The Five Huaquas
Health
A Message from ThunderStrikes
The Five Huaquas: |
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First, I wish to talk about the Teacher of Pain. Another way of expressing what Pain teaches is that Pain teaches us respect for the different forms that life can, may, or will take. In your relationship with Pain you have three choices: 1) You can choose to let it teach you the form life can take, in which case you will have long-term pain. If you choose to let it teach you the form life may take, you are gambling short-term or long-term, it is a toss-up. If you always approach pain as a teacher of the forms life will take, that choice connects you to your will and, therefore, puts you in control of the pain. You will pain to take short-term presence in return for long-term neutrality or pleasure.
When I feel a pain in my body, I take careful consideration of it. I deal with it immediately. I will it into a presence. I listen and it talks to me of how to get back to my center. It is the major teacher, along with Care that lets us understand our feelings without emotional content. While pain will always be present, many people make it into a disease, illness, and sickness because of emotional content. Pain comes in when we get upset or frustrated or lose our space. It is the teacher and we do not hear it.
Medical science has found that the majority of people who seek treatment for pain are really experiencing hypochondrial pain. Any time that you are in any form of resistance to the direction and opportunity life is trying to push you towards—you procrastinate, hesitate, distract, etc.—pain is present as a teacher. You don’t live life to the fullest because you place emotional labels on your feelings; you resist the more and the greater in life.
I have reached a point where if I do not have pain somewhere in my body, I am not alive. With my age I cannot work out as much. I must accept that. You must deal with it. If I want to work out in the martial arts, I know exactly what, when, where, and how to move my body to accommodate aging and lack of conditioning and still with maxi-mini take care of energy or experience. I cannot do a four-hour workout being in pain. That is old age pain. I can deal with that, but if I keep resisting or not doing, that will create long-term pain.
Well-trained athletes training every day experience short-term pain because they are increasing their physical prowess and strength, the she thought in the west of the Wheel of Life. When you work with the west she thought, you are working with the Teacher of Pain. The key is to marry it with the Teacher of Care. You do not hyperextend, strain muscles, and so forth.
I must learn to negotiate contracts with Pain and will it into the form I want to experience. Rage as a teacher is present when I use legitimate anger as a source of inspiration and motivation. Otherwise, I will not have the will to do or the willingness to engage. I will go into denial, excuses, and allow pain to have a long-term presence. In the physical I take care, instinctual womb caring, and let my body talk to me from my gut. It tells me what food is palate gratifying for me, the proper exercise I should be doing, what I can do and not do.
Diet and Palate Gratification
This leads me to another topic of vital importance to your health and well-being. The Teacher of Care teaches self-acceptance, which means you must listen to your body. It knows how to move, how to function most efficiently, and what it needs. This includes diet.
Food gurus today come in every size, shape, and flavor, maintaining that their diet is the solution to your weight and health problems. They are constantly coming up with new diets, many of which are actually bad for us. Over time something that five years ago was considered unhealthy now today is promoted s being good for you and vice versa.
You should not listen to anybody tell you what your body needs for energy and health. Your own body is your messenger of the voices of the four Teachers of the Child Substance Shield. That is what all the Elders do. If you talk to ten of them, every one is different. They use the individuality and autonomy she thoughts to perfect their prowess and strength and enhance longevity. They see old age as a much greater enemy than death.
You ask, “How does my body tell me the food it needs? How will I know if I’m really ‘hearing’ it correctly r if I’m reacting to stress or my food addiction or some other stimulation?” How does one get into that mindset?
There is really no “right” or “wrong” food. What matters is will it make you salivate and gratify your palate? And most important, that first bite should be like an orgasm. Exquisite.
Try this test with all your favorite foods. Close your eyes and go completely blank. Put your focus on the back of your jaw where the salivary glands are located. You are going to do “tactile stimulus” visualization. Scan for the food you think you want to eat. Picture yourself taking that first bite. See yourself doing that as clearly and distinctly as possible. You have engaged the sense of sight. Then smell its presence, taste and feel the texture. Does that stimulate the salivary glands in the back of your jaw?
That first bite is a sensual spark. There is no consideration to whether or not it is a “good” food. You are focusing on palate gratifying energy-giving fuel food. If your salivary glands do not respond and you don’t experience that heightened sensual response, that food is not for you. At least not at this time. Perhaps another time.
Each time you feel hungry scan the foods you think you want to eat. Do this test and follow your body’s guidance. Don’t eat a food that doesn’t make you salivate and give you that exquisite sensation.
Food vs. Fuel
Now, another important point. There is a difference between food and fuel food. You notice I referred to fuel food a minute ago. You must learn to pay attention to when your body desires and needs fuel and what kind it is calling for. The only reason you need food for fuel is for your body to function.
Try an experiment. Note the times when you have a little hollow, an empty listless feeling in your stomach. Check that with the same kind of energy you feel when you are aroused and want to make love. You will find they are very close in nature. You may feel this hollow feeling when you are in a period of high productivity or enjoyment, or you are feeling depressed, or you are bored, or you are being creative, and so forth.
That hollow feeling does not necessarily mean you are hungry. It may very well mean you need some other kind of fuel. Pay attention to what you need in your hungers fulfillment at that moment. When your body is communicating it needs true fuel, the feeling is intense and you start feeling weak. Go then to your palate gratification imagery and decide what kind of food fuel will specifically match that palate gratification.
Then eat, but forget everything your parents told you about all the starving children in the world. Instead, slowly eat with appreciation and respect for what the food is giving away to give you life (eating with care). Pay attention to every bite of the food until your salivary glands signal a “dead” bite to you. The food has lost is sacred song or power. It will not taste as good. When you reach the dead bit STOP. That is the last bite you chew and swallow. It doesn’t matter how much you eat—1/4, 1/2, or the whole plate. If your palate gratification test desires a second helping, go for it. Do not lie about it, however. The dead bite says the cup is running over. You must hear and heed it. Eat to the dead bite and stop.
When you finish with the dead bite, you will not feel bloated or overfull. You will feel contentedly full, and you will be able to function and not drop into a low. If you do drop into a low after eating, you have overeaten. A part of that is learning to hear your womb and stomach so that you become consciously aware of the difference between your stomach hungrily growling for true fuel and a habitual eating pattern kicking in.
The War Between Body Image and Self Image
You can even learn to control food addiction by following the steps I just described. Food addiction is a war between body image and self-image. Your body image is everything about your body—color and length of hair, height, weight (underweight/overweight), posture, eyes, size of your nose, size of your breasts, nature of your moon, your morphic type, injury that affects your mobility or appearance, etc.—every detail of the physical reality of your body. Your body image is related to your self-deservement.
Your self-image is how you really, honestly, in total sobriety feel about every detail of your body image. It is your concepts of self and your attitude, and mostly your inner perception of yourself when you look at your body. It is related to your self-acceptance.
Draw a scale with body image on the right side and self-image on the left side. List all the details of your body image down the page on the right. Then on the left, directly opposite each body image detail down the page, list how you feel, etc., about each of those physical details. Where are they in synch and where is there a war going on? Where in your self-image are you not accepting something in your body image? Is this part of your body image something you can change or not?
For example: In your body image you put you are thirty pounds overweight and in your self image opposite you feel ugly and sluggish. There is a war going on here. In your body image you put you have red hair and in your self-image opposite you put you absolutely adore red hair! You are in synch. Your self-image is married to your body image. Your self-deservement and your self-acceptance are in alignment, and this enhances your measure. The greater this alignment is the greater is your self-worth.
There is a whole body of teachings around this. I’ve just given you a very simplistic introduction. But where food addiction is concerned, people try to treat the body image. It will never work! It must be treated from the self-image. When a person is dealing with that phenomenon what do they do? How often during the day are they focusing their thoughts on food? A lot. Am I eating too much or not enough? Food dictates both images. Even during intense times there will be short flashes about food. They may not even readily recognize it.
Your body tells you what to do when it needs actual fuel, and food is only one of many fuels it needs. We call these the “hungers”. Most people when they think of hunger only think of food. Sex can be a much better hunger fulfillment that food as fuel. Make love not fat. Doing anything recreational or really pleasurable will also feed your hunger. If you subconsciously have a negative self-image you will do rote eating. You simply put food in your mouth out of habit. It’s not a stomach grabbing hunger for food. The self-image’s need to feel full is fighting with the body image. When you feel hunger pangs one of the best things to do is drink 8 oz of water.
I encourage you to explore the self-image/body image scale. Teach yourself. Perhaps in another Elder Wisdom we can explore this teaching further and take it to a deeper level.