by Dr. Connie Hernandez, ND
I remember how, nearly fifty years ago, Dr. Marcel and were in San Francisco, waiting for our Indian travel visas to arrive, and how we used the time to visit various spiritual ashrams in the Bay Area.
I remember one yoga ashram where the residents’ spiritual path, at least as they expressed it, was obsessively concerned with purity.
The followers showered multiple times a day, and the teachers wouldn’t partake of food unless it had been prepared by devotees they deemed to be of the highest spiritual attunement.
While Dr. Marcel and I resonated with the powerful spiritual vibrations we felt in the teachers, and the depth and clarity of our meditations, we did find the purification practices a bit over the top.
As the years passed, we came to understand a deeper truth in the spiritual teachings.
All of the nutrients we take into our bodies and minds carry subtle vibrations, whether they are encased in food, water, air, thoughts, or emotions.
A number of popular films have hinted, subtly or not so subtly, at an understanding that our food is changed by the vibrations of those who prepare it.
I’m thinking of several films in particular: Babette’s Feast, Like Water for Chocolate, Tampopo, Eat Drink Man Woman, Woman on Top.
Perhaps you, too, have experienced how the thoughts and emotions you experience while cooking have a real power to alter the vibrations of the food you prepare.
Dr. Masaru Emoto filmed the water molecules that make up our bodies and our food, and how they are changed by our thoughts, words, and emotions, by the music we play, and by many other influences.
Essentially, Dr. Emoto found that “good vibes” created beautiful crystalline structures, while bad vibes destroy these delicate structures in the water that comprises sixty percent of our bodies by volume.
Kirlian photography similarly offers startlingly different images of blessed and un-blessed food.
Conversely, you may have sensed how the attitude with which you receive food can dramatically change its effects on your own thoughts, feelings, and health.
There’s a story in Autobiography of a Yogi, where a cynical un-believer gave a bowl of deadly toxic lye to a great Indian saint, Trailanga Swami, telling him that it was clabbered milk.
The Swami unhesitatingly drank the poison to the last drop without the slightest ill effect – a feat that was possible, as Yogananda explained, because Trailanga was consciousness of the Divine presence in all things. The cynic fell to the ground screaming in pain and begging the saint to save him. Trailanga duly healed him, then gave the rascal a severe scolding and sent him on his way.
We’ve often heard our friend and colleague, Dr. Shanti Rubenstone, MD, tell patients who resisted taking certain medications that God is as much in the antibiotic as in the Vitamin C.
I find much food for thought in these considerations, particularly at Thanksgiving.
While there may be some good, and even critical medical reasons for not taking certain harmful foods and medicines, there will always be exceptions born of dire necessity.
An extreme example comes to mind. During our long-ago trip to India, Dr. Marcel and I joined a close friend on a very strenuous hike to Muktinath to visit the Temple of the Eternal Flame, on the Tibetan border, at 17,000 feet elevation.
Our friend was determined to hike over the next pass. Meanwhile, Marcel and I returned to Kathmandu by the route we had come.
Our friend was hiking with plastic bags over his tennis shoes to protect his feet from the freezing cold, when he suddenly stumbled and fell down the side of the mountain and was buried in a snowdrift. Fortunately, he was eventually rescued by local villagers.
The villagers had no modern medicines to help restore our friend to health, but they did have goats, and they duly offered him a hot meal of goat stew. Our friend had been a lifelong vegetarian, but the lovingly offered goat stew saved his life.
This brings us to the modern Thanksgiving “food wars” with friends and families, all of whom may have their particular dietary prejudices: Paleo, fruitarian, vegan, etc.
Is it truly healthy and holy to push aside with disdain food that has been prepared as a loving offering by an aged grandmother, or to argue endlessly about whose food preferences are best?
There are better options that I feel we might do well to explore, beginning with expressing our sincere gratitude to the people who’ve prepared the food, whether we feel we should eat it or not. Thanksgiving is, after all, about giving our humble, loving gratitude.
We love the simple ceremony of preparing and consuming food during the holidays – the holy days.
Sometimes it begins physically, by sitting down together at the table.
A simple conscious breathing exercise can bring people into a parasympathetic harmony and enhance the body’s digestive processes.
Take 10 conscious breaths, not controlling, just observing . Breathe in through the nose and allow the breath to escape through the mouth.
From this quiet space, offer invite each person to express what they are feeling particularly grateful for.
After the gratefulness exercise, rub your hands together and feel the energy generated. Place your hands over the food and bless it energetically, whether in silence, in song, or with spoken prayers.
Whatever the food, it will be healthier, better digested, and more enjoyable when we express our gratitude to the givers, both human and divine.
Happy Thanksgiving, Friends!
Drs. Connie and Marcel Hernandez
DrConnie@DrsHernandez.com
DrMarcel@DrsHernandez.com