Can a plant-based diet help you heal your body AND your emotional pain & traumas? TOTALLY!
AND it can help you make quantum leaps towards a life you truly desire. Clear the pain, clear the path! Here's what I mean...
When I went plant-based back in early 2021, it was kind of a surprise.
In fact, just the summer before, I got super triggered by a vegan woman in my DM’s telling me how ironic it was that I was talking about health while drinking milk and eating animals.
Later that night, I remember eating a steak for dinner, watching the blood seep out and fill my plate, and feeling a wave of nausea. My body knew that woman was right, but my brain wanted to fight it. So it did. For a few more months.
Even though I was actually no stranger to eating vegan. (FYI: I use the words ‘vegan’ and ‘plant-based’ interchangeably.) I’d been on-again/off-again with it in my early 20’s before giving up and going all-in on eating animals again– this was despite ALL of the research I’d done. I 100% knew better, I really did.
But out of comfort, denial, and sheer laziness, I turned my heart off to the truth, and I paid the price with my health.
Cut to early 2021, and I’m back to the vegan lifestyle, and this time, I KNEW it was for good. I was committed. I was READY. And I was willing to learn how to do it right, too– so much so that I got certified as a plant-based holistic health coach.
Why? What changed?
My spiritual path.
Through the inner work I was doing, the things in my life that had been keeping me numb and complacent to pain and suffering both within and outside of myself began to drop away– things like drugs, alcohol, and eating animals. And things that keep ALL of us numb, not just myself.
“But why would eating animals be keeping us numb?” you might be wondering.
Because we have to BE numb in order to willingly eat something that didn’t want to die. Something that not only didn’t want to die, but had a miserable and tortuous existence before it did.
Right before I stopped eating animals, I’d also gotten sober– stopped smoking weed everyday and stopped drinking. So that right there was like a jolt to my mind and body– like ten tons of weighted blankets being lifted from my energy field. I wasn’t sober when I went and “turned off” my veganism years prior, so with the inner work I was doing, it was a natural progression for me to then be like “Okay, I’m done eating animals now, too.”
And this is how I was able to go deeper into my healing. Into facing my own traumas so I could release them and set myself free.
Without the energy of death, smoke, and poison numbing my body, I could “see” more clearly. I could feel things more intensely. And that wasn’t a bad thing. We’re taught to run from our pain, from our emotions– but that’s where the gold is. Yeah, it might be scary and unfamiliar at first, but guess what also intensifies?
JOY!
Plants are a healing frequency since they’re living foods so we FEEL more alive. We have greater access to the highest frequency energies like joy, compassion, gratitude, love, and bliss.
Whereas eating something from a body that’s no longer alive is a low frequency energy... because it’s dead. It’s starting to rot. When you allow yourself to REALLY look at it that way, you can feel in your body that it just makes sense.
Add in lots of raw (uncooked) plant-based foods – tons of fruit, vegetables, fresh juice, smoothies – and you’ll also feel “more raw” so you can actually go deeper into your emotions and access any past experiences that need to be faced, felt, and healed. So much of healing is actually just ALLOWING yourself to FEEL so you can clear out whatever’s there and finally move forward.
Take unresolved trauma, for example:
Adopting a plant-based diet is one of the BEST things you can do to help yourself heal from trauma because you’re now more in tune with your body – you’re starting to detox, you’re feeling lighter, you’re vibrating higher – and this is awesome because unresolved trauma is stored in the body via ‘somatic memory.’
Basically, the physical and emotional pain of a traumatic experience gets “trapped” in your nervous system and can change your brain and your body, manifesting as physical symptoms like digestive issues, chronic pain, anxiety, poor posture, and so much more. Then these memories get triggered by certain situations and environments as you move through life.
And since animals experience trauma before and while being slaughtered, and since trauma is stored within their bodies, too, you’re eating all of THEIR emotions and experiences! All of the stress hormones that were released while they were scared, all of the sadness they felt while being trapped and caged. This is a big part of why people report actually feeling calmer and less anxious when they don’t eat animals!
So, by eating a low-fat high-carb plant-based diet (the optimal diet for humans) with LOTS of raw whole foods, this will support your nervous system – it will support your body as a whole – and even help you to clear out emotions.
The liver, for example, helps us to regulate our emotions, including anger, so if it’s overloaded with a high-fat diet and all the hormones and toxins in meat (animal flesh), dairy (animal excretions), and fish, guess what? Those emotions never get a chance to be felt and cleared, which only makes your health issues worse.
Your life also becomes FREE of the energy of death. Think about it: no more body parts to chop up, no more blood and guts to clean up, no more sticking your hands up anyone’s butt (Thanksgiving turkeys).
Even if the finished product tastes good, the journey there and the cleanup is a reminder of death and gore. It’s the antithesis of a healing environment, and it’s pretty grotesque when you ALLOW yourself to think about it– no shame, no judgment, just allowing yourself to LOOK at the reality and say “Hey, you know what… I see it. I see it, and if I can change this, if it’s a win-win for everyone, why not?”
Because it IS!
A plant-based diet has been PROVEN to be THE optimal diet for humans, and it prevents and can even reverse the top three diseases of our modern world: cancer, diabetes, heart disease.
And you know what isn’t gory or grotesque?
Slicing strawberries. Chopping cucumbers. Marinating tofu. Blending up a creamy vegan cheese sauce and pouring it over a bowl of rice ‘n beans. Or steamed potatoes. Or penne pasta.
You get the point!
It’s clean. It’s fresh. It’s full of life. And it FEELS light.
So you can bet that when I changed my diet, I went back to the vegan woman in my DM’s and messaged her to say “Hey, you were right. I was wrong. I’ve changed.”
And it’s been one of the best things I ever did for my life. Between going plant-based and getting sober, I was able to heal my chronic pain disorder and the trauma that had created it and make quantum leaps in my life– like end a dead-end marriage and move to Hawaii in under a year.
And you can, too. Maybe not the end-your-marriage-and-move-to-Hawaii part– I mean, unless that’s your path! But whatever it is you want, choosing life over death through what you eat can literally mean choosing actual LIFE over death– through your health and through how you spend the time you have here on earth: healed and happy. And having saved around 200 animals per year. Isn’t that awesome!?
Need support going plant-based and healing from physical and emotional pain? I’m your woman.
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❤️Malana
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Malana Hokulani
Certified HMI Wellness Holistic Health Coach & Quantum Mind-Body Therapist
www.awomanuncaged.com
