photo: Torkil Stavdal
Nature knows how to survive, adjust, and thrive. What can we learn from that?
Do you ever wonder how some huge trees can grow on top of rocks and their roots barely reach into the earth?
Or how some trees will just grow around light poles that we humans have put up too close to where the tree would naturally grow, we block their path, and they grow around it?
Or how some trees can get so old in the middle of a park in the center of a busy city like New York?
Nature is amazing. The survival instinct of nature is beyond our ability to adjust as human beings. We adjust too though. That is how we evolved and we still do. We are now adjusting to the man-made world with all its artificial ingredients.
But is that a good thing? Are we working with or against nature in our daily lives and in our choices of self-nourishment and care?
Nature or Not, Natural or Not?
When we live in huge cities and barely see trees we probably consider nature somewhere else. However. We are nature too. As human beings we are one of the elements of nature. We still need nature’s production of food and water to live. We need shelter from nature’s elements to be warm, safe, and dry. We do seem to remove ourselves more and more from nature though. Taller and taller buildings. Adjusted indoor climate. Office cubicles with no view of the sky. We are spending less time outdoors, watch TV at night indoors instead of going for a walk. But we still rely on nature for our existence and survival!
We use the resources of nature to feed ourselves, even if we cannot recognize the processed food as real food anymore, it still did start somewhere in nature. Today most food is so factory farmed or altered that eating wholefoods require of us to make an effort. Though fortunately there is a strong movement for going back to – or rather forward to, once again recognizing that real people need real food.
We too are amazing creatures designed to survive. Everything is set up inside of us to convert everything we eat into information for our system. Our blood, our cells, our neurotransmitters, our hormones, our energy, our emotions, our muscles, our organs function based on and because of what we eat!
Did you think your food is only going in your mouth, through the inner tube of yours, to fill your stomach, satisfy your hunger, and later on you will just pee and poop it all out and that is the end of it? Not quite!
I hate to repeat the old saying – but… you are what you eat! Sorry – it is true.
Thrive or Survive?
Our body renews itself over and over. That is what it is designed to do. It is both how it survives and thrives. Now if you think of your food as a language that your body has to understand to use it for nourishment and pretend that it only knows real food names. Look at a couple of labels and see what your body might understand of what you are feeding it.
This is how amazing we are.
In Quantum Healing (1986), Chopra gives a new paradigm for how the body handles its own rejuvenation process. Based on the estimates of quantum biology, you have a brand new stomach lining every 4 days, new skin every 30 days, a new liver in 6 weeks, even the skeleton is replaced every 3 months.
The blood plasma renews itself every 10 days. Our white blood cells renew themselves every 2 to 3 weeks. Our red blood cells typically renew themselves every 120 days. Our entire blood renews itself every 3 to 4 months. So since what you eat becomes part of your blood over and over with every meal, how you consistently eat changes your blood and therefore the quality of your health over time.
Our entire body (approximately 98%) renews itself every seven to eight years depending on whether you are a man or woman (seven for women and eight for men). Women have the ability to renew their bodies more quickly than men do.
When you first start eating differently you feel some immediate effects simply because you start eliminating toxins and artificially stimulating foods that have been causing too much imbalance in your blood. And what is in your blood affects your entire body and your hormones. Your hormones affect your energy, your metabolism, and how you feel and think.
But there is more…
You can tell how your body is doing. Your skin is a tell-tale. One reason your skin becomes dry, has blemishes, roughness, cracks or wrinkles is because it cannot get proper nourishment and renew itself efficiently. That is what we call aging. The reason is that it is clogged by fat so moisture and oils cannot pass through to re-nourish it.
Your health shows up on your skin because, as your body’s largest organ, it is an elimination organ and could almost be called your third kidney. The skin works with the kidneys, intestines, lungs and liver to keep the body clean.
So if it shows up on your skin, what happens to your organs that you cannot see? The dryness, the roughness, the blemishes or the wrinkles? You might have heard of a fatty liver…
So when you start eating better your skin starts to look better and your start to feel better. Your body is beginning to thrive too, not just survive. That is nature.
When we get ill.
We tend to think of illness as something that happens to us. What if it is simply just overuse in a specific way that has broken down our body’s immune system and resources for self-healing? What if it is a blockage of the self-renewal and energy that allows the body to both survive and thrive? What if the body would repair itself if it could?
Consider a broken bone. Yes, it helps to get to the hospital and put it back in its right place and hold it there so…it can heal. Either way it would mend itself. The hospital or the doctor is not putting your bone back together, it is.
As you see the carrot above in the picture, which I found at the farmer’s market, I am sure it only made it into the bin because the farmer himself put it there. In a supermarket it would never have survived the sorting process. As it grew in nature it survived as well, by adjusting.
Now the challenge is: As human beings, do we adjust to our lives or do we try to adjust our lives to support us as human beings? Do you let your life direct how and what you eat? Or do you choose to eat what you need as a human being, with blood, cells, muscles, and bones that need to be fed and nourished to survive and thrive?
We don’t need to all live in the country to be healthy, but you also do not need to eat “concrete, brick, and mortar” to live in the city. By this I mean; artificial and man made foods.
Give your body a chance to renew itself as it is meant to do!
Enjoy the process to health,
Jeanette