Nourishment is Deeply Ancestral
I’ve been thinking a lot about nourishment, and how we relate to it in our lives.
The way you eat can reflect your nervous system state, mother line wounds/imprints, and unconscious ways you may be relating to your body, nourishment, and sensuality.
Even just introducing this idea holds a lot of charge, so my invitation for you is to go slow and gentle as you read this
Do you eat to nourish? Listening to hunger signals from the inside and responding to them?
Or do you eat in a rush? Disconnect from the food as you’re putting it into your body? Swallow your food without chewing it fully, unconsciously expecting that your stomach will handle it. See meal prep, or even eating itself, as a chore. Perhaps even put the next bite of food in your mouth before the last one has been finished?
A little aside: I’m not writing this because it’s something I’ve “healed” and think you should do the same. I’m writing this because it’s a lifelong path I’m walking alongside you, and I love sharing somatic nuggets here. Awareness is queen , and that’s my intention here, for all of us.
Eating is a sensual experience, or at least it can be if we slow down enough to really feel all that’s there. The tastes, smells, colours, textures… even sounds. Eating can be pleasantly enlivening for our senses and nervous systems.
Food is nourishment. Our first nourishment, in more ways than one, was from our own mothers. Nourishment through touch, love, warmth, breastmilk.
And speaking of the mother line, I remember the very few young years that I had the privilege of knowing and visiting my maternal great-grandmother. She was known for eating with her hands… almost exclusively. Taking a piece of roti (a type of Indian flatbread) and scooping up curry or daal, bringing her hands directly to her mouth to bring food into her body. How beautiful. Even primal. Instinctual. Nourishing. She was definitely in a state of enjoyment around the experience, and it was wonderful to witness.
I still remember her hands, even after all these years. Leathery, loose skin. Milk-chocolate coloured. The kind of hands that told stories of many years of life experience. The hands that held the 13 children she bore.
I still remember kneeling at her feet, holding her hands, and feeling her love. She didn’t speak much English, but that didn’t matter. The connection I felt, one I can still feel as I’m writing this, was one of the heart. Still is.
As you may know, we are first formed inside our grandmother’s womb. When your maternal grandmother was pregnant with your mother, the egg that would one day become you was already present within her.
And when your great-grandmother was pregnant with your grandmother, she was carrying the womb that would eventually hold that egg.
This is the mother line, the red thread.
Your great-grandmother was the genesis of the womb that would one day carry the seed of you. There is something deeply sacred about tracking this and feeling into the energy of it.
There is a deep energetic and somatic relationship between the mother line and our experience of stomach, food, nourishment, and sensuality.
So all of this being said, my gentle invitation for you today is to go slow with nourishment. As you put cream on after a shower, really feel your hands in contact with your own skin, nourishing your skin with hydration. As you bring food to your mouth today, do so with presence, slowing the moment down, chewing fully, tasting all the wonderful flavours.