{"id":8,"date":"2007-10-06T19:32:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-06T19:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.wpdude.com\/test\/?p=8"},"modified":"2007-10-06T19:32:00","modified_gmt":"2007-10-06T19:32:00","slug":"what-is-natural","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/2007\/10\/what-is-natural\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Natural?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Natural is a problematic word I’ve been hearing<\/span> lately. A definition of natural might be, “That which we’re born with and have evolved to do – instinctive and unlearnt. ” Natural is often confused with habitual (e.g.”Its my natural posture”) or widely accepted<\/span> (e.g. “Its natural for women to raise<\/span> children). Sometimes it just means, “I like X”, or “I haven’t bothered to examine X”.<\/p>\n

\"\"A general notion many of us have, especially in the mind-body\/alternative world is that natural=good. Here are my views on this:<\/div>\n

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Some natural things aren’t healthy – take high infant mortality or parasites for example, both common in many tribal societies (often held up as natural exemplars). <\/p>\n

Many unnatural things can be healthy, my mother benefited from spinal neurosurgery and advanced drugs recently when she had a tumor and I’m very grateful it was available.<\/p>\n

Some things which people often say are unnatural, occur frequently in nature<\/span> on closer examination – homosexuality for example.<\/p>\n

I want to be real careful when making an assumption as to what we evolved doing. Did men hunt and women gather for example? How do you know? If hunting is a social activity where upper body strength is less important than coordination, who might have done it in our past, men or women?<\/p>\n

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All this being said here is my lil<\/span><\/span>‘ ole list of what we didn’t evolve doing that isn’t healthy as a result: <\/div>\n

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