What does our food choices, intuition and mediation have to do with each other?
As we know, the food we choose to eat is paramount to honoring all the ways our body functions. As we know, we are, after all, a series of nerve impulses, an electrical system, and we know our body turns to the food we choose to eat as our source of “electricity” to run efficiently, to run the way we were designed to function optimally. The food we choose to eat “plugs us in” or “unplugs us” in supporting proper digestion, proper assimilation and elimination. We too know, that if we don’t digest, assimilate and eliminate as we were designed to, other bodily systems will undoubtedly begin to suffer, with disease as the likely outcome because of the inherent way every organ, gland and body part work so synchronistically together.
What many don’t realize though is, our body actually does “talk” to us about what it needs and what it doesn’t need, and the level of communication offered us goes beyond the overt signs like headache, acid-reflux, IBS, etc. Indeed, the more subtle messages, like what our body really loves and what our body really needs prove to be very informative when we finally “get” that our food choices literally fuel us for what we need to optimally function. But how do we know if what we are choosing is indeed what our individual body needs? Can we hear our body “talking” to us?
This is where intuition and meditation become so very important.
Meditation, contemplative time carved into our days to quiet the hundreds of thoughts that run through our minds every minute offers us the opportunity to hone our intuitive nature. Sitting in silence, listening to the birds chirp in the early hours of the day, or the crickets chirping at days end offers us time to settle into our selves, settle into our selves to just “be” beyond the endless “doings” we engage in every day. While so many versed in mediation practice offer us the endless benefits reaped from creating quiet time into our days, I have personally learned that I am in keener on discerning what I need to not only “fuel” my body to be healthy, but what I need to create my days, my weeks, my life in the ways that I “intuitively” know are right for me from by committing to this practice. My intuition, my clear thinking now guides me towards what my body really needs to optimally thrive and function. It moves me to this place where “my” “common sense” takes over and guides me to what I intuitively know is best for my body to function optimally. I mean, really, how else can we find our way to what works best for us individually, with so many diet theories abound? Sure, we can and we do experiment. Sure, we can explore, research and analyze the “buffet” of often very conflicting theories offered to us, but how do we know if this “one seemingly very convicted approach to diet” is right for us bio-chemically as an individual?
Quiet time is “the magic quotient.” Quiet time offers us the opportunity to get back to our breath, get back to ourselves, our truest selves, to just be. In this place, we begin to “hear” what stirs in the background of the noise that fills our lives. We begin to hear if our choices really makes sense to us beyond the socio-cultural conditioning of our environments. We begin to refine, to hone, to fine-tune our relationship to our intuitive understanding of what really works best for us as an individual, beyond the insistence of every theory and everyone around us. We learn to trust our intuition to choose what is right for us, to choose what will empower us to feel and be our most vibrant and healthy selves. It is then that we possess the ability to move beyond the constraints of the body, like illness and disease, to get to what we really want to be doing with our lives!
