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There are many different kinds of food that we humans take into our bodies and transform into the nutrients that give us life, stimulate the mind, cause us to be creative and strengthen us to accomplish our purpose in this world. We have all been taught the five food groups, yet there is another kind of food that many of us are entirely unaware of even though it plays as significant a role in our healthy development as any other. Certain teachers of wisdom call this food the "taking in of impressions". In order to understand what this means, we need to realize that all matter is energy. This means that we are "eating" food that ranges from bread to the inhaling of air. As we all know, the absorption of oxygen is foundational to our existence and is an integral part of the transformation of nutrition into its life-giving properties. The same can be said for the nutrition of outside impressions which we take into our being when we focus our attention on something. Dr. Maurice Nicoll, in hisPsychological Commentaries, shares these insights on the matter: Impressions are the most important food of all the foods that enter the human machine. We have three mouths on our faces - the eyes, the nose and the mouth. All these three foods give energy to the body but the most important is the food of impressions. No matter what a depressed person eats with his mouth, or what air he breathes, it will not cure him until he gets that letter that he is waiting for in which it is said that he has passed his examination, or that somebody loves him, or that he has won his lawsuit… Our real life is this world of impressions and how we receive them and how we react to them, and it is in this world of impressions that we have to learn to live in the right way.Being exposed to constant bad news, constant negative criticism by others, constant fault-finding, all these form a class of impressions that will not give us the right force for normal life. We have all experienced the impact of beauty on our state of mind and our emotions. Great vistas can lift our spirits into realms of peace, joy, and gratitude that transcend all troubles and are deeply meaningful to our health. Who has not tasted the indescribable peace of standing at the edge of the ocean and listening to the waves rolling on the sand? The same can be said of studying fine art in a museum or going to the symphony to "imbibe" soul-stirring music. Surely, we can recognize that these impressions taken into our consciousness and into our bodies are nothing less than nutrition for the soul. Our well-being depends on receiving these finer energies which transmute into everything from lower blood pressure to new understanding and enjoyment of life. Unfortunately, there is another kind of impression with which we feed ourselves. Go into any video store and notice how many movies are horrific and violent. Who has not come out of a movie theater or turned off a DVD feeling as though they had bathed in toxic waste. It seems that our culture specializes in overwhelming the human psyche with negative and dehumanizing impressions. We have failed for far too long to recognize the dramatic impact these coarse energies have had on our children. We are unconsciously feeding them poison which is creating destructive attitudes, violent tendencies, and twisted perceptions of life. These are far worse consequences than eating too many twinkies in grade school. If we are going to seek healthy living through attentiveness to the foods that we eat, we cannot discount the impressions that we absorb so often without discrimination. We are familiar with indigestion in the stomach but are less conscious of nausea in the soul. Holistic attention to healthy eating cannot be reduced to what we put into our mouths. We are also eating through the things we give our attention to, through the air that we breathe, through the emotions and thoughts that rush through our bodies. Living on high adrenalin reactions is more dangerous than fatty foods. Allowing ourselves to wallow in a stew of simmering anger will give us ulcers quicker than daily overdoses of espresso. Be sure then, on your journey to healthy living, to include the intake of positive impressions in your food groups. Perhaps a fast from violent films will do you more good than putting the lasagna aside. Be conscious of the kind of food you are feeding to your soul.
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