Health Beyond Civilization

Health Beyond Civilization is a blog and a health resource, with a twist: Its operational premise is that modern industrial civilization is coming to an end, and moreover, even if it doesn’t, living in some other way more in balance with the earth is preferable. Thus, this site is focused on three questions regarding our lives post-civilization:

• How will the practice of medicine change?
• How can we maintain health?
• How can we get healthy to train ourselves for a more sustainable life?

Therefore, this site is aimed at those people who are engaged, in whatever capacity, in the effort to become more sustainable, indigenous, or “primitive” in lifestyle, whether to “escape civilization” or just to become better people.

This website is probably not for those people who are already hale and healthy and living off the grid with ease — the pioneers, so to speak. Those people don’t need my help. What I offer here is for people like me — people who still sit more than stand, let alone walk outside; people who have grown up living sedentary suburban lives, watching TV and playing video games; people who want to learn more about the wonders of the natural world and living in harmony with the earth but get blown over by a stiff breeze. Call it “rewilding for the weak.”

In short, what I chronicle here is a remedial course in health for the aspiring indigenous soul.

 

Philosophy

A fundamental premise of healing practices is that they tend both to shape and to reflect the culture they serve. Conventional Western medicine, with its severe reductionism and strict mind-body split, expresses the values of industrial civilization.

Health care in a society that is freer and more alive will not be the same. Thus, a central tenet of my philosophy is that developing and maintaining health beyond civilization must draw on philosophies and practices that lie beyond current conventional paradigms of health. There are many cultures whose wisdom and power have been tossed aside by the stride of “progress.” Some of them still survive, and will have much wisdom for us in the times to come.

Further, medicine in this day and age, and civilization in general, turns people into passive recipients. My philosophy of health is the opposite. The best help is self-help. Ultimately, you teach yourself and you heal yourself. The caveat is that you have to be prepared to do the hard work to earn those things. All I’m here to do is offer what little help I can.

My aim is to help people free themselves of health restrictions that keep them from enjoying life fully. My highest hope is that people take whatever they can from this site and learn for themselves how they can best be healthy — and perhaps even teach me a few lessons in the process.

 

About Me

My name is David. I took a class from Tom Brown, Jr.’s Tracker School and have gone through some of the Kamana program offered by the Wilderness Awareness School, but most of my primitive skills experience came from living for a year in the woods at the Teaching Drum Outdoor School.

That experience left my health significantly depleted, and I’ve been recovering ever since. But it was also a blessing, because through my struggles I discovered that my true calling is in the healing profession.

I am a student and practitioner of Oriental Medicine, a modality which includes acupuncture, herbs, qigong, diet and lifestyle counseling, and bodywork. I have also had experience with and exposure to a variety of modalities including natural vision improvement, peer counseling, holotropic breathwork, massage, Rolfing, Reiki and other forms of energy healing, neoshamanism, and the Alexander Technique.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers. My hope is simply that I can help people avoid what I went through, and facilitate, in some small way, the ease of transition to a healthier and better life.

 

Contributing Authors

Pathfinder is the web name for a dweller of the Snoqualmie Valley in the Snoqualmie and Tolt River Watersheds in the Cascadia Bioregion. He is a practicing acupuncturist, internal martial arts instructor, and teacher of survival skills, nature awareness, wildcrafting, and tracking. His family consists of his wife, two-year old daughter, and two cats. In his “free time”, he likes to catch up on sleep.