Date:   7/15/2005 7:24:56 PM ( 19 y ago)
Hits:   8,176
URL:   https://www.curezone.org/forums/fm.asp?i=617514

I agree with you that the psycho-spiritual aspects of physical health are huge. I thought for a long time that they were the whole thing. Now, I think that since we have physical bodies we are meant to work on that level too as part of evolution of the spiritual in physical form.
There's a whole modern movement toward "Integral Awareness" propounded by people like Ken Wilbur, Lama Surya Das, Andrew Harvey, Sro Aurobindo that encourages people to "wake up" on all levels--spiritual, emotional, mental, physical--and to take up practices in all these areas. I had the idea for a long time, based on my readings of various spiritual icons through the ages, that a deep spiritual search meant puting everything else second and basically neglecting the body. I concurrently went from a lifetime of being very physically healthy to three years of chronic and adrenal fatigue. At present, I feel either I misunderstood these historical examples or that perhaps these historical icons were evolved on a spiritual level but not on a physical or emotional level, and that it's appropriate for me to find my own way, and in absorbing advice from spiritual and nutritional authorities, to explore openly and use what works and discard what doesn't.
At present I think the fatigue problems I experienced and tried to address with the Body Ecology Diet came primarily from lifelong feelings of fear, grief and anger that were seemed too intense to deal with and got shoved out of consciousness via various addictions (food, thinking, activity). There is a brilliant book on the relation of repressed emotion to chronic "structural" pain (pinched nerves, herniated disks, tendonitus) by a medical doctor, Dr. John Sarno, who practices rehabilitative medicine at a well respective Eastern university and medical center, called "The Mind Body Connection", or something like that. (Several aquaintances here locally have solved long-standing chronic pain problems in a very short time just by reading the book and coming to understand what had happened on a physical/emotional level. One avid biker was bedridden for three years with back pain--resolved his back pain completely in a matter of days without any medical intervention, and another, an avid kayaker and skiier was previously unable to do either for three years because of tendonitis, resolved the tendonitis completely in a matter of a few weeks without any medical intervention. both had tried the normal medical and alternative intervention models)
I think the BED is one possible way to explore food addictions and their impact on the body and to allow repressed feelings to come up, and that it could be a useful thing to explore purely on a physical level as well. Maybe it is too radical a step for some people. Or, like you say, it may not be useful or helpful at all for some people. As I have started to sit with the discomfort of the intense emotions rather than follow the addictive impulses, I find that the painful emotions are energy itself and that in allowing that energy to be experienced and wake up and begin to move more freely through my system, my energy in general has picked up considerably. This increase in energy has also coincided with a return to a diet that feels more balanced to me, with the addition of some aspects of the BED diet. Energetically, the strict BED was like doing a long fast, which may not be good for me right now. I may try it later when my body is stronger.
One thing that didn't feel appropriate for me was that I initially wanted to spend less time focusing on food (as it had been my addictive tendency to do) and I had been doing that very effectively prior to the diet by simply deciding not to overeat. (The will and ability to do that just showed up one day as I was overeating and noticing how groggy and dead I felt). As soon as I went on the BED diet I was spending even considerably more time focusing on food --a huge amount of time preparing food, trying to get ahold of the right kind of food, trying to get find ways to get more energy from the food, structuring my day around eating because i was so weak and ignoring work and relationships and the rest of my life and drawing other people into my confusion and distress about my unwanted weight and energy loss and general confusion--it seemed like I got much less clear psychologically, mentally, emotionally, spiritual along with the physical effects.
My perspective, I'm sure, will continue to evolve.
I appreciate the opportunity to have a discussion via this forum. Thank you curezone!!! If I find this to be a good ongoing format for discussion, I'm going to have to donate. I think I'll send a message to curezone suggesting that they start some kind of database on this site that gives the people who've tried the various therapies and diets listed here to give a concise summary of their experience with the therapy or diet and some sort of recommendation-- pro or con or uncertain-- that can be tallied automatically as the database grows and provide people with both general statistics as to the efficacy of various therapies and diets for various body types and medical conditions as well as specific information from each person tallied to back up the data. So far as I know, nothing like this exists, and will probably not be addressed by mainstream researchers any time soon, since there may not be much money in compiling such data. But people who are sick or recovering or well have significant reason to want to help compile such data.
 

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