What Doesn't Kill Us

by Scott Carney

After a few years of exploring ways to use the environment to peek into the inner workings of the body, I’ve learned a thing or two about my own limits in the world. I know that every person—even people who have jellyfish spirit animals—hide vast wells of inner strength. The secret to cracking into our inner biology is as easy as leaving our comfort zones and seeking out just enough environmental stress to make us stronger. Exposure to cold helps reconfigure the cardiovascular system and combat autoimmune malfunctions. It is also a pretty darned good method for simply losing weight. These are all things that I’ve seen in myself and in hundreds of other people who have had the will to delve deeply into their own evolutionary physiologies. More profound than that, however, is the intrinsic understanding that humans are not just bodies bounded by the barrier of their skin; we are part of the environment that we inhabit.