Personal Sovereignty & Cannabis | Health
What is personal sovereignty? It is taking full responsibility for what thoughts you think, your actions, what foods and drinks you choose to put in your body and ALL that it entails to be a fully functioning human being living with a strong foundation of who YOU are.
I think of every human being as a singular cell functioning to provide balance to the whole collective Human Body Spirit. The countless cells in our body collectively make up a tissue (muscle, nerve, connective and epithelial) which then make up larger organ body systems including those of respiratory, nervous, digestive, endocrine, circulatory, muscular, reproductive, skeletal, excretory, integumentary/skin, lymphatic and immune. All of these body systems function together so that the human can live in homeostasis- in balance. It all comes down to how healthy each cell is. You can think of yourself as a cell who interacts with other cells (other beings) to produce a highly functioning and balanced community.
With these past two years and dealing with COVID-19 and all the FEAR, the masks, vaccines, boosters, mandates, FEAR, stay 6 feet apart, FEAR and the normalcy of now being asked, “are you vaccinated?”, human beings as a collective have each had to make individual health choices. Are you going to put something into your body because someone else in power is telling you that you have to? Who, then, is in control of your body? Personal sovereignty is when YOU determine what you put in your body. Personal sovereignty means that YOU will investigate, research, intuit and discern for yourself what is best for YOU. This means that you will be responsible for your health choices while others choose what is best for them even if it is different from your choice. If one person’s choice is different from yours, then so be it. Let us not shame the other.
Personal sovereignty means that you do not give your power away to your doctor or health care professional. What does that mean? It means that you can listen to a doctor’s health recommendations but then get another opinion and another two or three and then sit with the information, ponder it, check in with your intuition and then make a decision. As a Naturopathic Physician, I encourage patients to listen and know their bodies. What is good for one person may not be beneficial for another.
Cannabis is one of those plants that has been on the forefront of personal sovereignty. Just until recently, people have been given the permission to legally grow a few cannabis plants. I have seen thousands of patients as a medical marijuana certifying doctor and many people have chosen to use cannabis because the prescription medicines, surgeries and invasive treatments received have not helped, and in some cases, made their health worse. The Veterans Administration (VA) can not recommend cannabis to their patients, yet many veterans benefit from cannabis and exercise their personal sovereignty by getting a MMJ card with a non-VA doctor. As a result, many VA doctors are more accepting of cannabis now because they can see the benefits it has had on treating chronic pain, PTSD, insomnia and balancing the mood of many veterans.
Cannabis for the People.
Personal Sovereignty for the People
Kimberly Landino has been a Naturopathic Physician for over 20 years. She has been recommending Medical Marijuana to patients in Arizona for the last four years. Prior to this, she used the modalities of nutrition and diet, counseling, acupuncture, meditation, yoga, botanical medicine and more in her Naturopathic Family Practice in South Phoenix, Tempe, Flagstaff and in Tuba City, Arizona.