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The Cost of Mind/Body Nutrition
(This article looks at how to improve the health of your
body-mind without monetary expense)
by Carole Morton
Nutrition is commonly thought of as coming from the food we eat (and nowadays supplements) that give our bodies the biochemicals it needs to function. I would like to broaden the definition of nutrition to include all energetic substances that the body/mind requires for health. Not just the food we eat, but the mental/emotional/spiritual energies that keep our body/mind functioning (i.e. stress free and flowing).
As I'm sure many of you know, stress causes the depletion of the many nutrients needed to keep our body/mind functioning properly. This depletion leads to and causes disease (or non-ease). When the body/mind is malnourished its functioning becomes imbalanced and dis-ease results. So, if we “stress out” worrying about forgetting to take our vitamins we may very well be working against our own health.
Nutrition, therefore, is anything that feeds our body/mind in a way that creates flow, movement, growth and positive change. Our minds must stay flexible, open to new ideas, allowing for an expanding consciousness. Our emotions must not be blocked, depressed/pent up or stuck in an unending cycle of negative expression (i.e. always angry at things, always anxious). These blocks are stressful and will eventually affect our mental, emotional and physical health. Our bodies cannot be asked to function without the correct amount and formula of fuel. This would be similar to expecting your car to function without the proper chemicals – though the important difference is that a car would just stop running. Our stressed bodies will keep running and wear down and die slowly, speeding up disease and shortening our lives.
Each individual is just that, an individual. Each nutritional (energetic) formula must be tailored to that individual. If a person is basically healthy, then his/her eating, thinking and feeling is properly maintaining that person’s flow of life energy. If the person is challenged with an illness, then proper nutritional needs have not been met. Even if two people are challenged with the same illness, their nutritional needs may be very different.
The body and the mind have been viewed as separate for the past few hundred years. As we study the connection between body and mind we are beginning to see the wisdom that ancient cultures (like the Greeks and the Hawaiian Hunas) already knew. We cannot treat the body without treating the mind and vice versa. Candace Pert, a renowned biochemist, in her book, “Molecules of Emotion” shows us scientifically that what we think and feel creates biochemical reactions in the body that affect our well-being, our ease or stress, disease or distress.
Much of this research has not, as yet, reached the population at large. We, as a society, are still thinking and eating in an unexpanded, unconscious and deficient way. For example, we know that stress exacerbates illness and we know that too much processed sugar stresses our bodies – yet most people do not take heed. Does knowing that sugar stresses the body make a difference in people’s choices to eat sugar? Are we a society of people burdened with a physiological addiction to sugar or are we suffering from such low self-esteem that we don’t care enough about ourselves to take care of our bodies? There is no doubt we are a society of people experiencing an epidemic of stress. We know this because of the rise in mental and physical illnesses such as depression, anxiety, diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.
People who are threatened with losing their lives or having it shortened due to disease tend to listen; their diagnosis being their wake-up call. Until such time, most people are lulled into accepting a less conscious, less vital way of life. Health, in our society, is a waning reality.
If you create stress in your life by ingesting non-nutritive foods or by denying unresolved anger and fear or both, you can be assured your body/mind’s defenses and self-healing capabilities will begin to malfunction. Without taking some specific actions to change the behaviors that cause you stress you are weakening your body and will eventually succumb to disease. The good news is that both the mind and body have an amazing ability to heal. If you wait for a disease to be your signal to stop, then you’ve most probably cut some years off of your life.
There is a saying that goes, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Of course, in a society that keeps most of us living paycheck to paycheck, stress is unavoidable. But it doesn’t cost anything to meditate daily, take a walk, reduce sugar and white flour, eat more vegetables and less processed foods, count your blessings, and see the good within and around you. It doesn’t cost anything to begin a kind, understanding and forgiving conversation with your Self, and with others, as well. All of these things create nurturing energies that keep your body/mind healthy. All of these things, and more, are yours for the taking, free of cost. #
Entering Your Own Heart
(This article is about moving beyond pain into peace)
by Carole Morton
She spent most of her days rocking and crying on her bed, alone in her room. One day she just got up, climbed out the window, slid her small body to the very edge of the ledge (five stories above the ground), and tried to find the courage to let go. It wasn’t the thoughts in her head as much as the feelings in her body that drew her to the window. The rocking would ease it some, but on this day, for whatever reason, it wasn’t enough. She had one hand raised behind her head, clinging to the bottom of the open window, while the other hand pushed down on the red brick, in an attempt to eject herself over the edge. She was me… and I was 10.
I did not know how to ease my pain at age 10, and sought peace the only way I could imagine. Luckily, I couldn’t go through with it – and though life was very difficult I managed to stay alive until I could find a better way to ease my pain. Sometimes it seems to take profound pain to bring us to profound peace. Even though my search took decades, I did find the inner wisdom that enables me to have a peaceful, fulfilled life. If you aspire to peace, it is within your reach, as well, because it is within you.
No matter how alike or different we may seem, we all have the same core needs and can all achieve a fulfillment of those needs. My life perspective is what I would call “psycho-spiritual.” It’s an understanding of the human experience being connected and whole, with no separation between mind/body/spirit/other. My desire is that my words spark in you a great love and appreciation for your self. I want to put into words the complexity of what I know, and organize it in such a way that the miracle of who we each are becomes evident.
Until I was 34 I defined myself as an atheist because I simply would not believe in a God that allowed such misery – my own and all that I saw in the world. It was in a very slow process that I became aware that there was something that kept me going, something that seemed to value my life. What I have to share is not intended to lead you down any religious road, or to any organized group. If I had to say where it would lead you, it is to the very center of your heart – where you are connected to everyone and everything, and where peace and joy reside.
No doubt, ten was a profound year for me. Despite my urge to find peace through the only way I could think of at that young age, I also seemed to have a vision of what I would do when I grew up. I remember it very clearly. I would “see” myself speaking to groups of people and each person would come away from listening to me loving themselves more. Being a child who was severely belittled, it’s not difficult to understand that I was not learning self-love or self-respect. I needed to love, or at least like myself, but due to having a mother with extremely low self-esteem and a horribly abusive father, I only heard words that made me distrust, dislike and even hate myself. I felt like I didn’t deserve better. Yet, even at that young age I could see the bigger picture. I knew that if my mother loved herself more, if the President of the United States loved himself more, if the “bad guys” in the movies loved themselves more, the world would right itself and the crazy abuses would stop. It seems my life has been about finding that internal loving and supportive voice for myself and to help others find it for themselves.
Entering our own heart is the way we consciously connect with peace and joy. It spreads from within to without, creating a better world for our selves, our children, our families, our friends, our co-workers and strangers. Joy and peace are truly already within us and we are entitled to it. We are also entitled to feel the confidence needed to move towards our dreams. Each of us has the right to know this, and to love ourselves unconditionally. It took me a long time to realize this, and the sooner it is realized the sooner we can claim the joy and peace within us. I know, first-hand, the strength of the human spirit to help us heal and overcome terror. It is in touching your pain that you will gain the gifts that are within you.
The path to entering your own heart and connecting with the peace and joy inside is to learn how to touch and overcome emotional pain. Emotional pain is caused by mistaken beliefs (both conscious and unconscious). These beliefs are NOT the truth, no matter what evidence you believe you have for them. Think of your emotional pain as residing in a room. This room holds all of the mistaken beliefs that need correcting. and you must walk through it to get to the place where peace and joy reside. This journey, to the core of your being, will lead you to both your pain and your power, your fear and your joyful heart.
Before I was old enough to resolve the internal beliefs that caused my pain there was no true peace to be had. What was normal, familiar to me, was numbness. A seemingly painless place, numbness kept all the suffering away, but it also prevented me from feeling joy, as well. Of course, it’s said, “You don’t miss what you’ve never had.” and I didn’t know there was any joy for me to experience.
When we don’t have the tools to face our pain we numb out. There are many ways to do so other than my way, which was anorexia. Many use drugs, alcohol, other eating disorders or excessive work, sex or exercise. Some people numb their pain with anger and act it out through stealing, cheating, lying, fighting or becoming an abuser. Others numb themselves by creating other pain and become abused, accident-prone, or victimized repeatedly in other ways.
Coming out of numbness took a while for me, a slow and steady exploration of painful memories and feelings. First I needed to overcome my anger about having to face my past and accept that it just wasn’t going to go away. I also needed to get through the anger and sadness about being mistreated and the shame and self-blame from thinking I was less than others were because I had been mistreated. When I completed the task of feeling and dealing with the pain there was still one last challenge, to allow myself to feel these foreign, uncomfortable feelings called peace and joy.
In U.S. culture there are what I call culturally predominant feelings – happy/sad, fear/excitement, anger/ disappointment. The feeling of peace is, well… lost. Many people view peace as the lack of feeling uncomfortable emotions; i.e. “If I stuff down these uncomfortable feelings I can finally feel some peace”. Peace is a feeling in and of itself. Until I could resolve my self-hatred, shame, and fear I knew of no other way to stop the pain except to push it away. Though I buried it, it still upstaged the feeling of peace inside of me. I thought peace was something one attained when the external reality of life was better, i.e. more financially secure, being in a good relationship, having nice things. But I now know that peace is already inside of every one of us, waiting for us to be able to choose to connect with it.
Emotional pain is caused by the mistaken belief that you are not good or good enough, that this will be found out (by others) and that you will be left alone, disconnected and without love. These fears lie beneath every experience of pain, and influence all of our life choices. All of your “wrong” choices were motivated by self-protective fears. Though you have them, you did not cause them. Yet, you are responsible for correcting them. Without correction, these underlying beliefs will continue to hurt you and others. The process is a bit like throwing up. There’s an ache, then pain, in your tummy – you do what it takes to purge (which feels awful), but once it’s out – you are much more relaxed and happy. No matter how frightening the pain is, or how “bad” your behavior was, you deserve to understand the fears influencing your actions and connect with the innocent being trying to survive. Intellectually it’s easy to say, “I should have known better”, or “I should be past this”. Find the being inside of you who didn’t know better, who isn’t past this, and with loving compassion see their innocence – for it will be in that moment that you will gain the greatest strength of all – self-love. Peace and joy will follow.
Enter your own heart, embrace all of your feelings, recognize that all of your pain is a signal for the need to heal and uncover the mistaken beliefs causing that pain. Use the services of a compassionate counselor or therapist to help you get to the deeper places within you until you can see, clearly, that all of your defense mechanisms have been motivated by love. See that love holds you the way you believe you need to be held – maybe armored, swaddled, or caged. Enter your own heart with compassion and correct the mistaken thoughts that have created the need for the armor, the cage. When the inside of your heart and the beliefs in your head are no longer in conflict, health and peace will not only be yours, it will help heal the world, as well. #
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