Much of what I write here is going to interpret medicine and healing through the lens of native awareness. That term isn’t specific to a location on the globe or a particular tribe. If you go back far enough historically, every one of our ancestors lived primitively in this natural awareness. Every one of us has that genetic potential. For our purposes here it means the conscious dynamic of relating to our environment directly in everyday life. The earth, the trees and rivers, the stars, our tribe, etc. CONSCIOUS is the critical word here. Our environments shape our genetic expression therefore our health or disease expression, our awareness, intelligence, thoughts and emotions, all for good or for ill. All physiologic realities. Much of it unconscious. How could we choose differently if we had awareness of what those effects are? And how can those native awareness skills change our lives for the better as modern humans? The relevant categories for study and practice that emerge are: First, how do we identify and modify the detrimental environmental influences on our biology to unburden our health, our intelligence, our productivity and capacity as human beings? Second, how can we as modern humans start to re-learn some of the exquisite natural awareness, sensory and communication capacity that has been atrophied by our modern environments and lifestyles? Number one comes first because often biological repair is the prerequisite to our nervous system being capable of number two. In Biodynamic Osteopathy the foundation that unfolds in all it’s complexity through engagement of the forces of embryologic development in therapeutics is this: You (or me, or your dog) can’t possibly be the “islands” of isolatable “organisms” our centralized education paradigm trained us to see. We are instead dynamic relationships with our environments. Yes, I’m using that phrase as a noun. We are functions that include countless complex gradations and cyclic rates of semi-permeable boundary exchanges with our environments. Reframing our awareness this way is critical if we’re going to unlearn the linear, centralized phalacies of our educations and open our awareness to a different world. I’ll conclude this introduction with my deepest gratitude and acknowledgement to two priceless teachers who have had paradigm-shattering impact on my life. Both have passed on in recent years: the great tracker and outdoorsman Tom Brown Jr, and James Jealous, D.O. of biodynamic osteopathy.
