Food and meditating

I have been doing ACEM meditation for about 10 years now (see thread below). I do it twice a day, and every so often I follow a course. Over the years the course levels have gone up, and nowadays every year I go to Scandinavia in the heart of winter for a three week intensive.

Now when you do intensive meditation (up to 50 hours at a stretch!) you have to follow a specific diet. If you don't, you can't go very deep. This means: no meat, no fish, no coffee or tea, no alliums and, worst for me, no roots. I love roots, especially in winter, and have digestion problems even at home, when I can eat whatever feels right.
I know that avoiding roots works, for I have tried it: meditating for a long time is very difficult when you've had, say, black radish (my winter favourite).

The reason I am writing this thread is
a) just out if interest, has anyone heard of this?
b) Last year I was told I couldn't have ginger (root), but I have since found out that ginger is from a rhizome, not a root. Do rhizomes have the same effect as roots?

I am a bit worried, because half a year ago I developed a kidney problem

Any advice? Comfort? Or info about rhizomes?
Thank you!

While it is importathat a certain diet is conducive to meditation but important only till your seeking is purified and inner discipline established...And most traditions stress on such rules. But there are rules of periphery and rules (inner discipline), that come into play because your being is unfolding in a certain way.

I have not been one to follow many rules with any degree of staunchness. Wining dining with abandon, even partial to odd drink of wine, or whatever is going, let alone tea coffee. All foods are welcome. Vegetarian normally, but eat meat happily when nothing else is about. I just cannot be fussing.

Meditation is an inner discipline. If that discipline is in place, not much else is needed. Spiritual path should move towards simplicity, not to be left riddled with concerns, questions, dilemmas. And if all those arise, within yourself also should arise a clarity over time. The first thing that should arise in a spiritual discipline a certain uncomplicated manner of dealing with what life throws at you.

Why do that organization feel you need to avoid such a large variety of food in order to meditate? What have those poor foods done? What do they tell you is the ultimate you can get to, by meditating? What ultimate goal they work towards?

And also what is the ultimate purpose of you meditating Anne? Not that of the organization, but yours personally?

Levels going up every year? In which way?
Why 50 hours of meditation? What does that do to you each year? What changes?

you asked for comfort....sometimes the opposite is required in order to find comfort within.

My meditation practice is always done on an empty stomach . Same goes for healing, yoga, or any exercise . There is something about an empty stomach that works well with the energies I have found .

A conversation I had a while back with someone suggested that it is well known not to have garlic when meditating .. I kinda scratched my head on that one lols .

All I can suggest is see what works for you . Like you say you have been doing ACEM meditation for 10 years now so if it's not working for you doing what your doing then change something about it .

I find that my meditation at times suffers by the hand of what's on my mind rather than what's in my stomach .

I have found however that as time has passed by through years of meditation my diet has changed . I think one is left eating what feels right for them that is over and above what one's taste buds might suggest .

x daz x

All your comments make sense. Throughout the year I eat anything, particularly garlic and meat! In spite of their advise not to.

However, the intense 24-50 hour meditations are something else. You don’t meditate continuously for that long, but interrupt it to go to the loo (of course), to eat and drink in moderation, and to do yoga. Whenever you feel sleepy, just lie down and sleep. We meditate in our own individual room with all facilities.

In winter I used to take lots of black radish to have with my bread, as they keep and are very nice. But once I found out it was a root, I also understood why I seemed to have more trouble than the others with meditating so long. Last year I went without, and did better.

I have found the daily meditation, and especially the deep courses, very helpful. I have changed, got to know myself better, and am therefore more able to understand and tolerate others. Could do with that …..

Then follow all their rules with no fear, no dilemma, no hesitation or concern.

Surrender completely and not try to understand figure out or find a back door. Just do what is prescribed. Stop whatever they tell you not to indulge in. Do what they say. That is the only way to go forward. Your health concern will go In this state of surrender. Ask no one for guidance but stay in that state of obedience.
Obedience is rare in modern culture, but it is first step to surrender
May it all be worthwhile
Love

Hi Anne Mary,

As I read your first post, various thoughts came to me.
Then I read Jnani's reply to you, and she pretty much covered what I was thinking.

The two key things about what you said were:

"you have to follow a specific diet. If you don't, you can't go very deep"
and the fact you are doing 50 hours of meditation in a stretch (even with small breaks)

The first of those sounds like something that you've been told, and is along the 'fear inducing' lines of "if you don't do this then it won't work for you". Such statements come from an ego that wants to make you believe it is somehow more 'powerful' or 'important' than yourself. I would question why their technique is so good if it cannot work on simple meditation alone, but also requires an extreme (and it is extreme) diet. Surely that's an indication that there is a problem in the technique that it requires such an extreme addition to make it work properly. Many other meditation techniques allow a person to reach deep states without such extremes. Or, perhaps, it has been instigated by someone who wants to impose such additional restrictions to make their technique seem more 'special'? Only you can be the judge of that.

Of course, a healthy diet is good, and avoiding certain foods (or indeed any heavy eating) before meditating is advisable, simply because of the nature of how our bodies work in digesting foods and our desire to want to sit still for a period without interruption (external or internal interruption 😉 )

As you say, the rhizomes are not the roots of the plant itself, they are energy stores of the plants that will grow from them and develop their own roots. Some plants spread seeds above ground to grow new plants, and some (like these) will spread underground by growing rhizomes, which then grow independently of the parent plant.

I did read your previous post on ACEM meditation, and did wonder how it differs from any other mantra based meditation such as TM (or any other variant that teaches the same technique). On their website they briefly describe it as:

In Acem Meditation, you repeat a meditation sound mentally without effort, while thoughts and impressions are allowed to come and go freely. There is no attempt at emptying the mind.

This is no different to those other mantra based techniques, and they have no problem with allowing people to go deep into a meditative state.

That fact that you're having these restrictions imposed with this technique, means that they are creating attachments to the objects of worry about them, and those attachments will only serve to distract you during meditation. As Jnani says, you could "follow all their rules with no fear", or you could say that they technique is not the most appropriate for yourself and instead, choose to practice it however you find most comfortable, whether that's eating ginger or not. 😉

As for 50 hours of meditation.... what additional benefit do that give?
In many of the teachings, such as TM and those taught by the London School of Meditation (which is essentially TM but was being taught before the TM organisation founded, actually as far back as the 1930's if I recall correctly) etc. the teachings say that 20 minutes meditation is sufficient to gain benefit, and that any more than 30 minutes (some say 60 minutes) provides no additional benefit. Remember, the benefits of meditation are not what is experienced (or how deep one goes) during a meditation practice, but how it changes us in our daily lives. There's no benefit in our daily lives if all our time is spent in meditation. 🙂

Saying that, there can be benefits found from spending a period of time in a silent retreat, taking time to meditate, being contemplative and increasing awareness of what thoughts we have; time to just get away from all the worries and stresses imposed on us from our daily lives, and time to reflect. However that's not something that requires consistent meditation, or imposing restrictive diets on ourselves unecessarily.

All Love and Reiki Hugs

I eat and drink what I like when I like, and meditate whenever I want to. Neither seems to influence or affect the other 🙂