I have not always been into cooking. Actually, for many years I was quite lazy in the kitchen; I would come home from my long days at the university, look at what I had for frozen food in the freezer, and then pop it into the oven without a second thought. Most of us do this, although we like to pretend we don’t. We’re tired and we just don’t have the energy or the time to cook something.

With the years, I started to realize that what I put into my body can totally transform the way I feel afterwards. For instance, I noticed that eating frozen pizza gave me a heavy feeling afterwards whereas if I had made myself a salad, I would feel much lighter. After reading in several spiritual books that eating was key to maintaining a high energy level in our daily lives, I began to change my eating habits, and what a difference that has made in my interaction with my environment.

My friends know me as the “living food” practitioner. “Living food”, as I call it, is basically fresh food off the shelf that has all its nutrients and has not been frozen. Cooking living food has several benefits, the first one being that it is a form of self-love. When you cook for yourself, you are directly loving yourself and your body. You are saying to your body, “I care for you and will spend time to make you healthy and strong.” The second benefit of eating food that you cook yourself is that you actually have more vitamins and minerals than in frozen food, thus giving your body more what it needs. Frozen pizza might taste good but in the long run, it is pretty much what I call “fluff”: empty food without real nutrients or love.

But the best part of living food is that it feeds your mind, body and spirit, all in one bite. All that love you put into your food is felt at different levels because love is not just something digested physically. Masaru Emoto, author of “The Hidden Messages in Water”, explains that our thoughts are directly absorbed into water particles that we come into contact with. For instance, if we think of love when we hold a glass of water, this intention will embed itself into the water particles and the water becomes a source of love.

Living food is all about self-love and higher energy. Once you start cooking with love, and seeing the difference in your daily life, you won’t ever want to return to the pre-packaged way of life. And what’s fun after your cooking is you get to meditate while you do the dishes, what I call “moving meditation”. Whatever you choose to cook, it will certainly fill you with greater energy and in no time you will realize that your body, mind and spirit are all thanking you.