The Inner Climate Crisis
We are not who or what we think we are.
A surprising outcome from the Human Genome Project (1990-2003), the international research effort to sequence the human genome, was that our genome is far less complex than imagined. It was anticipated that genes would answer most all of our questions about human health, so when the results identified far less than the 100,000-120,000 genes expected—only 20,000-30,000—it was a shock. This is fewer genes than some worms and fruit flies, fewer even than rice! What then, was asked, makes our immense human complexity and adaptability possible?
This launched the Human Microbiome Project in 2007—work that is contributing to our understanding of how we are organisms of profound collaboration between our own genes and those of the countless microorganisms that comprise the majority of our bodies.
Not unlike our climate emergency, we are experiencing a crisis of our 'inner climate'. I can't help but see parallels between the 1980's-era quality of resistance to recognizing that human activities were setting off cataclysmic climate consequences and today’s reluctance to acknowledge the enormity of impacts on human health from what we are actively doing to our inner ecologies.
Similar to the days of messaging that was focussed on changing light bulbs, driving less, and recycling to mitigate climate chaos, we are engaging the inner climate crisis with necessary but radically insufficient awareness and action. Not unlike Greta Thunberg’s declaration to amplify climate response: "I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is," Rupa Marya and Raj Patel brilliantly describe in Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice, our bodies are on fire, calling for deep medicine that "has the potential to heal not only our bodies, but the world".
Our physical crisis is paired with a crisis of mindset—a quality of colonized ways of being within our own bodies. Though our bodies are providing direct communication through staggering increases in chronic illness, the majority response is that this is because we're living longer paired with a lament that 'people don’t want to change their lifestyles'. In the case that we're open to change, we want it to be easy to do and have fast results.
What is possible when we listen? Just as our world is crying for healing, our bodies and inner ecologies are as well. Yes, if we hack the code of diet and exercise that give our particular body the looks we want, but are still driven by self-contempt, fear, perfection, and comparison, as well as inflamed tissues, microbial dysbiosis, nutritional deficiencies, or thrashed joints—this is a problem. A focus on performative fitness will not resolve the pain and suffering in our lives.
Even more so, when we recognize that many of the problems we've come to accept as normal aren't expressions of normal aging—that the leaps in diseases like dementia, autoimmunity, or our joints needing reliable replacement—are in large part outcomes from our inner climate crisis, we'll be shocked with what hasn't been obvious to us.
Too many people are suffering—unnecessarily. Consequences to our lives, our longevity, our creativity and energy, our strength and sense of possibility, our capacity to contribute to the world, our communities, and our loved ones. How we engage in healing within our communities matters profoundly. How we engage healing within ourselves matters as profoundly. Our work is healing work. Life is providing a response, providing information and feedback. Denying it and pushing it away, or blaming ourselves and others for our bodies ‘failing us’ is inaccurate.
Our bodies are responding brilliantly, maintaining greatest health and equilibrium at every moment given the circumstances. We are directly experiencing consequences of a breakdown in our 'inner climate'. How do we choose to respond?
