Facing Food Fears and Discovering Your Food Home Base Through Ancestral Eating
Welcome to the Satiated Podcast where we explore physical and emotional hunger, satiation, and healing your relationship with your food and body. I'm your host, Stephanie Mara Fox, your Somatic Nutritional Counselor. Often at the beginning of recording my podcasts, I want to say hi and check in with you. Like, how are you doing? How's your day going? How are you feeling right now? So you might imagine for a second if I were sitting in the room with you or buckled in the passenger seat and we're having a conversation, how would you respond back? You might take a moment to check in with yourself and do a simple body scan and name any emotions or sensations present. This is how we learn how to hear our body's feedback with these small little check ins that don't have to take up a huge amount of time. While I would never wish the digestive issues I had in the past on anyone, they did teach me how to listen to my body because it would scream at me loudly if I didn't. And over time, it could speak softer and softer to me knowing that I was going to hear what it had to say. So I'm always looking for different approaches and philosophies around how to tap into our body's wisdom and understand our patterns with food. This conversation today with Lisa Mase is going to provide you a totally different way you could start interacting with food based on your family's lineage. Lisa is a nutritionist, herbalist, somatic practitioner, and food sovereignty activist. She's trained in ancestral European Herbalism as well as Ayurveda, Macrobiotics, Intuitive Eating, and Chinese Five Element Theory to offer a comprehensive, universal view of health. Lisa's book, The Culinary Pharmacy, weaves ancestral healing, intuitive eating, and personalized nutrition into a guide for vibrant health. We talk about the comfort of having symptoms, talking with your food as a way to more deeply connect with yourself, what ancestral eating is and letting your history inform you on what foods might digest most easily, and how to start to listen to your body when it comes to food. One last note before we begin, you have 72 hours left to sign up for the Somatic Eating® Program. We are going to explore your unique safety, security, and satiation with food so go to somaticeating.com to join in today. Now welcome Lisa! I'm thrilled to have you here today and to get into our relationship with food and you know how we can view that from a different lens from Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda and all the wisdom you have to offer and I first just want to get started and learning more about you and your history and how you got into this work.
Lisa Mase 03:01
Yeah, thank you. I'm thrilled to be here and really appreciate the work you're doing in the world as well. I came to this work of holistic nutrition and herbalism and somatics really, from a very young age, the way that we were raised in Italy was very much tied to the land, tied to the cycles of seasons to gleaning and growing and harvesting food, wildcrafting and then food production and herbal medicine production. And with eating we were always taught to listen to our bodies and that was anything from you know, the prayer that we would say right raised in a French Catholic Roma family, to the ways that we would honor food by being silent as we were eating and just experiencing the feeling of chewing our food and tasting all the flavors. Those were very common rhythms in our family and I found food to be very equalizing even, you know, from a food justice and food sovereignty perspective growing up in Italy, and I found food as an opportunity three times a day to feel kind of in a more of a balanced emotional and nervous system state. And then I came to the United States for high school and it was major culture shock from a food and food systems perspective and through a circuitous route of going to college and studying religion, anthropology and medical anthropology and living on dene land in Arizona and then living on Bali and Indonesia. I became very ill contracted intestinal parasites that became chronic and that I had a in relationship with me and my body for 10 years, and really came back to the foods, the plants, the ways of eating that supported me as I was growing up, I'm now in service to all of those foods and plants and practices that allowed me to regain balance and feel well.
Stephanie Mara 05:25
Wow. Yeah, I love how you're just beautifully reframing that you were in relationship with these parasites for 10 years, you know, we get all of these messages of like, oh, you know, what's going on in your body is the enemy and you know, you have to beat this or you have to heal this or you have to do something about this. And just even the way that you phrase that of how do we work with our body, and what's going on. I'm curious if you could say more about that in your journey and those you've ended up working with around actually the symptoms that occur, are actually our body's way of talking to us and we get to befriend that.
Lisa Mase 06:04
Absolutely. So I truly believe not only from my own experience, but also working with clients that symptoms are signposts on the path to restoring balance with ourselves and with our environment. And I am a really strong believer in the blessing of illness, I identify as an animist, so I feel that really everything is alive, right, and everything deserves to be treated with reverence, even if it's not something that I necessarily want in my body, right. And when I had chronic parasites, a real turning point for me, was when I realized that I didn't want to get well, because I was accustomed to feeling the way that I did, even though I felt very dysregulated and, you know, had all kinds of different sensations, the list is very, very long, I was familiar with those sensations, and with that body conversation, and it took me a long time to want to get out of the conversation. However, that turning point was truly profound. Because it reconnected me with my body on a deeper level, it reconnected me with my ancestral body, and the roots of who I am, and what sort of shaped me foundationally. And, you know, since that illness, I've had many other illnesses, many other opportunities to communicate with my body, many other reminders that change is the only constant in our reality. And I am so grateful to be able to meet whatever is coming through my body with this sense of of acceptance, but not complacency, right, of understanding and desire to continue to turn the wheel of change, but not you know, demonizing or vilification or coming to my body from a place of fear.
Stephanie Mara 08:13
Yeah, something that I hear in that is, you know, a lot of the times when, you know, and a lot of individuals who are listening to this podcast struggle with things like binge eating, and emotional eating, and the binge restrict cycle and all sorts of things that can happen in our relationship with food, and I'm so glad that you pointed out that moment that, oh, I'm actually accustomed to this, like I'm used to this is how I just live life. And I just want to bring that into our relationship with food for a second, because that so happens, I experienced that myself of like, oh, yeah, just binge eating as a part of my life. I can't even imagine a life that doesn't have that in it. And you can apply that to any symptom that we're navigating that there's this kind of comfort zone that occurs of well, at least I know what this is, I know what the symptoms are. I know how my body's going to react to that. Yeah, I'm just curious if maybe we could explore that a little bit more around what it took for you to kind of navigate that space of stepping into the unknown of something could be different for you, because I feel like that's a piece of the healing journey that's under discussed that when you decide, hey, this isn't actually how I want to exist in relationship with my body and with food anymore. That's just one little piece of like, okay, now what? And there's all this emotion and reaction that could come up.
Lisa Mase 09:41
Absolutely. And yes, it is all about moving slowly. It's all about listening to the body. And then, as we think about in traditional healing modalities, like Chinese medicine, Ayurveda from India, or the Mediterranean way with which I was raised. Again, there's this concept of animism, right? So we're not only in conversation with our bodies, but we're also in conversations with food. So what happened for me is that I realized a light bulb went off, and I said, oh my gosh, I need to be eating some of these healing foods that are also actually antiparasitic. Like olive oil is a great example, in order to restore this kind of feeling of lifeforce energy to restore what I witnessed and feel in nature, in my own body, and I struggled among many other sensations with orthorexia fear of food, right. Because when there are, you know, prehistoric creatures in someone's gut eating their food, it's not a pleasant sensation. So any food that I ate did not feel pleasant in my body. So number one, I realized that it wasn't so much about which foods I was eating or not eating, it was more about, okay, these are these creatures that have me as their host right now. And I need to, you know, gently kind of ask them to move on, though I can return home to my body because I was very dissociated from my body, because I was in pain. And I also need to befriend these foods that feel so meaningful to me. And this is part of why I teach ancestral eating, because I think we all have a comfort relationship with some foods from our ancestry, there may be trauma relationships with some foods as well. However, there are likely comfort relationships with certain foods. And those foods are actually pre programmed into our DNA to be most nourishing and most supportive for us. So I started talking to olive oil, I started talking to different grains, like rice with which I grew up, I started talking with tomatoes and with pasta and saying, Hey, we used to be friends, and what's going on now, right? And it may sound playful, or light or silly. And it also accessed this child self, who was so embodied and so connected to the land and to the rituals of food and seasons. And that child self got to come forward and say, hey, guess what, I'm still here with you. And it's going to be okay. And we are going to try out some new stuff. And it's not new, you've eaten all of these foods before, and you will eat them again. Right. And the simplicity of that, I think was also a huge pivot point for me to say, oh, okay, any discomfort I experience is temporary. And I don't actually fear these foods, I just fear change, which is huge and simple.
Stephanie Mara 13:14
Yeah, I know that, you know, I've talked about talking with food and you know, noticing the like, how we react to food and kind of imagining where that food came from, you know, to arrive there on your plate. And it can kind of feel like a really funny thing to practice at first, just like, this is not going to respond back. And so really, I find that having the dialogue with food is also having a dialogue with yourself, like, Okay, I have this tomato in my hand, how does my body respond to this tomato so that I can actually get to further know myself? And my reactions towards do I have fear towards eating this tomato? Because I've been what I've been taught around it, do I have excitement about eating this tomato because of my memories around it? That's the dialogue that's happening that yes, the tomato won't respond back to you. But in talking with your food, you are deepening into connection with yourself.
Lisa Mase 14:14
Absolutely. And that's ultimately where the true wisdom and where the true wellness resides, right. You know, we might have knowledge or training or tools, and ultimately, it's your body that is guiding this process. And that is sovereign unto itself. I think there's, for me, at least such a huge sense of relief, and knowing Okay, a lot of my own responses to my body sensations are driven by my mind, right? Which sometimes just gets into this like reptilian mode. I'm a brain and a black box, and I don't know what's going on. So I'm gonna freak out. Alright. And there's always this opportunity to say, Okay, I hear you, brain, and you don't really need to be freaking out right now we're actually okay. And we can come back into this moment and into listening, which ultimately slows us down, helps us to regulate, and then helps all of the brain to get information from the nervous system as it communicates with all our organs, and create a more complete picture for the brain about what's going on. And I think that's where compassion can come in, and just this willingness to embrace this moment and say, Okay, well, this is how it is right now. And guess what? My eating has changed throughout my entire life, and is going to continue to change throughout the rest of my life. And that's how it is to be a human in a body.
Stephanie Mara 16:04
Yeah, Yeah, absolutely. We are never static. And we can't just get to a place where it's like, wow, this way of eating is really working for me, okay, this is going to be the way that I eat the rest of my life, like, great when you find what resonates with you now, and it's going to change. And so you know, I know something that I talk a lot about here is starting to get to know how your body talks to you around food, so that when something changes, it's not suddenly that you are doing something wrong or bad, or you need to work harder. It's Oh, my body's giving me new information, and how can I pivot and evolve and grow and just change with my body. Ya know, coming back to this piece that you referenced earlier around ancestral eating and healing. I'm curious if you could say more about that. And what you teach?
Lisa Mase 16:55
Absolutely. For many of us, ancestral eating can actually be a place of resonance with ourselves and our environment, a place of residence with our trauma and trauma that's not even ours, and a place of resonance with our potential for change for growth and transformation. And ultimately, this concept isn't about, you know, something like the Paleo diet, it's about being aware that we all have these different threads that we're pulling from, right, that represent all of our ancestors, and the lands to which they were autochthonous, which is kind of even a step beyond indigenous. It's like, wow, at some point, our ancestors really kind of evolved to become humans on particular places on the earth, right. And I think scientists can make some pretty educated guesses about some spots, right, like the Middle East, and like Africa, where humans were kind of spontaneously arising. And so I think we can start to sort of trace back as far as possible to those lands based on what we know, based on our, you know, willingness to kind of digest whatever trauma comes with those ancestral stories, and then say, Okay, let's look at food maps, right? In my book, The Culinary Pharmacy, I have this lovely food map, you can Google it, it was created by the Royal Society of Physicians in Edinburgh. And it essentially says, just like humans kind of arose in these different parts of the world, foods also seem to have sprung up in these places. And so you can look at this food map and say, oh, right, I'm from, you know, France and I don't see any coconuts on the map of France, right? I see them in Indonesia, and, you know, South India and Malaysia, right. And so that way, we can start to kind of think about all the ancestral strands that I'm pulling, even if I've never done any genetic testing, I can start to try some of those foods from some of those maps, and really let my body tell me, oh, okay, I know that I have Polish heritage, and I'm really not digesting this sausage well. My body is saying like, Oh, I feel really bloated. This is like a brick in my stomach. Right? So it's like, okay, perhaps I'm just not really pulling as much from that food tradition. And so, ancestral eating really opens up this doorway into trying foods because they belong in our bodies already and allowing our bodies to give us feedback about is this calming? Is this energizing? Does this feel like it helps me to regulate and interestingly, the more you look at these food maps, the more that you'll see, there aren't a lot of animal foods on them, right? Because folks were hunting and perhaps getting less animal food than we have access to now. And there are a lot of foods on these maps that are high in different kinds of fiber, which feed our gut microbiome, which is responsible for producing a ton of our nervous system hormones. So that does, in some ways help to complete this cycle of okay, as I eat my ancestral foods, not only am I nourishing my unique body, but I'm also supporting my nervous system in helping to keep me here in my body.
Stephanie Mara 20:46
Yeah, it makes me think of a study I read a really long time ago at this point, that they took someone I think, from maybe Sweden, they took someone from America, and they basically had all of these individuals from different places in the world eat someone else's country's breakfast, you know, they took someone from Sweden, and they fed them a traditional American breakfast, and it digested horribly in their body. And, and not just because of, you know, all the things about the standard American diet, but because basically, when they went back to the foods that they grew up with, that they have been fed, since they were a baby, that is what the body has become accustomed to, that is what the microbiome adjusted itself to. And I love that you're bringing in this piece of just like looking at your history. And it also makes me think of like how much in our culture these days, we claim things as superfoods that all of us should be eating. And there is no such thing. You know, ultimately, only your body is going to let you know what is a superfood for it based off of its feedback, and all of the different markers that we can pay attention to like digestion and energy levels, and mental clarity and skin and our sleep quality and all of those things. And so I love that you're bringing in this piece of like looking at your personal history, to also not let anyone else dictate to you what is going to be the best foods for you.
Lisa Mase 22:16
This is food sovereignty, absolutely reclaiming control of our food and of our bodies, right because, of course, people have fear of food in the United States, our food is not food, it's highly adulterated. Right. And that was so shocking for me when I came to the States. And lo and behold, just like we have an Rh factor of blood type, we also have an enteric type or a gut type. And enteric type is in three main classifications, just like blood type. And there's more research being done about this looking at people's fecal samples, essentially, however, we're starting to see patterns, right. So somebody that has a Prevotella got typed, that kind of is, you know, a pescatarian, those folks do track to a lot of different island nations, which is fascinating, right? Or bacteriaoutus types who are kind of the meat eating types, they do track to some extent, to colder climates. And so we can start to see, again, how traditional wisdom really brings into awareness and has been for centuries, what science is just now kind of, you know, on the brink of deciphering about our relationships with our bodies, and with our environment. No wonder I had chronic intestinal parasites from living in Indonesia for four years. That's not my microbiome, right? Nor will it ever be. And other folks who were exposed to those parasites had ways and bacteria in their gut to digest them, and process them. And I think, too, you know, as part of my own healing process, I did realize how eating different foods actually in larger quantities than you might think, which I now watch my children do, like with the example of our blueberry bushes in the summer is actually a seasonal alignment process, right? And, yes, it can go into the category of binge eating when we become dissociated from our bodies. However, when spring is coming, and the liver is talking to us and saying I'm really cranky, because of winter and all the cold and contraction that's been happening, it's a natural instinct to want to eat a lot of green foods and more things like lemon and olive oil, right, and perhaps in greater quantity than our mind might even think. It is correct. However, this is the nature of change and the fact that our eating is always changing. We see animals do this all the time, of course, too. And I think the key is coming home to our bodies, as we're engaging in this process and really feeling what it feels like to eat, you know, a huge bowl of blueberries or a big bowl of arugula. And yeah, feel that without judgment.
Stephanie Mara 25:26
Yeah, it makes me just think of how much we are really taught in so many ways to mistrust our body. And it's, you know, I heard another practitioner recently provided an example of like, if you cut your arm, you don't like have to give instructions to your arm, like, hey, okay arm, here's what you need to do to like heal this wound. You know, your body just goes to work doing what it naturally does to heal that wound. Now, can that obviously be interrupted or halted for some individuals based off of a bunch of different factors? Absolutely. And there's this inherent wisdom that the body wants to move towards healing, and is constantly guiding you towards that, what have you found, gets in the way. So if we have this natural, innate wisdom and ability for to be guided by our body, there's obviously so many things that get in the way to hear that.
Lisa Mase 26:26
So two big ones, in my experience, as well as in my experience, working with clients, our thoughts, and emotions, and not to say thoughts and emotions are bad, they are part of being human, they are wonderful things. And they do cloud our ability to listen right to be in the presence of our bodies as their own sovereign living beings. I write this story in my book. And it's truly profound for me, when I went to my first silent meditation retreat for 10 days, when I was quite ill, a friend dragged me there, I was terrified, I really hadn't left my house in two years, I only ate six different foods, I wouldn't be able to bring any of my own food, right? This was a huge, huge leap of faith for me. And I went, and I sat the retreat, and I ate the foods. And I'd say my body sensations that felt challenging were probably reduced by about 75%. And it really helped me see how my thoughts, and then the emotions related to those thoughts. And then the stress that I created and still create, because of that cascade of thoughts to emotions, dictated what my body was trying to say to me. So not only is the body trying to communicate, but it's also listening. And part of communication is listening, of course. And so the body is noticing when we're having thoughts that lead to emotions that cause us to generate stress in our lives. Because yes, our nervous systems still haven't caught up with what it means to live in the modern world. And perhaps never will, of course, things get dysregulated. And it becomes harder to hear the body's messages below this message of urgency. However, when we start to create spaciousness creates slowness, especially when the emotional body and the nervous system want to speed things up, the more we can come into this space of listening, and then also appreciating, Oh, I see body, you're creating the stress, because of what you're hearing me tell you, right? You're trying to kind of complete a feedback loop.
Stephanie Mara 29:09
Yeah, yeah. You know, it's both working with the body and how that affects the mind, and also how the mind is affecting the body. This is the mind body connection, that we're talking about here, that there's just this loop that's always happening, and there's no right place to start. You could start with a body, you could start with your thoughts, because they're connected, one is changing one thing is going to change something else and changing another thing is going to alter something else and you might not even expect, you know, we have an idea of what might change or you know, transition, but you know, something might happen that you don't even expect and so I'm curious with the work that you've done both with yourself and others, how have you guided individuals into slowly listening because I feel like at this point, someone even in the somatic world there's this lingo of like, you have to listen to your body. But then for anyone who is like, I don't even know what somatics is, and like, what do you mean, listen to my body, what does that even mean? Like, how have you kind of guided individuals into a space where they can start to understand what that means?
Lisa Mase 30:19
Absolutely. I love to start, and again, everybody's in a different place in their journeys. And one of the places I do go into is interoception, and proprioception, right? So it's like interoception, again, like the enteric nervous system. It's about what the body is sensing from within and communicating to us. And most people can relate to, okay, am I hot? Or am I cold? I think that's a great place to begin and to help understand. Alright, I get it. My body's trying to tell me that I'm hot, or I'm cold, and how is it telling me that, and then we start to realize, oh, it's telling me that through different body parts, like my fingers and toes, or it's revealing it to me through actually sweating? And then what does that interoception kind of generate in terms of emotions? It's like, ooh, like, I was talking about winter and contraction, right? It's like, Oh, when I feel cold, I do feel kind of anxious, right? There is a feeling of, I'm not safe. That reptilian brain is saying, Oh, if we're cold, we might freeze and die. And then you know, if I'm really hot, and sweating, my body might be kind of adding to that initial layer of communication with emotions as well. So interoception and hot and cold. I love that as a starting point. And then proprioception, right? Like, how is my body moving through space. And I love proprioception, just with like walking around a room in your house and kind of just walking around the room, especially if something is feeling activating. Or you're like being drawn to a behavior that like in the mind feels like, oh, I don't want to be drawn to that anymore. Let me just walk around the room, feel my body and space, maybe I'm going to touch some things and feel what they feel like, maybe I'm going to look around in different directions, look out a window, just kind of, you know, bring myself into this moment in space and time. And then proprioception is a doorway into interoception of like, okay, and so now, how am I feeling inside? So I think those are wonderful places to start that, again, reflecting these traditional healing modalities that are talking about constitution and conditions. They're talking about what I was born with, and who I am my constitution, and then what's around me, and what's happening in any given moment, which is the conditions constitution interoception, conditions, proprioception.
Stephanie Mara 33:19
Oh my gosh, I love everything you just said. Where my brain went to, was how, usually when we're starting to explore eating challenges, like binge eating, or emotional eating, or restriction or chronic dieting, whatever it might be for you that usually the focus is so on, I need to fix this thing. And what you just made me think of, okay, if we don't know how we're feeling, if you don't even know that you are feeling cold, and you don't know that your body is going into a stress response over feeling cold. Now you're just in a discomfort, not knowing why or what is going on, you're so confused. That fear response, that amygdala that you're talking about that, you know, that part of your brain starts getting on. And, of course, you're just gonna go reach for food, because also just if we talk about evolutionarily, food is connected to safety, you know, if we had enough food around us, we knew we were safe, we knew we would survive. We knew we would get through this, we knew we'd get through the winter, if we're you know, kind of utilizing that analogy, that, yeah, like we get to see that there's so much wisdom and reaching for food, but it actually doesn't start with decreasing the pattern of reaching for food. It starts with identifying how am I feeling in my body and how am I reacting to that feeling. So I'm thrilled that it and that was such a great example.
Lisa Mase 34:49
Absolutely. And the body of course, goes into a stress response when it doesn't have enough food, right? That's truly scary and And we're, as you say, first wanting to kind of reconnect with, Okay, what's even going on in this moment. And the beauty of the reconnection is that then we have a choice. And we can say, what really is going to feel nourishing to me right now? And how can I bring all of these other aspects of my life into this category called nourishment? Maybe you know, you love to play with your dog, you love to go for a walk, you love to color or right, whatever it is, we all have things that we love, that are nourishment. And truly, our first source of nourishment is breath. A baby is born, they take a breath, they cry, that's it they're in the world. Even starting with being aware of the breath is incredible, right? Because it combines that interoception and proprioception and is this reminder of wow, we're always in relationship with the trees. And in fact, they need us to, and we are nature. And we're not just our mind and our amygdala, and these triggered responses that come from distraction and confusion.
Stephanie Mara 36:17
Yeah, even noticed, as you were talking about breath, you took a deep breath. And I always find that happens. Whenever we start talking about breath. We're like, oh, yeah, I've been holding my breath. And like how much that happens throughout a day. And also, you know, breath is the one part of our autonomic nervous system that is in a little bit of our control, you know, most of the parts of our autonomic nervous system, we don't really have control over. But you can play with your breath. And you can notice, like, oh, what actually supports me and coming into deeper connection with myself through how I'm breathing. So also a fantastic somatic resource as well.
Lisa Mase 36:54
Absolutely. And that's why food is such a wonderful way to repattern some of these nervous system grooves that have gotten stuck. And I always, you know, well go back to my story of growing up. And that prayer before the meal was this opportunity to breathe, to slow down to repeat something that was so ingrained that you know, we didn't even have to think about it. And then there was this opportunity to breathe, and to come back to okay, this is a body breathing. And then food came in as this wonderful support to the body breathing. And so wrapping food in this notion of this is one of my opportunities for nourishment, and for nervous system recovery, and for trauma, digestion and metabolism, right? Because that's often what's at the root of disordered eating, or I like to call it disconnected eating, we're disconnected, we're dissociated because of the world, it's not our fault. And we can actually come home to our bodies by coming home to food, when I was so ill, that was hard for me to believe. And, again, baby steps towards getting there. And my relationship to food right now as a result of all of these other body systems that are shouting and saying, We need help. We need support.
Stephanie Mara 38:27
Yeah, yeah. I'm curious. You know, I often like to wrap up in offering like a baby steps. So, you know, even with this ancestral eating, what do you feel like is a baby step that someone could start to take? I even heard you speaking about eating seasonally, you know, we're in a place right now, as we're recording this where maybe Spring is coming. Maybe in the next couple of weeks, we'll see. But I'm curious why someone listening to this could say, hey, is there something I could play with currently?
Lisa Mase 39:00
Absolutely. I love this notion of finding a bean or lentil or a grain that really resonates with you even looking at a book like The New Whole Foods encyclopedia, or I have a little culinary pharmacy in the back of my book to see let me read a little bit about rice or let me read a little bit about buckwheat or rye and kind of see, huh, that sounds interesting and perhaps like could have an ancestral thread connected to it for me. Let me see how I can love myself and respect my body and prepare this being this lentil this grain for myself and eat it and see how it feels to eat it and see if I want to kind of keep weaving it into my eating. I love that as a place to start and as a healing foods and ancestral foods exploration.
Stephanie Mara 40:01
Yeah, awesome. Being able to get curious about a food that you have felt drawn to, that you may not have any idea why. And really allowing yourself to, like, slow down with it, make it in a way that resonates with you that could be you know, baking it, boiling it, whatever food process way that you're like, Yeah, I think I really want to do it this way. And really like putting it on your favorite bowl, your favorite plate, and actually allowing yourself to notice your body's feedback. I recently I've been talking about this in a few podcasts. Now I because I'm still processing, like, I feel like vacations and going to different parts of the world provides such an opportunity to kind of like relook at relationship with food. And so I've recently had that opportunity and being able to try different foods in a totally different country, and just slowing down with it and noticing how does this food feel in my body. And when we are really like you said, sometimes some of these issues with food is from disconnection, which is also happening for a reason that it doesn't make me feel safe to be in connection and practicing in these tiny, small ways, whatever feels tolerable to whoever's listening. And you know, what I noticed was, in being able to just take one bite and really be present with the food in my body, I would know immediately don't take another bite, or Oh, yep, keep going. Like, you will get cues from your body of like, nope, thumbs up, we're good with this. Good, keep going. And I would like know, when something after the first bite, where my body would have all these reactions, or contractions, or, you know, things would change. And I would say, you know, I actually don't think I should take another bite of that my body might actually have a really bad reaction to this if I keep going. And this is where just coming full circle of how we started if like, symptoms are not the enemy, you know, that is our body's way of talking to us. And if we're listening, we get to honor its know and its boundary and say, Okay, thanks for letting me know, I'll stop there. And sometimes your mind will argue with that. But I like that tasted good. Why don't you just keep going. And that's where we get to kind of like be in connection with all the parts of us that might speak up and have different opinions around food.
Lisa Mase 42:20
That's right. And we get to say what else might be nourishing right now bringing in all those different ways to feel nourished, and all those different foods and the body's wisdom is also connecting to traditional wisdom and something like food energetics, right? It's like foods are either warming, cooling or neutral. And I think that that's a huge way to kind of get into our relationship with food, right? Is my body feeling hot or cold? Is this food feeling warming or cooling in my body? And kind of try to weave that awareness? It's like, oh, I can't drink ice water when my body is feeling that's cold. I need soup, for example.
Stephanie Mara 43:01
Yeah, yeah. And that goes back to that interoception to know how you're feeling to then make an informed and align food decision.
Lisa Mase 43:09
Absolutely. Yeah. And we're not looking for perfection ever. We're looking for humanity.
Stephanie Mara 43:16
Yeah, not even possible. Everything we're talking about is an ongoing practice. And, you know, sometimes you're gonna make a food decision that feels really in alignment. And sometimes you're going to make a food decision that you're like, alright, they maybe that wasn't the best choice, but it sort of tasted good.
Lisa Mase 43:34
Absolutely, yeah. And just even showing up for yourself in that experience.
Stephanie Mara 43:38
So I so appreciate you sharing all of your wisdom today. I'm curious how individuals who are listening to this can keep in touch with you.
Lisa Mase 43:46
Thank you. It's been wonderful to have this conversation and my business is harmonized living, and my website is harmonized dash living.com You can contact me through there, you can sign up for my newsletter, you can grab a copy of my book, The culinary pharmacy, and I'd love to hear from you people's questions and inquiries or how I learned so I always appreciate hearing from folks.
Stephanie Mara 44:14
Awesome. Well, I will put all those links in the show notes and also your contact information so that individuals can reach out to you and just thank you so much again for sharing all the research and explorations you have done.
Lisa Mase 44:25
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Stephanie Mara 44:27
Yeah, well for everyone listening if you have any questions as always reach out anytime, and I look forward to connecting with you all again real soon. Bye!
Keep in touch with Lisa here:
Website: https://www.harmonized-living.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HarmonizedLife
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harmonized.living/
Book: The Culinary Pharmacy