Organic refers to Nature, all around us and within us. Organic means “natural” or coming from nature and being in harmony with nature. It also refers to our internal world of organs and cells. And it also implies things unfolding naturally fitting together synergistically. Spending time in nature is calming and soothing whereas city life tends to be stressful and disturbing.
Modern city life can be quite hectic and frantic. There’s traffic, work pressure, information overload, bad news, pollution, smog and junk food. It’s hard to live in the city and not be affected by the tension and not give in to temptation. Many of us have some or the other personal problem or even an actual personality disorder, and the environment we live in, the foods, substances and drugs we ingest can either help us or harm us. But if we don’t know the difference and how they are affecting our cells, organs and systems then we can’t make informed choices that promote our physical and psychological health.
In the same way that you live within a large city with many inhabitants and are affected by your environment, similarly your cells are living in the collective cities that are your organs, and in the collective planet that is YOU! Your internal environment – all the substances and hormones flowing through your blood and brain – affect your cells and organs (in the same way that toxins and pollutants damage external ecosystems). High levels of anxiety, for example, result in high levels of cortisol, which is known to damage brain cells as well as telomeres (genetic quality control which ensures that DNA is properly copied with no errors) and this can sometimes lead to cancer.
Pharmaceutical drugs like antidepressants and anxiolytics etc., can be very useful especially for people who have serious psychological disorders. But these psycho-active meds have a limited window of effectiveness, after which they can actually become counter-productive or even detrimental. The idea is to use these meds, for a while, to create the space within which to start making real changes in your day to day life that will enable you to naturally sustain the effect/feeling and change the pattern. Mainly we want to replace unhealthy ineffective coping strategies and emotional schemas with better ones, and not become dependent on the meds to do it for us.