I am experiencing a time in life where opening and relaxing the body’s physiological systems and their spatially equivalent energetic fields seems to be of primary importance.

Just as each individual cell in an organism has access to, is sustained by and enriches the intelligence of the whole, my behaviour appears increasingly aligned towards perceiving and allowing the great osmotic pressure of love to recalibrate my physical body for deeper levels of relaxation.

Although healthy cells each have a distinct exterior and location, they are also appropriately permeable to accept from and deliver to the surrounding environment any information required for local and universal harmony.

You will know where along your physical architecture lie the areas of blockage and accumulation. For me, the centre of the brain, spinal system and lower abdomen hold the most tension. Accordingly, to relax these areas will invite the greatest increase in my level of connection to life – to the same intelligence which governs not only cellular function, but the entire biological realm, blooming and reaping under the infinite dance of stars.

Consistently releasing our rigidity – scar by scar, bone by bone, block by block – into this clearly discernible intelligence is a practical and relatively wholistic response to the sense of disconnected futility which plagues modern man. It restores aliveness by allowing life itself to guide our biology and to renovate the house of perception we inhabit to witness our unspeakable beauty.

The tension held in our bodies is creative potential – each knot a song to be sung. Encoded in your unique melody is the healing frequency required for you and those around you to restore the experience of universal kinship native to our species.

One way that I work on this in myself is through the modality of food – what the yogis call Anna Yoga. In my experience, the food that I eat has changed as I have, reflected and supporting my current desires and level of awareness.

At this stage in life the food I like to prepare is:

Local – I love to work with what is being produced here at home – nature’s gift to us in this climate, on this day, from this soil.

Organic – supporting farmers who support the earth (although not everything labelled organic is regenerative, or even sustainable!)

Fresh – maximal energetic goodness transmitted through intelligent purchasing, storage and preparation.

Simple – a desire to allow the sensory and vibrational essence of each plant to find its harmonious and synergistic expression within a meal.

Healing – food which is crafted and served with a sense of purpose, reverence and gratitude.

Attuned – is it snowing? hot? midday or twilight? what is the moon up to? Each day’s menu engages with its particular climatic, social and emotional territory…

Seasonal – using the best of what we can find in farmer’s markets, in forests, meadows and along wild roads.

Delicious – swirling together the mystical and the tangible, flavours can elicit child-like joy. Understand that flavours provide more than sensory pleasure – they are constellations guiding the weary traveller home.

Beautiful – a carrot is already art. Yet in the right hands it becomes transformed, imbued with the spark and magic of human creativity and perfectly aligned with the moment.

Colourful – very into strong, clear colours now. Green soup, orange turmeric, white coconut…

Open – to the moment, to refinement, to evolution…

Sometimes I will integrate a technique or flavour combination from world cuisine – these days that could be middle eastern, japanese, fijian or nordic – but mostly I am looking to work with what grows within a few hundred kilometres of where I live.

Now, a word on ‘veganism’.  I appear to be 100% plant-based, but in reality, my dietary choices arise from a synthesis of experience, information and bodily intuition – not because they conform to any particular model or ideology.

Do we eat no animals through altruism – or through kinship? Do your actions result from acquired belief – or arise from an opening heart?

Are you still hostage to right and wrong?

I see each of you as glorious – your bodies suffused with the same creative thirst as gives thundering water its roar and soil its ancient fragrance; inseparable you are from all that you perceive, yet you carry a particular yearning in your heart which makes you beautifully, nakedly human.

Your body is the only home for you in this universe. Nurture and know its blood-rivers, its dense forests of alveoli… care for and protect its honey-comb marrow, its colonies of defense and repair… know what your voice is and where it comes from.

Now I enter the arena and state:

Do not eat a food merely because it is labeled vegan, or organic, or anything else for that matter. A life built on ideas will always be unsure. May you instead allow guidance from the body’s exquisite cellular intelligence – it knows you and your needs more intimately than anyone on the internet. It is constantly assimilating your inner and outer experience and offers an intuitive navigation of the daily tides.

There are many ways to develop the body’s awareness: yoga, gentleness, qi gong, exercise, meditation, gut health, intention, visualization and many others. Yet the body will gradually return to its native frequency of joyful connection – and you will naturally perceive your unique gifts and eternal wholeness – if you simply ask,  are sincere in your asking, and utterly still in your receptivity to hearing It’s answer…