Originally posted in German on 5th November 2024
Article by Heinz Grill
In medicine, there is the Circulus vitiosus, the vicious cycle of the effects of illness, that inevitably bring with them further impairment. For example, if someone injures their musculoskeletal system and suffers from unavoidable pain in a limb, they naturally develop a kind of protective posture and overload other parts of the body more. Any protective posture that leads to compensation because of pain or fear produces restriction and sometimes even a complete lack of movement. In general, however, all natural movements are beneficial and support the muscles, ligaments, respiration and ultimately even the building-up processes of the metabolism connected with the will. Protective postures are, therefore, part of a vicious cycle.
If we start from the principle that meaningful activity, both mental and physical, is an elementary component in maintaining the health of the human organism, then the question arises as to which activities are beneficial and conducive to development and, in contrast, which automatic or unconscious actions and habitual vices it is imperative to avoid. The great researcher Edward Bach, who developed Bach Flower therapy, reiterated the central statement that every vice and every bad habit brings about healing for the soul and ultimately for the body through development of the opposite character trait. He was able to characterise in his therapeutic approach, in a very impressive way, the question of soul development and gave great importance to it.
This whole series of articles has been concerned with healthy, successful activity oriented to an aim. When someone is ill, the wish for health presses them to take various actions, not only to visit a doctor, but beyond this to clarify the causes of the whole illness. Very few patients can be satisfied with just taking medication or adopting a protective posture. Health is a great need and the path to integrity is likely to accompany individuals in a more or less conscious way.
However, illness not only has the fateful side of forcing individuals into protective postures, states of withdrawal or difficult and expensive therapies, it also shrouds their own consciousness and literally wants to blind them to real vision for the future, through its own radiating, physical dominance. Every illness possesses its own insidious, vailing behaviour with dark or nebulous impairments of consciousness.
1st Example:
Someone notices that their illness is connected with dependency in relationships to certain people. As a result of the need to get well, this person wants to free themselves from these dependencies. The problem, however, is that the whole consciousness is bound up in these dependencies and therefore wants to step out of dependency to a greater freedom of independence. It is a state of being caught up in one’s own illness and mental conditioning.
2nd Example:
An ill person realises how she is carrying the same inherited pattern that was suffered by her ancestors. She also longs for health. However, her thinking, feeling and ultimately all her actions remain determined by her genetics and therefore no healthier way of being can occur.
3rd Example:
In order to recover, a person suffering from cancer, for example, would have to carry out various physical activities, strengthen their respiratory system and activate building-up processes. As a result of exhaustion, her body signals a total weakness and she therefore becomes trapped by the weakness, both in her consciousness and also in her physical strength.
4th Example:
With another person, every time he meets with a certain group of people, he has an exacerbation of bodily inflammation. Out of societal necessity it is not possible to avoid the meetings and for this reason a cycle of repeatedly new symptomatic reactions develops.
5th Example:
Someone suffers from a slipped disc and now needs to move their spine sufficiently to heal. However, because of the pain he is forced to rest which in turn causes the whole musculoskeletal system and the back muscles to weaken.
An escape or exit from these situations, which constitute a pathological cycle of the body and the personal consciousness, is as a rule very difficult and not even conceivable under the normal conditions of the will. The Circulus vitiosus comes into effect in various ways and a special approach is now required for the self-activation of healing forces so that the individual does not stay ill and face further progression of the illness.
Ways to approach overcoming the Circulus vitiosus will be described in the next article.
Anmerkungen
| ⇑1 | Edward Bach, Ye Suffer from Yourselves, 1931. The Edward Bach Centre. P.15 |
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