These foods can help you regulate your mood naturally.
Grief and Grief: Reach for cauliflower, turnips and asparagus. These foods resonate with the immune system, lungs, and colon organs, which are associated with processing emotional grief in Chinese medicine.
Asparagus naturally supports healthy bronchial tissue to open up the lungs when grief makes you feel like you just can’t breathe deeply. The beets and cauliflower help support your immune system so the process of living with and healing from grief doesn’t leave you vulnerable to colds, flu, and bacterial infections. Dealing with just the emotional effects of grief can be challenging enough without the added stress of becoming physically ill. So try these foods to protect your health during a grieving process.
Acknowledge while eating these foods: I breathe deeply and have strong immunity.
Anxiety: Reach for yellow/orange foods like pineapple, honeydew melon, and sweet potato (great for satisfying carb cravings—and yes, you can microwave the potato for a quick snack, although I generally don’t recommend microwave ). Cinnamon and ginger teas also help suppress anxiety.
Likewise, a cup of butternut squash soup can also relieve anxiety. Look for low-sugar varieties.
In Chinese medicine, the foods that affect anxiety resonate with the Stomach and Spleen energies, or “Earth” energies. In this way, they help a person to come back to center when feeling strong, which can also support the processing of other feelings such as grief, sadness, disappointment, anger and fears.
As you eat these foods, acknowledge: I am centered and strong.
Fear: Reach for deep-sea fish like salmon or tuna. If you’re vegan, reach for seaweed like nori, wakame, and kombu.
These foods resonate with the kidneys and bladder in the Chinese medicine system, which we associate with the element “water” ruling courage or fears.
Sometimes fear can exist naturally as a reaction to situations, or it can be a secondary emotional response to other emotional states. Maybe you’re feeling deeply sad, then anxiety can come up with thoughts like, “I’m really scared that I’ll never feel joy again.”
Food from the sea can help take away fear and put us back in brave states by supporting our adrenal glands, which can become overloaded with the fight-or-flight response when we’re feeling strong emotions.
When you eat these foods, you affirm: I am brave and strong.
Anger: Reach for green leafy vegetables like spinach, mustard or kale, romaine lettuce or kale. Reach for spirulina, cucumber, and green vegetable juices that are low in carbohydrates.
Anger in the Chinese medicine system resides in the “wooden” organs of the liver and gallbladder. When we support the health of these organs with the foods listed, we empower ourselves to access our sense of peace and calm even when things happen that are inherently frustrating or irritable. These foods allow you to regain your natural patience and compassion even when angry. Drink a bottle of low-calorie juice like Suja Uber Greens (and no, I don’t get paid to clog this product—I actually drink this juice) when you’re angry. Or juice cucumber, cilantro, kale, lemon, green apple and peppermint yourself.
It’s amazing how much calmer you’ll feel when you take a moment to detoxify your liver and gallbladder with healing foods.
As you eat these foods, acknowledge that compassion and patience overcome anger and frustration.
Nervous stress/excitement: Reach for almonds, sesame oil or seeds and spinach.
These foods help calm the heart energies associated with fast-moving energy and that over-excited feeling that keeps you from sleeping, resting, or focusing on your thoughts. Imagine a flame going in many directions.
Acknowledge this as you eat these foods: I still the flame of my arousal.
Thanks to Kay Hutchinson
