5-Element Medicinal Food That Doesn’t Taste Like Medicine

[Food As Medicine 食疗]

Five Element Medicinal Food

That Doesn’t Taste Like Medicine

By Raven Cohan

 Five Energies           Do we in this junk-food jungle, find joy in calorie-laden foods that have extra grease, sugars, and actual ingredients added that can poison us?  Well, that is a definite. People who would say no to the question, may be those who haven’t done the research and don’t look at the web sites and daily news which print tons of info to back up this statement: You can start enjoying healthier foods. But it need not be necessarily scarier than any jungle.

Plenty of articles exist that support my information above, but how much is found that tells you how to start liking and perhaps loving an entire new way of eating healthy, fresh, non-GMO, organic food? Such foods would be including lots of vegetables. You would break in slowly, or go literally cold turkey to be opting never to (or for some of us, occasionally or regularly to,) include products of the actual animals themselves that have been raised in a more healthful way. They are brought to the public with as minimal processing as can be done. And if you presently are willing to never eat anything with eyes and a mouth, you are doing well already, in my opinion.

colorful foods           Would we agree that the word “medicine” in the above title doesn’t at all sound appetizing, and perhaps it is actually threatening?  Can we take a journey enabling slow steps that will help us break down former disregard of, or more extremely, less former loathing of foods that were put on a list by many youngsters. (Were we raised by parents that we were driven nuts when our hat-ful of hated foods were found under the table with the dog, or etc?)

This article’s author wants you to do a little Tao meditation coming up. Please understand that your 5 Element Foods are a science bound by rules.  This author doesn’t know as much as many other authors who specialize in this subject for this publication. The value of balancing one food with another and eating them seasonally and etc… is a big etcetera.  I personally feel, with respect to those who don’t agree, that this science of eating has done service to many who follow it exactlingly, and yet for many modern folks from the jungle-like place in my first opening statement, it is way too threatening to wander out of that jungle and run smack into a science library.

So how can you do a meditation on foods on a daily basis, that might get you to want to integrate into your 5 Element organs more healthy foods that offer a rainbow of nutritive colors that your own internal organs will like?  (Me… I LOVE my ingredients with which I choose to make my dinners, in a similar way as an artist puts color on a palette.)

Before you start researching which fruits and veggies are some you never even tasted because they look funny or even ugly, have a weird name, have a thick skin on them when they are fresh and not from the freezer section, etc., just go to the produce department of a health food chain store you like and bring a notebook. Ask the clerk about the strangest, and the most familiar which you never tried. Ask if they know what color is under the husks or skins that look dirty because they grew right in mother earth’s womb. (At least at her surface, any way.) Write down the pieces of information, take it to the internet, and look up info on what values they offer.  That is a good background that precedes buying, cooking, and eating these “weird things.”  Soon you can play with this meditation to begin bringing healthy food into your body before you even open your mouth and chew.

Now for those of you who are new to five element meditations of any kind, please know that the ancient peoples loved to place corresponding colors on a rainbow ‘graph’ and notice what foods, stars in the heavens, gems in the earth, and all nameable things can be categorized by colors alone. Colors even are given to emotions, both positive and negative. (Many tribes world-wide did this also, but in some places the five elements were called the four directions PLUS the center.) China took the science to tremendous arenas from which one can learn.

So now let’s just make it simple. You know that perhaps you have never liked red as a color and perhaps you might like apples because the pulp is white underneath.

A. 1. that red skin, (and perhaps you always hated beets or tomatoes.) Take a look at. 2. the power animal, the Red Pheasant, who is like a King or Queen of the forest. Take them into your 3. summer organ, the heart ,which has 4. the positive emotion of the of love in it.  No matter if  5. the negative emotion “hate”  tends to presently dominate your feeling, it takes much respect and patience to become full of JOY in the heart.  This more constant joy brought in can make you more open to any red food, or any food in fact. This applies to all the rest below.  I’ll go over the next one fully, but will only list the other three where you can classify by the same numbers as these examples:

After summer comes The Spleen and Stomach, center organs.

B. 1. Golden skinned  veggies  under the guide of the 2. Golden Phoenix which rises and returns to earth and enjoys them both.   3. Indian Summer, when much of the food in the garden is harvested, has 4. positive emotions of non-judgement and fairness. No matter if the 5. negative emotion of judgement wants  to dominate, let fairness and justice be centering you more strongly.

So the rest:

C.  1. white skin or pulp, 2. White Tigers, 3. Autumn organ, 4. Positive emotion- courage, 5. Negative emotion- discouragements, low esteem, sadness and deep mourning, are aided.

D. 1. blue skin or pulp,  2. Blue or black deers or tortoises, 3. Winter, 4.  positiveemotion /Gently, nourturing & ,  5. negative emotion/Fear.

E. 1. Green skin or pulp, 2. Green Dragon, 3. Spring, 4. positiveemotion/ kindness & 5. negative emotion/Anger.

If you wonder about veggies and fruits that are compound colors like purple or orange, consider both colors lists’ concerns.  When you balance your emotions with virtues,  you can open up to accepting more things in your life you couldn’t before. We need to go inside and open spaces that we have previously closed. Begin looking at the beauty of how so much of our likes and dislikes run on blind emotions.

 

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERARaven Cohan enjoys writing about the Tao practices she loves to do and teach, (as a certified, Senior Instructor of Universal Healing Tao of Grand Master Mantak Chia.) She has written dozens of published articles and has been working eleven years on a book and keeps hoping she will finish it soon.  She teaches in Hollywood, in S. Florida. Come visit. See www.taoTLC.com
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