I’ve spent a lot of time in thought about nutrition, health, and wellness in general. Devouring information from the experts, balancing forceful points of view with thoughtful forays into the ‘other side.’ In all things I do I seek balance above all. I reject rules, traditions, and control of self, of others, of society, of minds. I believe in power, personal, subjective power over mind, over intrusive thoughts and negative relationships to ourselves, to food, to dogma. I believe that we each have the power to heal ourselves, and we discover it only when we reject the ‘power’ of ‘higher authorities’ and ‘experts,’ in favor of the power within our bodies to heal ourselves.
We don’t have to understand ‘the science’ to heal ourselves. ‘The science’ we say, as if there is a single view, as if scientists always agree with each other, and every experiment is created equal. If only it were so! Our first stop on our journey towards healing should be our intuition. It should be our inner knowing. We’ve come to a point in our world where it would appear that most of us believe we are required to outsource our knowing to something, or someone outside of ourselves.
We hold faulty beliefs that we cannot ‘know’ because we are not academics, doctors, nurses, psychologists, psychiatrists, world leaders, politicians; we don’t hold degrees, or perhaps, not the ‘right’ degrees, we are not intelligent enough, not educated enough, not all-knowing enough; in other words, we believe at a core, unconscious level, that we are not sovereign enough to be the rulers of our own vessels.
Because of this belief, we outsource our knowing
. We feel our truth, and we reject it because the people outside of it, outside of us—‘the experts’— don’t agree. The experts are wiser than we are, because they are trained, because they have clearly defined parameters, and official™ permission to use them. They have specialties and knowledge that we may never understand, and so they must know our bodies better than we ever could, right? The experts are god level
and we are mere mortals
. How could we ever deign to understand our own vessels when we are but finite humans, living in the world who worships the god complex of the elite few.
Never mind that we live in the age of information, that we have access to nearly every piece of information that these mortal gods do, if we are willing to do the work and seek it out. Never mind that our heroes are owned by big business, big pHARMa, and our precious, ever-loving government. Never mind that their hands are tied by the oaths they swore, their lips sealed by the dogma they maintain, that if these heroes are willing to see outside of their narrow programming, they will be villainized, stripped of their titles, their power, and their worth in society quicker than you can say “industrialized medicine.”
I am not against the people who have committed their lives to systematizing, categorizing, and industrializing the human body. I believe that the people dedicating their lives to these highly regulated systems believe that this is where health lies, this is what will save us! I believe that they bought the narrative they were being sold, and the narrative sells easily because it is not wholly without merit. I understand why the Rockefellers saw the opportunity to industrialize medicine, and I understand why they monetized it and protected it so carefully from holistic healing practitioners— for the money, of course, and in turn, the power.
Allopathic medicine doctors have their place, and they are useful and life-saving when they are in that place. My own life, limbs, and eyesight have been saved by allopathic medicine doctors when I have needed my face stitched back together carefully, my bones cast in place to heal gently, or when I have needed my nerves reattached between my eyes from childhood fort-building gone awry. When I needed to be life-flighted to be pieced back together after being hit by a car, or when I have needed emergency tooth extractions to remove a tooth that was slowly killing me. Allopathic medicine thrives in emergency situations, when natural treatments would take too long.
In the same way, psychiatrists may prove helpful to some when emergency intervention is needed, when symptoms are overwhelming the vessel to the point of self-destruction, when there is no reasoning with a person because they are locked too far behind their layers of trauma. I don’t deny that medications may be helpful for some in the short term, when they are paired with self-awareness training, somatic trauma healing, empathy and a plan for moving forward. Medication alone is never an effective long-term solution. It’s a bandaide.
I don’t think that these disciplines are useless, or purely evil, but I absolutely think we’ve allowed industrialized medicine to get too big for it’s britches. We’ve allowed it to go on, unchecked, unregulated by human wisdom, intuition, and common sense for too long. We’ve allowed it to treat us as if we were machines coming off a conveyor belt, separating our parts out into “specialities” that have little to do with one another. As if our insides don’t interact every second of every day, as if every piece of us wasn’t kept alive with the same blood, and our stomachs didn’t affect our brains, and our food, and our potions, and our pace didn’t hold any weight in these vessels we carry with us everywhere. As if anything that cannot be measured, and quantified didn’t exist.
What we’ve really done is, we’ve created gods to worship, just like in the Biblical times of Moses; only instead of a golden calf, it’s a serpent wrapped around a rod, with golden wings, or a serpent wrapped around the greek letter “psi,” or a golden eagle for government. We like to think of the people in history who worshipped idols as silly, ridiculous people. Brainwashed with lore and mysticism. We make children’s movies out of their idols and their gods, feeling intellectually superior to their ancient ways. We would never worship idols, “we’re too smart for that” we say, as we dutifully take our places bowing down to the serpents wrapping themselves around staffs, and greek letters; as we lock ourselves away at the behest of daddy government, the great eagle in the sky, who snags up the serpents at will. Is it any coincidence that the symbols chosen to represent our modern idols tell the story of the power dynamic these idols have created? I think not.
Did you know that only 27% of medical schools currently require ONE class on nutrition in order to graduate? Yet it is a well-known fact that 95% of diseases are caused by diet and lifestyle factors. What that means is that a human who is getting every nutrient they need in the proper dose and pairing should live a long healthy life, without the need for medical intervention. A human body is designed to function properly, to function well, to thrive and to heal itself of nearly anything it encounters in this world, when simply being given the nutrients it needs to sustain life. The human body is also equipped with a brain and an ecosystem of bacterium that work symbiotically to ensure that it’s nutritional needs are met, by voicing cravings, creating symptoms of disregulation, and intuitive pulls towards certain activities, experiences, herbs, and various foods.
The way that modern “healthcare” is dealt with is outrageous, and yet we all allow it to continue. To what end? I’m of the mindset that the quickest way to change the status quo is to opt out. Stand on your own two feet and take the power of choice back from whomever you gave it away to. Return the fear to sender. Do not accept the tyrannical lies that your body is full of accidents and oopsies in your biology. Learn the ways of your ancestors with openness, with grace and without fear.
Your body holds the memory of every generation that has come before you. The way that your body operates is not an accident, nor is it a mistake; the way your body operates is a wise adaptation to your life. You can and must learn to work with your body, rather than against it. Anyone who tells you differently doesn’t understand the body.