"i need a healer"

St. Olaf has this tradition, as part of senior week and commencement activities, of hearing one "Last Lecture" from a professor chosen by a vote of the senior class. Traditionally, the senior class usually chooses renowned philosophy professor Charles Taliaferro; but to my great delight, the class of 2013 voted to hear their Last Lecture from Anthropology Professor Thomas Williamson. His lecture was titled, The Anthropologist's Guide to Unhealthy Living. You can stream it here; it's long, but worth it.

I took a medical anthropology class with Tom in the spring semester of my junior year. In it, we discussed how different societies conceptualize "health." In our mainstream U.S. culture, we tend to view "health" as the absence of illness. In the negative.

My medical missionary grandfather said to me once that many members of the tribal Amazon basin cultures have not known what it feels like to "feel good" most of the time. Their state of normalcy is illness: digestive issues; malnutrition; river blindness.

But, the older I get, the more I wonder if we, as a culture, know what it feels like to feel good most of the time. I would argue that our state of normalcy is worry, stress, depression, anxiety, terror; digestive issues; hangovers; hypochondria; migraines; general pain.

I have been noticing lately the occupational hazards of sitting at a desk for 7.5 hours a day, 5 days a week. I feel regular stiffness in my hips and knees, and pain when I run; perpetual tension in my back and shoulders, which in severe cases turns into piercing headaches, which tear up my stomach too; constant pain in my right hand, my mouse hand, my pen hand. This isn't the first time, either; last time I went to the doctor about hand pain they sent me to a hand surgeon who gave me a shot to create scar tissue in my tendon, after a shot of novocaine that left my entire hand numb for at least 12 hours. And then they charged me $270.

This isn't what I'm looking for. I don't want to get rid of my ailments; I want to be healthy. I want my doctor to tell me what I can change about my life to prevent this pain in the first place.

On Monday I had an SOS lunch break phone date with a faraway friend, to work through some general anxiety. She said, "I need a healer in my life." She said where she lives everyone has a bodyworker. And she's tried it, but that's not the kind of healer she needs. She said, one-on-one yoga practice didn't do the trick; nor did counseling. I would never even suggest to her that she goes to a "real doctor," because what would he or she do? Prescribe some drugs to glaze over the problem.

Not gonna cut it.

I've been on a quest lately to balance my life, to clear out more empty space so I have time for self-care and time for flexibility. I've been working on eating foods that make me feel good, foods that boost my energy and alertness and don't give me stomach trouble. (The list of foods that give me stomach trouble gets longer every year, which is a little frightening. And I know I'm not the only one with food allergies and intolerances springing up on me out of nowhere.) I've been trying to sleep more, which actually helps a lot. I've been learning how to say no, which is hard because there are legitimately a lot of things I want to do every single day.

Call me a hippie, but I truly believe that most ailments are psychosomatic or somatopsychic. That is, most sicknesses and most of the pain we feel is actually a symptom of a larger, deeper problem or imbalance. In fact, I will boil it down even more and say that a huge percentage of our general ailments are stress-induced. (Actually, it turns out that stress in our grandparents' childhoods may actually impact the ailments we experience now. Wild.)

This is hard to get away from, since the bulk of what we deal with on a day-to-day basis, particularly as young adults and recent grads, is

• Healthcare: Do I have any or not? Does it cover birth control?
• Money: Do I have any or not? Is it enough to pay my rent AND my student loan payments?
• Terrorism and random shootings
• Global warming and the most aggressive storm season since the Ice Age
• The government spying on us (but, really, are we all that surprised?)
• Jobs: Am I on a "career" path? Does that even exist? ...do I even HAVE a job?? Given the statistics, maybe not.
• How long before Friday afternoon and happy hour? Because this is getting old.

So what would it mean to bring a "healer" into all this? What kind of healer would even be able to approach our ailments while avoiding either dialing a hotline of some kind or pulling out a pad and sending me straight to the pharmacy?

I am doing a lot to build and keep a healthy lifestyle. But what I kept saying to my friend on Monday is that she shouldn't try to tackle all her struggles alone. There is something different and comforting and important about being healed, about the process and the social aspect of it. It is active, healing and being healed; it is interactive.

So what do we need? I couldn't tell you. I wouldn't know what to call the person that could tackle this one. People trek to all the most isolated pockets of the world to find healers; they try all kinds of shamans and rituals and superstitions, and they write books about their quests.

Any ideas? Recommendations? For my friend and for me -- a healer to bring us closer to good living.