I recently came across a new term, which I think am slightly embarrassed that I hadn't heard of it, but you may have guessed from the title of this post, is 'salutogenesis'. It comes from the Latin 'salutare' meaning health, wholesome, healing or salvation, and 'genesis' - birth, creation, origin or generation, and was coined by the Israeli-American sociologist, Aaron Antonovski. Salutogenesis is simply the study of what expands and enhances health, as opposed to pathogenesis which is the study of disease. These have fundamentally opposing intentions but exist on a spectrum. On this spectrum there is striving for optimal health at one end (complete physical, emotional, spiritual wholeness), and there is fighting of disease at the other end, with an infinite number of places in between.
One discipline has the reduction of what you don't want, one has the addition of what you do want. Please understand where I am coming from, both absolutely need to exist and were born for very specific roles, but I believe each of us needs to make a philosophical choice as to where to set our eyes in our daily lives.
If we ask a thousand people 'what can you do to be more healthy?', how many would run to their medicine cabinets and start guzzling pills? How many would book an appointment with their GP? People are not dumb, we know that these things can make us feel better, they can deal with symptoms and they can make us believe that we are doing something proactive, but we also intuitively know that we aren't sick because of a lack of drugs or too many body parts.
Conversely, if you have a serious infection or a broken bone, how many people would think it is wise to sit and meditate, or go for a massage? So it is about using the right tool at the right time.
What's going on in the world today is a perfect example of the essential role that the care given at each end of the spectrum plays, if we did not have the medics, the nurses, the hospitals, the medications and ventilators, where we would be is catastrophic beyond what we could imagine. My gratitude and admiration is so great for each and every one of those heroes on the front lines, but what if there was nothing we could do to make our immune systems stronger, we would also be in trouble.
The old metaphor rings true, as they often do - we cannot deal with darkness by trying to remove the darkness, we can only see more clearly by adding light, when we do that the darkness has nowhere to hide. So in order to express more vitality, we need to add life, we need to feed our mind, body, soul all the things that it needs to live fully.
We add light and everything else takes care of itself, we add love and fear runs for the hills.
Even if salutogenesis is a new word for you, as it was for me, the implications are clear and profound. Each decision we make will either drive us towards resilience or away from it, so in order to express maximum health and potential, daily and consistent acts need to be taken.
This is why I chose to practice Advanced Biostructural Correction. It's sole purpose is to do what the body cannot for itself, to remove blockages from the flow of information between the brain and the body, so that it can approximate the maximum healing potential. The importance of structural and postural integrity goes far beyond aesthetics and you can read more about that here.
All the usual suspects are there for creating health, but what has been shown to be one of the biggest single influencing factors affecting mortality rate is the degree of social connections (there are some flaws to her argument as her data for the impact of exercise is slightly outdated, but nonetheless, social interaction is significant).
Perceived loneliness and isolation cause more physiological stress than anything else, which is particularly relevant these days, and will make the present times harder than ever before for many, so reach out to those who may be struggling, tell people you are there for them and you are thinking about them, call your grandparents, comfort your kids.
We can not only strengthen ourselves, but we can also leave a significant footprint on those around us. Yes exercise, nutrition, fresh air and hydration are as important as ever, but I feel the real danger, and therefore the most powerful healing remedy is in our minds and hearts.
So please, take care of yourself and your loved ones, stay strong, stay optimistic when the world about you is living in fear, enjoy the hilariously creative videos that are circulating, do what you can to be compassionate for those who need your settling presence, don't revert to the base instincts of scarcity and lack, remember who you are and what you stand for.
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