Wild

People today seem to have forgotten that maintaining good health isn’t limited to the gym and the doctor’s office. There are, well, better ways.

Myself, I’m a big proponent of Herbalism and exercise that’s good for mind and spirit, as well as body. I practise yoga and I’m learning a bit of Tai Chi, and I take herbs for my health, such as ginger as a broad spectrum antibiotic, liquorice root and mulberry green tea for my ulcer, and honey for cuts and scrapes. We can supplement our bodies’ natural healing abilities without synthetic chemicals.

The kinds of things that we put in our bodies are, obviously, extremely important to our health. People who eat large amounts of fast and processed foods can hardly be surprised to discover that they’re in poor health, mentally and spiritually as well as physically. Heavily processes foods, totally disconnected from the natural world, are not only physically unhealthy, but promote that very disconnect in the people who consume them. Human beings are a part of nature, and the meat, vegetables and fluids that we consume are as well, and that is something that people today forget all too readily. Factory farmed, processed, and flash-frozen meat, and pesticide-rich, GMO vegetables are not what human beings are supposed to eat. That chicken thigh had a mother, and that side of rice was one part of an ecosystem. The soulless, faceless nature of the food industry prevents from understanding where our food comes from, and under what circumstances. So we’re filling our bodies with whatever Maple Leaf and Schneider’s thinks is best (or cheapest), blissfully ignorant of the force-feeding, chemical bathing, and genetic modifications that went into our dinners. Eating organic foods, free-range and antibiotic-free meat, preferably from local producers, puts us back in touch with our food source, and allows us to understand so that we can make healthy, informed decisions.

Exercise is just as vital part of maintaining good bodily health as is nutrition, but it’s also important for the mind and the spirit. I can say from experience that yoga not only exercises the body, but clears the mind and refreshes the spirit. After a yoga session you may feel tired and sore, but you also feel happy and clear-headed, like a dull, grey fog has been lifted from your soul. And the practise of Tai Chi, which I have only recently discovered, is an engrossing and powerful meditation that frees the mind and brings it into a surprising unison with the body. Less introspective, though perhaps arguably more active, at least as we tend to practise them today, exercises, just don’t have the same effect. Running down the street with an iPod, or lifting giant pieces of metal with your pointlessly large arms may be a widespread idea of physical fitness in the West, but they do nothing for the soul. Certainly they have the general positive effects upon one’s mental state that comes with fitness and health, but they don’t promote interior, spiritual development.

German naturism (FKK) for health.

 

 

 

 

Or how about this: nudity. Yes, that’s right, Naturism is believed by many to have health benefits. When the FKK (Freikörperkultur, Free Body Culture, the very first modern Naturist movement) movement started up in Germany, it was closely tied with the Naturheilbewegung (Natural Healing Movement), a predecessor of the modern alternative/Naturopathic medicine movement. Gentle exposure to the elements, sun in particular (because sun exposure generates vitamin D), was believed to be vital to good health. Heliotherapy (therapeutic use of light) was used to treat such diseases as TB, rheumatism, and scrofula. The health benefits of excersice and naturism are compounded in activities like naked yoga (and I suppose naked Tai Chi, though so far as I am aware that isn’t a movement or “thing” of any kind like naked yoga is).

And, of course, there are alternatives to traditional Western medicine out there as well. I myself a Naturopath, who diagnosed my H. pylori infection every specialist had failed, who beat a killer cold in 2 days, and who helps me maintain my health like no doctor I’ve ever had before. I also practise a little at-home Ayurveda, Indian traditional medicine, which helped me cope with the pain without having to pump myself full of even more drugs, and also me eating more appropriately for my metabolism and body type. And of course there is Chinese traditional medicine, traditional folk medicines, and all kinds of homeopathy. Properly trained practitioners of all these forms of medicine can do just as much good for your general health and a whole host of acute conditions as a more traditional Western MD can, and they do it without the drugs.

So perhaps people out there should consider supplementing their morning run with a yoga class, or even a nude session with a Tai Chi video podcast. They should start shopping at their local farmers’ markets and health food stores. They should go see an alternative health provider. And they should start learning how to maintain their health naturally.

Protest

Here are some more pictures that relate to yesterday’s post, these on the theme of protest.

Annual Running of the Nudes protest in Pamplona, Spain.

 

Scene from an anti-war protest in Washington, D.C. September 24, 2005.

 

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License. In short: you are free to share and make derivative works of the file under the conditions that you appropriately attribute it, and that you distribute it only under a license identical to this one.

Riding

Here’s a fun picture I found, it relates to yesterday’s post.

Author: Freehorseriding (German Wikipedia ID). Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

Body Break

Why are people ashamed of their bodies?

Nudity is taboo, body hair is unfeminine, sex organs are dirty, et cetera. Why?

In my humble opinion, it’s all beyond ridiculous. But let me tell you why…

Nudity

Human beings have bodies. We are born with them. And, as church and Bible both teach, they are the very pinnacle of God’s creation. Why would God give us these beautiful, blessed bodies and then demand that we cover them up? Your body is the way you are, it is your authentic self, it is you. It is the purest, truest and most simple expression of you.

A person in his or her natural state is a person unbound. Freed of instant indentification of class and personality from proto- and stereotypes based on clothing, we can express our authentic selves through genuine interpersonal communication. Freed of irrational taboos against seeing bodies and artifical standards of attractiveness we can share ourselves with others. Freed from sexualization of the human form we can enjoy true intimacy with others. Freedom from the need for clothing is freedom not just of body, but of mind and spirit.

One’s body is nothing to be ashamed of. Of course, societal standards of physical attractiveness and manliness/femminity don’t help. People who are overweight, who think their breasts or penis may be too small, or whatever, may be particularly unwilling to be seen naturally. They say fewer young men are willing to go natural because of fear of spontaneous erection (more on that later). People fear that their bodies won’t live up to some artificial and entirely transparent standard that no one fully understands but most people with strive vehemently to uphold – even at the expense of good sense and the feelings of others.

Of particular ire to me are Christian groups that teach that the human body is inherently sinful, and that to go about in your natural state is a sin. I think a good word for that would be blasphemy, or maybe heresy. Well maybe those are a little strong, but the point is that such teachings are incompatible with the Gospel. In the great words of one of the many Liberation theologians I read in Ethics and the Human Person last semester (I think it may have been Dorothee Sölle): “Christ came to save every part of us.” Christ never mentioned anything about only being interested in the spiritual aspect of humanity (sorry neo-Gnostics), Christ was and is interested in whole human beings. The physical and spiritual human being are inseperable, your body is part of your spirituality, and spirituality informs the way you treat and regard your body. Hell, Christ had a body didn’t He? If Christ was without sin, then how could He have had a human body if the body if the human body is inherently sinful? 

Of course there is nothing intrinsincally wrong with clothing, it’s just far less necessary than we seem to think, and has far more negative potential than we care to admit. We don’t need to impose clothing upon ourselves, we can be free.

Body hair

Women have body hair. Some women have more, some women have less, but all women have it – and there is nothing wrong with that. And if it is the natural state of woman to have body hair, how can body hair be unfeminine? If women should be hairless but for the top of their heads, wouldn’t they be born that way?

Women naturally have hair in their armpits, on their arms and legs, around their vaginas, even on their buttocks. Every time a woman shaves any of those areas, she is altering her body from her natural state. I’m not saying that shaving (or body modification in general) is wrong or inherently bad, i’m saying that it needs to be recognized for what it is. There is nothing wrong with a woman’s body hair, nothing. The idea that to be truly feminine a woman must remove her body hair is, just like the ideas we have of how thin and how young women should be, an unnatural standard of beauty.

If a woman really wants to live to that standard, particularly if she agrees with it (however bizarre and silly some of us may think it is), then that is entirely her business. But no woman should feel that in order to be feminine, she must shave her natural, God-given body hair. The way a woman is born and develops naturally is the truest expression of feminity possible. A healthy female body, at a weight and appearance proper to the individual, is the way a woman should be – and she should never be made to feel less of a woman for being that way.

Sex Organs

Eeek, a penis! I commented earlier on how young men are often wary of going natural for fear of spontaneous erections. This is beyond me. Why is a man’s penis becoming erect considered obscene and embarassing? It’s one of those things that happens, it happens several times a day, and it’s supposed to. When your penis stops becoming spontaneously erect, then there is a problem. Spontaneous erections is a natural function of the male body as much as breathing, and in no way is it dirty or obscence.

Why do we have warning for “parental discretion” before movies and tv shows where a penis or a vagina or breasts may be seen? What is it about these parts of our bodies that we must shield our children from them? Children have them you know, they touch them too. The problem isn’t that we sexualize these parts of our bodies (though that sexualization is largely erroneous, they do in fact exist outside the context of sex), the problem is that we regard sex as a bad thing. The fact that we negatively sexualize our reproductive organs is indicative of a whole pile of problems with our society. Yes, penises and vaginas are for sex, huzzah, they’re also for urinating, woop-de-do.

We see everything through sex-tinted glasses, and yet we regard sex itself as dirty. A natural, beautiful human activity in which most, if not all, of us partake and enjoy, with a good and important purpose, is regarded as bad. And yet we see the world in the light of this activity. We need to move beyond our negative views of sex and our tendency to sexualize everything. Then perhaps our society as a whole will come to understand that penises and vaginas are perfectly normal and perfectly fine – there is nothing dirty about them.

Originally posted to Flickr as naked on munros. This file is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License (cc-by-sa-2.0). In short: you are free to share and make derivative works of the file under the conditions that you appropriately attribute it, and that you distribute it under this or a similar cc-by-sa license.