As long as I can remember, rice has been something I could not give up. Well, I am born Chinese, where no-one would question this as unusual. Rice is served almost in every meal; I was so attached to my rice that I grew my own once.
Rice, being a staple in Asia, is used extensively; from the plain steamed rice that accompanies a meal, to the sweets made with glutinous rice, steamed sticky rice in a lotus leaf wrap with meats, the ever famous fried rice, rice noodles, breakfast congee (rice cooked in water until a porridge consistency), steamed rice rolls and so on – who would ever question the consumption of something so inherent to our culture and traditional identity?
I was no exception, and although petite I could probably eat more rice than someone twice my size, and not really gain weight. If there was rice, I would be content. When travelling, rice is the first word I learn in a foreign language, just so that I can ensure my ability to order it. In my opinion, eating other carbohydrates like potatoes or pasta doesn’t even come close to the feeling I have when eating rice. I would also choose rice over meat, as meat fills me up quickly; but rice, I can eat a lot of it. Being always hungry, rice has become my comfort.
Rice, unlike alcohol or drugs, is not illegal if you buy it under 18 years of age, or consume it in public. But like any addiction, it takes a lot of courage and honesty to feel and acknowledge what is really true for the body. From young, we were told that we are good children if we ate a lot of rice, since rice, being less expensive than meat, is consumed in much greater quantities. We were also taught, through a traditional saying “fan hey gung sum” (direct translation: ‘the energy of the rice invading the heart’, which is pretty spot on), that it is natural to feel drowsy after eating rice, and most would not question it. We would just feel somewhat unlike ourselves and unable to have optimal clarity after a big rice meal.
Yet the ‘comfort’ that results from eating rice is worth it, or so I told myself, even if being a bit muddle-headed was the payoff. I have long since given up alcohol, and sugar is not something that I crave (probably because all the rice I have been consuming has made that redundant), milk and chocolate were foods I had disliked since young, and when I had worked my way even into relinquishing cheese, oh boy, was I not prepared to give up rice. Whenever life felt stressful, I would make sure rice, a lot of it, would see me through. As such, this could be a situation that would go on, never to be questioned for the rest of my life.
But in 2012, I joined an Esoteric retreat organised by Universal Medicine in Vietnam; in fact, it was my first time joining anything Esoteric. Throughout the four days of the retreat, rice was not a part of the meals. I had enjoyed the retreat and its teachings, group discussions and wonderful nurturing food tremendously. Having said that, the experience also allowed me to feel how hungry I was without my rice. It was the beginning of an unmasking of the emptiness I had been covering up all my life. I felt how I had numbed myself from my own light and how I had been hiding who I truly am with this feigned comfort given to me, such as by consuming rice (I had myriad different numbing techniques, apart from rice). This emptiness was not something that was easy to swallow, and it so much fed into my arrogance and ignorance that on the last day of the retreat I went to the market and ate a plate of rice!
Throughout this past year, what has been initiated from the retreat has given me the courage as well as the support to be much more honest with myself. Who would have imagined a female Chinese, who cannot live without rice, would one day, not out of abstinence, nor because someone told her that rice is bad, but through an honest exploration and self-love, choose not to include rice in her diet anymore?
For in the stillness of my heart, overriding how my body is feeling is not okay anymore, hiding from the fullness of who I am is not okay anymore, and being led by a perception of any culture is also not okay anymore. Ultimately, when I chose to be in the livingness of who I truly am, the need to numb myself disappeared. It is truly no longer okay to perpetuate what is not true even though it has been accepted as normal. Once I realised this, my attachment with rice simply ended.
By Adele Leung, Fashion stylist/Art director, Hong Kong
297 Comments
I too grew up around rice and certain carbohydrates as part of my staple diet and remember the slumber afterwards – not pleasant when I’d indulge on coffee to counteract this.
I have recently returned from overseas after visiting family and it was interesting to observe the reactions when I expressed I was not eating rice anymore. There are times I have cravings for rice cooked in a certain way and it brings my awareness to why I am craving this, I now know it’s because I have gone into the doing of things and exhausted my body. When I am truly living, the cravings that makes me feel dense and heavy are no longer there.
Beautiful example, Shushila. I can have this with sugar. I used to be addicted to sugar and now when a craving for something sweet comes the questions that really support are: why would I want to eat that, am I tired or what is it I prefer not to feel or read? Sugar is the perfect substance to become racy, less aware and get difficulties with reading energy.
So interesting. You mention here that you got to feel how hungry you were without rice but actually it was how ’empty’ you felt without rice. This is something I have felt alot over the years that I have been paying attention to my over-eating pattern. I feel I am hungry when there is no physical way that I am, I know I have eaten a good meal yet I still want more. Many psychologists and nutritionists have said to me over the years that taking time to be present when you eat means your body can feel the food, it can feel when it is full. Without having a relationship with our bodies we can build patterns of behaviour that feed dis-ordered eating. There is always so much more to understand but addressing the emptiness inside, an emptiness that has nothing to do with food is a great place to start.
Food is a most interesting subject. Of course, there are physical withdrawal symptoms whenever one removes something from their diet or has to do without, but then of course once those symptoms have past, there are much deeper emotional attachments that one becomes aware of, which all too often stop us from making choices that we know to be true.
“who would ever question the consumption of something so inherent to our culture and traditional identity?” if we are indentifying ourselves with our culture it easily can justify behaviours like eating rice as normal and ok, even though they might be not true for us and our body. The only thing we can identify ourselves with without the before mentioned happening is the light of our soul.
Thank you Adele for a beautifully honest sharing of how you came to understand and let go of the dulling that eating rice caused in your body. This cultural embedding of certain foods runs through many cultures, as each have their own food that is the norm, to become aware of how these foods leave us dull and lethargic; connecting to the wisdom of the body is indeed a blessing and leaves us with a choice to connect to our deeper self and bring loving care to our body.
A very inspirational blog to inspire each of us to explore what foods or behaviours from our own culture that have a similar dimming effect upon our Light.
What you have expressed here Adele is so very powerful and wise, thank you;
“For in the stillness of my heart, overriding how my body is feeling is not okay anymore, hiding from the fullness of who I am is not okay anymore, and being led by a perception of any culture is also not okay anymore.
Breaking away from a familial, societal and cultural ‘norm’ can oftentimes bring about disapproval from others, reaction and even alarm… Yet if we make such a change founded upon the truth that comes from our innate connection with who we are, and the wise signals our own bodies continually offer to us – it is truth that is the winner, as it rightly deserves to be. And then, sometimes, others who have been as entrenched in a customary behaviour as we ourselves were, may be inspired to consider if not make their own choices…
Looking at the foods we use as ‘fillers’ is a great undertaking – not only for our physical well-being, but as you’ve outlined here Adele, rice was used to numb oneself, i.e. basically to shut down awareness, and make us more dull than we naturally are in our meeting of life and all that may unfold in it.
And so letting go of such a food choice is about far more than the actual food, isn’t it – for how do we want to be in our daily living? All of who we are, or a dulled and diminished version… Huge food for pondering (excuse the pun, but couldn’t help put it in for its relevance here… ☺ )
Telling the world they are hiding behind what is rice, bread, pizza, potatoes etc etc is not going to go down well, for when we do not feel the love within us, our choices would not reflect this love. How can we then allow another to feel the love that is within them, the love that is irrefutably so? In my living experience it is to be honest to my choices and no matter whether these choices are loving or not, whether I am aware or not when these choices are made, to then start living this irrefutable love for myself—to love myself no matter what my choices have been and are presently.
Maybe we could look at the Western world’s attachment to junk food… Talk about hiding behind pizza! Where ever we are, it all comes down to do we listen to our bodies or do we not.
Thank you Adele. When we feel empty we so often relate this to being hungry for food but the emptiness can be an awareness that we are not living in full who we truly are.
It is very exposing the way we can use a food such as rice to numb ourselves and not be aware, I remember I went through a stage that I would eat brown or organic rice and used to boast how healthy I was, what an illusion! Thanks to the teachings of Universal Medicine I too have learnt to listen to my body with honesty and let go of foods that only delay my own evolution. Thank you Adele!
Its interesting how our culture can identify us with certain foods. My family grew up in Asia and we ate a lot of rice as kids (never pasta or potatoes) it was always rice. This was different to the meals our friends ate, as I grew older and lived independently rice dropped out of my diet and I went more for the breads and potato chips. Now if I eat any of these- rice, potato, bread I feel that heavy bloated feeling and I just want to go to sleep. Its interesting how some of our nations’ staples are foods that dull us.
I gave up eating rice long ago, along with most carbohydrates. That was not a mental decision, nor one I made overnight, but a part of a progressive way of looking at what I ate based on observation of my own body and how it felt and responded. Today people say, but how do you get your energy? well, I still work as a builder, and exercise quite OK without my carbohydrates, and find myself actually eating more vegetables when I am hungry, rather than filling miyself out with carbohydrates. But what about everything in balance, right? Well, why would you take something that makes you feel lethargic, that you then need to work hard to remove from your system. What could your sleeping body otherwise take care of if it were not set the task overnight of assisting you to recover from poor food choices and otherwise? The old argument about balance is based on this myth that we need to be rewarded for our good behaviour. The problem with this belief is that it actually limits our understanding of what true vitality and awareness that is on offer to us, should we choose to truly look after ourselves. For every time you take a step forwards, you take a step backwards in the name of balance, and thus end up really going nowhere.
Just like with rice we have many other things to cover up our emptiness. From the outside I have come a long way, not eating gluten, dairy, sugar, salt, acid, humous (loved that one!), potatoes not drinking alcohol and many other things where my body was telling me “please don’t put this into my body ever again” . And this refinement goes on and on. But now the next step: I can see that the emptiness is still there, but what I now clearly see is that I ‘mistake’ this emptiness as being hungry, and then starting eating food. And to be honest, at this moment in time, eating less food still scares me as I am pretty skinny still. But, hey, step by step, I will grow out of this as well.
Spot on on that one Willem. What we see on the outside–does that harmonize with what it is within? That was the question for me. There was no way to look a part in appearance if it is not truly supported by my within. And whether I feel full or empty, first comes from within and it is wise to be aware of it there, and accept rather than react, As we deepen the love within our bodies, our emptiness gets highlighted, but then do we focus on the emptiness that we can now let go or the fullness of love which is who we are?
A beautiful and very true point Adele. A feeling of fullness cannot truly come from food, as it is a confirmation of who we are first and foremost.
I can testify to that as last week I had been feeling like my meals were never enough, I had enough but there was that nagging feeling of wanting something more, that there was something missing in my diet. Yet everything I tried helped for a second but no longer. Now having come closer to myself and holding myself preciously over the last day or two and feeling a settlement in my body because of that that cannot be attained by any food. Yet it is just as delicious, if not more.
The wisdom of our bodies… a beautiful sharing Adele of how we numb ourselves, in your case it was rice, but there are many alternatives we have all used. I recognise ‘It was the beginning of an unmasking of the emptiness I had been covering up all my life’, great that you got to feel this during the retreat, and called this for what it was.
Recently I have started to cook Chinese food again, something that I have stopped doing for a long time, because at that time it felt impossible. But it became possible again with a deeper acceptance of being Chinese, that culture is not something I have to fear or banish when I can express what is felt to not be true. What became possible was a deeper understanding of myself and a deeper commitment to life, I do not need to protect myself from truly living life, in fact, I feel a deep joy to experience life once again, to take responsibility to learning from my body, to re-build a deeper trust, and knowing this is a process and there is never a destination. In taking the responsibility to live, I also take the responsibility to my mistakes and the responsibility to keep expressing from the truth of myself, and to keep appreciating, confirming myself and rebuilding trust and confidence to be in the world.
With all of this I have also understood deeper why rice is a staple in our culture, why as people we want to hold onto this comfort and not be aware. I also have a deeper understanding of how this comfort feels in my every day life (whether it is rice that I choose to eat or not), and how it impacts me. Comfort basically does not allow me to fully commit to life and connect to others! Cooking Chinese food in a way where we do not have to be held down by comfort, is this possible? This becomes the exploration.
I am wondering how this Chines cooking looks like. I was for a very long time being identified by being a good cook, able to make delicious meals from different cultural backgrounds. But I did that with recipes, and along came consciousnesses, apart from the ingredients not fitting my body anymore. So I let that go, but your little added sharing triggers me to investigate if it is time to pick up cooking from different cuisines once again.Thanks Adele.
‘being led by a perception of any culture is also not okay anymore’ one of the cultures in my country is drinking alcohol, something which I’ve always known was poisoning my body and not good for me, although like many others told myself that a small amount of red wine was okay as it was full of antioxidants. What I noticed when I stopped drinking was how much pressure there was to continue drinking especially around occasions of celebration, which when we stop to look it’s bonkers that we celebrate Christmas, weddings and birthdays etc., with something that poisons us.
I can easily relate to the comfort you found in rice, I did the same, I loved rice and would often cook chicken casseroles with rice to comfort me at the end of a busy day or buy sushi telling myself I was being super healthy when if I was honest with myself I knew I was eating the sushi out of comfort and to numb what I did not want to feel.
Perfect time to be reading your blog Adele,
My “rice” is over eating ATM. What I am feeling though is discomfort in my body, and I can sense that this I do not want to continue. There is a deep honesty here being called for, that I have been tippy toeing around. Guess that is about to stop. Thank you for the support your article brings, I can feel an exquisiteness of self and I know that the moment I choose to stay fully with me, that I will not want to over eat.
There was a time when I did not question why I ate what I did and why I needed to fill myself with the foods that I used to avoid feeling what I was feeling. Wheat, gluten, dairy, sugar and alcohol are huge in the culture I come from. In every celebration they seem essential and there always seems to be something to celebrate or reward myself for. Giving them up caused problems socially but felt amazing and so giving them up in many ways was easy. I found substitutes – So culturally I was able to fit in again. Giving up those was not so easy. When I am connected to myself and therefore everyone, I do no longer need to worry about fitting in because I am exactly where I need to be. There is always a deeper place to go. I had filled myself with things that meant I didn’t need to feel what was true. When I feel who I am there is a responsibility to life, a commitment to life that comes with it. It is important to truly feel this.
Following what has been made normal and acceptable and formed to be ‘the way to live life’ Vs how our bodies feel. What I’ve been finding is that the only reason I would fight against my body is because it knows that what has been accepted in society and culture is not necessarily the whole truth and my attachment to fitting in and to not be exposed in playing my part in maintaining this untruth would override this knowing of truth. As such I have not expressed how I truly feel because it would expose others as living a lie and now I as write this I realise and question – if they are living a lie, that has been their choice to do so, but by me not saying anything I too am responsible for that lie being lived. Thus avoiding the power that expressing my feelings can bring to the world…Which makes sense now why the line “hiding from the fullness of who I am is not okay anymore,” stood out for me today.
‘It is truly no longer okay to perpetuate what is not true even though it has been accepted as normal’ – love that sentence…. And sadly gives us a lot to work on, as normal in so many areas is just not truth and as such is failing us miserably.
Each culture has its comfort food, usually in the form a carbohydrate, which becomes a staple that is almost a must have….. But many foods do not support the body to be nourished and nurtured but instead to fill and comfort and they say ” we are what we eat” … Worth pondering!
Comfort foods appear to have a strong relationship with the diet we grew up with in our family of origin. I had never considered this before Adele and now can see that there truly are many layers to some of the seemingly harmless foods we struggle to let go of. It is being honest and going to the deeper issues of what that food brings and the light it shuts down within us. Great Blog and definitely allows for deeper pondering of the choices we make around food.
Well nominated Adele, as we develop a deeper relationship with our body we have the ability to feel what serves us and what harms.
Adele, thank you for this amazing blog! Married to an asian man, I too must say that rice has been a large staple in our past diets, and I can understand how hard it is to fathom life without rice!
However, you are spot on with sharing how it can be and is an addiction and a comfort. I love what you said here: “that it is natural to feel drowsy after eating rice, and most would not question it. We would just feel somewhat unlike ourselves and unable to have optimal clarity after a big rice meal.” This says it all – rice can actually act as a drug in our body if it has the capacity to alter how we feel and affect our clarity of thought. Crazy how this is seen as normal and acceptable too!
But the real bombshell that I loved you sharing is how you used to eat a lot of rice to fill up the emptiness inside. Recently I have found myself overeating and wanting to eat more even though I know I have had enough. This is often a sign there is something I don’t want to feel – but more so I can now say the hunger is not a hunger for food, but that it is a hunger for deeper relationship with myself that I can learn to embrace. Thank you for this awesome awareness!
Hello Adele and ah yes food from my childhood and how I loved it so. My background is Lebanese and my aunty and Nanna were amazing cooks and my mother still is. They all could make the most amazing Lebanese foods including sweets. I would eat them morning, noon and night. Afterwards you would feel a little sick at times and most of the time after lunch we would all have a sleep, it was like a tradition. These things I grew up with and thought it was a natural part of life. As I got older I realised for me it wasn’t the food part that I craved but I just loved how we would all come together around food. Some of the things would take all day to prepare and then we would eat them the next day. It was a whole weekend thing and we would all be together as a family, laughing, catching up and just being around each other. I realise it’s not the food I crave it’s the feeling of being around others and this is the feeling I really enjoy. If I ate the food we use to cook now, it would have the same impact it had then, I would want to sleep and feel a little sick. At times we relate experiences to the ‘wrong’ thing, in this case for me I use to think it was about food but this was more about family, but even more this was simply about people and being together.
I loved reading this Adele, I used to eat bread in the same way you did rice, a meal never felt complete unless bread was a part of it. Of course I always felt bloated from this choice but continued anyway as it was ‘normal’ to eat bread in large quantities, until I finally had to address how bloated and uncomfortable I felt from eating bread and once I felt the difference I could no longer dull myself in this way.
“Comfort in all honesty, is truly not comfortable at all.” So true Adele it just keeps our hurts buried beneath the surface and supports our copping mechanisms to drive our behavoiurs to mask the pain of holding on to our hurts.
This is a very inspiring and informative blog Adele, with gems like the “the energy of the rice invading the heart” and the fact that you as a Chinese woman could let your addiction to rice go. I never had that problem as I had other things as my comfort but can so appreciate your story. Thank you for sharing.
I love the honesty of the saying “fan hey gung sum” – “the energy of the rice invading the heart”.
I love what this exposes Adele. Drugs, alcohol and anti-social behaviours are quite obvious ways to hide, but rice? (By hiding I mean where we are not ourselves). We can all be sneaky about what we use to hide but when we are super honest, we know what these things are.
Thank you for sharing this insightful blog Adele, I am intrigued that you had a saying that meant ‘the energy of the rice invading the heart’ and it was acknowledged that the impact of eating a lot of rice was to make you less present. We all know what we are doing when we chose to eat certain foods and it is only when we are willing to take responsibility for that and explore changes to our diet that we can build our connection to ourselves and truly feel what foods would support us to be purposeful and joyful.
Even though this blog was written some time ago, it would still surprise many to read rice considered to be a comfort food. It is typical for someone that if they were not used to feeling effects of food then they would just think it good for them and not be prepared to actually feel the effects in their body. Through Universal Medicine and coming more to feeling what my body needs, I have learnt about many foods that dull me and numb me to my body. Rice is certainly one of them and I found it very interesting that there was a Chinese saying around this to suggest this is not new information.
This is amazing Adele, and when truly understood we read that the reason why we use certain foods to dull, activate, slow down, burry our feelings is way more important than anything else… and so to look even beyond and feel why we need to bury, slown down or get ourselves pepped up.. As you shared Adele, when this is explored the need or craving for certain foods will go, without even trying! Amazing. Simply Amazing. Thank you for sharing.
The culture we have around foods & beverages in general (& also specific foods/beverages) is very strong and often unconscious, and also largely tied into social events. Simple ones that come to mind are ‘cheese and crackers’, ‘chocoloate’, ‘coffee and cake’, ‘wine’, ‘bread and butter’ etc. – most of which at some time or another I’ve found myself indulging in with little regard and honesty about how they actually felt in my body! It’s been a real shift to be more honest and aware of how certain foods feel – sometimes even foods that most would consider ‘healthy’ – and to feel the clarity I have when I feel what I need to eat in preference to eating whatever I feel.
One man’s meat is another man’s rice. This blog explains clearly how one food type, culturally endorsed, can become a method of escape, of dulling the senses when we don’t want to address those feelings it actually supports us in masking from ourselves.
We can conform to the conventions and beliefs of the culture we grow up in without question because ‘It is just what everyone does’. When we choose to feel into our own body and question whether this habit is truly supporting us this opens up our responsibility to feel into everything we do, say and think and have an understanding of the energy that is in everything. A freedom to reconnect to who you truly are.