Olive You

For thousands of years and across myriad cultures and mythologies, the olive tree has been synonymous with peace and prosperity. And so are the fruits and oils from this tree.

I think of olive oil as our No. 1 dietary pain reliever and anti-inflammatory agent.

Freshly pressed extra-virgin olive oil contains a compound that has the same pharmacological impact as ibuprofen.  It seems too easy!  One tablespoon of olive oil may be a better curative for those spasms and tenderness that typically leave you reaching for the plastic white bottle of NSAIDs.

This same molecule, called oleocanthal, is what’s said to be at the core of the great health benefits of the Mediterranean Diet, a diet like we explore in Body Blast Detox, the anti-inflammatory detox to promote anti-aging and pro-longevity.

Trying to include both anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant rich agents, such as olive oil, really does allow us to turn back the hands of time or at least slow them down! This means olive oil will be one of the most important tools in our toolkit for Body Blast Detox.

Yet like all foods, there are some guidelines for keeping the good efforts in check to insure the most potent health benefits. In other words, the wrong choices could send your good intentions in the wrong direction.

Olive oil contains a cocktail of hundreds of beneficial and anti-inflammatory agents.  If that sparks your interest,  join me for the upcoming Body BlastDetox! 

What is your body trying to tell you? Are you listening?

I know you haven’t heard from me a while.  I took a couple months to step back and look where I was heading and to take some time for my own health and growth. 

I know that many of us deal with different health symptoms that sometimes can drag us down for a few days.  Others have chronic symptoms that can drag us down for months and even years.  Both stink.

Symptoms can be all over the body or in one locale, ranging from fatigue, joint aches, headaches, skin irritations or changes, extra body weight (especially around the middle).  The list goes on and on.  Your body uses symptoms to announce that something is awry and to say “Please listen to me.”  Sometimes it skips the ‘please’ and just yells at you.

Our first reaction is to get rid of the symptoms.  Sometimes we use painkillers and anti-inflammatories to quell the symptoms.  This reaction can mask what’s really going on in the body and can drive the problem deeper into the body or allow the problem or condition to progress.  We can turn that around and use the symptoms to help us get to the root of the problem.  A symptom always has a root cause.

Take for instance the symptom of extra weight.  There are so many reasons why someone may hang onto extra pounds: sluggish digestive system, inactivity, food sensitivities, attitude towards stress, stagnated lymph (detox) system, overworked liver (too many toxins to process) ...  Only getting to the root of what is going on will help the weight management.  Work on the root of the problem and the pounds will whittle away.

When we feel a symptom crop up, lets look at it as a signal.  What is your body trying to tell you? 

Then we get to the nitty gritty and explore to find the root cause.  It’s not always easy or straightforward, sometimes is a trial and error process, and always is different for everyone.

Think about it and maybe change your attitude towards symptoms.

Carla

Food Energetics

Energetics of Food

The goal of Food Energetics is to reconnect with nature by consciously and proactively choosing our foods and living their effects.  Environmentalists focus on how we impact our environment and nutritionists focus on how quantities or parts (and sometimes qualities) of food from our environment impact us.  We need to be aware of and work on both of these aspects because they are intertwined.

When trying to use food to heal the body, there are no magic pills.  Foods work synergistically with each other and within you.  The magic pill focus is very oversimplified.  Just like with pharmaceuticals, foods have desired effects and undesired side effects, especially when consumed in excess.  A dietitian may know that brown rice heals the intestines and may encourage you to eat brown rice every day to heal constipation or diarrhea.  Theoretically according to Chinese Medicine, brown rice ‘resonates’ with the lower intestines.  But what if eating habits were poor in the past?  The lower intestines may not have the ability to be nourished by brown rice.  It may be too hard for the body to digest it.  The digestive system may be accustomed to processing junk food (easy, fast and devoid of nutrients) and may just create a bunch of gas instead.  So what works in one person may not work for another.

In order to heal, the desire or will to heal yourself is so necessary and provides the positive emotional energy feeding the physical body.  Healing is not a separate way of life although sometimes we are more focused on it.  The state of health is always changing and moving forward physically, mentally and spiritually.   A good goal is to choose foods with purpose, adventure, and constant new discovery.  Like exercise, the body needs to always change it up for your body to grow stronger.  Most types of diets have both positive and negative aspects that change with your changing body.

The State of the Food Supply  (State of the Union)

What is the state of our food supply and how does it effect us?  We have always known food as a substance or having a quality to it.  Most of us intuitively sense how our food makes us feel, especially comfort foods.  Valuable knowledge of food and healing has been built on over thousands of years.  Our food supply and the modern medical model have moved away from or have become disconnected from nature and this base of knowledge.   Traditional people respect and understand the power of their foods and the inherent (fixed within) energy.  Most people in the US have been drawn away from their instinctual knowledge of what nourishes them without realizing it because the trajectory taken by our food system.  It goes along with disconnection on a grander scale with waging wars on everything from other countries and small farmers to viruses, bacteria and obesity.  Medical research and the general public have been focusing on looking at specific parts of our food and declaring our foundational knowledge as “unscientific”.  What we see now emerging is that traditional knowledge of food and healing is being brought to the forefront, coming in through the back door waiting to be scientifically proven.  People want scientific proof before they are going to believe it.

Meanwhile, our daily food is a critical link to our adaptation to the ever-changing environment and the challenges we will be facing.  There is so much intelligence in our food experience.  The food experience includes:

• ·      The history of our food that can be seen through the seeds, their genetics and adaptability.
• ·      How the environment and types of food systems affect our foods (such as big agriculture produce and animal protein production)
• ·      If/how the food is processed
• ·      How the food is cooked
• ·      How the food is chewed
• ·      A person’s state of mind when the food is eaten and digested (quickly, slowly, angrily…)

Our experience with food is recorded electrically through our digestive system onto the awareness of our nervous system.

The energetics of food complement other healing modalities such as Ayurvedic Medicine (India), Chinese Medicine, Unani Medicine (practiced by Hippocrates – still in the Middle East), Energy Medicine (Donna Eden), Elemental Medicine (Air/Fire/Water/Earth), Vibrational Medicine, Functional Medicine, chakra balancing, Feng Shui and Homeopathy.   How food affects us depends on:

• ·      The balance of our body when ingesting the food (starting energy point)
• ·      The energy of the  food being ingested (processed, local, plant-based, artificial)
• ·      The health of the digestive system (can have lots of clogged debris and emotional energy)

Food can be analyzed in different ways.  The most common is chemical analysis.  It is from this viewpoint that much of the food research is conducted and doctors and dieticians/nutritionists are trained.  This is an important aspect of nutrition, but a big part of the picture includes the energetic effects down to the cellular level.  Cells communicate and vibrate.  We live in a sea of energy that includes the cosmos.  We are constantly communicating with this energy like a two-way street, with energy both within our bodies and outside of them.  Physicists are clear that energy can neither be created nor destroyed and that the nature of energy is that it is changeable, malleable and even adaptable.  Matter (like a desk) is simply energy that is dense.  The particles that make up matter are the same particles that make up energy and they are constantly in a state of flux.

Research done by Masaru Emoto on water molecules helps us to start to understand the way energy moves and how the energy in our food can affect us.  He has shown how water can take emotions into itself (energy imprint occurs) and retain memories of these emotions in the water molecules.  He exposes the water to written words for example, freezes the water, and then compares the various crystals that result.  The “Thank you” crystals are balanced and well formed, while the “Stupid” crystals are deformed and broken.  We are about 70% water!  The crystals within us contain energy from our emotions.  Different foods, plants and animals, are made up of water and can carry emotional energy. 

Lets look at the process of eating.  The main parts are: choosing your food, chewing, digesting, assimilating, absorbing, utilizing, and animating.   All of these parts energetically alter the food.  There is more to the cells of your food than just ‘burning fuel’.  A calorie is not a calorie.  Looking at the calories of a food is a good place to start but there is so much more to it.  Food affects our spiritual power, emotional power and physical (nutritional) power.  Some people are ready to work at an energetic level when it comes to improving their food, exercise, spirituality and other parts of their lives.  There is so much information and types of practices in the field of Energy Medicine to help you.  We merge with our food.  Now think about junk food and what it is turning you into!

Eating is a biochemical and electrical event and is described with the term ‘entrainment’ by Steve Gagne (researching and teaching food energetics since 1972), meaning to “draw after or into”.  Balance is always being seeked within our bodies AND between the food and our bodies, either being entraining or being entrained.  For example, a carrot grows down into the soil to seek vital nutrients.  When its picked, its out of place and will continue to seek its own level.  Eating the carrot resonates with the lower part of our body, the intestines, bladder, and reproductive organs.  The nutritional elements and the qualities (or essence) of the food are entrained by our body.

Steve Gagne describes the energetics of food by categorizing foods in these ways:

·      Temperament – basic nature

o   Moisture (damp, dry)

o   Temperature (hot, warm, cool, cold)

·      Character – growth and behavior patterns

o   Direction (down/up, in/out)

o   Speed (fast/ slow, regulated/irregular rhythm)

·      Body Position – area of the body where the food resonates

o   Upper (chest, lungs, heart and throat)

o   Middle (liver, gallbladder, spleen, pancreas, stomach and kidneys)

o   Lower (intestines, bladder and reproductive organs)

Working with food this way can be quit complex but can help set you on a healthier path when certain symptoms, diseases or deficiencies come up.

One working model (from traditional Chinese medicine) that helps to understand food energetics is the nature of the five flavors or tastes.  The five flavors of food (sour, sweet, pungent, bitter, and salty) affect different parts of our bodies in different ways.  They correlate to a filling/emptying/or balancing within an organ.  The five flavors are neither good nor bad for organs, but produce an energetic effect on the organs.  For example, a congested liver unable to handle the deluge of toxins the body intakes may be full and hot.  This may correlate to a hot and angry temperament.  Eating sour foods may benefit that person by cooling and promoting the emptying of the liver, since the sour energy has the following qualities:

• ·      enters the liver (is associated with the gallbladder)
• ·      astringent (contracts the tissues)
• ·      tendency to empty fullness
• ·      cooling

Simple ways to energetically balance your body using food:

1. 1.     Try to get all five flavors in your main meal to notice a difference in how you feel and what you crave.
2. 2.     Try to eat locally grown (produce and animal products) as much as you can.  Your body more easily assimilates the nutrients from the food and it also provides a connection with your community and natural surroundings.
3. 3.     Eat with the seasons as much as you can (goes with #2)
4. 4.     Take 3 deep breathes and pray or think of things that you are grateful for at the beginning of each meal.

Resources

Food Energetics, The Spiritual, emotional, and Nutritional Power of What We Eat, by Steve Gagne.

Energy Medicine, by Donna Eden

A Practical Guide to Vibrational Medicine, Energy Healing and Spiritual Transformation, by Richard Gerber, M.D.

Cell Talk, by John E. Upledger, D.O.,O.M.M.

The Miracle of Water, by Masaru Emoto

Who You Are, Who You Are Not:
A New Meditation for
Challenging Times

by Brian Vaszily, Founder of IntenseExperiences.com

For the worried, the stressed, the overwhelmed, the lonely, the displaced, the desperate, the sick, the heartbroken, the confused, the paralyzed, the angry, the lost, the human, I created and offer this meditation. My hope is that reading it, re-reading it when necessary, and passing it on to others will be a powerful and very positive intense experience for you.


I accept responsibility for my human being, because only I am responsible, but I take comfort in and rejoice that I am so much more.
As such:

I am not the circumstances around me.

Where I believe I can make a positive impact on the circumstances, I will try. Where I cannot change circumstances, I will accept that they are so, and how they impact my own circumstances is so. But I will not let them bring me down. Instead I will rise above them, as they are not me.

I am not my money.

And the gain and loss of my money is not me. I respect the good that money can help do, but I also recognize its limitations and how easily it can cause harm to others and to me. I will control my money to the best of my ability, but whether I gain or lose it, I will never let it take control of me.

I am not my possessions.

The material goods in my life include tools that can help me do and achieve things, and ornaments that can make me feel a certain way. But while I may choose to assign symbolic value to some of these things, I realize they are all still mere things, mere dust, but I am so much more.

I am not my job.

I may love the work I do, or my job may only be a stepping-stone, but either way it is still just something I do. It may nourish me, it may help others, but I am now and always will be far greater than the work that I do.

I am not my relationships.

Though they may be the nearest and dearest part of my human life, and though I seek to guide and learn from and share with and stand by them, in our humanness the people I love are not me. I am not the thoughts, hopes, desires, intentions, perceptions nor the actions of my spouse, children, parents, siblings, or friends. I cannot control their thoughts and choices, nor can they control mine. The only control I have is over me.

I am not my emotions.

I may feel joy, excitement, and other positive emotions, and I am grateful when I do. I may feel fear, anger and other challenging emotions, and I accept when I do. But because I am not my emotions, I know that only I have the power to let these emotions linger and influence my thoughts and actions, or to let go of the emotions so they do not.

I am not my actions.

But I am responsible for my actions. Where I have a choice of actions, I can only try my best to make the right choices. And where I make mistakes in my choices, I will acknowledge them, try to learn from them and forgive myself. And I will seek to atone for the impact of my mistakes on others, and seek their forgiveness.

I am not the actions of others that impact me.

I can hope their actions are done with the best of intentions, but I am not responsible if their actions are instead done out of envy, greed, anger, fear or other negative emotions. I am responsible for accepting if they are so, for trying my best to guide, and for forgiving and letting go if they are so. But I am not responsible that they are so.

I am not my body.

I am not my skin, blood and bones. I am not my fat, my baldness, my scars, or my illness. I am not my body’s desires. I am not my appearance. But I accept responsibility for controlling my body’s desires, and I accept responsibility for doing my best to respect my body, as it and it alone is what houses me in this human state.

I am not my genetics.

If a part of my human being is fixed and preordained, I accept both the gifts and challenges I have been given therein. But part of my human being is most certainly driven by choices, and so I will try my best using my wisdom and courage to make the best choices where I am able.

I am not my thoughts.

I recognize that my thoughts have the power to open doors or create barriers for me in this human form, and so I will do my best to manage the direction of my thoughts. But though their range and influence may seem immense, still they are only human thoughts, with human limits, whereas I am unlimited.

I am not my past.

Anything I have done or that has been done is done. I can choose to learn from it, I can choose to atone for it and seek forgiveness for it, and I can choose to cherish it. But I cannot change it, so I will not let it hold me. I will not let time hold me at all, as I am beyond that mere invention. The only moment to do and be is now, so now is where I am.

I am my spirit.

I am that which existed before, during and after this body, these events, these relations, and this place. That which exists beyond time and space.

In my flesh, my thoughts, my choices, my relations, my humanness, I am anything but perfect. But at my core, in my spirit, I am perfect. As we all are.

And though I cherish this human life, and this temporary body and family I am in, and I am committed to trying my best for all others and myself out of that love, I know I have nothing to lose.

Because I have been given the gift of this eternal spirit. Because I am my spirit.

I am pure, I am whole, I am God’s, I am the universe, I am grateful.

I am love.

And I have nothing to fear.

Everything is ultimately good.

And so it will be.

We are starting programs for kids to make healthy lifestyle changes within the context of their family and friends. We offer programs to individual families and small groups of families. More info coming!

Boosting Your Immunity Against Flu and Colds

More tools for the toolbox:

1. Perelandra Drops (specific to seasonal flu and pandemic flu) - a whole new way of working with healing energies called "Co-Creative Science", the science of working in conscious co-operation with the intelligence of nature.



2. Echinacea/astragalus tincture



3. Elderberry syrup as directed for prevention (Sambu Guard) - good for children



4. NAC supplement (Nutriclean) N-acetylcysteine is a stable form of the amino acid cysteine and a powerful antioxidant) In addition to fighting viral infections, it helps to combat exercise-induced damage to muscle tissue, detoxify the liver, build connective tissue, and combat the effects of age. Food sources for cysteine include poultry, yogurt, oats, wheat germ, egg yolks, red peppers, garlic, onions, broccoli, and brussel sprouts.



5. Colonic (done by a professional) - passes purified water over UV light to alkalize and then bathes and flushes the colon.



6. Oxy Powder - an oxygen based intestinal cleaner (oxygen, magnesium)for small and large intestine - take in the eve on empty stomach and expect a bowel movement in the am.



7. Colloidal Silver (Wellness)



8. Ashwaganda - immune-building adaptogen herb



9. Turmeric - herb that enhances digestive function, heals the villi and increases bile and lymphatic flow



10. Green Tea has antibacterial properties



11. Energy Techniques

• Tap K-27 Points (acupuncture point that affects all the meridians located at the 2 soft spots just below the collarbone) This tapping activates a sequence of responses sending electrochemical impulses to your brain and releasing neurotransmitters that will energize you when you are feeling tired and will focus you if you are having trouble concentrating.


• Cross Crawl - march lifting knees and crossing arm over to opposite knee for 30 sec to 1 min. This movement helps the crossover of energy between the left and right hemispheres of the brain to help you feel more energized, think more clearly and be better coordinated.

Here are some habits and simple solutions that are good for general health and will boost your immunity:

1. Get the amount of sleep your body needs


2. Get outside, connected with nature and move the body


3. Avoid sugar, processed foods and artificial sweeteners - sugar is well known to hinder your immune system


4. Reduce alcohol and caffeine


5. Eat garlic, ginger and other power foods (fruits and veggies)


6. Exercise wisely (don't overdo either - can be a form of stress)


7. Eat organic food limiting your exposure to added hormones, pesticides and other toxins


8. Chew your food - make it easier for your body to assimilate nutrients

Using Movement and Relaxation to Reconnect with Ourselves

When you are using breath work, whether your still or moving, things can come to life. We have to remember that traumas, early beliefs and pain from injuries can get stored in our tissues. Either we never dealt with the situation, it's left over "junk", or some other reason. I realized this in an episode years ago where I went to a chiropractor because my neck was stuck in a position. After he "broke the tension" I started crying (for no apparent reason at the time) and couldn't stop for a couple of hours. I realized it was stored grief I had been holding onto for 3 years. In other works, my body had to stop me in my tracks (by stopping neck movement) to address the grief and work through it. And then I asked myself, "How else has this grief been affecting my life?" or "How has my body been trying to tell me there was some grief to let go of before the neck?"

But in any case, this stored junk can hinder your movement, your relaxation, and your life in general. So it is helpful to check out what is your body saying to you (and don't wait 3 years to listen!). Some people can listen to their body better when they are moving. Some need to sit still in a quiet setting. I find sometimes I need the movement and sometimes I need the sitting and they kind of work together.