Hi, I’m Laure Marin de la Vallée. (pronounced /lôr/ like folklore)
Autoimmune in Theory & Practice is a field log of the human body’s various iterations on health, illness, and survival. It is a collection of risky thoughts for sensitive bodies, my applied heresy.
I write about the weaving of self and other, the illusion of separateness, and the invisible world. But mostly, I write about the biological “No.”
This publication dances around a questions: What if my symptoms are not a mistake? What if they are a high-fidelity signal, a biological revolt, from a system that can no longer tolerate the environment it is living in?
I am practicing Yangsheng (養生). Translating literally as “the art of nourishing life,” this concept refers to the ancient practices of self-cultivation aimed at vitality. I am researching its forms across cultures; it is found in Chinese Medicine, in Ayurveda (dinacharya and related concepts), in Somatics, and other attentive presence practices reminding the body and the world of their mutual indebtedness and creative co-emergence.
In a culture obsessed with spending life—burning it for productivity, sacrificing it for achievement—nourishing life is another way.
My daily practice is the architecture of my own remission ongoing from 25 years of chronic immune thrombocytopenia (ITP). My writing work shares the results and processes, the non-linear reality of that wayfinding as a living experience.
Autoimmune conditions arise from complex interactions among genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors. By examining my own relapse and remission, I am trying to understand how practices such as Ayurveda, TCM, Qigong, Somatic movement, and philosophy can do more than alleviate symptoms—they might just offer us a way to inhabit the mutation.
This is a compost heap. We take the rotting narratives of “chronic illness” and “healing” and we let them decompose until we find something fertile enough to build a life on.
I am based on the unceded land known as Tiohtià:ke (Montréal), though I travel for field research in Asia.
I am a practitioner and a patient, not an academic or a physician. I offer you my map, but you must walk the territory.
Free Subscribers Receive:
The Essays: 1 or 2 short essays a month on body and culture.
The Updates: News on my clinical practice (Autoimmune Navigation) and group events.
Paid Subscribers Receive:
The Field Notes: Raw data from my current training in Siddha Marma (Vital Point Therapy).
Warning: The Substack is the Map. Your body is the Territory. Do not confuse the two.
Pictures of me:
