would you put diesel in your petrol car?
Food energetics is about putting the right fuel into a unique vehicle, your body, and creating a foundation for dis-ease prevention. It even goes one step further and looks at the balance of your physical, mental and emotional constitution, considering the seasons, geographical location as well as the symptoms that you may suffer from. All of this is brought together in the consultation, considered, and then a way of eating, method of preparation, and choices of food to help your body strengthen and repair itself is prescribed. Food helps treat the whole body which then helps in the treatment of the particular illness.
“let food be your medicine and medicine be your food” Hippocrates
in the east ...
Food is one of the eight strands of traditional medicine alongside herbal medicine, acupuncture and bodywork. In the east the most skilled doctor should first understand the pathogenesis of the disease and then treat it with diet, using medicines only when food fails. This nutritional science is the study of vibration and resonance. Each food affects the body/mind in various ways and heats it up or cools it down; creates moisture or dryness; stimulates or sedates; nourishes specific organs or functions; moves up or down, in or out. The focus for food and the individual is to eat appropriate well-harmonised foods, flavours and easily digestible foods for optimal recovery and health. Food should be cooked, moist, and easily digestible. It should boost our energy levels, the production of blood, and our organ integrity and function. TCM has always used whole foods such as marrow, bones, chicken, liver, kidneys, fish, mussels, linseed oil, lotus seed, micro algae, millet, walnuts, sea vegetables, black beans with sea vegetables, bee pollen and royal jelly, ghee, cooked Rehmannia root (Shu Di Huang), peaches and grapes to assist our overall diet whereas in the west, we may take food supplements.
in the west ...
Generally our relationship with food is based less on nutritional needs and more on logistics and emotional needs. We eat to feel good, to distract ourselves, fulfil a craving or to fill a hole, and quite often, in a rush, and thinking about the next move. There is more awareness with the wellness movement and clean eating but on the whole it is not yet instinctive and our first approach to food. A deep appreciation and enjoyment of food can open one’s whole being to receive nourishment on physiological levels whilst enhancing the mental, emotional and spiritual levels as well. This is the essence of food energetics with the treatment of the person as a whole.
in your kitchen ...
Food energetics is considered at each session in relation to your constitution and the condition being addressed. I look forward to introducing this age old philosophy and approach if it is new to you.
‘To be skilled at nurturing one’s nature is to treat disease before it arises.’ Bei Ji Qian Jin Yao Feng (Essential Formulas to Prepare for Emergencies)