Everything Is Part of a Whole: The Body As a Metaphor

We live in a world where everything is compartmentalized and divided.

I really started reflecting on this when I saw my doctor the other day.

For most of my life, I went to traditional Western Doctors. When there was a problem with a specific part of my body, I was sent to a specialist whose focus was that body part.

Several years ago I started feeling ill. The symptoms were wide ranging: fatigue, racing heart, joint pain, insomnia, anxiety and depression.

My general practitioner sent me to specialist after specialist. I went to a cardiologist for my heart, was tested for rheumatoid arthritis for my joints, was given a sleeping pill for the insomnia, told to see a therapist for the anxiety.

After almost a year, I was finally diagnosed with an auto-immune disease. My body was attacking and destroying my thyroid.

I was told to take different medications to basically mask the symptoms. When enough of my thyroid was gone, we would begin medication to replace the thyroid hormone.

This answer didn't sit well with me. I didn't feel well NOW. I didn't want to MASK the symptoms, and I certainly didn't want to wait until the disease progressed.

I then sought help from a functional doctor. A functional doctor looks at the way the body functions as a whole. Each system affects another. All of the systems are designed to work in harmony together. When one gets disrupted there is a cascade effect, and the whole body begins to malfunction.

The functional/holistic approach to my recovery was to look for the initial causes of my illness, "fix" those triggers and watch the body right itself, part by part, system by system.

Reflecting on this got me thinking that the human body is just one example of how we compartmentalize things.

We are divided by countries, cities, races, political parties, and socio-economic classes, just to name a few.

We spend so much time concentrating on the needs, wants and desires of the particular groups we belong to and identify with, we forget the bigger picture.

We are part of humanity. More than that, we are inhabitants of earth, as are non-humans.

The body's regulation system becomes off kilter when the big picture isn't appreciated and attended to. The same thing is happening to our very existence right now. Climate change, illness, poverty, hatred, the extinction of species. And yet, we still have blinders on.

Until and unless we take a holistic/functional approach to life and the planet, we will continue to break down, bit by bit, system by system. We are the cause. We can also be the solution.