How to Step Over the Sickness ‘Hump’
A core healing concept that we would like to introduce to you is one of inertia. Inertia is the resistance of any physical object to a change in its state of motion or rest. From the perspective of health, inertia can be thought of as the cumulative weight of factors preventing or providing resistance to the bodies’ efforts at maintaining homeostasis or balance.
A great example and one probably dear to most of our hearts is the humble massage. Is there any more reliable method of treating an aching, facilitated muscle than by applying some heat and mechanical force to change its state from being ‘tight’ and ‘rod like’ to being soft and supple? The heat and mechanical force being the required stimulus or support for the muscle to allow it to return to normal function by removing the ‘block’ that was the thixotropic [1] change in muscle viscosity.
Similarly, in the context of disease – what level of support do we need to provide the body that allows for a shift in inertia from a state of disease to a state of balance?
What do we need to remove from or add to your system and at what dose and frequency, to provide a ‘kick start’ to restore an appropriate level of self-regulation? By definition, when your body is in balance (health) via self regulation or homeostasis, it cannot be in imbalance (disease).
An analogy for you as way of further explanation: roll starting a car with a flat battery, can provide for some varied scenarios. If the car is parked on a decline all that is needed is to release the handbrake, get up to speed, put it in second and drop the clutch. The car will then cough and splutter and perhaps back fire a couple of times before returning to normal function.
However, if the car is parked on the flat then a number of individuals are going to be needed to overcome the inertia of the car until it gets up to speed and the clutch can be dropped. How much more support are we going to need provide the driver if the car is parked on an incline or if there are blocks in front of the front tyres?
The body with its inherent wisdom knows what to do, how to do and when to do, what is required for optimal function – if in doubt, just take yourself back to before disease manifested and reflect on how you got there?
It is your Core Naturopathics practitioner’s role to guide, facilitate and support this process of self-regulation and repair.
[1] One of the many marvels of the body is the Thixotropic property of many of its fluids. Certain gels or fluids that are thick (viscous) under normal conditions, flow (become thin, less viscous) over time when shaken, agitated, or otherwise stressed. They then take a fixed time to return to a more viscous state. Examples of thixotropic fluids include the synovial fluid found in joints between some bones, the ground substance (extracellular fluid) in the human body, as is blood and semen.