Letter from the Editor
Whatever colour, gender, status, age, or place on Earth, the one elemental matter that connects us is water We are all water
This issue is dedicated to this amazing substance that is part of us and keeps us healthily alive
Part three of our history of Mental Health focuses on what some call the "Dark Ages" Medieval times are not associated with great water quality, yet, you are about to find out of its less-known importance in those times The medievalites not only understood it but lobbied its powers successfully, soand we now are the living proof
Do you drink enough? Are you respectful enough and against its overuse?
Increasingly wasting water and running out of it are two of the big dangers of the future It is possible for each of us to make a difference
Happy reading,
FOCUS
Monthly
Intangible, fluid, still under the sun, torrential at times, water is the make of our minds, the power that drives our spirit When we feel something, it often comes in fluid form, liquifying thoughts along the way, building up waves of emotion, pushing forward into each crevice of the mind.
Babies when born are 78% water. As one ages that percentage drops a bit but at all times it is in the range of half or more of our bodies In adults, the brain and heart are 73% water.
Out of all the functions it performs in our bodies, the most powerful is this magical connection with our minds Thought process is water The framework of our thinking, our reactions, our lives, are cosmical manifestations of its perpetual force.
"Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it."
Lao Tzu
| 5 Text to image: artwork were made by AI based on interpretation of the above text
Quote of the month 6 |
In Europe, Medieval times linked everything to the church, a fallen church lost in the abyss of its own making, where the hope that characterized the start of Christianity had been drowned. The church was a despotic ruler, with the clergy holding reigns over everything, including human health. And it started doing so by changing the definition of what it meant to be human.
BY
MOT PART 3 Mental health 8 |
ADRIANA
At the peak of its abuse of power, religion eliminated the physicality of its subjects. The body, as the unifying, biological sum of skin, structure, organs, and the mind, was forgotten, and conversation stopped. A unidirectional monologue ensued instead, and people became ethereal entities to be manipulated, coerced, and redirected. Medieval society was about division in everything except the church. A society that was highly segregated and hierarchical preventing any unity between the feudal lords, the vassals and the bourgeois (originally meaning the city dwellers), nor the clergy.
As life started to be perceived as sinful, disease became a manipulating ruler with long tentacles reaching wide. Medicines were mixed with spells or blessings, and herb gardens contained the many ailments to balance all humours of the body. Humours were the liquids circulating through bodies that were believed to secure the health of the individual once a balance was established. Purging was common as it was bloodletting.
And yet, something interesting has happened that we, certainly, in this day and age, relate to: countercurrents developed.
First had to do with alternative healing of the damaged bodies. Natural medicine knowledge expanded.
Blissfully reliant on the power of nature, headaches were treated with the power of sage, and stomach aches with mint. The fever was curbed with coriander. Lungs were healed with liquorice. How was it known that sage increases blood flow and, by that, helps specific headaches like migraines?
the faithdependant health age
We will never know. But as the learnings of medicine and herbalist treatments spread, sage not only reduced the pain of headaches, but it helped with memory and cognitive functions of the brain. Water was promoted as important to health as long as it came from reliable, clean sources, and London built its "conduit" in the thirteen century by creating a web of led pipes to distribute potable water to its neighbourhoods.
Second - had to do with spirituality. Was it flawed? Maybe. Was it perfect? Definitely not. But what the church did, unlike the antiquity before it, is place mind above body. It gave the mind the first chance to shine. Yes, it was through the lens of God, a God that some accepted and some did not, a God that forgave yet punished just as much, a God that was merciful and merciless at the same time. But this is how people learned they could live beyond skin. They can exist, beyond exercise, beyond aches, and beyond physical barriers. That was, despite all appearances, the first step toward spiritual independence.
| 11
“Since a city requires a large amount of water not only for drinking, but also for washing, for gardens, tanners and fullers, and drains, and this is very important — in case of sudden outbreak of fire, the best should be reserved for drinking, and the remainder distributed according to need.”
Leon Batista
Alberti (notable architect of the times)
| 13
14 |
