Taoist Secrets of Eating for Balance

Book excerpt: Explains how to use your Taoist astrology birth chart as a personal nutritional guide for health, longevity, and organ energy balance • Explores how to help balance your birth chi through your eating habits as well as explaining how foods address your five-element energetic profile • Provides detailed food lists based on ancient Taoist wisdom that reveal their effect on the Yin, Yang, and five-element energies • Shows how your five-element energies outline your life and influence success in relationships and at work We are each born with a unique combination of heavenly and earthly energies defined by the five elements and dictated by the universe at the moment you take your first breath. This “birth chi” can be calculated using the year, month, day, and time of your birth, and it reveals your personal profile of health and emotional strengths and weaknesses as well as the energy cycles you will encounter throughout your life. In this Inner Alchemy astrology nutrition guide, Master Mantak Chia and Christine Harkness-Giles explore how to strengthen your birth chi through your eating habits, revealing which foods will address imbalances in your five-element organ energy profile. The authors explain which organs are connected with each element--fire, earth, metal, water, and wood--and provide detailed food lists based on ancient Taoist wisdom that reveal the energetic temperature, flavor, and organ related to many common foods and superfoods. They emphasize the importance of local, seasonal, and fresh foods and of yin-yang balance for health. The authors illustrate the five elements’ characteristics through sample profiles for celebrities such as Paul McCartney and Meryl Streep, along with Taoist nutritional recommendations based on their charts. The authors also explore how your Inner Alchemy astrology profile determines your life and relationships and explain how Inner Alchemy practices and five-element nutrition can improve all aspects of your life. By eating in line with your personal five-element energetic profile, as part of ancient Inner Alchemy techniques, you can improve health and longevity and strengthen connections with your loved ones and the energies of the cosmos.