Nourishing the Body and Soul

The concept of nourishing body and soul has always been an esoteric idea for me, at least until these last months. Since about April and June of 2006, my dietary needs started shifting. For a couple of days in June, I went Vegan as a part of a cleansing impetus--I say impetus because I had an intuition that I needed to do it. By and large, I've no interest in spurning all meats, although I don't eat much red meat any more. By August, my dietary habits got completely changed because of a trip, a girl, and a whole bunch of spiritual energy, and now more than ever, I'm intensely aware about how my body feels about what it eats and what it wants to eat.

In many respects, I've aligned my physical form (body) a lot closer to my ethereal being (soul). Part of this involved a complete shift in my cholesterol levels and losing fifteen pounts. Really, I started to listen to my body more, and I realized just how much my mind was deciding about what to eat. For instance, why do we eat at noon for lunch? Why not 1pm? Or 2pm? Our minds spend so much time deciding what we do or don't need that our bodies get lost in the mix. Subsequently, you get anorexia and bulemia on the one hand with obesity problems on the other. Wouldn't it be nice just to get your mind out of the way of your body's needs?

A friend of mine recently mentioned that what your body wants shifts every day. Perhaps, this is a no-brainer for most of you, but I've been a creature of habit with my dietary wants in the past. It was usually cereal in the morning, a meat and cheese sandwich at noon, and then a more well-rounded meal at dinner. Fruits, juices, and water were usually thrown in the mix. And it's not that I've thrown out that mentality, but for instance, right now, my body seems to want to eat complex carbohydrates more than other things and at random times of the day. I seem to be eating bran and granola--I also seem to be eating lots of milk and cereal, sometimes just cereal. And I do sense shifts in my body from day to day in what I need to eat. So for me, my dietary needs are a daily adventure much less all the other changes in my physical life (moving to San Francisco and freelancing) that have gone on.

Why do I bring this all up? Because for those of you who read this, I'd like to know what your experiences with your food are. I know. It seems crazy, but spirituality takes you back to square one. I'm right back there again. I'm just figuring out what to eat and how in the world I'm going to make a job situation work out. Essentially, it's a lot of first chakra stuff. I've soared up into the heights of spiritual revelation and experienced amazing senses of union with another soul. Now, I'm working my way back up the ladder. It's not like I've lost anything or that I screwed up; it's simply that things flow in cycles. They ebb and flow. Life expands and contracts. Another wave will be lifting me back up, and I'll be surfing this into new life experiences. I'm sure that it will be amazing; I hope many of you are catching the next wave with me.

But for now, I've got freelance writing to do to keep a career going and perhaps I'll figure out how to make some bran muffins later on. =)