When the media articles about Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine came out in 2012, they suggested that anyone involved with Universal Medicine was being told to eat a certain ‘extreme’ diet. I knew from personal experience that nothing could have been further from the truth. The kinds of diets I’d been following in my life and subjected my body to – which many would accept as ‘normal’ – were in fact the truly extreme ones and were far from what my body really needed.
MY VEGETARIAN DIET
When I first met Serge Benhayon, my body had been begging me to eat meat for the last 18 months. I had been refusing to give into this clear message as I had made the choice to be a vegetarian. As a result I was exhausted, malnourished, and overweight.
I had been eating a vegetarian diet for several years prior to this. I had never considered asking my body how it felt about this decision. On reflection, this would have been the natural thing to do.
All other animals know what and how much to eat. Yet somehow we seem to have lost this natural ability from the human psyche and have made our minds king. My decision to be a vegetarian came from what my mind wanted and my reaction to how animals were farmed for meat.
I felt quite healthy on the vegetarian diet until I became pregnant: then the objections from my body grew louder and louder. Instead of listening to my body I clung with white knuckles to my principles. My ‘clever’ mind tried to find ways around what my body was clearly telling me. I ate excessive amounts of dairy and eggs in the hope that these would substitute for meat. My wellbeing continued to deteriorate, especially as I was breast-feeding. This continued until my son was a year old.
WHAT MY BODY KNEW
That was when I had my first healing session with Serge Benhayon. He never once mentioned diet or what I should eat. Yet at the end of the session I drove straight to the take-away to get a chicken satay stick. Surprisingly, I did not feel guilty.
I simply knew that this was what my body needed and I could not keep abusing it. What good was my peaceful protest against animal cruelty if it ended up destroying the protestor?
My body was right. It did need meat at that stage of my life and my energy and wellbeing improved markedly. This was a turning point in my life. I realised how much my body knew and how harmful and inflexible life run by ideals and beliefs could be.
THE QUESTION OF GLUTEN
My next big lesson about listening to my body came in the form of gluten. Over several years I had heard Serge Benhayon present about the energy of gluten and its effects on the body.
He never once said we should stop eating gluten. He simply presented listening to and respecting the wisdom of your own body.
So, with the free will to make my own choices (and feel the effects), I continued to eat gluten. However there did come a time when I knew that gluten was not sitting so well in my body. I really didn’t want this to be true. I couldn’t imagine life without bakery treats. So I played the game of adjusting my eating just enough to reduce symptoms and made excuses to myself for why my stomach wasn’t feeling so good. This continued for sometime until D (donut)-day.
DONUT DAY
I was grocery shopping one night and just inside the entrance to the supermarket was a table full of half-priced six-packs of iced donuts. Who could say “No” to that? I certainly couldn’t! So I took them home and ate not one or two but four donuts! I will never forget how I felt. For the next three days it felt like I had had cement poured into my stomach. Now, knowing the word gluten comes from the Latin meaning ‘glue’ makes a lot of sense! I could barely eat and my stomach was very, very uncomfortable.
I have not eaten gluten since that day and have never regretted it. I instantly started to drop the weight I had struggled to lose and returned to my natural size. I am free from the lure of bakery treats. I had had a big lesson to listen to and respect my body. It can only take so much before it says “No” quite loudly.
Today, I do not eat a prescribed diet (certainly nothing like an ‘extreme’ diet!) and what I eat is always changing. To others my diet may look extreme and as though I am ‘missing out’. From my experience, what I used to accept as normal was extreme and harmful to my wellbeing. Considering that over two-thirds of Australia’s population are overweight or obese, it may be time to start questioning the ‘norm’.
I now feel what my body needs to nourish and support it. I already knew first-hand how loudly my body could speak and the harm caused by ignoring it before I met Serge Benhayon.
What he has continually shared is to keep feeling what is right for ME.
No prescription, no rules, no letting myself be led by any ideas, needs, experts or diets, because…
There is no greater expert on what’s best for me than me.
Inspired by the work of Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon.
By Fiona Lotherington, Technical Officer, Registered Nurse, Lismore, Australia
559 Comments
I feel that Serge Benhayon offers a ‘what if’ scenario and then leaves it up to everyone to discover for themselves what foods they can eat and what they cannot. I have never heard any rules on the subject of food. I have lost count of the times when I have told people that I do not drink alcohol they wish they didn’t drink either but admit they needed alcohol to feel better about themselves. I used to drink alcohol like a fish so there is no judgement on my part I just know that my body can no longer tolerate it and I feel more vital within myself for not drinking.
I can so relate to your ‘diet’ journey Fiona, as mine was very similar. I had removed wheat, sugar, dairy and alcohol from my diet five years before I met Serge Benhayon, for health reasons, but was still a vegetarian. But it wasn’t until I removed the gluten and began eating fish six months after my body began to whisper ‘fish’ over and over again, that my health really began to improve. Never thought I’d eat lamb or chicken, but there I was, a year later, eating both and feeling way more vital and alive than I had ever felt in my life. So, there is definitely no doubt in my mind, that every single thing I put into my body impacts on every aspect of my life.
And are not our digestive system all set to a different tune so for each of us we have to find our own brand of healthy living that serves our bodies as we cannot fit everyone under the one blanket rule. As you have so simply shared Fiona feel for yourself what works for your body and don’t be guided by any hard and fast rules.
This is my experience of what Serge Benhayon shared too, ‘listening to and respecting the wisdom of your own body’, and honouring what your own body is asking for, this will be different for each of us.
As a teenager I also reacted to animal welfare issues and became a vegetarian and then a vegan. Although the food was considered healthy I feel it had a very negative effect on my digestive system to the point that even years after eating meat again my digestive system was still not normal. I agree with your line “I realised how much my body knew and how harmful and inflexible life run by ideals and beliefs could be.” This is exactly what I experienced because I also was prompted by my body to change how I was eating and also include meat yet my ideals and beliefs were placed first to the detriment of my body.
When you eat exactly what your body needs there is no guilt or other negative consequences, the trouble is we choose most of the time from our heads, or for the last rather than what we actually need on that day and at that moment.
‘From my experience, what I used to accept as normal was extreme and harmful to my wellbeing. ‘ Checking the norms is a healthy choice we can do and this can only be done by testing how they feel in our body.
No matter what angle I look at it it seems the norm is to abuse yourself and even boast about it. You can abuse yourself being “healthy” or abuse yourself by being “unhealthy”. It’s like a linear sliding scale of abuse and we can go extreme at both ends or try and balance it by “everything in moderation”. What a load of rubbish that whole mindset is – it is all abuse and we as a society championing it to the enth degree- it really is quite ridiculous.
Thanks for your comment Suzanne, I hadn’t considered the boasting part but it’s true, we drink huge amounts of alcohol and boast, and gorge ourselves on food to the point of not being able to move for hours because of the discomfort and we boast about that too. We actually see achieving extremes as good, much like a 10km marathon. We are very unaware of self abuse in society, it’s easy to point out obvious extremes like violence as abuse, or self harm like cutting, but we do not have a general awareness in terms of self abuse. Many of the things we do to ourselves that harm the body we would not do to a child because we know it’s abuse and hold children, but not ourselves, preciously.
And it’s not just food that our body can be given a say on but all areas of life. Recently my back went out and as I lay in bed (thats about all I could do!) I connected with my body and then and there made the choice to quit my job and go full time over to the other job I am working. My back went out as a result of not caring for myself and running ragged, I could only do this for so long before my body said STOP! in the form of back pain. The moment I resigned the back pain started to go whereby the next day I was asking “Where’s my back pain?”
Leigh I agree, the body has a say in everything that throws us out of balance. I recently had a cold and needed bed rest, what was obvious over those few days of enforced rest was how much I had been pushing myself and as a result placing my body under unnecessary pressure. Whatever our illness or message from the body is it’s an opportunity to change and come back to harmony with the body.
It is ludicrous really, that we are so unwilling to let go of our accepted ‘norm‘ in terms of our relationship with food and diet, or to even consider that something is amiss, even though this ‘norm’ is slowly but surely making us sick and essentially killing us. It certainly calls to question what it is we call ‘intelligence’, or is it that we are simply willing to be ignorant of how our bodies are reflecting the quality of life we are choosing to live? Is our ‘norm’ really supporting us to live with the utmost vitality and realise our true potential?
Yes, Fiona, it is a natural thing to do, to ask our body how it feels when we eat or have eaten something or in your case follow a strict vegetarian diet. The body is much wiser than our mind ever will be and I agree there is no one who knows better what and how to eat (and prepare our food) than we do for ourselves.
“There is no greater expert on what’s best for me than me.” When it comes to food only we know what is actually right for us to eat and not eat according to what is going on for us and how we are feeling generally in ourselves. If we can be honest about the fact that food has a much greater effect than it’s taste, our approach to food almost needs to be scientific in meeting what our body specifically requires that day.