Body of Water

I think one of the few things people know about spirituality, is that it's a practice uniquely tuned with your body and your environment in such a way that as soon as you become in tune with what is around you, your body interacts with the environment on a molecular level.

Building an aquarium is much like building a spaceship, so my aquarium maintenance course states. I actually disagree. It's like building a body. An aquarium needs natural processes to keep it running. Rocks, soil, bacteria, plants, and fish, coexisting in one tiny body of water within a glass box, all working in synchronicity with one another. Each creature, plant, and amoeba, has it's purpose. Human bodies, in the way that they are constructed, are very much the same way.

In Herbalism class, we learn that everything in the body is connected. All ailments, typically have similar symptoms. And/or they require similar treatments. A chronic illness is often the result of chronic stress. Medications can be given to suppress the immune system, but this is only part of the equation. When my body was diagnosed with a chronic illness, I knew that I had caused it within myself. I had faced persistent self-hate, which in turn affected my actions in my life. I didn't exercise, nor eat right, nor appropriately deal with and lower my stress. The combination of these things led to my immune system going into overdrive, at the slightest detection of a pathogen.

In aquariums, when a bacteria enters the aquarium that is foreign to the aquariums natural inhabitants, the aquarium becomes infected with massive amounts of algae. Much like how the human body needs a reset with immunosuppressants, an aquarium needs a reset through cutting out the "infected" parts of the aquarium plants which contain algae on them. Then, water changes need to be made to flush out the bacteria causing the "flare".

When a human body has a chronic illness, the immunosuppressants act as the reset. Upon research into homeopathic treatments, there are several ways to combat chronic illness with multiple different coping skills and mechanisms. My question was: if algae is the "infected" part of the aquarium, which part of my body is causing the "infection" I currently have? And in doing further research, I found an article linking chronic illness directly with self-hate and emotional trauma, hateful thoughts that caused stress and anxiety, which released chronic bouts of cortisol, and in high amounts leads to a toxicity level the body cannot handle. Thus sending the body, and the immune system, into overdrive. The infection I had? Self hate. I then had to "cut it out" of my body. Instead of listening to my self-hate and continuing to do the things that made my body feel worse, I needed to do the opposite. Drinking two liters of water served as my "flushing out" strategy, much like a water change in my aquarium. Yoga served as the "cutting out" for getting ride of the initial infection, much like physically removing algae from the aquarium.

And therapy was my strategy for reducing stress, much like consistent water changes that occurred after the initial infection was dealt with. This, I hoped, would keep my body in remission, at the least. And I'm proud to say, it worked quite well.

The results of my personal research were: combined with immunosuppressants, homeopathic strategies such as drinking a lot of water, doing yoga, going to therapy, eating and sleeping right, can cause the body to shift from an imbalanced state to a balanced state and remain in remission once balance has been restored. In essence, I learned that my body is the ocean, and to keep my ocean healthy, I had to clean it, flush it, and keep it stable. My body is an ocean. What a beautiful thing I've learned.