It's Not 'Woo' - It's Just Not White

In October, I started seeing a Chinese Herbalist and Acupuncturist. And all I keep thinking was:

‘Why haven’t I been doing this the whole time?’

The myth of colonial medicine being superior to the myriad, ancient practices of medicine is a deep and insidious conditioning that I have begun to unpack alongside my other endeavours to decolonise my way of existing. Much of ‘western medicine’ is built from the exploitation and torture of Black, brown and Disabled people, and yet the knowledge that was stolen from these non-consensual experiments is mostly parroted as belonging to and stemming from white men. Also, many of the life-saving operations and treatments that form the basis of what we consider ‘western medicine’ were being practiced in countries in the Global South long before Europeans decided they invented them. This preoccupation with ‘western medicine’ also prevents us from developing a relationship with the land we are on and the plants it has always provided, and cuts us off from the ancient medicines and practices that our ancestors once relied on. The irony here being that so many drugs that have been developed by the western pharmaceutical industry take their roots from traditional medicine - often without permission or compensation for the traditional guardians of that knowledge.

Let’s start with terminology. So often I see people refer to South Asian, East Asian, African, First Nations and Native practices of medicine as ‘woo woo’. There seem to be primarily two groups who do this. The first, dismisses anything other than ‘western medicine’ as pseudo-science and ‘make-believe’. I saw someone on a reddit thread write ‘I’m not religious, in fact I’m an atheist, so can acupuncture work for me?’ The replies were just as wild. ‘I’m an atheist but acupuncture worked for me’. Let’s be clear, acupuncture, is not heaven magic. It is not a spell being cast. It is a medical practice. One that has been performed for thousands of years, and the benefits of which are well documented - including within colonial frameworks of research, where hundreds if not thousands of studies show the various ailments and conditions that acupuncture has been proven to successfully treat. Perhaps the reason people make the ignorant assumption that it is somehow a belief-based practice, is because of the way they view the Traditional Chinese Medicine approach to the body, that works with Chi or Qi - our life force energy. In Yoga and Ayurveda this is called ‘Prāṇā’. There are many words in hundreds of languages that refer to our life force. And you do not need to be ‘religious’ to be able to accept that we are indeed alive, and that there are components involved in sustaining life. Oxygen and blood, for example, are vital elements of our lives continuing. Breathing and movement help sustain life. But as soon as some people hear ‘energy’ or ‘life force’ or a non-English word for these things - their racist, colonial conditioning tells them that it’s nonsense.

The other group who talk about ‘woo’ and also ‘alternative medicine’ do believe in it’s uses and efficacy. Many are even trying to ‘reclaim’ these practices. The problem is, more often than not it is people of European descent appropriating practices that did not come from their ancestors, and who do not realise that by continuing to collude with this idea that these practices are ‘other’, they are reinforcing colonial ideas around medicine. I don’t mean to say we can’t benefit from medicines and practices that did not belong to our ancestors, but that we should not be claiming them as ours. We must seek authentic practitioners who have lineage connections to these medicines, and we must compensate properly. To engage in these medicines, practices and rituals with limited and stolen knowledge and resources is to cosplay decolonisation.

An example of this that particularly irks me is as follows. You can still buy White Sage in shops in the UK, despite the fact that the plant is now endangered and it’s exploitation has left Natives on Turtle Island unable to engage in their own practices and rituals. What makes this even more maddening is that the ancient people of this tiny island I call home also burned a herb to cleanse and purify spaces - it’s called Mugwort, and it is native to Europe as well as parts of Asia and Africa. It is an incredible plant with so many curative properties, it can be drunk as tinctures and teas, it can be burned in sticks or as incense, it can be smoked, and it grows wild in scrubby areas all around the UK. But rather than actually reclaim our own ancestor’s practices, many appropriate from other cultures because of fetishisation and misguided romanticism fuelled by colonised thinking.

Back to Traditional Chinese Medicine. I was recovering physically, mentally and emotionally from my miscarriage, and I wanted to nurture my mindbody and try to get it back in balance. My Doctor did various checks and asked me lots of questions. I told him how long we had been trying to conceive and admitted that while I wanted the treatment to look after myself, I also really wanted a baby and was curious if he could provide any treatment in this area. He recommended 12 weeks of acupuncture and a course of herbs to be taken with hot water twice a day - the contents of which would change based on where I was in my cycle. To my surprise and delight, he told me he could treat my endometriosis. ‘Western’ medicine says this can’t be done - not without surgery. He told me that we needed to increase blood flow and also to ensure my kidneys were functioning properly. After my first session I felt relaxed and energised. After a couple of days of taking the herbs, I had a sort of pre-adolescent energy that I couldn’t quite believe. I started looking for studies on the effects of Acupuncture and Chinese Herbs on cycles and fertility. I found that there are tons of studies showing the positive affects of Acupuncture on the menstrual cycle. Regulating it, reducing cramps and pain, in people with PCOS (polycystic ovaries), endometriosis and various other complaints. When it comes to the impact of herbal treatments, I found a meta analysis of 40 random control trials that suggested a two-fold increase in pregnancy rates in those treated with Traditional Chinese Medicine. And while finding these results was enlightening and educational, I also keep reminding myself that thousands of years of medical practice from one of the largest populations in the world is already evidence. These practices don’t need ‘western’ approval for legitimacy. I also want to be clear that it takes two sets of reproductive organs to make a baby and studies only looking at infertility in uterus owners only tell half the story - and there are also studies available on the impact of TCM on sperm parameters. Nevertheless, this is hugely helpful knowledge that I wish I had thought to seek out sooner.

TCM won’t cure all ills or help everyone have a baby. Nor will Ayurveda or any other branch of traditional medicine. But neither will colonial medical practices. Through challenging our racist and colonised attitudes to medicine we can open our worlds and our wellbeing up to a wealth of knowledge and pathways to greater health, greater joy and greater quality of life. Furthermore, by examining how we engage with practices that do not come from our lineage, we can ensure that we are respectful and humbled in the presence of medicines that do not belong to us, and have the clarity and sense of purpose to reclaim those that do.

—AJ

Thank you for reading my first post on beehiiv! If you are reading this on substack, don’t worry, nothing has gone awry. I have shared on both platforms to ensure those who want to make the transition over don’t fall through the cracks. I’ve migrated all my paid subscribers and the majority of my free ones - but I’ve gained a few more in the last couple of days so I’ll go back and collect you before I close down the publication on substack. If you follow me on substack or have just come across my work for the first time but don’t subscribe, I recommend heading over to beehiiv to sign up if you want to keep seeing my work.

And one final update - it gives me unquantifiable joy to share that I sit here writing this piece at 15 and a half weeks pregnant. More on this in future articles 😀