It's an esoteric concept I know but being the hopeful, optimistic little bunny that I am, I thought I'd share with you what I learn from the plants around us: in our gardens, parks, or even just the neglected plant on your windowsill.
As a gardener, I potter about at the weekends and often think how amazing plants are, and in particular their ability to recover from setbacks almost overnight, seeming without any long-term ill-effects.
Have you ever noticed a plant starved of water, perhaps because you've been away for a few days or just because it's been a particularly dry and sunny spell? Or come across something you planted in the garden a couple of months earlier which is now almost dead because it didn't like the conditions, the aspect or maybe the soil type?
Quite often these plants look shrivelled to a crisp - this isn't just a few dry leaves which look as if they might re-hydrate given the chance - the whole plant is limp, brown, showing very little sign of life. It definitely looks as though it's on it's way to the great compost bin in the sky.
Despite these set backs, on almost all occasions, I've given the plant some water, maybe moved it or changed its conditions (sometimes more out of guilt and futile optimism than out of any real logical hope that it will recover), and there it is the next morning (Ta-Dah!): all perky, leaves rehydrated, petals turned to face the sunshine, and looking exactly how a healthy plant should look. A shining example of regeneration, rebuild and nature's ability to fix things.
Nature has an amazing ability to fix itself and to thrive even in the harshest conditions, to repair no matter how broken (provided the constituent parts are still all there of course).
Yeah, but Libby, I'm not a plant and neither are you!
OK I get that - the human body (or any animal body) is far more complex than the flora which surround us but on a cellular level, we're very similar. As humans we share around 75% of our DNA with a banana. The building blocks of life are common to all.
What does the plant tell us?
The plant recovers because, at its heart, cellular recovery is possible, achievable and desirable. It's in nature's interests to keep the species alive and will do anything possible to make that happen.
At our basic level, auto-immune conditions, such as PCOS, endometriosis, MS, etc etc etc are all conditions in which a disturbance causes cells to turn on themselves rather than to work in harmony.
These issues are all about cellular regeneration and by definition, we know this to be not only possible, but desirable by nature. Everything in the natural world wants to live, and our basic physiology supports this.
In the same way that it was possible for these conditions to develop, it is logical to conclude that it is possible to reverse the condition. By finding the right mix, and removing those things which cause the disturbance, we have the capacity to set the body back in balance.
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