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Too much of a “good thing” perhaps . . .
Body was probably telling you to set limits.Sorry to hear about the experience . . . S
my stomach was in shock of so much raw food at once…
I am doing better with Asian foods, stomach and belly is doing very well with that, I do not mind SOME raw foods though 😉
When I started with living/raw vegetarian food diet several years ago, I chose to follow Ann Wigmore’s version of it.
It is very much based on using not only various vegetables, fruits, nuts, almonds, sesame seeds etc, either fresh or dried, but also sprouting of alfalfa, mung beans, lentils, soyneans, wheat & rye grains, sunflower seeds and also consuming things like sauerkraut, seaweed and so on.
Important is also making of chapati (instruction for this can also be found from Essene Gospel of Peace, tr. by Edmund Bordeaux Szekely), which is easiest prepared of course in modern conditions with blender or liquidizer.
If one is basically healthy in normal sense, anybody propably could learn to survive with raw food diet when doing it step-by-step. But very few are actually anyway motivated to try also in these nutritional matters, what might be the best alternative. Maybe it’s anyway not raw food, when we think all humans, because it’s clearly someway too demanding.
If somebody is following raw food diet, there is no reason why he or she couln’t also eat pizza, hamburgers, steaks, boiled potatoes, milk and so on, if nothing else is available. I like the taste, but my immediate experience have shown that using raw vegetarian diet is much much better solution.
With following I don’t mean to be arrogant, but I just try to defend certain kind of diet, which seems to be such an abomination for many.
I don’t have myself any serious illness and I don’t have any allergies, so reason to shifting to raw food have been to have the best possible diet and also saving energy.
Very much depends also of course how often and how much is eaten. I personally manage well with one moderate one for 24 fours. I must admit that I have never followed my daily calorie intake, but it’s beacause I have never been neither over- nor underweighted.
I have been, during few summers, working as a construction laborer and I have noticed that even I don’t have all the skills, I’m the one who is most fit and have most stamina. This have been my observation mostly. For one summer I was allowed to leave half an hour earlier than others, because foreman of the construction crew knew that I anyway don’t need to keep the lunch break.
If somebody has been following this forum long enough, one should be also aware of so called bigu. I personally start to investigate that only in certain kind of controlled conditions, when I have possibility use various biofeedback devices and have also other ways to monitor what happens in the body.
Also if somebody works with breathing exercise of Iron Shirt or Pranayama, eating seldom and certain kind of foodstuff gives time and conditions where one can really make progress.
I remember sometimes having seen document about African Baka people. They for example ate roasted bats, which they found in the large hollow tree in the rain forest. Food hygiene seemed not to be concern for them, because they in this document roasted these bats alive with wooden sticks on campfire without even bothering to flay them before eating them. And at least in the document nobody got sick.
Water was mentioned earlier in this thread. For example in Europe beer was drinken by adults and children alike in the north and east and in the south wine has been important drink, because difficulty of finding potable water.
HOWDY
Ps. I haven’t yet had time to familiarize myself with diet based on Five Element Theory.
My take on it is that most of the Chinese medicinal advice is for people living in cities. IF you are a cultivator closer to nature things change. One you are bringing in allot more yang. Two you are not eating big raw salads and cold shacks. You are wild harvesting, top Chinese herbs and berries. Until you can just breath.
Even being such a wild herb cultivator doesn’t necessarily
eliminate some of the benefits of cooking. In particular,
the herb He Shou Wu has traditionally been prepared by
cooking it in black bean soup to reduce some natural
phytotoxins in it, as raw He Shou Wu has some side effects.Traditionally the diet of Taoist mountain hermits is
steamed above-ground vegetables and herbs, not raw.S
Of course moderation is the best….it is the safe answer always.
But i hear that chinese medicine doesn’t think raw food is very good. Maybe this is because the chinese have been civilized for such a long time? They say eating grains is good but maybe because people in civilizations need to eat grains or the land cannot support the civilization. Alot of taoists think it’s better to eat not much meat but maybe thats because theres not enough animals to feed lots of meat to the whole chinese population. After such a long time their body has adjusted to these conditions. Chinese medicine has massive amounts to offer the west but it was designed for chinese and so we shouldn’t take the chinese medicine textbook word for word. As mantak chia says famously, take what works and use it, while disgarding what doesn’t work (or something along those lines 🙂
I feel the benefit of raw food can be that because you have such nutrient rich food that you don’t need to eat as much of it. Due to this then your digestive system has less food to digest and can rest more (of course with grains, even if they’re cooked it has to work hard to digest them into energy suitable for the body). It’s not like eating chemicals or something – raw food is still food. When you get old perhaps you would need more cooked food because your stomach wouldn’t have as much power as when you were younger, and yes the stomach fire may go out. A bit of everything is still good though of course because if you only eat cooked food every day and then for some reason one day you’re not able to cook your food your stomach will labour with the effort of digesting. If your stomach is accustomed to SOME raw food it won’t be shocked by it. That could at least be of some benefit.
I was not arguing for or against a raw diet but trying to put it in its place in the cultivation path. There are allot of mountain hermits or temple monks that do not eat the small amounts of raw food I am talking about. So yes most I would say cook there food, that is a great clarification.
Peace
JDHere is an excerpt from Livia Kohns book (p.129), that represents the stages of eating that some Taoists go through as they cultivate (from the Xuanmen Dalun, “Great Treatise on the Gate of all WOnders”, translated by Eskildsen):
1. Coarse eating: grains, “to terminate cravings and desires”
2. Rough eating: vegetables, “to abandon fats”
3. Limited eating: no food after noon, “to eliminate confusion and defilement”
4. Absorbing essences: talisman water and cinnabar efflorescences, “to embody flower stems”
5. Absorbing sprouts: directional qi “to change into sprouts”
6. Absorbing light: sun, moon, stars, “to transform into light”
7. Absorbing qi: universal energy, “to become qi and wander in the six directions”
8. Absorbing primordial qi: cosmic energy, “to merge with heaven and earth”
9. Embryo respiration: pure qi of creation, “to become one with Dao”I can dig all of this except the cinnabar… also very cool to see how the gradual qi cultivation methods closely mirror the seven formulas of One Cloud.
It doesn’t mention if the food is cooked or raw though.
I just read your post, and do agree that these two types of raw foods, based on the “LIVING ENERGY” in grasses, sprouts, juices and earth (clay) as put forth by Ann wigmore and Edward Szekely are well researched and practiced, and highly beneficial for peoples health.
People should also note that in China, “cooked” vegetables are often just lightly steamed or fried so that the broccoli or bok choy for example is still crispy, not overcooked, and is in fact very close to being raw.
I really like chapatis so will look in in my books to find that info from Edward Szekely.
I would also recommend a book called “Earth Cures” written by Raymond Dextreit and translated by Michael Abehsera – there is an awesome raw liver tonic in there: grated carrots marinated in lemon juice, or if you have a vitamixer, just throw them in there. tasty.
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