heal your emotions with food
These foods can help you regulate your mood naturally.
Sadness and Grief: Look for cauliflower, turnips, and asparagus. These foods resonate with the immune system, lungs, and large intestine organs which in the Chinese medicine system are associated with processing emotional grievances.
Asparagus naturally supports healthy bronchial tissues to open up your lungs when pain makes you feel like you just can’t take a deep breath. Turnips and cauliflower help support your immune system so that the process of living and healing grief doesn’t leave you vulnerable to developing colds, flu, and bacterial infections. It can be challenging enough to deal with the emotional impact of the complaint without the added stress of becoming physically ill. So try these foods to help protect your health during the grieving process.
Affirm while eating these foods: I am breathing deeply and strong in immunity.
Cravings: Look for yellow or orange foods like pineapple, cantaloupe, and sweet potato (great for calming carb cravings, and yes, you can microwave the potato for a quick snack, though I generally don’t recommend it). Also, cinnamon and ginger teas will help calm anxiety.
Similarly, a cup of butternut squash soup can also calm anxiety. Look for varieties that are low in sugar.
In Chinese medicine, foods that affect anxiety resonate with the energies of the stomach and spleen, or “earth” energies. Therefore, they help a person to come back to the center when feelings are strong, which can also help to process other feelings such as pain, sadness, disappointment, anger and fears.
As you eat these foods, affirm: I am focused and strong.
Fear: Look for deep-sea fish like salmon or tuna. If you’re vegan, look for seaweed like nori, wakame, and kombu.
These foods resonate with the kidneys and bladder in the Chinese medicine system which we associate with the element “water”, which governs courage or fears.
Sometimes fear can exist in response to situations on its own, or it can be a secondary emotional reaction to other emotional states. You may feel deeply sad, then fear can build up around thoughts like, “I’m so afraid I’ll never feel joy again.”
Seafood can help overcome fear and reconnect us to states of courage by supporting our adrenal glands which can go into overdrive with the fight or flight response when we feel strong feelings.
As you eat these foods affirm: I am brave and strong.
Anger: Look for any leafy green vegetables like spinach, mustard or kale, romaine lettuce or collard greens. Choose spirulina, cucumber, green vegetable juices with small amounts of carbohydrates.
Anger in the Chinese medicine system resides in the “wooden” organs of the liver and gallbladder. When we support the health of these organs with the foods listed, we empower ourselves to access our sense of peace and calm even when naturally frustrating or irritable things occur. These foods will allow you to tap into your natural patience and compassion even when you are feeling angry. Drink a bottle of a juice like Suja uber greens, which is low in calories (and no, I don’t get paid to endorse that product; in fact, I drink that juice) when you’re angry. Or juice cucumbers, kale with cilantro, lemon, green apple and mint.
It’s amazing how calm you’ll feel when you take a moment to detoxify your liver and gallbladder with healing foods.
Affirm as you eat these foods: Compassion and patience are overcoming anger and frustration.
Nervous stress/excitement: Look for almonds, sesame oil or seeds, and spinach.
These foods specifically help calm the heart energies associated with fast-moving energy and that over-the-top feeling that won’t let you sleep, rest, or focus on your thoughts. Think of a flame that goes in many directions.
Affirm this while eating these foods: I am calming the flame of my arousal.