I have this weird belief that doctors don’t know everything, that there’s more to know and that each one of us can, in our own unique way, discover and utilize our own personal healing modalities.
What is a healing modality? It’s a way of getting better, getting rid of illness and debility. It’s something that makes you strong and resilient, flexible even. Our species has discovered and forgotten more healing modalities than we can imagine.
That’s my point. Contracting our health care out to doctors who are paid by insurance companies who make money when you are sick is a bad idea. Doctors have their place, that’s obvious, but don’t give them the whole bag. Learn how to be your own doctor.
And why not? Who knows your body better than you? You monitor it 24/7. No doctor in a clinic can do that.
Back sometime around 2000 I injured my back carrying heavy boxes of books out of the University CoOp bookstore and stacking them in my van. It was the biggest buy of my career as a book buyer but it also was the cause of an injury that would follow me (and mentor me) for the rest of my life.
I should mention that my lower back had previously been injured in high school when I sprained it doing an exercise wrong so there was a pre-existing condition, as the medical people like to say. Anyways I ended up with sciatica and a damaged sciatic nerve. That’s the main nerve that runs down into your leg from your spine. A herniated disc will pinch it, squeeze it as it emerges from the spinal column. It causes extreme pain. It rendered me dysfunctional, unable to bend over, walk or even sleep.
I went to a Doc in the box, crawled in there basically, barely able to move and he, apparently, thought I was faking it to get some ‘good drugs’, so he prescribed Motrin. I was way beyond Motrin.
Having no medical insurance and no doctor I realized that I needed to do whatever I could do. That was something at least. It was empowering actually. While the experience with the doctor was disempowering, finding what I could do was empowering. That in itself was healing.
I limped around for many months while I tried to heal the pain and I did. I walk with no pain now and no limp. I cured it. Well I still have to work on it, keep it enervated and flexible, my whole body needs to be enervated and flexible so there is no end to the maintenance. So here’s my second point. It’s fun. Learning how to be your own doctor is fun and very gratifying.
Learn to listen to your body. Have a conversation. Introduce yourself. Open your mind to the possibilities of communication without words. Your body is talking to you but it doesn’t speak English or any other human language. It speaks its own language, the only one it knows.
I began to understand this as I worked on my leg and my lower back. I found my body was responsive when I made slow, conscious movements around or through the painful places, like a range of motion. I call it rohn yoga because I invent it myself while having a conversation with my body.
Wherever there is tension or pain, find a range of motion and move through it slowly, being aware of everything you are feeling. Breathe into it. Hold it (the movement not your breath). That feeling that you get is your body talking to you.
I actually made a movie about it. It’s called ‘body work’. I made it a long time ago.
I could start a clinic with what I’ve learned about healthcare but I also believe it should be free and accessible and collaborative. It should be something we discover not something we buy from a ‘provider’. We should be willing to share our knowledge with other people who could benefit from it too. That’s healthy living.
Actually I’m a perfect laboratory for discovering how to heal things. I have an auto-immune condition and there are weird different symptoms showing up all the time. It’s the darndest thing. Sometimes I have a shingles like pain in my shoulder, once I had carpal tunnel, occasionally I have weakness and pain in my legs, all kinds of issues and their permutations and their nuanced manifestations. Shooting pain into my foot, restless foot syndrome, sore lower back, double vision, swollen elbow. They all may or may not be related but they all have come and gone and, in no small part, because I managed to find a healing modality.
Ultimately we have to surrender to the power of Mother Nature. She created us. And she destroys us. And she makes all this work. Some kind of natural process. It took 3 billion years. Yeah, going back to the first iteration: the microbes.
change change change
take a number
ama oh mama
oh mama ama ama
. . . is how the song goes. We are creatures of nature. Nature is all about healing and nurturing. The biosphere is the planet as an organism, it strives, as it were, to maintain homeostasis (balance, health) just like our body does. Just like we strive to be happy, we strive to be healthy.
Mother Nature, ama mama in the song, the energy of the universe causing each plant and each person to be what they are. How much is there to discover and know that Mother Nature can teach us about being healthy?
Alot. In each house there is a light and whatever rooms are occupied, they have light. Right? If the rooms are uninhabited, the light goes out. We need to inhabit ourselves. We need to light it up. Ama Mama.
the podcast music is a track from Larisa Stow & Shakti Tribe - ‘Ama’. Fantastic.
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