Slow vs Fast Healing

This morning while pondering all the ways gardening and Qigong overlap, I came across the book “God’s Hotel” by Dr. Victoria Sweet, a physician at the last existing alms house in America. Alms houses serve patients too poor and “hopeless” to receive care from other hospitals. There, disconnected from the health insurance quagmire, doctors are free to be creative and take time to understand the deeper causes of their patients’ suffering. 

In her book, Dr. Sweet writes about 12th C German nun, philosopher, writer, composer and medical practitioner, Hildegard von Bingen.  Hildegard, like Qigong practitioners in the East, considered the body to be more like a plant than a machine. To heal, it needed to awaken its innate capacity for growth; Hildegard called it “greening” or “viriditas”. In the alms house, Dr Sweet found that the “tincture of time”, along with proper nutrition, rest, protection from toxins (including too many medications), and basic, human care, brought slow but steady healing to her supposedly lost cause patients. It was an integrated, balanced, and humane process. 

It's unfortunate, but med schools today still look at the body the same way a mechanic looks at a car: as a collection of separate parts to be fixed or replaced as needed. Western--or fast medicine---is great for acute or emergency cases like broken legs or heart attacks, but preventative health (sometimes called the “health care of the future”), has a long way to go. Preventative care takes time, certainly more than the 15 minutes allotted to most doctor’s appointments.  

Qigong, like Hildegard von Bingen, looks at the body as a garden. Gardens can’t be rushed. They require patient, steady observation to support their innate capacity to grow. Do we need to water today? Is that plant getting enough sun? Gardens depend on a balanced ecosystem for healthy growth and so do we. We need to weed out stress, hydrate our joints and connective tissue, breathe in oxygen the way a plant absorbs CO2. We need to balance strength and flexibility, heat and cool, mind, body, and spirit. Sometimes we need to lie fallow, and rest. Perhaps most of all, we need the patience and hope of a gardener, delighted and enthralled by the process and cycles of nature.