Chow te-Ching

By now, pretty much everyone knows something about Feng Shui (pronounced fung shway), the ancient Chinese practice of rearranging all of the crap in your home, yard, office, car, etc. And a lot of folks in the Western World are actually practicing Feng Shui these days, or at least buying books about it. There’s even a Complete Idiot’s Guide To Feng Shui. But what if you’ve readjusted your physical environment the Feng Shui way and your life still sucks? Maybe it’s because you haven’t Feng Shui’d everything that can possibly be Feng Shui’d.

Such as your food, for example. I just got an email that alerted me to the importance of chowing down the Feng Shui way. Not only should you be paying attention to the shape and color of your food, as explained in my August 16 post (see the first letter, which discusses the new science of Neo-nutrition), but, as it turns out, you must also be cognizant of the physical arrangement of the food on your plate. Granted, once the food gets in your stomach all hell breaks loose and there’s not much you can do, Feng Shui-wise (or shape- and color-wise either, for that matter). But that’s all the more reason for taking a few extra preprandial precautions. (Sorry about the alliteration; I can't help myself sometimes.)

Actually, food Feng Shui is a lot more involved than placing your food on your plate so that your peas don’t fraternize with your potatoes, as LL CoolJ’s Captain Patrick Zevo character in the movie Toys might have put it. Fortunately, an enterprising therapist, healer and Jill-of-all-trades in Connecticut has made it easy for you. Chris Salonia has created a Feng Shui Of Food toolkit that consists of "a Placemat, refridgerator (sic) magnets, Travel size placemat, Water attachment and other assorted items." According to the Feng Shui of Food website, "This kit with its unique packaging and inspiring tools will support all people, with a desire to be a more conscious eater, aware of your body and your body’s relationship to food."

And the really good news is that food Feng Shui can even help you lose weight. That’s what the subject line on the email said, anyway.

Here’s how and why it works: "The mysteries around eating will dissolve as you develop your conscious, awareness and personal relationship to the food of your choice. This kit contains tools to help you reprogram: yourself, your body, addictive food patterns, and the food itself.

"The concept behind this thought comes from the work of Dr. Masaru Emoto, a Japanese researcher. He has shown that words and thoughts applied to water can change the frequency of the water. The human body is more than 70% water, as is much of the food we ingest. By reprogramming the foods and liquids that enter our bodies, we can also reprogram our bodies toward better health and higher consciousness."

Chris Salonia is well qualified to bring food Feng Shui to your table. She writes, "I have been working in the Therapy field for about 16 years. I began as a volunteer in the prison system, then worked professionally in adolescent treatment, in-patient and out- patient. I worked with adults and their families on issues of substance abuse, co-dependency, sexual abuse, and other forms of addiction and the related issues… I also have worked in the carnival business, publishing, film, restaurant business, and numerous other fields that I had a curiosity about.

"I have since moved on to private practice fulltime for about 13 years. I have been working out of my home, providing a safe, sacred and cozy environment to help clients explore all areas of their healing process."

Not to mention a possibly odoriferous environment, since, as Chris also explains, "I live with my dog and 4 cats, and help take care of my elderly Mom and Aunt, with their 2 cats, 2 ferrets and other assorted creatures that find their way to our home."

Chris’s education includes "traditional and non-traditional modalities including: Substance Abuse, Psychology, Co-occurring Disorders, Relapse Prevention, Hypnosis, Past-Life Regression Therapy, Yoga, Meditation, Energy Work, Sound Healing, Emotional Freedom Technique, Melchizedek Method, Sacred Geometry, Rebirthing, EMDR, and many others."

She has also been through the usual routine of addiction, recovery, spiritual seeking and, of course, therapy. "As I found the 'right' therapists, mentors, teachers, workshops and books to upgrade my personal mental software, I launched myself into a realm of awareness of the meta-physical and the quantum relationships of all things," she explains. "Everything is energy: food, carpet, rocks, water, and my thoughts and feelings...I learned about the law of attraction and attention. Where I place my thoughts and attention is what I create."

And so on.

But how, specifically, did she get into Feng Shui for food? Well, hold on to your aura; I'm getting there. It seems that for the last fifteen years or so, Chris had been rubbing her hands together and then placing them over her food with her eyes closed. She had been saying a prayer to thank the food and program herself, and the food, "to use only what serves me, and release all that is harmful."

Things really turned around for Chris when she saw the movie, What The Bleep Do We Know?. She says, "I remembered Masuro Emoto's work with water and the crystal formations from his video: how the crystals were different because of the words on the bottle and the thoughts of the participants in the study. The water was put in bottles with different words/phrases on them; 'love', 'thank you', 'I hate you and want to kill you'. Each time the water from the different bottles was frozen and the crystals were photographed. The crystals from the bottle with 'love' on it formed in complex symmetrical patterns. The words 'thank you' had its own symmetrical formations. The water with 'I hate you, I want to kill you' did not form symmetrical crystals. The words on the bottles determined how the crystals formed."

Apparently Emoto also did a study with rice in which one jar of rice was sent love by the study participants, and the other received hate. I'm not sure how these emotions were sent – by thought, the spoken word or email – but supposedly the rice that was sent love stayed white in the jar for weeks, while the hated rice turned black.

Voila! Chris concluded that thoughts, intentions and words change the frequency or energy of water and food. "This gave me the idea to create a food program that would change the frequency of myself, my thoughts while eating, cooking, shopping and our relationship to food itself. This was an important link for me in the eating right and healthy program I was trying to live. It gave me a more conscious awareness to my experience with food. I realized that this was something to share with the many who want a more conscious and healthier relationship to food. The Feng Shui of Food was born."

Apparently her Feng Shui food kit has already helped a few folks. For example, someone named Bobbi R wrote, "I have had a ‘beta’ version of the placemat for about three months now. I do not use it for every meal, only those I eat at home. Without any effort at all, except to read the words a couple of times and stick the placemat under my dish, I’ve lost 20 pounds. I can’t wait for the full kit to be available and see what changes will manifest in my life."

A self-described Holistic Health Counselor named Irma wrote, "I have been blessed by Chris’ gift of The Feng Shui of Food. The cards have been placed on the outside of my refrigerator, the inside of my cupboards and at my table where I sit and slowly digest my food. My homemade food is placed on the placemat. The prayer associated with these reminders is the gratitude of the life of abundance I am fortunate enough to live. The blessings of the Feng Shui of Food allow me to slow down, take a moment to be thankful, quietly chew my food that is feeding my body and my soul and appreciate and receive the wisdom the energetics of food has to offer me. Being surrounded by Chris' reminders has allowed the larger person, who quietly lives inside of me, become more present in each and every day. Thank you Chris for your creativity and your beauty."

I am a bit concerned about that inner large person Irma talks about, since, after all, this Feng Shui tool is supposed to help one lose weight. At any rate, you can purchase this kit through www.TheFengShuiOfFood.com. And it’s only $22.00 plus $5.00 shipping; wholesale prices are available for retailers, treatment centers, hospitals, schools and other non-profit or health oriented agencies.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go into the kitchen and rub my hands while saying an affirmation over a chub of ground beef; maybe I can turn it into a couple of nice thick ribeye steaks. And then I'm going to bless all of the food in the large freezer, and after that I'll probably rearrange it by color and size. Or maybe by its yin and yang qualities. I haven't quite decided, so I suppose I'd better read some tea leaves or coffee grounds first to help me make up my mind...

I'll see you next time. And don't forget to love your food, and let it know you love it.