I know I’m a living system because...
I feel love. That sounds kind of cheesy, I know. I don’t identify so much with my body though as I do my soul. Identifying other things with their spirit essence instead of their physical construction makes it easier to attribute “living” qualities to things like rocks and pieces of trash. Reflecting on this question honestly scares me a bit. I’ve been working hard these last five or so years to identify more with my body -- to “be in” my body more...but today I realize I still think of my body as a rubbery unit that is necessary in order to carry my soul around. That’s not to say I don’t feel the pain in my shoulder today, or that I don’t love a good foot rub, or that dancing, running, singing, and sex aren’t four of the biggest joys in my life, but they are more like extracurricular activities -- the real business is my soul. I’m the sort of person who feels bad if I fling a beloved pillow carelessly on to the ground because I’m worried it will feel lonely. Or I wouldn’t necessarily pile a bunch of blankets on top of each other because the bottom one might feel smothered. I feel immature admitting that...like a little kid who thinks her stuffed animals are truly alive....but I’m wanting to be honest here.
I collect lost and broken things; I think I do this in part because I feel sort of "sorry" for them. Them seem to have quite a bit of "life" left in them still, however...and often get a "new life" with me!
Some items from my collection...they seem alive to me!
I also know I’m a living system because I eat and poop. And because I know I’m going to die some day.
I tend also to associate other people more with their bodies than I associate myself with my body. I have pretty strong intuitions about the location of other peoples’ pain, and where to touch them to alleviate it. Sadly, I don’t tend to know my own body quite so well. And this has been a very interesting exercise. Yikes.
Biophysics and Oriental Medicine...
Systems! It took me awhile to see a connection, but the connection here I think is that they both utilize systems thinking. Do a search for “biophysics” and “systems” and you come up with studies about cellular systems, systems biology, neural systems, populations, ecosystems, descriptions of “living systems” at a microscopic level...etc. Biophysics takes interactions within the systems into account. We are no longer living in isolation. The body is no longer made of separate, discriminate parts like a watch...although if you think about it even watch parts are part of a system (if the spring breaks, so goes the whole thing!). Biophysics is interesting to me because any living system can be studying using biophysics as a lens. The similarity with oriental medicine is of course that oriental medicine views the body as a system interacting within an environment. Parts of the interior and exterior system affect each other. Nothing is occurring in isolation. I think that biophysics’s systems thinking might lend greater credibility to oriental medicine, and that oriental medicine might begin to see western science as more of a like-minded friend. Each could begin to learn more freely from the other.
This image, taken from a biophysics department studying of proteins, looks somewhat similar to something that might be found in a book about the five elements in Chinese medicine....
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