The Antidote to a Sick Sickcare System
BE Alink is a certified Bio-Tuning® Practitioner, a recording soundscape artist/composer of brain entrainment music, a life coach, and creator of ceremonial pieces. BE is a paradigm-shifter-inventor, founder, and CEO of The Alinker walking bike and the Author of her memoir ‘Inventing BE’.
When Selma Blair posted a photo of herself on her Alinker in early 2019, our @the_Alinker_world Instagram page exploded. I had to look up who she was, as I am not very familiar with Hollywood stars.
I learned that she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) after years of symptoms and doctors not taking her seriously, something many people deal with when dealing with what I call our “sick care” system: great for when you break a leg or need surgery, but the medical system is not meant to deal with chronic illnesses or make you healthy.
"I got places to go! Sometimes I can’t do it on my own two feet. Sometimes I have to sit down and roll with the punches. I saw this Alinker at my 'ms' doctor’s office and wanted one. I love being able to move at the speed of sound. Totally here for this innovation." – @selmablair
My name is BE Alink, Dutch-born and raised, and a permanent resident of Canada. I am the creator of the Alinker, a three-wheeled, nonmotorized walking bike without pedals. With the comment from my mum in 2011, “Over my dead body will I ever use one of those,” while pointing at electric scooters and rollators, I became aware that mobility devices are designed for a “body with a problem,” but that is not who we 'are'. We 'have' a body with exterior characteristics, but we 'are' whole human beings.
Freedom in the absence of language
I have always been obsessed with language because there was none for what I experienced growing up. I am a woman assigned at birth, and still am a woman, just without a uterus and breasts, and I am always stared at in public washrooms as an intruder. I fall in love with women but don’t feel like I am a lesbian. There is more going on, but I am also not transgender. Get my drift? No segments describe me. Language is powerful, and growing up without it gave me the freedom to invent myself and BE unapologetically me.
Language is powerful
Look at all the hyper language we use to identify ourselves so we can fight for the rights of our little underrepresented group, based on what we 'have': external characteristics, skin colour, the way we move, gender. The segmented language only divides us. When we identify with a minority, we oppress ourselves. The vast majority of us have the experience of being dismissed, only because we live in a conditioned construct, a “consensus reality” with an assumed mainstream, a small minority that enriches itself, and it can do so as long as we behave and consume as we were taught.
But did you ever consent to living in a world where we are consumers of toxic food that makes us sick, then funnelled into a sick care system that needs sick people to make more revenue, all while food industry practices are killing the very environment that we need to survive? With every purchase we make, we buy into that consensus reality and support the system that destroys us. Until we stop. Stop consuming...
Deconstructing language is deconstructing our conditioning. Change is not in what we do, but in who we decide to 'be'. Changing the world is an inside job.
A vehicle for change
We use our company, The Alinker, as a vehicle for change, but it confuses people. People ask, “Why are you talking about food? I thought you were selling bikes.”
Food is related to health; industries are related to environmental damage and rising chronic illnesses; the burning of the Amazon forests is related to the meat industry. We cannot separate our product from how it is produced, from what we eat, and from how that relates to becoming sick. Everything is related, and mobility is not an isolated problem to fix. It needs to be approached in the full context.
Back to the “sick care” system. We think we have a healthcare system as long as we refer to it as such. Until someone questions it. See my TEDx talk.
Once we rename it, we can recognize that we actually do not have a healthcare system; we have a sick care system that is great if you break a leg or need surgery but is no place for chronic illnesses. Medical professionals are not trained to deal with chronic illnesses other than to medicate. Medications often have adverse effects and are designed to manage symptoms, not to make you healthy.
Are you looking forward to becoming dependent on our healthcare system as it is? No one will answer “Yes,” so it is time to build healthcare that supports our wellness.
Health means having access
For us, health has three components: mobility, community, and food. We can talk about these things, but when people have been driven into poverty by the sick care system, they don’t have access to them. The Alinker’s foundation is built on providing 'access' to:
Mobility: A 0% rent-to-own program, staying out of the Medicare circus, and hosting crowdfunding campaigns.
Community: Hosting Zoom seminars, maintaining an active Facebook group with 1,200+ active Alinker users, rallying around campaigns, and showing up for isolated people.
Food: A partnership with Eat Real to Heal’s Nicolette Richer, reversing chronic illnesses while being in community.
The Alinker has been in the market for ten years, and we have done so much, but talking about systemic issues when trying to sell bikes confuses people, so...
Our vision is clear
Mobility and food are medicine. In community, we are powerful and a threat to the systems. We don’t need to tear the systems down. Collectively, we need to stop supporting them; stop consuming the food and the stories we have been conditioned to consume. Choose who we want to be. If we choose to be kind, then our actions need to be congruent with that choice. It’s not about 'what' we do, but 'who' we choose to be.
Read more from BE Alink
BE Alink, Founder & CEO of The Alinker Inventions Ltd.
BE is a thought leader who uses language as an awareness tool to create awareness around our conditioning that made us mass consumers of all that is making us sick and is killing the planet. BE: "Changing the world is an inside job". With her 10 years international work in non-western countries, she brings her unique perspective on our western world. Whether through her invention of the Alinker walking bike or, more recently, the brain-entrainment compositions she created and hosts for groups and online, BE dedicates her time to building communities around the modalities that support the health and life of all of us.
