Raw food. Raw. Vegan. Organic. I’ve eaten a raw food diet for coming up on 13 years, and it absolutely changed my life. For a long while, I attributed the health changes I experienced to the food itself: my debilitating back pain disappeared, hormone issues resolved (so much so that I conceived—on purpose and totally naturally in one cycle—at age 46), and arthritis, stomach issues, seasonal allergies, yeast infections, respiratory illnesses including asthma, brain fog: all gone (I just had to grab my own book off the shelf to remember all of the ailments I suffered with—I’ve been so long without them I’m shocked reading the list and hardly remember most of them). Miraculous indeed!
And then I realized—wait, it’s not only the foods I’m eating, it’s that I’m not eating junk. My body is no longer fighting fires, trying to deal with the chemically laden food-like, nutritionally empty, ultra-processed crap that passes for “food” on grocery store shelves. Without all of these wrenches thrown into the system, the body, in its innate wisdom which surpasses all human understanding, could access energy to actually heal.
Raw food, nourishing in itself and easily digested and assimilated, allowed me to remove blocks to health.
But then I started to understand things in more of a bigger-picture, systemic way. I began to read. What was good for my body was also good for the soil, all other animals (human or otherwise), all the way up (and down—as if there was some actual hierarchy) to every aspect of our Earth’s systems.
Things started to come together.
As time went on, I noticed other changes—health returned— spiritually, psychologically, emotionally. I became sensitive to the energies of plants, people, animals, soil, air…everything. Intuition returned (I hadn’t known what that even was before).
This is what happened: I reconnected with the whole I always was, but was numbed out to my entire life.
Health is wholeness.
Then it REALLY hit me:
Health of an organism falls on different points on a spectrum as a function of how nourished it is by (and connected to) the Earth—in all ways. In addition to food, do we have our bare feet on the ground? Is the air we breathe clean and moved by the wind? Are we getting some sunlight on our skin? Is the water we drink natural? Are we spending time at home (outside) with our brothers and sisters—wild plants, earth and nature?
And then it REALLY, REALLY hit me:
Life Force Energy. The reason we thrive when we’re connected to the Earth is because we are part of the Life System of the Earth. Disconnected, we fall ill, inflammation flares up, our immunity fails, dis-ease sets in in every arena of our lives. Connected, we are nourished by the healing and life giving and organizing Life Force Energy of the Earth—our true mother—through the ground (inflammation decreases and all kinds of health benefits ensue when we spend time with our bodies in contact with the ground), the air, the water and what we choose to nourish our bodies with via foods. The closer we are to the Earth in every element of our lives, the more Life Energy we are fueled by, and the healthier we become.
Example re food: Eating directly from your own garden you tended yourself, where the soil reads (I have heard) nutritional needs from contact with your bare feet and provides those for you in the fruits and vegetables the Earth offers up, would be pretty much ideal communion with Life Force Energy. Perhaps eating from a CSA box would be a degree further from the Life Force Energy of the Earth. Shopping at a local farmer’s market might be next, followed by a natural local grocery store…all the way up (or down, quality-wise) to a Safeway packaged, processed, food-like candy. You get the picture.
We live in a time in which disconnection is the norm and reconnection, or connection, is mostly seen by the mainstream as, uh, weird. Earthing shoes? Weird. Structured water device? Weird. Raw food? Definitely weird. The norm is now also obesity, heart disease, illnesses of all sorts, anxiety, depression, and on and on and on.
Maybe we should question the norm; our common assumptions, understandings and way of life are in many ways upside down and inside out and when questioned, make no sense in the bigger scheme of things.
We also live in a time that—though it takes a bit of un-learning to reconnect and re-member our dismembered consciousness, reconnecting to our wild selves, buried and mostly forgotten—we can immerse ourselves in nature without succumbing to, for example, overexposure and non-human (or human, for that matter) animal attacks. We can live in our fancy caves, sleeping soundly, procuring healthy food (or healthy-er, at least) easily, and then, sunhat and earthing shoes in hand, head out to commune with our wild mother, returning to our cozy nests refreshed and recharged by her Life Force Energy.
But it’s not just about individual health. It’s about remembering who we are. Where we came from. Where we belong. Who and what we are part of. What our place is in the world. Remembering we are supported by and part of the system of our Mother Earth, who feeds, houses and nourishes us in every way. Without her we are nothing. We do not breathe without her trees, we do not eat without her freely given gifts. We don’t exist. We are not and could never be, individual islands. If we attempt to be, we suffer this dismemberment, to the degree of our disconnection, at the expense of our health and the health of the planet in every way, if we are. It’s about gratitude and humility. Interconnection.
Raw food, especially if at least some of it is grown from a garden or a local farm, is one way we heal our bodies and the world at the same time (heating food above 104-118 degrees generally significantly depletes it of nutrients and of Life Force Energy and…if everyone ate vegan there would be plenty of food for all and less environmental destruction). Raw food reconnects and nourishes us from the inside out with what our bodies evolved to thrive on—alongside and along with—the Earth: Life Force Energy. Raw living food inherently, physically and energetically reconnects us with the soil, the air, water. With other people, with animals, with the ecosystem we are a part of. It connects us not only with the present moment* and thus with our True Selves, but with The Truth.
Re-member.
Re-connect.
Re-wild.
And…
Come back to Life.
*Life Force Energy is strongest in foods that are most alive=those most recently harvested.