Let me start with an in­ter­est­ing pa­tient story:
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The pa­tient
Forty years ago, a pa­tient came and said; “I dreamt you could tell me the spir­i­tual rea­son for my dis­ease.”

I was prac­tic­ing re­flex­ol­ogy and had just started to study home­opa­thy so my ex­pe­ri­ence was nei­ther broad nor deep. She had a mouth con­di­tion with in­fec­tion in her gums and was afraid to loose her teeth (Pyrea/​peri­don­titt).

She did not want any kind of treat­ment she just wanted to know why she was sick. I talked with her for 2 hours but still had no clue. She just said; “let me come back next week, you will sort it out.”  The night be­fore her third con­sul­ta­tion, I felt bad about not know­ing. As I was go­ing to bed I wished I could dream the an­swer.
I had the most mar­velous dream. I could look into the body. I had x-ray eyes. I could see only mus­cles or bones, only ar­ter­ies or any com­bi­na­tion of or­gans or tis­sues. I could make a hole into the tis­sues or make them trans­par­ent with my gaze. There were no lim­i­ta­tions.

Amaz­ingly, there were hun­dreds of small tags with a virtue or qual­ity writ­ten on what was con­nected with each body part! I knew in the dream that I would not be able to re­mem­ber them all, but took an ex­tra look at the mouth. On the gums the tag said “Grat­i­tude”.
Now, I was cu­ri­ous to meet my pa­tient and find out if grat­i­tude could be the is­sue. I was try­ing to find out if there was any­thing she was not happy about in her life. Dur­ing the third con­sul­ta­tion she re­vealed to me that her 60 year old hus­band had taken on two jobs work­ing from 07 in the morn­ing un­til 15, com­ing home for din­ner and then go­ing off to work again from 16 to 22, go­ing to sleep to get up at seven again. Sat­ur­days he would drive her to the shop­ping mall to do the shop­ping for next week and Sun­days they went to church. She com­plained that she was a lot alone and her hus­band did not make a pri­or­ity to be with her. When I asked her why he worked so much she said they had bought her child­hood house and to pay out her sis­ters the hus­band had to work so hard.

Here, she was not of­fer­ing to work, nor to buy an­other place, but just so she could be in her child­hood house the hus­band was giv­ing his life away and she had no grat­i­tude!

I met her some year later and she told me it took her time to rec­og­nize and re­al­ize that grat­i­tude was the true chal­lenge in her life. She said she now could say with­out doubt she felt grat­i­tude to­wards her hus­band and me for telling her and that the im­prove­ment of the teeth of course was slowed down by her age. The most im­por­tant thing for her all the time was to un­der­stand the jour­ney of her soul. (Read more about dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives on life in my ar­ti­cle in this is­sues: View can change re­al­ity)

Eat­ing
Grat­i­tude, love and zest for life are strongly con­nected to the mouth. Want­ing to kiss some­body or say­ing I could eat you or I want to eat you! Not to men­tion the ex­pres­sion Makes one´s mouth wa­ter.

The de­sire for deep con­nec­tion and uni­fi­ca­tion is in the mouth, noth­ing gets closer to you than what you eat, be­cause it be­comes the you to be.

An­other known ex­pres­sion is You are what you eat, eat well! This sen­tence of wis­dom is not only for phys­i­cal food, it is for all kinds of food. While the body needs food to work, the will needs to be ex­er­cised, the heart needs feel­ings, the mind needs to think, your soul needs to con­nect with the feel­ing of be­long­ing to­gether in a big­ger whole­ness a big­ger holon and your spirit needs free­dom to man­i­fest in you.

Di­ges­tion
To un­der­stand di­ges­tion we will look at chew­ing or mas­ti­cat­ing and the evo­lu­tion of life.

Plants do not di­gest they as­sim­i­late and weave salts from the earth with air and light into their own struc­ture. A plant weaves the light of the sun into the fab­ric of the earth. When wood burns, we see the sun­light get­ting backs its free­dom.

Fungi one step more ad­vanced in evo­lu­tion than plants di­gest things, but only out­side them­selves. They do not have the com­plete strength to di­gest yet. They are im­por­tant in tear­ing down de­cay­ing things for re­cy­cling.

An­i­mals are the first liv­ing be­ing that can di­gest. Di­ges­tion in higher an­i­mals starts with chew­ing and chew­ing is like a se­quence of bites. Chop­ping things up. But the bit­ing is only first phys­i­cal, then it be­comes chem­i­cal, then en­er­getic and spir­i­tual.

Imag­ine, you have a dis­tance to walk, and you go and sing like in a mil­i­tary ca­dence; One two, one two, with my shoe, One two, one two your shoe too etc etc. . You di­gest the path step by step. If you want to eat a ma­mut you have to eat it meal by meal. Through life you eat meal by meal. Life can be re­garded as a life long march of eat­ing, or meals, chew­ing and chew­ing.

When worms (an­nelids) evolved into seg­mented an­i­mals (arthro­pods) di­ges­tion started to de­velop into a new level. In the ear­lier flat­worms (platy­helminthes) the seg­men­ta­tion is just start­ing in the in­te­rior and the di­ges­tive sys­tem has still one open­ing where food comes in and out.

As an­i­mals de­velop we see the seg­men­ta­tion com­ing  clearer and clearer. Worms get­ting feet, like the hun­dred footed an­i­mals (cen­tipedes). Every seg­ment is sim­i­lar rep­e­ti­tions. The feet in the front de­velop into an­tenna or sense or­gans, claws and teeth show­ing the same ori­gin of these func­tions.

Now you can un­der­stand the anal­ogy of walk­ing and chew­ing. Di­ges­tion, mov­ing and sens­ing are all re­lated. Sens­ing crea­tures emo­tions and mo­tion and e-mo­tion are both how you move or get moved by the sur­round­ings. So as an­i­mals de­velop an in­ter­nal ad­vanced sys­tem they are able to take into them­selves the sur­round­ings and di­gest them, sense them or move away or to­wards them. This is like love or hate, de­sire or aver­sion. As you ad­vance you are able to di­gest more and more of the ex­ter­nal world and be­come one with it, love it.

Om­raam Mikhaël Aï­van­hov said: “With­out love, life is in­sipid; even if some­one pos­sesses great wealth, in­tel­lec­tual learn­ing and worldly renown, with­out love he will have no zest for life.”

Love is the dri­ving fac­tor that pulls you to­wards what you de­sire as aver­sion pushes you from what you dis­like. All the you de­sire to put in the mouth is the same thing, you are dri­ven to­wards it, you want to con­nect to it and what your body does not like is pushed out.

Some peo­ple get so con­nected to food stuff or other things they love, that they cant let go, they get ob­sessed. They are in a con­stant state of con­nec­tion.

The process of dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion on one side and in­te­gra­tion on the other are im­por­tant as­pects of love and di­ges­tion. You have to choose what you con­nect with. You be­come what you eat, you be­come what you drink, you be­come what you lis­ten to, you be­come alike the peo­ple you con­nect with.

Read other articles on integrative medicine here.
Overview of main groups of articles here

Here are some re­lated ar­ti­cles:
Jus­tice a mat­ter of Nose
The Eye a ques­tion of per­spec­tive
Wis­dom is hid­den in the Ears