Earth Element

Balance your earth element:

When the earth element is in balance people tend to be nurturing to others, great listeners and try to make everyone comfortable in any situation.  Our bodies are healthy with muscle and warmth and we exude high levels of energy.

When the earth element is out of balance that nurturing aspect often turns into over worrying, overthinking situations, you may become overbearing and/or clingy. These actions may also leave you forgetting to actually take care of yourself because you are so focused on caring for others. It leaves us feeling stuck in our behaviors and prevents us from being able to tap into our creative side. The earth element has a lot to do with the digestion of food and productions of energy.  
 

When out of balance it can leave you with symptoms such as stomach aches, pains and discomfort and low level of energy. Often with an earth imbalance we tend to comfort ourselves and illness through the use of improper food, or even if we do consume the proper foods it is slow in breaking it down leaving you with low levels of energy and even unwanted fluids and fat.

We all have parts of each element within us so when one organ of an element starts to be affected eventually another element or all elements will show signs of not being in balance. The more out of balance an element is, typically the more symptoms one will have.  Western Medicines approach to treating disease is to either kill the pathogen or suppress the symptom.  These approaches tend to drive the illness/disease even deeper into the body.

Chinese Medicines approach is to support the body and its organs so that it can overcome the pathogen and increase the body’s own healing potential. Let’s get your elements in balance!

FOOD RECOMMENDATIONS

Here are some foods that Nourish the Earth Element:  Carrots, daikon radishes, yams, sweet potatoes, persimmons, pumpkin, squash, strawberries, raspberries, dates, figs, barley, bamboo shoots, bok choy, adzuki beans,  black beans, garbanzo beans, peas, cilantro, ginger, dried ginger, fennel, nutmeg, basil, mustard greens, oats, sweet rice, jasmine tea

Congee is an amazing way to start the day for those with an earth imbalance.   Congee is an Asian porridge made from rice.  Look forward to tomorrows email for congee recipes for earth imbalances.

Avoid or Minimize: Ice cold drinks (our digestions system is like a soup pot it needs to be able to warm up to break down food), excessive raw vegetables, dairy products, alcohol, artificial sweeteners, citrus fruits, juices, rich meats, bananas, tomatoes.

General Chinese nutrition recommendations:

1. Eat small frequent meals
2. No Iced drinks while eating and only small sips of liquid during meals
3. Chew thoroughly
4. Relax, focus and be mindful.  If you are eating, then just eat; not eating and watching TV, reading, studying, surfing the web etc.
5. Generally the best way to prepare foods is by steaming, stir frying, baking or soups