“A fight is going on inside me," said an old man to his son. "It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf is evil. He is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other wolf is good. he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you."

The son thought about it for a minute and then asked, "Which wolf will win?"

The old man replied simply, "The one you feed.”

Cherokee story, which I’ve seen in various forms from various traditions.

Which wolf are you feeding?

I think very few of us would question the fact that the question of nourishment is critical to human health. The only ones who seem to doubt it are perhaps certain doctors who’ve been indoctrinated into a system.

Unfortunately, dietary education has been peppered liberally with misinformation. To move toward thriving, we may have to reframe everything we know about 'nourishment.'

Our concepts of nourishment begin in the womb and evolve from there.

Some questions to consider:

Were we breast fed or fed formula out of a bottle?
What state was our mother in while we were nursed? (I've heard of babies looking up at the mother while nursing, and mentioning a thought the mother had)
Did we have an emotionally available mother / father?
Were we fed ideal foods, or foods that impacted our bodies in a negative way (pasteurized cow’s milk or formula)?
Was the environment we were born into and lived in nourishing?
Were we fed when we were hungry, or were we left to cry? (Here is an interesting link: Why African Babies Don't Cry)

Re-Examining Nourishment

We’ve been programmed to think of ‘what we put into our mouths’ as our primary source of nourishment, and then completely misinformed as to what that should be.

Once we get to the point of needing a dietary shift, we tend to automatically adopt the belief that most diseases are a matter of ‘deficiency’ of some nutrients or minerals, and that the solution is to ingest more of those.

That is not the whole truth.

And ‘what we put into our mouths’ is far from our primary source of nourishment.

The sources of nourishment, in order of relative importance…

Air. The brain can only go minutes without oxygen. Oxygen is the animating force of life.

Water. Without water, life as we know it would not exist. We are 80% water. Higher at birth, and that declines into old age. Is that one of the reasons for aging? We’ll discern between ‘dead water’ and ‘living water.’ People can go for quite a few days without water. I used to hear 3, but I've read of 8 day dry fasts (no food or water) as pretty common occurrences, and very healing.

Sunlight. Sunlight animates all living sources of food, and we need it to synthesize vitamins, regulate hormone production, and other vital bodily processes that science does not yet understand. Parasites thrive in darkness, and sunlight is one way to begin to usher them out.

Other forms of Energy. Sunlight is one form of energy. There are others that are not talked about as much because they cannot be quantified. Think of Chi, Ki, and Prana, for instance. Think of the vital energies of the earth and the stars and the consciousness teeming off of other entities.

Food. (What we put into our mouths) The food we process through our alimentary canal goes here. Much (if not most) of the ‘nourishment’ we have gotten in our lives in ‘civilized’ culture comes from non ideal foods, or non-foods. Food is not merely nutrients, but also electrical charge and 'intelligence.' People have gone months or years without food.

Here's an interesting outline of the energy output of certain foods and non-foods:

angstroms and Energy

ENERGY OF HEALTHY FOODS

Fresh raw fruits 8000 to 10,000 angstroms
Vegetables (fresh, raw) 8000 to 9000 angstroms
Milk (fresh, raw) for children under two years of age only. 8500 angstroms
Vegetables (cooked) 4000 to 6500 angstroms

ENERGY OF TOXIC FOODS
Milk (pasteurized) 2000 angstroms
Cheese 1800 angstroms
Refined white flour 1500 angstroms
Cooked meats 0 angstroms

BODY FREQUENCIES
Human (average) 6500 angstroms
Cancer Patients (generally) 4875 angstroms

Morse, Robert (2013-09-11). The Detox Miracle Sourcebook: Raw Foods and Herbs for Complete Cellular Regeneration (Kindle Locations 3660-3668). SCB Distributors. Kindle Edition.

Sense Impressions. The stimuli we take in from the outside world can actually nourish or deplete. I’m reminded of a scene in a classic movie about St Francis, where a monk is about to dig up the flowers so they can plant more vegetables, and St. Francis stops him and reminds him that the flowers are equally important, because they feed the soul.

Cleansing

As we remove blockages from the physical system, through cleansing and the visceral bodywork, the body’s relationship to nourishment shifts. Addictions and abusive behaviors fall away. The body remembers how to open up to the other systems of nourishment, and begins to shed emotional and physical toxins... the two bind together.

You might find this article I wrote valuable:

Healing Disease and Trauma through Diet

Once the systems begin functioning again, remembering, healing builds momentum.

One client wrote this after one of our Budden Process meetings:

“One of the strangest effects I've experienced during this process is the way my body processes food. There's no other way to say this other than my body absorbs the nutrients of my food better. My energy levels have increased dramatically and - believe it or not - my hair and nails have been growing like crazy, strong and shiny. I thought brittle, peeling nails was just a way of life for me, they had been that way my *whole* life. I want to re-iterate that nothing in my diet or lifestyle changed directly... my body just started thriving like crazy!”

Using Nutrients

Nourishment is not merely what we put into our mouths. We also need to consider utilization and absorption, which are hampered by poor elimination. Otherwise isolated supplements would be effective, instead of destructive.

If there is a ‘deficiency’, it is likely that the body has not gotten what it needs, AND is potentially not absorbing what it is getting, AND is potentially not utilizing what it is absorbing.

Stuffing more non-ideal food into a system that is already congested only makes things worse. Plaque and mucus form over the intestines to protect the delicate villi from non ideal foods, but over time a layer builds up that needs to be shed for the body to function again. The glands and organs need to be purified of toxins so that the tissues can regenerate. Which is why, for most diseases, fasting (refraining from food), is more healing than eating. This, for me, challenges the standard held metabolic theory of disease. In fact, dry fasting (not taking food or water for limited durations) is often more effective than water fasting; an interesting consideration.

There are many studies that have been done on fasting, but refer again to the above sources of nourishment. Dry fasting cuts out food and water... does this allow the primary sources of nourishment to be better utilized by the body? Interestingly, most early naturopaths were advocates of sunbathing during times of healing, fasting, and regeneration. The skin burning and becoming spotty is due to a congested system, not to the 'dangers' inherent in the sun.

Fasting curiosities:

Arnold Ehret did a 49 day fast (circa 1923).
Brother Air, a follower of Ehret, completed a 106 Day water fast (2015).
Paul C. Bragg did many fasts, and studied contents of his urine, to find DDT and other synthetic chemicals were released during times of fasting.
In his book, The water of life: A Treatise on Urine Therapy, J. Armstrong writes about healing many of cancer and other otherwise ‘fatal’ diseases through urine fasts, ingesting only urine for a duration of time (until cured). For me, this is between a water and a dry fast, because you are recycling fluids, so you are keeping external influences out of the system.

* I'm not advocating long fasts; just sharing things that might challenge what we've learned about diet.

Liver or Diner

I was talking with a great healer once, Master Wang, who summed up his whole system of healing like this: "You're either a liver, or a diner." His English was sometimes not fluent, but what he meant was, you either LIVE, and put your focus on living and feeling, or you DINE, and put your focus on feeding. Look around, and notice the difference. 'Diners' are on the path of 'disease'.

Certain foods will feed the 'dark' wolf in you, and others will feed the 'light.'

Which wolf are you feeding?

Recommended reading:

The Grape Cure (Joanna Brandt cured herself of cancer by a diet of only grapes and fasting).
The Mucusless Diet Healing System (Arnold Ehret cured himself of Bright’s disease by a diet of fruit and fasting)
The Detox Miracle Sourcebook (Modern scientific explanations of how the fruit healing works, from an herbalist trained in chemistry. He ate only oranges for 6 months, and experienced an awakening experience).
The Fasting Path (An interesting treatise on the physical and spiritual aspects of fasting)
The Gerson Therapy. Time tested diet that has proven effective as an alternative cancer treatment, and is therefore violently suppressed by the pharmaceutical industry).

I hope this stirs up whatever is in your mind about nourishment.

In Truth,

Steven Budden

#dlseed #buddenprocess #vitality