Applying the principles of Chinese medicine and Native American shamanism to answer the call of the Earth and heal its polluted landscapes

• Explains how to build a healing relationship with the natural world by making offerings of thanks and listening to the Earth’s responses

• Details methods of diagnosis and several types of Earth acupuncture treatment, including building stone circles, planting crystals, and working with wooden and copper-rod needles

• Shares the author’s journey of healing a river with these methods

After experiencing a powerful vision of the nuclear power plant near her home and its toxic effects on the Hudson River, acupuncturist Gail Rex was inspired to help heal the river and surrounding lands but was unsure how to begin. Soon after, at a workshop with Cherokee-wisdom teacher Venerable Dhyani Ywahoo, she discovered the answer: she could treat the landscape just as she treated her patients--by taking its pulses and treating the points of stagnant energy and pollution with acupuncture.

Tracing her journey from initial vision and pulse taking to building a stone circle to open a major energy meridian of the Hudson, the author reveals how our rivers, valleys, and forests are capable of illness and healing just like a living being. She explains simple practices for attuning with the living landscape and responding appropriately to the messages and images received from the Earth’s intelligence. By making offerings of thanks and asking the land’s permission before every interaction, Gail Rex demonstrates the power of right relationship in action.

Drawing upon the principles of Chinese medicine and her work with Native American shamanic traditions, Rex shows how the landscape itself reveals both its imbalances and the opportunities for treatment. Using a broad range of diagnostic tools--including direct observation, principles of feng shui, listening to pulses, and working with maps--she demonstrates ways of identifying the master points of the surrounding landscape. She then explores different methods of Earth acupuncture treatment, including building stone circles, planting crystals, and working with wooden and copper-rod needles to treat these specific points and restore energy balance.

Offering not only a proactive method for healing the environment, Rex also reveals how to communicate with the rivers, mountains, trees, and rocks that surround us, allowing each of us to develop an authentic spiritual relationship with the living body of the Earth.

Gail Reichstein Rex, L.Ac., is an acupuncturist, author, and editor. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the Tri-State College of Acupuncture, she has been practicing Chinese medicine since 1995, first in New York and now in Vermont, and is the author of Wood Becomes Water: Chinese Medicine in Everyday Life. She lives with her family in Vermont.

Foreword by Dr. Patrick MacManaway

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Healing the Earth with Natural Medicine

Part 1

Diagnosis

1    The Dragon’s Breath

2    The Pulse of the Land

3    Yin and Yang

4    Heaven and Earth

5    Eagle Dance

   • Exercise I: Creating a Relationship with a Tree

Part  I I

Point Location

6    The Extraordinary Channels

7    Divided Waters

8   Thunder Mountain

9    Dunderberg

10    The Furies

11    Pilgrimage

   • Exercise II: Connecting with a Larger Landscape and Finding Its Pulse Points

Part III

Treatment

12    Druid Magic

13    The In Breath

14    Acupuncture for the Earth

   • Exercise III: Pulse Point Meditation

Part IV

The Healing

15    Into Darkness

16    The Great Turning

17    Healing/Reconceived

   • Exercise IV: Building a Stone Mandala to Balance Earth Energies

Epilogue       Rebirth

Notes

Bibliography

Index