Chakra Foods for Optimum Health. Deanna M. Minich

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      CHAPTER 1

      THE VIBRATION OF FOOD AND THE SPIRIT OF EATING

      We are indeed much more than what we eat, but what we eat can nevertheless help us to be much more than what we are.

      —ADELE DAVIS

      WE ARE “ONIONED” BEINGS

      If you are reading this book, chances are you understand that a human being represents the whole of several compressed layers, similar to those of an onion. Healing can occur by peeling away the layers. When we reach one layer, such as the emotional layer, and make a change, no matter how small or big, it ripples into every other aspect of our being like a droplet of water losing itself into a pond. For seconds afterward, the pond is filled with the rhythmic beauty of concentric circles. The pond has been changed forever because of that single, innocent droplet.

      Knowing that anything we do to ourselves affects our energetic fabric and, in turn, our physical bodies implies that we can choose to focus on any means of healing that attracts us in order to help heal ourselves. Food and nutrition are avenues that some people choose as paths to their physical and spiritual healing. If you are especially drawn to diets and nutrition, it may simply be that food is your conduit of healing—the medium upon which you learn your life lessons, temporarily or for the extent of your Earth journey.

      No matter the path choice, the vehicle will be symbolic in diverse ways. Every path we choose will have intention and be laden with messages if we allow ourselves to receive them. An underlying principle to remember throughout this book, and any book you read on food and eating is that our relationship to food and eating is symbolic of how we approach everything else in our lives. Do you eat convenience foods because you are always on the run? Perhaps you need to look at what you are running from—where does your focus need to be, or what do you need to make time for? Or are you eating alone, secretly, especially if you are feeling emotional? If so, what needs to come out in the open? What needs expressing? Who do you need to surround yourself with?

       Our relationship to food and eating is symbolic of how we approach everything else in our lives.

      Certainly, our relationship to food can open us up to insight about what our lives are like. It has been said that “As within, so without”—our internal environment mirrors our external surroundings. Our restoration to wellness lies in our awareness of what envelops us, how we engage with the world—with food and eating. The impact that food choices can have on our health can be significant, especially due to the sheer quantity of food we eat throughout our lifetimes—estimated to be at 60,000 to 100,000 pounds—and the fact that we need food to exist on this planet.

      In fact, we are given many opportunities to make food selections that benefit the layers of our complex selves. A modest calculation of three meals a day, 365 days a year, for an average life span of seventy-six years would mean that we have nearly 84,000 opportunities to have meaningful, healing interactions with food! There is unleashed potential in every single interface with food: each exchange carries the ability to bring you to a higher state of health, to keep you where you are currently at, or to take you into a state of symptoms or add to the pending avalanche of symptoms culminating in disease. Therefore, I encourage people to ask their bodies before making a food selection as to whether the food(s) will help or hurt them.

      In the grand theater of life, food has the center stage, as it serves our most primal need for survival, our bond with the Earth, and our intimate connection with each other. We link ourselves to all living beings on the planet through the process of eating and being a participant in the food chain. As a result, our incessant interaction with food takes on immense power and can define who we are. It is no wonder that people have strong opinions about how to eat.

      Despite being continually surrounded by food in all forms, ranging from 24-hour grocery stores to deluxe drive-thrus to vending machines, its existence and our innate need for it are ironically ignored. In the whirlwind of busy days, how many of us have thought to ourselves, or expressed to others, that having to eat gets in the way of doing more important things? Some people admit that they simply “forget” to eat. How can we neglect something as crucial for our survival—what message is this sending forth? When we finally do make time to eat, we find ourselves unable to stop due to an unconscious longing for greater satisfaction and union in the midst of our short, sound-bite-laden society and frequent, fleeting social interactions with others. However, with each hurried, unconscious bite, we step further away from merging with everything that food connects us to: ourselves, community, and the Divine. These surface observations indicate that our umbilical relationship with food has been severed, resulting in the fragmentation of the many aspects of ourselves.

       Three meals a day, 365 days a year, for an average life span of seventy-six years would mean that we have nearly 84,000 opportunities to have meaningful, healing interactions with food!

      Rather than experience a deeper level of understanding about the foods our bodies need for growth and maintenance, people in search of a solution fixate on the path of least resistance, or short-term, quick-fix tools. Is it any wonder that the “diet” approach to eating is a roller coaster of disappointment? Actually, the answers we are so earnestly craving lie before us: at the dining room table, at the restaurant, at the grocery store, and in the garden. Within the eating experiences are planted the true root of what needs healing at our innermost core. When we pay attention to what our body requires and view foods as healing entities, we get right to the heart of why we have manifested chronic diseases or eating dysfunctions. By envisioning foods as dancing molecules of energy that have power and potential to uncover our highest СКАЧАТЬ