ENLIGHTEN UP! a blogSelf-awareness stories: lighting our way to clarity, contentment and resilience in a complicated world.
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 “Energy doesn't communicate in English, French, Chinese or Swahili, but it does speak clearly.”
— Elaine Seiler Breath and energy together form the second layer of self-awareness (bethgibbs.com/fivelayersofselfawareness). The oxygen we breathe nourishes the body and brain and sustains life. Our energy is that invisible life force that animates us at all levels, enabling us to think, create, move, work, love, and navigate all that life brings. Breath and energy are integrated and inseparable even though we separate them to define, discuss, measure, explain, sense, feel and explore. Energy Grasping the idea of your subtle energy and learning to sense it may feel a bit woo-woo but it is very real. Just like the energy that powers our electronic devices, turns on the lights and heats our homes, it’s energy that animates us. It is believed to surround, interpenetrate and expand beyond our physical body and interrelate with everything in our environment. Eastern healthcare practitioners and philosophers tell us that the body-mind and its five layers are made of energy. They consider the study of subtle energy to be a complex and yet unexplored area that involves and impacts breath, the act of breathing, our overall health and our relationship to our world. Science acknowledges that human energy fields exist. The ones that can be measured include the electromagnetic and bio-magnetic fields generated by all living cells, tissues, organs, and the body as a whole. For example science measures electrical brain activity with an EEG (electroencephalogram) and heart activity with an ECG (Electrocardiograph). Scientists also acknowledge that the subtle energy field exists but are not in agreement on what it is or how to measure it. Theoretical physicists believe that energy holds the universe and all solid matter together allowing us to function in a material world. While Western science seeks ways to measure it, Eastern wisdom traditions provide self-awareness explorers with ways to grasp, understand and work with subtle energy. In India this energy is called Prana, but it’s known by other names in other places:
Subtle energy is said to enter the body as we breathe, and circulate around the body through energy channels analogous to blood vessels. The Chinese call these channels meridians. Yogis call them nadis. It is this energy that connects everything and everybody. How we understand and relate to that basic truth can have a transformative effect on how we live and interact with ourselves, with others and with our environment. Direct experience of subtle energy remains a bit mysterious for most of us until practice or grace renders it noticeable. This may be because most of us can’t ‘see’ our energy, but it is a factor in every aspect of the human condition. We all have the ability to work with our energy and use it to change how we perceive our issues, actions, behavior and ultimately, ourselves. To begin working with your subtle energy, consider these suggestions:
Sensing Your Energy Levels In her book, Charge and the Energy Body, Anodea Judith offers this exercise as a way to sense subtle energy in your body. Instructions Sit comfortably with a straight spine. Extend your arms directly out in front of you, elbows straight, your hands several inches apart. Open and close your palms, rapidly moving from all the way open to completely closed. Repeat until your hands feel tired, about half a minute or so. Then separate your hands about two feet, with your palms facing each other. Very slowly bring your palms toward each other, pausing when they are about six to eight inches apart. You should be able to feel a very subtle energy field between your hands and possibly some mild tingling or buzzing in the center of your hands. If you don’t feel this energy right away, extend your arms again and open and close your hands a few more times. Make sure you are opening and closing them all the way in each direction, until your hands feel tired. With practice, you can learn to sense this subtle energy. According to Judith, this exercise will work for about 90% of the people who try it. It definitely works for me! Breath and Breathing Not surprisingly, breath feels more ‘real’ than energy because it is firmly rooted in the five sense material world. We see pictures and diagrams of the respiratory system in anatomy books that list the parts involved in the process of breathing oxygen: nose, nasal cavities, mouth, throat, trachea, lungs and the muscles of respiration. These can be seen, touched, smelled, tasted, and listened to with our five senses and can be dissected and studied after death. Scientific research and integrative health professionals support the idea that the proper flow of oxygen is necessary to maintain optimal physical health. In The Breathing Book: Good Health and Vitality Through Essential Breath Work, Donna Farhi says, “Breathing affects your respiratory, cardiovascular, neurological, gastrointestinal, muscular and psychic systems and also has a general effect on your sleep, your memory, your energy level, and your concentration.” Fortunately we don’t have to think about each inhalation and exhalation we take. Our autonomic nervous system handles that function. It’s automatic and involuntary. However, with awareness and practice we can learn to consciously control and vary our breathing to change our physical, and mental states in several ways. By learning a variety of breathing exercises, we can:
These desirable outcomes are reason enough to take time to understand this aspect of our breath-energy layer and how to work with it. Our lungs can hold six liters of air, which equals approximately one and a half gallons. Sadly, most of us do not use the full capacity of our lungs. Here’s why we need to do that. The brain is only 2% of the body’s weight, yet it needs 20% of our body’s available oxygen. The practice of deep breathing and fully oxygenating the blood is important to our overall well-being. Lack of oxygen weakens every body system and is a key factor in many diseases. It weakens the immune system, which can lead to viral infections, inflammation, heart disease, and premature aging. Becoming aware of your breathing process and learning to breath deeply and efficiently is one of the most important practices you can incorporate into your daily life for optimal health. Here is an exercise for increasing your ability to breathe deeply and fill your lungs with those six liters of air. The Full Deep Breath Instructions Step 1: Abdominal (belly) breathing - Gently close your eyes and relax. Place your hands on your belly. Try to keep your chest still. Focus on your belly. When you exhale, push all the air out and press your hands a little deeper into your belly. Watch the inhalation as it fills the space, expands the belly and pushes your hands outward. Practice this for 1 – 2 minutes. Step 2: Thoracic (chest) breathing - Now place your hands on your chest. Try to keep your belly still. Let your focus be on your chest. When you inhale feel your chest rise. When you exhale, empty the lungs fully, and feel your chest fall. Practice this for 1 – 2 minutes. Step 3: Full deep breathing - This combines the above 2 steps. With your eyes closed, place one hand on your chest and one on your belly. First inhale by filling the abdomen and keeping inhaling as you expand your ribcage and fill the chest. Then exhale first from the chest as it empties and falls and then continue your exhalation from the belly as it draws inwards. Practice this for 1 – 2 minutes. Please note: All of the above steps should be done without strain. Go slow and easy. Initially your breathing may be jerky and uneven. If so, try to picture your breath as a slow motion wave rolling in and out of the body. It may take a few weeks of practice to get a real sense of how this feels in your body but your persistence will pay off. Self-awareness Goal: Become aware of your breath and your energy will speak to you in a language you can hear and understand!
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 “I love bugs. And as the first person to popularize their eating in America, I take special pride in seeing their appreciation soar.” — Andrew Zimmern
Let me put a bug in your ear – and maybe in your mouth. Of course, if you are vegetarian or vegan, this article will not apply to you but feel free to read it anyway and share it with your carnivorous friends. Do I eat bugs? Yes, I do. Here’s how I began the process of opening my mind and my mouth to the idea. For years I watched Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, TV personality, chef, and teacher. He travels around the world eating jaw dropping quantities of insects, raw and cooked. The late Anthony Bourdain on No Reservations also ate more than a few insects on his travels around the world. Fascinated, I added eating insects to my Bucket List. Then on a trip to Oaxaca, Mexico last year, my group toured a market, where Nicolas, our guide talked about the insect vendors. I perked up and told him I wanted to try some. He took me to a vendor he trusted and I bought 20 pesos worth of fried worms. I tried to share but no one took me up on the offer. The yuck, disgust and ‘eww’ factor was in full force with everyone but Nicolas and me. Later that week I ate a grasshopper taco at an upscale restaurant and ant mole at a cooking school. I put my travel experiences in a poem for my friend who was supposed to come on the trip but dislocated her hip and had to sit it out - literally. Here’s the part about eating insects: Oaxaca: Day 1 I bought worms to eat Oh my what a treat. So salty and crunchy Delicious and munchy Small and petite The taste can’t be beat And no, they did not taste like chicken! Oaxaca: Day 2 Flying ants in the mole At cooking class today With Oscar the chef; Casa Crespo the school The smells, the kitchen and cuisine so cool It was part hard work and part good luck To make dishes of pork, flying ants, and duck! How does this relate to self-awareness? I think the way we handle food says a lot about how we experience life. We Westerners have a complex and complicated relationship with food. How we choose what to eat, when to eat, how much to eat, where to eat and who to share meals with, offers us an effective way to practice self-awareness of what we put in our bodies and how that relates to our environment. Food is a weighty issue (pardon the pun) because of a global food revolution called entomophagy (En-tuh-MAH-fah-jee) that is poised to positively affect our lives nutritionally, personally, economically, environmentally and globally IF we are willing to engage with it. Entomophagy advocates embracing a sustainable source of healthy protein – insects. Self-Awareness Alert! If your first reaction to this idea is: eww! yuck! or a feeling of disgust, ask yourself, “Why?” Be honest but know that you have lots of company. A study published last year in the “Journal of Insects as Food and Feed” found that 72 percent of Americans are unwilling to consider eating insects. Paul Rozin, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia says the origins of disgust are rooted in culture, which undoubtedly has a major effect on our food habits but they can be changed with time, information and experience. Self-Awareness Alert! How do you feel about sushi? Consider that there was a time when raw fish was seen as repugnant in mainstream US culture. Now it's acceptable and it’s everywhere. So are insects. Most cultures around the world have included insects in their diets for centuries. Western Europe and North America are the exceptions and the United Nations, along with food researchers, chefs and climate change activists are encouraging us to evolve and join the rest of the world. First, we need to understand why eating insects is a good idea. Here are the key reasons: Nutritionally: insects are nutritious and can be up to 69% protein depending on how they are prepared. They are a great source of Omega 3’s and they are prebiotics – food for probiotics, those friendly, bacterial microorganisms that keep our digestive tract and immune system healthy. Grasshoppers, affectionately known as ‘land shrimp,’ are packed with about as much protein as lean ground beef but with less fat, and some caterpillars have more protein by weight than a turkey leg – and contain healthier fat. Personally: Many people are surprised by how good insects taste; and that they come in such a wide variety of flavors. Which insects? Globally, beetles and caterpillars are consumed as much as all other edible insects taken together. Bees, wasps and ants are popular too, along with cicadas, locusts, and crickets. Self-Awareness Alert! Any vegetarians and vegans reading this article may find this next bit of information unsettling. We have been unconsciously eating insects all of our lives. The majority of processed foods we buy have tiny pieces of insect in them. A jar of peanut butter may have up to 50 insect fragments. A package of frozen broccoli may have up to 60 aphids per 100 grams, and the same volume of chocolate can have about 60 fragments of various insect species. The FDA set these limits for aesthetic reasons — so we don't actually see the insects mixed into our food. The fact that we've been eating them our entire lives tells us how little of a danger they present. Self-Awareness Alert! How’s your eww, yuck, and disgust factor now on a scale of 1 – ten with ten being, “OMG! Please tell me this is not true!” I can’t — it’s really true. Economically: According to The World Bank, the global population is expected to increase to nine billion by 2050, which means we need to produce around 50 percent more food in order to feed an extra two billion people. Insects, according to a United Nations report have earned the right to be considered, "one of many ways to address food and feed security." Insect farming is already a multimillion-dollar industry in the US! Environmentally: Farming large animals is expensive and bad for the environment. Growing grain and then feeding it to animals so we can eat them is incredibly expensive and inefficient. Daniella Martin, in her book, “Edible,” points to the fact that insects have the lowest food conversion rate of any potential livestock. For more information on this go to: https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PA00K8MQ.pdf Globally: Between the carbon dioxide emitted as a result of growing grain and the methane burps emitted by cows as they digest it, it's estimated that raising livestock generates about 18 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions and that’s more than cars! In terms of impact on land, and water using the car metaphor: David Gracer, an advocate for easting insects and an expert on the topic says, “Cows and pigs are the SUVs; insects are the bicycles.” The Bottom line: Eating insects is a practical way of adding a healthy, low-fat sustainable protein to our diets. As opposed to unconsciously eating insects in our peanut butter, broccoli, chocolate and who knows how many other foods, lets do it consciously for our personal health and the health of the planet. If you are ready to join the entomophagy revolution, here are three US and one source in the United Kingdom to explore:
With its increasing popularity it is possible that eating insects will become an accepted part of Western culture, just like sushi. Let’s give bugs a chance and a maybe a place on our plates. |
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January 2020
AuthorBETH GIBBS started her yoga practice in 1968, four months after her son was born and she’s been practicing ever since. She currently teaches all levels therapeutic yoga classes for adults, and specialty classes for seniors in the Hartford, Connecticut area. Beth is a certified yoga therapist through the International Association of Yoga Therapists and is guest faculty at the Kripalu School of Integrative Yoga Therapy. She writes for the blogs, Yoga for Healthy Aging, and Accessible Yoga. Her master’s degree from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA is in Yoga Therapy and Mind/Body Health. Categories |
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