Not being a practitioner, tools may not be the proper term for my contribution. However, it could be said that a Kingston Nature Cure devotee should become his/her own practitioner. Ideally, having studied worked at and fully taken the philosophy on board, a person should be free, most of the time, from the need for professional help with any aspect of their health.

Be that as it may, my tools are approaches or techniques which I apply for the good of my own health. They are to do with consciousness and behaviour. It pays to behave well and bad behaviour tends to be punished. Behaviour is a fundamental quality of living things at all levels. Where there is life there is behaviour. Muscle activity is behaviour but so also is liver activity, brain activity, cell activity and all the physiological functioning of the body. Healing is behaviour and is a constant living function, not only a response to need. The point of seeing it this way is to understand that behaviour at all levels and in all parts, has similar qualities and is subject to similar influences to observable behaviour.

Another quality of all life is consciousness, again at all levels and as a human being our level of mental consciousness enables us to study observable behaviour and glean a better (non-medical) understanding of the functioning of the body which is not so easily observable. Such careful study can show how susceptible we are to harmful and misleading influences from many sources. Healthily modifying our diet, exercise, rest etc is very beneficial, but the effect of psychological, emotional and spiritual influences is even greater. We can observe and study our reactions to people, circumstances and things and endeavour to alter them for the good of our health. We can try to take a detached view of our behaviour, including thinking, weigh it up, assess it, sort the positive/healthy, from the negative/unhealthy, and work out ways of modifying it.

What is the difference between happy success and miserable failure? Usually it is to do with attitude and confidence. With introspection and observation one can influence one's own attitude and in a similar way improve confidence. Attitude can be positive or negative and the opposite of confidence (positive) is fear (negative). A positive attitude can dispel fear which is the most destructive emotion we have except when it is proportional and appropriate. This applies at all levels so that our attitude and confidence affect every molecule and activity in the body. Positive attitude combined with confidence results in belief. Belief is central to living. You cannot do anything without it and you can do practically anything with it. I believe this principle applies at all levels.

Of course you can' t simply switch on belief. But you can affect your attitude by what you pay attention to and you can achieve confidence by awareness and practice. Therein lie what I regard as my tools.

The most powerful tool is paying attention to fear when it appears and with practice, learning to apply an attitude to dispel it. There is always a choice of what you pay attention to.

OTHER PEOPLES' TOOLS

All health care practitioners, whatever their method, treat their patients' minds and emotions at every consultation with every signal they send through body language, every word they utter and every treatment they give and most of the time this is more important than the physical effect of any remedial treatment.

Most upsets of health recover without treatment. Not only that but every time a person recovers from illness without medical interference or help, confidence in their natural ability to recover is strengthened and that confidence is in itself a major component of good health.

The opposite is also true. When someone recovers with medical treatment (of whatever form), the recovery is likely to be attributed to it, thereby increasing the dependency. And when a medical treatment fails, fear of the consequences of the illness becomes stronger, thereby weakening the healing capacity.

So other peoples' tools are mostly not what they think they are.

NUTRITION

Mankind is perhaps the most successful species ever to appear on the face of the earth. Success in this context can be defined as ability to do and be almost anything and to survive and even flourish in a wide range of circumstances. Hence the observable phenomenon of apparently healthy, active and happy individuals living on, what we would consider appalling diets. The result, according to the Kingston philosophy and increasingly orthodoxy, is increased proneness to a variety of forms of ill health.

Back to basics is what Kingston teaches us. Any product of man's ingenuity for developing ways to make a profit from people's laziness and craving for stimulation is likely to be unhealthy.

The orthodox science of nutrition constantly strives, through research, to refine advice on what and what not to eat and drink. Different answers keep coming up to confuse people and stimulate the production of contrived and processed stuff. My own way through all this is, as far as possible, to apply the principle: Eat and drink what is as close as possible to having been alive.

Our civilised modernity, I think, blunts our instinctive knowledge of healthy living so I believe it is always useful to look at the animal kingdom for some indication of what is best for humans. Chimpanzees, our closest animal relatives live in the wild mostly on a vegetarian diet plus occasional meat. Not surprisingly dairy produce does not feature at all. Perhaps the ideal human diet is vegan plus a little meat. Or maybe the dairy is a good humane alternative to a little meat.

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