What Are Primary Food?

Do you remember what it was like when you were a kid?

You’d be playing outside with your friends when your parent called you in to eat dinner. “But I’m not hungry yet,” you’d say. At the table, your parent would instruct you to eat your food. Eventually, you’d force down a minimally acceptable amount of food and rush out again to play. At the end of the day, you’d return, exhausted, and go to sleep without thinking about food at all.

Have you ever felt depressed? Has your self-esteem ever been low as if you were starving for primary food?

Even in good times, when we come home at night, we often look in the refrigerator for something to eat – when all we really want is a hug or someone to talk to.

When your primary food is full, you thrive – actual food stays secondary, providing support to be healthy and do the things you love.

Primary food is nourishment that doesn’t appear on your plate… it’s exercise, spirituality, career, and relationships. When all these elements in your life are in balanced food is secondary. Healthy relationships, regular physical activity, a fulfilling career, and a spiritual practice can fill your soul and satisfy your hunger for life. primary food far outweighs secondary food. You could be eating all the kale and broccoli in the world, but if you’re not nourishing yourself on a holistic level, you will not feel vibrant. There’s no secret formula – each person is unique.

“Secondary foods don’t come close to giving us the joy, meaning, and fulfilment” primary food provides. 
 – JOSHUA ROSENTHAL 

Regardless of whether you are religious or not, it is said to believe that “to be in romance with life is religion, and when we create nourishing lives for ourselves; that is the highest form of religion.

To nourish your life means to build a fulfilling career, loving relationships, an energising and rejuvenating exercise routine, to create a spiritual practice that soothes and invigorates.

Naturally, it's important for the need of physical nutritious food in our bodies, although a healthy, fulfilling life is the real fuel for happiness and balance.

To balance our primary food, we often have to make changes that might be intimidating, to face our fears and do it anyway. This could mean taking a leap in a new and exciting career, ending a relationship that’s not serving us, signing up for a marathon, or embarking on a meditation challenge.

I encourage you to take the next step to bring yourself fulfilment – that is, complete mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical satisfaction. Our fears differ – the only constant is that we must face them in order to evolve.

“We hunger for play, fun, touch, romance, intimacy, love, achievement, success, art, music, self-expression, leadership, excitement, adventure, and spirituality. All these elements are essential” forms of nourishment. 
 – JOSHUA ROSENTHAL 

PRIMARY FOOD FEEDS US, BUT IT DOESN’T COME ON A PLATE.

• Primary food includes elements such as a meaningful spiritual practice, an inspiring career, regular and enjoyable physical activity, and honest and open relationships that feed your soul and your hunger for living.

• Every spiritual tradition that encourages people to fast does so partly to let individuals have time to reduce secondary food, thus allowing for a greater awareness of primary food.

• The more primary food we receive, the less we depend on secondary food. The opposite is also true. The more we fill ourselves with secondary food, the less we are able to receive the primary food of life.