About Nonlinear Medicine and
Remembering The Ways of Curvature
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Modern life has linearized us. We are told to think straight, walk straight and be straight. We drive on grid-lines, memorize textbook lines and follow external outlines of who and how we should be who and how we are. We are lost. Our minds, bodies and souls are flattened, oppressed, colonized, divided into boxes and cut into disciplines, disconnected from our authentic self and indigenous ways of knowing. We are disconnected from the deep organic webs of relationship that sustain life and health: deep relationship with one-another, with nature, and with the wholeness of our beings. This leaves us feeling tired, disconnected, flattened, and isolated. Linearization and disconnection are causing oppression and disease. But we can heal and liberate ourselves from this.
We heal and liberate by remembering the ways of Curvature. The ways of Curvature are older than words, deeper than the page can hold; they come to us from the motions of the stars and the curves of the earth, from the landscapes of the Universe and the rhythms of our hearts and drums. They speak of ways almost forgotten but re-membered through our Souls and Land and Ancestors.
Through a combination of Western and Indigenous science, nutrition and plant medicine, art-making, ritual and healing circles, I help people re-connect with Curvature. I help people reconnect with the nonlinear intelligence within them, in all of nature, and within communities of relations that weave us together. I help people bring curvature and connection back to their cells, self, society and biosphere. This is my little medicine in this big world.
About the Curvature of Body, Soul and Mind
Curvaceous Body
There are no straight lines in your biology. There are no separate parts. There are no linear cause-and-effect mechanisms. We are not machines. We are curvaceous beings.
Everything is interconnected. Our bodies are "complex adaptive systems" that must be nurtured, holistically, in order to liberate their patterns of health.
Curvaceous Soul
Your soul does not conform well to boxes. It wants to express its unique curvature. The unique curvature of your soul is like the unique curve of your thumbprint - it is the signature expression of your being that you were brought into this world carrying. Your soul knows its Curve, and when nurtured to express it, your soul rises into its full expression of health.
Curvaceous Mind
An education that teaches us to "think straight" leaves us forgetting our other ways of knowing - ways that go beyond linear objective thinking - such as our creative, intuitive, and embodied knowledge systems. When you nurture your nonlinear ways of knowing, you awaken your entire being into knowing its truth and remembering the path of healing.
About
Dr. Laura Batson
Naturopathic Doctor
My journey to become a naturopathic doctor began after reading the following passage from a complementary and alternative medicine book:
“In ancient and indigenous healing systems, medicine was not about the putting of things into the body but using external resources to help stimulate the internal resources of the body. The body heals itself and maintains it’s own health.”
I was nearing the end of my undergraduate degree in Biology and I knew the linear path I was on to become a medical doctor was about to take a turn. Rather than medical school, I enrolled in a postgraduate degree in Holistic Science where I was immersed in traditional and Indigenous knowledge systems, complexity theory and systems thinking, and the practice of intuition, spirit-dialogue and art-making as guides for scientific inquiry.
Upon graduating, I was called to put this knowledge into practice as a holistic medical practitioner who honoured the wholeness and sacredness of healing, the power of plants and creativity in healing, and the recognition of one's innate resources to heal themselves. This lead me to the study and practice of naturopathic medicine. I have been practicing as a naturopathic doctor in Canada and internationally, since 2012.
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2020 was a pivotal year. COVID-19, with it's disproportionate impacts on Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour, combined with the systemic racism and oppression revealed through the murder of George Floyd and the BLM movements, combined with the larger social/political/environmental crises, has woken an activist in me. It's time to liberate ourselves. It is time to re-member and liberate our Indigenous knowledge. It's time to show the world what we are made of. This activism has led me to create the course Revolution Medicine: healing at all levels of life. This course is the living adaptation of a book I curated while living and practicing in Egypt, called Curvature: the Science and Soul of Nonlinearity.
