Jaguang Sunim

As a Zen Buddhist nun who in the 1980's trained for 8 years in a monastery in South Korea, the foundation of my life and practice is spiritual awakening.

I have also had the great fortune to study and work with a Korean Buddhist monk who taught alternative health practices from S. Korea such as healing diets, Taoist breathing, and other energy work.

Five Element Sasang Constitutional Medicine is an ancient nutritional system from Korea that very few people in the West have heard about. It can be so effective in alleviating suffering on many different levels, that I am passionate about finding as many ways as I can to let people know about it.

Some symptoms that respond well to changing our diet include excezma and other skin ailments, IBS, sinus infections, digestive issues (acid reflux, gas, poor digestion, constipation, diarrhea, etc) also frequent urination, low back pain, joint pain, numbness in hands or feet, high blood pressure, thyroid issues, heart palpitations, just to name a few.

Also emotional issues that seem to arise for no reason, such as anxiety, worry, depression, anger, impatience can be greatly alleviated by establishing good internal energy balance through diet.

Five Element Sasang is an ancient Taoist system of four Body Constitutions. Each person falls into one of these constitutions. For each constitution there are certain foods that support their health, efficient fuel for their bodies, and certain other foods that work against their constitution and can gradually cause health problems.

My teacher developed a method of using Chinese Five Element natal charts to:

1) Diagnose the person's body constitution. This has proven to be an extremely accurate way of determining constitution, much more accurate than other traditional methods of using a long series of questions about health, personality, emotions, body shape, blood type etc.

2) See the strengths and weaknesses of each of the person's major internal organs (represented by the Five Elements), according to the energies they received at birth.

Often when I say this, some people will roll their eyes : )) It seems very foreign to our Western way of thinking about health and how our bodies function.

However, the above two pieces of information allow us to create a custom designed dietary program for that individual that uses the different energies of foods to create balance for the energetic imbalances they were born with.

We have been using this system for over 30 years, and I have seen so many people experience complete recovery from so many health symptoms, it is clear that the information provided in the Five Element charts is accurate.

Even though we may "eat healthy", what we don't realize is that no one diet works for everyone. We each are indeed different, and our nutritional needs are different.

The widely promoted turmeric, for example, can be a powerful medicine for some, but for others it is toxic, and can cause great damage to their health.

It is so important to know what foods truly work for our body, and which foods are hurting us.

I have been providing nutritional consultations not only to help people improve their health, but also to support their meditation practice by removing emotional or health obstacles they often encounter when sitting in meditation.

Many people struggle with these issues and feel they must resolve them through their spiritual practice, when in fact they can often be alleviated through this remarkable nutritional system.

This frees the practitioner to focus with greater ease on their spiritual practice.

Our understanding of ourselves, our spiritual practice, and the fundamental essence of who we are, becomes broader and deeper.

My teacher and I ran zen centres in Seattle WA and Berkeley CA for 20 years, then he returned to South Korea where he is now the Abbot of a zen temple. In 2019 I moved back to my native Canada. I now provide nutritional consultations to people worldwide, via internet, and teach zen meditation.

JaguangSunim.org