A Clean Body and Mind on a Clean Earth

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Today I’m delighted to present a guest post by Isabella Mori.  Isabella is a counsellor in Vancouver, Canada, where she has a psychotherapy practice.  Isabella hasbeen working in the field of mental health, counselling, psychotherapy and movement therapy for 15 years and enjoy helping people build better lives.  You can find out more on her psychotherapy practice home page.  She also has a blog – you will find the link in the sidebar on my blog, or – you can go to it here blog: change therapy.

At the peace walk/earth day rally I bumped into a friend who works at the head of a high profile environmental group. When asked how she was doing, she gave a big grin and said, “fast approaching burn-out, but fine, thanks. Tomorrow morning I’m flying to Toronto and it’s going to be meetings, meetings, meetings all week long. I wish I had some time off over there but I don’t. But otherwise, sure, I’m fine.” My response was meant to be a joke: “Seems your organization is doing all this campaigning for the environment out there, but they don’t seem to care much for the old body.” On the bus ride home, half asleep after walking around all those hours, i remembered this little conversation. Here we are, everyone all worked up about the carmanah valley and salmon spawning grounds and ozone holes – I wonder, do we realize that our bodies and minds are our most immediate environment?

This is the beginning of an article I wrote twenty years ago, when I was writing a monthly environmental column for a small newspaper.

I finished it with this question

How on earth, yes, on earth, not in the car or behind the desk, are we supposed to be “kind and gentle” to trees and animals, the air, the water, if we treat ourselves like, well, dirt?

It would be interesting to see how far we’ve come. I’m not aware of any research directly on this. Ruth Engs has written on the cyclical nature of “Clean Living Movements“; I have not read her book; perhaps she, too, touches on the idea. Let me just share with you my observations:

In the “awareness department”, i.e. realizing that our bodies and minds need to be taken care of, I think we’ve made great strides. Our health consciousness has increased dramatically in the last 15 years or so. For example, yoga has become immensely popular; it is now commonplace to include vegetarian options in meals; and there can’t be many North Americans who don’t know about the necessity for exercise.

On the side of emotional health, knowing one’s emotional EQ and checking out Deepak Chopra’s latest ideas have become pretty common, too. Regarding the environment, Al Gore must have been that 100th monkey who brought it home to us that we need to live environmentally conscious lives.

But here’s the question:

Even though we’ve come this far, do we really understand the connection between mind, body and environment, and, more importantly, to what degree are we acting on that understanding?

When you are thirsty, do you go and get a drink right away to answer your body’s needs? And as you quench your thirst, do you ever think of the parched earth of all those places in the world where people in their poverty (and lack of education) hack off the last few trees for firewood?

When you are tired, do you go to Starbucks, or do you go to bed a bit earlier because you know that your body needs rest? As you fall asleep, can you remember that plants “wake up” at nighttime and supply the world with oxygen?

When you are hungry, do you respond by eating to give your body fuel, or do you say, I don’t have time right now? When you bite into a nice juicy chicken leg, do you sometimes remember all the animals who starve because their habitat is destroyed by overzealous development?

When you feel a little sick, do you boost your body’s natural immune system with vitamins, good nutrition and rest, or do you get yourself some antibiotics? As you heal, are you aware of Nature’s immense capability of healing herself – a healing power that, if we’re not careful, may treat us humans as bugs that need to be gotten rid of?

When you stare out the office window yearning for a vacation, do you schedule a day off as soon as possible – or even a vacation – because you know your mind desperately needs it, or do you dismiss it because “this isn’t a good time”? And as you stroll along the beach on that much-needed vacation, is your heart filled with gratefulness for the beauty around you?

It seems to me that making this connection is crucial. As long as the trees in the park, the water in the lake, the birds on the hedges and the soil out in the valley are “other” or “not-me”, as long as they are “things” that we can discard, use and alter at will, we are not going to be good environmental stewards.

The same goes for our minds and bodies. Andrew Feldmar, an internationally known therapist, says that most physical stress symptoms – headaches, for example – are a result of seeing our body parts as separate and “instrumental”.

When I treat my eyes as little camera tools instead of realizing that they are “me”, I interrupt a vital connection, and this interruption ultimately causes suffering such as eye strain that results in headaches. (An interesting aside: In Christian theology, the deepest form of suffering is a separation from God.)

When I engage in talk that separates and even pits against each other head, heart and body, I perpetuate the kind of illusion of separateness that, very concretely, has brought us to the point of environmental destruction that we experience today. (Yes, I’m saying “experience” – not “see”. Environmental destruction is something that we live every day; it is an illusion that it happens somewhere on a TV screen). As Michaelman says

Ever since René Descartes asserted, “I think, therefore, I am” and Sir Isaac Newton published his Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, we in the West have largely regarded ourselves as minds amidst a mechanical universe, somewhat disconnected and apart from the surrounding reality, an observer rather than a part of the whole.

What will it take for you to reconnect? How can you – your head, heart, body and the earth – heal and become whole again?

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Tags: ecology, health, Relationships