Did you see the latest episode of 30 Days?

Did you see last week's episode of 30 Days? If you've never seen the show, it's one to be added to your viewing schedule. Morgan Spurlock, the producer and star of the movie Supersize Me!, has created a unique reality show (no, really, it truly is unique and not cheesy at all!) where he puts different people into different situations for thirty days. Their experiences during those thirty days nearly always become transformative in one way or another. In so doing, it creates opportunities for inspection of one's own values.

In the season premier, a member of the MinuteMen, the militia group in the southern US on the watch for illegal immigrants, moved in with a family of illegal immigrants in California. The Minute Man and his parents had legally emigrated from Cuba when he was a small boy. Watching this I thought there would be no way his perspective would be changed. And, for most of the show, it didn't. Only when he visited the other family members still living in Mexico did he reevaluate his position. Once he saw the extreme poverty this loving, generous, hard working family came to America to escape, you could see his eyes open. Illegal immigration no longer was simply a case of foreigners trying to take over "his" country. The issue, like so many issues, became much more complicated for this man.

Back to alternative health...The latest episode had an overweight stressed-out salesman pursue a variety of different alternative health practices. From meditation to scream therapy to walking over hot coals, this guy was pretty open-minded (this surprised me!) in his experimentation with the world of alternative healing. I was proud of how open he was to healing his body by recognizing the connection between his emotional well-being (or lack thereof) and his physical wellness.

The producer spent a brief couple of minutes talking with a guy who proclaimed that any therapy that hadn't been "proven" by science was a fake and a waste of money. Other than that, the show reflected the different paths to healing quite well. Its focus was on being open to change, being more conscious in the moment, and allowing oneself to feel the emotions generated in different situations without suppressing them. It also discussed the role of energy in health and healing, looking at a couple of examples of young cancer survivors who had turned away from modern medicine (chemotherapy and radiation treatments) in favor of energetic healers to quite positive effect.

I only wish they show had looked at the role of "modern" medicine in creating the cycle of sickness, the treatment of symptoms through suppression and the subsequent creation of the facade of health, only to often experience deeper sickness later. Homeopathy (my favorite alternative!) wasn't even mentioned once!

But Morgan Spurlock can be forgiven... I love the show. If you haven't checked it out, it plays out here in western NC on Wednesdays around 10:00. Watch it and leave me a comment on your thoughts.

(I've left a link to his show through the fx network below. Ugh, I feel a little dirty conducting such base advertising...)
http://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/originals/30days/main.html
Be well!