Childbearing & Mothering
Define Nourishment
by LadyBarbara

Defining nourishment as taking in anything that causes you to THRIVE is a very GOOD place to start. I highly recommend getting your paws on a really ripe pear.

The way I see it, NOURISHMENT is more about the ‘taking in’ than it is about the ‘substance’. NUTRITION is a word that makes my face do strange things just in the saying of it, and brings up immediate notions of milligrams of vitamins.

If NOURISHMENT is about the ‘taking in’, then it has to be about our SENSES, not merely about our digestion. It’s as much about what we get on our faces and dig our fingers into as it is about what actually goes into our mouths.

I’ve never been a fan of capsules for much of anything, which has made working at a few health food stores a little dicey. Grinding a perfectly good herb into DUST, locking it in a capsule and tossing that down my gullet without tasting, or smelling or having any sense of what I’m taking, never felt quite right to me. Having this tiny pile o’ dust being released SOMEwhere in my digestive tract just seemed confusing both to the dust in question and the digestive tract trying to figure out what to DO with it. These were my ‘gut’ feelings, based on very little.

Recently, Susun put forth a very good explanation of all this, somewhat in answer to questions as to why herbs that have been safe for thousands of years, are now getting all this ‘bad press’ for causing problems. It’s not the herb’s fault, it’s the way they’re being taken. Capsules leave out important parts of the digestive process. The taste, smell and feel of FOOD sends messages to parts of our digestion further down the line. Herbs were meant to be used by our bodies as FOOD, even if they are used medicinally. Capsules take them way too close to the bloodstream without full digestion and so, turn them into drugs.

But we’re still putting things into our MOUTHS here. NOURISHMENT is so much more than that. If capsule-swallowing constitutes non-nourishment, the next step up is M.F.S.: Mindless Face-Stuffing. Ever been eating while you’re doing something else and looked down to see the food in question is gone and you don’t even remember eating it?

THAT is M.F.S..

Did your body still break whatever it was you just ate (as you start searching through the crumbs for clues) into usable ‘nutrition’? Not completely. Those sensory ‘take-ins’ actually send chemical messages to places like your liver to, as Susun says, get out the chemistry kit. Your liver really HATES that little post-it note that says ‘Unknown Foodstuff’……were you just NOURISHED by that little M.F.S. episode? Not hardly.

So. If this is all true, guess what, we can flip it all over. If you can bypass the actual NOURISHMENT of a possibly nourishing food, you truly can NOURISH yourself with absolutely anything that feeds your senses. And I don’t mean just PLEASURE yourself, I really do mean NOURISH….as in “Cause To THRIVE”.

Ah, our senses….taste, touch, smell, hearing and sight……how do we ‘feed’ THIS crowd? Best we ask my Grandkid, Jicaiya up there in the photo. He’s GOT it. Everything goes into his mouth so he knows how it tastes and FEELS. He looks at things with his FINGERS. He’s learning to talk by mimicking the sounds he hears. We can get back into much of that without NECESSARILY needing to smear pear all over our faces (but don’t discount that ALL together). We just need to tune our AWARENESS.

So, while you’re busy being a grownup, just ‘tune in’ to one of your senses….let’s say sight, and give a little thought as to what FEEDS that sense….color, texture, shapes….beautiful. The easiest one to go for is color. Right where you are, look around you. My calendar-holder is bright red. Just ‘take in’ red. Don’t TALK to yourself (we did that last month) just TAKE IT IN. Absorb. Something just STIRRED in a lot of places. Keep going. Now I’ve got a shiny, shimmery green on a book cover. I can FEAST on shiny, shimmery GREEN. Feel it? It even works while you’re driving, suddenly you’re so aware of the different colors of the other cars. Or the TEXTURES around you, or the shapes of buildings and trees. What makes it nourishing and not just some New Age Whacko Awareness Exercise is this whole ‘taking it in’ thing. Just let it IN. THAT is nourishing, to every part of you, including your emotions and aura and nerve cells and brain and heart and you GET the picture!

Want a better night’s sleep? FEEL THE BED. Feel your body supported by the mattress, cradled by the pillow, softly covered by the covers. Wow. Who knew. Think about the FeastFest a SHOWER could be, or being in the garden or yeah, a really GOOD meal, or a SINGLE potato chip.

How many different sounds can you hear right this second? Don’t JUDGE, just take them in. FEED on the sounds. This all gets to be GREAT fun….and y’know what? FUN is incredibly nourishing. What say we go out and PLAY? ~~~~~~ LadyB

I am an herbalist, hypnotherapist, and belly dance teacher
with a rowdy reverence for life's dancing.