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What is the Pre-History of Heliotherapy?
We are part of the solar system.
That sounds very simplistic, and it is. The historic center of our world is the sun. We live in a world alive with, because of, sunlight. Yet many today hide from this physical light of the world. They view it as something to be feared. Yes the sun should be respected, but when used with respect, there is nothing to be feared and much to be gained.
The light of fire is a great thing on a cold winter’s night.
However, you must respect it and use it in perspective of the harm that disrespect can bring. Food is great and necessary, but it deserves respect and not to be over indulged in. If you disrespect it, you adversely affect your health.
If you fear it, you will have an eating disorder.
I am afraid that many of us have a sunlight disorder.
Plant life takes sunlight in.
In the mysterious process of photosynthesis, which is the process whereby green plants synthesize foods from carbon dioxide and water, it transforms sunlight into chlorophyll. This process still baffles scientists. Because sunlight is so transformed, all life on this planet is sustained.
This is the center of the ecosystem. Some animals eat this processed sunlight. Then those animals feed other animals. In the death cycle plants are fertilized and photosynthesis goes on. Because there is sunlight, there is life.
Early man did not seclude himself in caves. He walked in the sun.
And he was benefited by his walk in the sun.
When you eat plant life or meat, you are living off the sun. I guess you could say on some level eating is a kind of heliotherapy. When you overeat, you are getting a nutritional sunburn from taking in too much transformed sunlight. The same is true when you have too much direct sunlight; you get burned. Always it has been, and as long as there is life, it always will be.
So you look for the right herb to heal yourself.
You are looking for the right vibration, effect of, or part of sunlight to heal your issue. Herbal remedies are indirect forms of heliotherapy. When you ask what food or juice you should have for a problem, [like orange juice for vitamin C]
you are asking about heliotherapy. The physicist David Bohm says that all matter is frozen light. Of course, he means sunlight. This is our history.
From the earliest times man has seen himself in integral relationship to the sun. This may be a metaphor, but man judges his time on earth in relationship to the sun. He sets his time by sun. When is noon? Check the sun’s shadow. What is the year? Check the sun or its reflection in the moon. Your time on this earth is sun time in this and so many ways.
When you think about healing, in one way or another your healing time is sun time. That might be a little esoteric, but it is true.
Ancient man respected the sun as integral to life. Some even worshipped the sun.
They viewed healing as a return to the source. When they would visit the sun in times of sickness, they would judiciously bath themselves in sunlight.
This has been true even into modern time among many people. I remember when I was sick and the sickness was kind of lingering. Mother would come in and tell me to go outside for a while and get some sun. Invariably, I would start feeling better. It was heliotherapy.
A few years ago there was an older lady that I knew who was not feeling good. No she was not sick in the classical sense, but she was not feeling good and was not moving toward feeling better. Remembering my mother, I suggested that she take some sun time twice a day.
She just looked at me sort of strange, and after long pause and a smile she said, “That is what my mother would have said.” She started getting out of the house some and into the sunlight, and she quickly started feeling better.
It was historic heliotherapy. Too simple and cheap, but it is often dramatically effective.