Living in Accordance with the Rules of Nature

What is the cause of disease?

The farther away that we live from a natural environment, the more layers of impediment challenge our health.

Processed food, which has been stripped of its wholesome nutrition and engineered by humans to taste good fool the body’s natural cravings into unhealthy choices. A body that has not enjoyed a purely natural, unprocessed food diet (most people on this planet today) will lose the ability to discern what it is hungry for. Practices such as smoking and breathing excessive pollution will alter the breath’s natural course.

A sedentary lifestyle created by our division of labor may fool the body into laziness.  A body that receives proper exercise has a fire that burns through toxic qualities and useless calories to extract benefits from even a poor quality food.

Living in a climate-controlled environment may impede the body’s ability to live comfortably in a natural range of climate and temperature.

The human child is born and its first act is to cry. This is the natural first exercise, first breath. Mother’s milk is the natural first food, and her body’s warmth is the natural first climate. As the child grows, play dictates the natural exercise that a child should take in order to progress in a healthy way.

 A child given only healthy, whole food choices, will choose food according to what will promote health in the best way, at that time. 

It is beyond the average age of 7 that humans are capable of beginning to move beyond play and begin to learn civilized tasks: his or her place in the divisions of labor begin to be introduced, complex sets of directions can be followed like “sit still and pay attention.”  This is also when Kalari wisdom says that a child is ready to begin the first exercises of Kalaripayattu.

Living in Accordance with the Rules of Nature

Messages from nature manifest as feelings. If you are hungry, you should eat. If you walk on hot pavement and it hurts, that is nature telling you to get off of the hot pavement.

If you do not listen to the messages of nature, then your health will be negatively affected.  Feelings are brought on by instincts. For example, pain, hunger, feeling hot or cold, feeling tired. These feelings should be accepted, and then behavior should follow suit.

Where should we live? Where the climate does not require heating or cooling to survive and prosper.

What should we eat? The plants and animals that we could hunt and gather in this natural climate, that which tastes good to us at the time.

When should we eat? When our bodies tell us we are hungry.

How and when should we move? Being close to the earth, close to nature, and challenging the body to move like a natural creature. We should move according to our innate desire, if we feel an ache from sitting, we should get up and move.

How should we breathe? Nature dictates our breath. As a mostly involuntary act, breathing is unavoidable and self-regulating. We naturally take in more air with exertion and less with sedentary activity. We should only control our breath when we are avoiding poison. Nature tells us to do this because we hate foul smells. In this wisdom, pranayama techniques and other breath control systems may cause disease, even as they aim to cure it.  Unless holding your breath to avoid poisonous toxic fumes, breath should not be controlled, just allowed to naturally proceed.

We can control breath as a part of treatment for any disease of the respiratory system, because during illness the autonomous function of respiration may not take place properly.

How should we treat disease? By returning to nature. For instance, a fever will burn out infection if allowed to progress in its natural course.  Eating a diet of unprocessed food can alkalize the body and restore balance. Sometimes a health situation will require fasting, so that the body can concentrate on healing instead of digesting. You can often tell if this is indicated because appetite will be absent.

Emotions are different from feelings, in this context. Emotions are man-made and can be processed and controlled by knowledge and logic work. The work of Kalaripayattu is to see events as they really are, not clouded by layers of man-made emotion.

This doesn’t mean that emotions are necessarily bad, or expressing them is wrong. Emotions are part of the human experience and how we navigate our civilized human world. The refining work of Kalaripayattu can give us tools to separate our useful instincts from the not so useful stories that we tell ourselves.

For example, if somebody close to you dies, you may immediately understand that everyone eventually dies and that is a natural part of life. Or maybe you will be overwhelmed by sadness and want to cry, which would make you a normal human. Crying is the natural release valve by which strong negative emotion can be purged from the body. To not cry when your instincts want to cry would be unhealthy, as pent up negative emotions cause disease.  In this instance, the natural instinct of crying prevents disease.