avoiding sugar and milk

[bd2]

In afluent societies, meals contain a lot of sugar and milk. These substances are said to harm the generation of chi. How can i abstain from eating them? Could i defeat my hunger if i became energentically sensitive due to meditating?

[Yoda]

I reduce refined sugars and milk products to a dull roar. It's a goal of mine to reduce calories via meditation, but it hasn't clicked yet.

[sean]

Switch to raw milk and raw honey.

[beancurdturtle]

How can i abstain from eating them?

How do you abstain from jumping off a cliff? You choose not to - then don't.

 

You have a choice. Choose to stop eating them if that's your wish.

 

Then don't eat them.

 

[bd2]

[Ian]

These substances are less harmful but the solution is still not satisfying.

Hunger is torture. You need the right technique to defeat the pain which is associated with hunger.

 

Try this: do not try to defeat the pain, just contain it. Try to find an inner sensation, a sort of soft alive tingling not based on chi movement. Maybe easiest in the limbs at first. Then see if you can spread that sensation to a whole body thing. Surround the pain with it. Allow the pain to exhaust itself, burn away. Do not combat it, do not engage it. Do not allow it to rise up and make thought. Hold the pain in the physical with your attention to both it and its surrounding softness. Expect it to take a while.

[beancurdturtle]

Edited May 30, 2007 by beancurdturtle

[Tao Parrot]

Switch to raw milk and raw honey.

 

Not sure if this would help. Honey is mostly glucose and fructose, while table sugar (sucrose) is glucose + fructose, which gets quickly split apart in your small intestine into glucose and fructose. So by the time you've absorbed it, it's pretty much the equivalent.

[bd2]

[beancurdturtle]

[Tao Parrot]

Yes, you are right. The only good thing about raw milk and raw honey is that they contain less toxins.

 

Not sure about raw milk, but as far as honey goes it's actually far more likely to contain some weird unknown substance, a pollen spore or something, which you might be allergic to. It's best to avoid giving it to babies, as a matter of fact.

[sean]

Not sure if this would help. Honey is mostly glucose and fructose, while table sugar (sucrose) is glucose + fructose, which gets quickly split apart in your small intestine into glucose and fructose. So by the time you've absorbed it, it's pretty much the equivalent.

Yes, it will have a similar basic effect as sugar on your system once it's absorbed. But your same argument can be said of whole wheat vs. refined flour, or of eating an apple vs. eating processed baby food made from apples. The state of something going in is as important as what it turns into. For instance, there is a big difference between eating a potato with the skin vs. mashed potatoes. The fiber rich skin on the potato will slow down the speed which the potato is converted to glucose, so the energy is delivered into your bloodstream steadily. Whereas mashed potatoes are converted much more rapidly and give you a quick hit but that you can crash from. This isn't even touching on the larger differences between raw and cooked/processed, where important things (physically and energetically) are lost. My experience of pasteurized milk vs. raw milk is the difference between something important and nutritious vs. something gross and nearly poisonous that I can just feel is not good for me.

 

Sean

[Yoda]

I would focus on making only modest improvements to any given diet. Tweaking the diet too much, regardless of the improvement, can be a net negative thing on an energetic level.

[beancurdturtle]

I would focus on making only modest improvements to any given diet. Tweaking the diet too much, regardless of the improvement, can be a net negative thing on an energetic level.

Good advice. Our bodies adapt to the environment - including diet. A "cold turkey" change for any substance we are psychologically and physiologically accustomed to will create stress.

 

Cold turkey changes are possible with a strong mind - and if you don't mind some physiological discomfort. Gradual changes will be less disruptive. Depends on temperament and tolerance.

 

My style when I see a change I want to make is to "just do it." It's my first recommendation because change can be accomplished quickly that way. But I realize that it doesn't work for everyone.

 

Others prefer to change a little each day and reach their objective gradually. If you achieve your goals through a change process, define your objective clearly and set standards or milestones so you can validate your progress, that makes it easier. When you meet your milestones it builds confidence and you will approach the goal faster. Simple stuff from Chapter 64 of the Dao de Jing - start smart and finish strong.

 

Good luck,

[karen]

I like what Sean said about knowing the qualitative difference between living foods and processed foods. I think the problem in thinking about all this is that we're fumbling with concepts of energy and chemistry and not having a system for integrating them. If anyone's interested, some thoughts Toward a Dynamic View of Nutrition

 

-Karen

[Tao Parrot]

I think the problem in thinking about all this is that we're fumbling with concepts of energy and chemistry and not having a system for integrating them.

 

Something I want to be clear about in my earlier posts is that they were not intending to say anything about "energy" except in scientific terms--Calories (kilo calories) in the case of nutrition. I just wanted to point out that two substances are equivalent by the time they are actually absorbed by the body, and how this would affect one's chi is left for the reader to interpret.

 

Karen, feedback on your article: It feels to me that you are trying to bridge multiple models of how the body functions--western physiology and various Eastern models (chi, etc). I'm not certain these models can and should be bridged. It's a bit like the wave/particle duality. You can look at something as a wave, or as a particle, but trying to mix the two isn't going to necessarily produce a model that is as accurate as the separated versions.

[karen]

Karen, feedback on your article: It feels to me that you are trying to bridge multiple models of how the body functions--western physiology and various Eastern models (chi, etc). I'm not certain these models can and should be bridged. It's a bit like the wave/particle duality. You can look at something as a wave, or as a particle, but trying to mix the two isn't going to necessarily produce a model that is as accurate as the separated versions.

 

Thanks for the feedback. You're right - cobbling different elements together doesn't work. The uncertainty principle says that there's no way to know reality precisely, but that's only because the intellect can't go there. It can't make the leap - the duck gets very near to the pond but can never actually get there . It requires a different function of mind, the deeper etheric mind which can embrace polarity and non-linear relationships.

 

Let me see if I can clarify.. It's not really about taking two things and trying to bridge them. It's about developing a new model entirely which can embrace the sensible and the supersensible as a functional polarity, so that we're not whipsawing back and forth between the two.

 

It's like the interrelationship between yin and yang. The intellect wants to separate and dissect them, and can't see the flow of interpenetration. It will look at each as separate entities and will get very frustrated in the hall of reflecting mirrors where everything is mirroring everything in a cascade of relationsihps. Particle - wave - particle - wave - where does one start and the other end? You can separate them and look at them that way, but then is what you see real?

 

What I'm describing is all about energy and yet it's not an eastern model per se. Knowledge of the supersensible isn't the purview of the east - it's just that a western system that embraces the non-material realm has not been brought out except in certain disciplines that are a bit off the map. And it requires developing the etheric mind in order to understand it without simply imposing materialistic concepts onto it.

 

There is a western system that's alive and well within the Dynamic system, a stream of thought running through the work of various functional thinkers like Hahnemann, Goethe, Coleridge, Steiner, and Reich. Goethe has come to be known as a poet, yet he did phenomenal scientific work. The dynamic thinkers have been largely misunderstood by intellectual interpretation. A paradigm shift changes the actual meaning of the ideas so that the material can't be understood from the same frame of reference.

 

I hope that clarifies somewhat. It's hard to sort of start in the middle without going back to the history of science and the epistemological underpinnings - it's fascinating to tease things things out, but I didn't mean to go that far into the discussion.. just thought I'd put out a few thoughts in case there were some points of resonance .

 

-Karen

[Spectrum]

When I first started Chi Gung training in 1994 one of the first things to flare up in my old system were the perrenial effects of refined sugar & flour, and processed milk. Chi Gung not only made me "aware" of these imbalances, but supplies the medium in which to guide towards balance.

 

Like my first mentor said, to have a solid foundation for later practice we must unlearn/relearn where we get our chi from. For that is the true source of health and healing and movement & defense. How we manifest our chi to the surface from within.

 

Walking, Eating & Breathing were my first lessons. How does a cat walk, how do animals eat and breath.

 

When needed Accupuncture balanced things out. Continued practice engrained changes. Daily "habitual" routines that we take for granted like walking, eating and breathing need to be examined deeply to effect deep change.

 

The systematic principles found in chinese meditative traditions are suitable for these processes, regardless of an individuals praxis for health or defense. The foundation for success being emptiness and observation.

 

Spectrum