The Structure Of Functional Medicine

How Broken Crayons Still Know How To Color::

Maybe you’ve had this feeling too: something kicking around your head for years, refining, developing, refreshing, sourcing information and sorting itself, on its way to becoming…

Years ago I read a book called Range. It made sense of my life in ways that I’d not previously been able too; short of describing myself as a Sagittarius with a penchant for firing arrows with little consideration for aiming.

Much like my life. I’ve worked across numerous industries, collected titles and traveled across continents, searching for some way to make sense of a strange collection of skills that longed to be of service.

It’s been said that the first 40 years of a life are for growth and lessons. With that, the next 40 are to apply that information in a life filled with purpose, creating momentum for the life truly desired.

My name is Ramesh Tarun Narine, and for much of my life, I have been guided to learn about the body. It is anatomy. It is physiology. It is the story of relationships that take place under the every day influence of gravity as well as the inexpressible mystery that keeps it all coherent.

A large part of these interactions come down to how structure and function depend on one another as the body generates its native and vital force, it’s potency, a form of currency, that creates resilience and keeps dysfunction away.

For the past 20+ years I’ve been working with the body in various capacities, all with the perspective that with the right conditions, a body knows how to do health and can self regulate itself in that direction with grace and ease.

For the past 10+ years, I’ve been working primarily in a hands on capacity with the body. I’ve been helping people to harmonize the systems of their body, to support the relationships of the body internally, and thus, to find ease in the body’s relationship with gravity.

For the past year, I’ve been working exclusively with the west coasts preeminent medical clinic dealing with complex chronic illness. In some ways, these are the people that have been unable to find a solution for the way they wake up more tired than when they went to bed. I work with private clients and patients of the doctors from a structural lens and often these clients are the most complex of a very complex community.

And so I’d like to share with you some thoughts on holism and health with the intention that it might be of service to you.

Whether you are of optimal health or have been diagnosed as someone dealing with complex chronic Illness, it’s my plan that you find something of use here, perhaps even encounter something unique that provokes your own coloring outside the box.

Because a broken crayon can still color.

And so I encourage you to remind yourself that as you are right now, no matter your challenges, your body knows health.

IT feels strange to share that for much of my life I’ve looked at one of my greatest teachers to be a self inflicted concussion at the age of five.

I had a hammer and was trying to industriously expand a small hole in the cul-de-sac across from my childhood home. My frustration arose in a two handed overhand grip. The asphalt was resilient, to a fault, and the recoil of that hammer strike drove the tines of the hammer into the top of my skull.

Kids are tender creatures. And life leaves an imprint.

At this age, my imprint met the Lambda suture of my cranium. Named for the Greek letter it resembles, this intersection of cranial bones is integral to free motion in the skull as well as supporting the spine in maintaining a neutral relationship with gravity.

My subjective experience of the scar tissue that formed in my skull was that it created a limitation that my spine was forced to grow around. Objectively, I consider that being a larger baby, there may have been unobserved birth trauma that could have affected the place where the low back and the pelvis meet.

It’s difficult to tell as the whole spine functions as a continuum.

I also spent 20 years playing sports that created pretty strong shearing, pulling and compressive forces on my spine so it’s a bit of a chicken or the egg conversation as to which came first.

What I can say is that my whole spine move away from neutral at some point, and that affected a number of things in my body’s physiology, from how my spine moved in gravity to how the central nervous system was able to both interpret information coming in and sending signal out.

It’s but one example I’m excited to share with you.

Because a question we like to ask at the clinic is what might your other Doctor’s be missing?

For me, the structural component of functional medicine is being overlooked.

With an example we can all relate to, I ask you to consider childbirth, a dynamic process that is a wonder to observe, even more so to be involved in.

If you don’t know anything about your birth, I encourage you to find out what you can.

You and I both began as a baby. We came into this world tiny, and grew in size as we matured. The birthing process, a strong experience, required that we arrive from a place of softness.

A baby is born with a soft skull to allow them passage through the birth canal. Bony skull plates overlap to make their way through the mother’s pelvis. For the most part, this birth process results in a natural progress whereby a child comes to maturity with health and vitality abundantly on display.

What about those born under duress or too early without enough time to develop with all the mother’s resources at their beck and call. What about difficult births where the child spent too long in the birth canal, were birthed with a cord around their neck, or had an asymmetric presentation of their cranium.

It might seem insignificant, an anomaly of presentation, but the shape of a child’s face may foreshadow items seeking support. What if a slight rotation of the head as it develops in the mother’s womb leaves the baby pinching the nerves at the base of the skull?

These nerves communicate with key organs like the Heart, Lungs and Liver. Organs that, at such an early age, the brain needs to have it’s clear intent communicated well and with ease. It’s keys like this that can significantly cue development.

Same with the tubes that deliver blood to the brain. Were this slight twist of the head on the neck to remain through early development, it would throttle nourishing blood from the Heart to the Brain at a time when a lack of resources would be severely missed.

Working this last year with clients who have great complexity in their conditions, a question I have been asking is what leads an individual to join the complex chronically ill? What preexisting conditions or causes, what slow accumulation of injuries, can disrupt the natural coherence of the body, limiting its resilience to disease, and why then are select people being subject to the world in ways the majority of people will never experience?

My perspective on health, vitality and chronic illness is not common. It requires a vast amount of desire to comprehend. Only you can make these connections for yourself. If you’re here, I encourage you to do what one of my teachers did and, dig on. I continue to educate myself and look forward to sharing more.

I welcome your comments and questions and I will do my best to honor and meet your curiosity with my own.

I hope to be of service to you on that journey.

Thanks for being here,

Many blessings,

Ramesh