We are a lot more like trees than common belief would admit. We share an energetic root system with our fellow beings. We take in nourishment from the sun and water and air and earth around us, which we use to build new tissue, fuel our projects, create new life. Then, when we have used what we can, we return what we don’t need to mulch the earth.
When I ask my clients about what nourishes them, they invariably start talking about their literal nutrition: what foods they put in their mouths. And because of the type of clients I have tended to attract, many of them are following a diet that is based on the latest scientific information about what inputs they should have in order to be healthy.
This obsession with inputs in our culture begs the question of what happens to the food when it enters your body or tries to leave again. And it begs the question of whether what you, specifically and individually, need in order to be truly nourished physically, emotionally, and energetically is something scientists can determine and prescribe.
Angie’s parents were famous health food advocates. So you can imagine how embarrassing it was for her to have to seek support when her digestive system was in an uproar. She was not able to digest any of the foods she knew she should eat. Eden Energy Medicine includes techniques for energy testing foods, asking the body which ones it can handle. At the request of her practitioner, Angie brought in a large selection of foods to energy test. At the end of the session, it turned out that the only two foods Angie’s body would accept at that time were full-fat premium ice cream and bacon!
Angie was horrified that her body told her to eat no-no’s. But she was desperate, so she agreed to go on a bacon and ice cream diet for the next week and see what would happen. Over that week, her symptoms receded. And after two weeks, her digestion was back in gear, willing and able to digest pretty much anything — as long as she practiced attuned eating and listened to what her body craved and signaled it needed.
When I told this story in a recent class, a number of the students promptly put themselves on a bacon and ice cream diet, though a few attuned to their bodies to figure out their body’s specific desires. Many of us get caught in the dietary craziness of our culture, trying to control our inputs rather than seeing food shopping, choosing from bounty, cooking, eating, and self-feeding as part of a larger pattern of nourishment!
Years ago, I edited a publication about malnourishment in young children. There were a number of studies looking at the effects of food inputs and types of feeding and care. The studies showed that the best nourishment was achieved with a combination of feeding plus care. In other words, infants thrive best when they are fed with both nutritious food and love.
This is true of grown-ups as well. We are not just chemical-processing machines. We are in a dynamic exchange with our environment — physically with mother earth, but also energetically with the symphony of life-forms that inhabit this dimension (and beyond). So nourishment is more than a diet, a set of foods. It is everything that you:
- take into your body, mind, and perceptions
- metabolize or process so your body, mind, and spirit can use it
- distribute to the parts of yourself that need it
- use to fuel and support the workings of your body, mind, and spirit
- release or store as appropriate when there is excess or unneeded portions
When you eat a meal, you are eating more than the chemical makeup of the foods on your plate. You are eating the energy of care (or of distraction, deprivation, judgment, or perfectionism). You are eating the atmosphere of nourishment (or desperation or self-criticism or other people’s preoccupations).
And if you are then on to your next activity, perhaps the food is just going in one end and coming out the other, without being truly received, appreciated for the gift it is, metabolized, distributed to where it is needed in your body, made available to support your body with the building resources it could supply, and released comfortably and easily when it is not useful.
Babies thrive when we feed them more than formula or breast milk: when they get loved, held, supported, and spoken or sung to as part of the experience of receiving their nutrients. What do you do to love, hold, support, and sing to yourself in providing nourishment for the use of your body, mind, and spirit?
Copyright ©2022 by Ellen Meredith. Excerpted from the book from Your Body Will Show You the Way: Energy Medicine for Personal and Global Change. Printed with permission from New World Library — www.newworldlibrary.com.
