The prevailing belief systems of our time are invented.
I hope this doesn't make anyone too sad or angry, but a small look at history makes it quite obvious. It's also obvious when you travel to different countries and see entirely different belief systems, many contradictory, yet all applicable to life on the same planet. Christianity, for instance, is interpreted dramatically differently depending on the period of time you look at, though all of it is based on the same man's life.
Unfortunately, most of us are run by whatever mantras were recited to us through our childhoods and as adolescents. The tapes keep playing, long after they are coming from the outside. We internalize them and recite them forever.
As I read more and more from books on healing how important it is to have positive and supportive belief systems, I have mostly noticed that I'm not too messed up. :) Apart from that, I have still learned that a lot of the beliefs I would fight to convince other people of are not even my own. I mostly have cherished them because they are more modern, new, or progressive than older ones, so they seem great, since this is by comparison. Yet they still came from somewhere else. I'm sure the next generation will have even more modern, new, or progressive ones. The point is: why not make up your own?
When my parents were kids, the mantra was "go to college, work hard, you'll get a good job." Most of us have noticed life, success, and happiness are not quite that simple. Especially my parents.
When I was a kid, it was, "have fun. You're young, and if you don't have fun now, you'll find yourself with a family and less freedom. You could miss your chance."
Of course, it was never stated in such a way, but that was the implicit idea. Maybe I just absorbed it from the environment too, as I psychically tuned into all the less than happy parents who did as they were told and who found themselves with unrealized dreams. The new mantra is probably "better" than the old in that it at least allows you more freedom and also implies confidence in the person that "you'll turn out fine, don't worry about the future, do what you love or choose to do." But I found myself actually feeling pressure during and after college, "I've got to have fun!! How do I have fun!? I only have a few years before I'll be too old to have fun!" How absurd is that? Does my life end on the day of my 30th birthday or something? I think not.
What if we looked beyond both of these Life Rules?
For instance, it became so ingrained in me, whether through family or friends, that marriage and family meant selling my soul, giving up my freedom, and being boring, that I practically went into shock when I realized I wanted to get married. One of the supposedly happiest things to happen to someone--finding The One had me chasing my own tail, trying to reconcile the supposedly irreconcilable facts of "I'm not selling my soul, nor giving up any freedom" yet "I'm getting married." Getting married isn't cool anymore, hadn't I gotten the memo?
At this point, it became obvious that my mental constructions weren't really making sense. I wondered where they came from and why I still had them. I wondered what construct I would make if I was to chant the perfect mantra to the next generation.
I guess it would be: do whatever you feel is right, and ignore what you have learned it supposedly means
Only You have the power to give anything meaning.
Sometimes I think people my age are now under so much pressure to be "different" so they won't be accused of caving in to the status quo, that they're more limited than they even would have been in the first place! I'm really so exhausted by trying to make sure I have fun (which, by the way, comes pretty naturally to me on its own), am different enough, and seem "cool" that I have finally just given up. By the way, everyone on the face of the earth says they don't care what other people think, and that's a big load of crap.
My entire generation has, in a way, collapsed under the general baby boomers' collective disappointment, which partly has turned into a high divorce rate, lots of therapy, and new mantras begging their kids to have fun. It has given us the sense that work and family were in some way the source of this unhappiness. Many young people naively now believe marriage = unhappiness or corporate job = unhappiness which is so pathetically simplistic, it's downright silly.
Please: Stop Making Rules. Stop Trying To Figure It Out.
You're not going to learn how to conduct your own life by seeing divorce and saying, "ok, marriage ends in divorce, so I just won't get married." Can we be a LITTLE more sophisticated than this?
THERE IS NO RULE OF THUMB FOR LIFE
Marry young, marry old, don't get married
Have kids young, have kids old, don't have kids
Go to college, don't go to college
Get a job, take a break and live at home
Travel, don't travel (that's a big one. People of my generation MUST travel, you are cool if you travel, and if you don't you probably don't have a sense of adventure or enough culture to be interested in traveling)
Move to a new town, stay in the town you grew up in
Have a religion, don't have a religion
Work a desk job, work a physical, outdoor job
Live downtown, Live in the country
Work for a large corporation, work for a small business, work for a non-profit
Be the breadwinner, be a housewife
Be thin, be fat
Be womanly, be manly
Why does anyone care what their kids do anyway? Does any parent really have the illusion their kids Belong to them in the sense of ownership? We belong to our families only in the sense of a communal connection of belonging. We borrow our kids from God and send them on their way to find God again however they like. Is there any other definition of parenting?
Friday, May 28, 2010
Monday, May 3, 2010
It's the...Soy??
Yes, after my disappointing revelation that coffee was totally messing me up, I had an even worse one. The soy milk, which is the only "milk" I like, might have been doing some damage as well. I have been enjoying soy in my latte almost as long as I have been enjoying my latte.
As Pranic Healers, we get together once a month for a "practice" session. During this, I had my friend work on my throat chakra because I'd had a slightly sore throat lately. I had also been unusually thirsty (though I always seem to be dehydrated no matter how much water I drink). She scanned and found the throat chakra to be very congested, and she also scanned my thyroid and found IT to be very congested. She has worked for a vitamin company for years and is very knowledgeable about nutrition and health. So this prompted a conversation on thyroid health. (I have also gained about 5 pounds in the last few weeks with no change in my diet and lifestyle which made me wonder about a thyroid problem because the thyroid controls the metabolism.)
Lack of sodium and iodine can cause thyroid issues, but also hormonal stuff such as estrogen levels. I am obviously nowhere near menopause and am not on any medications, so we ignored this for a while. Until it came out that I drink soy daily in my latte and have for years. My friend almost jumped up--soy has "estrogenic" effects. I didn't really know what that meant, and I REALLY didn't want to have to give up soy. So I did a little research. Within about 2 minutes, my hopes came crashing down: I found numerous problems with soy.
The following are some quotes from a website by a naturopathic doctor, Dr. Lam:
"There is ample evidence that the isoflavones contained in soy products, including genistein, are toxins. Isoflavones are inhibitors of thyroid peroxidase that makes T3 and T4."
"Soy acts as an competitive inhibitor of estrogen at the cellular estrogen receptor site, reducing the effect of estrogen in our body. At the same time, over consumption of soy can overwhelm many of the body's cells and may overload them."
"For adults, just 30 mg of soy isoflavones per day is the amount found to have a negative impact on thyroid function. This amount of soy isoflavones is found in just 5-8 ounces of soy milk, or 1.5 ounces of miso. Interestingly, while miso has the phyto-estrogenic effect, it does not have the enzyme inhibitory effect because it is fermented. Other fermented soy product include soy sauce or tempeh."
"Soy contains a variety of toxic chemicals, which cannot be fully metabolized by the body, unless it undergoes a long cooking, or fermentation process. Unfermented soy contains phylates, which acts as an anti-nutrient and blocks the body’s absorption of minerals from the gastro intestinal track. It also contains enzymes inhibitors that reduce protein digestion. Processed soy protein contains carcinogens such as nitrates, lysinoalanine, as well as a large group of anti-nutrients not found in traditional soy consumed in Asia. It also lacks calcium and causes a deficiency of vitamin D, both of which are not conducive for bone building."
Bummer.
I have often heard of the "dangers of consuming unfermented soy products," but honestly did not feel it was all that serious. It's just a bean! I also felt it was probably over-hyped by the meat and dairy industries who stand to lose money by us switching to this vegan product. I now feel I was wrong to underestimate the problems with soy--I had really not done any personal research into it until now.
Back to the coffee shop for solutions:
One place in West Seattle has rice milk. Uptown Espresso. My husband and I go. Terrible. Rice milk doesn't foam at all. That's out.
Organic milk. Starbucks has that, right? I called the one on Alki and they don't. C & P doesn't. Bird on a Wire Espresso doesn't.
Caffe Ladro! They have organic milk. I drink it. Not digging it. It tastes like....milk! Gross.
The problems with caffeine haven't been enough, until recently, to get me off coffee. But this loss of the soy option has, perhaps, finally taken my ritual away. Milk just doesn't taste good. If it's to be consumed at all, it should be raw so the enzymes are intact in addition to the vitamins. This twice-cooked (pasteurized + steamed) milk contains just about nothing nutritionally plus tastes bad.
I still haven't solved my dilemma.
Aside from this. This is my long-term solution. Investors, listen up.
I will, at some point, open my own cafe. It will be a primarily raw food cafe. It will be a place where you can grab a pick-me-up without having to harm your health. We all need to learn to cook from scratch, but sometimes, we still need some food or a drink in a hurry.
There will be no refined sugar.
There will be no pasteurized milk.
There will be no soy.
There will be no refined grains.
There will be fruit smoothies and green smoothies.
There will be healthy, raw breakfasts like cereal/raw granola with almond milk.
There will be healthy, raw snacks and healthy, raw desserts.
There might be healthy, raw lunches.
There might be caffeine (hey, you gotta make money).
Everything will be organic.
You can stay, surf the web, have a drink or some food and actually nourish your body.
You can be in a hurry and still eat/drink something good for you.
It will be designed entirely by me, an energy healer and nutritionist, and people will actually be able to trust what we sell because it's not designed just for profit, but for sustaining healthy bodies. It will be totally original and wildly, immediately popular... :)
Wish me luck.
As Pranic Healers, we get together once a month for a "practice" session. During this, I had my friend work on my throat chakra because I'd had a slightly sore throat lately. I had also been unusually thirsty (though I always seem to be dehydrated no matter how much water I drink). She scanned and found the throat chakra to be very congested, and she also scanned my thyroid and found IT to be very congested. She has worked for a vitamin company for years and is very knowledgeable about nutrition and health. So this prompted a conversation on thyroid health. (I have also gained about 5 pounds in the last few weeks with no change in my diet and lifestyle which made me wonder about a thyroid problem because the thyroid controls the metabolism.)
Lack of sodium and iodine can cause thyroid issues, but also hormonal stuff such as estrogen levels. I am obviously nowhere near menopause and am not on any medications, so we ignored this for a while. Until it came out that I drink soy daily in my latte and have for years. My friend almost jumped up--soy has "estrogenic" effects. I didn't really know what that meant, and I REALLY didn't want to have to give up soy. So I did a little research. Within about 2 minutes, my hopes came crashing down: I found numerous problems with soy.
The following are some quotes from a website by a naturopathic doctor, Dr. Lam:
"There is ample evidence that the isoflavones contained in soy products, including genistein, are toxins. Isoflavones are inhibitors of thyroid peroxidase that makes T3 and T4."
"Soy acts as an competitive inhibitor of estrogen at the cellular estrogen receptor site, reducing the effect of estrogen in our body. At the same time, over consumption of soy can overwhelm many of the body's cells and may overload them."
"For adults, just 30 mg of soy isoflavones per day is the amount found to have a negative impact on thyroid function. This amount of soy isoflavones is found in just 5-8 ounces of soy milk, or 1.5 ounces of miso. Interestingly, while miso has the phyto-estrogenic effect, it does not have the enzyme inhibitory effect because it is fermented. Other fermented soy product include soy sauce or tempeh."
"Soy contains a variety of toxic chemicals, which cannot be fully metabolized by the body, unless it undergoes a long cooking, or fermentation process. Unfermented soy contains phylates, which acts as an anti-nutrient and blocks the body’s absorption of minerals from the gastro intestinal track. It also contains enzymes inhibitors that reduce protein digestion. Processed soy protein contains carcinogens such as nitrates, lysinoalanine, as well as a large group of anti-nutrients not found in traditional soy consumed in Asia. It also lacks calcium and causes a deficiency of vitamin D, both of which are not conducive for bone building."
Bummer.
I have often heard of the "dangers of consuming unfermented soy products," but honestly did not feel it was all that serious. It's just a bean! I also felt it was probably over-hyped by the meat and dairy industries who stand to lose money by us switching to this vegan product. I now feel I was wrong to underestimate the problems with soy--I had really not done any personal research into it until now.
Back to the coffee shop for solutions:
One place in West Seattle has rice milk. Uptown Espresso. My husband and I go. Terrible. Rice milk doesn't foam at all. That's out.
Organic milk. Starbucks has that, right? I called the one on Alki and they don't. C & P doesn't. Bird on a Wire Espresso doesn't.
Caffe Ladro! They have organic milk. I drink it. Not digging it. It tastes like....milk! Gross.
The problems with caffeine haven't been enough, until recently, to get me off coffee. But this loss of the soy option has, perhaps, finally taken my ritual away. Milk just doesn't taste good. If it's to be consumed at all, it should be raw so the enzymes are intact in addition to the vitamins. This twice-cooked (pasteurized + steamed) milk contains just about nothing nutritionally plus tastes bad.
I still haven't solved my dilemma.
Aside from this. This is my long-term solution. Investors, listen up.
I will, at some point, open my own cafe. It will be a primarily raw food cafe. It will be a place where you can grab a pick-me-up without having to harm your health. We all need to learn to cook from scratch, but sometimes, we still need some food or a drink in a hurry.
There will be no refined sugar.
There will be no pasteurized milk.
There will be no soy.
There will be no refined grains.
There will be fruit smoothies and green smoothies.
There will be healthy, raw breakfasts like cereal/raw granola with almond milk.
There will be healthy, raw snacks and healthy, raw desserts.
There might be healthy, raw lunches.
There might be caffeine (hey, you gotta make money).
Everything will be organic.
You can stay, surf the web, have a drink or some food and actually nourish your body.
You can be in a hurry and still eat/drink something good for you.
It will be designed entirely by me, an energy healer and nutritionist, and people will actually be able to trust what we sell because it's not designed just for profit, but for sustaining healthy bodies. It will be totally original and wildly, immediately popular... :)
Wish me luck.
It's the Coffee
I've been drinking a latte almost seven days a week since I was about 16 or 17 which makes that 11-12 years. Despite my obsession with healthy living, I have not seriously examined the potential impact of consuming a mild drug every single day for over a decade.
I remember when the coffee craze started--when all the Starbucks' opened up in the suburb I lived in and all the other ones nearby. I didn't care much about the drink at the time, just that it was a place to hang out when you are young, can drive, but don't want to be at home with your parents and are too young for the bars. Our local Starbucks turned into our hangout, and we would pass hours and hours there gossiping and maybe doing the occasional homework assignment. It was our favorite way to sit in the sun in the summer since there was always outside seating. I have countless cherished memories of sitting with my best friend Laura, summer day after summer day, during this bonding ritual.
This habit extended perfectly into college where the coffee buzz helped us all get to our 8:00AM classes or study for hours on end. After that, going to the neighborhood coffee shop just became my daily retreat where I would go to read for a while. It was a way to get out of the house and be around some people when I lived alone where it could sometimes get a little too quiet. My husband didn't drink coffee when we met, but I quickly converted him and convinced him that $8-$10 a day was worth it for some unhealthy drinks and a sugary snack (oops).
The habit has become so ingrained that I have rarely questioned it seriously, despite the fact that I read health information daily, and hardly an article on nutrition is published that doesn't include coffee in the list of no-no's (the others are sugar, alcohol and sometimes dairy). I have always had a really strong stomach, no real food sensitivities, and no food allergies. I thought I was immune to practically anything.
A couple of weeks ago, however, I was driving with my husband back home after having coffee somewhere, and I was just feeling so stressed out and irritable. I was in a big hurry to get back and do some things before work. I was feeling like I was fighting the clock. I suddenly snapped out of my head-spinning anxiety and realized, "I felt great all morning before we got our coffee. And I always get antsy right around this time of the day, which is after we go to coffee." Sometimes a new perspective suddenly jolts you, and you don't need to do any research or lab tests to confirm what you have just realized. My occasional crankiness wasn't just my personality.
So I undertook a very easy and very difficult experiment. Cut out coffee for a week and see how you feel. (I luckily never have withdrawal symptoms from removing caffeine.) I researched how much caffeine is in chai since I like chai lattes. There's approximately 1/4 to 1/3 the caffeine in chai. Not too bad. Decaf coffee has only a few milligrams of caffeine compared to around 150 per cup of regular coffee. Looks like I could have an occasional chai and decaf and probably still conduct the experiment. Don't have to totally give up my ritual....yet.
After only a couple of days, I noticed a huge difference. I was absolutely AMAZED. Rather than freaking out before work, running around, I was completely calm. I was calmer in the morning, afternoon, and evening. The calmness just seemed to snowball into downright...peace. Now, I also do a lot of other healthy things that probably contribute such as almost-daily meditation, exercise, and healthy eating. I now realized that coffee was completely tripping all this up. I had wondered why the healthy stuff wasn't having a bigger impact, and I now seemed to have my answer.
Everything from comic strips jokes to cafe humor, to whatever--depicts the average person as barely awake, barely functioning, and totally grumpy until they've gotten their morning cup o' joe. Yet what's really true is that coffee can ruin your mood. This treasured beverage was actually having the exact opposite effect as what it is promoted as having, and in a big way.
How much does caffeine prevent us, as a population, from being the naturally peaceful people we are meant to be?
How many distractions do we need to get us through one more day??
What I have learned is: examine everything. ESPECIALLY things you do daily or almost daily. These are the things that add up in huge ways. Learn for youself, and don't trust everything you read. I have read lots of downsides to caffeine but none convinced me to give it up, being that I am still young and healthy. Something may be affecting you in a way that is either not common or not yet discovered or advertised. I am so thrilled--and peaceful!--to have figured this out.
I remember when the coffee craze started--when all the Starbucks' opened up in the suburb I lived in and all the other ones nearby. I didn't care much about the drink at the time, just that it was a place to hang out when you are young, can drive, but don't want to be at home with your parents and are too young for the bars. Our local Starbucks turned into our hangout, and we would pass hours and hours there gossiping and maybe doing the occasional homework assignment. It was our favorite way to sit in the sun in the summer since there was always outside seating. I have countless cherished memories of sitting with my best friend Laura, summer day after summer day, during this bonding ritual.
This habit extended perfectly into college where the coffee buzz helped us all get to our 8:00AM classes or study for hours on end. After that, going to the neighborhood coffee shop just became my daily retreat where I would go to read for a while. It was a way to get out of the house and be around some people when I lived alone where it could sometimes get a little too quiet. My husband didn't drink coffee when we met, but I quickly converted him and convinced him that $8-$10 a day was worth it for some unhealthy drinks and a sugary snack (oops).
The habit has become so ingrained that I have rarely questioned it seriously, despite the fact that I read health information daily, and hardly an article on nutrition is published that doesn't include coffee in the list of no-no's (the others are sugar, alcohol and sometimes dairy). I have always had a really strong stomach, no real food sensitivities, and no food allergies. I thought I was immune to practically anything.
A couple of weeks ago, however, I was driving with my husband back home after having coffee somewhere, and I was just feeling so stressed out and irritable. I was in a big hurry to get back and do some things before work. I was feeling like I was fighting the clock. I suddenly snapped out of my head-spinning anxiety and realized, "I felt great all morning before we got our coffee. And I always get antsy right around this time of the day, which is after we go to coffee." Sometimes a new perspective suddenly jolts you, and you don't need to do any research or lab tests to confirm what you have just realized. My occasional crankiness wasn't just my personality.
So I undertook a very easy and very difficult experiment. Cut out coffee for a week and see how you feel. (I luckily never have withdrawal symptoms from removing caffeine.) I researched how much caffeine is in chai since I like chai lattes. There's approximately 1/4 to 1/3 the caffeine in chai. Not too bad. Decaf coffee has only a few milligrams of caffeine compared to around 150 per cup of regular coffee. Looks like I could have an occasional chai and decaf and probably still conduct the experiment. Don't have to totally give up my ritual....yet.
After only a couple of days, I noticed a huge difference. I was absolutely AMAZED. Rather than freaking out before work, running around, I was completely calm. I was calmer in the morning, afternoon, and evening. The calmness just seemed to snowball into downright...peace. Now, I also do a lot of other healthy things that probably contribute such as almost-daily meditation, exercise, and healthy eating. I now realized that coffee was completely tripping all this up. I had wondered why the healthy stuff wasn't having a bigger impact, and I now seemed to have my answer.
Everything from comic strips jokes to cafe humor, to whatever--depicts the average person as barely awake, barely functioning, and totally grumpy until they've gotten their morning cup o' joe. Yet what's really true is that coffee can ruin your mood. This treasured beverage was actually having the exact opposite effect as what it is promoted as having, and in a big way.
How much does caffeine prevent us, as a population, from being the naturally peaceful people we are meant to be?
How many distractions do we need to get us through one more day??
What I have learned is: examine everything. ESPECIALLY things you do daily or almost daily. These are the things that add up in huge ways. Learn for youself, and don't trust everything you read. I have read lots of downsides to caffeine but none convinced me to give it up, being that I am still young and healthy. Something may be affecting you in a way that is either not common or not yet discovered or advertised. I am so thrilled--and peaceful!--to have figured this out.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Comfort. Food.
Why do you eat?
You'll all say, "because I'm hungry," or "because I have to to live." I'd be willing to bet that anyone over age--maybe 10--has already started eating for a dozen other reasons in addition to hunger. These reasons will include but are not limited to:
boredom
sadness
the food's in front of me
celebration: there's special food being prepared
eating=being social
it's mealtime
food addiction (sugar is as addictive as cocaine)
distraction
huge portions at restaurants (and we probably all eat out too much)
sedative effect of certain foods (milk, alcohol, sugar) this is probably subconscious
Do you ever notice how a little kid will go from crying out of hunger to eating to leaving a half-full plate to go off somewhere else like it's yesterday's breakfast? And we freak out and say, eat! eat!
Well, it might be a shocking concept but: maybe the little kid isn't hungry anymore. He or she has instantly lost interest in their food because they have had enough. This is what it looks like to just stop when you're full.
Are we really all coincidentally perfectly full at exactly the time the plate is empty? I doubt it.
I read an article about the Slow Food Movement which basically is just about chewing your food thoroughly, stopping when you're full, paying attention to your body, not distracting yourself when eating, and being aware of and grateful for your food.
This also, incidentally, allows satiety signals to reach the brain which tell us to stop eating. If you wolf down a cheeseburger and fries in 7 minutes, you have no idea if you ate too much. You didn't give your body enough time to tell you.
Today at lunch, I made a sandwich and small side salad. While I made these, I also snacked on a handful of chips and hummus. After the snack and salad, I realized I was full (I was trying to pay attention to my stomach while I ate which I normally don't do!). I was amazed that so little had filled me. If I hadn't just read the article, I would not have noticed! I would have ate the sandwich anyway. I left it for later. I am now at a coffee shop, drinking the soy chai I would also have had even if I'd over-eaten at lunch, and I am still not hungry. (I even skipped my cookie today! I'm being so good!!) If I'm hungry in a couple of hours, I'll eat the sandwich. But if not, I guess I'll be having it for dinner.
The author of the article, after simply paying complete attention to hunger and fullness (and even through some family celebrations where she admittedly over-ate) still lost 5 pounds in a matter of weeks. She was already thin and not in major need of losing weight...but it was still that easy. I was amazed by that.
I also just read a very interesting book, Women Food and God by Geneen Roth. The author conducts retreats for people who are overweight and puts them through grueling exercises: making them all wait until every single person has been served before eating, for instance. She says they stare at her with daggers coming out of their eyes. These may be people with serious eating disorders, but how many of us feel the same anxiety when we sit down if we make ourselves wait long enough to, for instance, say grace? It's pretty startling to read these embarrassing facts and realize you are really not much different, just to a lesser degree.
The women at these retreats generally all had the same problem which was excessive eating to push down various emotional pains. I don't have any serious emotional pains I'm aware of, but I definitely have boredom or a desire to distract myself from things I should do but put off instead. That turns into going out, getting a snack somewhere, or sometimes drinking a couple glasses of wine. None of them life-threatening, but still--what's the point? Why burden my body because I'm feeling "off" today?
Is pain so painful? Mark Twain said (I paraphrase from memory), "In my long life, I've seen many hardships, some of which actually happened." We put ourselves through so much more misery than even comes close to what we technically go through.
I read a fascinating account of a woman who gave birth without painkillers. She explained how she coped with the pain, and what she said was to imagine you are in the ocean and there are waves coming at you. Rather than keep your head up and let each one smack you, what you want to do is put your head a little lower and immerse yourself in the water where it will push you but not knock you over.
When you feel pain, go into it. Immerse yourself in the feeling, dive into it. Energetically, what happens when you do this is that you actually put fresh, healthy energy and light into that area which will have manifested as congested, blocked, grayish energy in your aura. You can visualize this process too, if you want. When that happens, the gray energy dissipates and is released. The pain is gone. This is self-healing. It's that simple. If you resist negative feelings, you push them into yourself, and they stay. You will have to keep pushing them down to avoid them. This is very unhealthy and will manifest as disease eventually.
Pay attention to your body. The size of your stomach is not a mistake. Let it tell you when it's had enough. Don't exhaust your precious energy by giving your body a stuffed belly to cope with. You will love the feeling of lightness you have when you are never full to the brim with food. I've noticed I feel "thin" when I don't over eat, regardless of the size of my body, and I feel "fat" when I over eat, regardless of the size of my body. Do what feels good!
You'll all say, "because I'm hungry," or "because I have to to live." I'd be willing to bet that anyone over age--maybe 10--has already started eating for a dozen other reasons in addition to hunger. These reasons will include but are not limited to:
boredom
sadness
the food's in front of me
celebration: there's special food being prepared
eating=being social
it's mealtime
food addiction (sugar is as addictive as cocaine)
distraction
huge portions at restaurants (and we probably all eat out too much)
sedative effect of certain foods (milk, alcohol, sugar) this is probably subconscious
Do you ever notice how a little kid will go from crying out of hunger to eating to leaving a half-full plate to go off somewhere else like it's yesterday's breakfast? And we freak out and say, eat! eat!
Well, it might be a shocking concept but: maybe the little kid isn't hungry anymore. He or she has instantly lost interest in their food because they have had enough. This is what it looks like to just stop when you're full.
Are we really all coincidentally perfectly full at exactly the time the plate is empty? I doubt it.
I read an article about the Slow Food Movement which basically is just about chewing your food thoroughly, stopping when you're full, paying attention to your body, not distracting yourself when eating, and being aware of and grateful for your food.
This also, incidentally, allows satiety signals to reach the brain which tell us to stop eating. If you wolf down a cheeseburger and fries in 7 minutes, you have no idea if you ate too much. You didn't give your body enough time to tell you.
Today at lunch, I made a sandwich and small side salad. While I made these, I also snacked on a handful of chips and hummus. After the snack and salad, I realized I was full (I was trying to pay attention to my stomach while I ate which I normally don't do!). I was amazed that so little had filled me. If I hadn't just read the article, I would not have noticed! I would have ate the sandwich anyway. I left it for later. I am now at a coffee shop, drinking the soy chai I would also have had even if I'd over-eaten at lunch, and I am still not hungry. (I even skipped my cookie today! I'm being so good!!) If I'm hungry in a couple of hours, I'll eat the sandwich. But if not, I guess I'll be having it for dinner.
The author of the article, after simply paying complete attention to hunger and fullness (and even through some family celebrations where she admittedly over-ate) still lost 5 pounds in a matter of weeks. She was already thin and not in major need of losing weight...but it was still that easy. I was amazed by that.
I also just read a very interesting book, Women Food and God by Geneen Roth. The author conducts retreats for people who are overweight and puts them through grueling exercises: making them all wait until every single person has been served before eating, for instance. She says they stare at her with daggers coming out of their eyes. These may be people with serious eating disorders, but how many of us feel the same anxiety when we sit down if we make ourselves wait long enough to, for instance, say grace? It's pretty startling to read these embarrassing facts and realize you are really not much different, just to a lesser degree.
The women at these retreats generally all had the same problem which was excessive eating to push down various emotional pains. I don't have any serious emotional pains I'm aware of, but I definitely have boredom or a desire to distract myself from things I should do but put off instead. That turns into going out, getting a snack somewhere, or sometimes drinking a couple glasses of wine. None of them life-threatening, but still--what's the point? Why burden my body because I'm feeling "off" today?
Is pain so painful? Mark Twain said (I paraphrase from memory), "In my long life, I've seen many hardships, some of which actually happened." We put ourselves through so much more misery than even comes close to what we technically go through.
I read a fascinating account of a woman who gave birth without painkillers. She explained how she coped with the pain, and what she said was to imagine you are in the ocean and there are waves coming at you. Rather than keep your head up and let each one smack you, what you want to do is put your head a little lower and immerse yourself in the water where it will push you but not knock you over.
When you feel pain, go into it. Immerse yourself in the feeling, dive into it. Energetically, what happens when you do this is that you actually put fresh, healthy energy and light into that area which will have manifested as congested, blocked, grayish energy in your aura. You can visualize this process too, if you want. When that happens, the gray energy dissipates and is released. The pain is gone. This is self-healing. It's that simple. If you resist negative feelings, you push them into yourself, and they stay. You will have to keep pushing them down to avoid them. This is very unhealthy and will manifest as disease eventually.
Pay attention to your body. The size of your stomach is not a mistake. Let it tell you when it's had enough. Don't exhaust your precious energy by giving your body a stuffed belly to cope with. You will love the feeling of lightness you have when you are never full to the brim with food. I've noticed I feel "thin" when I don't over eat, regardless of the size of my body, and I feel "fat" when I over eat, regardless of the size of my body. Do what feels good!
Sunday, April 4, 2010
I watched Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story and have also been reading A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, and I have to say it's given me quite a different perspective. Most of us see our economic system and government as generally fine, only needing certain legislation here and there to fix the problems of the day.
What Capitalism: A Love Story suggests outright and what the book forces the reader to consider is that the economic and political systems that largely run our lives are fundamentally flawed and not fixable while still within them. I did not previously think a complete overhaul was necessary to solve our problems (poverty, joblessness, environmental degradation) but I now do.
What A People's History absolutely proves is that corporations must be dragged, kicking and screaming, to consider any interest outside of their bottom line, and that their lack of care for simple human dignity literally costs lives. Well, duh, but it's fascinating to read the history of this. We didn't start out generous and idealistic and nice. We started out conniving, controlling, manipulating, and cruel.
How well does an economic system "work" if the average person and-hopefully-politician has to constantly, relentlessly bully each industry, one by one, to pay a decent wage, stop polluting the environment, etc. It's horribly inefficient and, of course, maddeningly frustrating. Yet it's all marketed so brilliantly that even the sufferers of this pathetic machine support it.
I'm so often reminded of the children's story, The Emperor's New Clothes. Will anyone just point out the obvious here? Well, people do, but they are essentially ridiculed.
We live in a country where businesses have actually convinced us that they have rights. That, like people, they deserve help from the government (ex: subsidies) and that they have interests that should be considered. Like they are living and breathing, and they will suffer like any life-form if they don't get protection. (They're not alive!!!!) They are not people, who ask only to survive with enough food, shelter, and clothing. Businesses ask something completely different: obscene profits, increasing stock prices, exorbitant salaries, power, status, and--what it boils down to--food for their big, gigantic, enormous ego. These rights are somehow seen side by side with a request for simple human dignity and are weighed as though they have similar degrees of importance.
I was shocked to learn after Obama's student loan reform bill just got signed, that the government was previously handing out subsidies to private loan organizations. Excuse me? The government is giving money to banks or whomever so they can give me a student loan at 4 x the interest rate I would get if I'd gotten a government loan? But some schmuck business guy convinced the government to give his bank money to "help" students go to college. Why don't you just hand them profits in an envelope?
What Howard Zinn's incredible book shows is that the U.S. government formed for really one purpose: to protect the money of the elite of the country, and to make more for them through business and trade. This sounds like a cynical statement, but it is laid out very simply with direct quotes and hundreds of citations. It is too complex to detail here--please read for yourself before making up your mind. To describe the issue as a "conflict-of-interest" would be a pathetic understatement. It is hard to even come close to describing the corruption involved in the birth of this country. Our political party system is little more than a disguise to give us the impression of choice, freedom, and control, when everything has been set up ever-so carefully so that the interests of the rich "capitalists," as you may call them, can never actually be threatened.
I wish everyone would just read a hundred pages of this book and see the desperate, desperate attempts made to be simply allowed a 10-hour workday (instead of 16) and a 6-day workweek instead of a 7-day workweek. The marches to stop child labor. Requests for simple safety in the workplace. The strikes, demonstrations, arrests, union efforts, etc, etc, went on for decades. The corporations enlisted the National Guard to squelch strikes. The government itself used the military to kill people for asking for the tiniest dignity.
We may have evolved since those times (though I would argue that the evolution really means that what we used to be able to get away with in public we now have to do in secret), but it is important to see where these present-day institutions come from. They do not come from a tradition of charity, generosity, "freedom and justice for all." We must be at least educated and realistic.
Know what I read the other day? Pharmaceutical companies actually control medical school education in America. You can be sure your doctor never learned a thing about health in all those years of college--only disease and drug prescription. They can draw the chemical composition of Lipitor but don't know that eating oatmeal is proven more effective in lowering cholesterol than drugs.
What Capitalism: A Love Story suggests outright and what the book forces the reader to consider is that the economic and political systems that largely run our lives are fundamentally flawed and not fixable while still within them. I did not previously think a complete overhaul was necessary to solve our problems (poverty, joblessness, environmental degradation) but I now do.
What A People's History absolutely proves is that corporations must be dragged, kicking and screaming, to consider any interest outside of their bottom line, and that their lack of care for simple human dignity literally costs lives. Well, duh, but it's fascinating to read the history of this. We didn't start out generous and idealistic and nice. We started out conniving, controlling, manipulating, and cruel.
How well does an economic system "work" if the average person and-hopefully-politician has to constantly, relentlessly bully each industry, one by one, to pay a decent wage, stop polluting the environment, etc. It's horribly inefficient and, of course, maddeningly frustrating. Yet it's all marketed so brilliantly that even the sufferers of this pathetic machine support it.
I'm so often reminded of the children's story, The Emperor's New Clothes. Will anyone just point out the obvious here? Well, people do, but they are essentially ridiculed.
We live in a country where businesses have actually convinced us that they have rights. That, like people, they deserve help from the government (ex: subsidies) and that they have interests that should be considered. Like they are living and breathing, and they will suffer like any life-form if they don't get protection. (They're not alive!!!!) They are not people, who ask only to survive with enough food, shelter, and clothing. Businesses ask something completely different: obscene profits, increasing stock prices, exorbitant salaries, power, status, and--what it boils down to--food for their big, gigantic, enormous ego. These rights are somehow seen side by side with a request for simple human dignity and are weighed as though they have similar degrees of importance.
I was shocked to learn after Obama's student loan reform bill just got signed, that the government was previously handing out subsidies to private loan organizations. Excuse me? The government is giving money to banks or whomever so they can give me a student loan at 4 x the interest rate I would get if I'd gotten a government loan? But some schmuck business guy convinced the government to give his bank money to "help" students go to college. Why don't you just hand them profits in an envelope?
What Howard Zinn's incredible book shows is that the U.S. government formed for really one purpose: to protect the money of the elite of the country, and to make more for them through business and trade. This sounds like a cynical statement, but it is laid out very simply with direct quotes and hundreds of citations. It is too complex to detail here--please read for yourself before making up your mind. To describe the issue as a "conflict-of-interest" would be a pathetic understatement. It is hard to even come close to describing the corruption involved in the birth of this country. Our political party system is little more than a disguise to give us the impression of choice, freedom, and control, when everything has been set up ever-so carefully so that the interests of the rich "capitalists," as you may call them, can never actually be threatened.
I wish everyone would just read a hundred pages of this book and see the desperate, desperate attempts made to be simply allowed a 10-hour workday (instead of 16) and a 6-day workweek instead of a 7-day workweek. The marches to stop child labor. Requests for simple safety in the workplace. The strikes, demonstrations, arrests, union efforts, etc, etc, went on for decades. The corporations enlisted the National Guard to squelch strikes. The government itself used the military to kill people for asking for the tiniest dignity.
We may have evolved since those times (though I would argue that the evolution really means that what we used to be able to get away with in public we now have to do in secret), but it is important to see where these present-day institutions come from. They do not come from a tradition of charity, generosity, "freedom and justice for all." We must be at least educated and realistic.
Know what I read the other day? Pharmaceutical companies actually control medical school education in America. You can be sure your doctor never learned a thing about health in all those years of college--only disease and drug prescription. They can draw the chemical composition of Lipitor but don't know that eating oatmeal is proven more effective in lowering cholesterol than drugs.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
The Tough Part About Raw Food is the Tough Part About Food
Raw bean burritos with guacamole, salsa, cilantro, and spinach wrapped in cabbage tortillas
The toughest part about eating raw is that you have to prepare all the food yourself, from scratch.
Notice anything funny about that sentence?
We're supposed to be making food from scratch!! Going raw just forces you to do this. Then we say, "going raw is so much work!" In fact, eating healthy in general is "so much work." At least, compared to what we're used to.
We have transitioned from one- to two-income households in these last decades and have gone to convenience foods in the process which involve either throwing packages into the microwave or into a pan of boiling water to prepare. Then there's fast-food or simply eating out too much.
For the sake of our health, we MUST go back to the old custom of preparing our own food at home from scratch. Certainly there are times and places for going out to eat with friends or to celebrate, but I do not feel there is a place for boxed, bagged, or microwaveable meals.
I think for most people, transitioning to making all food from scratch would be one of the hardest changes they could make, yet it would have an instant and powerful effect on their health for the better.
It's so funny--people think the food they eat at restaurants tastes so good because of some brilliant chef in the kitchen (which is surely the case at times), but really, it tastes so good because it completely over-stimulates your taste buds with salt, sugar, and oil. There's nothing magic there. If you want to reproduce the "superior" restaurant food taste at home, put four times the salt, sugar, or oil in whatever you are making. Then appreciate why it is so much healthier to be the one in control of your food.
Once you've been making all your food on your own, going raw won't seem like any work at all. You'll just be making different recipes than before. Pretty simple.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Food as Religion and Culture
Raw milkshake: walnuts, agave, raw chocolate powder
America is often made fun of as the country with no culture. We are a very young country and do not have the hundreds- and thousands-years old traditions that most other cultures in the world have.
However, this is not at all the case. Our culture may be a little less romantic, without the artistic architecture, traditional dress, or family and community structure, but it is practiced and ingrained just the same.
Taking food as an important example: we have a totally culturally-ingrained diet. I did not realize this at all throughout my life because I am, of course, part of this culture. I thought Americans had a moderate, relaxed diet and also must eat the way we do because it has been proven to be healthy. We love science and are always studying the effects of everything. If we are so modern and smart, we wouldn't be so rigid on something like food which we can learn so much about, and thereby adjust to suit our health. We would change the way we eat at a moment's notice if we knew we needed to, or if we thought it would help us lose weight. However, it is obvious when we look that we only make such changes as still fit within our cultural way of eating.
Remember in the '80s and '90s how we were warned that animal fat contributed to heart disease. This idea is not standing the test of further scientific study, as it turns out, but how many people went vegetarian when, for a couple of decades, this was the prevailing viewpoint? Vegetarianism has been on the rise for decades, but not in the numbers you would have expected considering how widespread this belief was and actually still is.
This type of tunnel-visioned approach was really obvious to me when I went to India. I have spent two months there total, and have just found it hilarious the way any Indian will back up the way they eat, 100%. Practically everything is deep-fried, even breakfast food. Rice and bread products are eaten at absolutely every meal and snack. The spice level can sometimes be just ridiculous. All of these things are taken completely for granted as healthy and delicious. When my husband and I would occasionally point out that, nutritionally, eating a mountain of rice twice a day really amounted to nothing and probably even did harm, his parents would mostly shrug and say, sure, maybe. It didn't change what they did, and it probably never will. The changes a typical Indian would be willing to make in their diet would amount to an inch in one direction or another.
I found this silly and sometimes frustrating, and, of course, thought Americans were above that.
Americans are not above this at all. The changes 90% of Americans are willing to make are also an inch in one direction or another. Our staple foods of meat, potatoes, dairy, pizza, burgers, ice cream, and soda will never be given up by the majority of the population. These are the foundation foods of our culture, some of which are, arguably, far worse than a mountain of rice.
We DON'T listen to science unless it shows us something easy or convenient we can change. Most of us feel we have to give up our entire identities to simply leave out certain foods and become thoroughly depressed at the idea. Isn't this strange? Americans treat their diet as a religion, as does almost any other traditional culture. We follow it on faith, and conversion is extremely difficult. We eat as part of our identity, part of our comfort, part of how we connect with other people. I don't believe there is a place for faith in diet, do you?
Witness the common offense taken by many meat-eaters when it comes out you are a vegetarian, which you will know about if you happen to be one. Honestly, I could more easily say I was a pathological liar to avoid the disdain and condescension I have encountered. I keep my eating habits a secret as long as possible until a meal comes up where I have to let it be known. At least with religion, though, we have some etiquette, as we are taught to accept those who have different beliefs.
I don't mean to guilt-trip Americans--as I said, it is entirely natural to hold on to diet and food habits as part of culture. But we MUST be aware that we are doing this. If we fool ourselves into thinking we eat based solely on scientific evidence for health benefits behind food, then we will stay laughably ignorant and probably very unhealthy.
I only wish that the rigid defenders of the American diet (not that they all are that way, by any means) would simply say, "I haven't spent much time researching health and nutrition, but I like to eat meat because it tastes good. I haven't heard anything bad enough to stop me yet." At least this includes self-awareness and honesty. The most important thing for us to be honest with ourselves about is that 100% of us believe what we are told until we are adults. At that point, each one of us has a responsibility to challenge our beliefs and learn from truly trustworthy and expert sources.
Such issues become obvious if you ever read the book The China Study which I am almost halfway through now. This is the largest and most scientifically strict nutrition study ever undertaken. It involves a conglomeration of a massive number of studies conducted over a period of 27 years. It isn't a book based on conclusions from a few skewed graphs connecting animal fat with heart disease. It is finally surfacing that animal fat does not contribute to heart disease in the ways we previously thought and that those conclusions were based on some very incomplete and improperly interpreted statistics.
The evidence for consuming a plant-based diet to avoid disease, based on this study, is simply incontrovertible. Yet this doctor, in undertaking the research, had to deal with other scientists who wouldn't even work with him or who claimed results had been mixed up because the findings ran so counter to everything they believed in. By every single rigorous definition of proper and strict rules of conducting science, this study surpasses them all. Yet his own very intelligent colleagues could not psychologically cope with the answers.
And why on earth has it taken me years of being a total nutrition nerd to even hear about and then read this book? Not because it isn't rigidly backed up by the highest standards while being published, study by study, in the most prestigious and reputable scientific journals. No, it's because people do not like the answers very much. And because it hasn't been packaged and marketed as a fad diet (yet).
This is the scientific, objective, progressive society we live in? We might conduct our studies well, even come up with good ones in the first place, but, as one doctor who studies the mind/body disease connection put it, "some end up in the Bermuda Triangle." They are not argued or disputed, but they disappear, ignored, and never to be heard from again. Even studies that can save thousands and thousands of lives. Inexpensively, with no side effects, and--heck, without health insurance.
Psychology and food must be gently unwound from eachother. Food is not a religion, and even culture is not a religion. People are dying by the thousands of easily preventable diseases, and we sit here still saying, "No! I don't want to change!" What is going on with people when to simply let go of certain foods induces a personal crisis and an extreme emotional reaction? Is this crisis preferable to getting sick? Granted, we are not given a lot of tools in this world to navigate personal crises, but I'll wing it at one of those before taking my chances in a hospital bed.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Wholly Holistic Healing
I am so excited that the concept of holistic healing is becoming very popular. Most people seem to know what that means--that more than the physical body has to be treated for healing to occur. We are multi-faceted beings, with minds, bodies, and spirits that all need to be in alignment for vibrant health to be experienced.
In my practice, I address physical and mental ailments with Pranic Healing and, in addition, place importance on healthy food and lifestyle choices in order to prevent illness and maintain health. (I will complete my nutrition consultant program by the summer and add this officially, including nutrition protocols to heal particular ailments.)
The first step is healing from present ailments, and the second is to prevent any more from occurring. However, there are several parts to each of these steps.
The first part of holistic healing is to heal past psychological trauma. This may involve blockages, specific traumatic events, chronic negative thinking, negative attachments, and unhealthy patterns. By releasing past negativity, a person is immediately freed to move forward, live in the present, and be fully empowered. Pranic Healing is a brilliant modality which heals even severe trauma in a fraction of the time it would take with conventional talk therapy. Forgiveness is absolutely key in this process, as lack of forgiveness can manifest as severe health ailments, and complete forgiveness is a requirement for total healing and moving forward. One must be completely ready and willing to Let Go.
Next is to heal any mental ailment (ex: depression), chronic pain, sickness, or other physical ailment. This can be done with Pranic Healing and nutrition therapy. Emotional issues could potentially surface again at this point, as disease is often a manifestation of our mental state. All processed foods must be eliminated and only whole foods, preferably organic, should be consumed. This means the body is getting real nourishment, allowing it to carry out its natural and powerful healing processes which are so often hindered by our food choices. Balanced nutrition is also key to emotional and mental health.
Fasting might have a place as cleaning the body and purging obstructions is very influential in allowing flow and also proper assimilation of nutrition. Again, emotional issues can come up during fasting as emotional experiences are stored in the body. This new freedom and emotional clarity can even be scary at times, but is necessary for health, a sense of well-being, and true personal power.
Other targeted therapies might be useful or required such as massage, chiropractic, or others.
The third part is to permanently alter lifestyle habits over a transition period. This allows a person to stay healthy and prevent future mental or physical illness. The point is to become as independent as possible in staying healthy and healing oneself. Health is our natural state and should not require frequent and regular intervention from healers.
At-home, from scratch, whole food preparation for 90% or more of meals is necessary. Purchasing pre-prepared meals, whether from grocery stores or restaurants means consuming substances which are not actually food and shouldn't be put into our bodies in the first place. Or, it means consuming excessive amounts of salt, oil, and other things which should be consumed in a moderate balance. Only by making your own food will you have control over your health.
A WIDE variety of plant foods should be eaten and raw dairy is preferable over pasteurized for much easier digestion. Meat must be hormone and antibiotic-free, free range, and beef should be grass-fed. Sugar should be practically eliminated, as sweets can be made at home easily without it. Pranic Healing is fabulous for food addiction healing, whether due to the physically addictive nature of sugar and caffeine or from the emotional addiction aspect of eating. An exercise and meditation routine has to be established as well, even if it only starts with just once a week for each. These might be dramatic changes for many people, and they won't happen overnight, but the goal is total health freedom, and these are, therefore, all essential.
Coping techniques for stress may be required for some, as well as overall stress reduction in general. Certain lifestyle changes could be required, perhaps as small as turning off the TV or as large as changing jobs. Life balance in all areas is required for peace, health, and sanity. Are you doing what you love? Do you at least have time for your hobbies, or time to yourself? Relationship assessment is also important, including family, friends, co-workers, and romantic relationships: toxic relationships do to our energy what toxic food does to our bodies. Energetic hygiene using Pranic Healing techniques is always taught: saltwater baths, cord-cutting, and keeping the home environment clean.
These elements combined will truly treat the whole person and make them health-independent, as every person has the natural right to be. Our culture has somehow gotten so far off track that such a system is even required, when all this should be natural. It is the right of everyone to feel vibrant, alive, peaceful, and fully healthy all the time.
In my practice, I address physical and mental ailments with Pranic Healing and, in addition, place importance on healthy food and lifestyle choices in order to prevent illness and maintain health. (I will complete my nutrition consultant program by the summer and add this officially, including nutrition protocols to heal particular ailments.)
The first step is healing from present ailments, and the second is to prevent any more from occurring. However, there are several parts to each of these steps.
The first part of holistic healing is to heal past psychological trauma. This may involve blockages, specific traumatic events, chronic negative thinking, negative attachments, and unhealthy patterns. By releasing past negativity, a person is immediately freed to move forward, live in the present, and be fully empowered. Pranic Healing is a brilliant modality which heals even severe trauma in a fraction of the time it would take with conventional talk therapy. Forgiveness is absolutely key in this process, as lack of forgiveness can manifest as severe health ailments, and complete forgiveness is a requirement for total healing and moving forward. One must be completely ready and willing to Let Go.
Next is to heal any mental ailment (ex: depression), chronic pain, sickness, or other physical ailment. This can be done with Pranic Healing and nutrition therapy. Emotional issues could potentially surface again at this point, as disease is often a manifestation of our mental state. All processed foods must be eliminated and only whole foods, preferably organic, should be consumed. This means the body is getting real nourishment, allowing it to carry out its natural and powerful healing processes which are so often hindered by our food choices. Balanced nutrition is also key to emotional and mental health.
Fasting might have a place as cleaning the body and purging obstructions is very influential in allowing flow and also proper assimilation of nutrition. Again, emotional issues can come up during fasting as emotional experiences are stored in the body. This new freedom and emotional clarity can even be scary at times, but is necessary for health, a sense of well-being, and true personal power.
Other targeted therapies might be useful or required such as massage, chiropractic, or others.
The third part is to permanently alter lifestyle habits over a transition period. This allows a person to stay healthy and prevent future mental or physical illness. The point is to become as independent as possible in staying healthy and healing oneself. Health is our natural state and should not require frequent and regular intervention from healers.
At-home, from scratch, whole food preparation for 90% or more of meals is necessary. Purchasing pre-prepared meals, whether from grocery stores or restaurants means consuming substances which are not actually food and shouldn't be put into our bodies in the first place. Or, it means consuming excessive amounts of salt, oil, and other things which should be consumed in a moderate balance. Only by making your own food will you have control over your health.
A WIDE variety of plant foods should be eaten and raw dairy is preferable over pasteurized for much easier digestion. Meat must be hormone and antibiotic-free, free range, and beef should be grass-fed. Sugar should be practically eliminated, as sweets can be made at home easily without it. Pranic Healing is fabulous for food addiction healing, whether due to the physically addictive nature of sugar and caffeine or from the emotional addiction aspect of eating. An exercise and meditation routine has to be established as well, even if it only starts with just once a week for each. These might be dramatic changes for many people, and they won't happen overnight, but the goal is total health freedom, and these are, therefore, all essential.
Coping techniques for stress may be required for some, as well as overall stress reduction in general. Certain lifestyle changes could be required, perhaps as small as turning off the TV or as large as changing jobs. Life balance in all areas is required for peace, health, and sanity. Are you doing what you love? Do you at least have time for your hobbies, or time to yourself? Relationship assessment is also important, including family, friends, co-workers, and romantic relationships: toxic relationships do to our energy what toxic food does to our bodies. Energetic hygiene using Pranic Healing techniques is always taught: saltwater baths, cord-cutting, and keeping the home environment clean.
These elements combined will truly treat the whole person and make them health-independent, as every person has the natural right to be. Our culture has somehow gotten so far off track that such a system is even required, when all this should be natural. It is the right of everyone to feel vibrant, alive, peaceful, and fully healthy all the time.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Toxic Bodies, Toxic Minds
A suddenly major interest among health-conscious people is detoxification. The fact that we are toxifying our bodies in the first place is a subject worth serious consideration and is usually skipped over in the conversation about detoxing. Why should detoxification be necessary at all? Why do we have to "clean up after ourselves"? What are we putting into our bodies in the first place?
What is a toxin? In general, the word toxin refers to something chemical, not considered food or nourishment, and which does not belong in our bodies. Toxins can be chemicals in the air, water, beauty products, and food which we ingest or which are absorbed through the skin. Toxins are, in part, stored in the tissues and lymph fluid.
Toxins are not stored intentionally--why doesn't the body just get rid of them? The body does get rid of plenty of junk we ingest, however, not everything can be eliminated easily. The way that toxins end up stuck in the tissues and lymph is due to a simple process of diffusion. Immediately after eating cooked food, the blood becomes thick. This is the reason one cannot eat 8 hours before surgery: the blood is too thick for surgeons to safely operate. Due to this thickness, toxins diffuse into the lymph which is thin and light in comparison. When fasting or eating raw food, the blood becomes thin and toxins naturally diffuse out of the lymph fluid and into the bloodstream. Then they are eliminated.
More complicated than that, however, is toxic residue. Toxic residue is basically a layer of junk lining the intestinal tract. This junk inhibits proper absorption of nutrients, which is the purpose of the intestines. This reduces the nutrition we can get from our food, even when we are eating what we should in the first place. Where does this come from? Cooked food, especially animal products, which are difficult to digest and do not "burn" cleanly. Toxic residue keeps us out of touch with our bodies. Many people believe food cravings are messages from the body, and sometimes they are, but often we are just craving what we are addicted to. This layer of junk is a barrier between the real messages of our body and our awareness, and our bodies cannot communicate through it. Until you have detoxified, you will not hear very well your body's real messages.
This junk stuck in the intestinal wall can actually ferment by being stuck in the gut for too long, hence becoming toxic. This buildup does also leak continuously into the bloodstream and cause problems, however, as illustrated by Gabriel Cousens, MD in his book Conscious Eating:
"Many people think that the phrase 'toxins in the body' is just some jargon of food faddists. Research over the last 100 years shows that these bowel toxins actually exist. Not only do they exist, but they also have a tremendous negative impact on mental and physical well-being. Toxins usually come from a process called 'intestinal toxemia,' an overgrowth of putrefactive intestinal bacteria in the small and large intestines. These toxins are then released into the blood stream and from there affect both our mental and physical functioning. Intestinal toxemia is predominately caused by a high-protein and low complex carbohydrate diet. Intestinal toxemia not only has been associated with severe mental symptoms such as psychosis, but with a variety of mental imbalances.
As early as 1917, Drs. Satterlee and Eldridge presented 518 cases at an American Medical Association conference that had mental symptoms which were cured by removing the intestinal toxemia. The reported symptoms of intestinal toxemia which are familiar to many people: mental sluggishness, dullness, and stupidity; loss of concentration and/or memory; mental incoordination, irritability, lack of confidence, and excessive and useless worry; exaggerated introspection, hypochondrias, and phobias; depression and melancholy; obsessions and delusions; and hallucinations, suicidal tendencies, delirium, and stupor. Senility symptoms are also common with intestinal toxemia."
Gee, does anyone here know any Americans that seem excessively anxious, stupid, or sluggish??
I'm going to make the bold statement that toxemia is rampant in this country. I do believe that our food HAS made us dumb and complacent, quite easily managed and manageable by the so-called powers that be.
The long-term solution is to eat more raw food and less cooked food, especially less animal products. Eat lots of raw leafy greens and fruit which contain fiber. For a more sudden and possibly slightly painful detox process, you can do a fast which will rather quickly and dramatically release toxins into the bloodstream and then out of the system. This might put you through some unpleasant symptoms as all this garbage comes out from its hiding place. It can be mild to severe, from a headache or a little crankiness to getting a cold or major aches and pains in the body. However, I have heard of wonderful benefits to doing this such as lasting weight loss, disappearance of minor health problems, especially digestive problems, among other things.
The question in my mind is: if we are meant to eat meat and cooked food, why does it leave us with a ton of toxic buildup that causes mental disorders and requires a dramatic fast to get rid of? And then, as popular raw food author, Shazzie, points out: "detox to retox?" because it sounds good to do these fasts or detox diets for anywhere from 3-30 days, but if you're going to go back to your old diet again...? Well, still way better to do a twice yearly fast than none at all.
What is a toxin? In general, the word toxin refers to something chemical, not considered food or nourishment, and which does not belong in our bodies. Toxins can be chemicals in the air, water, beauty products, and food which we ingest or which are absorbed through the skin. Toxins are, in part, stored in the tissues and lymph fluid.
Toxins are not stored intentionally--why doesn't the body just get rid of them? The body does get rid of plenty of junk we ingest, however, not everything can be eliminated easily. The way that toxins end up stuck in the tissues and lymph is due to a simple process of diffusion. Immediately after eating cooked food, the blood becomes thick. This is the reason one cannot eat 8 hours before surgery: the blood is too thick for surgeons to safely operate. Due to this thickness, toxins diffuse into the lymph which is thin and light in comparison. When fasting or eating raw food, the blood becomes thin and toxins naturally diffuse out of the lymph fluid and into the bloodstream. Then they are eliminated.
More complicated than that, however, is toxic residue. Toxic residue is basically a layer of junk lining the intestinal tract. This junk inhibits proper absorption of nutrients, which is the purpose of the intestines. This reduces the nutrition we can get from our food, even when we are eating what we should in the first place. Where does this come from? Cooked food, especially animal products, which are difficult to digest and do not "burn" cleanly. Toxic residue keeps us out of touch with our bodies. Many people believe food cravings are messages from the body, and sometimes they are, but often we are just craving what we are addicted to. This layer of junk is a barrier between the real messages of our body and our awareness, and our bodies cannot communicate through it. Until you have detoxified, you will not hear very well your body's real messages.
This junk stuck in the intestinal wall can actually ferment by being stuck in the gut for too long, hence becoming toxic. This buildup does also leak continuously into the bloodstream and cause problems, however, as illustrated by Gabriel Cousens, MD in his book Conscious Eating:
"Many people think that the phrase 'toxins in the body' is just some jargon of food faddists. Research over the last 100 years shows that these bowel toxins actually exist. Not only do they exist, but they also have a tremendous negative impact on mental and physical well-being. Toxins usually come from a process called 'intestinal toxemia,' an overgrowth of putrefactive intestinal bacteria in the small and large intestines. These toxins are then released into the blood stream and from there affect both our mental and physical functioning. Intestinal toxemia is predominately caused by a high-protein and low complex carbohydrate diet. Intestinal toxemia not only has been associated with severe mental symptoms such as psychosis, but with a variety of mental imbalances.
As early as 1917, Drs. Satterlee and Eldridge presented 518 cases at an American Medical Association conference that had mental symptoms which were cured by removing the intestinal toxemia. The reported symptoms of intestinal toxemia which are familiar to many people: mental sluggishness, dullness, and stupidity; loss of concentration and/or memory; mental incoordination, irritability, lack of confidence, and excessive and useless worry; exaggerated introspection, hypochondrias, and phobias; depression and melancholy; obsessions and delusions; and hallucinations, suicidal tendencies, delirium, and stupor. Senility symptoms are also common with intestinal toxemia."
Gee, does anyone here know any Americans that seem excessively anxious, stupid, or sluggish??
I'm going to make the bold statement that toxemia is rampant in this country. I do believe that our food HAS made us dumb and complacent, quite easily managed and manageable by the so-called powers that be.
The long-term solution is to eat more raw food and less cooked food, especially less animal products. Eat lots of raw leafy greens and fruit which contain fiber. For a more sudden and possibly slightly painful detox process, you can do a fast which will rather quickly and dramatically release toxins into the bloodstream and then out of the system. This might put you through some unpleasant symptoms as all this garbage comes out from its hiding place. It can be mild to severe, from a headache or a little crankiness to getting a cold or major aches and pains in the body. However, I have heard of wonderful benefits to doing this such as lasting weight loss, disappearance of minor health problems, especially digestive problems, among other things.
The question in my mind is: if we are meant to eat meat and cooked food, why does it leave us with a ton of toxic buildup that causes mental disorders and requires a dramatic fast to get rid of? And then, as popular raw food author, Shazzie, points out: "detox to retox?" because it sounds good to do these fasts or detox diets for anywhere from 3-30 days, but if you're going to go back to your old diet again...? Well, still way better to do a twice yearly fast than none at all.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Getting "High"
One thing I wish I knew when I was in college is that putting toxic substances into your body is only one way to get high and, by far, the most painful.
Being "spiritual" sounds pretty dull to most people. In most religious traditions, it involved going off to live in a nunnery or maybe be a celibate priest. One was supposed to renounce earthly pleasures.
Modern spirituality has a different approach, however, and does not require anyone to ignore the fact that part of our existence is physical (the other part being energetic). In fact, I would say success is measured, in this system, by how much fun you are having.
I realize how completely hilarious this sounds, but experiencing regular meditation and spiritual growth is as close to living on the edge as you can get. Ha! There, I said it.
Think of a time when your mind was totally blown open. Maybe you read a book that blew the lid off your previously-held beliefs. Or you watched an incredible documentary. Or you traveled to another country and saw a completely different way to live. These examples are pale comparisons to what it is like to experience the metaphysical-and magical-reality we all live in. Meditating can be like learning half a book of new and incredible information without having to read, and a book that might never have been written, at that. For the rest of the day, things come into your mind from nowhere, making you laugh out loud or stop dead in your tracks.
Drugs and alcohol are toys compared to what every human has the capacity to experience. I have, more than once, gotten to work, having meditated right before I left (I work at a restaurant) and found it difficult to get oriented to even do my job.
Spiritual people love getting high! We've just noticed that messing up your body and going through the side effects of hangovers, comedowns, depression, exhaustion, sleep interruptions, bad dreams, regrets, and bar tabs is a terribly ineffective way to do so.
Being "spiritual" sounds pretty dull to most people. In most religious traditions, it involved going off to live in a nunnery or maybe be a celibate priest. One was supposed to renounce earthly pleasures.
Modern spirituality has a different approach, however, and does not require anyone to ignore the fact that part of our existence is physical (the other part being energetic). In fact, I would say success is measured, in this system, by how much fun you are having.
I realize how completely hilarious this sounds, but experiencing regular meditation and spiritual growth is as close to living on the edge as you can get. Ha! There, I said it.
Think of a time when your mind was totally blown open. Maybe you read a book that blew the lid off your previously-held beliefs. Or you watched an incredible documentary. Or you traveled to another country and saw a completely different way to live. These examples are pale comparisons to what it is like to experience the metaphysical-and magical-reality we all live in. Meditating can be like learning half a book of new and incredible information without having to read, and a book that might never have been written, at that. For the rest of the day, things come into your mind from nowhere, making you laugh out loud or stop dead in your tracks.
Drugs and alcohol are toys compared to what every human has the capacity to experience. I have, more than once, gotten to work, having meditated right before I left (I work at a restaurant) and found it difficult to get oriented to even do my job.
Spiritual people love getting high! We've just noticed that messing up your body and going through the side effects of hangovers, comedowns, depression, exhaustion, sleep interruptions, bad dreams, regrets, and bar tabs is a terribly ineffective way to do so.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Reflections on Raw Food
It's been about two weeks of eating almost 100% raw. I am committed to being fully honest and cannot say that I have not had a bite of cooked food. I have essentially eaten three raw meals per day the entire time--it's just that in between those meals have had either bites of other peoples' food, a snack while going out with a friend, and a soy chai twice at a coffee shop.
Which doesn't sound bad at all, I know, but I definitely hoped for "perfection" on my two-month commitment. The tough thing about raw food is that by being "perfect" and keeping absolutely any cooked food away from your mouth, you experience that over-the-top healthy feeling. For me, I don't seem to get it until I have been absolutely strictly raw for about a week. Seeing as I have not been so strict, although I notice changes, they are not the dramatic ones I enjoyed the last time when I did this diet for a month. Which THEN tends to make you less motivated....which is kind of where I am at at the moment.
The positive changes I have noticed are:
no interest in alcohol
no interest in sugar, cheese, or bread
absolutely loving all the raw meals I eat without missing anything
calmer mind
never heaviness after any meal
less hungry and less appetite--small meals will fill me for hours
no obsessiveness/cravings/compulsive thoughts about food
sleeping very well
much more energy in meditation
What I got the last time around (when I was strict) but not this time:
much less sleep needed--2 hours less per night
no negative thoughts/feelings
constant happy "buzz"
And this doesn't make it sound like I am missing out on a lot, but those three that I am not experiencing this time around are some big ones.
And, about that happy buzz, I have to mention a couple of powerful off-setting factors: it's winter (and feeling like a very long one to me), and my husband has been gone a week now on his 4-week contract job in Indiana, leaving me kind of lonely/bored. So part of that lack could be due to circumstance.
I think I am also not noticing as much drastic change because since doing raw last summer, I have added a lot of raw food into my life. It's been my habit for months to eat several raw meals per week, and I've been drinking green smoothies for months now. Before I ever tried raw food, I was eating zero and then went to 100% almost overnight. That exciting, drastic change probably won't be felt by me again unless I go back to eating significantly worse than I have been for the past 9 months. I am probably feeling 10 times better than a year ago but don't notice because I have added raw food gradually over a long period, so this 90% raw food diet of the last two weeks was just one or two steps upward.
I am reading lots of raw food dieting accounts online and it's kind of giving me an inferiority complex! Everyone seems to be doing a perfect job of it and having a fabulous time! This amazes me because the first time I ever did this, it was EXTREMELY difficult. I was tortured, craving my regular foods night and day for the first week. Then there was immense frustration in making the recipes which really took practice (as well as learning to avoid the difficult ones--and knowing in advance which ones will be difficult!). I am having a much easier time the second time around with no cravings and no difficulty making the recipes. I am just, somehow, not motivated to be super strict and I don't know why.
One important difference between me and a lot of people who start this diet is that I don't have any health concerns, nor am I overweight. Almost everyone who decides to do this who I have ever read about has health problems or weight problems. These are obviously enormous motivating factors for people. Who wants to go back to their old foods if they will be 50+ pounds overweight or suffer extreme pains or illnesses? I already rarely get sick in the first place. So for that reason, it's hard to be a perfectionist.
I think for now, I will accept taking my goal down to a 90-95% raw food diet for the remaining six weeks. This percentage is pretty comfortable and natural for me. Maybe I will change my mind and choose to be more strict later, but I am happy with this for now.
Which doesn't sound bad at all, I know, but I definitely hoped for "perfection" on my two-month commitment. The tough thing about raw food is that by being "perfect" and keeping absolutely any cooked food away from your mouth, you experience that over-the-top healthy feeling. For me, I don't seem to get it until I have been absolutely strictly raw for about a week. Seeing as I have not been so strict, although I notice changes, they are not the dramatic ones I enjoyed the last time when I did this diet for a month. Which THEN tends to make you less motivated....which is kind of where I am at at the moment.
The positive changes I have noticed are:
no interest in alcohol
no interest in sugar, cheese, or bread
absolutely loving all the raw meals I eat without missing anything
calmer mind
never heaviness after any meal
less hungry and less appetite--small meals will fill me for hours
no obsessiveness/cravings/compulsive thoughts about food
sleeping very well
much more energy in meditation
What I got the last time around (when I was strict) but not this time:
much less sleep needed--2 hours less per night
no negative thoughts/feelings
constant happy "buzz"
And this doesn't make it sound like I am missing out on a lot, but those three that I am not experiencing this time around are some big ones.
And, about that happy buzz, I have to mention a couple of powerful off-setting factors: it's winter (and feeling like a very long one to me), and my husband has been gone a week now on his 4-week contract job in Indiana, leaving me kind of lonely/bored. So part of that lack could be due to circumstance.
I think I am also not noticing as much drastic change because since doing raw last summer, I have added a lot of raw food into my life. It's been my habit for months to eat several raw meals per week, and I've been drinking green smoothies for months now. Before I ever tried raw food, I was eating zero and then went to 100% almost overnight. That exciting, drastic change probably won't be felt by me again unless I go back to eating significantly worse than I have been for the past 9 months. I am probably feeling 10 times better than a year ago but don't notice because I have added raw food gradually over a long period, so this 90% raw food diet of the last two weeks was just one or two steps upward.
I am reading lots of raw food dieting accounts online and it's kind of giving me an inferiority complex! Everyone seems to be doing a perfect job of it and having a fabulous time! This amazes me because the first time I ever did this, it was EXTREMELY difficult. I was tortured, craving my regular foods night and day for the first week. Then there was immense frustration in making the recipes which really took practice (as well as learning to avoid the difficult ones--and knowing in advance which ones will be difficult!). I am having a much easier time the second time around with no cravings and no difficulty making the recipes. I am just, somehow, not motivated to be super strict and I don't know why.
One important difference between me and a lot of people who start this diet is that I don't have any health concerns, nor am I overweight. Almost everyone who decides to do this who I have ever read about has health problems or weight problems. These are obviously enormous motivating factors for people. Who wants to go back to their old foods if they will be 50+ pounds overweight or suffer extreme pains or illnesses? I already rarely get sick in the first place. So for that reason, it's hard to be a perfectionist.
I think for now, I will accept taking my goal down to a 90-95% raw food diet for the remaining six weeks. This percentage is pretty comfortable and natural for me. Maybe I will change my mind and choose to be more strict later, but I am happy with this for now.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
The Middle Road?
One of the most common things I hear when I tell people I'm only eating raw food for a certain duration is that I shouldn't be too extremist and moderation is best.
My question is, what is moderation?
In a raw food book written by two siblings brought up on raw food (Victoria Boutenko's kids), they were visited by a child services worker at the door once. Some school kid's parents thought they were suffering from child abuse because of the strange lunches they brought to school. They asked the kids what they had for lunch today, and, knowing what this child services worker wanted to hear, they said "we ate McDonald's." The person was satisfied and left.
Eating pizza and burgers is considered moderation today, an average middle-of-the-road diet. Wasn't it just 50 years ago that people commonly had 3-martini lunches? Old movies just crack me up because there's barely a scene where the characters aren't drinking straight whiskey, bourbon, or scotch every time they're home. That was moderation.
Then you tell someone you're going to eat an incredible variety of plant foods and not cook them, and they think you've fallen off the deep end. But slicing potatoes and deep-frying them in grease--that makes sense. The only nutritional concept they're familiar with is protein--that's in meat!! But ask them where they're getting the maybe two dozen required vitamins and minerals, and they probably can't identify where to find even one of these nutrients--let alone tell you how THEY are fulfilling these requirements for themselves.
The extremists are the average Americans.
As I read in one of my favorite books, most people take better care of their cars than their bodies. The mechanic has a tizzy if you wait an extra month before getting your oil changed. But the doctor doesn't really mind what you do, there's always a pill!
The middle road isn't the sum average of what everyone in your culture is doing. We are blessed to have some pretty sophisticated techniques now to understand what happens when we do certain things to our bodies. It's time to let science rather than the overwhelming number of unhealthy grocery and restaurant chains guide our idea of "moderation." Culture and popularity so often reign in these decisions such as what we should eat. And Americans pride themselves so much on their freedom, their open-mindedness, and their individuality.
So let those values run free a little!
My question is, what is moderation?
In a raw food book written by two siblings brought up on raw food (Victoria Boutenko's kids), they were visited by a child services worker at the door once. Some school kid's parents thought they were suffering from child abuse because of the strange lunches they brought to school. They asked the kids what they had for lunch today, and, knowing what this child services worker wanted to hear, they said "we ate McDonald's." The person was satisfied and left.
Eating pizza and burgers is considered moderation today, an average middle-of-the-road diet. Wasn't it just 50 years ago that people commonly had 3-martini lunches? Old movies just crack me up because there's barely a scene where the characters aren't drinking straight whiskey, bourbon, or scotch every time they're home. That was moderation.
Then you tell someone you're going to eat an incredible variety of plant foods and not cook them, and they think you've fallen off the deep end. But slicing potatoes and deep-frying them in grease--that makes sense. The only nutritional concept they're familiar with is protein--that's in meat!! But ask them where they're getting the maybe two dozen required vitamins and minerals, and they probably can't identify where to find even one of these nutrients--let alone tell you how THEY are fulfilling these requirements for themselves.
The extremists are the average Americans.
As I read in one of my favorite books, most people take better care of their cars than their bodies. The mechanic has a tizzy if you wait an extra month before getting your oil changed. But the doctor doesn't really mind what you do, there's always a pill!
The middle road isn't the sum average of what everyone in your culture is doing. We are blessed to have some pretty sophisticated techniques now to understand what happens when we do certain things to our bodies. It's time to let science rather than the overwhelming number of unhealthy grocery and restaurant chains guide our idea of "moderation." Culture and popularity so often reign in these decisions such as what we should eat. And Americans pride themselves so much on their freedom, their open-mindedness, and their individuality.
So let those values run free a little!
Friday, February 5, 2010
Meditation: a health requirement
today's lunch: marinated portobello mushroom sandwich with avocado, lettuce, and tomato on raw sprouted grain bread...delicious
I know it can be tiring to hear about all the new things they have to do every day in order to be healthy. It IS a lot of work when you grow up in a modernized society where we are supposed to work at least 40 hours/week, go drinking with your friends, get enough sleep, etc. All these obligations take time.
However, nothing is more important than health. If you are in pain or unable to enjoy life with others, little else will really matter to you.
When I hear people say they don't have time for such things, what I automatically want to ask them is, "how many hours of TV do you watch per week?" Exercise can only take 3-4 hours per week, and meditation as little as 1-2 hours per week. Can we not eliminate a few of our favorite programs to lengthen our lives and dramatically improve our quality of living?
If you don't make your health a priority, this so-called civilization WILL drag you down and you will be sucked into reality shows, potato chips, and a half-asleep, sedated kind of awareness.
So, yes, no one else may be doing it, but: you have to exercise regularly. You just do. You have to eat foods in their whole, original form. You may not buy things that come in boxes. You may not eat at a fast-food restaurant. You may not eat un-organic meat or dairy products. Yes, I am issuing an ultimatum.
So this one more thing... You have to do it too. You have to meditate.
Let me say right away that meditation does not necessarily equal keeping the mind silent for a certain duration. This may be one type of meditation, and it seems to be meditation's definition to most people. However, I expect this to be a huge deterrent to an otherwise interested person--this the hardest meditation technique out there!! Meditation can be extremely simple and easy.
First of all, what is meditation? There are a lot of ways of looking at this word. Meditation can be a quiet walk in the park and it can be an 8-hour marathon during a retreat. My definition of meditation is a state of receptivity and quiet where you stop doing or thinking about any physical or worldly matter.
What generally happens during meditation, when your intention is set, is divine energy comes down through the top of the head. Energy is simply your life force. It keeps you alive and "energized" when, without this energy, the physical body would die. When we quiet ourselves, we open ourselves to this divine energy.
We are all already connected to it. Every living thing has what is called a spiritual cord going out from the top of the head to this infinite source. In the average person, this cord is very thin, like a thread. In a regular meditator, it is wider. In a saint or highly developed teacher, it can be much wider than the physical body. The larger your cord, the bigger the supply of steady energy. During meditation, the cord expands and then partially retracts again afterward. It's one of your spiritual muscle, and you want to make it as strong as you can.
So you don't have to have a perfectly quiet mind to let this energy in. You just have to be still and set the intention to meditate, to be in a state of relaxation and peace and to receive healing and rejuvenation. Set this intention or ask for it specifically...and I promise you will be heard.
Meditation is your metaphysical daily exercise routine. Remember, healing can be done on a physical or energetic level or both. Energy healing can often be faster than physical. If you are already charging up your energy body daily, you are healing yourself energetically daily. This is extremely powerful.
You will notice significant changes over time if you make this a regular practice. I can tell you what you might expect, or you can just try it yourself. There's already enough written on this topic. Everyone is different, and there's no need to believe what I am saying. Just try it for yourself and prove or dis-prove it.
One thing I've noticed with myself is that if I go a long time without meditation, I start to get slightly depressed. The world also starts looking very one-dimensional, dull, depressing, linear, and also infuriating. Everything is infused with energy and has its own "magic." You will have very little sense of this truth if you have no energetic healing or meditation experience to expand yourself. Meditation gives me a sense of excitement.
So, yes, robust health does take time. But your meditation doesn't have to take longer than 15 minutes a day. And at least you don't need to pay for a gym membership....
P.S. At pranichealing.com you can purchase the CD for the Meditation on Twin Hearts. It takes 20 minutes and is extremely powerful. It is designed to flush out the energy body of negativity and congestion and then powerfully energize it.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Nobody's Perfect
Today's raw dessert: a banana smothered in raw chocolate sauce, peanut butter, and a little berry smoothie...SOooo good
I had too much to drink last night.
I know--horrible! After making the biggest commitment to my health possible, I not only indulged but over-indulged. It amounted to 3 glasses of sangria and then one glass of wine we split which doesn't sound like that much, but my tolerance is pretty low these days. Which I am proud of, by the way!
As I wrote to Elizabeth who made a comment asking whether wine was pasteurized, it's uncertain. I cannot find that information anywhere on the internet--just a lot of speculation. I am guessing some is pasteurized and some isn't, but it's not something written on any label. I have read in one of my raw food books that organic wine is not pasteurized, and in another raw food book, there are recipes containing wine plus a delicious-looking recipe for sangria. A lot of raw foodies don't drink alcohol which makes the most sense to me, but I am not ready to cut that out 100% yet.
My goal was to occasionally indulge in only one glass per "occasion." And to have as few of these occasions as possible. Right now, though, I feel like swearing off the stuff for the whole 2-month period.... but I really don't want to make promises I can't keep. For now, I'll leave that one open.
Burdened with guilt as I am, and keeping in mind one other significant food slip-up two days ago, I am starting the two months over. The whole point of this way of eating is to FEEL GOOD!!! I should be feeling amazing by now and woke up feeling so far from that, it was ridiculous.
Taaaaaake 2!
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Protein
I was all excited to write my little schpeal about protein, and in looking up a few facts I found a web page that is so far superior to anything I could have written, I am just going to be totally unoriginal and paste a few things, make a few comments, and then put the link to the page at the end. Sorry, but it's more important to portray the best info than to come up with something original in this case!
To start: no dietary concept has been more hyped up than the one of protein.
This has an extremely simple reason, and it is that certain powerful people stand to gain a lot of money from their businesses if we think their product is nutritionally superior a.k.a. the meat and dairy associations. Otherwise, why wouldn't the average person know how much selenium, potassium, and vitamin D they need? Yet everyone knows about protein and calcium. This is sly corporate marketing and nothing else.
Did you know the beef and dairy associations supply free "educational" materials to children in schools? They get to color in pictures of happy cows on the farm to learn about nutrition: protein and calcium! What else is there?!?
I started doing some research to see which plant foods are complete protein because a few were mentioned in my raw food book, and I was surprised because of course I learned that no plant food contains all essential amino acids. Well, if I'm not the dumbest vegetarian that ever lived.
Here's some plant foods that contain all essential amino acids:
brown rice, tomatoes, potatoes, green peppers, corn, lettuce, celery, cucumbers, oats, carrots, broccoli, pinto beans....and more. Maca contains all essential and unessential amino acids, along with some other superfoods.
The most everyday, common foods any American eats...
We have been duped.
The plant food with the lowest percentage of protein is the potato at 10% protein. Even the poor Irish farmers from the old days who had to sometimes survive on potatoes and water didn't have a protein deficiency.
Again, from this website:
"It's really meat that's incomplete:
When you think about it, it's kind of silly to single out protein, just one of the many nutrients, just so we can declare plant proteins to be incomplete (although they're not). Why aren't we declaring meat to be an incomplete vitamin? Because it is, you know. For example, beef is completely devoid of Vitamin C, an essential nutrient without which you'd die. And beef doesn't just have a lower level of this essential nutrient, it has zero. So why didn't the authorities ever caution us that we need to combine beef with chicken to get a complete vitamin?
But actually, no combination of meat will make a complete vitamin, since every single kind of meat has zero Vitamin C. And it's deficient in other vitamins as well. So while plants aren't actually deficient in protein, meat is definitely deficient in vitamins. But I'm sure you never heard about vitamin deficiency in animal foods. All you've heard about is the supposed deficiency of protein in plants.
And speaking about biases, the whole protein-combining idea supposes that vegetarians are eating just one food, which is allegedly incomplete. Okay, how many people do you know who eat one food? And since nobody eats just one food, the whole idea of protein combining would be unnecessary anyway, even if it were true. So here again, what would be the point of harping on protein combining when it doesn't matter?"
The World Health Organization recommends the diet be 5% protein. Mother's breast milk is 2% protein (although this website says 5%--I have always read 2%). There is no known death on record from lack of protein. The only way NOT to get your required protein is to not get a significant number of calories per day.
from http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/protein.html :
"We never talk about protein anymore, because it's absolutely not an issue, even among children," says Marion Nestle, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Nutrition, Food and Hotel Management at New York University. "If anything, we talk about the dangers of high-protein diets. Getting enough is simply a matter of getting enough calories."4.3
"'There was no basis for [protein combining] that I could see.... I began calling around and talking to people and asking them what the justification was for saying that you had to complement proteins, and there was none. And what I got instead was some interesting insight from people who were knowledgeable and actually felt that there was probably no need to complement proteins. So we went ahead and made that change in the paper. [Note: The paper was approved by peer review and by a delegation vote before becoming official.] And it was a couple of years after that that Vernon Young and Peter Pellet published their paper that became the definitive contemporary guide to protein metabolism in humans. And it also confirmed that complementing proteins at meals was totally unnecessary.8.5"
Let me repeat this: The person who wrote the American Dietetic Association's position paper described above said that complementing proteins at meals is "totally unnecessary".
There's a very easy way to see the completeness of plant proteins, that most nutrition writers haven't bothered to do: Look at what's actually in the food! It's not like this is a secret; that data has been publicly available from the USDA for decades, and now the USDA's database is even online.4'"
Did you know one teaspoon of sea kelp dissolved in water has 1,000 times the calcium of a glass of milk? 1,000 times the calcium! If we care so much about calcium, why don't we know that? Green leafy vegetables are a fabulous source of this essential mineral. The average person knows nothing about nutrition save the ridiculous claims and myths perpetrated by those who stand to gain from our purchase of animal products.
Vitamin B12 is one a lot of people have heard about because we have learned it can't be had without meat and dairy, and this PROVES we must eat meat and dairy! Humans need five millionths of a gram per day. The average meat eater can go vegan and not come up with a deficiency in this for over a decade because there is a massive quantity of it in a piece of meat. This is how out of proportion meat is with human dietary needs. Yet animal products are not the only source; otherwise, how could traditional vegan cultures survive without this necessary vitamin? Traditional vegan cultures do not have a deficiency in B12 for a simple reason: it is present in dirt and they do not meticulously wash their vegetables as we do. You can go without washing your (organic) produce and take in enough B12--again, only 5 millionths of a gram per day is needed.
What IS so special about meat? I have yet to hear of a miracle meat or egg that has helped eliminate free radicals in the body or protects against cancer. Yet we learn of new miracle plant foods every day from superfoods, to cancer-curing plants, to everything in between.
The human body, based on its teeth, saliva, stomach acid, and intestines, is an herbivore's body. As this website states, "we are most similar to other herbivores and drastically different from omnivores and carnivores." My best friend was Pre-Med in college, and her Anatomy & Physiology teacher, a Ph.D., said the same thing. The most common cause of choking death is eating meat, and animal omnivores and carnivores do not have that problem.
If you don't believe me...please, see for yourself!
To start: no dietary concept has been more hyped up than the one of protein.
This has an extremely simple reason, and it is that certain powerful people stand to gain a lot of money from their businesses if we think their product is nutritionally superior a.k.a. the meat and dairy associations. Otherwise, why wouldn't the average person know how much selenium, potassium, and vitamin D they need? Yet everyone knows about protein and calcium. This is sly corporate marketing and nothing else.
Did you know the beef and dairy associations supply free "educational" materials to children in schools? They get to color in pictures of happy cows on the farm to learn about nutrition: protein and calcium! What else is there?!?
I started doing some research to see which plant foods are complete protein because a few were mentioned in my raw food book, and I was surprised because of course I learned that no plant food contains all essential amino acids. Well, if I'm not the dumbest vegetarian that ever lived.
Here's some plant foods that contain all essential amino acids:
brown rice, tomatoes, potatoes, green peppers, corn, lettuce, celery, cucumbers, oats, carrots, broccoli, pinto beans....and more. Maca contains all essential and unessential amino acids, along with some other superfoods.
The most everyday, common foods any American eats...
We have been duped.
The plant food with the lowest percentage of protein is the potato at 10% protein. Even the poor Irish farmers from the old days who had to sometimes survive on potatoes and water didn't have a protein deficiency.
Again, from this website:
"It's really meat that's incomplete:
When you think about it, it's kind of silly to single out protein, just one of the many nutrients, just so we can declare plant proteins to be incomplete (although they're not). Why aren't we declaring meat to be an incomplete vitamin? Because it is, you know. For example, beef is completely devoid of Vitamin C, an essential nutrient without which you'd die. And beef doesn't just have a lower level of this essential nutrient, it has zero. So why didn't the authorities ever caution us that we need to combine beef with chicken to get a complete vitamin?
But actually, no combination of meat will make a complete vitamin, since every single kind of meat has zero Vitamin C. And it's deficient in other vitamins as well. So while plants aren't actually deficient in protein, meat is definitely deficient in vitamins. But I'm sure you never heard about vitamin deficiency in animal foods. All you've heard about is the supposed deficiency of protein in plants.
And speaking about biases, the whole protein-combining idea supposes that vegetarians are eating just one food, which is allegedly incomplete. Okay, how many people do you know who eat one food? And since nobody eats just one food, the whole idea of protein combining would be unnecessary anyway, even if it were true. So here again, what would be the point of harping on protein combining when it doesn't matter?"
The World Health Organization recommends the diet be 5% protein. Mother's breast milk is 2% protein (although this website says 5%--I have always read 2%). There is no known death on record from lack of protein. The only way NOT to get your required protein is to not get a significant number of calories per day.
from http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/protein.html :
"We never talk about protein anymore, because it's absolutely not an issue, even among children," says Marion Nestle, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Nutrition, Food and Hotel Management at New York University. "If anything, we talk about the dangers of high-protein diets. Getting enough is simply a matter of getting enough calories."4.3
"'There was no basis for [protein combining] that I could see.... I began calling around and talking to people and asking them what the justification was for saying that you had to complement proteins, and there was none. And what I got instead was some interesting insight from people who were knowledgeable and actually felt that there was probably no need to complement proteins. So we went ahead and made that change in the paper. [Note: The paper was approved by peer review and by a delegation vote before becoming official.] And it was a couple of years after that that Vernon Young and Peter Pellet published their paper that became the definitive contemporary guide to protein metabolism in humans. And it also confirmed that complementing proteins at meals was totally unnecessary.8.5"
Let me repeat this: The person who wrote the American Dietetic Association's position paper described above said that complementing proteins at meals is "totally unnecessary".
There's a very easy way to see the completeness of plant proteins, that most nutrition writers haven't bothered to do: Look at what's actually in the food! It's not like this is a secret; that data has been publicly available from the USDA for decades, and now the USDA's database is even online.4'"
Did you know one teaspoon of sea kelp dissolved in water has 1,000 times the calcium of a glass of milk? 1,000 times the calcium! If we care so much about calcium, why don't we know that? Green leafy vegetables are a fabulous source of this essential mineral. The average person knows nothing about nutrition save the ridiculous claims and myths perpetrated by those who stand to gain from our purchase of animal products.
Vitamin B12 is one a lot of people have heard about because we have learned it can't be had without meat and dairy, and this PROVES we must eat meat and dairy! Humans need five millionths of a gram per day. The average meat eater can go vegan and not come up with a deficiency in this for over a decade because there is a massive quantity of it in a piece of meat. This is how out of proportion meat is with human dietary needs. Yet animal products are not the only source; otherwise, how could traditional vegan cultures survive without this necessary vitamin? Traditional vegan cultures do not have a deficiency in B12 for a simple reason: it is present in dirt and they do not meticulously wash their vegetables as we do. You can go without washing your (organic) produce and take in enough B12--again, only 5 millionths of a gram per day is needed.
What IS so special about meat? I have yet to hear of a miracle meat or egg that has helped eliminate free radicals in the body or protects against cancer. Yet we learn of new miracle plant foods every day from superfoods, to cancer-curing plants, to everything in between.
The human body, based on its teeth, saliva, stomach acid, and intestines, is an herbivore's body. As this website states, "we are most similar to other herbivores and drastically different from omnivores and carnivores." My best friend was Pre-Med in college, and her Anatomy & Physiology teacher, a Ph.D., said the same thing. The most common cause of choking death is eating meat, and animal omnivores and carnivores do not have that problem.
If you don't believe me...please, see for yourself!
Monday, January 25, 2010
100% Raw for 2 months!
I woke up today, feeling kind of groggy, and thought, "I can't wait till I do my next raw food experiment and have that amazing, energized feeling again, it will feel so good." And I have had this thought every single day for at least a month. I figured I'd start in a week or two, after having received another new raw book in the mail that I ordered. But today, the absurdity of looking forward to starting this eating plan when I can start it any minute I want finally hit me. So...nothing to look forward to--it's here!
The book I ordered is The Sunfood Diet Success System by David Wolfe, and it is fantastic. Everything you need to know is finally in one book. The other books I've read still left me with a lot of unanswered questions, mostly about the science/nutrition aspects. This guy has degrees in mechanical and environmental engineering, law, and a master's in nutrition. Both his parents are doctors. So he doesn't do anything that doesn't hold up scientifically, and he explains every detail to you in this book....at last. I am so totally fired up.
Welcome back: mental clarity, physical energy, total calmness, no food cravings, no under-eye circles, reduced weight, and 7 hours or less of sleep a night.
I am going to focus more this time on meditation and Pranic Healing and what changes happen on this food because it's common knowledge that the lighter the body is, the more energy it can hold. This will make you more sensitive and more powerful as a healer. I am really excited to see what happens with meditation experiences as well.
I did one month of 100% raw last June and loved it but caved into social pressure in the end. I have never been able to sleep under 9 hours for some strange reason, and I enjoyed 6.5-7 hour nights and woke up feeling like a million bucks. It is a huge time-saver, as you can imagine. The most amazing thing besides that was the total calmness I experienced. I have read many times that bad food makes you mentally negative, impatient, and generally miserable, but I didn't really believe it. I always thought, "I'm in control of my emotions, and if I'm negative, that's my fault for not being in control of my own mind." That may be true to some extent, but if you want to stop trying to be calm and peaceful and have it just come upon you effortlessly, eat only raw vegan food. Even when my husband did something "irritating," it didn't even irritate me, I literally didn't care and just felt love and happiness toward him. Some of the things that happen to you when you eat this way sound literally impossible. But if you don't believe me, try it yourself! The above book is the best one I've read (out of 4). It's the best place to start, I recommend it to everyone.
The book I ordered is The Sunfood Diet Success System by David Wolfe, and it is fantastic. Everything you need to know is finally in one book. The other books I've read still left me with a lot of unanswered questions, mostly about the science/nutrition aspects. This guy has degrees in mechanical and environmental engineering, law, and a master's in nutrition. Both his parents are doctors. So he doesn't do anything that doesn't hold up scientifically, and he explains every detail to you in this book....at last. I am so totally fired up.
Welcome back: mental clarity, physical energy, total calmness, no food cravings, no under-eye circles, reduced weight, and 7 hours or less of sleep a night.
I am going to focus more this time on meditation and Pranic Healing and what changes happen on this food because it's common knowledge that the lighter the body is, the more energy it can hold. This will make you more sensitive and more powerful as a healer. I am really excited to see what happens with meditation experiences as well.
I did one month of 100% raw last June and loved it but caved into social pressure in the end. I have never been able to sleep under 9 hours for some strange reason, and I enjoyed 6.5-7 hour nights and woke up feeling like a million bucks. It is a huge time-saver, as you can imagine. The most amazing thing besides that was the total calmness I experienced. I have read many times that bad food makes you mentally negative, impatient, and generally miserable, but I didn't really believe it. I always thought, "I'm in control of my emotions, and if I'm negative, that's my fault for not being in control of my own mind." That may be true to some extent, but if you want to stop trying to be calm and peaceful and have it just come upon you effortlessly, eat only raw vegan food. Even when my husband did something "irritating," it didn't even irritate me, I literally didn't care and just felt love and happiness toward him. Some of the things that happen to you when you eat this way sound literally impossible. But if you don't believe me, try it yourself! The above book is the best one I've read (out of 4). It's the best place to start, I recommend it to everyone.
Friday, January 22, 2010
projectaskgod.com
This website has totally changed my day-to-day view of spirituality. I have read many books on the subject and understand the whole topic to be a lot more dynamic than "God helped us write a book called the Bible 2,000 years ago." But this blog really takes it to the next level.
The writer of this blog is Brian Scibetta. He's an 18-year-old indigo from Portland, OR who started the blog, I think, when he was only 16.
First of all, what is an indigo? You usually see this term as "indigo child," but in talking about someone in their teens or older, the word "child" doesn't really work, so I leave it off. However, most indigos are young because this is a new vibration of human that did not exist before this time in human history.
People can be described based on the dominant color in their aura. Everyone has one or two dominant colors that will determine their personality or maybe worldview or possibly spiritual abilities to a certain degree. The indigos are called as such because the dominant color in their aura is the color indigo. These people are basically born with more advanced levels of perception. Although many people throughout history have had clairvoyant and other special senses, indigos universally have heightened perception in one or more ways which can include clairvoyance, advanced healing abilities, and general increased awareness that in children sometimes gets labeled as ADD. (It's not attention deficit but attention surplus, being able to focus on so much at the same time.) They see easily through lies and other nonsense and cannot be fooled in any way. This is a very brief description and I am probably leaving a lot out, but that's the general idea. Please do more research if you are interested--there's a fabulous book you can read called The Children of Now.
Brian has the ability to speak directly to God and to his and others' angels. He is also clairvoyant and is a powerful energy healer. He started doing readings for people a few years ago and a little later started the blog. The blog is a way for any visitor to submit a question for God, and Brian will answer it for free (one per person, please) and post it. Reading this blog is beyond-fascinating, and reading it regularly will bring an element of spirituality to your daily life, and an awareness otherwise difficult to gain. I think the blog, with chosen questions and answers, would make a great book.
If you read it for a period of months, you will start knowing most answers to questions before they are written. You start to see the patterns of how life works whether regarding romantic relationships, getting a job, how to find The One, forgiveness, loved ones who have passed away, how angels work, how to heal yourself, and also some larger mysteries regarding religion, spirituality, and the universe.
This is what I've learned from reading it regularly:
-Everyone has at least one soul mate option, and as soon as you make room for this person in your life (a.k.a. end your current unsatisfactory relationship), decide exactly what you want in that person, and say no to everyone else along the way, then ask God to bring them, that person will come.
-Everyone has at least one angel with them all the time, and this being is with you to help you with any matter, large or small. they cannot help unless you ask!!!! They must be invited in to heal you, to heal others, to remove roadblocks in your life, to give you advice, and everything else. Talk to them every day and multiple times a day!! You don't have to know how many or what their names are (if they have names), just know they are there. They are waiting to hear from you!
-There are negative forces that can impact us, though they are very weak. However, if you are sick, having strange nightmares, pains, or addictions, it could be from such negativity. It is easy to remove this--just ask your angels and/or God to do so, and it will happen instantly! To keep your energy strong and resistant against such pests, meditate regularly.
-After death, there is only heaven.
-Many of us are not getting what we want because we don't know what we want. If you are not getting what you want, get very very clear on what it is you want. Then ask God and your angels to help bring it to you.
-Lastly and most importantly: MEDITATE. This is not an option. I repeat, this is not an option. Meditation is not for some. It is for all. It is in virtually every answer to every question. Why? When you meditate, you invite God in. It's much harder for God to be with you in a significant, helpful way if you don't invite Him in and spend at least 15 or so minutes a day with Him. We can live and breathe because of two factors: physical energy and spiritual energy. When you meditate, you "eat" your spiritual energy for the day. You can starve yourself of this energy all your life, but you'll make it much harder on yourself in every single area. This is the #1 way for God to communicate with you. You may not hear Him say during meditation, "hey, buddy, quit your job," but you will start to notice over time that your thinking becomes clearer, you seem to know better what to do in different situations, and your own negative thoughts seem reduced which is because they are getting cleaned out on a regular basis. Meditation is your spiritual bath. It cleans out the mental/emotional crappy buildup. In the same way, your physical bath cleans out dirty physical buildup.
You can purchase Brian's meditation CD from his website, or you can just sit in a very quiet spot and invite God and your angels to heal you and bring you peace and clarity. Then just sit in a receptive, relaxing position for several minutes. I am partial to the Meditation on Twin Hearts, created by Master Choa Kok Sui and available from the Pranic Healing website www.pranichealing.com. It is a very powerful guided meditation that flushes out the energy body and then charges it with lots of fresh prana (energy). It will vastly increase your divine connection over time, and you will notice serious changes in your life if you practice it regularly, which I can tell you from experience.
And much, much more.
I can only recommend to everyone that they read this blog, it's 20 times better than most self-help books on the market, and it's 100% free to read! Plus, ask a question. It is awe-inspiring to hear God talk to you this way, and you will feel peace in reading the answer to your heart's question. For a full reading from Brian, click on the link to his website from the blog for info. I have had a reading with him myself, and it was amazing.
The writer of this blog is Brian Scibetta. He's an 18-year-old indigo from Portland, OR who started the blog, I think, when he was only 16.
First of all, what is an indigo? You usually see this term as "indigo child," but in talking about someone in their teens or older, the word "child" doesn't really work, so I leave it off. However, most indigos are young because this is a new vibration of human that did not exist before this time in human history.
People can be described based on the dominant color in their aura. Everyone has one or two dominant colors that will determine their personality or maybe worldview or possibly spiritual abilities to a certain degree. The indigos are called as such because the dominant color in their aura is the color indigo. These people are basically born with more advanced levels of perception. Although many people throughout history have had clairvoyant and other special senses, indigos universally have heightened perception in one or more ways which can include clairvoyance, advanced healing abilities, and general increased awareness that in children sometimes gets labeled as ADD. (It's not attention deficit but attention surplus, being able to focus on so much at the same time.) They see easily through lies and other nonsense and cannot be fooled in any way. This is a very brief description and I am probably leaving a lot out, but that's the general idea. Please do more research if you are interested--there's a fabulous book you can read called The Children of Now.
Brian has the ability to speak directly to God and to his and others' angels. He is also clairvoyant and is a powerful energy healer. He started doing readings for people a few years ago and a little later started the blog. The blog is a way for any visitor to submit a question for God, and Brian will answer it for free (one per person, please) and post it. Reading this blog is beyond-fascinating, and reading it regularly will bring an element of spirituality to your daily life, and an awareness otherwise difficult to gain. I think the blog, with chosen questions and answers, would make a great book.
If you read it for a period of months, you will start knowing most answers to questions before they are written. You start to see the patterns of how life works whether regarding romantic relationships, getting a job, how to find The One, forgiveness, loved ones who have passed away, how angels work, how to heal yourself, and also some larger mysteries regarding religion, spirituality, and the universe.
This is what I've learned from reading it regularly:
-Everyone has at least one soul mate option, and as soon as you make room for this person in your life (a.k.a. end your current unsatisfactory relationship), decide exactly what you want in that person, and say no to everyone else along the way, then ask God to bring them, that person will come.
-Everyone has at least one angel with them all the time, and this being is with you to help you with any matter, large or small. they cannot help unless you ask!!!! They must be invited in to heal you, to heal others, to remove roadblocks in your life, to give you advice, and everything else. Talk to them every day and multiple times a day!! You don't have to know how many or what their names are (if they have names), just know they are there. They are waiting to hear from you!
-There are negative forces that can impact us, though they are very weak. However, if you are sick, having strange nightmares, pains, or addictions, it could be from such negativity. It is easy to remove this--just ask your angels and/or God to do so, and it will happen instantly! To keep your energy strong and resistant against such pests, meditate regularly.
-After death, there is only heaven.
-Many of us are not getting what we want because we don't know what we want. If you are not getting what you want, get very very clear on what it is you want. Then ask God and your angels to help bring it to you.
-Lastly and most importantly: MEDITATE. This is not an option. I repeat, this is not an option. Meditation is not for some. It is for all. It is in virtually every answer to every question. Why? When you meditate, you invite God in. It's much harder for God to be with you in a significant, helpful way if you don't invite Him in and spend at least 15 or so minutes a day with Him. We can live and breathe because of two factors: physical energy and spiritual energy. When you meditate, you "eat" your spiritual energy for the day. You can starve yourself of this energy all your life, but you'll make it much harder on yourself in every single area. This is the #1 way for God to communicate with you. You may not hear Him say during meditation, "hey, buddy, quit your job," but you will start to notice over time that your thinking becomes clearer, you seem to know better what to do in different situations, and your own negative thoughts seem reduced which is because they are getting cleaned out on a regular basis. Meditation is your spiritual bath. It cleans out the mental/emotional crappy buildup. In the same way, your physical bath cleans out dirty physical buildup.
You can purchase Brian's meditation CD from his website, or you can just sit in a very quiet spot and invite God and your angels to heal you and bring you peace and clarity. Then just sit in a receptive, relaxing position for several minutes. I am partial to the Meditation on Twin Hearts, created by Master Choa Kok Sui and available from the Pranic Healing website www.pranichealing.com. It is a very powerful guided meditation that flushes out the energy body and then charges it with lots of fresh prana (energy). It will vastly increase your divine connection over time, and you will notice serious changes in your life if you practice it regularly, which I can tell you from experience.
And much, much more.
I can only recommend to everyone that they read this blog, it's 20 times better than most self-help books on the market, and it's 100% free to read! Plus, ask a question. It is awe-inspiring to hear God talk to you this way, and you will feel peace in reading the answer to your heart's question. For a full reading from Brian, click on the link to his website from the blog for info. I have had a reading with him myself, and it was amazing.
I miss going out
I still go out pretty frequently, so I don't miss actually going--I miss how it used to be. I could eat and drink anything and feel fine, even healthy. I didn't over-analyze it or feel too guilty. There were lots of restaurants I loved to go to, and it was fun to choose which one I would eat at.
Now, to go out to dinner, we spend a bunch of money on food that isn't healthy--it's loaded with oil and salt and probably plenty of cheese (we are vegetarian and sometimes go for cheese-involved dishes). The portions are big so we always over-eat. The food tastes good but doesn't give you a good feeling after eating it. There is no way to eat vegetarian and avoid the foods I am trying to now cut out: deep-fried food, cheese, bread, and pasta. I know, laughable to even try! When we try to choose where to go, it's just a question of which is the "least bad" for us and still has enough atmosphere to be enjoyable.
On top of that, the food is not organic. The strict standards we have for household food disappear when we go to restaurants, so we will consume genetically-modified food and food sprayed with chemicals. In the case of dairy, we are purchasing cheese from tortured, drug-injected cows--products we would never buy at the store. I used to not bother with that because eating out doesn't happen every day. Yet I still work at a restaurant, I end up eating there or bringing food home a couple of times a week in addition to a once a week or so dinner out together. It does add up.
If there was just a restaurant that actually prepared food like what we eat at home! (That was affordable.) I can't stop going out. I'm a libra! I love to go cozy up in a candle-lit restaurant where I can sit and be waited on. I like sitting next to my husband with no television or laptop nearby where we will just talk. Sometimes I even get fancy and wear something besides my sweatpants!
I don't think it will be long before someone capitalizes on our interest in healthy, organic food at a nice restaurant--for cheap! I can't go to a $30/plate dinner every week. I mean a regular restaurant with a happy hour menu and all of that with something besides french fries on it.
And one last thing: Coffee shops. Can we please get something to eat besides bread and sugar products in the morning? These so-called breakfast foods of scones, chocolate croissants, bagels, and banana breads are nothing more than desserts wrapped in breakfast food vocabulary. I allow myself the coffee indulgence already, do you have to push my discipline by putting that pastry case in front of me every morning??
Now, to go out to dinner, we spend a bunch of money on food that isn't healthy--it's loaded with oil and salt and probably plenty of cheese (we are vegetarian and sometimes go for cheese-involved dishes). The portions are big so we always over-eat. The food tastes good but doesn't give you a good feeling after eating it. There is no way to eat vegetarian and avoid the foods I am trying to now cut out: deep-fried food, cheese, bread, and pasta. I know, laughable to even try! When we try to choose where to go, it's just a question of which is the "least bad" for us and still has enough atmosphere to be enjoyable.
On top of that, the food is not organic. The strict standards we have for household food disappear when we go to restaurants, so we will consume genetically-modified food and food sprayed with chemicals. In the case of dairy, we are purchasing cheese from tortured, drug-injected cows--products we would never buy at the store. I used to not bother with that because eating out doesn't happen every day. Yet I still work at a restaurant, I end up eating there or bringing food home a couple of times a week in addition to a once a week or so dinner out together. It does add up.
If there was just a restaurant that actually prepared food like what we eat at home! (That was affordable.) I can't stop going out. I'm a libra! I love to go cozy up in a candle-lit restaurant where I can sit and be waited on. I like sitting next to my husband with no television or laptop nearby where we will just talk. Sometimes I even get fancy and wear something besides my sweatpants!
I don't think it will be long before someone capitalizes on our interest in healthy, organic food at a nice restaurant--for cheap! I can't go to a $30/plate dinner every week. I mean a regular restaurant with a happy hour menu and all of that with something besides french fries on it.
And one last thing: Coffee shops. Can we please get something to eat besides bread and sugar products in the morning? These so-called breakfast foods of scones, chocolate croissants, bagels, and banana breads are nothing more than desserts wrapped in breakfast food vocabulary. I allow myself the coffee indulgence already, do you have to push my discipline by putting that pastry case in front of me every morning??
Sunday, January 17, 2010
A New Idea of Healthcare
It's not only hard to imagine our world without a gigantic medical industry with its gigantic health insurance industry and gigantic pharmaceutical industry, it's hardly even been attempted.
I watched a David Wolfe video (prominent raw food expert), and he mentioned that you can't ask a fish about water because it's "right here," and he put his hand on his face, covering it with his fingers spread out. In the same way, we are so used to our diseases, doctors, pills, that we have never even looked at it. They are the water we're swimming in.
Conversations with God says what we have is a "disease-care system," not a healthcare system.
Consider this: In some traditional Indian villages, the village doctor would go around to each home in the village on a regular basis, and was paid by every healthy person present. Does this make sense to you? It's such "backwards" logic to us, we have to think about it. The presence of sick people meant the doctor had not done the best job.
Who do you owe your health to? I hope you're buying their book! I am happy to pay PCC or the farmers at the market more, for they keep me from having to go to the doctor in the first place! I am saving not just money but suffering and pain.
By a simple flip of our thinking, the solution is so obvious, we wonder that we never saw it before. As my parents used to say when I couldn't find something I was looking for that was right by me, "if it gets any closer, it's going to bite you." Enough of us have been bitten by the obvious to be paying for prevention, saving our short- and long-term health on top of the environment in the form of supporting organic farming.
Things will go on much longer this way. Nowadays, when someone is diagnosed with cancer, they go home and get on the Internet before they submit themselves to drugs and radiation. Some have healed themselves through their own self-education in ways their own doctor SAID was physically impossible. They go back to see their doctor after their full recovery, and the guy or gal literally can't believe they are seeing the person alive in front of their eyes. When an uneducated common person can read some free stuff online, change their diet/lifestyle, and CURE CANCER, how much longer do you think we'll have to fund these research studies that cost millions upon billions of dollars to "find a cure"? It's just a matter of time.
How many people have already fired their doctor? You can now go to an un-trained energy healer who can accomplish more in an hour than many have accomplished in years of advice from mainstream health practitioners and pills. Doctors will claim to be the most scientific-minded folks of anyone, yet they are in total denial of their abysmal success rates in healing. At the same time, they deny the better success rates of natural, nutrition, and energy healing remedies!
The sad truth for mainstream medical practitioners is that the combination of proper, natural, organic nutrition and energy healing would eliminate or heal probably 80-90% of ailments and prevent the vast majority from ever occurring in the first place.
I get a thrill when I imagine our future: herb and vegetable gardens at every home, farmers markets in every neighborhood, an energy healer in the average health office. High school health class requiring instruction in honest nutrition education (without the free "educational" materials from the Dairy and Beef Associations), herbal remedies, energy anatomy, and simple vegetable gardening skills. In California, some elementary schools have school gardens which the students work in and then EAT FROM at their school cafeteria! I cannot think of anything smarter or healthier.
I watched a David Wolfe video (prominent raw food expert), and he mentioned that you can't ask a fish about water because it's "right here," and he put his hand on his face, covering it with his fingers spread out. In the same way, we are so used to our diseases, doctors, pills, that we have never even looked at it. They are the water we're swimming in.
Conversations with God says what we have is a "disease-care system," not a healthcare system.
Consider this: In some traditional Indian villages, the village doctor would go around to each home in the village on a regular basis, and was paid by every healthy person present. Does this make sense to you? It's such "backwards" logic to us, we have to think about it. The presence of sick people meant the doctor had not done the best job.
Who do you owe your health to? I hope you're buying their book! I am happy to pay PCC or the farmers at the market more, for they keep me from having to go to the doctor in the first place! I am saving not just money but suffering and pain.
By a simple flip of our thinking, the solution is so obvious, we wonder that we never saw it before. As my parents used to say when I couldn't find something I was looking for that was right by me, "if it gets any closer, it's going to bite you." Enough of us have been bitten by the obvious to be paying for prevention, saving our short- and long-term health on top of the environment in the form of supporting organic farming.
Things will go on much longer this way. Nowadays, when someone is diagnosed with cancer, they go home and get on the Internet before they submit themselves to drugs and radiation. Some have healed themselves through their own self-education in ways their own doctor SAID was physically impossible. They go back to see their doctor after their full recovery, and the guy or gal literally can't believe they are seeing the person alive in front of their eyes. When an uneducated common person can read some free stuff online, change their diet/lifestyle, and CURE CANCER, how much longer do you think we'll have to fund these research studies that cost millions upon billions of dollars to "find a cure"? It's just a matter of time.
How many people have already fired their doctor? You can now go to an un-trained energy healer who can accomplish more in an hour than many have accomplished in years of advice from mainstream health practitioners and pills. Doctors will claim to be the most scientific-minded folks of anyone, yet they are in total denial of their abysmal success rates in healing. At the same time, they deny the better success rates of natural, nutrition, and energy healing remedies!
The sad truth for mainstream medical practitioners is that the combination of proper, natural, organic nutrition and energy healing would eliminate or heal probably 80-90% of ailments and prevent the vast majority from ever occurring in the first place.
I get a thrill when I imagine our future: herb and vegetable gardens at every home, farmers markets in every neighborhood, an energy healer in the average health office. High school health class requiring instruction in honest nutrition education (without the free "educational" materials from the Dairy and Beef Associations), herbal remedies, energy anatomy, and simple vegetable gardening skills. In California, some elementary schools have school gardens which the students work in and then EAT FROM at their school cafeteria! I cannot think of anything smarter or healthier.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Green Smoothie Experiment
I almost called this the "The Accidental Experiment" because I wasn't trying to learn anything, but after drinking green smoothies regularly, I got kind of bored with them and stopped. I've never been nuts about them, but I learned about the health benefits of consuming raw greens, and it seemed like the easiest way, so I started doing it.
For those that have not read a bunch of raw food books as I have, eating food raw keeps the enzymes intact which the body needs for various functions. Cooked foods have no intact enzymes, and the body then uses up its own stores to digest food which is very taxing, especially after doing this year after year all your life. Some people really connect loss of enzyme reserves to aging. Aside from that, cooking food destroys 75-97% of the vitamins and minerals. This is huge. Even if you are eating spinach for dinner, if it's cooked, you're not getting many of the vitamins and minerals. (Add onto that if it's not organic. Non-organic fruits and vegetables have significantly less nutritional content.) It's a big shock to realize most of the food the average person eats isn't feeding their body at all.
Greens like kale are full of calcium and other vital nutrients. Consuming them raw is the absolute most nutritious way. The problem is that raw kale is a little tough to chew and doesn't taste great. For some, it can even be difficult to digest and give some feelings of indigestion. The reason for this is simple: we are meant to chew our food into a liquid, and doing this breaks down the tough cellulose wall of the plant. When we don't break down this wall with our teeth, our stomach can have a tough time with it. Your options are to chew your kale to death or stick it in a blender. Thank you, Vita-Mix!
In casual experiments, raw food teachers/coaches have noticed that consuming these raw greens regularly drastically reduces peoples' cravings for unhealthy cooked food such as fried foods, sugar, and cheese. Most will tell you that if you want to go raw, start first by adding green smoothies to your regular diet, and after you don't crave your usual foods, you know you'll be able to cut them out completely.
SO... as I said, I stopped drinking these, not thinking about any daily impacts to my life. I forgot I had made this important move but noticed I was feeling cranky, impatient, and then started thinking about food all the time, craving sugar, cheese, and fried foods. Now, if I hadn't eaten any of these all this time, I wouldn't have suddenly gotten cravings for them out of nowhere, but I occasionally do indulge. This time, though, a couple of indulgences turned me into an addict! The crappy food made me feel more sluggish and crappy, and it was this downward spiral. It wasn't until yesterday that I realized this had all started a couple of weeks ago when I took this extremely important component out of my diet! (duh)
Today, I am on to PCC Natural Market for some kale, collard greens, and spinach.
If you are interested in trying this yourself, here is the general formula to make one: 60% fruit and 40% greens. This makes it sweet and very drinkable. About 2 cups of water. Make sure there is enough water or you'll feel like you are chewing what should be a drink. You can go online for some more specific recipes. The Vita-Mix is the best blender because the blades turn at something like 500 mph which obliterates those cell walls quickly and easily. For other blenders, I would recommend leaving it in to blend for a good minute or two so it's broken down as thoroughly as possible.
This is the most powerful "diet" drink out there. Try it for yourself, and you will be amazed that you don't crave unhealthy foods anymore. It's miraculous.
A great way to drink these is to have them handy when you're doing something else like working on the computer. You'll mindlessly keep sipping away and consume a large quantity without thinking, "ok, here's my smoothie, now I have to drink it."
By the way, most people love them. You will probably just love the smoothies. I am weird and don't even really like fruit smoothies, I don't know why. My sister doesn't have any special fascination with raw food but makes one every day and LOVES it. So don't let ME get you down!
Enjoy!
For those that have not read a bunch of raw food books as I have, eating food raw keeps the enzymes intact which the body needs for various functions. Cooked foods have no intact enzymes, and the body then uses up its own stores to digest food which is very taxing, especially after doing this year after year all your life. Some people really connect loss of enzyme reserves to aging. Aside from that, cooking food destroys 75-97% of the vitamins and minerals. This is huge. Even if you are eating spinach for dinner, if it's cooked, you're not getting many of the vitamins and minerals. (Add onto that if it's not organic. Non-organic fruits and vegetables have significantly less nutritional content.) It's a big shock to realize most of the food the average person eats isn't feeding their body at all.
Greens like kale are full of calcium and other vital nutrients. Consuming them raw is the absolute most nutritious way. The problem is that raw kale is a little tough to chew and doesn't taste great. For some, it can even be difficult to digest and give some feelings of indigestion. The reason for this is simple: we are meant to chew our food into a liquid, and doing this breaks down the tough cellulose wall of the plant. When we don't break down this wall with our teeth, our stomach can have a tough time with it. Your options are to chew your kale to death or stick it in a blender. Thank you, Vita-Mix!
In casual experiments, raw food teachers/coaches have noticed that consuming these raw greens regularly drastically reduces peoples' cravings for unhealthy cooked food such as fried foods, sugar, and cheese. Most will tell you that if you want to go raw, start first by adding green smoothies to your regular diet, and after you don't crave your usual foods, you know you'll be able to cut them out completely.
SO... as I said, I stopped drinking these, not thinking about any daily impacts to my life. I forgot I had made this important move but noticed I was feeling cranky, impatient, and then started thinking about food all the time, craving sugar, cheese, and fried foods. Now, if I hadn't eaten any of these all this time, I wouldn't have suddenly gotten cravings for them out of nowhere, but I occasionally do indulge. This time, though, a couple of indulgences turned me into an addict! The crappy food made me feel more sluggish and crappy, and it was this downward spiral. It wasn't until yesterday that I realized this had all started a couple of weeks ago when I took this extremely important component out of my diet! (duh)
Today, I am on to PCC Natural Market for some kale, collard greens, and spinach.
If you are interested in trying this yourself, here is the general formula to make one: 60% fruit and 40% greens. This makes it sweet and very drinkable. About 2 cups of water. Make sure there is enough water or you'll feel like you are chewing what should be a drink. You can go online for some more specific recipes. The Vita-Mix is the best blender because the blades turn at something like 500 mph which obliterates those cell walls quickly and easily. For other blenders, I would recommend leaving it in to blend for a good minute or two so it's broken down as thoroughly as possible.
This is the most powerful "diet" drink out there. Try it for yourself, and you will be amazed that you don't crave unhealthy foods anymore. It's miraculous.
A great way to drink these is to have them handy when you're doing something else like working on the computer. You'll mindlessly keep sipping away and consume a large quantity without thinking, "ok, here's my smoothie, now I have to drink it."
By the way, most people love them. You will probably just love the smoothies. I am weird and don't even really like fruit smoothies, I don't know why. My sister doesn't have any special fascination with raw food but makes one every day and LOVES it. So don't let ME get you down!
Enjoy!
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Late Night at a Friend's...
Last night my husband and I went to our friends' house for our typical late-night dinner party. We ate an absolute ton of cooked food--rice, chapati (Indian bread, look like tortillas but wheat flour), dal, garbanzo curry, and a third curry I was not familiar with. There was wine and whisky floating around. Then truffles for dessert. I somehow ended up with a torturous case of the hiccups by the end of the night. I rode home in the car bent over, trying to be upside down, hold my breath, whatever.
Of course, we didn't get to bed until 2:00AM. And slept late. And woke up thoroughly groggy with that fuzzy head. Every time, I ask myself the same question: why? I know this is not good for me.
These are the days I say, "I'm going raw." No more heavy food. No more sugary desserts. No more bread!!!
Then I look in the fridge and see a carton and a half of eggs, a whole package of tortillas (to be treated as chapati), a new package of gardenburgers. How will I explain to my husband I won't eat any of it? He is so beyond-supportive of my nutritional schizophrenia. But I hate to yo-yo with him... "Honey? Can I make curry tonight? Will you eat it?" I've been hinting at him I want to go raw again (we did a month together of 100% raw and, actually, loved it--just got inconvenient in social situations so we set it aside to be decided upon later). I haven't heard any major objections. He likes us to eat the same things together, so I know if I do it, he will, by default, be part of it. Last time we did it, he lost 7 pounds and his skin got really clear. He got tons of compliments on his appearance....so I think he might be happy to experience some of that again!
I just want all those benefits back: never feeling heavy, tired, groggy. total mental clarity, a razor-sharp mind. never bloated. 7 hours of sleep a night and feeling like a million bucks every morning. energy for exercise, work, cleaning, everything. lost a couple of pounds. knowing you never put anything bad into your body that will hurt it or drag it down. better-looking skin. a lighter footprint on the planet and knowing you aren't giving one dollar to those nasty food corporations.
I might try to experiment with a compromise where everything eaten at home is 100% raw, but for socializing, some exceptions can be made. Or holidays with family. Anything with other, non-raw people, basically. Which we probably only do about twice a month. Won't get in the way of the goal...
*sigh* I'll keep you posted.
Of course, we didn't get to bed until 2:00AM. And slept late. And woke up thoroughly groggy with that fuzzy head. Every time, I ask myself the same question: why? I know this is not good for me.
These are the days I say, "I'm going raw." No more heavy food. No more sugary desserts. No more bread!!!
Then I look in the fridge and see a carton and a half of eggs, a whole package of tortillas (to be treated as chapati), a new package of gardenburgers. How will I explain to my husband I won't eat any of it? He is so beyond-supportive of my nutritional schizophrenia. But I hate to yo-yo with him... "Honey? Can I make curry tonight? Will you eat it?" I've been hinting at him I want to go raw again (we did a month together of 100% raw and, actually, loved it--just got inconvenient in social situations so we set it aside to be decided upon later). I haven't heard any major objections. He likes us to eat the same things together, so I know if I do it, he will, by default, be part of it. Last time we did it, he lost 7 pounds and his skin got really clear. He got tons of compliments on his appearance....so I think he might be happy to experience some of that again!
I just want all those benefits back: never feeling heavy, tired, groggy. total mental clarity, a razor-sharp mind. never bloated. 7 hours of sleep a night and feeling like a million bucks every morning. energy for exercise, work, cleaning, everything. lost a couple of pounds. knowing you never put anything bad into your body that will hurt it or drag it down. better-looking skin. a lighter footprint on the planet and knowing you aren't giving one dollar to those nasty food corporations.
I might try to experiment with a compromise where everything eaten at home is 100% raw, but for socializing, some exceptions can be made. Or holidays with family. Anything with other, non-raw people, basically. Which we probably only do about twice a month. Won't get in the way of the goal...
*sigh* I'll keep you posted.
Health and Wellness Fair
Just to let y'all know...
I will be at the Health and Wellness Fair this Wednesday from 11 to 1:00 at South Seattle Community College. The Pranic Healing table will be in the Women's Center, though the bulk of the tables will be in the Student Center room A.
You can get maps and directions at www.southseattle.edu/campus/map.html
I along with some other Pranic Healing buddies will hand out info and do free mini-healings.
Hope to see you there!
I will be at the Health and Wellness Fair this Wednesday from 11 to 1:00 at South Seattle Community College. The Pranic Healing table will be in the Women's Center, though the bulk of the tables will be in the Student Center room A.
You can get maps and directions at www.southseattle.edu/campus/map.html
I along with some other Pranic Healing buddies will hand out info and do free mini-healings.
Hope to see you there!
Fun at East-West Bookshop
Yesterday, I had a table at East-West Bookshop where I have been renting a healing room for the last six months. There were some books, pamphlets, informational sheets, and free coupons for 60-minute healings. It was a LOT of fun! I also did free mini-healings. I was a little afraid no one would come and talk to me, but I ended up doing back-to-back healings the entire time!
Everyone enjoyed their experience of Pranic Healing and took a coupon for a free full session. I had such a blast talking to all these people who already knew tons about natural health and energy healing. I got to chat with an aromatherapist, massage therapist, and astrologer! I just love that bookstore and wish I lived across the street from it! What a fabulous community of knowledgeable, wise, and positive souls!
I still have 19 coupons left that I would LOVE to get rid of!! Take me up on my offer of a free 60-minute Pranic Healing session and experience the bliss!!
Everyone enjoyed their experience of Pranic Healing and took a coupon for a free full session. I had such a blast talking to all these people who already knew tons about natural health and energy healing. I got to chat with an aromatherapist, massage therapist, and astrologer! I just love that bookstore and wish I lived across the street from it! What a fabulous community of knowledgeable, wise, and positive souls!
I still have 19 coupons left that I would LOVE to get rid of!! Take me up on my offer of a free 60-minute Pranic Healing session and experience the bliss!!
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