We live in a world that is physically hungry and spiritually starved. Most people in the Western world are surrounded in a sea of food excess and yet, they remain depleted of nourishment and susceptible to the rising tide of chronic disease. In parallel, a majority of Americans are in search for meaning, connection, and depth in the midst of their transient lives – aiming for success with high bars of expectations, only to fall short and flat in areas of happiness and harmony.
To put it simply, we are out of touch with our bodies and with our spirits. Our society is in crisis. We need new, fresh ways to look at complex problems. Turning to another diet book will only make us more confused. Looking on the outside of us for fulfillment will only create more emptiness.
Quantum physics tells us that thought manifests into matter. Therefore, one potential starting place is to look at the more subtle aspects of our being – what are we thinking, feeling, and sensing and how do these non-physical parts of us translate into our life in the flesh? We are constantly taking in and processing energy on all levels. Of course, the densest form of energy is in the form of matter, like food. But what about the invisible forms of energy that we generate or that we receive in our every day exchanges (e.g., being safe, feeling emotions, encountering stress, speaking and hearing words, receiving insight, feeling connected)? Perhaps those are areas that need to be tended to since they have the possibility to manifest.
In ancient East Indian texts, it is well-documented that various places in the physical body act as “energetic intersections” or “wheels” (in Sanskrit, the word “chakra”) that have the ability to receive, exchange, and transduce subtle energy. These subtle energy centers (“chakras”) receive a spectrum of energy – from the very dense to the very fine – and these varying degrees of energy have come to be associated with metaphors that all human beings have as part of their lives:
• Grounding/protection (root chakra, densest vibration that resonates with the physical realm)
• Feeling/flow (sacral chakra)
• Power/transformation (solar plexus chakra)
• Love/compassion (heart chakra)
• Communication/truth (throat chakra)
• Insight/imagination (third eye chakra)
• Purification/clarification (crown chakra, least dense vibration that resonates with the spiritual realm)
These symbolic aspects of living can serve as magnifying glasses for any food and eating issues. For example,
- Do we eat to feel grounded? Do we overeat to feel protected and safe? (root chakra)
- Instead of feeling, and going with the flow, do we stuff and block our emotional selves with food? (sacral chakra)
- Do we lose our power by making poor eating choices and stress eating? (solar plexus chakra)
- Do we limit our expression of love by confining it to food? (heart chakra)
- Do we refrain from communicating to ourselves and to others what we really need in terms of food in order to be healthy? Do we bypass our highest food choices? (throat chakra)
- Do we ignore our intuition when it comes to food choices? (third eye chakra)
- Do we eat impure foods (e.g., high levels of pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, genetically modified organisms) rather than selecting pure foods and even cleansing the body with fasting? (crown chakra)
Indeed, you can tell much about someone based on what and how they are eating. Here are some examples:
- Simon is a workaholic and often forgets to eat. When he makes time to eat, he eats high-sugar foods to give him energy. (His eating pattern reveals an imbalance in the power center or solar plexus chakra)
- Janet feels tired and spacey most of the time. She forgets to eat or eats too much. She craves proteins and has a mineral deficiency. (Her eating pattern reveals imbalance in the grounding center or root chakra)
- Shannon harbors a lot of sadness and resentment about the breakup of her relationship. She has no interest in preparing meals but finds herself eating lots of prepared foods high in saturated fat (Her eating pattern reveals imbalance in the feeling center or sacral chakra)
How can issues on a deep personal level be addressed with foods and eating? If we are stuck or blocked in a certain area of our lives, specific foods and ways of eating may help provide us with subtle vibrations to shift us back into balance. In the cases listed above –
- Simon would do best on an eating regimen that is high in fiber (bean soups, vegetables, whole grains) and that involves him eating small meals frequently. Fiber assists with evenly distributing energy through the body (in the form of steady blood sugar levels) and eating small meals often will help with keep blood sugar constant. By keeping blood sugar constant with foods, cravings for foods high in sugar subside.
- Janet requires high-protein containing foods to help her feel stable and grounded. Eating foods high in minerals and protein such as nuts and animal products like yogurt and cheese will provide her with the solidity she needs to anchor her to her physical world.
- Shannon would most benefit by increasing her water intake and her ingestion of liquid oils like flaxseed and fish oils as these fluids help her body to flow and release stuck emotions and residual stagnation.
In summary, the vibration of our subtle body can give us clues as to what is imbalanced in the physical body. Similarly, the deficiencies or excesses in the physical body can help us to detect what is really at work in our more subtle energy. We can help to heal our food and eating issues by looking deeper at our subtle energy using associated metaphors, and shifting out of stagnant or imbalanced patterns using the continuum of energy (everything from physical to vibrational) contained in food and the eating experience.
