I’m talking about rocks as an analogy to our body and health as opposed to a pie.

Not a real pie of course, but a circle “cut” into eight slices, each representing an aspect of our health. For instance: water, fresh air, laughter, love/relationships, structure, meaningful work, nourishing food, sunshine, etc.

For years I used to draw this pie to give my clients a visual to understand what we require for health. When we focus on one, say diet for instance, while ignoring the others, wellness will elude us. We need to be supporting all aspects of our health/self, to fully be well and happy. And lets face it, some aspects are easier then others to commit to on a consistent basis.

Around the time someone pointed out that a pie was an odd analogy for me to use since so much of my practice was about nutrition, I came across a book by Lissa Rankin, MD talking about the whole health cairn.

And there it was…the pie was out and the cairn was in as a model or visual for my clients and myself.

What really resonated with me, is that I’d been collecting rocks my whole life. Carrying, touching, saving, moving…stacking….you may have noticed that there are rocks in my office and in my waiting room, pictures of rocks on my website, paperwork and cards. This is no accident but a reminder, especially when we look at a cairn (stack of rocks), that each aspect of our health is dependent on another aspect….everything is connected.

If we remove or change one rock from our cairn, the integrity of the whole structure changes depending on its relationship to the others. Same with our body, everything is interrelated.

Very osteopathic to say the least.

Now of course, pie taste good…but if you have a piece, there’s still more pie and it doesn’t affect the rest of the pie.

See why rocks are better???