You may ask, "What has nutrition to do with the mind, or 'bodymind'?" or "What has nutrition to do with 'healing'?" And I may reply, "Could there actually be a separation between what we take in, what we think, and how we feel, physically and otherwise?" I believe not, but lets look at some basic principles of nutrition and health.

         Nutrition is based on the proper functioning of one's capacities to do each of the following eight steps: recognition, acceptance, ingestion, digestion, assimilation, integration, and utilization of needed nutrients, and elimination of any unusable matter from the body/mind system. If anything from the environment is to be used, it must go through this process. I want to say that this -- and the rest of what I have to say in this essay -- applies to whatever level we conceive, including the emotional and intellectual (with stimulus/experience) as well as the physical (with foods, liquids, and gases; light, sound and touch). Nutritional processing is not only therefore continuous, it is multi-dimensionally interdependent. That is, intake on any one or more levels has some degree of effect on the intake and process on all the other levels.
        Furthermore, if the input gets stuck somewhere in the system it becomes a hindrance to body/mind's functioning. Health, here meaning more than just a lack of symptoms, is maintained through taking in only the needed nutrients that can be fully processed on the various levels. Seen in this light then, proper nutrition appears quite a bit more complex than we may be used to seeing it. But any complication(s) are actually dependent upon the individual and the degree to which s/he has strayed and/or been led away from the natural laws of health. These laws are basically very simple, but "civilized" societies have, over time, given priority to other matters, and our intakes have been influenced (read: complicated) by the conditions that have resulted.
        The difficulties with our intake sometimes come when we have to tell the difference between things which we can process easily and those which require unnecessary expenditure of energy. One of the primary sources of these difficulties is our early conditioning and role models. We are not always properly conditioned by parents or others in regard to nutrition on whatever level. Even our taste buds can be misled especially as to the sources of needed nutrients. Those things which do not provide needed nutrients or experience, are addictive, or bring on "expectations," also tend to bring on guilt over the past or anxiety as to the future.

        There are some intakes that require more energy to process. But in many cases, more benefit is derived from them -- at least during some phases of growth or healing. Other times we feel as if we've taken in a problematic substance or experience, when in fact, a less recently ingested item has been causing "stuckness" and is actually being acted upon -- relocated or eliminated -- by the vibrant stimulus of the more recent intake. This is one example of what is called a cleansing or "healing crisis." Let us look at how it may appear on the experience levels: A troublesome memory might be made acceptable or even useful by a new perspective, but the introspection required to accomplish this might be temporarily painful. The discomfort is a result of the new information re-organizing age-old belief patterns established in infancy and childhood. This is one instance where belief patterns can be appropriately restructured to provide a more resilient foundation -- especially if "core" belief patterns are involved.
         Such shifting in our bodymind is similar to causing shifts in a building's foundation, possibly resulting in structural cracks for a time, but our bodymind systems are programmed with the capacity for a certain amount of tangential movement around the blueprint's original design. The basis of that rides on a certain set of parameters or guidelines. This stipulates (if you will) just how much variance from the blueprint can be allowed when and where, and how much has to be "paid back" to the system - before the system is irreparably damaged by how much loss of a given capacity. I refer to any lack of balance in this regard as the "Nutrition Debt." It is paid back, whether by diet, supplements, therapy, prayer/meditation, etc, or by surgery, terminal desease, and/or death.

        In healing "the cause and the core" as well as the effect, clarity and efficiency and transformation is brought about, whether it be in regard to physical matter, an emotional or mental energy, or an attitude that may be held on to for some reason. Some, including myself, would say that the "attachment" on one level is necessarily indicative of holding onto something on all the other levels. In that sense, everything exists to some degree on all levels, however imperceptible to the human senses. Modern physics is revealing and exploring this multi-dimensional ("holographic") existence -- heretofore only spoken of by mystics and yogis -- and is opening up a whole new path regarding what could be called Body-Mind Nutrition.

         Today's path to health seems to be primarily concerned with the "cleansing" of garbage or stuckness or the re-arranging of misplaced data. Hence, "transition diets" and "transpersonal therapies" are devised. (For more on the later, see "Most Recommended Gestalt Psychology Sites (Links)". These allow certain discretions in the earlier stages while implementing essential principles that initiate the aspirant onto the path of quality existence (without suffering). Body-Mind Nutrition does not emphasize life-longevity as its goal, although that may very well be a side-effect along with joy-filled health. Each individual has a different life process or path, and each is a multi-dimensionally integrated and continuously changing being.
       Therefore, our healing processes need be individually devised and revised according to our transition(s), so that we may rediscover what actually is the "natural aging process," and be able to choose to age without internal organ ailments, arthritis, senility and the like. It may take us a few generations for most of society to actually recover this. To do this generally involves a new, "holistic" understanding of the basics -- and the simplicity -- of nutrition and health.

        We are even now publishing articles on the health successes of "Centenarians" (those over 100 years old) in the mainstream media. Many of these folks have lived what appear, at first, as ordinary lives with "normal" diets. Yet the common denominator among these people has been the nature of their individual bodymind elements, the set of attitudes and ideals carried and the path they have followed, consciously or unconsciously. In a sense it has not been so much WHAT they have done, but how they have done what they have done. A Buddhist might call this factor the "intention" behind the action, meaning a cross between one's underlying motivation and feeling and end result desired.

        At first we may want to scoff at nutritional approaches to health and healing since cancer and other traditional terminal deseases have taken some of our role models of naturopathic based nutrition. What many people do not know is that many of our famed authors in nutrition began living their teachings *not* early in their lives, *not* terribly long after they had been living the worst of dietary lifestyles perhaps ever since birth, and only after their parents had *not* given them the strongest of immune systems to begin with. But in spite of that, they discovered through the practices they later taught, that so much more health and vital force was available to them. That they lived as long as they did inspite of the belief systems that they had been brought up with, some revolutionized, but some maybe not, is a testiment to the nutritional discoveries they made and/or published.

        Ideally (and perhaps somewhat impossibly) we would all start out from birth and/or soon after have all of the following factors attributes or capacities:
  * Optimized Immune System for any given situation
  * Optimal Genetic Coding for Systemic Metabolism/Catabolism (can digest and assimilate and/or eliminate efficiently anything we take into our system)
  * Ideal Food Farming and Processing, such that all the nutrients that our systems depend on and grow best with are plentifully available via a regular, natural, and easily palatable food intake; and such that no substances which would cause any type of hindrance to any of our systems would be a part of anything we might ingest.

        Given that such a perfect set of ideals are practically impossible to find in or create for any individual in this day and age, we then have a number of strategies for coping as best we can from any given point along the scale of health, and actually bringing the level of health and vital energy up to the maximum level for that individual. We also know that both this "maximum level," and the rate of improvement toward it, has been undergoing wonderfully impressive changes.

        One of the principles of health is that, like for physics and the laws of energy, "There is no free lunch," or "if you play, you gotta pay " -- the Nutrition Debt. Another is "All things are best taken in moderation, even moderation."
        I will note below some of the basic approaches for raising ones level of health and vital energy. While there are many other alternative and conventional routes to rebalancing the bodymind system(s), for the sake of topic consistancy, the following are limited to nutrition-based approaches and related attitudinal focus considerations. Any one or more may be employed, as appropriate, beginning with the more common of approaches:

  * Individually devised diets for optimal nutrition maintenance, selected from commonly sold foodstuffs, with or w/o Supplementation
  * Individually devised diets for optimal nutrition maintenance, selected from organically grown foods, with or w/o Supplementation
  * Diet Supplementation with special concentrated mixed-vegetable and/or "green foods" products.
  * Diet Supplementation with Herbs
  * Diet Supplementation with Vitamins and Minerals
  * Diet Supplementation with selected Amino-Acids
  * Diet Supplementation with Essential Oils
  * Diet Supplementation with Glandulars
  * Supplementation with blessing (ie: focused acknowledgment, invocation, visualisation, and/or meditation¹) for the food, water, and/or supplements taken in
  * Supplementation with blessing for the organs and systems involved in processing the intake (ie: Stomach, Liver, Gall Bladder, Pancreas, Kidneys, Intestines, etc.)
  * Supplementation with blessing for specific organs/systems considered/known to be challenged

Footnotes

To TOP  of PAGE

A Semi-Technical Treatise on the Storage & Release of Tension: Essay, "Body-Mind Integration in the Personal Growth Process" -- The Basic How's And Why's Of Psycho- Emotional Storage In The Body-Mind (published in Massage Magazine, July-August 1992)

"The Transition Diet" - Steps & principles telling how to transition -gradually & successfully- to a diet that promotes & sustains optimal health for body, mind, AND the planet, even from the standard American diet. Incorporate this approach as slowly or as quickly as you can maintain. (If done too fast, you may find it too uncomfortable, then bounce back to the old ways, so would just be a waste of time). Includes a Food-Combining Chart for optimal digestion and assimilation of nutrients, as well as for proper elimination. Other sections included: "Transition Diet," "Rebuilding Diet," "Three Day Apple Fast And Seven Day Cleanse," "About Cleansing Reactions," and "Efficient Body-Sizing Strategies (for Weight Management)."