When most ‘complementary’ health practitioners are trained in HEALth and WELLbeing we are taught about the TERRAIN THEORY AS WELL as the GERM THEORY. We learn about Beauchamp as well as Pasteur, there is no bias. It is about understanding where these ‘models’ come from and what exactly do they mean and how they translate into HEALth and WELLbeing.
Whether one believes one of these theories or not is not a matter of semantics anymore. The current virus has made the TERRAIN THEORY very REAL and CRITICAL and hopefully it will make its way back into the medical text books in BOLD CAPITAL LETTERS.
So what is this terrain theory? Firstly we have a medical system that has focused way too heavily on the GERM THEORY and in doing so, we have lost sight of the TERRAIN THEORY.
The GERM THEORY focuses on what is proving to be an UNSUSTAINABLE medical system.
Imagine a garden that you are tending, you are the gardener and the garden is the terrain, this includes the soil, the weeds, the micro-organisms, the mini beasts, big beasts ..the ‘whole nine yards’.
One day you start to notice your plants are beginning to wilt and some leaves are turning a bit brownish. You have a few options ..
Ignore them, ’put your head in the sand’
You spray the plants with pesticide
You water the garden
You spray the pesticide and water the garden
You set the whole garden on fire (ok who is this person?)
You notice some plants are bit too exposed to the sun, so you provide them with some shade
You notice some plants are bit too exposed to the sun so you try to put sunblock on them
You enrich the soil with some old compost or some manure you are mindful to not deplete the nitrogen
You get some compost from your compost bin and sprinkle some into the soil, mindful of not over tilling the soil
..and you can add more scenarios.
I grew up with a massive garden that was basically like a FLOURISHING, THRIVING allotment. My parents come from the Punjab where their livelihood is dependent on FARMING. They grew up knowing about the land, the terrain, the soil, the seeds, the plants, the climate, real food etc I have had the privilege of spending long holidays on my Uncle’s farm in the Punjab and milking the ‘buffalos’, making yoghourt, making butter, patting buffalo manure into flat discs, and using the dried manure as a fuel source. My sister and I have joined in the harvest season and will never forget the time my aunt and I got chased by a bull whilst we both carried big bundles of cotton on top of our heads which we had collected from my Uncle’s land. I know I side tracked here but do our kids know about the land, about where butter comes, how to make butter, about dried dung? My parent’s know their land, they know about their external terrain.
So what is this all to do with health? The question is do you nurture the soil, the terrain, keeping the soil’s ecosystem or do you kill it with over digging, over ‘pesticiding’ , over watering, then top it up with fake soil? Are you trying to grow something that is ‘depleted’ but may look ‘pretty’ or the right shape? Are we turning a fertile earth (terrain) into an infertile concoction of chemicals? Ask Monsanto/Bayer? They are experts at doing exactly this.
Each plant has different root systems, (they have their own ‘job’ in nature), they take certain minerals and leave other minerals for the other plants. Think wild forests, look how they just are so lush and green when they have NOT BEEN tended to by humans but just by the wonderful amazing creatures of the forest land. Watch that worm ‘toil’ the soil and process organic material like the leaves which goes onto to enrich that topsoil. So why on earth would one want to add glyphosate and trash the whole ecosystem? The top soil in the forest is rich, the leaves die and fall and re-nourish the land. It is all part of this amazing cycle of mother earth’s genius.
So, how do you tend to your own garden,,,I am referring to your BODY. Your body consists of this terrain, this rich body of interconnected systems just like the forest. This forest of the body has the cardiovascular system, the nervous system, the microbiome, the adipose cells, the immune system, the digestive system..and on and on.
How do you nourish your inner garden? Do you tend to it mindfully? Do you strip it with ‘pesticides’, then hope for good health? What do these pesticides look like? They can look like antibiotics, anti-fungals, anti-virals, anti-pyretics, anti-hypertensives, anti-X
Did you know a decade or so ago, there was a kind of a break-through in traditional western medicine, it was called the PNIE system, Psycho, Neuro, Immuno Endocrine System. That basically means your psyche, nervous system, immune system and hormonal system are all in cahoots. BUT …hold on…now science is saying ‘scrap that people, it is basically the Psycho, Immuno, Endo, Microbiome-o, Cardio, Hormonal, Adipose-o , lympho, AND SO ON SYSTEM. Just like the forest, …ALL IS CONNECTED, NO ONE SURVIVES WITHOUT THE OTHER. The weeds, the worms, the beetles, the microbes, the birds, the slugs (oh the slugs), the minerals, the SUNSHINE, the creepers, all are interdependent. ALL our systems are interdependent (sounds a bit too much like homeopathy speak to me but why let that get in the way of science). We cannot pull out the weeds and think the job is done, we need to look at the whole terrain.
So as a society we have come up with ‘fake grass’ …so can you see where all this is heading? Fake food? MSG, artificial sweeteners, refined carbohydrates, sugar free beverages…what is happening to out TERRAIN?
How are you tending to your terrain (garden)? Are you watering it? Are you nourishing it? Are you mindfully ‘watching it’, (listening to it)? What type of gardener are you?
Or are you using pesticides like medications, depleting it, over feeding it, drying it out from vital nutrients and expecting it to thrive? But no problem, we have ‘fake food’ like ‘fake grass’ to replace it…what will that produce? Surely this is not SUSTAINABLE? Is the medicine you are practising/using SUSTAINABLE? (oh there comes in homeopathy again).
Beauchamp is making a come back, he was ignored for too long. The RONA is exposing our out-dated medical text books, the ‘short sighted-ness’ of the germ theory IS NO longer working, the germ just gets more ‘wild and more merry’. The germ cannot devastate a terrain that is well tended to, it cannot bull doze the rich, vibrant, life sustaining FOREST, but it sure can bull doze a deprived, nutrient depleted terrain.
Do you know your ‘garden’? What is your top soil like? What is the underbelly of that topsoil like? Or are you just over ’tilling, weeding and fertilising’ mindlessly? Resulting in nutrient depleted bodies.
We will always have the pathogen, the pathogen has it’s own journey and that journey is to mutate and go forth and multiply. The pathogen has it’s own agenda, but human kind can only survive if we start nourishing and tending to our inner terrain as well as supporting our mother earth’s terrain.
Bulldozers like Monsanto/BAYER, are not about SUSTAINABILITY, they are not about HEALth and WELLbeing, they are too focused on the ‘GERM’, they have no intention of building the terrain but ripping it apart.
Are you bulldozing your terrain? Focusing on the GERM alone is bulldozing, UNDERSTANDING the germ and ‘building’ the terrain is where ‘it is at’.
If we continue to focus on the GERM, there will never be safe world, there will never be a bubble sterile enough, big enough, dis-infected enough. The pathogens are out-witting the UNSUSTAINABLE medical system of the West as we know it.
Why not start tending to your terrain, your garden?
The germ theory is out dated.
WELCOME TO THE ERA OF THE TERRAIN THEORY.
PS. the sunblock on the plant is a bit ‘tongue and cheek’, as plants have their own sunblock and other plants use their community’ for shade, like the creepers.
PSS. If you have fake grass, no judgement but
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