The solution to your health crisis is the solution to the planetary health crisis.

I hear people talk about terrain medicine. I hear people talk about their microbiome. I hear people talk about working the terrain as if that were any different from stewarding the earth. I hear people talk about micronutrients, making sure they’ve got the right intake of bacteria and algae. I hear people talk about their multivitamins. I hear people talk about the Plants they Take and people say, Laure, what do you do? What do you take? What should I do? What should I take? And I want to tell you.

I want to tell those people the solution to your health crisis is the solution to the planetary health crisis. That means everything you do to help yourself feel good, actually good, not numb, not avoidant or coping, but actually Good, simple, sattvic, at ease, at peace. Everything you do that brings you a little closer to that each day, that’s part of the planetary health solution. And that can be true because the actions we take that help us feel good help us towards actual health, Svastha. That’s a Sanskrit term meaning: to be situated or seated within one's true Self, with the root sva (self) and stha (to stand); in Ayurveda, this state of authentic self-awareness is synonymous with true health. Those actions are not consumption. Those actions do not require us to buy and sell. Those actions are internal cultivation of felt sense, discernment, the ongoing iterative trial and error inquiry of “What do I need right now?" What do I want right now?”

The wisdom traditions teach us that in order for that inquiry to be anything other than egotistical materialist striving for accumulation of wealth, the power underpinning those questions comes from the orientation under the question: how can my actions serve the good of all beings? How can my Resting into health, my repose into self-knowledge at the grounded, fundamental state of being, where nothing is in the way and there is no impeding my vision of who I really am, from that bed of comfort and ease, how can I be of service to the web of life, that wellspring of being flowing up from earth’s entrails? How can I serve all that? Feel the wound deep in your own viscera. Feel that abscess, that ulcer, that fire, that acid, feel that violation, it’s right there, it’s at your perineum, it’s at your prostate, it’s up inside you, within your emptiness, that wound, and from that, from that wound, there is helping. From that wound, there is serving. From that vitiation of bodymind, from that moral impediment of sin, that inculcation of wrongness and its dissolution into a simply complex right-relation to breath and earth. Well, there is an option.

There is an option for being simple and at ease. Each day, each decision can bring you closer to that way of being simple, at ease. And this does not mean the end of illness, and this does not mean the end of sickness, and this does not mean the end of disease. It means being with that process of life’s flourishing through Sickness and living a sick life of joy and emergence, in conscious coexistence with all the other sick beings here, now, today.

picture of Laure out on a wooden bridge during a hike in Charlevoix