Not long ago, a friend was frustrated that she was just learning now from mainstream media about the healthful impact Vitamin D has on overall immune functioning. Specifically when it comes to the virus of the moment. At first, I felt uplifted with the knowledge that other effective approaches of being with our current situation are making their way into mass consciousness. Something for which I am profoundly grateful.
I am also of a mixed mind.
On the one hand, that viable, effective, studied approaches with long histories of helping are starting to make their way into the mind of the western medical system is, though long over due, a great blessing. On the other hand, we are running the risk of doing what we in the West tend to do. Look for the quick fix. The magic bullet. The one thing that we can do, and do fast. An action we can take, without much effort on our part, to bring an end to our suffering. So very human to want expediency without too much expenditure of energy. And yet, that very same want has brought us to our knees when it comes to our health and well-being.
Why? Because the demand for quick fixes is based in avoidance, and with it, a fatal lack of understanding of how health and the body actually works. None of which will bring us to necessary truths or needed perspectives. None of which will reveal to us that what sits at the heart of our current health care crisis, what ails us most, is avoidable. But only if we are willing to understand ourselves and our health as inseparable from what we do, think, and feel. As inseparable from our environments, our beliefs, the company we keep, how we grow our food, and how are with ourselves on the daily.
Without including all of ourselves and all that we come in contact with, we run the risk of leaving our vitality up to something separate from how we are living. A fatal flaw actually in its denial of what it takes to keep any living thing alive and well. An unfortunate perspective that has separated us from the fabric of Life itself. It is far more difficult to look in this way. Not because it is unnatural, but because we have been conditioned to believe otherwise. We have been trained to look at the root causes of an illness, a pain or an imbalance in the body as being something we need to make go away.
As opposed to understanding its presence in our lives.
This is the proverbial band-aid approach. I cover up the symptom. I gain a little relief. I go on. Never addressing that whatever is underneath that band-aid, remains. Untended. Ignored. Denied. So no matter how much vitamin D I take, if I am not getting the sleep I need, am endlessly propped up by caffeine, and staying too busy to notice how out of my mind I am, my immune system will still be flagging. No matter what I put into it.
As we open ourselves up to new perspectives around health and healing, it is essential to remember that magic bullets can come in any form. They can come from conventional medicine or alternative medicine. The most important aspect here being how we use them. What our mind set is. For at its best, it is not about substituting one bullet for another. It is to stop looking for bullets all together. It is to create a way of being that honors the fullness and the totality of who you are and what you need to be healthy.
It is a perspective that asks the question “What do I need to feel well?”
What supports that in you? What undermines it? Though we are inclined to make this question beyond the lay person’s ability to know, that is just not true. I recently heard a physician say that if you listen long enough, all good doctors know, that the patient will not only tell you what the problem is, they will tell you what caused it. What enormous power and possibility lies in that perspective. To go from looking for a magic bullet that someone else shoots at you, to understanding that nothing within needs to be annihilated.
Try it. Carve out some time when you can be alone with yourself. Put your hands on whatever is hurting, and listen. Just listen.