are becoming they're waking up and becoming more aware of that, like, oh, wait, there might be a better way.

And so one by one is like, people come in, you know, if I can, you know, just help them, like, figure that out.

Then they go tell their friends and then there's more people and definitely there's an increase.

If people wanted to go a more natural route, there are, a couple of people here in town.

Sherry Stickler at Synergy, is an herbalist.

She does a very good job.

Christina Whitfield, is also, very good at this and she uses natural medicines.

There are a couple of Native American healers that you can take classes with.

And if they know you, they may provide you with a cure or a treatment for a particular ailment.

One last comment I have is that people should not be afraid to try a natural remedy, as opposed to getting a drug from Big Pharma, because there are natural ways to heal or to make yourself feel better.

I think it's very important that we listen to our elders and we carry this forward because it's, kind of dying out.

You know, a lot of the young people don't want to know I'm doing everything I can to teach my grandchildren.

Since they were babies, they've been in my garden picking that and mullein, and they know what's poisonous and what's not.

But they, one of them is 15 now, and, you know, it's not real cool to, you know, do these things, but I'm praying that this carries forward.

My greatest desire for myself is that I have the ability to reach more people with my words, with my love, with my heart, and that I get better at just loving them where they're at and not getting so frustrated with them.

That would be my greatest desire for myself, for the future.

So my greatest desire is that people will start loving more.

And I'm not talking about that hippie groovy kind of love.

I'm talking about love, compassion, and not just for others, but for yourself first.

Because if you don't love you, you can't love people.

You can't.

You know.

The story of alternative medicine is one woven through time, rooted in tradition, shaped by culture, and passed down with care in the Upper Cumberland.

The legacy lives on through the practices and wisdom of generations before us, from ancient rituals to herbal remedies.

These healing traditions continue to offer insight into the deep connections between mind, body, and spirit.

We hope you've enjoyed this glimpse into the Upper Cumberland rich heritage of holistic healing, and how it still thrives today.

Thank you for watching and we'll see you next time when we go where stories live.

♪♪ I am Mike Galligan with the law offices of Galligan and Newman in McMinnville, Tennessee.

I support WCTE.

The Upper Cumberland's own PBS station because I believe it is important to create entertaining TV programs that also promote lifelong learning and understanding.

When I support WCTE, I know that I am helping our Upper Cumberland community for generations to come.

The law offices of Galligan and Newman provide clients with large, firm expertise and small, firm, personalized care and service.

This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.