FoodBodyMind.com

The cycle

Edible, adj.:  Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.  ~Ambrose Bierce

Obesity as a public health crisis

According to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Human Nutrition, up to 75 percent of the U.S. population will be obese or overweight by 2015 if the trend continues.

Key findings:

• 66% of U.S. s were overweight or obese in 2003-2004.
• Women 20–34 years old had the fastest increase rate of obesity and overweight.
• 80% of black women aged 40 years or over are overweight; 50% are obese.
• Asians have a lower obesity prevalence when compared to other ethnic groups. However, Asians born in the United States are four times more likely to be obese than their foreign-born counterparts.
• Less educated people have a higher prevalence of obesity than their counterparts, with the exception of black women.
• States in the southeast have higher prevalence than states on the West Coast, the Midwest and the Northeast.
• 16% of children and adolescents are overweight and 34% are at risk of becoming overweight in 2003-2004.
• White children and adolescents had the lowest prevalence of overweight and being at risk of overweight compared with their black and Mexican counterparts.

Great veggie restaurant

Had a nice dinner at The Wheel of Life Restaurant, in Irvine (California), just off the 5 and Culver. It’s a gourmet vegan restaurant that has dishes that look like meat (beef, chicken, pork, seafood) but are not. My friend (who didn’t like tofu to begin with) was dubious about the whole thing, but he said it was actually an excellent dinner and was planning to come back. The cuisine is Thai and Chinese. The owner, Victor, claims to be a fourth-generation vegan. He says he’s in his 60’s, but actually looks like he’s in his forties. I have my eye on the Pad Thai, one of these days, after I’m through with my experiment on a strict Six Week Eat To Live program from Dr. Fuhrman. (I’m going on my fifth week currently).

Strength

Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
- Gandhi

Kosas

The concept of kosas or sheaths of being is a key concept in yoga. Mr. B.K.S. Iyengar in his book Light on Life, states: “True health requires not only the effective functioning of the physical exterior of our being, but also the vitality, strength, and sensitivity of the subtle levels within.”

Annamaya kosa (the anatomical body) encompasses four other subtle bodies. Managing the energetic/organic body (pranamaya kosa) will depend on our ability to create alignment and harmony first at the level of the anatomic body, and so forth. Without this basic alignment, no progress can happen. Then integration between the different kosas/levels can occur.

What’s interesting is that chi kung (e.g., through the practice of standing meditation), also targets alignment and energetic development as a goal. Very interesting how two separate body-mind traditions arrive at the same destination in slightly different routes.

Excerpts re. Mind Training

From Tarthang Tulku’s Mastering Successful Work, from the chapter on “Developing Concentration:”

“As the body and mind relax more fully, energy released from emotional patterns and the binding power of inner dialogues becomes available to support concentration and align itself with knowledge. Balanced and made more open through relaxation, awareness can direct both concentration and energy in new ways. Reminding, encouraging, allowing, suggesting, and advising, awareness supports the deepening of concentration into the fullness of contemplation. ” (p.210)

“Mind can promote contemplation at any time, making it a part of daily work and life. Once one thought has been extended through full concentration, other thoughts or sense perceptions can be extended as well. As we improve our understanding of how to exercise awareness, concentration, and energy, contemplation occurs naturally.

“To develop contemplation as we work, we can bring awareness to time, awareness to energy, and awareness to awareness. We can put energy into energy, energy into time, and energy into concentration. We can concentrate on awareness, concentrate on time, and concentrate on concentration. Each day we can choose whatever aspect we find most suitable or consider lacking. Whatever we are doing, at any time, we can continue with this active refinement.

“As we develop sensitive ways to practice, awareness records them in memory, preserving for mind the knowledge they embody. As we perfect our inner qualities, they likewise come together in mind and are preserved in awakened awareness. Awareness becomes so open and sensitive that it registers recognition of experience directly. Unfolding of its own accord, awareness records, carries on, and becomes more perfected, making knowledge available without any special effort to recall or remember. (p. 213)

And finally, on p. 215, we stumble upon “Exercise 69 - Understanding Interactions:”

“As you develop the practice of contemplation, apply it to explore the active interplay of awareness, concentration, and energy. Consider, for example, these possible connections:

Awareness of awareness leads to insight. Concentration on awareness leads to illumination. Energy applied to awareness leads to clarity.”

Welcome

I will be exploring three topics that encompass my concerns as a creative practitioner and student of personal development: food, body, and mind. My interests are the pursuit of nutritional excellence and how we use food as the key source of health and energy; how we approach training the body, as a system, to serve our goals; and lastly how we can use the mind in integrating, improving, and making meaning of our continuing struggle to remain sane and healthy in today’s times.

I would like to approach this blog as a “practice journal” — something that I can share with others, “lifehacks” if you will, about eating and food, training the body and mind. More significantly, it would also focus on the intersection (or relationships) between food and mind, food and body, mind and body. I would argue that the success or failure of our efforts (in our personal goals of health, personal relationships, or our life’s work) depend more on how we manage these fundamental “intersections.”

Creating a healthy relationship with food requires both correct knowledge about nutrition, but more importantly, the ability to manage the emotional “gestalt” that gets in the way of recognizing and responding to true “physiological hunger.” As such, correct eating is really a yogic practice.

Food affects mood. Mood affects food. What comes first? And how do we break the negative dynamics that ultimately lead to disease? How does food affect the body, and what happens to the systems (structurally, physiologically, energetically) when we do not sustain it with proper nutrients, overloading it beyond its capacity to repair and regenerate itself? Lastly, how do we move towards integrating the fracture between our bodies as a vehicle and physical system, and the emotional/mental/spiritual objectives that define the pursuit of “a good and meaningful life?”

How do we get clear about right action? What actions should we do to obtain clarity in our lives?

We are what we eat. Food is a portal to the body-mind. It is both dependent and independent variable. Simultaneously, interdependently, con/sequentially, each one negating or supporting the other. Food. Body. Mind.