Stepping into a Sacred Kitchen

The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.

-R.D. Laing

I spend a fair amount of time here at my kitchen sink. I love the colors of the bottles as they reflect light changes from morning to night, and the rafus palm leaves oscillating in the breezeway. It's a calm setting, highly beneficial to preparing food. As I read in The Sacred Kitchen:

A centered person is one whose thoughts are focused, not scattered; someone who resides in a place of peace within, rather than bobbing in the choppy waters of ill health and emotional volatility. Just as a centered individual makes the best friend, student, or parent, such an individual also makes the best cook. We can shift our lives "closer to the center" just by being aware of the great benefits of centeredness. Making the diet more centered is perhaps the greatest consideration in creating a sacred kitchen.

Undeniably, the current food buzzwords are safety and obesity. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an estimated 76 million cases of foodborne disease occur each year in the U.S.(1) and the latest obesity statistics show that it continues to rise as overall, 26.1% of adults are considered to be obese. In 2008, Mississippi recorded the highest percentage at 32.8%.(2)

According to the headlines, fast food is to blame for our nation's climbing obesity scores and government agencies are at fault for not monitoring our food sources more carefully. What we may be failing to notice are our own basic attitudes about food. Somewhere along the way certain foods turned evil, filled with calories, fat and toxins. So we opted for low-fat, non-fat, natural and fortified. We also voted for "fast and cheap food" with our buying habits and the food industry complied. We lost our respect for food and allow it to be mass produced, soaked in preservatives and zapped by microwaves before we let it enter our bodies, often unconsciously.

Deepak Chopra, M.D., says in Creating Health: Beyond Prevention, Toward Perfection:

People who do not feel sufficient respect for eating are showing no awareness of the flow of organizing power that it represents. Eating indiscriminately or eating unconsciously, eating on the run, habitually overeating or not eating at all - these are all violations of natural law, that is, of the biological processes that must work in their preordained channels in order for food to be converted into us.

I'm guilty. Even though I may be centered and at peace as I stand before my kitchen window preparing my meal, I eat unconsciously or eat as I'm doing other things. This week, I want to:

1. Re-read The Sacred Kitchen.


2. Cook some of the "10 Healthy Poor Man's Foods for When You Have Nothing to Eat". The article was written by my friend Stefan Pinto and the 10 foods happen to already be in my sacred kitchen. I'll add local fruits and veggies for perfection.


3. Turn my eating space back into a Centered Dining Experience (my laptop is now the centerpiece).
   

I would love to see self-responsibility become another buzzword when we speak about Food. While collectively, we continue with efforts to insure the safety of our foods and take steps (literally) to decrease the nation's obesity ratios, individually we can move "closer to the center" by noticing our food and our attitudes toward eating.

Care to join me? You may subscribe to Lessons In Balance or check-in every so often. Please feel free to comment, I'd love your feedback and ideas.

Sources:
(1) Department of Health & Human Services, CDC
(2) WebMD: How Fat is Your State?