I had an ‘aha!’ moment this week while speaking on an alternative medicine panel at the Conference on World Affairs. An audience member asked the panel if we had any thoughts or solutions to the expenses and hazards associated with pharmaceutical use. The question suggested a misalignment between the profit-driven corporate structure of pharmaceutical companies and the health needs of individuals. Pharmaceuticals are completely outside my scope of practice as a movement therapist and bodyworker: My primary objective is to empower people in their bodies and healing process through movement, awareness, and touch. What struck me in addressing pharmaceuticals is that the relationship between the companies that produce them and the individuals who use them is that of producers and consumers. The companies will sell whatever there is demand for. Our medical culture revolves around the idea that our health depends on these substances, and that we therefore depend on these companies. We expect pharmaceutical companies to be benefactors, perhaps like parents, whose responsibility it is to take care of us. We may feel wronged when they don’t.
Only we can produce our own vitality, and doing so is our primary function as living beings. Opposing entropy—the tendency energy has to disperse—living systems gather energy and organize it into vitality. We are self-organizing and generative. Unlike machines, which must be created and energized from the outside, we grow spontaneously when given resources such as food, water, shelter, information, and love. Unlike pharmaceutical companies, many of us are parents, and biologically we all have parents. We generate vitality for ourselves and then generously produce future generations. The question of pharmaceutical use changes when we realize that we are producers of vitality, and not consumers of it. Pharmaceuticals are a resource that we can choose to include in our self-organization, but they are not the source of our health. When we begin by acknowledging this power structure—that we are the agents of our own health, lifestyle choices such as movement patterning, food, personal relationships, and environment become exciting ways to organize our vitality. Pain and injuries are opportunities to notice the less lively parts of ourselves, and to reorient our awareness and actions toward healing. It is our nature to heal. We can reach out to others for help as we do so. Doctors can help us choose pharmaceuticals when we deem them useful. I’m here to help you physically direct how you generate your vitality, because you are producing gobs of it. We can practice being alive through movement—life is always moving. The most amazing part is that when we practice moving with clear intention we get better at it!

If you would like to see and hear the panel it is available here:
http://livestream.com/accounts/18548854/events/5105457/videos/118547136

Another panel I loved participating in was on improvisation. I was honored that cellist Joshua Roman even joined me for a little jam! Available at this link:
http://livestream.com/accounts/7791094/events/5105446/videos/118193913