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In this episode, I talked with Barbara Fernandez.
Michael: Welcome back to the show. I'm here today with Barbara Fernandez. She is an amazing raw working chef. When we say rocking, she used to be a rockstar, rock singer. Now she's a star in the kitchen producing amazing recipes that are healthy and tasty. She helps other people do that in their lives and use that to overcome their depression or other issues that are going on so they can be healthy and full of energy and vibrant. Wouldn't we all like to be that in our businesses? What is coming up in today's episode is how can you pick food using your intuition so you can be more healthy and have more energy during your work day? We'll look at what would it take to be healthy today? How you can bless your food to shift this vibration or make it more compatible to you? Also, why the words you speak during cooking are so important to making healthy food?
Here's one that I didn't know. Why you should not talk while you eat. That could be a bit of a mind blower for some people. How gratitude rituals help food taste better and be healthier. How old emotions may come up when you start eating clean food for the first time in your life. How to have amazing digestion. We'll also look at ego eating versus body eating. Foods that help you improve your intuition and psychic abilities. Foods you must avoid if you want to have excellent business intuition and what to do if after eating all this healthy food, you end up too sensitive to the energy around you and you can't deal with it anymore. Welcome, Barbara.
Barbara: Thank you so much, Michael. I'm psyched to be here. It's going to be fun.
Michael: Yes. I'm curious how do you pick food using your intuition? Even if you're at home and you're deciding what to make or you're out in a restaurant.
Barbara: I just listen to myself. I've been doing it for quite a while now. I know that one thing I tend to avoid is food that has the same shape as all the other foods around it. If you go to some supermarkets and you see the apples are all the same size, I tend to not go for those. Yeah.
Michael: Are you talking about this super perfect apples we get at the supermarket as opposed to this slightly, ugly, more natural one?
Barbara: Yes.
Michael: You might get it at farmer's market?
Barbara: Yeah. Not everybody has a farmer's market around the corner. Certainly, I definitely go for organic whenever possible. I just listen to my body to see what I want. You mentioned something interesting about picking food when we were talking about earlier about passing your hand over food. Right?
Michael: Yeah. If there's a selection of food, suppose it's a buffet, I'll just ask my hand what food here is going to bring me health now? That may be a different answer everyday.
Barbara: Yeah. I agree with that.
Michael: It might be there are some bananas there one morning and they're particularly vibrant and healthy bananas. The other day, there are some that have been coated in pesticide and beaten for a living before they arrived on the table.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: I may get a different answer even though they're both bananas.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: My body is different and it needs some potassium or whatever else is in the banana that my body's looking for. Yeah. I'll just run my hand over it and where I feel the energy shift, that's the food I would pick. I'll take that a step further if I'm in a restaurant. I'll run my finger down the menu with my eyes closed and see where my fingers wants to stop. Whenever I'm asked the question, “What would it take to eat healthy food today?” It's something that will make my body healthy today. Sometimes, it surprises me. It's not necessarily “healthy choice food” that my body wants for whatever reason.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: Maybe it's deficient in some mineral or vitamin.
Barbara: Exactly. Yeah.
Michael: That's what I do. How do you notice with your body that something's good for you intuitively?
Barbara: I guess I've been doing it for so long. I know that if I eat certain foods then I'll feel really good. If I eat other foods, I won't feel so good. For example, bread even if it's gluten-free, I know that I'm not going to feel as good as if I don't eat it. I might choose to eat it sometimes. If I do choose to eat it, then I will eat it happily because it's really important to be happy and grateful for what you're eating. I just check in with how I feel physically because I think we've all had those days where we eat something and make a spur of the moment decision and then we know it's not the best decision. We regret it later because we might feel quite full or bloated or whatever. I'm really used to listening to what my body wants. I think that for people who might be new to this, it's a game. You can just totally make it a game.
I love the idea of the finger down the menu and you could also ask actually in restaurants. If your intuition is saying, “You know what? I don't want any of this. Just ask them to make me something.” A lot of places will do that. You'll get really amazing surprises. I have done that before where I've looked through the menu and I've been like, “Okay. What would make a healthy plate for me?” I might just pick a couple of ingredients then just ask the waiter. “Oh, can I just have a plate with tomatoes and basil and spinach or this that meal?” Oftentimes, the chef is really happy to do something new. Maybe not on a Saturday night at peak time. If I know that I'm going to go somewhere at peak time, I might ask in advance or I might not depending on again, what my intuition is saying, how I'm feeling on the day.
If they have time to do it, a lot of people, they enjoy doing something a bit different. You wind up with a plate that everybody has once. I've had that happen a couple of times. Yeah.
Michael: Another trick if you're eating, on a healthy diet and you're going out with friends who are maybe on a different diet that may be less healthy for you is just eat a snack before you go out to dinner with them. Have something that is healthy that your body wants and then just pick an order or something that's the most healthy thing you can find on the menu. Trying to plow down into a big pile of unhealthy food.
Barbara: Yeah. I did that the other day. Also, I think it's important to eat when we want to eat. I don't really like sticking to meal times and thinking, “Oh, it's 1:00. I have to eat because it's 1:00.” I just eat when I'm hungry. I have two or three meals a day but for some people, they need to limit their eating to three meals a day because they might go a bit out of control otherwise if they've had past eating issues for example that might be something for them that they need to do to nurture themselves. Other people are happier just grazing. I think it's really important as well to think about what works for you and eat when you want to eat. My friends now they know. The other day, we went out and I was hungry two hours before.
Michael: Let me ask a question here.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: You said eat when you want to eat.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: For many people, how do we know that our body wants to eat as opposed to our ego is wanting to eat?
Barbara: What I find is that it's really important if you're going to try to implement this to give your digestion a bit of a break first. Some people might actually do a juice fast for a day or two. Just to give their digestive system a rest and get out of a habit of constantly eating. Other people might for a couple of days decide on three meals a day and that's it. Be a bit more rigid with it because then they're making themselves wait until they're really hungry to it because a lot of times, we don't always wait until we're hungry to eat. We just want to eat so we eat. We don't even know why we're eating. In those situations, you can also before you reach for the food, stop and ask yourself. “Okay. Hang on a minute.” Just ask. “What do I want this food? Is it because I'm hungry? Is it because I'm a bit upset or whatever?”
Then at least you're doing it consciously even if you still choose to eat the food when you're not hungry, you're doing it consciously rather than letting the food control you if that makes sense.
Michael: Yeah. It makes total sense. Maybe you're eating because you have a Pavlovian response to it to being 1bm.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: In your belief system, you must eat at 1bm. Otherwise, you're a naughty girl.
Barbara: Yeah. Some of the food stuff goes really deep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Michael: Yeah. The other common reason for eating is just social reasons. You're with other people. They're eating so you should eat.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: That's quite a deep belief taking that over that you must eat.
Barbara: Yeah. Yeah.
Michael: Very interesting.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: How would you use what would it take to decide what to eat?
Barbara: I would say what would it take to make an amazing meal out of what I've got in my fridge for example. You open the fridge door and you think, “Okay. What would it take to create an amazing meal right now?” Yeah?
Michael: What would it take to create an amazing healthy meal spending on the $10 at the supermarket?
Barbara: Yeah. There's so many ways to use that.
Michael: Creative. Yeah.
Barbara: Yeah. You can be in the produce aisle, yeah.
Michael: What would it take? Yeah. You might be inspired to do something new.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: What would it take to eat a healthy amount today as opposed to overeating? If that's one of your issues.
Barbara: Yeah. You could even do it with new foods.
Michael: What would it take to, yeah. Go ahead.
Barbara: I was going to say you could even do it with new foods. Often people eat the same foods all the time. You could be like, “What would it take to find a new vegetable today that I would really enjoy?”
Michael: I love that.
Barbara: Yeah. It'd be fun.
Michael: What would it take to taste the food 10 times as much today?
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: Some people's taste buds are fading.
Barbara: Yup. Yup. If you have a favorite vegetable or fruit or whatever that's your go-to food, you could say, “What would it take to make this zucchini in a totally different way today? What would it take to make a totally new dish from this fruit or vegetable?” You could do so much with that. Yeah. I would think of you know but I'm in the previous [crosstalk 00:12:07].
Michael: Okay. What would it take to use food to improve my intuition and my business today?
Barbara: Yeah. Yeah.
Michael: Another thing you mentioned you do is blessing your food. How do you do that? Why would someone do that to help with their business intuition and the healthiness of their eating?
Barbara: Words are a vibration. Emotions are a vibration. Everything is a vibration. Everything is made up of energy. By being happy and grateful when you're preparing your food and you're about to eat your food, then your food will be more nourishing for you. This goes hand in hand with the importance of experiencing positive emotions when we prepare food. Like that movie Like Water for Chocolate. There's a large degree of truth in that. I know for sure that it makes a difference when you are happy and joyful preparing your food as opposed to upset and stressed. You don't want to be upset and stressed when you're eating, much less preparing food.
Michael: I've seen that movie, Like Water for Chocolate. It's a Mexican movie.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: Great thing to watch. For people who haven't seen it, how did that work in the movie?
Barbara: Yes. In the movie, this woman, she just poured so much love into her food. When she was feeling particularly loving, people would eat that food and feel loving. When she was upset, there was a scene where I think a tear falls into the bread or something and people eat the bread. They start crying. It's a fantastic movie for those people that haven't seen it. I haven't cried into my food and had a room full of people that have started crying but the principle is sound. Those emotions are vibrations and they're going into the food. It's the same with water.
When you get people that you thought your food and your water and you bless the food before you eat it, the tradition of saying grace, of prayer before we eat. I'm sure that that's another aspect of basically when you're grateful for your food, you're putting that vibration out into the universe so that your food is then able to give you more abundance because it's a two-way street. The more abundance and gratitude you put out, the more abundance comes back to you. The same with your food.
Michael: In some ways, blessing the food while you're preparing it and the words you say during it or your state of mind is setting an intention for how you want the food to be to eat.
Barbara: Absolutely. Yup. Yup. It goes along with cleanliness of the kitchen and all of that. If you think about it, most of us don't really prepare food in a mess. We like to have clean surfaces and clean dishes and things like that. There's a reason for that. It's really important.
Michael: That's also not just the words we say and the energy from people who are in the kitchen. If you had a grumpy person, you are in a good grateful place preparing with food but then grumpy people came and hung out in the kitchen while you're preparing. That could end up in the food.
Barbara: Yeah. That wouldn't be ideal. Yeah. That would not be ideal. I haven't had that happen actually. Usually, when people come into my kitchen, if they're feeling a bit grumpy, I'll just do something to change that grumpiness.
Michael: Yes. Also, it occurs to me that rooms have energy.
Barbara: Yes.
Michael: As do cooking implements.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: If you've cut yourself on a knife and were really upset, that energy could stay in the knife and then end up in the carrots that you cut next week with it.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: If you're in a new kitchen and someone had a terrible argument, it's going to affect how the food is that you prepared there.
Barbara: Yeah. Yeah.
Michael: Best to clear the energy in any space that you're going to use to clear it.
Barbara: Absolutely, yeah.
Michael: The same thing in our businesses. The people who come into our office affect the energy the work that is done.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: The energy of the office space and furniture affects how good the work is and how abundant our business is. We're talking about food here but there are much bigger principles at play here.
Barbara: Yeah. Even the way that the food is served and presented, it's always good to find ways to make the food appear as abundant as possible if that makes sense. It's always better to have in my view anyway, it's better to have a smaller plate that's fuller rather than a big plate with a tiny amount on it. A big plate with a tiny amount is saying lack to your unconscious mind. A smaller plate, it's more bountiful and plentiful that's telling your unconscious, “I have abundance.” Yeah.
Michael: Why is it so important to you that you don't talk while you eat?
Barbara: Yeah. This is hard to practice.
Michael: That is really going to blow somebody's mind.
Barbara: It's a digestion thing. It's because when we talk while we eat, we're taking in air. The air mixes with the food and we don't digest it as well. Ideally, we would want to have stimulating, lovely conversation beforehand and then when we're eating, it's the mindful, grateful appreciation of the food. It's an instinct. When we're eating, our instinct isn't necessarily to open our mouths and start talking when our mouths are full of food. Unfortunately, usually we just chew and try to swallow really quickly so that we can say something. Whereas actually, we should be ideally relaxed and enjoying the food and just savoring all the taste of the food and making it a very, very sensual experience. Then we can talk when the food is done because you can't put a lot of air and a lot of food down you at the same time. They just won't mix very well. Yeah.
Michael: Well, it's hard to focus on the food and how good it tastes and setting the intention that it's going to be healthy for you and you're digesting it well and have a conversation at the same time.
Barbara: Totally, yeah. It would be trying to talk to three or four people at the same time and have engaging conversations with each one at once. You just couldn't do it really. Also, if you put this into practice, you find that you eat less because you got less food that will satisfy you. The food that you've eaten, you've been so satisfied that you won't have as much of a tendency to overeat.
Michael: Right. It's much easier to pay attention to how our body is feeling about the food and whether we're full or not if we're doing it meditatively in silence versus talking.
Barbara: Yeah. It takes 30 minutes to-
Michael: You shouldn't eat in a rush because then you'll overeat.
Barbara: Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
Michael: You won't realize you're going to be full.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: Also, the content of the conversation. I understand some people have dinner where it's very uplifting and positive conversation but I've also been at dinner parties where the conversation could be gossip or negative in other ways.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: That can affect the digestion and affect how healthy the food is for us. We're now putting more negative words into it even if it's prepared with love previously.
Barbara: Yeah. What I do in those situations is I take a few deep breaths. I try to isolate myself energetically if that makes sense. I go very quiet. I don't say anything. If people are gossiping, I'm not really going to say anything anyway. I find that if you go really quiet and you relax, and you think very happy, grateful thoughts, you don't have to say anything at all. You're just thinking happy, grateful thoughts for your food. You can out shift the energy in the room. Even if you can't, even if the people there just aren't receptive to that and they're going to keep doing their thing, at least you won't get drawn into that. You just create your own little bubble really.
I think of that as an extreme situation but I think we all have had those times where we've been at a dinner party or something and maybe the conversation is excruciatingly boring for example. I've had that. People talk about things that I really have no desire to talk about while I'm eating, especially politics and things. People get all upset and enraged. That's the last thing I want in my food. Yeah. In those moments, it's important to just check in with yourself. First of all, check how you're feeling. If you do find yourself getting swept in a little bit, that's okay. Just stop and take a couple of silent, deep breaths. Nobody has to know what you're doing. You can say a silent blessing to yourself over the food. Just be in your own little world for that moment while you're still eating. Once you're done eating, then at least you've nourished your body properly. Yeah.
Michael: Tell us a bit more about what gratitude rituals you use when you're going to eat food.
Barbara: I use gratitude a lot during the day for all kinds of different things. For example, when I'm preparing food, it's a meditation in motion I think. Even when I'm chopping the vegetables, I'm going to go, “Thank you for this gorgeous pepper.” In fact, I had somebody bring me a box of organic veg the other day. We were doing some filming. He was almost laughing at me because I immediately picked up the tomatoes and I was like, “Whoa,” because they smelled so good. They smelled actually tomatoes. I didn't even have to think about all this big whiff out of it. I was very grateful that I got to have tomatoes that smelled like tomatoes. It's more of a in the moment appreciation for what's in front of me. Also the colors, which is quite easy to do especially with uncooked fruit and vegetables and things.
The food that you prepare is very colorful, which is important from a nutritional perspective but also it's very pleasing to the eye. That's another way that you can feel grateful for all the colors and the crispness of the food and the texture as well because I think that food is as much about texture as it is about taste. Being grateful also to be able to have the space to prepare that food and to be able to eat food that's really healthy and good for you because not everybody has the same access to fresh food.
Michael: For me, it's also an appreciation that these plants and animals basically died in order to feed us.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: Also, to me it's important how those plants and animals were raised and how they were killed.
Barbara: Yeah. Yeah. That's really important. One of the things that I tell people, one of the biggest, biggest things you can do to help your intuition is to eat organic because chemicals just clog all of our bodies like physical, emotional, mental, spiritual. They clog our physical bodies so it makes total sense that they would clog all the other bodies as well. Pesticides in particular, those just walk intuition. It's useful to avoid those whenever possible not only for your intuition but even just for your health and particularly for your brain health. If we want to be performing at our best in business and our most creative, happy, vibrant selves, pesticides aren't really part of that picture. Same thing with, yeah.
Michael: Pesticides are poisons.
Barbara: They're poison, yeah.
Michael: They're designed to poison insects but unfortunately, they also poison other things like humans.
Barbara: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Michael: Honeybees as well. Some people believe that the reason the number of bees has declined dramatically is because they've croaked from too much pesticides.
Barbara: Well, yes. Absolutely, yeah. Animals, it's just got a huge impact. Yeah. Also, yeah. Sorry?
Michael: We get a regular amount of pesticide on those fruit and vegetables and there are other chemicals that go into animal protein.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: If you ever look at farm work because you work with pesticides, first of all, they wear these biohazard suits when they're applying the pesticide to the field. Which if it was safe, do you think they would be wearing that?
Barbara: Exactly.
Michael: Secondly, it's pretty common farm workers have terrible diseases because they get an accidental contact with those pesticides.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: Pesticides are really not safe.
Barbara: No. It's awful that they still use but hopefully, that will change one day.
Michael: If you want to avoid pesticide, what's the best way to avoid it?
Barbara: The best way is to eat organic whenever possible but also try to find some farmer's markets near you that don't necessarily have the organic certification but the food is organic. There's a lot of places like that actually. Getting organic certification can be really difficult. For example, I know one farmer in particular out where I live where their food is all organic. No pesticides at all. The only reason they can't get organic certification is because they're right next door to huge massive farm that sprays pesticides all over everything. Technically, this other farm can't get the certification even though their food is clean. There are a lot of places like that, which mean that you don't necessarily have to pay top price. If you can't get organic, if that's quite difficult, there are foods that aren't too affected by pesticides I don't say.
Basically, the harder the water content and the food and the thinner the skin, the more affected it is by pesticides. One of the worst foods that you can eat that's not organic would be strawberries, blueberries but especially strawberries. Those are just a pesticide cocktail if they're not organic unfortunately because they have so much water. The pesticides go into the water. The fruit or vegetable absorbs the water. Cucumber, same story. Cucumber's 98% water or something. Celery, the same thing. Loads and loads of water in there. If they have been grown with pesticides, loads and loads of pesticides as well. However, it's funny because you mentioned bananas.
Bananas are one of those fruits where you don't really need to get them organic because apparently, the pesticides just don't go into the actual fruit. Their skin is so thick they just don't go in. Watermelons on the other hand, very high water content again. Better get those organic. Other things, yeah.
Michael: Any root vegetable, the pesticide if it was applied on the leafs and not on to the roots so it's less pesticide.
Barbara: Exactly.
Michael: Potatoes, beet root.
Barbara: Yeah, onions, stuff like that. It's not really that big a deal if they're not organic. I would start with the ones that are the most affected. If you do have whatever veg you have, obviously, you can wash it and things. There are sprays you can get. I don't use sprays to take off pesticides. I just think it's more weird stuff put on my food. I just use a couple of drops of vinegar and some water. That's particularly important actually for greens. Spinach and kale and things like that especially spinach because spinach can have little creatures in there. You want to well wash the spinach really well but a bit of vinegar and water does wonders.
Michael: The other thing you could do is peel the fruit or the vegetable.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: Although ironically, most of the nutrients is often in the peel.
Barbara: Yeah. Apples for example, you really want to eat the peel because most of the nutrients are there. Yeah.
Michael: If you'll start with the perfect supermarket pesticide-d apple, you're going to eat it, better to peel it.
Barbara: Yeah. Better to peel it, yeah.
Michael: The other thing that occurs to me is if you can grow some food yourself whether it's tomatoes or some herbs on a windowsill, you can guarantee that the soil is healthy and you didn't put any pesticides on them. It's a whole lot better than what you can buy.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: Does that deal? I forget what they call it where you agree with the farm that's healthy and organic that you'll buy a box of fruit and veg from them every week.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: Over the whole growing season and that can give you a wide variety of really healthy food.
Barbara: Yeah. There's also box games as well that people do in communities. They pool together and get big boxes of food.
Michael: Farmer's market, generally good and then the foods down that list would be buying organic stuff at supermarket. Sometimes, things labeled organic really aren't quite as good as you might hope they would be.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: The farm sometimes twists those regulations around or even if it was organic, it was shipped all the way across the country.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: The further the food is shipped, the more it suffers nutritionally unhealthy.
Barbara: For sure. A lot of times, you're best having frozen foods actually because if they're frozen quickly, they've got more nutrients than the food that's been sitting around for a while. I tell people to eat the best they can. I don't think it's worth getting too stressed about this kind of thing. I think that you're better off eating a salad made with non-organic vegetables that is filled with love and blessed rather than a super clean organic something or other and you're filled with resentment, other emotions like that. That's not going to feed you any better.
Michael: Yeah. That comes back to the earlier point. If you're going to eat an ice cream for whatever reason, whether it's celebrating something or you're emotionally upset and you just decide you want one. Eat it from a sense of love and gratitude, not from a sense of guilt and feeling bad person.
Barbara: Absolutely. Absolutely. There's a whole school of thought that says that if you were to, I think this is really extreme. They say you're better off eating a hamburger with love and joy than you are eating a raw, vegan something or other, salad or pasta or whatever it is feeling all compressed and constrained and angry at the world situation. Our emotions are so powerful.
Michael: Also, I find how the plants and animals were raised and how they were killed.
Barbara: Yeah. What I always tell people is, overall, the best foods that you want to be eating for your intuition are uncooked fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, sprouts, things like that. If you do eat meat, then at least get organic free range because you don't want to absorb the vibrations of an animal that's been kept in stressful conditions because their emotions of fear go into their flesh just like us. Emotions produce chemicals. They produce chemicals in the brain. They produce chemicals throughout our body. Same thing for an animal. You don't want to eat their fear. Yeah.
Michael: Also how they were killed because they could be killed quickly or they could go into a factory process where they see their fellow animals being killed and the killing is screwed up and they die over a long period of time in agony. That goes into the meat.
Barbara: Absolutely, yes. It's awful. Yeah.
Michael: You can test those chemicals in the meat.
Barbara: Yeah. You can do a taste test as well. They don't taste the same.
Michael: Right.
Barbara: Right.
Michael: Makes a big difference. I believe the same is true with plants. If they are effectively tortured as they are harvested, and not treated with respect and gratitude, they don't taste as good either.
Barbara: Yeah. There's a wonderful book. I forget who the author is but it's an old book now but it's called The Secret Life of Plants. It talks about plants' reactions to people and everything. They did this fascinating experiment where the guy that was growing all these plants, he hooked up I guess you'd call him electrodes to the plants so that he could measure EEG waves and stuff. He could measure the vibrations in the plants. The plants normally would have quite a steady vibration throughout the day. If you go towards the plant with the intention of picking it or cutting the leaves, the plant will put itself into a numbing thing. It will just numb itself if you like and the vibrations will just stop. Like the needle, you'll get this straight line. It's almost like the plant prepares itself to be picked.
Michael: What was interesting, if he lit a match and burnt one of the plant's leaves, this ECG graph will go off the scale.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: It even falls about lighting a match and burning not that plant but the plant next door.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: First plant ECG would go off the scale. It's very interesting. The plants pick this vibration out.
Barbara: Yeah. My favorite bit of that book actually was when this woman comes to visit. She wanted to visit his plants. He didn't really know much about her. She walked in the door. All the plants immediately just went numb. All the needles just stopped. She walked around and she was like, “What's going on? I thought you're going to show me the reactions of these plants and everything. I don't see anything.” He's like, “I don't understand it. Nothing's happening. This has never happened before.” She leaves and then he finds out later that what she does is she picks plants and then dries them out in ovens and stuff like that. She's constantly killing plants. I find that's just incredible. It's like they knew. They felt her emotion and they just numb themselves. Yeah.
Michael: Speaking of emotions, we're talking about eating clean, eating vegetarian or eating raw food. Raw food meaning uncooked fruits and vegetables typically although they might be warmed up to taste better.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: I've eaten raw foods that you've made, Barbara. It's amazingly tasty. Sometimes, it even looks like traditional cooked or animal food.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: It doesn't have to be boring or anything. One of the things that can happen if you start eating clean is old emotions come up.
Barbara: Yup.
Michael: Can you tell us a bit about that and why you need to look out for it?
Barbara: Yeah. People don't really talk about this very much in the whole raw food/clean eating world. When you start to eat cleaner and you're clearing out your physical body and you're also clearing out your mental body, your emotional body, what you find overtime is that any unresolved patterns or unconscious beliefs or life situations that need to be changed, they tend to just rise up to the surface. It's almost like if you imagine a big pot and it's got stuck stuff on the bottom, which is all our old patterns. Things we've picked up from childhood, stuff like that. You start eating clean, it's like someone's taken a Brillo pad and they've started to scrub the bottom of the pan. All that gunk is going to start coming up to the surface. You can get rid of it. It can be quite overwhelming because the cleaner you eat, the more this stuff will come up.
For example, you might realize, “Oh, my goodness. I'm actually not in the right relationship.” Let's say. That's what happens to me is quite big things could come up and not everybody is ready to transmute everything quite so quickly. What you find is people will go through a clean eating phase for quite a while and then maybe they might have a divorce or somebody dies. They have some major thing happen in their life and then they find themselves eating a bit more cooked food to cope with the emotions because you feel things more kingly. That has a good side and then a challenging side. The good side is yes, you're more connected to your intuition and all of that. The flip side is, you are much more aware of anything negative or within you that really needs cleaning out.
You can use food in that sense to either speed things up or slow things down. Sometimes, what I've done in the past is I would start eating rice or potatoes or anything starchy tends to just slow things down. Dairy slows things down massively that's why you get people who if they're feeling a bit upset, they might reach for a lot of sugar or cheese or bread. Those are foods that deaden the emotions.
Michael: Even better toasted cheese on toast with sugar sprinkled on top.
Barbara: Yes, the ultimate. Those foods, that desire to reach for that food comes from the fact that that food will dampen that emotion. Sometimes, that's what we feel we need. Nothing wrong with that. At least if you know why you're doing it, then you're using the food as a tool.
Michael: This can affect our business, too.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: We might notice thinking our business weren't working as well but we've been oblivious to it when we haven't been eating clean.
Barbara: Definitely, yeah. That's actually really useful for that. If you're wondering, “I don't quite know what's not going so well with my business.” If you start eating cleaner and fasting once a week for example and doing things to just clear out your body, that will really, really help you get more clarity in your business and what you need to do next.
Michael: Yeah. I've talked to a number of people in case study videos and in coaching sessions who don't have clarity about what to do next in their business or how to attract the right clients. I think that's an interesting idea that one approach is to eat clean for a few weeks or fast for a few days to get extra clarity.
Barbara: Yeah. Yeah.
Michael: I've been eating what I call a 511 diet, which is one day of fasting, one day of eating anything and five days of eating raw for more than a year now. I find that for me gives a nice balance between eating healthy and having clarity but not feeling deprived.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: The fasting for me, it gives me emotional clarity. I can't reach for the food to dull out the emotions that come up so I need to process them somehow. Also, the next day, the food tastes way better. It's like my taste buds have been cleaned out.
Barbara: Yes, I love that. Yup. Yup. Yeah.
Michael: Yeah. Also, I typically fast one day a week. I've also fasted up to 10 days. Humans can fast for 30 days with no ill effects.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: If we evolve from hunter gatherers, they didn't necessarily eat everyday.
Barbara: That's right.
Michael: It's 1 PM on the dot.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: They might not eat for a day or two. Human bodies are designed to be able to not eat for several days and have no ill effect. It's a good idea to drink lots of water because you might be detoxing a lot of stuff. Anyway, the amazing thing to me when I first started fasting is that the pooping keeps on coming out.
Barbara: Yes.
Michael: Where is that stuff coming from?
Barbara: Yup. You're clearing stuff out.
Michael: Yeah.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: I know we're talking about food but I've also found colonic irrigation helps with my digestion and eating habits.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: I went through a sequence of 10 colonic-
Barbara: Irrigation, yeah.
Michael: Irrigation sessions and basically, that's warm water washing out old cakes on poop out of your colon.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: Just in case anyone's never checked that. The first few times I did it, all these old emotions came out. It's been storing all this old stuff in the muscles of my intestines. Intestine is not just a hose pipe if you've never studied anatomy. It's an enormous surface area because it has to absorb all the nutrients.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: It has a lot of crinkly crevices and things and things can get stuck in there.
Barbara: Yeah. It's like the length of a football field.
Michael: Yeah.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: Those people who are sensitive may not want to listen to the next sentence. As you're letting the stuff out, the one I went to that was a little transparent pipe that you could see the stuff coming out and usually, my poop is light brown. I noticed this dark, tar-y, yucky stuff coming out.
Barbara: That's old stuff.
Michael: Yeah. That stuff has been there for a long time.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: There was one other patient who at the same place, she had this rainbow colored thing come out. She couldn't figure it out. Finally, she remembered. She was 50 years old. She remembered when she was seven, she ate a whole box of Crayola crayons, wax crayons. They have been in her intestine for 40 years. As had the other things that had been in there. Anyway, coming back to the food aspect, after I'd done this, the food tasted better. Instead of me having to take a big plate of food to feel satisfied, I could eat half a plate of food and be satisfied. My weight went down. My skin improved. My intuition improved.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: Just another way and looking at eating from the other end, sometimes it helps to clean stuff out.
Barbara: That's actually quite crucial really. I love colonic irrigations. They're just magical. They are so, so, so good for you. They're actually essential if anybody does any kind of detoxing because if you change your eating habits radically, and you don't do that kind of cleansing or at least an enema, then often what happens is you're releasing a lot of toxins in one go. It depends how bad your eating habits were before but for somebody who let's say had really bad eating habits before, they're like, “Right. I'm cleaning things up.” They will definitely need some colonic irrigation because otherwise, the body can't get rid of those toxins fast enough. The toxins just go into the bloodstream and they just go round and round the body. You really don't want that.
Also, you mentioned that you were satisfied with less food because the other really important thing is by cleaning out the colon, the colon can then absorb the nutrients more of the nutrients from the food that you're eating. That's why you're satisfied with less food and that's why then it's much easier to control your weight for example because you don't have to eat, fill yourself with stuff because you're not absorbing the nutrients.
Michael: The colon has this great surface area but if it's caked with old toxins and goop, it can't absorb stuff so easy. You have to eat more to get the same amount of nutrients.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: Also, many of us have not a beer belly but they have some bloating in the belly area.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: Often that is caked on goop stuck in the intestines that hasn't been cleaned out.
Barbara: Yeah. The body holds on to water to protect our organs in that situation. People say, “I have this flat stomach or whatever.” What I do, if you've got somebody who they're feeling overweight. They look in the mirror and they feel frustrated with their body or even people take their stomachs and they're like, “Oh, I want to get rid of you.” On the contrary, it's showing gratitude and love and appreciation for your stomach that's protecting you by holding on to the water and protecting your organs and all the rest of you. By showing gratitude towards your stomach, you can even lose weight like that because that gratitude and love and abundance, that's affecting the cells of your body, too.
Michael: The other thing I've seen is people grow their intuitive and psychic skills and clean up their chakras is often people hold on to extra weight because they're trying to protect their energy from energy vampires around them.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: When they learn skills to shield themselves energetically, they suddenly drop pounds and pounds of weight they've been holding on to.
Barbara: Yeah. It makes a lot of sense especially the stomach being the power center. People who feel powerless can very often have extra weight in that area. Yeah. Absolutely.
Michael: You mentioned earlier not talking while you're eating but what about having emotions before you eat or during eating. Is being angry or sad something dangerous?
Barbara: It does inhibit digestion really. You won't digest the food as well. The happier and calmer you are, the better you'll digest your food.
Michael: What I found as a practice is, often I want to eat comfort foods when I'm having strong emotions. I'll reach for the potato chips or the ice cream or the french fries or whatever. You were saying how those kind of foods do damp down emotions.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: What I do now is I may still choose to eat those foods but first, I do something. I either do EFT tapping, or bring some light in. I'll do some deep breathing or moving to move that emotion. I clear the emotion first then I re-decide do I really want to eat this food? If I do, I go eat it.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: At least I'm not eating it to cover up the emotion.
Barbara: Yeah. Yeah. Then you find over time that that thing happens less and less. At least you're able to clear those emotions faster and faster. Yeah. Over time, normally you don't quite want those feelings as often. It'll still come up. We still want them but not as often. Yeah.
Michael: The other thing I think can be important is talking to your body organs, talking to your stomach, talk to your intestines and also talk to the bacteria that live in our intestines. Human beings are amazing. We have 60 trillion cells that make up our body.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: There are 10 times as many bacteria, healthy bacteria that live in our gut. There are 600 trillion bacteria on a typical human gut.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: They're the ones who are really doing the digesting.
Barbara: Yes.
Michael: You can talk to them.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: If I have an upset belly because the bacteria are having a party down there and I'm really paying attention, I'll just say, “Hey, guys. It's fine for you to be in my body. It's fine for you to have a little party but just keep the noise down because I'm not feeling so good.”
Barbara: Yeah. Yeah.
Michael: Then I feel better.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: It's amazing. Also, you can take probiotics if your bacteria are a bit off or you've been taking antibiotics and killed off all the bacteria. You can get yogurt or you can get pills that have bacteria in that will put healthier bacteria back into your digestive system. That can really help.
Barbara: Yeah. One of the best ways to do that is any kind of fermented food. Things like kimchi or pickled cabbage or I make something called Rejuvelac, which is with wheat sprouts. Wheat grains, the whole wheat grains, you let them sprout and then you put them in water. You leave them in water for two or three days. You give it a little stir. Then they ferment and it makes a really sweet drink. It's a bit like water that's been sweetened with a bit of maple syrup. You drink that. Your whole intestine just goes, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” Fermented foods are really good, too. Yeah. It's really important actually.
Michael: We talk about getting gut feelings from our intuition.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: They literally are more nerve receptors in our intestines than there are in our brains.
Barbara: Yes.
Michael: If you've ever looked at the anti-depressant bottles, hopefully you don't have to take anti-depressants. If you ever read them, they say not only can weird things happen in your brain but it may mess up your digestion. The reason is anti-depressants attached to those receptors in the gut as well or better than they do in the brain.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: Those bacteria are actually part of what is called our belly brain.
Barbara: Yeah. Yeah.
Michael: Taking care of them and having healthy bacteria there and letting go the unhealthy bacteria and also the parasites because let's face it. More than 50% of people in Western nations have parasites in their guts.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: It's just very common. Little amoebas or other little critters in there, not necessarily tapeworms but smaller.
Barbara: No, no, no.
Michael: When you do a eat healthy or cut out the sugar, because often I find when I have an urge to eat something “bad” sugary thing, it's not even me who wants to eat it. It's some parasite in my gut who wants to eat it. It's secreting things into my body saying, “Eat the sugar. Eat the sugar.”
Barbara: Yup. That's particularly important if you've got candida. I've got a colon hydrotherapist who she sees that in people. She sees right away if they've got candida. One of my friends, he really struggled with sugar cravings. It turned out that that was why. When he had some colon hydrotherapy, it got rid of the candida. The sugar cravings just disappeared. He was just blown away. As you say it wasn't even him craving the sugar.
Michael: Yeah. Also spiritually speaking, we talk about there are physical parasites but also there are energetic parasites. There are spiritual entities that a lot of people have attached to them that are sucking their energy. They also can lead to cravings. You must eat sugar. You must drink alcohol. You must take cocaine or whatever the thing is. Not only physically cleansing yourself but clearing out any entities that are attached to you. I write about that a bit in my book Intuitive Leadership Mastery and also cutting cords that you have with other people. When you have a cord with someone, that can cause your eating and digestion to be messed up particularly if the cords attached to your stomach area which many are particularly if abuse was involved and attached in the cord.
Barbara: Yeah. Yeah. Some of these things like sugar, you mentioned sugar. That's one of the things actually that's probably one of the worst things that you can eat if you want to have any kind of intuitive connection. Sugar, it not only strips the body of vitamins and minerals and enzymes as well. It weakens our aura. If you've got anybody that sees auras for example, you can do this experiment. Have them look at your aura before and after you've eaten some kind of sugary snack and they'll see a difference. It weakens it. It weakens our resistance on many levels. It weakens our resistance to other entities but also to disease. Yeah. That's quite a big one to look forward actually.
Michael: Look at the typical office, Barbara. What are the snacks that are available there? Donuts, cookies, sugar and the coffee and tea.
Barbara: Yeah. It's so easy to do alternatives but yeah.
Michael: Yeah. You could have carrot sticks or celery sticks in the fridge or fruit. I used to have a fruit when I had an office before I went to a virtual set up. We used to have our fruit bowl. We'd buy fruit every week. One of the admin people would go to the organic supermarket and pick up some fruit to share in the office.
Barbara: Yeah. Things like grape-
Michael: They could get that instead of something unhealthy.
Barbara: Yeah. Even if it's things that are very sweet or naturally sweet like dates and raising and things like that, those are so much better. Some of my energy bowls actually, my raw chocolate brownies. That's what I like to have. There's so many alternatives that are easy to make. It frustrates me sometimes when I think people only knew. It's just really easy habits to get into that make all the difference.
Michael: Partly, this is not being conscious of what having in our office affects us and our staff. It probably also is the energy can get pretty heavy enough in an office particularly if it's a lot of office politics or drama going on.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: People probably want to be eating sugar just to damp down that negative energy that's going on.
Barbara: Yes. Especially if people don't want to be there. If they're in a job that they don't like, if they were to start to eat healthier, they would realize. Especially people who are in a job or an office environment where they've learned to accept it. If they start eating more cleanly, they're going to start to feel the need to move because they're going to be listening to their soul if you like or how their self is going to be like. You really don't want to be here. You want to look for something else.
Michael: Yeah. That's not just for employees. That can apply to entrepreneurs, too. If you're an entrepreneur and you start eating cleaner and healthier, you may notice stuff about your business that you just don't like anymore. You didn't like before but you didn't notice it. It needs to be cleaned up, too.
Barbara: Yeah. It's your choice as to are you going to take responsibility and clean it up? Are you going to dampen things down and just have some more sugar and coffee.
Michael: Alcohol, which is the other common dampening thing that people use to cover up their emotions and their intuition.
Barbara: Yeah. Even things like artificial flavors and sweeteners and all of that or all of the additives as well. They block intuition, too. They have no place on anybody's plate really. Things like ready meals and stuff. As we were saying, nobody's perfect. There's going to be time when we're going to want some of the stuff. At least if we know what to avoid, I think it can make a really big difference.
Michael: Yeah. I had an amazing podcast interview with Anna Wickham. Her intuition and the abundance in her business blossomed when she decided to stop drinking alcohol for a year.
Barbara: Wow.
Michael: Yeah. I can just see the same with you, Barbara. Just deciding to eat healthy food, what our body wants, whether that's raw food or whatever your body's saying could just make an incredible difference in the profitability and the joy in our business.
Barbara: Yeah. No. For sure. That's basically how I cured my own clinical depression. It's amazing because there was no way, no way I could have run a business being depressed. There's no way.
Michael: Yeah. You don't have to waste the energy to do anything.
Barbara: It's not. If you can't even get out of bed, if you can't be motivated to do anything, how are you going to? Also, being an entrepreneur can be, I love it but it can be super challenging. It's like a personal development journey in itself already. You don't really need any added stress or anything to make things harder than they would be.
Michael: Often, our relationships are affected by this, too and what occurs to me is a question for our listeners. What is the relationship you have with your food?
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: Is it a loving relationship? Do you love the food? Does the food love you? Is it abusive?
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: How are you relating with food? That may echo previous relationships you had in childhood with other humans. How do you relate with food now? A very common thing that happens with food and this is the story tied in Italian families is food is used to demonstrate love.
Barbara: That's what I was going to say. Exactly, yeah. It's about people finding other ways to demonstrate love through food. You can still demonstrate love through food. In a way that's better for everybody. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead.
Michael: That would mean you don't have to eat three helpings to prove to your mother that you love her.
Barbara: Exactly, yeah.
Michael: You don't have to eat heavy foods that makes you sleepy and is toxifying to your body to prove that you're loved. You don't have to eat a bunch of sugar to show that you're worthy of love.
Barbara: That's right. This is what I'd do. If I'm going to give somebody cookies and stuff, I make them with dates. They still get cookies. In my house, we have to have things like that. We have to cookies, brownies, tortilla chips and all that. I make them with super healthy foods.
Michael: They might be kale chips for example where you dehydrate kale and make it into chips.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: You get that crunchy, salty taste but it's done in a healthy way. One of the things I want to share is that I used to be pretty strict about how I ate if I was eating vegetarian or vegan or raw or what's that diet where you pretend you're a cave man?
Barbara: Paleo.
Michael: Paleo.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: I didn't feel so good about it. Now, what I do is I notice how I feel emotionally before I eat and I do that thing, either tapping or some other clearing to clear the emotions out instead of just reaching for food. If I eat something “naughty” whether it's a pork chop or ice cream or whatever, I notice why I'm wanting to eat it is my body saying it's got something missing in it and it really needs that piece of pork chop. I noticed during our meeting, did I just need one mouthful of pork chop and now my body is happy? I've had that experience in the restaurant. I went to a great restaurant. I wanted a pork chop. I tested my intuition. What does my intuition want? What's this? It really wanted just one mouthful.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: Then when I was eating the rest, “Oh, do I have to eat this?” My body is saying this. My ego was saying, “Wow. Pork chop. Pork chop. Yeah.” Pork chop means love. My mother used to make pork chop for me. This equals love.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: My body was like, “We've had enough. Thank you.”
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: I did eat. I did eat the whole thing because I probably had a belief that hungry children in Africa will be suffering if I don't eat everything on the plate.
Barbara: Yeah. I had that in my house, too. My mom told me the same thing.
Michael: Yeah. I noticed how I feel after I eat the food. Usually when I eat pork, if I eat more than a mouthful of it or if my body doesn't really want to eat it, I feel so tired and lethargic. The same thing with ice cream. I get that high. I go way up and then I'm way down when I get that sugar blue crash. I'm not trying to make eating certain foods bad or good. I'm just noticing how do I feel while I eat it? How do I feel after I eat it? I just know that maybe in general information, if I'm really focused on my eating so I can see patterns here. When I'm sad, I tend to reach for this kind of food. When I had a bad business meeting, I tend to do this. Whatever the thing is or the other way around. I eat something, I eat raw fruit and nuts for breakfast and then I really have a powerful energized morning getting a lot of tasks done. I'm not distracted.
Barbara: Yeah. I think that brings up a really important point. Some people can get so militant about the different kinds of food. It just makes you want to scream. It's just so unnecessary. It's very divisive. When people will say, how dare you eat meat and you're killing animals? My thing is like, well you have to do what feels right to you. It's exactly what you're saying. I think that it's very freeing to let the whole dogma go. Just be, body what do you want? You're trusting your higher self as well. You're really putting your trust in nothing and no one else except for your own higher self, which will guide your intuition, which will guide you to the perfect food for you.
Michael: Yeah. In that moment, one day, I might want to eat just lettuce sprinkled with some herbs. Another day, my body may say, yeah. We want a little piece of hamburger or we want oranges. We don't want to eat at all today.
Barbara: That's what kids do. If you watch little kids, they're so much more in tune with their desires and their needs. Little tiny kids. Sometimes they won't eat for a while and then the parents are like, “Oh, they need to eat. They need to eat.” Well actually, no they don't. They're fine.
Michael: Yeah. They could go days without eating. It's a good idea to drink lots of water but you don't need to do that. Speaking of water, a lot of people in offices have plastic water bottles. Is that not good for the intuition? Why?
Barbara: Yeah. The problem with plastic and I'm sure that a lot of listeners will have heard about BPA bottles and stuff like that, which that's what I use. The thing with plastic is that there are substances from the plastic that seep into the water that play with our hormones. We really don't need anything else playing with our hormones. We have enough challenges in mercury and the fish and in water and stuff like that. Ideally, you want to buy your water in glass, which I know most places it's plastic water bottles. What I do is I have a BPA free water bottle that I fill up at home. We've got filtered water in our house. Yeah. I do that. If I'm out, yeah. Try to get water in glass but sometimes, it's just hard to find.
It's one of those things where you do the best you can and I think also that ideally, normally, plastic bottles would be left to sit for two years before being filled because it takes two years for all the plastic vapors to dissipate.
Michael: Two years?
Barbara: Two years, yeah.
Michael: Wow.
Barbara: Of course no one does that. Who's going to leave a warehouse full of plastic bottles for two years? The plastic bottles are made and then the water's put in immediately. Plastic seeps into the water. Yeah.
Michael: Having a glass or metal water container and also when I had an office, I had a water filter put in in the kitchen. People can make their own filtered water, put it into their container or whatever.
Barbara: That's what we've got in my kitchen. Yeah. Metal isn't so good either. You can do this experiment actually. It's gross but I've done this where you can put some water in a plastic bottle. Put some in a metal bottle. Put the same amount of water in a BPA free bottle. A couple of hours later, come back and taste them. You'll see especially if it's warm out or if there's sunlight. A plastic bottle in sunlight, that's the worst because the heat from the sun makes the plastic seep out even more.
Michael: I have something even worse than water in a plastic bottle and sunlight, which is Coca-Cola in a plastic bottle and sunlight.
Barbara: Yeah. They say that if you put a spoon in Coca-Cola overnight, it removes all the tarnish. You can just imagine what it does to your intestines.
Michael: Yeah. The other thing that happens in water in some countries is fluoride is added to the water. Some water filters you get can take that out. I think there are some benefits to sticking fluoride directly on teeth but not digesting it in water every day.
Barbara: No. Not in water, yeah.
Michael: There are certainly some evidence that fluoride affects your third eye, which is where many people access their intuition.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: I'm just going to turn on the hashtag conspiracy rant number 13. If you wanted to design a society where people don't have intuition, they aren't too creative and they don't question the people who are really in control, why not provide food that's covered in pesticide, sell water in plastic bottles, put fluoride in the tap water and provide lots of sugary snacks for people continually on the food front and you would design a society where people's intuition was kept damped down so they weren't so troublesome.
Barbara: Absolutely, yeah.
Michael: I'll turn the rant tag off now.
Barbara: No. I have the same view.
Michael: I just want to wrap this interview up with if you follow some of these clean eating and you clean out your colon, when to use colon irrigation. If you're not into colon irrigation and you can't get it where you are, there's a thing in the States called Blessed Herbs, which is a company. They sell colon cleansing kits that you can clean out your colon that way. The other thing, if you're detoxing because you're fasting or you're eating clean, go into a sauna and just sweating out the toxins is another way to get the toxins out of your body.
Barbara: Yeah. That helps. Yeah.
Michael: Supposed you do all this and now you're like really noticing where your business is not joyful, not abundant but you're now super sensitive to energy. In fact, too sensitive and you have difficulty being around other people. What do you then?
Barbara: That's what happened to me when I first moved to Paris. I didn't eat meat for years before moving there. All of a sudden, I had become very sensitive psychically and all of a sudden, I was in the metro with loads of people around me in quite squashed conditions. A lot of those people are quite unhappy going to jobs that they hated. At that time, what I did was I just started eating a bit of meat. That just immediately dampened things down.
Michael: What is a bit mean? A mouthful or seven hamburgers in one go?
Barbara: No. This is the thing where it'll be important for listeners to just ask their intuition. What do I need to do right now? Yeah. What would it take right now to just slow things down a little bit? For different people, it'll be a different answer. It might be just a mouthful of steak. It might be one hamburger. It might be a baked potato because as I said, all the starchy things are quite good. Rice is another good one. It might be a bit of cheese. Those are the top ones that come to my mind because it tends to be dairy, starchy foods and meat or fish. Fish is a lighter way to dampen things down but you're not dampening them quite as much if you like. Fish has a bit of a lighter impact on the psych even than meat does. In terms of the meat, the lowest meats on the scale if you like, the most dampening ones would be beef and pork. Things like chicken or are lighter.
That's what I would do is I would just test with a small amount. I would try not to pick foods that are what I call trigger foods. For some people, they can't eat just a little bit. For me, if I eat a bit of bread, it's a slippery slope.
Michael: I just had this vision if you're on a ski slope made of bread slices and she's falling down the slope. “Oh, no goes the slippery slope. I only ate one little piece of bread.”
Barbara: I'm meant to eat one. The next day and the next day, it's never a whole loaf or anything like that but then it becomes a habit again. Some foods are more addicting for people than others. For some people, it's cheese. If they stop eating cheese for a while, then they're fine. If they eat one piece, there we go.
Michael: Yeah.
Barbara: Use your intuition and see. I always say do a small amount and then see. It might be a glass of red wine actually because we mentioned alcohol. If you really feel like you need something alcoholic, let's say, I would say red wine would be your safest best bet energetically because it actually has some good properties for you. It's not as destructive as glass of whiskey or something.
Michael: Yeah because it's less refined.
Barbara: Yeah. It's fermented.
Michael: I gave up drinking alcohol about nine years ago for similar reasons to Anna that I mentioned in that story earlier. I wanted to increase my abundance in my business and I was fighting my magical skills didn't work as well when I'd have a glass of wine.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: I just had a bit of a drinking problem, too.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: When I did drink, the hangover I would get did depend on the quality and the type of alcohol I drink. Cheap red wine was pretty bad. Cheap vodka was not good. Cheap spirits in general are not good.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: There are many different things to notice there if you do choose to drink alcohol.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: The other thing talking about grounding, when I did yoga teacher training, I learned a lot about Ayurvedic cooking. They split foods into three types, tomasic, rajasic and sattvic.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: Sattvic is like lettuce, leaves and other things off the top of the plant. Tomasic is root vegetables. Rajasic is sugar, meat and all those kind of things. If that appeals to anyone listening, check out Ayurvedic cooking because there's some interesting things there that you can play with. They classify people having different body types. You have vata, pitta and whatever the third one is.
Barbara: Yeah. I know what you mean, yeah.
Michael: People who are very intuitive and psychic tend to be not so grounded and they would be vata type. They have suggestions on what foods to eat. That help with that and help ground you.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: There's some interesting things.
Barbara: Cooked pulses actually, that's another good grounding one. Cooked beans and pulses, which don't suit everybody but some people find them quite good. Yeah.
Michael: Yeah. This has been an amazing conversation about food and intuition. It's got a lot deeper than perhaps we thought it would.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: It flows both ways.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: Our intuition helps us eat healthy food but the food we eat affects how good our intuition is in our businesses and elsewhere in our life.
Barbara: Yeah. It's totally a spiral of self-feeding thing.
Michael: I know you have an interesting gift article for everyone listening. We'll put that URL in the show notes.
Barbara: Yeah.
Michael: That's going to be at your website, rockingrawchef.com.
Barbara: That's right.
Michael: I also read another article there about foods that can help your brain, which is pretty important for everyone as an entrepreneur or a business. Their brain is functioning good. Also, I was really excited when you started your podcast. What's the name of your podcast, Barbara?
Barbara: I'm so excited about my podcast. It's called Clean Food Dirty Stories. Yeah. Not dirty sex stories, more dirty gritty stories. It's about real and raw stories from my checkered past combined with food tips on a particular food that might have helped in that situation. For example, my latest story coming out for Episode 4 is all about a girl friend of mine who discovered that she married a felon. What food would you give the two policemen who showed up on her doorstep telling her that she owed $200,000?
Michael: Wow.
Barbara: Yeah. Those kinds of stories, yeah. It's really, really fun. I really enjoy it. I'll be having some stories of other people to share on there in the future. It's really fun. Yeah.
Michael: Great. Yeah. Please check out that podcast, listeners. What did you say was?
Barbara: Clean Food Dirty Stories.
Michael: You can find that on iTunes or at rockingrawchef.com. You can find this podcast at Intuitive Leadership Mastery on iTunes or many other places. We really appreciate people for subscribing on iTunes whether or not you consume the podcast on iTunes, the more people that subscribe, the more it shows up on other people's iTunes searches. That is really helpful. If you can leave a review on the podcast, that would be helpful, too. Thanks so much. We love you listening. I love getting your comments on the show. Thanks so much, Barbara for this amazing investigation into food and intuition.
Barbara: Thanks so much for having me, Michael. It was really, really fun. Really enjoyed it. I hope it helped people.