The meridians of the stomach start at the bottom of each eye, wrap around our eyes, go down the neck and out the collarbones, down to the nipples and down to our second toes. The meridians hold out our energy field, our aura.
When the stomach organ system is in distress, where the meridian goes around the eyes puts out so much more energy than we are accustomed to. The visual distress from having so much more energy around our eyes than we are accustomed to is the main cause of dizziness.
The stomach meridian runs it energy to the fullest from 7 to 9 AM. That's often when we have breakfast, the ideal time to imagine how we want our day to play out. The stomach nourishes the whole bodymind, spirit and soul much like a mother nourishes her child.
There are twenty-two sets of muscles that make the electrical energy the stomach system needs to function well, all of them in the neck, shoulders and arms. The function of the stomach, its meridians and its supportive muscles are linked together. When the stomach is dysfunctional, the muscles of the neck/shoulder and arms go into distress. When we have neck/shoulder/arm problems, look to the stomach.

Ripening our Food, Ripening Our Thoughts
Thinking our thoughts through well is the bodymind equivalency of chewing our food well. When we become aware that something needs our attention, that’s when we need to think through how it affects all our relationships, our work, beliefs, politics and all the other important issues in our life.
The moment we commit to thinking through whatever we become aware of, our stomach meridian instantly come into balance. Then the pressure in the stomach organ immediately starts to release, similar to how a hydraulic jack lets the car down. Within about forty seconds, all stomach pressure is gone.
We discover that digestive issues we thought were so permanent simply fade away. Even though I observe organ systems release their stress and come back to normal within about forty seconds many times daily in my office, it always seems like a miracle. It confirms that we are mostly consciousness.
Our stomach, like all our organ systems, exists on all seven dimensions. In the higher dimensions of our consciousness, food also includes all our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, principles, values, beliefs, all our relationships, work, religion, politics and our philosophy of life.

How Our Stomach Works
On the physical level our stomach churns our food while secreting four different kinds of hydrochloric acids into the mixture, ripening it before releasing it into the small intestine. When our stomach makes the food acidic enough, the bile and digestive enzymes become nine times more potent.
Anytime we are not thinking our thoughts through, the stomach is not making our food acidic enough. As a result, the small intestine keeps rejecting it back into the stomach until it is acidic enough. Medically, that's diagnosed as "Gerd," or "acid reflux."
If our stomach does not acidify (ripen) the food adequately, the bile from our liver is unable to break down the fats and proteins. Enzymes are similarly ineffective. Digestive problems begin with not adequately ripening our food.
Ripening our food has a powerful grounding effect for our body, mind and spirit. The direction associated with our stomach is downward, grounding us to Earth. When our stomach system is strong and healthy, we have a profound sense of balance and equilibrium, and we feel safe and loved.
Persistent or long-standing digestive issues show us that we are chronically not thinking our thoughts through well. Our intelligence and instincts are so effective at waiting until something happens and then reacting to them that we can become spiritually lazy about thinking our thoughts through.
We often try to fast forward through the more mundane aspects of life because we don’t think those issues are as important as the “big issues.” This way of being greatly distresses our stomach.

Imagination: How Our Soul Interfaces with our Bodymind

We have seven senses, not just the five (sight, sound, taste, smell and touch). Imagination is how our soul interfaces with our stomach. Intuition is how our spirit communicates with us through our feelings. You can read about the spirit/kidney connection in the element of water.
We correctly use our imagination when we ripen our plans and dreams by imagining them as if they currently exist. As we imagine something, our soul projects it onto the screen of our imagination, and never tires of doing so.
A caution here is: We seriously darken our soul by imagining ways we can be unkind to someone who was unkind to us. A far better and more efficient strategy is to feel all the feelings about that particular unkindness. As we feel the toxic feelings, they are released out of your body and the unkind acts loses its power over us.
The right use of imagination is to use this incredible talent as a tool for creating our own unique world in the most loving and efficient manner.
Playing in our imagination, like we did as children—as if our goal or dream currently exists—lets every part of our incredible bodymind participate in the manifestation process.
The part of our consciousness that resides in our liver immediately starts drawing up plans that make the goal happen in the most effective manner. Good discernment from our gallbladder about everyone and everything involved allows the liver to make plans that will stand the test of time.
Our heart provides the unconditional love, warmth and guidance our goal needs to come into fruition. Our heart’ attention brings the whole process into being in the most loving graceful manner.
Our pancreas figures out how to get the sweetness out of it. Our spleen’s role is to help us maintain strong clear boundaries, have good distribution and to know when is enough as we are imagining the end result.
Our lungs breathe in the higher truths and visions from the spiritual kingdom. It also breathes in enough life force to make it happen. The large intestine lets go of what no longer serves us, which makes room for inspiration.
Our kidneys—our higher mind—incarnates the vision, makes it real. Our bladder releases all the negative feelings (by feeling them). When we don't feel our fears, they inevitably grow to become the monsters that sabotage our dreams. Once the fears are gone, it is easy to maintain the joy or gratitude that attracts our desires to us in record time.
With our whole bodymind participating in the visualization process, manifesting desires is fun and takes a lot less effort. Remember, we create our own unique reality by what we are focusing on—and it doesn’t matter whether what we focus on is what we want or what we would never want. Creation becomes easier when we single-mindedly focus on what we desire.
The trinity of our spirit, soul and bodymind are all completely literal. Clearly visualizing the end result in our imagination makes it real. It shifts the paradigm from, “Oh my gosh, how am I going to get there?” to “I’ve already seen it, so I know I can do this,” or “this is doable.”
Moment by moment we heal our stomach and bring it into harmony by focusing our attention toward ripening the life our heart desires by thinking it through.

Sympathy vs Empathy
Sympathy: An unconscious default of our brain operating system, means “I suffer with.” When we sympathize, we lose objectivity and become part of the problem. We become enablers.
When we feel concerned, worried or feel sorry for a loved one, spiritually we have reduced that person to the status of a third-class citizen. If we reason it out, the underlying assumption is: That person doesn’t have the goods. They are probably going to screw it up. And somehow it will fall back on us.
Worse, the creative power of our attention collapses all the possibility and probability waves that do not agree with what we believe. Because we are creators, worrying that a person will fail quite often makes it so.
Further, sympathy is like throwing a blanket of gloom over their already difficult situation. It's like doing voodoo on them. Because most people are still spiritually asleep, it is assumed that if you don't feel sorry for people, you don't have a heart. But that's the way a person thinks when their brain’s still in charge.
When we are concerned or feeling sorry for someone’s trial or tribulation, we are actually ripening their pain in our body, developing a pain body, while souring that relationship. But the worst thing about sympathy is: We are not actually seeing them.
Empathy: the action our stomach puts forth when our heart is in charge of our consciousness: The ability to understand and share the feelings of another: The understanding that the core essence of every person is a powerful spiritual being, a Christ in training, a Buddha.
When we empathize with a loved one who is going through a difficult time. We become a “fair witness” to this powerful spiritual beings’ travail and inevitable triumph. Later, when they have triumphed over their trial or tribulation, it is so good that someone accurately saw them for who they were, a spiritual warrior that stood tall through a difficult experience.
In this way, we hold them in the power of their true self. We truly see them. This is empathy. Empathy actually helps our loved ones.

When We Worry
When we catch ourselves being concerned or worrying about a loved on, which is the unconscious program we all default to: Breathe out strong to interrupt the unconscious pattern. Then go over a check-list of that person’s admirable traits, their strengths and assets.
If you find yourself concerned twenty times a day, go over their strengths and assets twenty times a day. There are no one-way thought patterns. Each time you go over their strengths and assets, they become aware that they have those assets and strengths.
As soon as they can see their next step, they begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Then, the power of your attention actually helps them. This is the creative power of empathy.

How Sympathy Affects Your Stomach
From early childhood, we may have stuffed anger, frustration, fear, anxiety, sadness, and any number of difficult feelings into our stomach by sympathizing with others or feeling sorry for ourselves. Our brain goes crazy thinking one worst-case scenario after another.
When we are not actually feeling the negative feelings, we also stuff happy positive feelings that we were not able to feel. And they build pressure too. The build-up of unfelt feelings cause the following symptoms:
• Thinking you have too much to do and not enough time
• Dizziness and nausea. Excessive pressure in the stomach meridians is the number one cause of dizziness
• Recurring bouts of anxiety
• Migraine headaches. Migraines almost always have a digestive component
• Wanting to withdraw from life
• Long-term depression
Feeling the good feelings cause them to expand inside us, giving us great fullness of joy and happiness. As good feelings expand, they can fill our life to overflowing. We can allow the feeling of peace and contentment to fill up our bodymind, radiate out into our energy field and go out to our people.

Food as Fuel: The Acid Base Balance

Seventy percent of our food needs to be vegetables and fruit, the more organic the better. Fruit and vegetables are alkaline and everything else, like meat, grains and dairy is acidic (exceptions: millet, quinoa and amaranth are high-altitude alkaline grains).
Eating five to seven servings of vegetables or fruit per day is our greatest insurance against all diseases. A serving is the size of our closed fist. As a general rule, when we observe our meal, three quarters of the plate should be vegetables.
Eating this way makes our blood sugar levels rise slowly then fall just as slowly, keeping our energy levels strong and stable from one meal to the next, allowing all our digestive processes to work at their highest levels of efficiency. Our body feels good.
Stable blood sugar levels create stable internal environments. Eating this way provides greater physical, emotional and mental endurance and stamina. It provides us with a sense of security and well-being from meal to meal.
Without the modulating effects of alkaline foods, vegetables and fruit, our blood sugar levels rise too quickly, then crashes below acceptable levels between meals. Milled grains are pure sugar. They make our blood sugar skyrocket upward then crash downward just as quickly.
Initially, the sugar rush buoys our spirit. We have big plans. The sky's the limit. But by mid-morning and mid-afternoon, our blood sugar levels fall below our ability to handle stressful situations. But because we still have to perform our duties, even though our low-blood sugar levels do not support our efforts, a myriad of stresses, aches and pains descend on us.
Currently, this is how most people eat, and how they handle life: Stressed out a lot of the time, seeking comfort food, having lots of little aches and pains, lots of highs and lows in their life. When blood sugar levels are erratic, so is life. Blood sugar levels directly equal energy levels.
Most breakfast foods are way too acidic to support high energy levels. Because of this, I do a blender drink every morning with frozen blueberries and powdered sprouted vegetables that are in a pleasant tasting formula. It starts my morning off with an alkaline rush. My energy levels remain stable all the way to lunchtime.
Then a salad, soup or a mainly vegetable meal with protein keeps my energy levels stable for the next five hours until I can get home for dinner. When I ate mostly carbs, I felt awful most of the time. Now my energy levels remain stable enough to sustain a high energy lifestyle. No more mid-morning, mid-afternoon sags. I love how I feel eating this way.

Thoughts are Alkaline or Acidic
Our bodymind reacts to every thought, feeling, and belief as if they also were food. In essence, they are. Positive thoughts are alkaline. Negative thoughts are acidic. Just as with our food, we need a certain amount of both.
A small amount of fear, from 10 to 30%, is healthy. If we have no fear, we might naïvely step in front of a bus, give our password or credit card information to a scammer, or do any number of things that can get us into trouble.
The trouble is, most people's fear levels are more in the 70 to 80% range. Fear of death shows up as being shy, not wanting to stand out, not thinking our perspectives matter, not wanting to be pushy, wanting to fit in and a host of other limiting thoughts.
A combination of eating too acidic and letting our brain do most of our thinking continually throws us into sympathetic dominance, which is also known as “fight, fright, flight.”

In sympathetic dominance, we shut down our immune, digestive and sexual systems, which are superfluous when we are in danger. We shunt all that energy to our sense organs and muscles so we can survive the supposed threat. Most of the drugs advertised on TV are for just this problem.

Health is simple. It is disease that is complicated. Correct thinking and eating are the very best medicine. Examples of nurturing (alkaline) thoughts are:
• I am safe and loved
• The universe loves and supports me
• Life happens for me, not to me
• I have enough time and resources to do what I want to do
• I love what I’m doing
• I am appreciated
• I am respected
• My family, friends and life are supportive
• Life is good
• And about difficulties: This too shall pass