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Early trauma–starting from infancy and possibly even conception and theoretically even beyond (the relationships of parents and the atmosphere of the household) defines and impacts the lives of children all the way into adulthood. It shapes personalities, and personalities shape societies and cultures. On the other hand, early safety, love, care, nourishment and bonding prevent trauma, erases and heals lineage trauma, and creates a soothing nervous system and a healthy body. A healthy body houses a healthy mind and psyche, and healed and loved people go on to create healed and loving societies. While latter age healing and redemption is possible, the proactive and considerate approach is to build love and care into the very bodies of human beings as early as we can, and this early trauma reduction and nervous system soothing is what BetterBonds taught.

We focused on Massage, Baby-Wearing, and Swaddling as three great tools of soothing babies while building their bodies. The whole spectrum of healing, though, requires more than contact; it requires mindset, environment, safety for parents and much more. Not all this is covered by the offerings of BetterBonds, but the teachings do allude to this culture of nourishment & care.

For very long, the world civilizations have been organized by and around patriarchal-masculine-industrial narratives, priorities and culture. There is also a focus on GROWTH–psychic, emotional, material. The matriarchal-feminine-domestic culture, on the other hand, focuses on CARE, DEPTH instead of BREADTH, NOURISHMENT before EXTRACTION. It is the narrative and culture that GIVES before it ever TAKES, and the taking is minimal.

BetterBonds believes that this is not a BINARY SPLIT & SPERATION, but two ALTERNATING MODALITIES that go hand-in-hand, taking turns sometimes, fusing and separating, and doing a cosmic dance or pattern dance to yield a fruitful life on the Planet. One doesn’t take absolute precedence over the other, rather they work together, each in their own place and realm with some primary duties and scopes for each.

Preferably, the society is designed by Patriarchy and around Matriarchy. To use a mystic idiom, one (patriarchy-masculinity) is the bottle and the other (matriarchy-femininity) is the wine, or the content of the container. Both go together, but each in their own realm.

What has happened in the human society is that we have a lot of STRUCTURE and FORM, but not enough CONTENT. This is occurring due to diminishing, eroding, and threatening Matriarchy. We are a garden bed without plantation. We are a house which is not a home. Matriarchy and Femininity’s erosion and depletion is a severe, cosmic problem, and doesn’t pertain just to female humans. This is how we treat the Planet and our own Psyches, and everything in between.

At BetterBonds, we double down on favoring the seeding and protection of a matriarchal way of life that is focused on care & nourishment–of the soul, the Self, and the Planet. Without this happening across the world with intensity and commitment of resources, the Planet and life as we know it will neither survive nor thrive.

As people of the Plant Medicine world who are also learning the ways of the wilderness and the ways of the hearth, BetterBonds advocates for and works on a multidimensional, depth-based approach to enabling the advancement of a matriarchal society that has a firm hold in the domestic realm, or the Personal-Familial Zone, as described in Ramala Hubb’Allah’s work, The Salaam Matrix.

Ramala Hubb’Allah discerned that for there to be more peace on Earth, there needs to be peace, calm and warmth and energy in bodies. She discerned that both the Earth and the human bodies are suffering and need healing. For the Earth, her initiatives of Food Growing were launched in 2008, and she developed a Farmers’ Market in 2013. For bodies, she developed BetterBonds.

One of the healing themes that has been the focus of BetterBonds is Reduction of Inflammation. The typical approach of BetterBonds has been to develop both internal and external medicyne, for instance syrups & teas for internal use and balms for external use. These are offered as “bundles” for people suffering from inflammation, especially skin-related which appears as rashes, psoriasis, eczema, itch, alopecia and such. Clients who agreed to buy and try bundles experienced accelerated and more sustainable results.

The reduction of inflammation using and inside+outside modality is a revolutionary approach that revitalizes and cleanses the organs while maintaining and improving aesthetics, whereas aesthetics signal wellness and integrity of cells and organs.

The modern human raised in the military-industrial cultural strains has become physically, mentally and emotionally disconnected from Land, experience of Relationships, and the give & take in Transactions — all of which create a somatic, tactile and sensory experience of being ALIVE. The BetterBonds medicyne puts the human in touch with the land, and put the medicyne in the body. This reinforces a therapeutic and creative connection.

The Age of Information is yielding way to the Age of Attention & Intention. What is not attended to and beheld with Intent can perish. The knowledge of land and the traditional practices stands are a high risk of being forgotten or worse, usurped by unsavory characters and players. Making medicyne at the home level and serving community and companions revives ancient traditions and empowers healers while taking power back from the harmaceuticals.

It is not enough to bank upon some romantic and elusive past and think of it as some benchmark or diminishing or distant treasure. The knowledge of flora, fauna and life is immediately available to humans, in the present. We are the ancestors we have always sought. We are the cycle-breakers, tradition-makers, keepers of knowledge, weavers of tapestries, carriers of baskets, and makers of medicyne. This is a role humans should not let slip. BetterBonds seeks to empower mostly Mothers and make them the medicyne-woman of the family, while she in turn is supported by the living tradition we are creating here in the wilderness of Himalayas. However, the role of medicyne-maker and keeper is available to other seekers, too. Also, the collective’s quotient of wisdom and healing ways needs to be elevated in addition to preparing healers, so that there are recipients of healing and wisdom.

In modern speak, we call is market education and development, a role that BetterBonds has played actively. We shared the stories of our adventures, our preparations, our explorations, our trials, challenges, discoveries, formulae, packaging background. The outcome was phenomenal, however the downside was generation of excess need and demand that could not be met! :-0

Plant Work is sacred when it is not extractive, exploitative, and destructive–as has been the norm under the military-industrial-extractive paradigm for so long.

Instead, not only must the humans develop a kinship and become guardians of the Flora (and Mineral) Kingdom but also become the Regenerators of Earth. What we see on Earth is a ‘starter kit’, especially in terms of Flora. We can intentionally re-arrange and replant much of the kingdom except the ancient and old-growth structures. At the very least, we need to regenerate and populate new spaces. These become carbon sinks as well as the source of bio-fuel, food and medicine.

This is the larger picture.

In the smaller picture, BetterBonds identified sustainable harvesting practices for the herbs that we used, so that the whole plant is not damaged, and flowers etc. are left standing for the bees. Also, we only ever harvested sample amounts no more than a few bagfuls. So, while we barely had a footprint and imprint, we tested our methods even in that sampling era and developed our core practices and methods.

The next step would be to grow the plants that we harvest, and also, to better manage and possibly even shape the wilderness in areas of interest, such that wildlife and humans stay out of each other’s path for the most part, and interact where need be. Currently, the population and the wilderness get in each other’s way, people access the flora without safe practices for wilderness or humans, and catastrophic damage has been yielding on precious wild reserves. This, for the most part, was beyond our ability to yield influence on, but not beyond us to study and take note of.

Ramala Hubb’Allah also advocated the case for wilderness flora on her Facebook groups and pages that have brought the knowledge of Himalayan herbs to people of Pakistan, and beyond.

Pioneering Plants work creates both educational content for the economy of concern, and also stimulated the economy, and creates job. The beauty of integrated land work is that knowledge marries economy–the two do not go separate ways, creating an expensive and debilitating a lacuna. This also promotes resource guardianship, ownership, and a sense of autonomy and power.

In our experience though, this is a delicate realm that needs to be entered into with careful consideration and a deep knowledge of local economy, politics, and the behavioral orientation of the Collective.

The work of BetterBonds is the opposite of corporate or institutional control–this is one social entrepreneur (Ramala Hubb’Allah) bringing wealth, knowledge, and empowerment to participating families that have been engaged to do the Plants Work with BetterBonds. Because we were one of the pioneers of such work in the regions that we worked in, we tried a few different approaches: Self-harvest in permitted areas (often fields and gardens owned by families), engaging harvesters for targeted work, and buying the harvest that was available already with various sellers, as well as buying regular produce such as local wheat, berries and nuts.

The larger and longer-term vision is to enable Families or Village or Cooperatives or Units within Cooperatives to make their own products from local flora and fauna (where applicable) and then bundle them towards a market or market representative–or open local marketspaces that would serve both the local, regional, national and travel market.

This is a democratic economic structure that enables wealth distribution and the uplifting of the collective by uplifting of the parts.