It’s Sunday morning and you decide to do a long nice meditation which you have been waiting for the entire week. Finally, you decide to sit down and close your eyes and start enjoying the meditation. You are able to bring your awareness on the breath and be in the moment and you are happy. Suddenly, one of your family member comes in and shakes you up and wants to know what do you want to eat for breakfast. You feel disturbed and get distracted. Since it is your own family member, you somehow manage your emotions and answer something and again close your eyes and go back to meditation. You take some time to come out of these disturbed thoughts and focus on your breath again, and start enjoying the meditation. Now a child comes in and wants to know where are the story books and which one to read. You again get disturbed and unable to enjoy the blissful state of meditation. Imagine this happening time and again, every time you meditate. Your entire goal of meditation is lost.
Now imagine, your physical body is so happy and doing its job so wonderfully without wasting a moment and always ensuring each and every cell and organ inside of the body is doing its job, healing, repairing, rejuvenating and keeping it healthy and ensuring its well-being. Now imagine someone comes and offers you a piece of cake as it is their birthday. It’s a joyous occasion, so you take a small piece and eat it. After sometime, it is coffee time and everyone sits around and asks you to join them. You decide to join too and take a cup of coffee and a small snack. It’s now dinner time and the entire family sits together. You are not hungry any more. Since it is the last meal of the day and there is something tasty you decide to eat anyway.
Every time you eat, the body has to stop working on what it is doing and divert all its attention and energy into the process of digesting the food. Right from the salivary glands to the acids in the stomach, all of them have to start functioning irrespective of whether you eat one bite of snack or a full meal. The process and the series of steps involved remains the same. The body which loves to heal and keep you healthy stops its work and attends to something else which is not top priority at the moment. Imagine this happening non-stop 365 days in a year. Healing is meditation for the body and every time you bring it out of its meditation and make it do something else which is not top priority, the body gets distracted and disturbed.
Our body is the most marvellous machine that has ever been designed with so many organs working together non-stop tirelessly from birth till death. The heart, the lungs, the liver, right from the time we are born till we die, without skipping a beat, without stopping a moment for rest, keep doing their job. The body is also the most intelligent machine ever found with its own intelligence system always guiding us. It also communicates to us every moment, if we know how to listen to it. Every cell in our body is capable of tapping into the higher intelligence and giving us any information, we ever need. What it wants to eat, how it wants to move, what does it want to wear, who needs your attention and energy this particular day etc. It relays this information more like an awareness which is very gentle. It is more of a feeling. Anything that makes you feel light and expansive is always right. Anything that makes you feel heavy and constricted is not right.
Even the food we eat, the body exactly knows when it wants to eat and what nutrients it requires for its well-being and you feel like eating a particular food which supplies those nutrients. Many a times just a few bites of food, consciously eaten with full awareness and presence is enough. We normally over eat and override our bodies awareness with our own mind. We also get influenced by others or pick up thoughts from others around us and make it our own and eat for other bodies too. That’s why it is said food is not a social activity. Food is a time to connect with our own body.
97% of the energy we get from eating food is used to digest the food we eat. The more food we consume, the more energy is needed to digest and assimilate it. Any food that we eat, even if it is the simplest of the food available, will taste as if it was the best ever eaten and that’s when you know that your body is really happy with it and benefits from it. When the food doesn’t taste great, then we know that the body doesn’t want that food. It doesn’t have the energy or the nutrients that the body requires and even if you consume it, doesn’t add any value.
Also, it is always good to eat only how much ever the body wants and as soon as it is enough you feel like stopping. The body gives you an awareness. That’s the time to stop and not allow the mind to continue eating. It is always better to eat when there is keen hunger in the body and not in the mind irrespective of what time it is. Never eat when you do not experience keen hunger. Many a times, it is the space or emptiness that the body experiences which we confuse for hunger. Or looking at the clock, the mind sends you a message to eat. It’s ok, to not follow the meal timings if possible and go by when the body wants to eat. Hunger is a communication from the body that it is now ready to eat and that’s when you eat. Also, its ok to save up that piece of cake or whatever you wanted to eat in between and eat along with the meals so that the body can process it together.
We all have heard time and again, not to waste food. However, I personally feel, it is better to waste the food outside of the body and not inside of the body. It is ok to stop when you feel full or not feel like eating anymore and not force yourself against the body’s wishes. Of course, it means that we need to be very careful on how much we take on our plate and always take smaller quantities and refill them.
Most of the times its always better to keep the food on plate as simple as possible limiting it to one variety of grain, one or two types of vegetables and Dal and eat as much as you want. This way it is easier for the body to properly digest the food we eat by producing only those kind of stomach acids that is required to digest that particular food and not mix up too many chemicals inside. You can always eat different varieties of vegetables or grains each day to keep it balanced. Never complicate your plate. Keep it simple.
The body should feel so happy and energetic after a full meal and not lethargic and that’s when you know you have eaten it right. There are days when I personally feel like dancing after a full meal and I know I have eaten it right and my body is happy.
Also, sometimes when eating out, the entire spread in the buffet doesn’t mean that you need to taste or eat all of that food that is spread out there. It’s just an option available so that every body can choose what they want to eat. I normally take a plate and go in front of the food and allow the body to choose what it wants to eat and only take that on my plate. If not sure, just eating a bite or maximum 3 bites, we know if that food is required or not.
The body is designed to move. Movement is what the body loves to do. Doesn’t matter what form. Whether it is dance, or some physical activity or just walking or anything else that you love doing. See what makes you happy and you can accordingly incorporate it and also keep varying it and choosing different activities too based on the energies on that particular day. Again, it is always better to check with our bodies and not decide ourselves on what and how much to do. I have seen people who overdo it too, especially in the gyms or when running long distance etc., It is sometimes over exerted against one’s own bodies needs.
Maintaining the right posture and stretching, also helps all the parts of the body have enough space to function at ease. Just imagine a overcrowded space in a shopping mall or a public transport where there is no space and you feel so suffocated and unable to even sit or stand comfortably, forget about moving around. Are you happy with it? If not how do the different parts of the body feel when they do not get enough space to function with ease. In addition to not giving it enough space internally, we also many a times avoid occupying space externally too and constricting our own energies. Space is what the body requires for all of the internal organs to function optimally. Give it as much as it wants.
Normally, the body communicates in very light feelings initially and draws your attention there. When we do not listen to it, it slowly starts screaming louder and louder in the form of pain and then illness, till it gets your complete attention and you can no longer ignore it. When we heed to it and pay attention and listen to it in the initial stages itself, then the pain and disease doesn’t appear. Absence of ease in body is disease. All illness and health related issues can be avoided if we pay attention to every little signal it sends. We need to make our bodies as our best friends and take care of it as if our entire lives depend on it, for it does. We are dependent on it in this reality and not the other way.
The body is designed to be used and not abused. It’s violence against our own self. Just imagine the kind of abuse or over use we have been doing and in spite of it, the body continues to do its work diligently day in day out.
This is where meditation can help fine tune that communication channel with our bodies and help us to listen to it more attentively and enjoy our health and well-being. Just like the way we like to enjoy our long Sunday meditation, lets also allow our body to go back to its own form of meditation and not disturb it unnecessarily. It knows when it wants our attention and that’s when we attend to it.
- Savitha Reddy
04 June 2023
