Traditional Healing is the oldest form of structured medicine, that is a medicine that has an underlying set of principles by which it is practiced. It is the medicine from which all later forms of medicine developed, including Chinese medicine, Graeco-Arabic medicine, and of course also modern Western medicine. Traditional Healing was originally an integral part of semi-nomadic and agricultural tribal societies, and although archeological evidence for its existence only dates back to around 14,000 B.C., its origins are believed to lie much further back and probably predate the last Ice-Age.
Unlike other traditional medicines, Traditional Healing has no philosophical base, as its practice is totally founded on healing knowledge that has been accumulated over thousands of years, and upon the healer's personal experience, which includes his/her awareness of, and sense of unity with the natural world, as well as his/her understanding of the different levels of consciousness within the human psyche. Traditional Healers see the universe as an living intelligence that operates according to natural laws that manifest according to specific rules and correspondences, and exercise their inner conviction that the purpose of life and the nature of disease cannot be understood without a knowledge of these laws and the individual's relationship to the natural world.
Thus Traditional Healers share a profound knowledge and a deep understanding of how natural laws influence living things. It is for this reason that Traditional Healing is often referred to as "wisdom medicine" and Traditional Healers are often referred to as wise or "clever" men or women or as persons of knowledge. It is this knowledge and experience base that provides the similarity between the core principles of Traditional Healing through the ages and in different parts of the world.
Traditional Healers practice in a different way than practitioners from other types of medicine.