Slow body
I like peace and quiet to practice my early-morning Shibashi qigong routine.
I was reading The Lost Art of Healing, Practicing Compassion in Medicine, by Bernard Lown, and came across the three doctors: doctor quiet, doctor diet, and doctor laughter.
At one time, these three doctors may have been the only resource. As medical technology became so successful, they are now largely ignored. Hence, the ‘Lost Art’ in Lown’s title. Time is said to be the great healer and the body knows what to do if you just give it time and treat it right.
Your doctor is more likely to prescribed pills than a list of hilarious novels or plays. It’s unlikely to have your doctor recommend complete rest in some mountain spa, or to travel to a more accommodating climate for a number of years. Were these prescriptions only available in fiction? Possibly.
To my mind, it’s a great pity so much emphasis is on productivity. It seems such a Calvinistic perspective. The idea of a healthy person goes beyond the ability to produce something. Taking medicine may be a case of life and death. Clearly many lives are made better through drugs. But it surprises me that there is an expectation for the middle-aged to be using drugs. I don’t have anything against drugs. In fact, I am all for them in the right context and used appropriately.
Prevention is always the best cure. For me, a certain amount of quiet is necessary. It just feels healing. Sadly, quiet is in short supply.
Not long after I came to live in California. I rented a car and took off for an exploratory drive. I drove from San Francisco to Death Valley and up spectacular highway 395 where the mountains drop precipitously to the desert floor, over the Tioga Pass through Yosemite and back home.
When I got out of the car in Death Valley it was quiet. It was so quiet that I thought I heard noises when I walked. Was someone following me? I stopped and the noise stopped. I walked and the noise started. This was getting eerie. Eventually I realized this noise was my shirt sleeve scraping against my shirt. I had never experienced that sort of quiet. I have heard that there were people in the Sudan, elderly people, who had no hearing loss at all.
But quiet is a thing to be either terrified by or to be deeply satisfying. When it’s quiet, you hear the blood pumping in your veins, you hear your heart. It seems that you are making the very devil of a racket by breathing. Yet after a while you start to notice all sorts of things. Stillness is elusive and maybe an impossibility.
Where I live the early morning is the quiet time. I appreciate it. I step outside the door and slowly do my gigong (Chi-Gung) exercises. It’s my preferred slow way to start the day.
Hi christopher, I’ve just returned home from a long weekend on the Isle of Skye and I can so identify with this healing power of quietness. I had a few walks into wilderness which could be perfectly still and quiet or the only sounds the lapping of gentle waves on the stony beach or the gurgling of a peaty brown burn meandering down the hillside amongst the autumn ferns. I feel re-charged! re-juvenated! Alive!
Oh, and as you probably know, I totally agree with you about drugs. Health is NOT about taking drugs. It’s NOT about the absence of disease either. It’s a whole other phenomenon.
I’ve been telling myself to slow down when walking the halls and stairs at work for better mental and physical health.
I haven’t been around these parts in a while. What have I missed? Time to get busy with the talking about slow!
I had a similar moment to your Death Valley moment at the weekend… As I have mentioned on my blog (see “Engaging by Proxy”), I have been assisting, of late, in the invigilation of my other half’s photographic exhibition. At one point on the Saturday, I snuck off for half an hour to go for a little stroll around the grounds of Hanbury Hall (the National Trust property where the exhibition is being held). I stopped at the edge of a field full of cows, semi-meditated and listened… All I could hear was the cows munching on the grass and the slight rustling of leaves in a gentle breeze. Quiet kind of creeps up on you. You aren’t aware how quiet it is until you start to hear things you don’t normally hear - like, as you say, the blood pumping in your veins and the scraping of shirt sleeves.
Doctors should prescribe ear plugs! We should all take a dose of quiet at least once a day…
Earplugs are an essential tool. I SAID EARPLUGS ARE, Oh! I see you have taken yours out.
Yes, both the missus and I swear by earplugs. Although she doesn’t find them as uncomfortable as I do. ( I think she puts hers in her ears.)
But what else should doctors prescribe? I think three months rest and relaxation, a course of literature, and soaking in natural hot springs. I almost forgot: humor.
Yes, humor! Or as us Brits say… humour!
And chocolate chip shortbread.
And cute little bunny rabbits bouncing round your garden.
And squirrels (eating nuts).
Dan,
Here is a picture of my squirrel. It only likes walnuts.
Awww!!
I’ve never seen one that colour here in Blighty…
…but grey ones can be just as cute!