Mindfulness

Originally Posted Wednesday, October 22, 2014

I have never liked doctors.  When I said this recently to a friend, she shot back, "Nobody does."  I'm not sure that is true, though.  In my observations, some people are obsessed with trips to the doctor's office.  Multiple doctors.  They rely on them for "health."  Since high school, I have felt differently.  I have seen doctors as a sometimes necessary evil.  They are good at the mechanical things--sometimes.  A broken bone, a severe laceration, something growing in or on you that shouldn't be there. . . those have to be taken care of. 

My mother has always gone to doctors.  When I was a kid, they were science gods and they gave you medicine which was good for you.  My mother took medicine.  Some of it helped her control her weight, some of it relaxed her at night, brought her down from the diet pills.  It seemed to me that she was going to the doctor all the time.  I, even then, wouldn't go unless beaten.  Literally, my mother and father had to physically subdue me and get me there.  I once bit a dentist who was hurting me.  He would refused to work on me any more after that.  I don't remember doing it, and I think it was a purely involuntary reaction to the pain.  Fuck him, anyway. 

My mother still goes to doctors quite often, but she won't take the medicines they tell her to take.  Go figure.  But she is aware of all the things that are going wrong.  She tries to repair them with exercise and diet.  The diet thing, however, is problematic (see diet pill paragraph above). 

By the time I was in college, I had already been reading about biofeedback and other natural forms of healing.  I read a book by E.O. Wilson in which he reported thinking away a wart.  I had one that had recently started to grow, so I did what he did.  It has never reappeared.  When the whole "pyramid power" thing began, I experimented.  O.K.  Goofy idea.  Still, I was willing to see.  I loved experimenting with biofeedback.  I was hooked up to wires and machines and was able to put my brainwave patterns into the same ones that occur in "nirvana."  I learned to control body temperature pretty well.  I was a vegetarian for a very long time and learned to use herbs to better my health. 

Anything not to go to a doctor. 

I have friends now, people my age, who have medical problems.  There seems no choice for them but to go.  I can't say anything.  I wouldn't want to tell them not to go.  But the more they go, the more things go wrong.  One medicine, then another. . . .

I know that some of that is necessary.  I do.  But I believe in the mind/body connection, too.  It is really not so dichotomous as that.  Thanks to more powerful microscopes, research has found that the mind is present in every cell of the body.  Every cell "thinks" and has "memory."  Neurology in every cell.  Who knew? 

I imagine that a happy mother who thinks healthful thoughts can make a better baby.  We know that reading to the fetus and playing soothing music, too, has beneficial effects.  Creating positive environments should be our first priority, not just for fetuses, of course, but for everyone.  First you create the environment, the old saying goes, then the environment creates you. 

Sometimes things happen.  They do, and I can't help it.  And I start to slip, start to worry and get down.  Studies show that people who live alone. . . you know the drill.  I think, though, that it is more about having someone to pick you up than to have someone in the house with you.  Everyone needs a cheerleader.  Or many.  The more the better, I think.  Positive energy and all that. 

I read an article in the New York Times this morning that made me happy.  Cheered me up.  You can read it here.  I don't need to listen to Perry Como to get younger (though I am not opposed), but there are some take-aways for me that are not explicitly stated in the article.  The most important things are about perception.  I have been down of late, lower than I need to be.  Lassitude and a breaking of the will.  It is easy to go there, too easy.  The things I do that bring me the most criticism are exactly what I may need to be doing.  When I say I want to buy a Vespa, people wrinkle their foreheads and noses as if I am just a spendthrift and a fool.  But it is not the Vespa I want.  The Vespa is just a symbol of the thing itself, a certain kind of attitude, a way of venturing, a statement about being alive and carefree, a counterpunch to the strictures of middle-class life and work at the factory.  Perhaps my "craziness" and "immaturity" have had some benefits after all. 

Great.  Now I will go to the factory and live the self-denying life.  I can feel it sinking into my bones already.