A couple years ago, about this time, I started to feel…sluggish, weighted, and at the same time, restless. I got the idea to do a “cleanse”. After consulting with my supportive naturopath, I embarked on a 28 day cleanse and recruited my husband to join me in a month of doing without many common foods. Only the best and the brightest passed our lips. We ate so many vegetables we couldn’t believe it. We took our rice protein and herb smoothies and took the road to transformation. The list of “avoids” meant we had to get creative. We even took a trip to the Oregon Coast for our anniversary and took a cooler full of fruits and veggies and salad dressing. I plugged in a mini rice cooker at the hotel and we were in business. We had to eat so often that our meals became really simple. And this is where the miracle happened. As I ate more cleanly and simply, so I became.

I began to sleep super deep and sound.
My emotions were simple, clear and easy to read and express.
What I really, really wanted from my relationships and my life became crystal clear…uncomplicated.

As I “uncomplicated” my diet, I became less complicated. I was more effective at getting my needs met and heeding the signals of my body and mind, because there wasn’t so much noise, so much distraction, so much confusion. I got the benefits of meditation by EATING! I created a space. And nature rushes in to any open space with rejuvenation and healing. It is her way. It is the way of the body.

Another thing that came clear to me during those days was that, well, vegetables are a miracle.

All those other things I tend to fill up on are not harmful to me, but they take up all the space. They crowd the place in my tummy meant for my living pharmacy, my vitality meal, my sweet dream green cocktail. I could literally feel the direct transmission of the “chi”–the life in my food– straight to my cells. Now, this of course, has been happening every day of my life, but I never got to FEEL it before. Again, the process inside my body was just less complicated, less convoluted, more natural.

Those 28 days were life-changing. I only thought it would be “good for me”. But it handed me a looking glass that allowed me to see the miraculous relationship between “me” and what I choose to invite inside me. Altering our nervous and biochemical systems can color our every experience…most everyone knows this from “beer goggles” but imagine it the other way around…seeing MORE clearly, feeling MORE acutely, but having the groundedness to accept and appreciate what we see without overload, reactivity and…hangover!

Eating is but one avenue to upgrade your system. Feeding, breathing, eliminating, being held, and being touched are primary ways in which you were kept alive as an infant, so these naturally have an enormous impact on your system even as an adult. Enhancing the quality of these basics can heal and grow you at a deep, pre-verbal level. Think of it as leverage. The closer to the root(beginning) of your body you can effect a shift, the more profound and permanent the effect of your efforts will be.

By Amanda Coleman, LMP