Wilberg on Wednesday - The Illness Is The Cure pt 20/46

Illness as an Altered State of Consciousness

From the point of view of Life Medicine there is no need to scientifically find or prove causal links or relations between ‘body and mind ’, ‘body and brain ’. Instead it is a matter of recognising that every bodily state is a ‘mental’ state, but in a much broader sense than usually understood – being a state of consciousness that is experienced just as much in a bodily way as in our ‘minds’.

No ‘subjective’ state or ‘state of consciousness’ is merely something enclosed or encapsulated in our heads, brains or minds. Conversely the body as such is not something we merely perceive or are merely aware of ‘mentally’ – as if it were some object we carry around with us. Instead the body itself is but a particular shape and dimension of subjective experiencing – one that completely transcends the whole body-mind, body-brain division. This is why the notion of the ‘felt body ’, ‘lived body‘ or ‘subjective body‘ is so central to Life Medicine – and to the new understanding of illness it brings. For this new understanding makes it impossible, in principle, to separate our lived experience of illness into two separate categories that we call ‘mental’ and ‘physical’.

A basic principle of Life Medicine is that every bodily state is also a state of consciousness and vice versa. That is why the experience of any bodily state or condition, even a minor ailment such as a flu or cold goes together with a new and different state of consciousness – a state of consciousness that is not limited to one's head or mind but pervades one’s entire body.

Conversely, different types of ‘mental’ or ‘emotional’ states are also states of consciousness not confined to the head or mind – but felt and experienced in a bodily way, for example as a particular sensation arising from a state of muscular tension in one’s chest, stomach or guts.

“Every feeling is… a mood that embodies in this or that way.”

Martin Heidegger

What we call a ‘mood’ however, is nothing we are simply mentally aware of in our heads, but is rather a particular tone and quality of embodied, feeling awareness – one which is always in one way embodied as different degrees and qualities of muscle tone and tension – which is why no state of ‘mental’ stress or tension is not at the same time a state of muscular tension.

“A mood makes manifest how one is…” Martin Heidegger

In other words, a mood is not just something purely mental but is a bodily way of feeling ourselves. This is reflected in the fact that the question 'How do you feel?' is synonymous with the question 'How are you?’ For the way we ‘feel’ is the way we ‘are’ – and vice versa.

For this reason however, any alteration or change in how we feel or are is at the same time a change in our sense of who we are or feel ourselves to be – a change in our identity or sense of self that is felt in an immediate bodily way. For in a most literal sense the ‘you’ that feels sick or tired is not the same ‘you’ that feels healthy, bright and alert.

Thus, not only is every bodily state also a state of consciousness – it could also be described as a ‘self-state’ or ‘body identity’. For the way we feel our bodies cannot be separated from the way we feel ourselves. How we feel in our body affects not just our mind but who we feel ourselves to be – our ‘bodily sense of self’ or ‘body identity ’. That is why, when people begin to feel ill they might speak of ‘not feeling themselves’. This basic ‘dis-ease’ of ‘not feeling ourselves’ is both the essence and first sign of illness – being not only an altered state of consciousness (how we feel) but also an alteration of our bodily sense of self or body identity – of who we feel ourselves to be.

The Immune System and Body Identity

In the framework of biomedicine ‘body identity‘ is reduced to our genetic or biological identity and associated in particular with the immune system – which is seen as ‘defending’ our biological identity against threats and attacks from ‘foreign bodies’ in the form of pathogenic bacteria, viruses or mutant and cancerous cells, or any type of genetic material such as organ transplants that consist of ‘non-self’ cells (a term actually used in immunology).

Today more than ever, much fuss is made about ‘health’ being dependent on maintaining or restoring a strong ‘immune system’ or with strengthening the body’s immune ‘defences’, which is why countless food products and supplements are advertised that claim to do so. On the other hand even biomedicine acknowledges that most discomforting or painful symptoms of illness (such as a runny nose or swelling and painful joints ) arise from the activity of the body’s immune system. Indeed many illnesses are recognised as resulting from an immune system that is too strongly defensive and as a result is overactive – leading to so-called ‘autoimmune’ diseases such as arthritis in which the body’s immune ‘defences’ are used to attack its own cells. Alternatively, the body’s immune system may be at such a high alert and so overactive and ‘strong’ for long periods that it ultimately weakens or collapses. Its very strength and activity therefore may ultimately result in precisely the sort of weakness that makes the body susceptible to infection and other types of illness.

In contrast to biomedicine, Life Medicine understands the strength of our immune system – the degree of immunity of our bodies – as an embodiment of the degree of immunity of our self or identity. Thus a too rigid or strongly defended identity or sense of self – one completely ‘immune’ to natural and healthy processes of change and adaptation to life – may find biological expression through an over-defensive and over-active immune system, which then actively seeks out threats to our biological identity that would otherwise be ignored or are ignored by the immune systems of other people. An over-rigid or immune self – or one that experiences deep identity conflicts – would explain many so-called ‘auto-immune’ disorders. A more healthily and naturally ‘strong’ identity or sense of self on the other hand would also explain what biomedical immunology can’t explain – why some people ‘catch’ diseases which are supposed to be highly infectious whilst others don’t – even from spouses or children they live with or during widespread epidemics. Nor can biomedical immunology explain why most of the bacteria, viruses and even damaged, mutated and ‘cancerous’ cells that biological medicine regards as ‘causes’ of diseases are all in fact constantly present in most healthy bodies.

Biomedicine simply takes it for granted that ‘health’ is the protection of a fixed biological and genetic identity – one ‘immune’ from all change. The problem with this theory is that it prevents biomedicine from coming up with any explanation of why it is that the immune system, though it may launch attacks on transplanted cells and tumours, does not launch attacks on a no less alien or foreign body that can grow within the human body – namely the baby growing in a pregnant mother’s womb? And whilst biomedicine has effectively come to treat pregnancy and birth as something fraught with as many dangers as an illness, therefore requiring hospitalisation and the use of hi-tech medical equipment, the body itself clearly does not regard pregnancy as a disease or the baby as an alien or foreign body growing inside it – despite the differences in its DNA to that of the mother. Life Medicine, on the other hand, understands ‘health’ itself as a capacity to allow our body identity or sense of self to be altered and transformed in response to our life world and life experiences. That is why, instead of treating pregnancy as if it were a type of illness, Life Medicine understands illness itself as a type of pregnancy – the meaning and purpose of which is precisely to allow us to gestate and give birth to a new ‘bodily sense of self’ or ‘body identity’. A key aspect of health, not as a mere state but as an on-going life process is therefore the capacity to pass from a state of ‘not feeling ourselves’ to one of ‘feeling another self’ – and of learning to embody or ‘give birth’ to that self through new and different ways of relating to our lives and life world.