You are what you digest, assimilate and eliminate

You probably know the saying ‘You are what you eat”. But lately I’ve been hearing “You are what you digest” from functional medicine practitioners. This is true for food, relationships, and everything in our environment. If we can’t digest it, it accumulates and stagnates in our system causing all sorts of health problems.

It’s not just what we digest though, it’s also what we assimilate and eliminate. What goes in, must go through and come out. If if doesn’t, we aren’t nourished by the things that are good for us and we can’t therefore eliminate what is no longer good for us.

If we don’t feel, we can’t experience. But feeling seems far too simple a solution for it to work. We think we need something more complicated and fancy, especially when our issues are complex.

So much has been written on this subject, but because it doesn’t seem quick and painless, it doesn’t get as much airtime as other so-called easier solutions, but the fact is that it works. The ability to handle difficult emotions increases our capacity and resilience and makes us more of who we really are. Who wouldn't want that?

Collectively, our emotional intelligence isn’t great. We aren’t very good at dealing with difficult emotions, people or experiences. Is it because we don’t place as much value on our emotional and social intelligence as we do academic intelligence? Watch/listen to this excellent podcast with Dr Joan Rosenberg talking about how our life changes for the better when we learn to feel and experience difficult emotions.