Spinalroots

Since my teenage years I have been shouting for change, singing along to the punk rock anthems. Now we are finally faced with the prospect of change I’m not sure we like what is happening. Not that it’s the possibility of change I don’t like, but the actions of government that seek to control and tell us what to do. It rather epitomises all that I’ve ever shouted against.

We certainly live in extraordinary times. Who would have ever thought that our government, who for ever have been hell bent on achieving economic growth, would destroy livelihoods, bankrupt businesses and collapse an economy in the name of keeping people safe. I don’t for one minute doubt there is a new disease across the world. I do, though, wonder if such measures are a sensible approach to addressing the situation. I know little of virology and am no expert in health, although I have learnt much during twenty years working in the field of bio-mechanics and have managed to transform my body and my health. I have learnt that health is a product of three factors. The quality of the body, the quality of the environment and the quality of the interaction between the two (the manner in which we live our lives). I have also learnt that there are no quick fixes.

I went through my initial rehabilitation in a specialist spinal unit at an NHS hospital. The care was wonderful. However, if I accepted their prognosis, and their guidance for my further rehabilitation and care, I would still be in the terrible condition I left hospital in. What is more, having found a better way I can’t go back and show them what is possible. I’ve tried and might as well just bang my head against a brick wall. Their educations doesn’t allow them to understand. If I could find a doctor or physiotherapist who does understand then there is nothing they could do within their profession. Their job is to follow a set practice and the opportunity for developing a new approach is extremely limited. Embracing the phenomenal way of rehabilitation that I have helped prove is possible is simply not possible within the NHS in Britain. The health establishment has become lazy in its thinking. Despite its amazing surgical ability, and capability to save life, it is so conservative, and its thinking stuck so far in the past, that it dogmatically follows a blinkered path. You’ll forgive me if I hold little faith in the health establishments ability to support the nations health right now.

Luckily we live in the age of the ‘freedom of the individual’ and it is the personal responsibility of each and every one of us to seek the knowledge and understanding to care for our own health and make our own choices. I for one will not be bullied by our government. Apparently, though, if we all get vaccinated then life can return to normal! I long for true social living once again. Food and drink, music, dance and theatre, hugging and kissing. All that is integral to being human, eternal and questionable whether lawful to prohibit. As for everything else that might be considered normal, I think the isolation and separation, the technologisation and commercialisation, that we are living with in lockdown, is the ultimate expression of where that normal has been leading us for quite some time. I have no desire to go back and will keep shouting for change.

Power to the People