Human health, Earth’s health, and environmental health can no longer be spoken of separately. Health must be seen from a new perspective that necessarily includes every living being.
What does bio‑building have to do with meditation? How does fasting relate to permaculture? What connects phytoremediation with birth? How are economics linked to emotions? And how do ancient grains intersect with autobiographical writing?
We could keep extending this list indefinitely…
The reality is that today many people are experimenting with new lifestyles in an effort to somehow fill the gaps of modern society.
However, each person tends to focus on a specific domain.
There are those who concentrate solely on the health of the earth, perhaps overlooking fundamental aspects such as human relationships or the psycho‑physical integrity of the individual.
There are those who deal only with spirituality, tragically forgetting everything that belongs to this material dimension.
And still others focus on the health of body, mind, and spirit, losing sight of the health of soil, water, and air.
Here at Autosufficienza we are pursuing a different vision—a vision that, very honestly, is rather difficult to communicate and to make understood, because it involves letting go of old schemes and paradigms and opening up to new ideas.
That is what we will aim to do in this article.
Salus: integrity and harmony of all living systems
“Health.” What comes to mind?
Someone will surely think of a sneeze…
Putting jokes aside, the issue hinges right here.
Some will define health as the absence of disease. Others will say health is doing yoga and meditation every day. Still others will claim health means eating well.
All correct…
These, however, are perspectives that tend to isolate and narrow a phenomenon that actually touches every aspect of life—and not only human life.
Let’s start with the etymology…
Salute derives from the Latin “salus,” which means whole / intact.
In the last century, a renowned anthropologist and sociologist, Gregory Bateson, published a groundbreaking book titled “Steps to an Ecology of Mind.”
In this work Bateson makes unmistakably clear the tight correlation between our thoughts, the words we choose, and, more broadly, our psycho‑physical integrity, and everything that happens “outside of us.” Because the mind is closely linked to ecology.
We can no longer reason in isolated compartments. To care for the future of all humanity, we must inevitably begin to observe the interdependence that exists among all living beings.
Returning to the etymology, it is impossible to think of an individual’s integrity without considering that of the earth or the air. Integrity means harmony for every living being.
That is why the courses and retreats we offer here focus primarily on topics such as nutrition, meditation, cooking, emotions, detox (and much more). But if we want to be the change we wish to see in the world, if we aim to give rise to a new societal model, we absolutely cannot limit ourselves to just that.
Autosufficienza Farm, the organization that formally manages hospitality and training courses, is a benefit corporation—a type of enterprise that incorporates the purpose of generating a positive impact on society and the environment into its economic activity.
Beyond the company itself, there is also a community of individuals who collaborate with the organization and strive each day to experiment with a healthier lifestyle toward themselves, toward others, and toward the entire planet.
These are just a few examples…
In short, our concept of health is integrative rather than fragmented, taking responsibility for every single aspect of life of every living being.
Health Is a Common Good
How many times have you heard someone say, “what I do with my health is none of anyone else’s business”?
Well, that’s another paradigm to question…
If what we just discussed is true, health is not a private good. For example, if you choose to buy legumes from an ethical supply chain instead of a large supermarket, that purchase will affect all living beings.
Because with that single act, with that single choice, you will have either reinforced a vicious chain (the supermarket) or a virtuous one (the ethical supply chain). Indirectly, you will have encouraged a certain type of cultivation and therefore the health of that soil. But the health of that soil directly impacts the people living nearby. Those nearby residents may, not because of a single choice but because many people make that kind of purchase, develop health problems. This will feed back into healthcare costs, and thus also affect you, the reader.
This example may sound exaggerated. But try to imagine millions, billions of people contributing to this mechanism—what impact they could have on the health of every living being.
That’s why it is fundamentally important for the idea of Health to shift from being conceived as a “private good” to becoming a common good.
Imagine for a moment if every person on the planet began to regard health as a common good, a shared asset in which each individual is aware of being responsible for everyone.
How would things change?
What Autosufficiency Means to Us
For many, self-sufficiency concerns only purely practical aspects: producing food in one’s own garden, generating electricity with a photovoltaic system, having sources of water.
In general, autosufficiency is understood as the condition where “you are self‑sufficient” and do not need to depend on anything or anyone.
We believe that in today’s society this is utopian. Moreover, humans draw their strength from relating to others, so imagining a world where everyone “is self‑sufficient” is inconsistent with our very nature.
The problem of modern society is that we depend more and more, in every aspect of our lives, on a small handful of multinationals.
From food to water, from electricity to gas, from fuel to medicines. But it doesn’t stop there. Today even our social interactions are regulated by a few multinationals that, through big data, subliminally influence our thoughts, and therefore our choices.
In one of the books that inspired Francesco Angelo Rosso, founder of Autosufficienza, titled “An Instant Later”, a scenario is imagined in which a reversal of the magnetic poles—and the consequent deactivation of all electronic control units—throws an entire society into crisis.
Think about what could happen, for example, if a total blackout occurred…
Our idea of autosufficiency is to reclaim degrees of power. That’s what we are doing here: trying to create resilience and value in a territory like the Savio Valley and Romagna in general, so that ever more networks of people and entities can become detached from the multinationals.
Returning to being aware, as much as possible, of every area of one’s life and creating relationships within one’s territory that can enable as many people as possible to be independent and autonomous.
Why self-sufficiency and health are synonyms
Based on what has been said so far, we can readily conclude that self-sufficiency and health can be regarded as synonyms.
Let’s look at a few examples…
Imagine we are unable to cultivate our own garden and we purchase staple goods from a local farmer who practices organic agriculture.
That simple, seemingly insignificant gesture of self-sufficiency is also an act of health. At the exact moment I buy something from that farmer, I have chosen a local ethical supply chain instead of a large supermarket. Consequently, I have reduced CO₂ emissions that would otherwise have been generated by the typical transportation associated with supermarkets. I have encouraged a cultivation method that cares for the soil rather than focusing solely on profit.
We could continue the list of benefits…
Isn’t that also a health act?
Now consider a person who practices meditation daily and tends to their thoughts. In that simple, apparently insignificant gesture of health there is also an act of self-sufficiency.
Because, put simply, the space this person creates for listening to and observing their thoughts allows them to manage decisions and relationships more effectively, thereby having a more positive impact on the world, gaining degrees of freedom (= self-sufficiency) compared with the influence that certain mechanisms of modern society can exert on an individual’s thinking.
Two straightforward examples illustrate that self-sufficiency and health move in exactly the same direction. An act of self-sufficiency is also an act of health, and vice‑versa.
Self‑sufficient health
We are immersed in delegation and dependence…
The paradox lies in the fact that our daily lifestyle, in most cases, is what triggers certain disorders and symptoms. We are the ones creating the damage, only to take medication that suppresses that specific symptom but creates inflammation elsewhere.
It sounds absolutely crazy…
That’s why, with our courses and retreats, we aim to teach people to care for their health autonomously.
We develop a set of knowledge, skills, and experiences that enable individuals to modify their lifestyle and create conditions of personal integrity and harmony which, as we have explained, will have an impact on the integrity and harmony of all living beings.
Just a clarification…
Here we are not saying that healthcare professionals are useless nor demonising the use of medication. What we are saying is that, with solid and careful prevention, drug use can be minimized, thereby creating a virtuous impact on society as a whole. Turning to a specialist will remain an exception, not the rule.
Rethinking the health paradigm is not merely theory; it lets us reshape our perception of health and act accordingly.
We believe today that this is one of the core themes on which to focus in order to create the change we want to see in the world.
Health as the integrity and harmony of all living systems. Health as an element of prosperity for the entire planet.
Watch this video >> Autosufficienza: vivere liberi e in salute oggi
