In today’s hectic, technological world, we sometimes underplay the power of instinct. We read, we analyse, we compare, but we also operate on animal instinct.
Instinct is one of the most fascinating reflexes we have. Instinct is natural, innate, primal and it is what guides us before conscious and rational thought. Instinct helps to guide and protect us and instinct is driven by ancient and inherited patterns, not what we learned at school or at college. Where we learn more about instinct, it is because we have been read or been taught to explain instinct with words, but they are only ever an approximation for a process that is inherently animalistic, and beyond perfect understanding.
And that is precisely why we should trust our instinct.
We have instinctively been drawn to silk for thousands of years. Long before modern science was able to explain and analyse the benefits of silk, we have always known it was extraordinary. Its beauty, its tensile strength, its radiance and the way it is so structurally and chemically similar to our own skin.
Silk is a barrier, like our own skin, and shares 90% of the same amino acids. When we put silk on our skin, as our ancestors instinctively knew to, silk lends us its abilities to protect and repair, acting as a regenerative shield.
I trusted my own instincts when I turned to silk for my own rare skin condition. Without the language or understanding or scientific knowledge that I developed over 15 years later, I just knew that the silk I turned to when my skin was red and inflamed and so painful when I was deeply depressed, was helping.
I knew that the silk was helping my skin in the same way that surgeons in Ancient Greece realised that silk was helping to heal the wounds of gladiators they were treating.
Now, modern science and medicine is studying silk, and has documented its extraordinary regenerative qualities. Silk has been used in nerve regeneration, cardiac repair and complex eye surgeries.
Silk is that rare ingredient that is powerful enough to synthesise and regenerate cells when it comes into contact with our skin and yet so compatible with our bodies that it is safe for use inside our vital organs. No other material compares. Our bodies recognise silk.
I trusted my own instinct with silk. Many years later, when I was familiar with scientific research and journals, I wanted to bring an understanding to what my body had intuited, and when I went to the British Library, it was there I unearthed the medical and regenerative powers of silk.
I firmly believe that deep down, even with the distractions of the modern, technological world, even with all the intellectual layering and rational analysis and the clinical proof, we have an affinity with the world around us, and we just know what is good for us.
Our bodies know. We should trust our instinct.
