Joshua Rosenthal calls it 'primary food'. Primary food is not the food on your plate but ‘nourishment beyond the plate'. What you eat and how you eat is only just a part of wellbeing.
What about the experiences that feed you daily?
Our wellbeing is more than the food label or the food ingredients that make up the meal. Your wellbeing is also dependent on, factors such as:
movement
relationships
having purpose
having meaning
When was the last time, you got out of bed with purpose? When was the last time you felt connected and spiritually nourished? When was the last time you did that walk down the street, avoiding the cracks for the fun of it?
Did you know that two people could eat the same meal and have different nutritional needs met from that meal? .....
State of mind matters
If you enjoy the meal in a ‘loved, parasympathetic’ state of mind, you obtain more nourishment from the meal. How can this be so?
Imagine you have sat down to have a meal and you have just gotten off the phone to your mother. She mentioned how you could do better in your job and move into a house rather than stay living in a small apartment that has no room for her to stay over. This upset you and made you angry. You work hard to pay the bills, make ends meet and you even visit your mother weekly who lives 70 miles away, the travel is not cheap nowadays. As you sit down with your dinner in this frustrated and upset state, your physiology has registered this and has already prepared you for the ‘fight, flight, freeze’. As it does this, your digestive system thinks ‘we have an emergency folks, let’s take a break until the danger has passed’. So as the sympathetic tone is heightened, the stomach acid reduces. After all, why would one be eating when under ‘threat’.
You already do not feel ‘good enough’ but thanks mum for enforcing that belief. You eat your dinner, without tasting it. Your mind is in alert mode, you are thinking a thousand thoughts, the swallowed bites, plop into the stomach, and are met with a slightly higher pH, not enough acidity to digest this meal. The food then passes into the small intestine, but that low acid is not loud enough to get the pancreas to release a good quota of it's goodness. As the food passes further through the gut, it seems to be flowing a bit too fast.
The microbiome is not too happy as it was looking forward to decently ‘prepped-up’ carbs but the phone call messed-up that plan. The microbiome loves fibre, it relies on it, this way it can ensure better blood sugar regulation and prevents the colon cells from becoming cancerous, more importantly this community makes some vital nutrients to support immunity.
You suddenly feel the urge to leave your dinner plate and rush to the loo.
Can you see what a phone call can do?
Can you see how a relationship, a conversation, can impact well being? Imagine living like this 'day in, day out', the body would eventually express these
emotions as dis-ease. If not addressed this dis-ease can manifest into a disease.
The school curriculum teaches about the connection between the 'conversations' in our head and how cells in other parts of the body eavesdrop, no conversation is private anymore!
To WHOLEness!
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