Eating As A Spiritual Act

Today's blog post deviates from the more recent sexuality and intimacy type postings, moving instead towards another of my main areas of work in this world, juicing and physical wellbeing. I've been an avid juicer for over 20 years now, and during that time I have really felt my love, passion and interest in it evolve and grow into whole new ways of thinking about how, and with what we nourish ourselves.

To me, nourishment is a profound concept that reaches way beyond food, however I also believe that we need an essentially 'clean' diet in order to be able to truly receive nourishment on every level.

When we eat refined, processed and energetically heavy foods laden with (refined) sugars, antibiotics, growth hormones, and other additives that contribute to the creation of dis-ease, and when we eat foods raised and created from a lack of awareness of what health really means and how to attain it, then we are literally digesting the sickness that is inherent in that way of producing and consuming our food. 

In life, we are ever faced with choices; crossroads appear at every junction! We choose which path, often with hesitation, sometimes with clarity and focus, but choose we must. Sometimes in choosing the 'wrong' path and deviating from our true natures, we actually come to learn the most, for how can one know light when one has never experienced darkness? Yet we also need to remember how to return to light and truly clean up our acts. For me, eating is a spiritual declaration! 

This weekend whilst away, someone commented on the food some of us were eating; food free from wheat, sugar, refined process, several mentioned that it looked 'boring' to them, and I know this is true for many, just as it was once true for me. These days, my taste buds have changed and this kind of living food really supports and nourishes me so deeply that it excites me, it thrills me, it expands my potential and it is the other kind of food that to me makes me go "yuk no thanks!"or "that looks boring" - if it doesn't make my cells dance, I'm not partnering up with it! 

It interests me that so often people choosing additive free, compassionate and healthy diets still find themselves forced to justify their/our choices. I guess it comes from the same place and is not so different to when people opt out of mainstream education, finances, housing and health etc…the world wants to know 'why'? And so nowadays I will happily engage in conversations about this. In fact, I love being an ambassador for health by being a model of it rather than a preacher for it! 

On my shamanic training this weekend just gone, we also came to discuss eating meat and the difference between the old ways of hunting and eating, giving thanks and offerings to the spirit of the animal who had given their life for the food of the tribe, using every part of the animal for clothing, food, construction, even weapons for more hunting, against the over packaged mindless consumption of factory farmed meat that is so prevalent in so many of our cultures now. Personally I have chosen to stop eating meat, but I've also chosen to stop eating any food that is processed and refined, chemically treated and created from a place of lack, over spirit and soul. I also accept that everyone is on their own path and has to make up their own mind about what feels good and what doesn't, but how do we distinguish addiction and habit from genuine body need and healthful choice? 

Starting with the above statement, we can begin to truly empower ourselves to wellness. If food is healthcare then we must choose healthy food right, otherwise food simply becomes another layer of sickness? I juice daily now and without it I miss it massively and notice the difference regular juicing makes to my energy levels and all round health. That said, I also drink lots of water, exercise regularly and eat clean too, knowing that any one of these things does not really bring health on its own,  and we all need a helping hand, yes? Don't be put off though! Exercise doesn't mean 5 times a week in the gym, it can be as simple as a 20 minute walk in nature twice a week. Move your body and watch your energy respond. I can be the laziest person ever in some ways, so again I know it can seem an intimidating thought making all of these changes, and yet I've done it in the most accessible and smooth manner I could have imagined and it no longer feels like effort, it feels fun, it feels easy and most importantly, it feels nourishing!

Read Charles Eisenstein on food, watch David Wolfe on super foods and health, look up Jay Kordich on juicing and perhaps get some Eckhart Tolle on mindfulness and you'll be off to a great start.

Live the life you were meant to live with unlimited potential and health! Eat well! Nourish your soul!

Eating The Wild

I read a quote this morning, written by a man named Stephen Buhner. Stephen's quote went as follows:

"One of our greatest fears is to eat the wildness of the world. If we eat the wild, it begins to work inside us, altering us, changing us. Soon, if we eat too much, we will no longer fit the suit that has been made for us. Our hair will begin to grow long and ragged. Our gait and how we hold our body will change. A wild light begins to gleam in our eyes. Our words start to sound strange, non-linear, emotional. Unpractical. Poetic. Once we have tasted this wildness, we begin to hunger for a food long denied us, and the more we eat of it, the more we will awaken"

This quote really struck a chord in me in a week where I have been giving much thought about what it is to literally 'eat our wildness'.

In shamanism, the totem animal who walks with us teaching us how to embrace the unknown, the shadow, the night, the darkness, is panther. Panther treads softly stalking her prey, assessing her terrain. She knows when it is time to act, time to hunt, time to rest, time to be still. Panther is lithe and untamed. He does not question his instinctive nature. Where does your wildness live inside of you? Do you recognise its call or do you literally 'eat your wildness' and refuse to give it a voice through fear?

Now, imagine this - if we begin to eat the wild rather than our wild, we begin to discover what it truly means to be free and to unlock our potential for expansion. Nutritionally, living food contains a light force that many of us don't even recognise as our diets and lifestyles have become so processed and contained, controlled and packaged, and delivered to us as lifeless addictions. We don't even know how to distinguish between an addiction and a real physical need any more. Our wildness has been sold back to us as extreme sport, long holidays (a break from our 'reality'), or romance that doesn't have any relevance to truth.  Our wildness is sleeping the long sleep of an eternal winter; Sleeping Beauty awaiting her kiss.

But what if the kiss we await is the kiss of our own wild nature trying to touch us? What if that wildness was given breath and held in the reverence it surely deserves? What if we stopped self censoring, judging and projecting and instead became fearless warriors of the heart?

I'm summoned to thinking about this in a week of synchronicity, change and finding my way back to centre over and over. I WILL EAT THE WILD! I will eat the fruits of life and my clarion call is to radical honesty.

I desire that my suit no longer fits because guess what…I did not employ the tailor!

I desire that the wild light enters my eyes, that my gait changes and that my words become poetic. Not the poetry born of self indulgence, but that born of truth. Is it so hard to find that?

Why do people squash themselves into small boxes, somehow being less than they know they are? How much courage does it require to start to release the wildness in us? Gabrielle Roth, founder of Five Rhythms was once quoted as saying - "It takes a lot of discipline to be a free spirit" and I couldn't agree more. Self awareness is key, and courage is our main weapon.

I ask for Radical Honesty in all my relations, for all our relations. The Native Americans can be heard referring to something called 'The Children's Fire'. Sitting around the fire in Sacred Circle, any decision thats's made in this Council comes from a place cognisant of the seven generations to come. How does this action affect my children, their children, their children's children? Imagine that for a mind bend! But basically it's about honour and integrity. It's about taking responsibility. For me, truth telling can be a challenge as I'm sure it can for many; not having clarity, not wanting to hurt others, or not yet knowing how I actually feel about something, all of these factors influence to greater or lesser degree my ability to be radically honest, and yet, as long as that's my intention, then I'm doing ok.

No more sleeping beauties. No more to lack of nourishment coming from dead food, dead parts of ourselves. No more unmet hungers that can be fed by truth telling. ONLY truth telling. No more passions locked away. But let it all be done in the name of LOVE. Self love first and foremost for without that, our wildness cannot even recognise itself. And I love you all. Aho!