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Nick Polizzi - On pharmaceuticals versus plants
Identifier
017315
Type of Spiritual Experience
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A description of the experience
From an interview with Director Nick Polizzi on New Film ‘The Sacred Science,’ Energy Healing and his Run-In with a Lightning Bolt - by Nick Meyer October 15, 2013 AltHealthWORKS
I am definitely of the belief that the full plant, the concoction and the tinctures made by people that live on the land where the plants grow, these are the full package. When you try to isolate certain compounds from a leaf and put them into a pill it’s not going to be nearly as beneficial as the whole plant.
So when the pharmaceutical companies try to exploit the natural resources of these communities and healing plants, I think they’re always going to hit a stumbling block and they already have to some degree, because these drugs aren’t nearly as potent as the medicines the tribes make themselves.
Furthermore, pharmaceutical companies are no longer being given the access that the ethnobotanists have, to the medicine men and the healers in the jungles, …..like many human beings, these tribes have realized they’re being exploited and they’re no longer sharing their knowledge.
[The pharmaceutical company’s approach] also does not take into account the shaman’s intuitive ability to pick out plants and prescribe an herb or two that he doesn’t even know the name of. Sometimes a medicine man will pick out a plant the night before the healing ceremony, he is shown the location [by his spirit guides] and he harvests it. …. there’s a lot of that…How do you mimic that without having a connection to the plant, and without going to the ceremonies?
When you participate in these ceremonies you no longer want to categorize and study these herbs from a scientific perspective, because when you’re at the ceremony you realize the idea of trying to do that is futile because there’s a larger picture which is much more about your own relationship with your surroundings than about relying on, you know, your doctor to give you an herb to heal your problem. To even get to that knowledge you first have to go through a number of ceremonies that will shift your perspective on why you came down there in the first place.