Childbearing & Mothering
Define Nourishment
by LadyBarbara
Defining nourishment as taking in anything
that causes you to THRIVE is a very GOOD place to start. I
highly recommend getting your paws on a really ripe pear.
The way I see it, NOURISHMENT is more about
the ‘taking in’ than it is about the ‘substance’.
NUTRITION is a word that makes my face do strange things just
in the saying of it, and brings up immediate notions of milligrams
of vitamins.
If NOURISHMENT is about the ‘taking in’,
then it has to be about our SENSES, not merely about our digestion.
It’s as much about what we get on our faces and dig
our fingers into as it is about what actually goes into our
mouths.
I’ve never been a fan of capsules for
much of anything, which has made working at a few health food
stores a little dicey. Grinding a perfectly good herb into
DUST, locking it in a capsule and tossing that down my gullet
without tasting, or smelling or having any sense of what I’m
taking, never felt quite right to me. Having this tiny pile
o’ dust being released SOMEwhere in my digestive tract
just seemed confusing both to the dust in question and the
digestive tract trying to figure out what to DO with it. These
were my ‘gut’ feelings, based on very little.
Recently, Susun put forth a very good explanation
of all this, somewhat in answer to questions as to why herbs
that have been safe for thousands of years, are now getting
all this ‘bad press’ for causing problems. It’s
not the herb’s fault, it’s the way they’re
being taken. Capsules leave out important parts of the digestive
process. The taste, smell and feel of FOOD sends messages
to parts of our digestion further down the line. Herbs were
meant to be used by our bodies as FOOD, even if they are used
medicinally. Capsules take them way too close to the bloodstream
without full digestion and so, turn them into drugs.
But we’re still putting things into our MOUTHS here.
NOURISHMENT is so much more than that. If capsule-swallowing
constitutes non-nourishment, the next step up is M.F.S.: Mindless
Face-Stuffing. Ever been eating while you’re doing something
else and looked down to see the food in question is gone and
you don’t even remember eating it?
THAT is M.F.S..
Did your body still break whatever it was you
just ate (as you start searching through the crumbs for clues)
into usable ‘nutrition’? Not completely. Those
sensory ‘take-ins’ actually send chemical messages
to places like your liver to, as Susun says, get out the chemistry
kit. Your liver really HATES that little post-it note that
says ‘Unknown Foodstuff’……were you
just NOURISHED by that little M.F.S. episode? Not hardly.
So. If this is all true, guess what, we can
flip it all over. If you can bypass the actual NOURISHMENT
of a possibly nourishing food, you truly can NOURISH yourself
with absolutely anything that feeds your senses. And I don’t
mean just PLEASURE yourself, I really do mean NOURISH….as
in “Cause To THRIVE”.
Ah, our senses….taste, touch, smell,
hearing and sight……how do we ‘feed’
THIS crowd? Best we ask my Grandkid, Jicaiya up there in the
photo. He’s GOT it. Everything goes into his mouth so
he knows how it tastes and FEELS. He looks at things with
his FINGERS. He’s learning to talk by mimicking the
sounds he hears. We can get back into much of that without
NECESSARILY needing to smear pear all over our faces (but
don’t discount that ALL together). We just need to tune
our AWARENESS.
So, while you’re busy being a grownup,
just ‘tune in’ to one of your senses….let’s
say sight, and give a little thought as to what FEEDS that
sense….color, texture, shapes….beautiful. The
easiest one to go for is color. Right where you are, look
around you. My calendar-holder is bright red. Just ‘take
in’ red. Don’t TALK to yourself (we did that last
month) just TAKE IT IN. Absorb. Something just STIRRED in
a lot of places. Keep going. Now I’ve got a shiny, shimmery
green on a book cover. I can FEAST on shiny, shimmery GREEN.
Feel it? It even works while you’re driving, suddenly
you’re so aware of the different colors of the other
cars. Or the TEXTURES around you, or the shapes of buildings
and trees. What makes it nourishing and not just some New
Age Whacko Awareness Exercise is this whole ‘taking
it in’ thing. Just let it IN. THAT is nourishing, to
every part of you, including your emotions and aura and nerve
cells and brain and heart and you GET the picture!
Want a better night’s sleep? FEEL THE
BED. Feel your body supported by the mattress, cradled by
the pillow, softly covered by the covers. Wow. Who knew. Think
about the FeastFest a SHOWER could be, or being in the garden
or yeah, a really GOOD meal, or a SINGLE potato chip.
How many different sounds can you hear right
this second? Don’t JUDGE, just take them in. FEED on
the sounds. This all gets to be GREAT fun….and y’know
what? FUN is incredibly nourishing. What say we go out and
PLAY? ~~~~~~ LadyB
I am an herbalist, hypnotherapist, and belly
dance teacher
with a rowdy reverence for life's dancing.