Eating

Dear Patient,

I want you to try something.

For one day, whenever you eat, don’t do anything else. No reading the cereal box over breakfast, no social media scroll during lunch, no watching television with your dinner plate balanced on your lap. Just eat.

Here’s why. The Spleen and Stomach, our Earth element organ systems, direct the digestive process—the Rotting and Ripening of food and the Transportation and Transformation of vital nutrients. They’re also our organs of rumination, the digestion of information and thoughts. When you read, study, worry or try to distract your thoughts while also ingesting food, you’re heaping extra demands on your Spleen and Stomach. And these organs are terrible multitaskers, just like the rest of us.

So for one day, disengage your distracted, overloaded thinking brain while you eat. Allow your Spleen and Stomach to do just one thing. See what happens.

Love and gratitude,

Your Acupuncturist