Energy in the body also reflects the seasons. In the spring energy goes up and in.
Spring can be frustrating as “up” energy makes us want to do things and “in” energy confuses the outward expression of our experience. Anger and impatience are frequent in spring because energy is up and pushed inside. In springtime, shiatsu treatments are aimed at calming energy and bringing it out. Lack of energy is rarely a problem, usually the energy is just stuck.
Spring would be associated with morning energy and breakfast comes as we arise from our natural death-like slumber, just as spring follows winter. Morning has the yang-rising energy of springtime.
In the early morning, our digestive system is sensitive as that of an infant. Interestingly, whole grains have a protein to carbohydrate ratio and sweet flavor that virtually duplicates human mother’s milk. This suggests that a soft grain porridge would be a particularly suitable staple food around which to build a natural breakfast. A warm gruel as opposed to dry toast or cold cereal. Fruits and sugars generally have a yin, condensing, cold energy and are not appropriate foods for the first meal of the day according to Chinese herbalists. They can be temporarily stimulating, but can in fact dampen the Qi of the spleen/stomach/pancreas and create a tendency to experience those mid-morning low energy ‘Blues”, and cravings for more sweets and stimulants. For breakfast then, oats, barley, millet and rice are most suitable. No one would think of feeding an infant bacon, egg, sausage, steak or other such foods; these foods are appropriate at times when our digestive fire is stronger.
Kabir says:
Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think…and think…while you are alive.
What you call “salvation” belongs to the time just before death.
If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive,
Do you think the ghosts will do it after?
What Kabir is saying is this:
When the Guest
Is being searched for,
It is the intensity of the longing for the Guest
That does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see
A slave of that intensity.
~ from the Kabir Book, versions by Robert Bly.
SPIRITUAL PRACTICE is the work of constantly being aware of life processes by carefully attending to the flow of movement of sensations and phenomena of the body life as they occur. This awareness is uncluttered by opinions or judgments about the experience themselves. It is an attentiveness that is direct, clear, simple, and without agenda. Attention for attention’s sake. Taking time to be with what is. Not wanting to make the moment anything more than what it is.
This is how I approach my Shiatsu Practice. Being in the moment with my clients and focusing on what their innate wisdom wants to address in that moment.
