Expand & Contract like your heart!

 

 I just came back from Sicily, where I spent a week in heaven, in a land where everything is an offering and an adding on. People are always ready to offer you more, to add more to your plate, to add more to time in the day…there is a sense of peace, of timelessness, of stillness. The air is brisk, the feeling is like everything around me is honey…from the sweet smell of it, to the thick consistency, the stickiness, the adaptability, the flowness…when I think of my five days in Sicily I think of watching honey slowly flow off of a spoon, slow, steady, sweet smelling, thick…even.

This morning I got up at 5.30am, jet lagged and I started reading "Food Energetics" by Steve Gagne'. Amongst other things he was talking about the properties of foods: constrictive or expanding. I had to put down the book. While I was in Sicily my diet had to adapt to their tastes: sweet, thick, rich, oily, spicy, hot, cooked, heavy. Their diet is expansive. All very fresh as the ingredients come from the ground but very heavy to digest, once cooked Sicilian style :).
I noticed how my body started needing things I usually try to avoid, or that I no longer crave since I organize my meals. I all the sudden had to have a coffee after my meals, I missed my lemon and my tea, but I couldn't bother thinking of drinking a warm cup of water with lemon after I digested those heavy foods. The reaction in my belly would not have manifested in a very pretty way…hehehe

Half way through the week my body was desperately craving  real pungent foods that usually make up my daily meals: Lemon, ginger, cayenne pepper, greens, non sweet, raw…
It's a good balance of constrictive and expansive foods. The constrictive being the more pungent and the expansive the spices.

The reason I'm writing this is because Sicily to me was very important, I met my husband's family, I was thrown out of my routine, into a place unknown to me, to meet a lot of people important to the person I love. I felt exited, scared of the unknown. Reading Steve's book this morning I realized why I was craving my constrictive foods…this is what he says..
"A common reaction is to choose constrictive foods, in an effort to 'pull yourself together', when you feel the situation is 'coming apart'….Emotion from the latin 'emovere', means to move out, stir up, agitate. The 'e' in emotion is an out motion or moving outward, an unwinding centrifugal motion, a motion away from the point of center"
I had to put the book down; this is exactly what I was experiencing in the mist of excitement, joy, love, and fear of the unknown…was his family going to like me? was I going to be able to adapt to the situation? was I going to be loved, accepted, liked? was I going to be able to practice? would I like them? their foods? their habits?...

Yes it all turned out perfectly well, I've never been happier but the whole situation created this unsettling sensation in my belly, and what my belly knows is constrictive grounding foods, so that's what it looked for to feel 'put together'.

take a moment today and see what routine, what choice of foods you make to balance you, to ground you…and just know that reactive food choices not only support the present emotion, they also prepare the psyche for more reactions that will continue to negate your life. So open up to life as It comes and be aware of your choices!

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