The gift of health

The gift of health!
Probably the finest gift one could be given at Christmas would be the gift of health. Unfortunately “health” is something we cannot buy from a shop or give as a gift to another person. Health is a very personal thing that has defeated many great minds that have tried to define it. We all know what it is when we see it or experience it, but to define it is another matter. Most would agree that health is not “just what is left over after you have removed all diseases” – it is more than that.

Here are some of the attempts at its definition:

• The World Health Organization: The WHO in1958 defined it as the total social, psychological and personal well-being.
• A great pathologist, Dr. Scott-Williamson, regarded health as a biological entity capable of existing as the natural state where environmental conditions were resonant and in mutual relationship with the organism.
• Dr. Patch Adams, Gesundtheit! expands the concept of health and happiness and points a way to a new era in health care and medical practice, not dominated by technology and money.
• Aaron Antonovsky developed the idea that our health is dependent on experiencing the world we live in with a sense of comprehensibility, a sense of manageability and a sense of meaningful-ness.
• Lord Horder suggested health is more than a soundness of body and mind. We can¹t define health in a negative way, by saying it is a freedom from disease. Because health isn’t a negative thing; it is positive … As a matter of fact it is not an exact balance. There is a little something to spare, of which the healthy man is quite conscious. This is what leads him to say: “It’s good to be alive!”

We currently have a NHS crisis and we are told and that the solution will be to plough more money into it; this will give us a better Health Service. No amount of increased funding will transform our NHS into a successful health service. Why? Because there is very little interest and time for health within this system. We have in reality a gigantic disease management system that, in such a role, performs remarkably well, given the impossible nature of the task demanded of it.

Imagine a world where none of our cars, lorries, buses, trains, or aeroplanes were looked after, maintained and serviced regularly, the chaos and mayhem that would ensue would be unbelievable. Every road would be lined with broken-down vehicles, airports would be almost unable to function, accidents and breakdowns would be commonplace every minute of every day, garages would be overwhelmed with repairs of ceased-up engines, burnt-out transmissions and waiting lists for attention would be in months. The cost to our economy of all this, the disruption, loss of working time and damage to people and property would be crippling. This is almost exactly where we are with regards to our individual and the nation’s health.

The quest for health is fun, is not a boring, serious exercise and is no more or less than the individual’s passion for their journey through life. It embraces the rough and the smooth, it needs the extremes of human sadness and happiness as the essential “ingredients” in the total process of self-development and growth towards a whole person.

It is my experience, meeting many people as a therapist over thirty-five years, that those who have been through the highs and lows of life have usually become strong characters enriched by their experiences. Some of my “youngest” patients have been in their eighties and nineties, and some of the oldest weary souls have been in their prime. We speak of the “grindstone of life”, it is, I think a very good analogy of our life on earth. Unfortunately more people regard a grindstone as something that wears down and destroys, that it can undoubtedly do, but in the right hands, with the right frame of mind it can sharpen and hone a person to perfection. If a piece of steel is unmoving as the grindstone bears down on it, it will be ground away to nothing but a useless stump and a heap of filings. If, however, the piece of steel is actively responding to the grindstone, embracing its fearsome cutting power, it can just as easily become a shining razor-sharp sword blade fit for any challenge.

There is no simple solution, there is no quick fix. It is pointless to hope that science and technology will get us out of all these problems, yet it is not a time for despair and resignation to our fate. No one problem sits alone, all are interconnected. Likewise no one move to a solution of any single minuscule problem can stop at that one problem but will re-percuss on all others. If the single tiny step to improve a single problem is of the right action there will be a ripple of healing to all other problems. If we could have the instruments sensitive enough to measure it we could note the movement of the sand on a beach on the other side of the earth when we throw a pebble into the sea.

The “solution” to all these problems is to find what constitutes “right action” in all our lives. We all have the ability to respond to these problems, we must just learn to act responsibly for our own health and the planet’s health.

Michael Lingard BSc. DO. WPNut. Cert.

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Further reading from Health Without Medicine available here