ARTICLES, ARCHIVES & MUSINGS
Failure to Thrive...
Many years ago, when I was teaching ‘The Care of Infants’ course at a local college, the subject of ‘failure to thrive’ was a topic of our curriculum. Physically, this occurs when an infant is unable to integrate life processes that support growth and development. Instead, the body systems are reversed and eventually arrested until the child’s physical body is returned to nature.
Allopathic medicine has suggested that such experiences may be attributed to damage to the brain or central nervous system. There may be heart or lung problems. There may be anemia or other blood disorders or even gastrointestinal problems.
When exploring this topic with students, we initially read about the experiences of orphaned children in underdeveloped countries who were being fed – physically, but not emotionally. If nutrition is not the determining factor of ‘thriving’, what, we wondered, is? Under such institutionalized conditions there were few or no bonding experiences, no time for warm, nurturing caresses or lullabies and no affirming hugs, kisses or gentle rocking to sleep. Often bottles were propped with a cloth or blanket and sometimes removed from cribs when empty. Our continuing research always examined poverty and abuse in developed countries and appalling similar ‘failure to thrive’ reports.
Traditionally, failure to thrive was categorized as either organic (underlying medical condition) or non-organic (no known medical condition). However, this categorization is currently deemed outdated in allopathy as has been recently reported, “the causes and effects of malnutrition are usually intertwined in most children”.
In fact, all cause and effect of all dis-ease or dys-function is intertwined…not just in children, but in adults as well.
We are divinely embodied….in perfect concert with nature’s human form. Our bio-dynamic electrical potential is dependent upon energy that entrains or ‘intertwines’. Trillions of human cells are incredibly designed as complete systems within themselves to communicate across ‘barriers and borders’. They direct action and reaction throughout our bodies, expanding and expressing our potential.
Recently, I have been observing a steady increase in symptoms of clients that seem to mirror ‘failure to thrive’. But these are not infants or even elderly adults, as have typically been the subject of such research. These are young adults in the ‘prime’ of their lives. Most appear healthy...on the surface. Their physical bodies have yet to diminish by the medically defined 5% weight loss indicative of such ‘failure to thrive’. Yet each one senses that something is ‘not right’. And as I track the energy, the vibration of their physical bodies is significantly less than their mental, emotional or soul/spiritual vibrations. The symptoms are presenting in energetic ‘physical’ vibration that each ascertains, but cannot embrace nor rationalize. Yet upon discussion, all describe isolation of some form…. from a job or career, a partner, a parent, or society in general. They want to believe that they are ‘okay’ but their energetic bodyfields reflect ‘not okay’. They are, in fact, isolated from the essence of who they are.
We humans are designed to be communal… to articulate through our five senses likes and dislikes, acceptance and rejection, love and fear… to express and receive with our eyes and our sense of touch, swiftly relaying messages to our brains and hearts that we okay. We are ‘at home’ within ourselves. We matter. We belong. We have purpose.
Today, however, these innate human tendencies, to commune and instinctively cross ‘barriers and borders’ have been called to the forefront. They are headlines. They are news. They are threats. They are fears. More importantly, they are confusing, frightening and misunderstood. Our innate communal nature has been too often halted at our physical boundaries, alerting related functions. Immune and integumentary systems exhibit chronic conditions of compromise, eventually leading to digestive, nervous, respiratory and cardiovascular dis-orders.
If we reach out and no one reaches back with a smile, a touch or an affirming embrace, what messages are we vibrating into the cells of our bodies? Do we shore up our innate ‘barriers and borders’ in isolating self-protective modes? Are we bathing ourselves in poisoning isolation? Is our potential to be brilliantly and resonantly connected with all of nature diminished?
Do you accept this or can you change so we can all change?
Will you reach out to one person today…crossing a barrier or a boundary, whether real or perceived? Will you find one human who, like each of us, desperately craves connection? Will you share a smile, a warm greeting, a gentle touch, or an embrace? Will you take action to enhance our human capacity to thrive?!