The food you eat can cause nutritional stress
“You are what you eat” is the old cliché you’re no doubt familiar with, but have you ever realized how profound this idea is and applied it to your life? As a culture, we tend to generally accept that some foods are good for us and others are bad, but beyond this level of understanding, there is no deeper meaning behind the way we eat. We eat out of habit and not on purpose. We eat without consciously thinking about what this food does in our body, apart from the temporary taste sensation in the mouth. And all because we have become so disconnected from the natural world and where our food comes from.
We have somehow reached a point in the human experience where we no longer intuitively know what is good for us to eat. Let that sink in for a moment. How come we are the only species on Earth that has this problem? There is not a single animal in its natural environment that is overweight or has a chronic disease as a result of its diet. They just know what to eat. They are in touch with the innate intelligence that guides their food choices, and as a result they thrive. If this alone doesn’t demonstrate how spiritually disconnected we have become, then I don’t know what will.
So how does this all relate to our meditation practice? The answer is simple. We don’t eat real food anymore. The problem we face now is an abundance of chemically loaded products masquerading as food, and a system that makes it difficult to obtain good quality plant-based foods, which are what we need most. We eat ‘food-like products’ that our biology does not recognize, resulting in a state of physiological stress that keeps us trapped in the primal aspects of our physical body and unable to transcend into that infinite silence of meditation.
“If we fail to provide our beloved nervous system with the essential nutrients it needs to function optimally and remain calm, we can become stuck in the primal, reactive way of life, unable to transcend to higher levels of conscience.”
To truly understand the role of nutrition in our ability to achieve deep meditation, we must first understand what is happening in the brain and nervous system; after all, it is our interface with the world around us.
Our brains are brilliant, sophisticated, and complex organs, but for consciousness/spirituality purposes I’m going to focus on three parts of the brain that determine how we live, how we interact with the world, and how far up the ladder of consciousness we go. manage to climb.
The Neocortex
This part of the brain is programmed to experience unconditional love, see the beauty of the world and allow us to discover who we really are and our place in the universe. It houses the pineal gland that secretes DMT, the spirit molecule that essentially allows us to feel connected to all living things.
However, the Neocortex can be a difficult place to reach in our modern, fast-paced lives fueled by toxic convenience foods. If we don’t take the time to give the neocortex the nutrients it needs, we are operating from the more primary parts of the brain: the reptilian brain and the limbic brain.
The reptilian brain
The reptilian brain (also called the hindbrain) is the most primary part of our brain. It is 100% instinctive and interested in only one thing: SURVIVAL. It regulates our most crucial autonomic functions such as breathing, body temperature, heart rate and the fight/flight response. The reptilian brain is often referred to as a cold-blooded snake, completely emotionless and focused only on itself. If we have too much control over this part of the brain, we may live thoughtlessly, be self-centered, avoid change, and cling to past experiences that we associate with safety and survival.
The limbic brain
Instinct and emotion come together in the limbic brain. It is also a primitive part of the brain. It analyzes environmental signals and maps the experience to one of our 4 fundamental programs, the 4 F’s: Fear, Feeding, Fighting and Fornication. The limbic brain becomes more active when we rely on processed grains and sugar. It is this part of the brain where normal life and obsessions with sex, food and mind-numbing things like alcohol and television take place. It is also where patterns of emotional withdrawal and aggressive behavior come from.
So now we have an understanding of our basic operating systems, but how do we get to that elusive Neocortex and experience deep meditative states? The answer lies not in a trendy diet or supplement, but in the wisdom of our distant ancestors, the keepers of our deep past. The only place we can really trust to look. To those who have thrived on our planet for thousands of years, in harmony with nature, and with a connection to Source and a reverence for life that goes beyond anything we see in our modern age.
“Don’t eat anything that your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. There are many food-like items in the supermarket that your ancestors would not recognize as food. Stay away from here” ~Michael Pollan
The Neocortex needs “NATURAL FATS” to function optimally, especially DHA, a form of omega-3 fat found primarily in seafood. If these fats are not present in the diet, the Neocortex will simply struggle on, perhaps providing the occasional brief epiphany, but never a profound lasting insight. However, it’s not just omega 3 that’s important, the saturated fat we’ve been so afraid of for the past five decades is also a crucial nutrient for our nervous system. Every nerve in our body is insulated with a substance called Myelin, which is made up of the fats in our diet.
The neocortex does NOT function well under stress, in fact it will actually be inaccessible and hand over control to the limbic brain. This may seem like a good survival mechanism, but the problem is that the limbic brain evolved at a time when the only stressors we had were the occasional “sabre-tooth tiger” chasing us or a prolonged famine. It’s not designed to cope with the bombardment of things vying for our attention in the modern world, and it can’t tell the difference between the sabre-tooth tiger and the 100 grams of sugar you just ate with a bowl of ice cream.
Best foods for optimal health and wellness
In summary, the neocortex can keep the four Fs of the limbic brain in check and allow us to have meditative and transcendental experiences, if we give it the nutrients it cries out for and avoid the nutritional stressors that shut it down. The following nutritional principles are the most reliable way to nourish your nervous system and Neocortex:
- Abundant omega-3 fats, especially DHA and EPA, which come exclusively from animal foods such as fish, oysters, grass-fed beef and free-range eggs.
- • Plenty of saturated fat from coconuts, raw cacao, eggs, ghee, grass-fed butter and grass-fed animals.
- Clean, pure, filtered, fresh water. 70-80% of our physical body consists of water.
- Magnesium-rich foods such as green leafy vegetables, nuts, seeds, raw cacao, etc. Magnesium is an absolutely essential mineral for the nervous system.
- Minimal stimulants such as caffeine.
- Intermittent fasting and staying in a state of “lightness”. Digestion has enormous energetic/metabolic costs. Eating a nutrient-dense but low-calorie diet can distribute this energy elsewhere in the body, such as in the brain and nervous system.
- At least 80% of the diet consists of nutrient-rich, mineral-rich plant foods with an emphasis on dark green leafy vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, sprouts, seaweed and fermented foods.
- Eating foods in their whole and natural state.
- Daily consumption of fermented/probiotic rich foods such as sauerkraut, Kim Chi, Miso, kombucha, kefir etc. and mushrooms, which are super nourishing for the nervous system.
- Restriction of pasteurized dairy products.
- Avoiding synthetic/man-made “foods” such as additives, preservatives, artificial (ridiculously neurotoxic) sweeteners, margarines, etc.
- Avoidance of refined sugars and refined carbohydrates (white breads and pastas etc.) which are nothing more than pharmaceutical foods/empty calories.
- Avoiding the overconsumption of factory farmed animals and processed meat. These animals are slaughtered out of fear and kept sick their entire lives by being fed food that is unnatural to them and being injected with hormones and antibiotics (which end up in your body). Always aim for grass-fed, organic animal products. There is a persistent myth that to become enlightened you must be a vegetarian. I had this belief too, until I was challenged to tell a Native American or indigenous elder that they are less spiritual when it comes to eating animals. They have a connection to the spirit that goes beyond what we can even fathom.
I hope you found this information somewhat enlightening. To help you understand how important the food we eat is to our spiritual practice, I will give you the truest definition of the word nutrition, one you have probably never followed before. Nutrition comes from the Latin word ‘nux’, which means ‘light’. So nutrition is literally nothing more than the ‘processing of light’. A very important thing to consider if “Enlightenment is something you want to experience.
Written by Johnny Foreman
Johnny is passionate about guiding you back to this state of vibrant health using whole-food nutrition and herbal medicine, as well as lifestyle and exercise coaching that empowers you to take your health into your own hands.