Trusting Your Gut as a Shamanic Practice

You may wonder how trusting you gut is a shamanic practice. Let me tell you a story.

About nine weeks ago, I started a new diet, a new way of eating. Instead of eating mostly carbohydrates, some proteins, and some fats — and that’s about all there is to eat, people

Whale learns to cook broccoli and peppers and garlic and capers

— I changed my percentages so I am now eating more fat than protein, and very few carbs. This plus lots of exercise, works surprisingly well to take off the weight and tone up.

When I embarked on this new way of eating I decided to go strict with it, so, I got a kitchen scale, and used a calorie counting app, mostly to keep track of my “macros,” which is a fancy way of saying how many grams of protein, fats, and carbs I was consuming at each meal, each day, each week. That activity created a certain mindfulness which made up for eating no chocolate candy or pasta. I also weigh myself twice a day, and record my progress in a note book. All of this is to acheive a certain state, a zone, and to stay in that state, once you get there.

All good until the end of week 6, when I embarked on what became a 2,000 mile, 12- day road trip through most of Florida, in my efforts to celebrate the Labor Day weekend with friends, then evacuate family members and button up two dwelling units, and then to evacuate in advance of Hurricane Irma.

I didn’t pack my various weights and measures at the start of my trip, but I did pack a cooler bag. And every so often in my travels, I bought food, cooked it, and repacked my cooler bag, wherever I could. I vowed to stay on this diet for the duration, because I had worked so hard up until this point.

I arrived at a Red Cross Hurricane Shelter in Marianna, Florida on Sunday night, just a few hours before Irma began making land fall on the Florida Keys. I was a very weary traveler, and was grateful to find shelter. Dinner was being served as I arrived: non-beef hot dogs (eg, corn-and-sugar-based) in buns, pretzels, and brownies. I also saw a bowl of chopped up fruit. None of this was on my diet, so I ate hard boiled eggs and cheese from my cooler. Not every meal was like this, but most were. By the second day, my Very Dear Man and I were making jokes about it.  (I want to be sure to emphasize that the rest of the accommodations at this shelter, were comfortable and gracious, as in a-state-of-grace, we were well cared for by the volunteers from the entire town, and we have no complaints about this experience.)

Let’s return to where the shamanic practice kicks in: I had to figure out how much to eat to stay in my zone, and how long I could eat my food in the cooler, before the contents became too warm to eat safely. This happened intuitively. My intuition kicked in, because I had no choice, but also, I trusted myself, and allowed it to kick in. Some of it was due to an imperative I had pushed myself into. I chose to stay on my diet, and I couldn’t eat spoiled food. I needed to get enough calories, and stick to the ratios of proteins, fats, carbs. And it happened.

I’ve also been learning to cook since I started this diet, but that’s a story for another post!

Share your peace with Mother Earth, Father Sky and the Big Waters all around us, for we are all connected.

[Timeline was correct when post was drafted 9/20/2017]
