Morning Dew & Saliva: Breakfast of Champions

As legend has it, advanced qigong practitioners are able to sustain themselves entirely on energy drawn directly into the body – from the sun and moon and stars, from lakes and rivers and trees. At this level, one of the most potent forms of nourishment is morning dew.

For most of us, however, our diet needs to include more substantial substances – carrots, kale, pomegranates, yogurt, cheese, Aunt Carol’s poppy-seed torte - taken into our body and digested in the usual ways. We can use the principles of Chinese Medicine to choose foods supportive of our qigong practice – Paul Pitchford’s book Healing With Whole Foods is especially excellent in this regard. Also important is to remember that our dietary choices are just one aspect of what it means to be “nourished” – a point explored beautifully in this short essay by guest writer Seth Braun, a health counselor based here in Boulder, Colorado.

Using What We Already Have

Midway between the really esoteric (sustaining ourselves with sunlight and morning dew) and the mostly mundane (being nourished by food and meaningful relationships) lies the practice of turning our saliva into a form of alchemical “medicine” – a practice described fully by Mantak Chia in his book Golden Elixir Chi Kung. This is a good one to explore: it’s pretty easy to do, and potentially very powerful. The basic practice involves letting saliva pool in the mouth, using our breath and intention to infuse it with the essence of our endocrine system and the energy of the natural world, chewing it, then “swallowing it down” to the dantian. Do this ten times a day, a hundred times, a thousand times … and see what happens!