“Diet is not the key but a significant aid to enhance all aspects of our lives, including the spiritual.” Dr. Gabriel Cousens, Conscious Eating
We don’t think much of food as being a connection to anything but enjoyment and sustenance. The modern way of “fast food” living has broken our connection to the underlying relationship we have or should have with food. Most of us have an unhealthy relationship meaning food was used to either tell us we did good or used to stuff unhappy emotions down deeper.
In Dr. Cousens book, Conscious Eating, we learn a very interesting realization that as we make healthier food choice, moving away from processes, heavy, nutrient deficient foods and start eating more living plant based foods these “uses” for food we once employed begin to dissolve.
Living plant based foods do not allow us to continue in unhealthy behavior patterns. No more stuffing down hurt, shame, resentment, jealousy, rage, or depression. No more numbing ourselves by overloading our digestive system with empty food like stuff creating such a weight our body and second brain (our gut) are too busy processing all that “stuff” that there’s not enough energy left to think or feel.
Many people try a plant based diet and give up quickly when the stuffed repressed emotions start to bubble up. When we are faced with what we’ve been avoiding we quickly run back to the numbing foods and exclaim, “that diet wasn’t for me!” It really is for me…..and you.
To truly heal and be a whole person we need to face the inner demons, to bring light into all those dark places.
It isn’t just about the diet we eat. The diet isn’t the key but it is part of the process of becoming wholly healed. We need to realize that the food (building blocks) that we put into our bodies that rebuild our structure and the years of putting dead nutrient deficient foods into our bodies has rebuilt our bodies into a disease state. When we start to feel this in our bodies by actually doing it we realize that we really are what we eat. We have ignored and numbed ourselves so much that most of the country, dare I say the world, has reached the maximum state of illness, cancer.
When I hear shocking statistics such as, “100 years ago 1 in 8,000 people were diagnosed with cancer and today 1 in 2 men and 1 in 3 women are diagnosed” something is staggeringly wrong! Additionally, cancer is now the number 1 killer of children under 15 years! They are dying of mostly brain tumors and leukemia. Where did we go wrong? What have been the major changes we’ve experienced in our lifestyles over the last 100 years?
What are the common factors that are leading to this enormous shift to human health?
I don’t know about you but with information like that I have to know! I too was on a path of massive ill health that I know would have lead me to cancer if I hadn’t gotten sick of the way I was being treated by Western doctors. I’m not judging them. I know they are doing what they are trained to do. I am concerned that there has not been a larger number of them shifting their practices to natural forms of healthcare to overcome the tide of massive ill health.
There are many who are and I am blessed to know some of them. They have helped me turn my health around along with a plant based diet, moderate exercise and educating myself as to the way a human should be treating their bodies. We are nature after all. We are animals with a frontal cortex but we are using it to exploit pleasure and each other into slavery and illness instead of using it to create beauty and unity with all Earthlings.
I encourage anyone interested in bettering their health to take it step-by-step and start reading Dr. Cousens’ Conscious Eating book. It is truly fabulous! If you need any help I am always here for you. I have been through the gamet of health challenges, diets and imbalanced lifestyle habits. I can help you find what would work for you best. No one thing is right for everyone.
Here is a questionnaire Dr. Cousens has at the end of chapter one to get you thinking and more conscious about how you are using food:
Blackboard Self-Reflection
Present Eating Habits I Want To Change
Daily Weekly
⏭ ⏭ Overeating
⏭ ⏭ Red meat: hamburger, steak, ribs, roast
⏭ ⏭ Pork: chops, ham, bacon, sausage
⏭ ⏭ Poultry: turkey, chicken
⏭ ⏭ Fish: fresh, frozen, canned
⏭ ⏭ Fried/fatty foods: potatoes, flesh foods (meats)
⏭ ⏭ Junk foods: potato chips, candy, soda
⏭ ⏭ Fast foods: McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken
⏭ ⏭ Dairy products: cheese, milk, yogurt
One last thought I will leave you with for now from Dr. Cousens book, chapter 2:
“To successfully make the appropriate dietary adjustments we must be free enough psychologically to distinguish between healthy intuition (these subtle, internal feedback systems of when, where, how much, and what) and the drives of our habitual eating patterns, peer pressure, unconscious psychological needs, food transference, and cultural and personal life patterns. The key to this approach lies in identifying non functional food patterns and being able to let them go if they are detracting from our [spiritual, physical, emotional and mental] well-being. In this process, we need to ask questions of ourselves, such as:
- Am I really hungry now?
- Am I eating too rapidly and overriding the sensation of fullness?
- Am I responding to other needs?
- What am I trying to say by this food choice?
- Are there alternative foods for filling this present desire to eat?
- Are there alternative activities for filling this present desire to eat?
With deep love and desire for all to know their unique truth,
Andrea Lambert
Health Educator
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