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"Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved."
"In certain situations, the language of the body and illness proves to be the most acceptable way to talk about one's suffering."
Until the beginning of July 2014, while I was descending the Loire in a packraft, I had never questioned fundamental aspects of nutrition. Strange questions like: “Is it normal to eat three or four times a day every day at fixed times?” or, “Why do I eat meat?”. This questioning began with an episode of fever that lasted two days, following a heat stroke, during which I could not swallow anything. Once recovered, fasting continued more or less because as soon as I tried to eat something, I felt like vomiting. Only raw fruits and vegetables could somewhat pass. For two weeks, I experienced a significant decrease in appetite while paddling 9 hours a day and being in great shape. All of this was incomprehensible to me, the omnivore used to gargantuan meals.
In search of the ideal diet
For several years, I had been keen on eating locally and producing my own food. I cultivated a vegetable garden, picked fruits from the surroundings, and raised poultry; the idea that everything we need is found around us, in its natural state, was already taking root. I simply supplemented my production with regional dairy products, cereals (a lot of wheat), and coffee. I almost never consumed cold cuts, chocolates, sweets, sodas, pizzas, prepared meals, canned goods, etc. I embodied in practice the famous “everything in moderation”. A convenient two-cent wisdom since everyone sees noon at their door, which has probably made it popular despite its emptiness. I had a gargantuan appetite that I believed was justified by the practice of many sports in addition to my work as a lumberjack and all the outdoor activities related to my lifestyle. Moreover, I was thin, full of energy, and proud of my nearly self-sufficient lifestyle, disregarding chemical products. Intellectual self-sufficiency also made me completely impervious to what I could hear about the harms of meat, cereals, legumes, milk, and coffee, unfortunately too often justified without the scientific rigor needed to penetrate my Cartesian mind…
Thus, over the years, I accumulated vision problems (myopia and astigmatism), skin issues (cysts, acne, sweating), allergies (cat hair and pollen), and increasingly severe and frequent colds. But since these vicissitudes were the lot of many, I paid no attention, thinking it was part of life, that it was certainly not well made for human beings but that we had to deal with it and fortunately, science was there to save us. You know the litany!
It is probably out of pessimism or, dare I say, lack of faith, that so many people consume medications, these drugs that I have always viewed with suspicion, and live in sanitized environments with fear of the nasty microbe. Seeing all these people become strangers to their own biotope, protecting themselves from the sun, insects, bacteria, cold, etc., the image of aliens in suits often came to my mind.
Suffering as a driver of change
Since I still did not understand the message that life was sending me through health problems, it was ultimately a sciatica that came to signify more strongly that something was wrong and that it needed to change. I inevitably consulted doctors: general practitioners, osteopaths, physiotherapists who only relieved the pain.
I was subjected to those seemingly innocuous phrases that undermine self-confidence, like: “It’s normal, you’re doing too much!” or “We’re not made to run!”, not to mention the most famous one, “You’re getting older, that’s all!” when I wasn’t even 30…
Since I took no medication and did not consider surgery, the only thing that allowed me to cope was the daily stretching session I performed after work or sports. I did this without method, as a self-taught individual, which is why I was surprised, a few years later, to find that it was quite close to Hatha Yoga. The stretches were not enough to overcome the sciatica, but I had absolute confidence in my body and I knew that sooner or later it would find the solution to heal.
For more than two years, I endured this sciatica daily in all the activities I performed; it sometimes turned into an obsession.
That is why, when a colleague from the running club lent me “Born to Run” by Christopher McDougall, it was the trigger. I finally understood that running shoes were the source of my pain.
Returning to nature
The real remedy was the obvious one; I just needed to run barefoot. It hurt me too, but it was just a transition, and I could understand that pain. Shoes have made us disabled (just look at someone walking barefoot on small pebbles to be convinced), so how could I have emerged unscathed from thirty years of mistreatment towards my feet? In short, I needed to learn to walk and run, for real this time. Thanks to this radical method, I got rid of that sciatica as one wakes from a bad dream, definitively, almost miraculously.
This experience strengthened my faith in the human body and its incredible capabilities that we are just beginning to (re)discover, it seems to me. That is why, a few months later, when I landed from my packraft in Chambilly (71) on the banks of the Loire, bewildered by this experience of fasting naturally imposed by my body, I was ripe for another trigger.
That evening, I was invited for a stopover at friends’ who aptly lent me, “What if we stopped eating a bit… from time to time” by Bernard Clavière. For over 30 years, the author has only eaten once a day, only fresh fruits, raw vegetables, and nuts. I only had time to read the preface before heading back to the waters, but this man’s life was a revelation and a transcendent example for me; I didn’t need to know if it was true or not, although my intuition had no reservations. Living on fresh products without exploiting or killing animals, I found that beautiful and ardently wished to experience this dietary experience myself. Once again, the return to nature allowed me, without expecting it this time (because as I said, I thought it was the lot of all), to resolve almost all of my health problems.
Illness is here to “heal” us…
Thus, illness “falls” upon us, not to bother us but to guide us on the right path, the one that Life wants for us, the suffering we all experience is sometimes our best guide. It holds immense transformative power and a potential energy from which we can draw. Turning a deaf ear to suppress symptoms is futile, except in the short term or to relieve suffering.
One of the paths to healing lies in rediscovering and applying the laws of the living (cf read the article “What is hygienism?”), evident in its outlines but whose logic is stifled under the weight of social and cultural heritage, heavy with fears and beliefs.
The human body is a marvel, the most complex thing that nature has created, light-years away, after a ruthless natural selection lasting several billion years. We all harbor within us the miracle of life; that is why we all harbor within us a potential for self-healing, no need for artifices. It is enough to unconditionally love life and believe in it, sincerely, sometimes desperately, for tears of joy to spring from the depths of our being.
