Depending on how we have eaten, worked, socialized, slept, exercised…we might have totally different biochemistries. We can be mean, cruel, greedy, possessive and manipulative, but we can also be kind, compassionate, generous and honest. We are everything! There is no biochemical consensus, not even in ourselves.
The question is how to enhance the possibilities for it to be good? The religions tell us to believe in their God, science tell us to believe in their statistics, our parents tell us to believe in them, the market economy tells us to believe in money and the politicians to believe in them. The confusion is total, and clearly difficult for us. This becomes specially clear to us when we are around teenagers struggling to understand the world and their future. The biochemistry can write our future.
If you meet someone that doesn’t like their job, that has just come back from a business trip over seas, has had too much wheat, meat, alcohol and cortisol, how can you define that person as they are? They may have stress in their body from the business trip, and on top of it, they are thrown into their family life with small kids when all they need is to sleep and be in silence. The basic biochemistry for this person is not favourable for a good first impression when they meet someone else, and most likely the other person will judge the meeting negatively so that they never meet again.
Our biochemistry can be so different that we totally change opinions and feelings as our biochemistry changes. Something that was nice one day is terrible the other day. It can even surprise us how inconsistent we can be, how sensitive we are some days and not others. How we tolerate some food sometimes and not at all other times. The only thing we know is that when the so called happy hormones are produced and not oppressed by the stress hormones, we normally are more physically and mentally strong, as well as open and liked by others and ourselves. The meeting and learning from others is completely different then.
The only way to enhance that favourable biochemistry like the happy hormones, say dopamine and serotonin, is best explained by simply being healthy. In Ayurveda it would be expressed as to enhance Prana, the life energy force, the Chinese Qi. Hippocrates would have said to enhance Physis. Our religions around the world would call it, to be good and have faith, the doctor tells us to take the medicine, your mum to eat well. At Olive Retreat we say that there is no right or wrong, there are no principals, only experience, learning and knowledge. So learn, pick whatever makes you healthy. Explore what that is for you. If you can learn from others mistakes you save time. If you can’t, you’ll push your health until your body & mind will tell you your limits.
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