Krysan Blog: Healing Words 3 - Dirt - Archive
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- Written by Marian Moore
KRYSAN
THE WELLBEING CONSULTANCY
Planting Golden Seeds in Northumberland, Tyne & Wear, and Durham
H E A L I N G W O R D S
(5-minute reads from Marian @ Krysan)
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. ALBERT EINSTEIN
You are invited to log on to the KRYSAN BLOG each Friday or Saturday during the months of July and August for this latest series of Krysan Master Classes. The intention is to continue to explore the use of writing as a form of therapy and hopefully the caption HEALING WORDS and the Einstein quotation will prove rich in possibilities. MARIAN @ KRYSAN
Blog 3
Friday, 17 July 2009
IN SAFE HANDS
Recently, I came across a bit of good news for people like me (and maybe you!). I heard for the first time about an organisation called Green Gym which is specifically aimed at those of us who lead inactive lifestyles and who might experience isolation through mental or physical health problems. What a lovely idea - and there's more. Green Gym also gives training and support to everyone who joins so they can develop their horticultural skills and, of equal importance, their confidence. How does it do this? It sets out to bring people in the community together, giving them the opportunity to 'work out' safely and in safe hands in allotments, community gardens and in nature reserves.
GREEN GYM. Green Gym is about fresh air and being in contact with nature. Yet, fresh air and nature would seem a bit problematic these days. That is if we are to believe what we read about the capacity of our young (and not so young) to stick ever-closer to their home computers and the great 'in-doors'. This being (apparently) to the exclusion of all other more healthy out-door pursuits. So, most definitely Green Gym's appearance in the market place is more than welcome. Moreover, fresh air and nature rather assumes contact with the soil or what Dr Larry Dossey simply calls - dirt.
DIRT. I know that you will either hate the thought of 'dirt' completely or you will embrace it with all the love and care you can muster. Those in this latter category might even ascribe a multitude of healing properties to same. I know one person who does. That's my husband - the one-time boy-farmer. And, indeed, he was just a young boy when he first started his life-time love affair with the earth. Whilst his first-choice career was sadly to be short-lived for economic reasons, the earth and its dirt have remained for him a source of great pleasure throughout his life. Now an elder of the pack, he gardens all-day, every-day (weather and season permitting) to his heart's content in the well-cared for plot of land surrounding our home.
FILTH PHOBIA. I rather envy him his passion; this bonding and affinity with fresh air and nature. Like farm people everywhere, he's certainly not skittish about a little dirt. For him, filth phobia and germ consciousness would seem never to enter the equation, or at least not enough to cause him to lose any sleep! Larry Dossey points out that a little over a century ago, ordinary folk had no idea that the diseases that often killed them and their children were in fact related to micro-organisms. Indeed, the phrase "germ theory of disease" did not come into common use until around 1870. The idea that germs are actually evil became fixed in the modern mind on the heels of Darwinism and the notion of the survival of the fittest. This was when we began first to hear microbes described in lurid terms, such as, "foreign," "base," "murderous," and even "cunning." Before long the dangers of dirt, disease, and death were being hammered into people everywhere.
THE HYGIENE HYPOTHESIS. Money was to be made! Germ consciousness, along with Listerine and Cellophane, and the idea of disposability in the form of toilet paper and paper cups, was born. This gets me nicely to the "hygiene hypothesis" as proposed by a growing number of researchers in the present day. They suggest that our increasing separation from dirt and microbes carries a serious price tag and may, in fact, be killing us. The basic idea is that too much cleanliness is bad for you, that we need germs. They remind us that throughout humankind's evolutionary history, we were continually assailed with dirt and microbes from the moment of birth. Our immune system evolved accordingly, strengthened on all fronts, to protect us throughout our lives. We now know that if these challenges to the immune system are removed, as they largely have been in modern times, things can and do backfire.
ASTHMA AND ALLERGIES. This is not say that modernisation and wealth have not led to increases in health - they have in many ways as evidenced by the increase in longevity during the twentieth century in industrialised countries. But, nevertheless, conundrums abound. For instance, in recent times the cause of asthma has been attributed to dirty air. But, in the United States, the incidence of asthma is increasing despite the air becoming cleaner. Some experts tried to explain the rising incidence of asthma and allergies to an increase in house dust mites, but research shows that the numbers of mites actually levelled off years ago. We might also take heed of the fact that for some childhood viral infections, 'reverse quarantine' has been practised for many a long year. When I was young, I know I was deliberately exposed to my older sibling when she came down with mumps, measles, and chicken pox and this was common practice in other households in our neighbourhood. The purpose behind this reverse quarantine was to spread these infections in the belief that if one acquired them while young they were more likely to be benign than in adulthood.
FOLK WISDOM. So, long before the hygiene hypothesis was elaborated upon, ordinary families embodied a version of it into their folk wisdom. They understood that childhood sickness could promote long-term health, and that one sometimes needs to co-operate with illness instead of fighting it. What a contrast to current child-rearing practices. Evidence suggests that folk wisdom was quite correct on this score, as it was also correct on 'getting dirty'. It is now known that people's exposure when growing up to specific bacteria that are contained in the dirt is important and the making of mud pies, so beloved by the young in my day, is still something to be encouraged! Here's another example, this one related to dirty water. When we began to chlorinate water on a massive scale, we radically changed our essential exposure to mycobacteria and, currently, British studies are in progress to assess whether a vaccine made of Mycobacterium vaccae, could be used therapeutically in humans with asthma and hay fever.
THE HEALING POWER OF DIRT. The problem of not having enough exposure to dirt, or to the microbes dirt and dirty water contain is compounded by the fact that people in the inner cities rarely have gardens. And, things began changing right back in the Middle Ages when people moved away from living in houses with dirt floors and started having reasonable clothing and all the other things that separate us from our environment. It is further suggested that excessive hygiene methods, as now followed, are yet another step separating us from the essential learning process that the immune system needs. And there I stop. I conclude by saying that dirt means so much more to my husband than just the precious medium in which to grow crops. As a no-nonsense farmer and now active in his very own 'green gym', my hubby's blood no doubt whispered to him long ago of the healing power of dirt - physical, psychological and spiritual. Such knowledge used to be commonplace. As Dr. Larry Dossey points out,
"In our urban paranoia of dirt and dirtiness, however, we have lost that awareness, and all the antibiotics and antiseptics in the world will not substitute for it."
A TRUCE ON DIRT. We ask, 'Can we set aside our sqeamishness and declare a truce on dirt?' At an even deeper level, 'Can we make a place for the lowly, the humble, the unclean?' If so, it may be more than our immune system that benefits from a richer vision of humanity. Roll on Green Gym. We need you more than you can know!
NEXT WEEK. Once more, we've come a long, long way in a few short paragraphs. Why not join me next week for a look at the healing power of music, bearing in mind that,
"A bird does not sing because it has an answer.
It sings because it has a song."
~ CHINESE PROVERB
Bird sounds from the lyre bird - David Attenborough - BBC wildlife
I leave you again with this Irish Blessing.
Marian
REFERENCES
DOSSEY, L., (2006), The Extraordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things: Fourteen Natural Steps to Health and Happiness, pub. New York, Three Rivers Press
GREEN GYM, Groundwork South Tyneside & Newcastle, The Eco Centre, Windmill Way, Hebburn, Tyne & Wear. NE31 1SR. Telephone 0191 428 1144
