TENDING TO THE PHYSICAL VEHICLE
All the faculties, possibilities, and accomplishments of shamanism, from the simplest to the most astounding, are in the human body itself.
CARLOS CASTANEDA, The Wheel of Time
Our body is the temple within which we work to illuminate our understanding of reality. It is the space and time reference point where we “reside” within the fractal patterning of the universe at large. Because of the holographic nature of our universe, any part contains within it the whole. From infinity up to infinity down, it’s all the same: it is all the great Tao.
Caring for our body must become the foundation of any and all “holy” practice, for our physical body is the point of view from which our consciousness experiences reality. The narrow band of the visual, auditory, and sensory information we can receive in our physical body serves as a funnel for our attention. If we have come from an unbound universal consciousness to a rather limited spectrum of experience anchored in physicality, maybe we should pay attention to our body. As discussed earlier, the polarized chasm in our Western thinking has created an imbalanced view of spirituality that mostly leaves the body aside, to be detested and not to be trusted. From a Taoist perspective, this cannot be further from the truth. It is vitally important to understand that the “fall” from the Garden of Eden in the Western Creation myth is not an idea shared by the naturalistic religions and philosophies of the world. According to those traditions, we are the caretakers of the Garden, and our body serves as the focal point for our practice and understanding of all things.
In reclaiming the body’s position as the lynchpin of our practice, it is important to address a number of vital aspects of how the body works and what it needs to thrive. In the previous chapter, we discussed the five elements and their correspondences with the organ systems of the body. This knowledge is very useful in our understanding of how to care for the body. In Chinese medicine, it is said that one is not to administer any acupuncture or herbs unless the basics of diet and lifestyle are first addressed.1 That means no medicine will work if we aren’t living right!
Remember, the separation of yin and yang is in our perception; even here, in this book, this perception has us discussing the body as something separate from our spirit. But they are all One; we are simply speaking of them separately here because of semantics. It helps us to understand the Tao when we can examine it through the full spectrum of its expression; in this case, we are examining the most physical aspect of who we are. In our practice, it all starts with the body.
The Four Wheels
In looking at what we need for our body, we can essentially break the concept of lifestyle into four categories, using a simplistic model that will help us stay focused. These four “wheels” to the vessel are diet, exercise, sleep, and mindset.
DIET
We are what we eat, and there is nothing more profound and sacred as our communing with Earth when we thankfully ingest its bounty and harvest into our body. Food is the fuel that feeds the energy of the body. As discussed earlier, this food qi is our post-heaven foundation of energy. We must eat a healthful diet filled with essential nutrients in order to have a fit and strong body. According to Ling Shu 10, which is one of the foundational books on Chinese medicine, the initial flow of the energy in the meridians is set in motion once nourishment enters the stomach after birth. The food we eat determines the quality and quantity of energy in our field and serves as the basis for the body’s growth and development.
It is also important to note here that food holds a powerful place in people’s blind spots. Because we have to eat so often, we often overlook our food. Food is where many people fall into a trancelike sleep, allowing the action of eating to simply fall under the radar. And while it can be difficult to bring these unconscious eating habits to light, it is also powerfully liberating. In working with thousands of patients over the past decade, I have come to understand that people who are able to wake up and actively engage in changing their eating habits are the ones who get better. It is so incredibly easy to fall into an old trance with food; almost everyone does it. To illustrate, I have been to several “spiritual” events where people are fully engaged in some truly groundbreaking work but then revert to mindless zombies during the lunch break. It often takes hours for the instructor to bring them back fully into the room. That is why most monasteries have built rituals around eating in order to keep the light of awareness on it as much as possible.
Here are a few common bad habits with food:
• Mindless eating: This means going into a trance or simply talking through a whole meal without paying any attention to the meal in front of us. There are often several forms of vegetable and animal life on our plate that we hypnotically scarf down without stopping to give thanks or thinking of where this food came from.
• Overeating: It is advisable to stop eating when just over half full. We have huge portion sizes, especially in America, and many people have walked into life with passed-down “finish your plate” mentalities. Don’t waste food; simply eat less per sitting and save the rest for a snack.
• Bad choices: Processed foods are out. Frozen dinners are a no-no. Eat live, organic, preferably locally grown fruits and vegetables and never eat traditionally raised meats. The quality of our food is very important, and our overall health depends on it.
• Waiting too long: If we’re starving by mealtime, it means we’ve waited too long. We tend to make bad food choices when our blood sugar has already crashed; physiologically, we’re in panic mode. We should be eating something every two to four hours, depending on our individual constitution. This way our blood sugar stays stable, and the brain doesn’t put us into stress mode. Fasting has its place, but it is not advised for the average work day.
• Bad food combining: Carbohydrates should never be eaten on their own. Always mix a carbohydrate with a protein or a fat. Fiber intake is about 10% of what our ancestors consumed. These help with detoxification and also feed our good bacteria.
Essentially, we want to keep our blood sugar stable and provide good-quality carbohydrates to our body. This means eating foods that are low on the glycemic index (refer to table 5.1 for a list of some “good” and “bad” carbohydrates).
Carbohydrates
Eat lots of fresh vegetables. Always start your meals with proteins and fats first; then, wait a few minutes before eating carbohydrates. This keeps the pancreas from spiking insulin levels in your bloodstream. An example would be dipping bread in olive oil (letting it fully soak up) and eating a little bit of that before the meal. This tempers the carb hit and gives the body lots of fat to burn instead. Ideally, however, you should dip with vegetables and avoid the bread altogether.
Essential Fatty Acids
Try to eat a teaspoon of olive oil at each meal or two or three olives per meal. This could also be replaced by a good omega-3/6 supplement formula. Omega-3 fatty acids are essential for cellular metabolism, yet they don’t lead to prostaglandin synthesis, which can lead to inflammatory response in the body (i.e., pain). You want the good stuff, and you want to avoid the partially hydrogenated oils.
TABLE 5.1 GOOD AND BAD CARBOHYDRATES
GOOD CARBOHYDRATES (those low on the glycemic index) Eat more of these foods |
BAD CARBOHYDRATES (those high on the glycemic index) Try to avoid these foods |
Most nonstarchy vegetables |
Bananas |
Apples |
Breads |
Asparagus |
Carrots |
Beans |
Cereal with added sugar |
Blueberries |
Corn |
Broccoli |
Corn chips |
Cabbage |
Dates |
Cantaloupe |
Doughnuts |
Celery |
French fries |
Citrus fruits |
Fruit juices (eat the whole fruit instead) |
Cucumber |
Honey |
Honeydew melon |
Mangoes |
Kiwi fruit |
Mashed potatoes, instant |
Leafy greens |
Oatmeal, instant |
Peaches |
Pancakes |
Peanuts |
Papaya |
Pears |
Parsnips |
Peppers |
Pasta |
Plums |
Potatoes |
Pretzels |
|
Spinach |
Raisins |
Tomatoes |
Rice, instant |
Young summer squash |
Sugar |
Zucchini |
Waffles |
Protein
• Fish: Eat wild fish. Hawaiian, Norwegian, and Scandinavian fish are usually not too heavily polluted. Watch out for farm-raised fish, as well as shark, swordfish, and other big-game fish, as they are usually high in pollutants. Also stay away from freshwater fish, which tend to carry more diseases and, hence, get more antibiotics.
• Turkey: Turkey meat is lean and high in tryptophan, an essential amino acid and precursor to serotonin, which helps feed the frontal cortex and aids in maintaining a positive attitude.
• Chicken breast: Poultry should be organic to avoid hormones and antibiotics.
• Grass-fed beef: This can be higher in omega-3 fatty acids than some fish! A healthy cow that eats natural grasses on the range is pretty healthy for you when eaten in small quantities.
• Dairy: Organic low-fat or no-fat cottage cheese and organic feta cheese are good sources of protein.
On top of these basic guidelines and recommendations for foods, it is important to note that in the Chinese medical system, digestion is regulated by the yang, or active, aspect of the spleen, which warms and transforms the food. Therefore, it is not advisable to eat too many raw uncooked foods, as this creates an additional burden on digestion. In fact, soups, broths, and congees are highly recommended for anyone who is having any signs of digestive insufficiency (gas, bloating, fatigue after meals, malabsorption, etc.).
Another important consideration is water intake. It is recommended that you drink two and a half to three liters (eighty to one hundred ounces) per day at a minimum. Spring water or microclustered water is preferable. Green tea is a wonderful antioxidant and has incredible health benefits, but it is important to not replace water consumption with this, as teas have an overall dehydrating quality by stimulating urination. Avoid coffee — it is too acidic and is also dehydrating. A great deal of research has been done on the healing properties of water, including maintaining a healthy histamine response (allergies), enabling digestive juices to be properly secreted, and detoxifying the system — and obviously many more.2
Drinking enough water is critical for all functions of the body, and many of us are running around in a chronically dehydrated state. As far as cultivating energy goes, things will simply not flow correctly without adequate hydration in the system.
Getting a handle on food isn’t just important; it is critical! Follow the basic guidelines in this section, and you will see things begin to change almost immediately. (Please note that this text does not take the place of qualified, individualized help.) Eating well is a lifelong study, and the good news is that you have several chances to get it right every day. The take-home message of this section is one you’ve heard before: wake up! Be mindful of your eating habits. Pay attention to what you are eating and how you are eating it. Chew slowly and savor your food. Add more fiber via vegetables and fresh fruit. Don’t talk so much while eating. Really allow the food to settle into your stomach before your next activity. Your participation in this process is not optional. This is an unconscious rug under which much has been swept. But you are the new sheriff in town. Ride in and clean up that mess because nobody else can do it for you!
PERSONAL JOURNEYS Adjust Your Diet to Your Lifestyle
Before I found the Chinese martial arts systems, I practiced in some of the Korean arts for a number of years. After thousands of roundhouse kicks, I was starting to have a persistent achy pain that wasn’t getting any better.
I was very busy with school and work at the time, so I decided to give my training a break for a number of months to allow my hip to heal. I went from thirty hours or more of aggressive training per week to almost nothing except some mild yoga. Prior to taking this break, I simply could not eat enough to keep the weight on; I probably had the ability to digest a car tire in those days. I was on fire and could eat anything.
Four months later, it occurred to me that I had forgotten to turn down the dial on my food intake; my appetite and subconscious eating patterns had been dialed into the exertion level of a serious martial artist, yet my lifestyle had shifted to that of a mellow yogi. I woke up one day having put on a good fifteen pounds! I had fallen asleep to my shifted caloric requirements and was piling too much fuel into a much less active machine.
I quickly adjusted my diet down and tuned my cardio exercise up. It didn’t take too long to turn around, but it certainly wasn’t as easy.
Traveling through India and Asia while on sabbatical, I ran into spiritual aspirants who did nothing but sit and meditate all day. Such daily devotional work was commendable, but their bodies were falling apart because they were suffering from many of the same problems I had encountered with patients in California. The singular, shared trait was that neither population really moved. Poor immunity, low energy, achy muscles, weak joints, and low morale were just some of the health problems. The 2015–2020 dietary guidelines for Americans advise at least 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity or seventy-five minutes a week of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity. They also suggest “muscle-strengthening activities that involve all major muscle groups on two or more days a week.”3
Over the years, I have had extensive training in the Chinese martial arts, with an emphasis on the Shaolin tradition. Here’s a quick story about the Shaolin temple:
In the early fifth century, an Indian monk by the name of Bodhidharma traveled to the Shaolin temple in China and took up residence outside the grounds, where he sat in silent meditation for a long time until the monks took notice of him. When invited to enter the temple to teach, Bodhidharma immediately noticed that the physical constitution of the monks was weak and sickly. He proceeded to teach them a series of mind-body exercises and introduced a more rigorous labor regimen for their day-to-day activities. With the introduction of his powerful yoga techniques (the qi gong, which we will study soon) and physical exertion, the monks began to gain strength. This heralded the start of the golden age of the Shaolin temple, wherein the monks were transformed into the famous “warrior monks.” With superior skills in the martial arts, they became the defenders of good and justice in ancient China. Bodhidharma is known as the first patron saint of the Chan Buddhist tradition (which is called Zen in Japanese).4
The Shaolin kung fu philosophy of chopping water and fetching food, mixed with rigorous training, created a form of “superhuman,” and this is nothing more than our birthright. We all have the capacity — and, I would argue, the need — to develop our bodies to become strong and resilient. It strengthens our bones, aids our circulation, boosts our immunity, clears our toxins, raises our metabolic rate, helps us burn fat, supports our joints, and lifts our mood. It really is a no-brainer. Yet, most people do not get enough exercise and are constantly struggling with their health and weight. Again, we come face to face with ourselves here. It is incredibly easy to come up with excuses not to exercise and to go unconscious about it, but the answer is always the same: we still need to get our exercise.
In my opinion, working out just for the sake of working out is very difficult to do, which is why most people don’t do it. I much prefer sports or games. I personally train kung fu, go hiking, play basketball, or swim. Now, there’s a catch to this, and anyone who has played weekend warrior long enough can attest to it: sports only work until you get injured! This is where the gym comes in; this is where functional training takes meaning. We train and increase strength in order to support the structures and to stay healthy enough to play sports. Sure, if you enjoy lifting weights, then you’re all right. But most people hate gyms, and a majority of people in this country won’t even step foot in a gym, for a variety of reasons. But, alas, we still need to move! So let’s now look at some powerful ways to do so without the drama of the gym.
First of all, if you’re not already taking a morning walk, start ASAP! It increases the metabolic rate for the rest of the day and cues the body to start burning fat instead of sugars preferentially. A brisk morning walk for twenty to sixty minutes, followed by a healthy breakfast, will set the energetic tone for the day and boost mood and circulation very quickly. Just build it into your daily routine. Yes, the first few days will be rough with the earlier alarm clock, but, within a week, you will likely be off to the races and will be so happy you are doing it.
Second, we need weight-bearing exercises to maintain good health. Weight-bearing exercise is critical for the development of muscles and bones. Basic squats, lunges, curls, dips, push-ups, pull-ups, and rows are a good way to get started — and they don’t require a gym membership! What we want to do is stress (remember eustress?) the muscles into activity, which signals the brain to release more growth hormone (increasing post-heaven jing) and to further develop the system. Either we are busy growing, or we are deteriorating. We need weight-bearing exercise to support our lean muscle mass and nervous system. There is no quicker formula for aging and rapid decline than a sedentary lifestyle. Muscle development is a key factor in keeping the body-brain connection active.
Third, stretching is our friend. I would say that 90 percent of the musculoskeletal injuries I encounter in the clinic are a direct result of inadequate stretching. People are just too busy nowadays for stretching, and they really pay the price. Maybe stretching isn’t active enough for you. Maybe there’s no time because you just arrived at the tennis courts, and your friend is ready to start, so you pick up your racquet and strain your elbow ten minutes in. Consider stretching the yin activity for the yang aspect of your routine. They need each other.
Fourth, cardiovascular exercise is key. The legs are considered our second heart, and we need to break into a sweat daily in order to expel toxins, drain lymph, and keep the heart muscle healthy. Again, this is where a lot of people injure themselves, so it is important to stretch before and after exercising. It is also important to train the leg muscles and strengthen the lateral stabilizers of the hips in order to avoid injury when running. I’m personally a big fan of long hikes with added weight in a backpack to keep the heart rate up. Running is very rough on the joints, and most people hurt themselves trying to get into it and then are put off from exercise altogether; this is obviously not helpful.
In addition to getting the heart rate up, a little time outside communing with nature is always good — especially with fresh air and sunshine. (Note: If you have a history of heart problems or suffer from shortness of breath or dizziness, please consult your physician before jumping into a cardio program. It is always important to be safe in what we do.)
Finally, as mentioned in part I, recovery is a critical aspect to all that we do. The body needs rest in order to rebuild tissues and recover from exercise. A majority of the elite athletes I have worked with exhibit signs of adrenal fatigue, and their lab work confirms this. They are burning up their essence by pushing too hard and not allowing the yin aspect of their activity to match their drive.
Again, balance is key in everything we do. The body needs stress in order to continually evolve and grow in a healthy light. Too much stress damages the system, but not enough stress is what we have when we sit on the couch and watch the tube. Balance is the operating ideology of all Taoism, and we need to attain it in all aspects of our lives.
SLEEP
Speaking of recovery, to date, there is no better substitute for fatigue than sleep. It is an absolutely critical process that we often take for granted. It is our chance to finally lay to rest our conscious mind, which has been working so diligently all day. We have millions of bits of information going through our mind in any given second. Our conscious mind can only handle a very small fraction of that information because it has to reconcile what it sees “outside” ourselves with the artificial identity we’ve created (called our ego). This gives our mind a heck of a job because the ego routinely faces catastrophic collapse daily as new information challenges its definition of itself and forces reconciliation.
Now, in addition to all the energy we store subconsciously in the shadow, we also have millions of reactions to emotions we don’t want to feel and memories we’d rather forget. These load up defensive arguments and chains of rationalizations, which interface with our consciousness all day. Whatever is brought into the light of conscious awareness must be dealt with by either absorbing into our greater self-identity or stuffing it away into the shadow to deal with on another day. Sleep is where much of this gets cleaned up; it’s when the brain is allowed to process and make sense of the day’s happenings.
Aside from the profound mental reorganization, sleep is where tissues throughout the body are repaired and toxins are expelled. Living in this modern world, we are all being exposed to toxins at an unprecedented rate, and we rely on our body’s detox pathways to help clear these poisons at night. Inadequate levels of sleep severely compromise this system and force us to carry these toxins into the following day, which, as we all know, has its own load of junk to deal with.
PERSONAL JOURNEYS Hibernation Saves the Day
I have read many stories about Taoist masters who really applied the philosophy of rest and recovery to their daily lives. During an extremely busy time in my life, I had gone more than a year and a half without any real down time. I was always behind on something and was constantly overcommitting left and right.
I’d been teaching a classroom full of students in Los Angeles about eating seasonally, and I was working on the next lesson’s curriculum (which was about modulating our energy output to match the seasons), and that’s when it finally dawned on me. I was totally exhausted and running myself into the ground. I had been so motivated to help people that I had forgotten my teacher’s primary axiom: “First help yourself, then help the people.” I was being a terrible Taoist.
It was late fall at the time, and winter was already showing in the trees. I had just been hit with the reality that “go with the flow” had not been part of my life for a couple of years. The “flow” should have landed me in a hammock long ago! I went about clearing my schedule in the winter and pulling my energy out of all noncritical tasks. I kept my practice and a modified exercise program.
I essentially committed to do whatever it took to rejuvenate that winter. I gave my body sleep as often as I could. At first, I’d sleep twelve to thirteen hours per night and most of the weekends. I had to commit to being lazy. I had to learn to say no to friends when the phone rang. It turned into a hibernating “staycation,” and I spent a lot of down time thinking and catching up on little projects in the house. The operating motto was “rest when you’re tired” — and that was pretty much all the time.
It took about three months before I really noticed what had happened to my life. The dark circles were gone from under my eyes, my achy low back was no longer bothering me, and the low-grade anxiety that had seemed to always be there was gone. It turned out that some of the mental noise had been purely physiological; it had been my body trying to tell me what it needed. In my case, I needed sleep. Eventually, I felt like doing things again and had a renewed enthusiasm that came from deep within. I was restored and felt healthy again. Lesson learned.
The next lesson, however, was soon to come. I needed to find that balance in my everyday life. Sure, I could crash in the winter after a crazy year, but that was a big swing of the pendulum. Was I going to be able to find that balance in an average day? That turned out to be the real Taoist training because it required mindfulness. I had to wake up to my daily trance trains and become an Urban Monk.
Sleep is also a critical place for tissue recovery and growth. During stage 4 sleep, the body releases growth hormone (vital essence) into the bloodstream, which helps trigger the muscles and tissues to stay young and to proliferate. This ultimate yin activity becomes the basis of our regrouping and repair at night. This is why a minimum of six to nine hours of sleep is necessary for most people.5
Let’s go over some basic sleep hygiene rules to help you get better sleep now:
• No caffeine after 2:00 p.m. The stimulating effects can stay with you for several hours.
• No TV or other screentime in the bedroom. It sends pulses of light to your pineal gland (third eye), which signals the brain to stay awake and alert and kills your sex life/intimacy.
• No bills or stressful business in bed. The bedroom is for sleep and for making love. Keep everything else out.
• Keep the temperature cool and a window cracked for fresh air if you can. (For most people, 68–72 degrees Fahrenheit is the average temperature for inducing the best sleep.)
• No big meals three hours before bed. (However, if you suffer from insomnia, you’ll want a small snack of fat and protein to stabilize your blood sugar before bedtime.)
• Write down what’s on your mind so you can deal with it the next day.
It is important to note that a very healthy practice is to set out what you need to accomplish on any given day and make sure you do it before you go to bed. Don’t take unfinished business to bed with you, as it’ll keep your mind unsettled throughout the night. If you constantly have unfinished items on your list every night, then it is time to really look at your goals and manage your expectations of yourself. Are you being unreasonable with what you expect of yourself, or are you chatting with people at the coffee shop for too long and neglecting what you need to do? In any case, event management, rather than time management, is the key. Time is pretty consistent; it is the number of events we commit ourselves to that crunches our time and gets us stressed out. (I invite you to read my book The Art of Stopping Time for a hundred-day journey into this topic.)
Part of the process here is the process of becoming honest with ourselves and bringing to conscious light all the side deals. These deals are the unspoken agreements we have running in the background that cause us grief and stress. Essentially, we should choose to either drop it or handle it. Whatever it is, we need to stop dragging it around. This leads us to our fourth “wheel” of the physical body.
MINDSET
The way we see our body and the way we live our life are direct reflections of our internal state. The levels of stress we experience have a profound effect on our body. Although this book has an entire chapter devoted to Taoist mental practices, it’s important to speak of this subject in relation to our body as well. The key to a happy life is to develop a peaceful “operating system.” This puts us in a healthy mindset that isn’t looking for a quick fix every time stress overwhelms us.
In my clinical experience, most people in the West have compromised adrenal glands because of long-term stress to their system. This is directly a result of their lifestyle practices. For example, those of us who have a hard time eating on time routinely call upon our adrenal glands to secrete cortisol as a blood sugar stabilizer. Cortisol helps pull stored sugar out of our reserves because the brain cannot go without food. As the primary organ in the body, the brain will sacrifice other systems to get what it needs. This can lead to hormonal problems, insomnia, long-term exhaustion, anxiety, and low back pain. The extra cortisol in the system tells the body to store fat (which it does when it is in emergency mode), which makes it difficult to lose weight, no matter how hard we exercise. Then, the adrenals finally exhaust our reserves, and the cortisol just isn’t being produced, so the body uses the next system in line — epinephrine and norepinephrine — to get sugar. When this happens, we are jolted out of bed with a racing heart, and we have a low-grade level of anxiety that doesn’t seem to go away, no matter how many trips to the Bahamas we take. Now we are in trouble.
We need to develop a mindset of reverence and goodwill toward our physical body. We must treat it like a long-abused child who now, finally, needs the extra attention and love it deserves. We need to listen to it and ask it what it needs and then give it to it. This becomes a practice of honoring the needs of our physical vehicle and raising it to its rightful place as the very altar of our spiritual practice. Remember, balance is the key.
Mindset and the Five Elements
Each of the elements is associated not only with an internal organ but also with an associated emotion (see table 5.2). Mania, worry, grief, fear, and anger are manifestations of imbalanced energy in the five elements, but they are simultaneously expressing as pathology in their corresponding organs. Heart palpitations, indigestion, shortness of breath, chronic exhaustion, and vertex headaches are also respectively brewing within those emotions and vice versa. As above, so below. Everything is associated with everything else in Taoist thinking, so physical lifestyle habits can influence mental patterns, while emotional disturbances can show up as physical ailments.
TABLE 5.2 FIVE ELEMENT ORGANS AND EMOTIONS
This obviously speaks volumes about the importance of caring for the body — inside and out. The good news is that the body has an amazing ability to self-regulate, so good diet, balanced exercise, and adequate sleep all go a long way in healing many illnesses, including problems with the internal organs. The point to take home here is that in order to wake up, we need to do so on all levels, and it starts with the body. Cleaning up the temple is the necessary first step in the alchemical process.