None of us exist in a vacuum

This article is the latest in a series of articles that I’ve read or stories I’ve been told (my friend went fishing with his friend, who is a fisherman. They caught a fish and my friend says, “You can’t sell that fish, it’s sick.” And his friend says, “all the fish are sick. I sell fish sicker than this all the time.”)  that stop me and make me really see that we are all interconnected, that nothing stands alone in this world and that our actions ripple out and affect everything.

The descriptions in this article, of the absence of bird calls, of the interminable mire of floating garbage, of fishermen trawling reefs of everything living make me really stop and think about my food choices. Last night, I made fish tacos and they were delicious. But if the oceans are dead, and much other meat we get in this country so polluted, the current trend towards veganism begins to make so much more sense to me. I was a vegetarian for ten years and have been a rapacious meat-eater for the past ten but over the past few months, I keep coming back to the idea that maybe, right now, with the environment clogged with chemicals, meat stuffed with antibiotics and fed who knows what and the oceans and rivers and streams dying, perhaps it is time to change what and how I eat.

The obvious reason would be, if the fish that I can get are indeed sick (and farmed fish are dirtier than anything) and I am working my way out of a long bout with chronic Lyme, why would I eat it? As a nutritionist once told me, what I eat literally becomes me on a molecular level so eating polluted food just adds another layer of crud for my immune system to deal with. There is this: choosing not to eat animals or animal products for my own personal health. And there is recognizing that, in changing my choices, I change my impact on the world around me. 

I'm not sure what I am going to do; I used to believe that I could eat consciously raised meat infrequently and not negatively affect the environment but reading "The Ocean is Broken" hit home for me more than anything else that we are nearing (or at) the breaking point. Over the past years, I have weeded out anything processed and moved towards mostly organic eating but we're long past that being enough now. Especially since Fukushima, I have been pretty careful about the fish I eat (nothing from the Pacific) but now I am going to stop eating it altogether. Food choice, I realize, is not enough alone, but it is a starting point and already, my perspective shifts.

Injuries as teachers

One of my mentors always used to say that insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect different results. But this is how most people end up with injuries that affect the quality of their lives.

Most of my clients have found me because of their injuries and pain and most people that I work have injuries that got worse over time, from the low back pain that started in law school and then became utterly debilitating after a few years of work to the generalized achy knee and hip that made distance running impossible. It seems to me that there is always an element of mystery to many people about their body that stems from a lack of understanding of how it works and an inability to listen to it—or to trust their own instincts about their body. I think that it is this, this unknowing, that keeps people from moving out of the ruts and patterns of habit to try new things when pain presents.

At any rate, so many people that I work with seem to have waited until what had been a minor injury has become debilitating and its effects have spiderwebbed out into their lives, stopping them from doing what they love or, worse, making day to day functioning a challenge. 

I think that injuries can be our teachers. They can be the way in to understanding and knowing the body and learning a new way of being and doing what you do. The trick is learning to listen, to not freaking out or denying the first sign of pain but to sit with it and to begin to reach learn what is going on with alignment or movement or stress to unwind it. As we go down the route of reaching out to various practitioners, we can learn from them and start informing our own choices and understanding of the body, choosing to supplement or weave in new habits not just to alleviate pain but to promote a healthier more resilient body overall.