It's easy to neglect our physical bodies in favor of entertaining our minds. Some say, that entertainment is a door for demons, that honest hard work and rest are the things that sustain and center the self.

It becomes interesting to note that entertainment, particularly theatre and gladiatorial games, plays to the spirit of a thing, sometimes a very foreign thing, and by so doing, inspires otherwise innocent people to do things heretofore undreamed.

If spirit is a flow of life energy (and death too), as practitioners of voudoun and similar religions believe, it stands to reason that a mighty channel is needed. If you are expecting a spiritual flood, your channel must be strong.

I guess we could use the word Horse for the body. Whether or not we are consciously calling the spirits to us, some Horses are more fun to ride than others, and this cycle can become exhausting -- if the vessel is not replenished or if there is no suitable vessel nearby for these energies to dissipate, sooner or later the spirits do tend to overtake the channel.

One way to help prevent this is diet. The planning and preparation of food is time-consuming and ritualistic. Imagine as you prepare the food, that you are cutting away what is unneeded, sorting out what is too old or rotten, adding spice to enhance existing flavors, or even to hide them.

Culinary arts help break the cycle of obsession with death. Notice that even in voudoun, the food offering is extremely important. The spirits are thought of as bored, free of human concerns, and need to be bought off and occupied in order to prevent the household guardians from betraying the hearth.

Notice that the more spiritual Hispanic people put great emphasis on preparing food personally. Similarly, southern African American women are also famous for the extreme complexity and care put into the food.

Because food is life energy, it has the power to help make you healthy, and if neglected, unfortunately this becomes apparent very quickly.

In spite of the hype about great masters living on a grain of rice per day, all that sort of thing, soldiers and normal people down here in modern Sodom and Gomorrah (not talking about gay but rather civilization missing the point of life) can't live on single grains of rice.

One reason people get sick goes way back to the concept of humors and fevers. The body's humors being the principal fluids, fevers of course being inflammation or changes in temperature or pH.

When i visited Spiritwind, one of the things she had that impressed me was a food chart showing how healthy Alkaline heavy foods are compared to acidic foods.

Look at what Mediterraneans and Hispanics eat. They can be heavy yet still feel good some of the time. But look at the average skinny American, if you can find one. If you're lucky you'll find a health nut. If not, you are likely to encounter someone who has been starving, purging, or even subconsciously relying on acidic foods to turn themselves off of eating.

Coffee for instance. There are weeks that I've literally lived on the shit and still not lose weight. The creamer that the stores sell, is extremely addictive, sugary, not lowfat unless you pick lowfat, and it coats the digestive tract in order to enable more and more ingestion.

Ultimately after using that stuff too long, your colon changes and is not only sucking up the water from the coffee diarrhea, but also the massive doses of caffeine.

Apparently actual coffee addicts who abuse exist! They put it up their butts with the equipment you use for, hm what's it called, enema. Colon cleansing.

So there are tons of ways to abuse the body. But let's focus on stimulants and acid.

Spiritwind's pH chart had so many types of food on it that I was shocked at how few of them were on my regular shopping lists. I've been relying on greasy, pan fried animal products for my heavy calories. Even chicken curry is not a light dish, it's full of heart clogging fats.

I think Americans in particular are very stressed out and rely too much on comfort foods. We are starting to rub off on the immigrants in a bad way: natural products disappear under waves of pre-packaged over processed candy and snack foods. These are marketed mostly to workmen and children! People who must spend time outside the home...

How can we, as a homogenous American culture (or global culture!) insist that the manufacturers of such foods be held to a nutritional standard that actually allows us to have a healthy choice?

Anyhow, the reason I wrote this, I drank some day old coffee and it was so acidic without cream, that I retched then realized, the stomach tries to coat itself with mucus to avoid the pH change, and the mucus sets off an asthma attack. Hyper sensitive people may even have an attack when they taste overly strong coffee.

The combination of a wrecked body pH and the sugar in processed foods and often added to drugs like coffee as a sweetener, can wreak havoc on the immune system and accounts for a lot of things, including skin inflammation , diarrhea, and sluggish or blurry thinking.

In essence your diet can determine the scope of your health possibly more than your genes.

Thank you Spiritwind for having that placard up, lol.

Oh Naga...............this is one leg of my learning stool (no pun intended) lol that I am very weak in and give into easy peasy more than not................help!! I wish someone else could fix it but alas.......it is only I.............

I'm set up for Chelation therapy in April sometime to clean the toxins from the body along with some other alternative stuff and taking easy peasy thereafter will not be a choice so readily made.........my learning curve here is to learn to love not only my Spirit Self but my Body Self that houses my essence.........

Thanks for the post that has synchonicity for me these days.........good stuff

I noticed that too!!!! Lol

Aw, don't beat yourself up unless it's with a chicken drumstick, haha! Try to hit the mouth.

Huge serious hug

P.s. i have some very ugly reasons for neglecting diet. Dad was indoctrinated to be rude at the table in ways that were not at first obvious. A big character flaw, to use mealtime as attack time.

So when my son was born, on top of being addicted to that goddamn World of Warcraft (artificial drug), i was still carrying all that bad juju from all those years of sitting at table with bastard dad. Sometimes he was quiet but didn't waste time being nice. I figure he was ASD and unable to let go of bad habits.

Abusing the smart kids is real bad, abusing anyone is bad, but they tend to be unable to Let Shit Go.

They'll have to pry the trauma out of my rigor mortis claws.

Psychology Today has an article I will share, saying that high blood pressure accounts for nearly all the cognitive decline that has traditionally been blamed on other factors.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/article ... -the-brain" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Blood Pressure and the Brain
Hypertension is at the root of cognitive decline. It's becoming increasingly clear that high blood pressure, or hypertension, is at the root of much cognitive decline that has previously been attributed to aging. The more that scientists scrutinize brain function, and especially memory, the more they conclude that we have the ability to keep our memory and spirit strong well into old age.
By Willow Lawson, published on June 1, 2003 - last reviewed on June 9, 2016





The next time a nurse inflates a blood pressure cuff around your
bicep, pay attention. Those numbers are not just important for your
heart, but for your brain as well.

It's becoming increasingly clear that high blood pressure, or
hypertension, is at the root of much cognitive decline that has
previously been attributed to aging. The more that scientists scrutinize
brain function, and especially memory, the more they conclude that we
have the ability to keep our memory and spirit strong well into old age.
But it depends on how well we nourish our brain throughout life.

Hypertension is defined as blood pressure of 140/90 or above. The
first number is the measurement of the blood's force against artery walls
when the heart is beating. The second number is the pressure between
beats. A person is hypertensive if either number is too high.

Most people think salt is the culprit in high blood pressure. In
the vast majority of hypertensives, salt isn't the root of the problem.
Only about one third of people with high blood pressure are what doctors
call "salt sensitive."

"The rest of the folks can eat all the salt they want without
seeing much change in their blood pressure," says Shari Waldstein, Ph.D.,
associate professor of psychology at the University of Maryland at
Baltimore County, who studies the cognitive consequences of hypertension.
People whose diets are not to blame can pinpoint the problem through a
trial of medications that target differing pathways in the body. Blood
pressure is affected by many of the body's systems, including kidney
function, hormones such as insulin and the sympathetic and
parasympathetic nervous systems.

Regardless of cause, high blood pressure is extremely dangerous,
especially for people who don't know they have it, typically people who
rarely see a doctor. Hypertension has few symptoms; some sufferers
complain of headaches, nosebleeds or shortness of breath but for the most
part the body suffers in silence.

High blood pressure does its damage by weakening the blood vessels,
over time leading the inner lining to slough off. Vessels can be weakened
to the point that they tear, causing sudden death or disability via a
stroke or aneurysm. Hypertension can also lead to heart attacks.

But long before it creates a health emergency, hypertension takes a
subtle toll on mental faculties. It can reduce attention, learning,
memory and decision-making skills in ways that can be clearly seen in
studies.

"Generally, whatever problems impact cardiovascular health also
affect cognitive functioning," says Merrill Elias, Ph.D., a professor of
epidemiology at Boston University who has studied hypertension for 35
years.

Indeed, some researchers now believe that a substantial amount of
age-related mental decline has little to do with age and much to do with
blood pressure. Waldstein says there's a large body of research linking
hypertension directly to brain function, but scientists don't yet know
how it causes damage at the cellular level.

Elias says high blood pressure exerts a constant stress on the
brain and cardiovascular system that appears to be cumulative. "It's more
of a problem for people who don't go to the doctor," he says. "Just think
of it as your brain taking a hit every day."

The damage to the brain can come in a variety of forms. In the
elderly, more than half of whom suffer from hypertension, the damage can
be detected on MRIs in the form of "white matter lesions." These are
pinpoint lesions in the brain's message-carrying axons that affect
cognitive function, especially weakening memory and reasoning and
significantly impacting quality of life.

High blood pressure can also cause small strokes that may go
unnoticed, but which diminish the brain's capacity to function. Other
people who have chronic hypertension actually have small spots on their
brain where the tissue is dead, says Elias.

But that doesn't mean that high blood pressure is a disease of old
age. For one thing, many people who are in their 20s and 30s suffer from
it as well. It's especially important for younger people to control their
blood pressure so that the damage doesn't start early and snowball over
time.

But neither is high blood pressure inevitable with age. Blood
pressure can be kept in check by keeping cholesterol low, not smoking and
limiting salt. But perhaps the most important factor is keeping obesity
at bay, a struggle most Americans are not winning.

"Weight is a biggie," says Elias. "The more you weigh, the more
pressure there is."