Greetings Friends, 

A lot has happened since my last share in November, and I’ve taken some time to sit with it. This piece weaves together my reflections on the air element, political ideology, and healing, among other topics. It’s about a 12 minute read and goes perfect with a slow cup of tea and this Medicine Melodies album (specific on-theme tracks listed below). 

I welcome your thoughts and hope you’re all taking care as the collective body of this country continues to undergo major changes. 

P.S. If this article speaks to you, please share with others who might resonate with it as well! 

Air-borne: Facing the Infectious Ideology in Our Collective Body

This is a story about the air and the importance of staying alert to the ideology that rides through its currents. This is a story about the individual body and our collective body and whether we are listening to it, and what happens when we stop sensing from within it. This is a story about people I love who have been infected. This is a story about my own infection. 

The air element often gets left out of the pantheon. Earth, water, and fire are visceral and visible. Air is subtle, it moves swiftly; by the time you notice it, it’s likely already passed by– like the time I found myself in the mountains of Yosemite National Park weak and nauseous from the too-fast-to-absorb shock of oxygen-thin air.

In fact, the swifter it moves, the more destructive air can be–as we’ve tragically witnessed with the Santa Ana winds and the toxic air aftermath of the Los Angeles fires, what’s now being called “the disaster after the disaster” by the Coalition for Clean Air.  

According to ancient Ayurvedic texts(1):

“For all the good and bad of the world, Vata (the mix of air/space elements in traditional Indian medicine) in its normal and abnormal state is the only cause, especially so in the human body. It is the doer of all actions, the soul of all things, possessor of all forms, chief of all living beings, the creator, supporter, and controller of all; is omniscient, destroyer, lord of death and death itself. Hence all efforts should be made to maintain it normally always.”   

It’s possible air is among the most powerful elements because of its obscurity. A spiritual teacher I studied with once said, “The subtle is more powerful than the gross.” We breathe air all day long, often with little regard for what rides along its waves. 

We do so at our own risk. 

November’s election was a wake up to the viral nature of hatred wantonly proliferating in this country, now re-empowered. Spending time with family members I love over the holidays was a reminder of how mild ideological symptoms can grow to major infection–and the pain of unsuccessful interventions. 

“Don’t look away,” Norma Wang said when asked about a habit change that would strengthen our movements. Still, in grappling with my responsibility in this moment, I come to an impasse: I can’t look away, and yet I also can’t change it/ them/ the results of this election, directly. 

What lies in between these two poles? 

The Disease Pathway

In late December over the holidays, I found myself knocked out from a virus. Bedridden for two days, I had time to reflect on how hard I had been pushing against the energy of a season designed for rest, ignoring the subtle signs of exhaustion and foggy head my body had futilely used to get my attention.

The illness coincided with my purchase of a wearable that tracks my body’s vitals–a prospective antidote to neglecting my body’s needs– whereby I’m now getting support to listen up! 

“Time to stretch your legs.”  

“Your stress levels are still high, consider unplugging before you sleep.” 

“Good morning, your body temperature was elevated last night, consider eating a lighter, earlier dinner.” 

I’m grateful for my body’s more overt, digitally personified concern, and the boost to my immune system it’ll hopefully entail. 

–

The importance of heeding initial signals cannot be overstated, as the the Indian Ayurvedic system of medicine’s disease progression model, also called the 6 Acts of Time, outlines: 

In the early stages of a disease pattern, an imbalance begins to “accumulate” in a specific location. Once it reaches a certain threshold, it enters the “provocation” stage where it begins to ‘rise’ –still in its own location. 

During these first two stages in the ‘acts of time’, one can apply common sense– take action in the opposite direction– to rebalance and restore the irritation. Feeling dry or itchy? Apply some cream, oil, or shea butter. 

If not, the imbalance begins to “spread” throughout the system (stage 3), eventually identifying a  weak link to deposit itself and “localize” (stage 4).  

By the time it “manifests”, showing signs and symptoms, it is already in stage 5. By stage 6, the disease has taken on a “destructive” form of its own with major structural changes. 

For this reason, an Ayurvedic sutra says “always” treat an imbalance at its earliest, subtlest stage. 

And this is where my activist ears perk up. Consider:  

Hateful thought is to compromised immune system 
As toxic ideology is to illness 
As body part is to person 
As individual body is to collective body
As movement activists are to doctors and healers  

Where are we, and how did we get here? 

AI-generated image of clouds blowing in the air from ChatGPT

The fruits of late-stage ideological disease are here (again) in the U.S., which has me wondering about the more subtle, less visible, and earlier stages of progression many missed or lacked the collective power to shift. 

One element the generalized Left overlooked or at least failed to inoculate–is the waging of ideological warfare by the Right, which is both more subtle and more powerful than many realized. 

With ~98% of the brain’s thinking operating unconsciously, in the words of George Lakoff, “the mind that we cannot see plays an enormous role in how our country is governed.”  

This unconscious mind is reflexive– automatic and uncontrolled–as opposed to reflective. And it is literally fixed with deep narratives– such as the overplayed story of the victim and the hero. These narratives become permanent fixtures of our brains–literally characterized by the synapses of our neural circuits. (For more, see The Political Mind.) 

When conservative media ties a narrative to a particular situation–regardless of the truth of the parallel– the unconscious mind will tend to ignore or hide realities that contradict the narrative. For example, painting innocent people or countries as perpetrators and the United States as a victim (a subtle communications ploy) creates a political opening for overt violent acts that would otherwise land as brazen and unjustified with the vast majority of the public–such as immigrant detention centers that separate families.

See also Exhibit A, with how Republicans are falsely framing the climate-induced disaster of the LA fires as the fault of democrats, environmentalists, ‘diversity’, and Ukraine!!

Ideology reinforced by the intentional invocation of false narratives clouds the ability to see reality and opens the door for material harms. 

Desensitization’s Role 

Why has toxic ideology infiltrated great numbers of people on the one hand, yet failed to rise to the level of consciousness and activation for those that might have mitigated it on the other?

Mass desensitization plays a part– and has both systemic elements and individual implications.

In the words of Jenny Odell, we have “an entire economy and information ecosystem preying on our attention.” Or in the words of Byung-Chul Han, "under the neoliberal information regime, mechanisms of power function not through the disciplining of the body but through the moulding of the mind, which is all the more effective because people perceive themselves to be free."

We are being bombarded, constantly. And the media’s not just preying on our attention, but stirring up emotions and activating our sympathetic nervous systems–the part of our nervous systems associated with ‘flight or fight’ and increased heart rates and blood pressure. When one finds themselves in an overactive sympathetic response, it makes it hard to respond from a place of clarity. It's more than our body-minds can digest and can even have an anesthetizing result.

This level of overwhelm on the body is also a form of collective Prajnaparadh– a concept from Ayurvedic traditional medicine that translates as ‘disregarding the body’s wisdom’, or “intellectual blasphemy.”  Ayurvedic texts note that while there are many causes and factors of disease, prajnaparadh is one of the most prevalent.  

Ever eaten that pint of ice cream at 10 PM, even though your stomach-mind suggested you might regret it? Ever scrolled continuously or ridden a Netflix bender, staring vacuously at blue light late into the night, despite how it interrupted your reparative hormone secretions from rejuvenating your body? Ever ignored the voices of your ancestors in spite of what your bones knew? 

I have, and I paid the price. 

What Late Stage Societal Disease Patterns Mean for Our Moment 

While I was bedridden in December, I noticed some natural adjustments happen quickly. My partner quarantined me in my bedroom while the rest of my family activated to care for me– gathering and distributing medicinal cough drops, immune-boosting herbs, and boxes of kleenex. And this was a mild infection. 

For those of us oriented to change-making, how might we tend to those obscure but no less viral toxic streams of ideology? 

As one approach, it may be time to engage more deliberately in ‘cognitive policy’-- the intentional act of seeding ideas into public discourse via framing campaigns that use metaphor, morals, and story, but for the public good. 

In his book, The Political Mind, George Lakoff describes the Sky Trust as one example of cognitive policy whereby a moral frame– that the air is part of the public trust–informs a policy proposal whereby polluters pay for their pollution and revenues are disbursed to all citizens stewarding the air as a collective trust. The Sky Trust invokes the frame of the commons whereas other climate change policies often lead with complex carbon or financial commodification jargon, such as cap-and-trade or taxes. 

Simultaneously, we need to communicate the importance of vigilance surrounding what airwaves we play and whose agenda is propelling the flows. 

Still, I come back to this country exhibiting a late stage disease pattern, meaning much may not be salvageable in the near-term aside from protecting and nourishing each other and the ‘healthy cells’ so to speak, while backing up the surgeons, aka long-time movement leaders and warriors, on the more complicated moves. 

That said, with a view toward the longer-term, more becomes possible. Right now our energy may have the greatest impact applied toward earlier stage imbalances and endeavors, and we can attune to the power of our perceptive sensitivity to guide the way.

This could literally be a focus on supporting youth or perhaps taking on the slow but no-less-important work of peace-making, a la Thích Knát Hàhn or the 14th Dalai Lama, to assist people in working with their minds and emotions. On the more material plane, we can take steps to seed new ways of meeting our basic needs– from growing food to building sustainable energy and water systems. 

I’m reminded of Norma Wang’s enjoinder that in late autumn it’s time to plant seeds– for the life-giving world on the other side of collapse. 

Addendum: Toward the Heart-Space Beyond Ideology 

A lingering concern has accompanied my writing of this article, and that’s whether all ideology is dangerous.

Someone once pointed out to me that even the fixation on changing the world itself could be said to be an ideology. In Vedic astrology, there’s a combination called the “illusion of the sun” whereby one becomes so fixated on the notion of changing the world that they miss the reality that the world is simultaneously and mostly changing them. I’ll admit to that tendency. 

There’s a dharma teaching that goes something like this: ‘it’s best for bad thoughts to be replaced by good thoughts– but eventually, good thoughts, too, are best replaced by no thoughts.’

This tracks with my best guess on the validity of ideology: that the closer ideology is to universal truth, the less dangerous. 

If we asked the Air Element, that giver of life and death, ki(2) might tell us that our thoughts are connected to our breath. 

As we consciously slow our breath, so, too, we slow our thoughts . . .

relaxing our bodies and thereby strengthening our immune systems . . .

until all that remains is raw, unadulterated reality . . . and the possibility for the warmth of our heart-minds to prevail over oft-confused, colder brain waves.

May we find our way there. 

—-----------------

Resources and References

Listen:

Listen and Reflect: 

  • adrienne maree brown and Autumn Brown’s podcast episode, “When No Thing Works with Norma Wong.” 
  • Norma Wong’s Reflection Question: “Could you imagine sharing a detailed story of the long horizon, beyond your descendent’s descendents, with the darkness at your back, and the light in front, without any isms, and begin to seed that future… for the post-apocalypse?” 

Read and Subscribe: 

Breathe:

See Prentis Hemphill’s minute-long Reminder to Breathe on Instagram and check out their offerings at Embodiment Institute.  

Referenced: 

Footnotes: 

(1) Ashtanga Hridayam Nidanasthana.15.1-3 as quoted in the Ayurvedic Way blog on the “Role of Vata Dosha in your health.”

(2) I adopt Robin Wall Kimmerer’s suggestion to use ki (singular) and kin (plural) as pronouns for nature, which is a living entity, over “it.” 

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