The Health Lessons We Can Learn from Nature

BY Crystal Melanson        January 30, 2017

Have you ever looked outside and wondered if your body is really so different from the wisdom of nature that surrounds you?

The earth works in a beautiful holistic symphony. Everything is completely intertwined, whether you can see it or not.

Underneath the ground spans a giant web of fungi. These fungi work in a mutually beneficial relationship with plants and trees. Plants can help provide the fungi with food while the fungi help the plants get water and support their immune systems.

Just by looking at the ground you would not see this giant web of fungal networks that connects and supports plants that are far separated.

You can look over aspen groves seeing hundreds of different trees standing tall. It’s easy to forget that all of these separate, majestic aspen trees are actually ONE life. One tree grows its roots throughout the forest sprouting up new identical trees, creating one genetically identical organism.

Our human bodies work very similarly to these networks in nature. However, to try to simplify things we often like to separate and compartmentalize them, especially when it comes to health.

You see a dermatologist for your skin, a gastroenterologist for your digestion, a neurologist for your headaches. Looking at separate symptoms for one body, as if areas do not touch or rely on each other.

We seem to have the same false image of our bodies. Separating arm from a leg, heart from lung, digestion from food. Forgetting that we are ONE; mind, spirit, and entire body. Everything we do, think, and experience affects our entire selves.

Like the aspens, our functioning and systems are all interconnected and inter-dependent. Your diet can affect your gut health, your gut health affects your immune system, the functioning of your brain, the clarity of your skin.  Stress coming in from your environment affects the stress inside of your body. Your eating habits affect your hormones, your energy, and your mood. And all of these examples are interconnected together.

Why do we treat our body as though it has different independent parts?

What we call a “symptom,” normally something bothersome from our health, such as fatigue, excess weight, headaches, digestive pain, all of these have an underlying cause of something going wrong in one of our networks. Symptoms are a cry for help. Like a tree with wilting leaves needing water, a symptom is a surface level issue telling you that you need to pay attention, that your body is not getting something it needs.

It may sound overwhelming that one part of your body affects all the others. However, to truly find health and overcome your issues we must stop individually labeling symptoms and diseases. We must stop treating our body like a dinner plate, trying to keep the peas separate from the potatoes, the rice separate from the chicken. Because we are messy, beautiful beings that deserve to be looked at as whole -- for all the mystery and magnificence that we are.

If you have been suffering from a chronic issue or from symptoms that you are covering up with medications, I encourage you to explore the idea of the intertwining systems in your body to get to the true underlying cause.

Ask why an issue has arisen and where it may have come from.

Ask how your habits and lifestyle may be affecting ALL of the parts of your body.

And start to look at yourself more like a beautifully designed holistic body and less like a dinner plate.

 

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