As an occupational therapist I know that small changes in daily habits can make big changes in health and happiness. I focus on developing habits in 5 Healing Occupations – Eating, Playing, Sleeping, Working, and Loving. Getting right with these occupations can transform our lives on many levels, and simple habit changes go a long way to making this happen.
For four decades of providing healthcare to people of all ages I have seen chronic disease rising in my clients – autism, dementia, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, diabetes, liver disease, kidney disease, heart disease, and cancer of all kinds. Many more people, especially children, seem far sicker than we used to see decades ago.
I have come to realize that convenience, provided by technology, has not improved health. Increased access to convenience products of all kinds has led to a decrease in health. We rely on technology, not our own wits and muscle power.
For this reason, I take a low-tech approach that favors pre-industrial solutions for a post-industrial world.
We are not stupid. We can see the degradation of our environment happening before our eyes – warmer summers, colder winters, stronger storms. The planet is doing her best to get our attention, and to heal herself.
Our children are sicker. Our old people are more miserable living with debilitating physical health. This does not happen in non-colonized or unconquered societies we have studied. In these places people died from infections or accidents, not through prolonged death and dying by inches.
Developing low-tech solutions, pre-industrial solutions, is easier on the wallet and easier on the planet than relying on and feeling dependent on the ever more costly “medical-industrial-complex” of corporations that makes up modern health care.
We can heal ourselves and we can make choices about how we want to live and die. We can combine the healing technologies of the pre-industrial world with those of the post-industrial world. Pre-industrial solutions lend themselves to prevention and the treatment of chronic conditions. Post-industrial solutions do best with trauma and diseases that respond to an intensive approach.
Each time we change a habit in the 5 Healing Occupations we get closer to the level of health and happiness we want to enjoy.
For four decades of providing healthcare to people of all ages I have seen chronic disease rising in my clients – autism, dementia, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, diabetes, liver disease, kidney disease, heart disease, and cancer of all kinds. Many more people, especially children, seem far sicker than we used to see decades ago.
I have come to realize that convenience, provided by technology, has not improved health. Increased access to convenience products of all kinds has led to a decrease in health. We rely on technology, not our own wits and muscle power.
For this reason, I take a low-tech approach that favors pre-industrial solutions for a post-industrial world.
We are not stupid. We can see the degradation of our environment happening before our eyes – warmer summers, colder winters, stronger storms. The planet is doing her best to get our attention, and to heal herself.
Our children are sicker. Our old people are more miserable living with debilitating physical health. This does not happen in non-colonized or unconquered societies we have studied. In these places people died from infections or accidents, not through prolonged death and dying by inches.
Developing low-tech solutions, pre-industrial solutions, is easier on the wallet and easier on the planet than relying on and feeling dependent on the ever more costly “medical-industrial-complex” of corporations that makes up modern health care.
We can heal ourselves and we can make choices about how we want to live and die. We can combine the healing technologies of the pre-industrial world with those of the post-industrial world. Pre-industrial solutions lend themselves to prevention and the treatment of chronic conditions. Post-industrial solutions do best with trauma and diseases that respond to an intensive approach.
Each time we change a habit in the 5 Healing Occupations we get closer to the level of health and happiness we want to enjoy.
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