Health and Disease by Lance and Susan Schuler

This extract was written by Lance Schuler and his wife Susan. Lance taught me how to teach yoga back in 2005 in Byron Bay. It wasn’t just yoga he was teaching me, but helping to re-inforce and validate how I felt about health and healing and yet didn’t have the confidence to voice it back then, or to truly understand it. I know it a lot better now having worked with health and healing since then. I still can’t voice it as well as Lance and Susan however, which is the reason I share their words here for you, for anyone who is interested in living a life free from the fear and from dis-ease, who truly wants to come to know themselves and live in a way that is harmonious with nature and with their own innate wisdom. Lance inspired me then as he inspires me now, and I miss being in that environment where I can be surrounded by those who know and feel the same way. There is so much fear in our beautiful planet at the moment, and so many suffering, and yet to know thyself, you are free, so free. Love Emma x

“HOW OUR UNDERSTANDING OF HEALTH AND DISEASE IS ESSENTIAL TO ACCEPTING AND MOVING FORWARD THROUGH THIS PANDEMIC 
For the first time in recorded history our youngest generation of children are now expected to live shorter and sicker lives than their parents, even though medical technology continues to advance and we know more about the impact of poor diet and lack of activity than ever before.
It is as if humanity is at war with nature.
If all of us were to simultaneously jump of the Sydney Centrepoint Tower, we would each fall 10m/sec/squared and we would hit the ground at the same time at a very predictable velocity because we are all subject to Natural Laws - because we are Nature.
Disease is because of the violation of Natural Laws.
If Doctors wish to use the word Dr before their names then they should be teaching. So if teaching, they need to teach people how to stop building disease –that’s what doctors’ real roles are, otherwise they need to call themselves Physicians.
The only way Doctor’s can teach to not build disease is to know it, the only way they can know it is to live it and the only way they can live it is if they have learned it.
Doctors spend over 16,000 hours during their residency and have less than 20 hrs of nutrition instruction. 
Doctors have a nutritional deficiency in their education. 
Our exiting healthcare system is based on treatments, even though 80% of illness is preventable. Lifestyle disease needs lifestyle medicine.
Poor diet is the number one cause of death and disability. If most deaths and disability are related to nutrition, then, obviously, nutrition is the number one thing taught in medical school; right? Obviously, it’s the number one thing your doctor talks to you about at every visit; right? Drugs don’t cure dietary diseases.
Doctors mean well, but they are generally just working with methods that don’t work. (Cut, burn, poison – come on!). The body takes care of itself – it cannot do it wrong. It is always working in your best interest. It is programmed for survival. We are not talking about accidental and emergency care here – this is where medicine and surgery can have a life saving role. 
Our bodies are so complex that we will never work it out and you don’t have to. Do we have to explain it to a dog, possum, or elephant? NO! Instinctively they know. They are plugged into the wisdom of nature called instinct. Medicine as we know it has only been around for about 150yrs – instinct has been around since the beginning of time – listen to it!
All culture and “cures” take us away from nature and that’s an abomination because we are nature. That’s the beginning of the lie that leads us down the path of looking for a cure. Is it not better to stop building disease? Of course it is! Does anything else work? NO!
Why is it that those animals that have no interference from humans die from less than 10 diseases?
One out of every 2.5 people will now get cancer. There are 4,000 rare diseases and over 80 auto immune diseases alone.
Heart disease and cancer are the number one and two leading causes of death and medical error is the third!... Iatrogenic - look it up!!
So what do we use to treat these leading causes of death? We use medicine – but medicine is the third leading cause of death – does this make sense to you? This is data.
The reason this has happened is because we have strayed from nature. We live in boxes, drive around in machines and eat foods that are made by machines.
We are living in a way that we were not evolved to live.
How many of us know how to take care of our body?
Paracelsus said “anyone who is not their own physician by the age of 40 is a fool” and that “health depended on the harmony between man and nature”. To be healthy in today’s world we need to cultivate a reliance on ourselves.
Our dietary and lifestyle choices and the way we think and emote are affecting our health, our environment and the animals we share this planet with. How we think, eat and act are a choice – to either improve the world or make it less… to either sustain the conditions that are supportive to life or worsen them…..

SO WHAT IS HEALTH AND DISEASE 
Health is life in balance – disease is life out of balance.
Disease is a body instigated process for healing and repair; to re-establish homeostasis. If you treat a symptom 99.9% of the time it’s going to make the disease worse. The symptom is there as your body’s attempt to self-regulate and heal itself. Symptoms are a manifestation of something out of balance – you and your soul, you and your emotions, you and your body, and you and nature. The symptoms are the medicine.
When we take drugs for the disease we are telling the body that we are not listening. When we treat the disease we halt the body’s attempt to heal and repair. The symptoms are the body’s attempt to remove excess waste and when we treat the symptom we increase the body’s toxic load. Even though you will experience pain and uncomfortable symptoms these are signs of the body’s attempts to heal itself and restore balance.
When we treat disease we separate from ourselves.
The only way to address disease is to address the cause. Every action in the body, in disease, as in health, is towards the preservation and improvement of life. What is commonly called disease is in reality, a beneficial and remedial process. Dr Herbert Shelton (Human Life) says, “Health and disease are the same thing – vital action intended to preserve, and protect the body and there is no more reason for treating disease than there is for treating health. The body slides easily into disease when conditions warrant and glides as easily back into health when conditions justify.” 
Convincing people to alter their behaviour to remove the causes is an unprofitable business. People quite naturally, want to feel better with as little effort as possible and their natural psychology equates feeling better with getting better. However, when drugs are taken to relieve symptoms and reduce pain, feeling better does not mean getting better.

Modalities, treatments or therapies that involve drugs, herbs, supplements, manipulations etc may be useful predominantly in the short term to assist with any imbalances and allow time for the person to somewhat recover until they make the lifestyle changes necessary for true recovery to occur. However, if used continuously they really only act as a band-aid unless the underlying causes are addressed. 
When we use drugs, remedies and therapies to eliminate symptoms, and do nothing to address their cause, we do nothing to create health, nothing to motivate change, no reconnection with nature, no evolvement, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual and does nothing to protect us from further disease. Treatments and so called cures take us away from the journey of healing.
THE BEST KEPT SECRET IS THE BODY CAN HEAL ITSELF. 
The same innate wisdom that made the body, can heal the body. This is known as – vitalism. And it doesn’t make mistakes; it doesn’t mess up. Everything the body does is a wise response to a perceived stimulus – without exception.
Most acute diseases are self-limiting and resolve with the passage of time.

Now that we know about our microbiomes and viromes can we really believe that "germs" are predominantly the main cause of disease?
Or are these so called pathogenic ones just co-existing with us - whose roles are to "clean up the mess"
And just like the flies do not cause the compost - are these "pathogenic germs" inside us to restore balance?
And our jobs therefore would be as simple as to stop building disease inside and outside us. 

Address the cause, learn the tools, do the work, then live the solution yourself.
Health comes from healthful living.

The secret to recovery: Stop the repeated injuries 
Acute disease or accidents are generally from single or less frequent injuries such as food poisoning, infection, insect bites, car accident etc. Whereas chronic disease is the result of thousands of injuries - to the arteries, joints, and other tissues over prolonged periods of time. Even though the force, frequency, and means of impact differ; the mechanisms of repair are still the same, whether the injuries occur once or a million times. 
If your health is getting worse it is not because your body is failing you - efforts to heal never stop - not for a moment. Again your body is always working in your best interest. It is programmed for survival. The reason for your continued distress is because the damage is ongoing. FOR DISEASE TO PROGRESS, INJURY MUST OUTPACE HEALING. Reversing disease is simply a matter of STOPPING THE ONGOING INJURY, which is usually self-induced. Greater recovery is expected the sooner the repeated injury is stopped. (There is a point reached where disease can become irreversible, because the injury is too severe and/or the body is too worn out to recover however, even than spontaneous healing can still occur – don’t underestimate the miraculous healing powers of the body).

4 APPROACHES TO HEALTH 
(Comparison between Medical, Alternative, Natural Hygiene)
1) Does this approach teach people that they can take responsibility for their health, resulting in them feeling empowered, and in control of their lives or does it led them to feeling victims of their fate?
2) Does this approach focus on identifying and removing the cause or does it just focus on removing the symptoms?
3) Does this approach respect the fact that all physical healing can only be done by the body itself?
4) Does this approach take into consideration every aspect of an individual, including their psychological and emotional health or does it just focus on a particular organ or body part? 

SO WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN 
We need to educate ourselves about the causes of health not the treatment of disease.
Our bodies know what to do – we need to relearn how to listen to it and trust it. 
Health sovereignty – self responsibility, not farming out our responsibility to others. We have lost how to care for ourselves. We have been programmed that the governments and doctors can make us healthy, better and heal us. They do not know how to do this, nor are they healthy themselves. 
Doctors study disease not health. We go to doctors like priests to be absolved from our disease, not to learn about health. 
You need to know that your health is largely in your own hands and no one else’s. Especially not to those who have invested interests. Health is the natural spontaneous consequence of healthy living. Become your own doctor. The more conscious you are the less support you need. 
This doesn’t mean you don’t ask for help or accept opinions. It means that we need to be responsible for our own health, to care for our own being and that of others and the earth. 
We are constantly in healing and recovery, what if it was about living? That’s the goal. Healing now is recovery from our artificial living.
We don’t mind dying – we just don’t want to be the cause.
Our current model is outdated and disempowering. 
Dr Michael Greger calls the leading cause of disease as, “not telling the truth.”
The food and medical industries have been manipulated for profit and control. Today the masses no longer think for themselves and have lost trust in their innate and instinctive healing ability. They turn to an industry and governments that have no interest in keeping them healthy. According to independent reports by the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, a wing of the American Congress, and the World Health Organization (WHO), 85-90% of all medical procedures used by today’s medical establishment are unproved and not backed up by scientific research.

To discover and understand the cause of disease, you will first need to let go of the idea that disease is something that must be fought. Healing is accepting, allowing and supporting, not fighting or resisting. Healing can occur when the body can use its innate healing capacity and is not overrun with a fight (treat) or flight (ignore) response situation. 
There is something to be learned from every situation, including disease. A person’s willingness to face, accept and grow from the issues that dis-ease brings up turns disease into a purposeful and potentially uplifting experience. There is an underlying cause of every situation, even if it seems unrelated. You as consciousness, are the only true source of that energy and information that runs your body. Your presence in all things including your body, what you do, eat, drink, feel and think determine how well on a physical level your cells are able to control and sustain your physical existence. Disease is a provider of new life. Disease only “strikes” when a part or parts of us are not alive anymore, physically, emotionally and spiritually. 
The wound is where the light enters – means that grief, pain, suffering is where you grow. 
The Cosmic Intelligence is holding us responsible for our universal health - both body and planet. 

With loving kindness Susan and Lance”