Physical Health: Freedom from Disease

My Dad has just had knee surgery. His endorphins are wearing off and the pain killer prescription has expired.

I have plant medicines. I offer them after first saying, “Dad, I swear it’s not mine.” A reference to my brother getting busted in high school for experimentation and a porn magazine.

We both laugh. Really, it isn’t. I’m not sick at this moment, feeling healthy, happy, and fit. Medicine unnecessary. I forgot to give it to give to a client who deals with anxiety.

“Dad, seriously, do you want it?” His teeth are chattering and he has a fever. He says, yes, but only in food form.

”Ok. It’ll take a while.”

As the concoction brews and synthesizes, my dad looks at me and says, “I give you permission to practice medicine on me.”

I look at him and consider the long road from when I was choosing natural alternative therapies to heal my endocrine system after it shut down from a brain tumor and our many disagreements about that choice.

”Dad, I give You permission to practice medicine on yourSelf.”

My Dad and I have never feared disagreeing amicably about many topics. This isn’t one, especially now that this path has laid out in front of me from age 17, “It’s how I have become who I am,” I continue.

We take a moment to discuss pharmaceuticals and their scientific synthezation for the purpose of billion dollar profits taking plants and turning them into pills.

Aspirin and willow is one, but the list is extensive from anti-tumor agents and artichoke derived liver medications.

The insanity of it hits me in this particular moment, wherein, I tell my dad, reclaiming our relationships to seeds, plants and food is the first step to medical reformation.

When we realize knowledge, diet and natural medicine are free to every human being then perhaps we will begin, not to look outward at corporations as the problem, but rather our own separation from the Earth and a failure to take control of our own health.

This is not to discount medical doctors or emergency facilities with state of the art technology, rather this is to say that if we don’t start looking to the plants, not just for recreation or psychotropic effects, we will fail to liberate ourselves into health and a better relationship with our living planet.

Also, if we don’t realize the very separation of our plant from our consciousness and the creation of dependency on high priced synthesized versions is a form of addiction to unhealthy that keeps a billion dollar industry thriving so that it has the monetary power over politics, government and health care.

It begins with us. Every day. Every choice.

If we as a species are increasingly diseased, it is a product of our inability to doctor our own minds in conjunction with necessary behavior modifications, ending unhealthy patterns of addiction and also seeing the correlation between our choices in making our world a peaceful healthy place.

In making physical health a priority, we can begin to feed and water our bodies with the highest quality ingredients beginning with food sources, high plant based diets, especially greens.

As we become more in tune with the plants, we will understand water and sunlight as basic needs, realizing indoor lighting and computer screens are no substitute for active life styles and exposure to the outdoors. Being outside will increase our affection for living beings of all sorts, ourselves and our dependency on other life forms being one.

Perhaps our greatest source of disease is our disconnection.

When I say to my dad, practice medicine on yourself, I mean self heal. I mean know how to take care of your body. Do it daily. Stop lying about the things you know are breaking down your cellular structure. Stop contributing to the unhealth of society and reconnect to sources of healing.

One of the ways to do this is to recognize there are those who abuse plants with less side effects than prescription drugs. The idea that plant based medicines are the drugs of low economics and of the same vibration as alcoholism, needs to be healed. For many, the stigma is worse than the truth.

What is the truth? Somewhere between here and there. Always somewhere between here and there. Both sides see a truth that neither side will accept, this is blindness akin to the other side of the moon rejecting the existence of the sun because it is in the shadows.

Physical health is obtainable to all people, especially in our country. To be true, in our country there’s no excuse for claiming ignorance. Since I was a child and Arnold Schwarzenegger addressed childhood obesity and made us start doing chin ups by presidential decree, health and what constitutes it has been a conversation and a concern, and that was at the beginning of Lucky Charms sugar cereals and Burger King playgrounds.

The conversations and concerns: Soda and its effects on internal organs. Meat in high quantities, especially from discompassionate sources. Poisons on monocrops to cover over diseased farming practices. Corn syrups. Margarines. Any kind of science food not derived from a natural source. Did you know jaw breakers are actually sugar coated plastic? Yes, plastic. Here, son, because I love you.

The knowledge is there and rather than putting it to use people point fingers to Washington DC.

Highly radical first step to physical health, imagine someone who wanted you to be healthy rode with you in the car and steered you towards health alternatives in food. Imagine someone who desired vitality for you because they had nothing to gain monetarily, was with you in your home and deciding how you spent your time and money.

Imagine that person turned off the tv and went for a walk. Imagine that person making your meals. Imagine that person loving your children and interacting with them face to face. Imagine that person is you.

The real medicine I speak of practicing is wisdom, self-care, radical honesty and I not only give you permission to practice it on yourself, I say beginning with you can lead to a whole reform not only inside your bodies, families, communities, and country but would change the way we interact with the world and care for our life giving planet.