Tag Archives: food

A Balancing Act, Relax And Take Responsibility.

Posted on September 14, 2014 | 1 comment

My Beloved weighs fifteen kilos less than I do, a skinny little runt who must have hollow legs because he certainly doesn’t eat any less! To my fond eyes he is the perfect size but there is a part of me that can’t help feeling a bit envious at his ability to eat everything in sight without seeming consequence. Of course the trick is always to find the best diet for your particular body type and if there are two of you then a certain amount of compromise is probably required.

Men are from mars

It’s the age-old question for those of us women who don’t quite fit the ideal laid out in the current cultural archetypes, is it about health or how you think you should look? Health has been the paramount question for me but lately indulgence has been a bit of a byword and that can definitely go too far at times. The thing is when you improve your diet you do become more sensitive, no matter how often I notice this in my response to food I still seem to need reminders.

be-happy

At the end of the day I want to be happy more than anything else, pretty much the way I am right now except that I’ve noticed it keeps getting better. That’s all pleasure by the way, our capacity for opening to this kind of energy I do believe is infinite. Follow your bliss sounds shallow but it can actually be fairly deep, and if you truly relax and surrender you can go beyond whatever ‘stuff’ you may have picked up along the way. RELAX and enjoy the journey, the one thing you can be sure of is change so try and get comfortable in the flow of life. RESPONSIBILITY is being able to respond to the shifts and changes that inevitably are a part of following our flow, it can be FUN too!

Big Rainbow

So I think I will be fairly relaxed with my food, just watch the sugar thing and try to have a few green smoothies every week. Relaxation is a bit underrated as a quality but I think it is the key to so many of the ways in which to move into new ways of being in the world. So I will continue to spend lots of time with my Beloved, that’s always relaxing whatever we’re doing! And we are going to the joining gathering very soon to present our first workshop together, very exciting!

Remember to have fun!smiley face daisy

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Bigger, Better, Faster……….Slow Down!

Posted on July 16, 2014 | Leave a comment
Rainbow Man at the Enchanted Gathering.

Rainbow Man at the Enchanted Gathering.

Life has been a little bit crazy what with being between two house sits for almost three weeks, ending in the moving haze I referred to in an earlier post and arriving in a house full of Celtic musicians. Then a couple of days at the Enchanted Gathering with lots of magic, frequencies and dancing, freezing cold and fires burning as the Wizard and the Rainbow Man kept crying, “More wood, more wood!”.

The Enchanted Gathering.

The Enchanted Gathering.

So it’s been very busy and quite intense and my Beloved and I have been enjoying the chance to slow down and begin to get to know our new environment which we now have all to ourselves.  I’ve also started reading a new Diana Richardson book, “Slow Sex”, if you’ve read my posts before you might remember me talking about her book “Tantric Orgasm For Women”. I’ve read the introduction and the first chapter and already I’m feeling very inspired, and not just about sex either, the principles she is talking about can be applied to everything that we do.

couple make love

In fact her inspiration to write the book came from another writer called Marc David who wrote “The Slow Down Diet”, he is a nutritionist and expert on the psychology of eating. He talks about eight qualities that are an integral part of how we are nourished when we eat and it is less about what we eat and more about the way in which we do it. Awareness and relaxation are two of these qualities and you will hear a lot about these in any book on tantric sex worth it’s salt.

passionate embraceWhen you slow down there is an entire world of sights and flavours and smells to savour, and if you can actually relax you offer your body the opportunity to respond to all of this treasure. Most of the time we have ideas about things, whether it be food or sex, that we try to force upon the body. Then when our experience is less than satisfactory we think that there must be something wrong with us, if we can create that ‘perfect’ body somehow it will all made right.

It is so important to nourish ourselves on all levels of our being, bring the sacred into everything that you do and you are well on the way to true fulfillment on a soul level. And remember that life was meant to be fun!

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Who Owns Life?

Posted on August 22, 2013 | Leave a comment

I just watched the most inspirational film called “Monsanto: A Documentary on GMO”, we follow the journey of Percy Schmeiser, a Canadian farmer, as he battles this monolithic corporation. What they are doing in the world is wrong, in simple terms they are attempting to control the supply of seeds and therefore the food supply. They are not interested in feeding the world’s hungry or improving the quality of the food we eat, all they care about is power, and they have an enormous amount of influence in a world where money seems more important than justice.

There are many issues regarding GMO crops, probably the most important is that they were never fully tested in the first place, and so we actually have no idea of the consequences of having this unknown factor in the food chain. With research that has been done since then, it’s very clear that GMO crops are not the same or even similar to regular food, the claims that Monsanto have made for their products are out-and-out lies. They do not produce a higher yield and actually require much more in the way of pesticides and chemicals.

Once GMO is in an area, it is impossible for farmers who don’t want it to avoid contamination, then Monsanto moves in and takes them to court because they have ‘stolen’ their plants! Monsanto encourages farmers to dob each other in, thus destroying trust amongst the farmers, and endangering the sense of community that has existed before they came along.

Percy Schmeiser.

Percy Schmeiser.

It’s so inspirational to hear Percy Schmeiser speak, he is motivated to fight his battle not only for himself and his children, but for the future of humanity on this planet. If a bio-tech company can put a gene in a life-giving form and then say that they own it, where does this stop, if they put a gene in a human being, do they then own that person? There are some big questions posed in this film, and it could be overwhelming to see the might of Monsanto doing as it pleases, but this is more than balanced by the inspiration you will feel at what people are doing to stand up for our basic rights.

This documentary shows that we can make a difference, let’s face it, most of the people in the world want good quality food on their plates, clean water to drink and clean air to breathe. I feel very hopeful about the future of humanity, we’ve made a terrible mess but we have the resources to do something about it, and we have people like Percy Schmeiser and his wife!

I hope you enjoy this film as much as I did!

Natural Cures Not Medicine: Monsanto: A Documentary on GMO (a must watch)

http://www.naturalcuresnotmedicine.com
Save this for later, you won’t regret it. This is a great documentary for humans of all ages.

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Food For All.

Posted on August 12, 2013 | Leave a comment

I am reflecting on my recent posts about listening to my body and getting the right nutrition happening, something that I am able to do even though I am very much in the lower socio-economic group as far as income goes. After watching this short video about a community food system in India, I am feeling wealthy by comparison to these people, many of whom live on less than  dollar a day. I still manage to go out to dinner and to lots of amazing events, it takes a bit of juggling and lateral thinking at times but I manage to do it.

poorpeopleindia

I confess to a keen sense of injustice when I look at the gap between the wealthy and the poor, and it’s getting worse not better. What really baffles me is how the super wealthy can sleep at night, knowing that there are so many starving people without access to clean water.  How can our politicians accept the ridiculous amounts of money that they receive when so many of the people they are meant to be serving are struggling to manage the basics of living.

I know that population growth is a serious issue but surely if we distributed what we do have a bit more evenly everyone would be well cared for. And with all those resources in the form of people, new ways of thinking and creating, surely we can come up with ideas that will serve not only humanity, but this planet and the other beings we share it with. If you would like an example about innovative ideas, in this case its education, check out “The School In The Clouds”, posted on the 4th July 2013.

How to supply food to everyone inexpensively and
consistently, around the world?

Imagine the convenience of take-out food every day,
but for less money that you would pay to COOK at home,
let alone order from a restaurant.

Here is a brilliant solution: members pay in to a
collective community kitchen, and meals for households
are distributed daily by the kitchen run by employed chefs.

Video: (2:26)

http://www.nextworldtv.com/page/11549.html

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Veggies With Zing!

Posted on July 10, 2013 | Leave a comment

People in the mainstream think of healthy eating as having plenty of fruit and veggies, good in theory but how much nutrition are they actually getting from the food that they eat. Well if it isn’t organic then it’s full of nasty chemicals that are toxic to your body, but even if it’s one of those hardy plants that doesn’t need much in the way of pesticides, chances are it offers much less nutrition than it would have 100 years ago. Soils in most parts of the world have become depleted in minerals, which has had a direct effect on the quality of the food that we eat.

fruits-and-veggies

If you buy organic then you are generally getting a higher mineral content, but if you grow your own and add generous quantities of rock dust to the soil, you end up with the best possible quality, add in love as you work the garden and the food you eat from it is going to make your body zing! I am so looking forward to settling down and having a veggie garden, by the time that happens I will have so much wonderful information I will be able to create a garden that supports me to live to at least 120, maybe even longer. There are places in the world where people routinely live to 100 or more, and one of the things they have in common is that the soil is highly mineralised.

There are many different ingredients to having a long life in good health, mental, emotional, spiritual and physical are all important, and need to be in the right balance with each other. When it comes to the physical the food that we eat is high on the list of priorities, and while I do believe our minds are powerful enough to transform the effects of eating low quality food, why not make less work and just give your body the right stuff in the first place!

Check out this interview with Don Weaver who is talking about the remineralisation of the soil using rock dust, a web site that he recommends for more information is remineralize.org

Do you know about the movement to remineralize the earth?
The mineral content of our food has gone down drastically since 1910, but the solution for your personal garden is very simple: you just add rock dust.
See more about the amazing benefits of remineralization and where to get rock dust here!
 

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Endings And Beginnings.

Posted on June 9, 2013 | Leave a comment

My time in this house sit is drawing to a close, this has been the happiest and the darkest of times, here in this fairy cottage surrounded by trees and full of magic. This Princess feels very sad to be leaving, but she knows that she will be taking some of that special magic with her now wherever she goes, what I’ve learned while in this place will never leave me.

Not my fairy cottage exactly but you get the idea!

Not my fairy cottage exactly but you get the idea!

It was here that I took back my power and restored my voice to its proper place, speaking my truth took an enormous amount of courage but has given me a stronger sense of who I am, and what I deserve. I recognised the true character of the Knight, who was definitely wearing armour, but let me tell you it certainly wasn’t shining! It’s a King that I seek as I move forward into the next phase of my becoming, one suitable to sit at the side of a Queen as beautiful and powerful as this Princess is becoming.

camelotkingarthur

Within these wooden walls and peaked roof, I discovered the aspect of me that loves to create food with love, as an act of devotion. Ram Das talks about his guru a lot, and when he asked Neem Karoli Baba how to get enlightened, he was told to serve and to feed people. Offering yourself in service is a very pure form of love, even if you are doing some kind of exchange there is a completely different feeling compared to when you are doing things for money. I went to a Rainbow Festival once where everything was done on the basis of exchange of energy, and it was a wonderful feeling of open heartedness and true connection with other human brothers and sisters.

camelot

More reflections to come as I ponder the experiences I have received here in my little Camelot, like Morgana in that mythical tale I have had travails and challenges upon my path. In my version of that classic story she is not evil and means no harm to Arthur, she is simply trying to keep the pagan magic alive against the onslaught of the Christian religion. My task is to participate in the creation of a new age of magic and wonder, and while it may draw upon the old ways, it is also new forged, and much of it has not been here upon the earth before.

We live in exciting times, I welcome the Golden Age with all my heart and soul, bring it on!

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Taste The Love!

Posted on May 12, 2013 | 1 comment

Even though I am obsessed with self-care, there are still times when I seem to load up my plate with such a lot of activities, I wonder if I really do know what I’m doing. First check point is, do all the things I want to do ‘feel’ right for me, if the answer is yes then I need to work out how to do it all while still taking care of myself. It can be quite a challenge, and while being organised is helpful, it’s my attitude that actually makes the biggest difference.

I’m sure you’ve heard about having an attitude of gratitude, well it does actually work, only I take it even further than that. The other day I did a day of cleaning at a beautiful healing centre, a huge building and an enormous amount of effort involved. I don’t really like to clean much but if you have to do it, you may as well feel good about it, and so I look upon it as an act of devotion or service. That notion I’ve been talking about a lot lately of bringing the sacred into everything we do. When you bring love into your action it not only enhances whatever you are doing, it brings that energy into the house that you are cleaning, or the food that you are preparing. And you can actually taste the love in food, really you can, it does taste better!

If everyone on the planet suddenly came down with a magical virus that brought out the qualities of love, respect, devotion and kindness, the world would be transformed overnight. Not a bad idea for a novel now I come to think of it, the sort of thing that Ben Elton might write. Let’s try seeing the world as the comedy that it really is, when I went to my yoga class in the middle of my busy week I dropped all the ‘doing’, and found myself smiling a lot and trying not to laugh. Not at anything in particular, just because I was in one of my favourite sacred spaces, and all my stressing was suddenly in perspective.

Let’s try to get some perspective happening here in this crazy world we’ve created, see the humour and the sacred in all things.

Shanti, shanti, shanti………peace, peace, peace………………..

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Travel Broadens The Gut.

Posted on March 30, 2013 | 1 comment

Seems like it’s time to talk about food again, I am fairly obsessed on this subject most of the time, but there’s only so much you can say unless you are an expert, or much more into research than I am. But it’s in my awareness always, and I’m mostly feeling very good about where I am in terms of my relationship to food. I don’t crave sugar, I have one or two coffees a week, and my simple cave man’s diet satisfies me with very little snacking required between meals.

I do get a bit frustrated about water sometimes, in my house sitting travels I’ve had lots of rainwater which I love, but when you are drinking town water then a water filter becomes an issue. Your basic Britta water filter is not expensive but it doesn’t take out the fluoride, for that you need something like a reverse osmosis system and they are not cheap. That’s a big part of the problem of trying to be super healthy, you tend to need a super bank balance which makes it prohibitive for many. For me I spend the money I would have spent on rent on buying local organic produce, I also buy a probiotic to put in my green smoothies which is pretty expensive, but with my energy levels I would say it is definitely paying off.

The probiotic comes under the classification of cultured food, and I listened to a short video which had something very interesting to say on this subject. In the past people had a lot more cultured or fermented foods, particularly in the days before refrigeration. We talk about people becoming more cultured when they travel, and generally we’re referring to things like art, theatre and dance. But when we travel we are also being exposed to the local bacteria, puts the expression ‘becoming more cultured’ in a rather different light doesn’t it!

Sauerkraut.

Sauerkraut.

You could make a fabulous short animated video using that idea as the theme, if I had time I would try to find something on YouTube, but I don’t so I will simply add the link for my inspiration for this post. It comes through Food Matters which is responsible for a documentary of the same name, as well as a newer doco called Hungry For Change. If you are looking for information on good food I can highly recommend both the films and their newsletter.

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Naughty Faeries.

Posted on March 17, 2013 | Leave a comment

On my enchanted adventure I ventured into forbidden territory, sugar, grain, Cadbury chocolate and coffee, I gave myself permission to be naughty and hoped that I would not be trapped in the world of faery forever, having supped of faery food. Actually the truth is that the faeries probably eat food that gives them plenty of life force, maybe it is the power of that energy that has given birth to the stories of the dangers of eating anything while in the realm of magic and enchantment. Having sat at the table with Titania and Oberon, our present reality cannot be anything but a pale imitation of life’s glorious potential. Like a beautiful photo that has faded with time, we become accustomed to a lesser reality, so much dimmer than the place we inhabit as children.

The Fairies' Banquet by John Anster

The Fairies’ Banquet by John Anster

A little bit of naughtiness will do you no harm, but for those whose daily fare is processed and full of sugar and nasty chemicals, the dulling down is happening quite literally in the cells of the body. I strayed off the path for just four days and even so I could feel my sugar and carb addict beginning to wake up, the more you have the more you want. I came off it slowly with the help of some chocolate halva (Oh my Goddess what a treat!) and my green smoothies are incredibly important for bringing me back into alignment.

For those of you who struggle with cravings the news is good, if the former Junk Food Queen of Parap can become pure, anyone can! From the very beginning as I moved on to solids I wanted everything that was unhealthy, I dealt with teenage trauma and loss by drowning my sorrows as only a true alcoholic can and smoking furiously whatever I could get my hands on.

The path to redemption has been a long road of shifts and changes on all levels of my being, physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. You deal with one layer at a time, making the changes that are possible at that time, and slowly but surely you begin to build up better habits. For me the emotional aspect of food has been very important, I no longer have that ‘need’ to fill the empty space within me by stuffing my face.

Dear Gaia, thank you for providing me with such a dazzling array of sustenance in the form of the fruits and the vegetables that abound on this gorgeous planet. And thank you for helping me to connect with that leafy, aromatic realm of taste and texture, heightening my senses until I positively reel with ecstatic delight!

fall_harvest

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Food Is Medicine.

Posted on January 15, 2013 | Leave a comment

I’ve been going through my inbox and actually watching some of the things that people send me, and I find myself getting both inspired and angry. So many problems in the world have been solved and yet the information isn’t taken up by those in power. They seem quite happy for the powerless to continue to suffer and die unnecessarily, if they could truly empathise and feel for those people it would not still be happening.

And now laws are coming in in Europe, so that while you can talk about the effects of food and supplements, you can’t have any links to places where people might be able to access the products. The fines for breaches of this law are ridiculously high and it is being put forward as an attempt to improve consumer safety. We wouldn’t want people to stop taking their pharmaceutical drugs and actually start getting healthy on safer alternatives!

So far it is just in the Netherlands, but if something isn’t done it will gradually infect the world and severely impact on our basic rights of free speech. I went to the petition to sign it but it is all in Dutch, and I think you probably have to be a citizen of the EU to qualify.

I hope this attempt to erode democracy does not stop organisations like Nextworld Tv from whom I receive a lot of wonderful information about positive developments in all walks of life:

Our nation is coming apart at the seams,
in so many ways, including the pandemic
of mental health disorders, such as
depression, anxiety, addictions, and the
sky-rocketing suicide rates.

The pharmaceutical industry has cashed in
on an incalculably vast scale, selling pills
for every “disorder” and persuading Americans
that their problems are due to a “chemical
imbalance.”

In fact, research shows that the secret and
hidden Holy Grail of mental health is nutritional
deficiency!

There is a very simple and inexpensive
way to insure that nutrients are reaching
your brain.

Watch this video!

http://www.nextworldtv.com/videos/health-and-wellness/cracking-addiction-and-mental-illness-through-fish-oils-and-other-nutrients-.html

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