What Food Can Teach Us About Fear

Food can be laden with empty calories or it can be rich with life giving nutrients. Fear has the same possibilities. In an age of “No Fear” internet memes and “Positive Only” wall art, fear gets a bad wrap (food pun intended).

We are born with a sophisticated fear monitoring system, our nervous system.
The center of our nervous system isn’t our hearts or souls, it is our brain.
Our bodies and brains work together to create a communication circuit. It is a two way information superhighway.

As we all scroll through social media we see a lot of quotes about fear. Mostly these quotes are trying to impart a point of view that fear is something we must eradicate. How do you eradicate something that is hardwired? Perhaps the greater question is, why would you want to? You came into this world with a nervous system which relays fears, so the body must believe that it is an essential element to life. Have you ever walked into an unfamiliar place and you feel the hair on the back of your neck stand up? Your nervous system will make a threat assessment, your mind will give you information to either walk out or stay. You’ve just made a choice based on what Robert Ohotto calls Sacred Fear. Sacred Fear has just served you.

The same holds true for empty calorie fear. If all you consume is fear mongering news and angry media i.e. movies, podcast and music, your nervous system has just dined out on the equivalent of a 48 ounce of soda and twizzlers. Your brain and your body were not designed to process an onslaught of fear. Empty fear works at a speed and tempo that is very different then sacred fear. Back to food for another analogy. Sacred fear is a low rolling boil pot of water and empty fear is a screaming tea kettle. Have you ever heard the phrase, the loudest thing in the room, wins. Empty fear is the loudest thing in your mind, that is why people say quiet your mind. What they don’t tell you is, in a quieted mind, you can hear sacred fear.

It isn’t that we must eradicate sacred fear but learn to embrace it. What if sacred fear was viewed from a position of self love? That the fear that serves you does at the behest of love?
High caloric empty fear even has a purpose. It shows us what we are indulging in and gives us the opportunity to decide if we still want to continue to eat up or step away from the plate.

All I ask is the next time someone suggests you stop acting from a place of fear, ask yourself why, why give up on something that could save me?

Lynda Simpson

I’m a former Restaurant Manager who has studied Ortho-Bionomy. This article is a gumbo of both of my loves, I hope it fills your mind with food for thought.

www.facebook.com/lasimpson66