Jaguang Sunim

As a Zen Buddhist nun who in the 1980's trained for 8 years in a monastery in South Korea, the primary focus of my life and practice is a path of 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 Five Element Sasang nutritional programs designed to alleviate health symptoms, a Korean Taoist breathing practice, and other healing systems.

Five Element Sasang Constitutional Medicine is an ancient nutritional system from Korea that is extremely effective in alleviating a wide variety of health symptoms. The foods we choose to eat can have a tremendous impact on our body's health and the functioning of our internal organs. So it is vitally important that we understand our own body's constitution, which foods create internal imbalance, and which foods are the ideal fuel for our specific body's energy makeup.

Some symptoms that respond well to changing our diet include eczema 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.

In this Five Element Sasang system, we use Chinese Five Element natal charts to:

1) Diagnose the person's body constitution, and

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.

The above two pieces of information allow us to create a custom designed dietary program for that individual, using 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.

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 meditation practitioner to focus with greater ease on their spiritual practice, and to go more deeply into their practice, free of the distractions of physical health issues and pain.

Our understanding of ourselves, our spiritual practice, and the fundamental essence of who we are, becomes broader and deeper. This is true transformation on physical, emotional and spiritual levels.

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, teach an online Zen meditation group and private online classes in Sundo, a Korean Taoist breathing practice.

JaguangSunim.org