>I don't know Peter, you may be expecting too much from a diet.
How can you say that? Cravings feed off addictions, not a good diet.
>A raw diet does appear to free one from many degenerative habits
>including smoking, drug use, etc. It certainly does enable "increasing
>the chance for survival of the organism by making it more resilient to
>stress". It can't however rewite history, nutritional or emotional or
>organism-as-a-whole-wise.
For the body to heal it needs to be properly nourished at all levels -
including the nutritional level.
>to brin'm saying that when I eat for non-nutritional reasons (ie. the
>"fun" of a salad, the "satisfaction" of overeating, etc) that I am
>acting out in the only arena left to me: raw food.
The sum of ones vices always remains the same.
>I don't/can't have a smoke or a margarita, so a neurotic behavior is
>invented within raw foods.
Sure, no diet will cure neurosis. But a nourishing diet will bring the
urges & cravings down to a manageable level.
>I have no doubt that raw foods easily satisfy my present nutritional
>needs, and allow rebuilding to the degree possible--what they don't do
>and can't do is give me an instinctive mother's breast milk when what
>I got was a Karo syrup mixture.I've been able to feel how high-charged
>of an issue that is in my body,though not to feel it all the way "to
>the bottom".
A truly nourishing diet will enable you to feel the need all the way
"to the bottom", just like feeling loved in the present will allow you
to feel, how unloved you were as a child.
>he sensation is in mylips and mouth and it is pure and unremitted
>NEED, deathly even. When (if? god I hope not if?) I do feel it all I
>have no doubt that overeating will be part of my past, and further
>that no new behavior will pop up to defend against the repressed
>feeling trying to come up.
You need to defend against the repressed feeling, because your diet is
not nourishing you properly. Though, it seems to me that you are doing
pretty good being among the 5%, who are able to stay successfully on
the instincto diet. What are you complaining about anyway? :)
'
>My experience is that there is an "emotional detox" and rebuilding
>which happens (or tries to happen!) on a raw diet, esp. instincto.
Yes, but be careful not to mix up emotional detox with malnourishment!
>The organism starts "righting itself" and this includes metabolically
>and structurally. Metabolically seems easy: the cells ar properly fed,
>blood levels of this and that are properly maintained. But
>structurally is a much different process. A nervous system may be
>well-fed on a cellular level but still repressive and neurotically
>"organized".
That is very true, but only to a degree. When the organism is well
nourished, the need for it to repress will deminish. It will naturally
begin to shed itself of its old programming.
>The imprint of early trauma (and the defense against it) are
>biological realities. Evolution has allowed us the capacity to defend
>against trauma (at the price of repression and neurosis, or psychosis
>if the trauma is extreme) and even allows us to integrate it later on
>(in a primal deep feeling) when our nervous system is mature.
.
Or when we are on a truly nourishing diet. You and Melissa seem well on
your way in this process of integration.
>But me thinks that one can't properly expect evolution to deal with my
>26 years of misnurishment and non-mammalian child-rearing in an
>absolutely smooth and la-de-da manner, which instantly "free us from
>our cravings and satisfy our needs".
That is exactly, what I expect. I believe that a proper diet will
stabilize the system and empower it to do whatever housecleaning is
needed at the appropiate level.
>My only amazement it that it can deal so well with such a fix as we
>have been born into. "Inner stress" is the only kind there is and when
>it is felt to it's source (usually early trauma) there isn't much
>"outer stress"left.
Well, I can see that Janov has not lived completely in vain. :-)
>Outer stress can be a useful trigger, but it is rarely the cause of
>anything in our adult life.
This is a mute point. With too much outer stress the organism will
never have the strength to heal itself.
>Ironically, the outer stress (medical births, misnourishment, sleeping
>alone in a crib, etc) of (esp) Western infants reverberates as
>unconscious inner stress for a lifetime, or until truly felt.
The more the present lifestyle reflects the old traumas, the less the
organism will be able to truly feel & integrate them.
>BTW, anyone interested in Primal stuff might check out Janov's more
>recent books, like "Imprints" and "The New Primal Scream". According
>to the "Primal Page" on the web there are a few more books coming out
>soon. Janov's books are almost 100% theory and 0% how-to. "Facing the
>Wolf" by Theresa Sheppard Alexander (Dutton, 1996) looks at idealized
>therapy seesions from both "patient" and therapist POV. I think that
>at some deeper level Primal and instincto are the same pre-verbal
>thing, esp. regarding early feeding.
Primal is alot more than 'the pre-verbal thing'. Janov speaks of 3
levels of consciousness, that reflect the 3 levels of the human brain:
the neocortex, the limbic system & and the brain stem. (thought,
feeling and instinct)
>One last bit about evolution. I used to think (almost religiously
>looking back on it) that "nature is perfect" and that "evolution is
>perfect". I've come to understand that nature isn't perfect--nature
>simply works.
I agree. Eat a proper diet and your cravings will disappear. Old
programming causes people not to take care of themselves & choose to
eat a bad diet. The bad diet is what causes the cravings to continue to
manifest, not the programming.
>Perfection is an abstraction of something that doesn't even exist in
>mathematics. Don't get me wrong--I'd bet on nature and evolution over
>most anything, but nature is "whatever workd well enough to
>reproduce"--not perfection. Even if humans are perfectly adapted to a
>particular niche, the modern world sure ain't that niche; so how is
>the perfect diet supposed to relieve us from all frustration?
Boy, they sure did a good job on you. The world has never been perfect
and never will be. Neurosis and its present physical manifastations are
the only things that are preventing us from eating according to our
genetic makeup. Living up to our fullest potential is not an
abstraction, but a very viable solution if we only implement it.
>Ever hear of the Aqautic Ape Theory (also known as the marine chimp
>theory)? It proposes that humans started evolving back into the ocean
>ala other sea mammals, but the "trip" was not completed, leaving us
>with a hodgepodge of traits which aren't perfectly suited to any
>niche.Controversial stuff in the anthro world.
I have read about this theory. I am not sure what to make of it.
>If true, its another reason to eat seafood...which probably contains
>enough toxins these days to make one mildy "frustrated" :)
Or to eat spirulina & sea vegatables.
Cheers,
Kirt
Best, Peter
|
