TO KNOW THE WORLD, KNOW YOURSELF

We desperately need a new model for the care and maintenance of the human bodymind. Not only for ourself, but for our tribe. Our Illness-Care industry is reeling from mismanagement, undernourishment and neglect, and we're lurching toward the edge of an aged-care precipice.

Boffins are constantly exhorting people to change to illness-preventing lifestyles. But urging people, especially young ones, to practise moderate exercise, to abstain from alcohol and tobacco and harder drugs, to adopt a sensible diet, thought awareness and stress management isn't grabbing a huge following. Parents are farming out their responsibilities to their kids to the extent that a scary number of teens are mentally and emotionally wild-carded before they get to 18. It's not a pretty picture, and the medium- and long-term prognosis is even worse. We're seemingly heading for a social train-wreck.

Why? It's not for lack of information. I think it's lack of Motivation. A positive lifestyle requires that you balance and tend your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual growth, day in and day out for decades if you want to ensure the full benefit of health. But the consequences of our choices, whatever they are, may not show up for decades yet. We always pay for early inattention and mistakes by a decline that generally doesn't show overt symptoms until around late middle age. It's hard to persuade anyone, including yourself, to discipline yourself  and do something proactive today in order to reap a reward twenty or thirty years from now.

So what would it take to improve your motivation to get off your arse and do something in your own intelligent best interests? I can find only one answer: reinvent how you think about your human body/mind. Your attitude to your self is mirrored in the way you treat everyone and everything "else". For people to shift their behaviour toward self-care and heightened well-being, we don't need just compliance with standard prevention; we need compassion and kindness. There also has to be a drop in our predilection to drugs and surgery as shortcut approaches to relieving suffering. 

 

Over the course of history, there have been four major models of the body:

1) The body as a collection of Nature's basic elements (the medieval conception of the four humours is an example).

2) The body as the temple of the soul.

3) The body as an expression of the life force (the Chinese concept of Chi is an example).

4) The body as a machine.

Depending on which model your personal culture accepts, you tend to approach illness and wellness in different ways. A doctor might advise a patient to undergo surgery or chemotherapy, pray to God as opposed to taking a pill, strengthening his Chi, making merit, or correcting imbalances in chakras. Each of these approaches has a lot to recommend it. But none on its own holds a way out of the dead-end we've got ourselves into.

In a Western-cultured place like Australia, the body-as-machine model has prevailed for a long time thanks to the reductionist methods of science. Machines are repaired by specialist mechanics who tinker with its defective parts, and that's basically what doctors do in their practices. 

But it's obvious that your body isn't a machine. Your body is alive, for one thing. For another, exercise makes it stronger, whereas a machine, if used more often, begins to wear out. Your body/mind is a bio-organism that is inseparable from other parts of the same bio-organism. It can heal itself. It's a self-organising and self-regulating process. It also has access to intuition, a connection to the context of things going on at a deeper level – a quality not available to machines.

Yet the biggest flaw in the machine model of medicine, as I see it, is its rejection of the mind-body-spirit connection. I don't think that's spiritual chauvinism; I think embracing it in a curriculum would make training too long and complicated to churn out fixit graduates at the rate we need them. Medicos in training do learn a bit about psychosomatic disorders, but there's an implication that they're the result of the patient's imagination, and best left to shrinks (ie. more specialists). 

 

This situation hasn't changed much in medical school, sad to say, but a surge in alternative and integrated medicine has brought the mind-body connection a little more out into the open, particularly in areas of Australia where there exists a supportive general culture of awakening consciousness. 

This development of medicine is so important that a fourth model of the body is being formulated as we speak: an Integrated Model.

In this Integrated model of medicine, every cell is regarded as intelligent. The body holds and works interdependently through a constant stream of information that reaches every cell. 

 

Ego is another matter. It ignores these cosmic conversations, makes up laws of its own and stories to support them. Self-centred ego/mind interferes and spends far too much time sending energy in directions opposite to the natural flow. Ego IS the problem.

Homeostasis - a state of dynamic balance - represents health. Inflammation, as yet not fully understood, represents the state of imbalance, separation and cross-purposes, leading to many if not most diseases. A person's habits, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviour are the key to well-being, since messages from any bunch of cells, especially the brain, affect the whole body. The brain plays a critical role in the feedback loops that maintain homeostasis, yet at every level, down to the expression of your genes, feedback repeats the same pattern of input and output. To put it bluntly – positive input promotes well-being; negative input impairs well-being.

The advantages of an Integrated model for the body/mind can be summarised in a few key points:

• - Self-care becomes the primary care, not reliance on drugs and surgery from a doctor.
• - Beliefs and attitudes assume the same status as physical input, such as food and exercise.
• - Genetic consequences of lifestyle habits is now proven, extending our perception of the benefits of positive lifestyle changes. What we eat in our teens will genetically affect our babies a few years later.
• - As you cultivate the role of Awareness in your moment-to-moment life, positive lifestyle changes won't need years to show benefits; you'll notice differences immediately.
• - Most chronic disorders become preventable through routine maintenance of the whole system. This includes heart disease, diabetes and probably the vast majority of cancers.
• - Mind-oriented practices like meditation improve well-being throughout the system, all the way down to the genetic level.

There is abundant and mounting evidence that all of these things are true, which means that an Integrated Model has reality on its side, more so than the old standalone machine model. 

 

I referred a moment ago to your body/mind as a process. That was very deliberate. Your body is a concentration of processes, things and no-things coming together into be-ing: your body is not a thing. Well-being depends on finding your flow, in terms of a relaxed but aware mental state, a steady upbeat mood about your life, following the natural rhythm of rest and activity, nourishing ingestion of food and drink and excretion of wastes, taking realistic, practical steps to reduce stress, respecting the need for a good night's sleep, avoiding toxins, stimulating your body's natural defence systems, and relying on your body's innate intelligence.

It's the last point about realising that your body knows best what's going on with you, tells you what's happening (if you'll only listen), and has a good plan in place for restoring natural balance, that will radically change your behaviour. Your own basic attitude, and one you should impart to your children in everything you say and do, should be a reliance on the intelligence, awareness and knowing that is innate in every cell. There is no separation between you and the universe. Energy and thought (as distinct from “thoughts”) are in continuous interaction 24/7. No-one and no thing is an island.

Instead of seeing the body as a machine that, like a new car, must deteriorate over time, we should see it as a system that learns, adapts, and improves over time. In short, we need to let the body take care of us, for that is what it's actually doing, if we will only let it.

 

Here's a ridiculous question. Have you never considered sitting or lying down quietly with your body, asking its advice and noting carefully the sensations it sends you?

To me, that is less ridiculous than going to see an almost complete stranger and asking him to “give you something”. No body knows you better than your own body.

The one thing this amazingly self-sufficient system of yours needs from you is better attention and input.

Behold a few things that constitute better input:

- Being self-aware.

- Practising whatever connects you to contentment with what-is.

- Being more relaxed and accepting.

- A strong self-esteem, a sense of worthwhile-ness.

- Being of service to others, giving.

- Showing generosity of spirit.

- Loving, nurturing, supportive, challenging relationships.

- Any activity that makes you feel light in mind and body.

- Taking time to play, and having a playful attitude.

- Not stressing out other people.

- Devoting yourself to projects that have real meaning and purpose for you.

- Expanding your awareness and experience. Growing and maturing from the inside.

- Being comfortable with your inner world.

- Working through negative emotions like anger, envy, and fear.

- Self-acceptance.

- Reverence for Nature.

- Connection with a higher power, whatever that may be for you.

As you can see, almost none of this is advice will you hear in a doctor's office, and you sure won't find it in any of the waiting room reading material. 

 

This new way of regarding body/mind goes far beyond standard prevention, which is based mostly on reducing risks. Of course it's good to avoid risks, but thinking in terms of what can go wrong feeds fear, and fear is a very primitive and clumsy motivator over the long run. 

 

Becoming happier and more fulfilled day by day is a much better motivator, and not bad as a protection against terminal despair. Upgrade your conception of the body to include everything that is mentally, psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually fulfilling. 

 

Look after your body/mind. It's your best means of eavesdropping on God.

What do you think?

PS. My thanks to Dr. Deepak Chopra for his inspiration.