crystal bowl healing

             Last year I wrote about the theory behind sound and gong baths because I was intrigued by the idea - as a holistic adventurer I gobble up all alternative therapies and love to try them out.  In the meantime, I have finally experienced a crystal bowl healing session.

            The sound therapist had laid out a rug in the large studio where the session took place.  Crystal bowls of various sizes (different sizes for different sounds, some quite large) and various colors (I don't think color makes a difference) were set up on the rug, and wooden mallets were set aside for producing the sounds.

            After a long guided winding down period, or savasana (my daughter coined the term slowvasana), we were all deeply relaxed and receptive.  It had been suggested that we come up with an intent, because the deep relaxation coupled with the healing frequencies channel the message of the intent into more easily into the subconscious, which guides - hold your breath - 95% of what we do (yes, indeed!).  Then the sound therapist began to produce sounds by rubbing along the edges of the different bowls.  There is no melody or pattern to the sounds, so the mind has no place to cling to, it can drift and let go.  Not only my ears, but my entire body experienced the sounds - I felt with my body that sound is frequency.  The deeper sounds of the bigger bowls were so powerful that the sounds filled the entire room and my entire body.  Some sounds sent shivers down my skin, others appeared to travel from one side of the body to the other. 

            I ended up in a timeless space where the sound bath could have gone on forever, it was profoundly grounding and calming - definitely to be repeated.

infinite healing

             Nature has an amazing ability to heal and regenerate.  Two years ago I had received this beautiful mini cyclamen.  Unfortunately, somehow after many months, it faded away until it had only one leaf left.  It looked so sad.

            I don't throw plants away unless they are truly, completely, dead, and I was determined to nurse this cyclamen back to its original health and vitality.  I observed it every day, I made sure it was well watered and fertilized, and I watched for signs of new life.  Lo and behold, a second leaf emerged after a while, then a third, then one of our cats chewed the second leaf and felt discouraged.  But here we are, my cyclamen has six big new leaves, and several new shoots.  I am positive that it will make a complete recovery and produce beautiful flowers soon again.

            Remember, you are nature, too.  Your body's ability to heal are infinite.  Just watch Anita Moorjani's story of coming back from what the doctors thought what a hopeless state.

            I don't throw plants away unless they are truly, completely, dead, and I was determined to nurse this cyclamen back to its original health and vitality.  I observed it every day, I made sure it was well watered and fertilized, and I watched for signs of new life.  Lo and behold, a second leaf emerged after a while, then a third, then one of our cats chewed the second leaf off and I felt discouraged.  But here we are, my cyclamen has six big new leaves, and several new shoots.  I am positive that it will make a complete recovery and produce beautiful flowers soon again.

            Remember, you are nature, too.  Your body's ability to heal is infinite.  Just watch Anita Moorjani's story of coming back from what the doctors thought what a hopeless state.

quality over quantity

           Racing through the calendar from one appointment to the next, breathlessly looking at the next event as something else to check off the to-do list, makes death your final appointment.  "I made it!"

            But it's too late then to wake up to the realization that your life was one mad dash to the finish line.   Lately, we were caught in a mad routine between accommodating our daughter's many early evening activities, my occasional evening meetings, our tango lessons, and my husband's attempts to return on time for them from a busy workday.  It became stressful and our quality of life suffered, especially trying to get dinner in there somewhere, hopefully before the tango lesson, after our daughter's evening activity, before my evening meeting, attempting to eat together, and making a home cooked meal from scratch.........................you get it - exhausting. 

            Meaning comes from the quality of what we do, whether it's tango, taekwondo, or the made-from-scratch meal.  For us the tango had to go, at least for now.  It was just too much.  We had to choose quality over quantity, depth over breadth...............................Here an earlier related blog post "slow that train down."

P.S. Susanne's book DEEP LIVING is now out - buy it on Amazon.

on losing weight

            Different lifestyles call for different diets.  Let's face it, the majority of us have sedentary jobs.  Most of us don't farm all day long, don't lift heavy equipment all day long, and are not high performance sports people.  Most of the time most of us sit behind the computer much of the day, and sometimes behind the wheel or on public transportation.  Yet, our diet, in general, is still carb heavy. 

            Indeed, you need lots of carbs to sustain you if you have a very physical job - the way our ancestors did when they created the agricultural diet of grains and starches we still hang on to.  But if you sit most of the day you don't need all that bready, noodly, ricy, potatoy type of food (sugar is a whole other bad matter - empty calories and inflammatory) - hence, it's easy to gain weight on this diet.

             Soooooo - if you want to lose weight, and if you don't work in construction or farming, consider cutting out some of those refined carbs and starches and making friends with all those low cal/low carb vegetables such as peppers, cauliflower, broccoli, greens, asparagus, squash, mushrooms, cucumbers, eggplant, and tomatoes (I probably forgot some).  Of course you'll need to make them delicious - I don't care for steamed broccoli one bit!   Spice them up (the Indians have developed delicious spice combinations), combine them, sprinkle parmesan over them, broil them with olive oil until they are a bit toasty burnt on top, add lots of garlic, or butter, or sesame oil, sauce them up, puree them - mmmhhh.

a Ford or a BMW?

            You get the difference between a Ford and a BMW.  The BMW is a better car.  Because all components are made of superior materials, and lengthy thought and testing has gone into the design of the mechanics, it will last long and the driving experience is exceptional.

            When it comes to food we have the same choices, between the Fords and the BMWs of foods so to speak, but.......with food the choices you make matter a whole lot more than which car you drive.  And I am not talking about caviar versus pasta.  I am talking about how a food is grown or made, what goes into it, how natural it is - you get it, its inherent quality.  Food goes inside your body, it literally becomes you.  It gives you the energy to live, promotes building and healing the cells in your body, contributes to a good immune system, feeds the brain so you can "think on your feet," and insures your overall good health.  My mother believes that she would have been taller if she didn't get inferior food during the first six crucial years of her life, the six years of WWII.

            Inferior foods, whether out of a carton and enhanced with chemicals, grown with pesticides, premade and over sugared, fed antibiotics and growth hormones, or kept and slaughtered under horrific conditions, cannot give you BMW quality health.    The consequences can be many fold.  Eating inferior foods can cause you to be more susceptible to illness in general because your body doesn't get adequate nutrition, you may tire more easily, have a troubled digestive tract, duller skin, less zest for life, think more fuzzily, become afflicted by chronic conditions, and even die younger.

            Of all the Western industrialized countries this one spends the least amount of money on food in proportion to average income - for the sake of your health, increase your food budget.   You don't need a BMW to get around, but you need superior food to live a long, healthy, and beautiful life.

unslumping yourself

             Inspiration is what renews my creativity and energy, and refreshes my enthusiasm for life.  Inspiration can come from people, things I experience, things I read, things I see, do, taste, hear, even feel - anything that stimulates my senses in a positive way, the more positive, the more inspiring end energizing. 

            Every once in a while it is necessary to break out of our day-to-day routine and make it a point to experience something new.  Routine has its merits - see a previous blog post on that - but all routine and no fun and stimulus makes us bored and boring, and potentially even depressed. 

            What inspires you?  Last spring I wrote about going on an adventure.  I get good energy and a kick in the mind from conversations with people - when my voice becomes loud, as my husband points out, it means I am passionate about what I'm talking about.  Exhilaration can come from overcoming our comfort zone and succeeding beyond our initial expectations.   Sparkling eyes are a sign of good energy, as are big smiles or laughs - that's when a person is inspired and inspiring.  Do you have a trick for getting out of a mental slump and boosting your enthusiasm for the zest of life?

making food your ally

            So many people view food as their enemy.  Whether it's the perception that fat is bad, that cholesterol clogs your arteries, that dessert is sinful, that foods that are good for you taste bad, or that all the yummy foods are bad for you.  Well, here is a list of complaints that makes food your enemy. There is a lot of bad science behind these blanket statements, and many of them have been debunked in recent years, although it is a fact that the so-called Western Diet makes us sick. It is true that eating empty calories, foods without nutritional value, will never satisfy your body and you'll keep craving and eating more in a vicious cycle.   

            How about making food your ally in building a strong and energetic body instead?  "Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food," Hippocrates, the famous physician from Ancient Greece, is purported to have said.  When you learn to cook well with the foods that are healing and beneficial you'll make food your ally.  When you learn to love good food unconditionally because it is what heals your body and assures a good life you'll make food your friend.  When you become knowledgeable about the healing properties of food, the guiltless pleasures of food, you'll not only create a great hobby, but also the basis for healing the Western civilization diseases. When you learn about the good-for-you foods, and how to prepare them well so they taste delicious, you can have your cake and eat it too. 

tangoing from the heart

             A few weeks ago my husband and I started taking beginner lessons in Argentine tango - the place is only ten minutes from our house and the lessons happen to be free - major incentives - although we have dabbled in ballroom dancing since before we had kids (always on and off, always at the glorified beginner level).

            But tango seems different, less mechanical and structured than conventional ballroom dancing, and more intuitive and sensual.  For one there is that sliding, slithering tango walk - the most basic tangoing might actually simply entail slide-walking to tango music.  Tango requires dropping from the head into the heart, and isn't that the topic of our times?  Tango teaches trust because the follower always moves backwards.  As a matter of fact some of the practice exercises were done with closed eyes.   More so than conventional ballroom dancing (at least it seems so from my beginner perspective), tango becomes a complete merging of self, music, and partner, an in-the-moment moving, feeling, trusting, responding to your partner - no anticipation, just being in the now.

            Tango, and ballroom dancing in general, is good for your health.  It helps your balance and coordination, moving to music is joyful, tango, in particular, is also very sensual, it requires and trains trust, it's great exercise that's a lot more fun than running on a treadmill, you can do it 'til the day you die, and as a social activity connects you with people.  As an exercise in togetherness, partnership, and trusting it's a perfect hobby for our times. 

            We need to play more, we need to dance more, we need to enjoy life more.

hahaha

           Laughing is good for you.  As a matter of fact laughter should be prescribed as medicine.  It reduces stress hormones, diffuses anger, triggers endorphins - those feel-good hormones, oxygenates and massages your organs, makes you feel relaxed, aids in the elimination of toxins, and boosts your immune system.  That sounds like therapy to me.

            Laughter is so good for you that an Indian internist, Dr. Madan Kataria, invented laughter yoga two decades ago; the Mayo Clinic promotes laughter for stress management purposes; and it's an excellent addition to cancer therapy because a positive outlook improves your chances for healing.

            A few years ago I tried out laughter yoga when I saw that a session was offered in my area.  At first it seems quite bizarre to laugh with a bunch of people you don't know, about nothing in particular, and do a bunch of things to get everyone to start laughing for the simple sake of getting you to laugh.  But soon enough it becomes contagious and everyone in the room goes from giggles, to laughing, to full belly laugh in no time.  Soon enough you don't know anymore why you're laughing, because you're not laughing at a joke or something someone did, but simply because everyone else laughs so hard.  It's very cathartic and very funny and feels very good.

            When was the last time you had a really good belly laugh?

soaking nuts, seeds and grains

           Oh no, you are going to think, she is going to propose to add yet another gimmick to my already full and crazy life.  Granted, soaking or sprouting adds a layer to food preparation, requires a bit of organization and thinking ahead.  But deep living is about going deeper, getting away from coasting and skimming the surface. 

            Shifting towards a more plant based diet is ultimately healthier (for us as well as the environment), and it's good to become aware of deeper nutritional connections.  Moreover, we live in times when we are bombarded with environmental pollutants and it's so important to consume the very best foods and beverages we can in order to boost our immune system and cleanse out toxins that have accumulated in our bodies over the years.

            Soaking nuts, seeds and grains increases their digestibility and permits the body to absorb their nutrients more easily.  The process takes a load off your body so to speak.  Nuts, seeds and grains all contain phytic acid and enzyme inhibitors - also called antinutrients - that prevent them from sprouting prematurely.  While not exactly harmful - don't be alarmed if you never soaked your nuts before now -  they are not exactly great either.  As said before, these antinutients cause a lesser availability of nutrients and possibly digestive troubles.

            Whether preparing nuts for snacks, making nut milk, requiring legumes for soup or chili or refried beans, even baking with whole grain flour, simply soak them all in fresh water - see chart for length of time - and be sure to throw away the soaking water and rinsing well. 

            You can go a step further and sprout seeds, which takes another day or two.  Now you're talking, because sprouts are some of the most nutrient rich foods we have, chockfull of antioxidants.  I recently started to make broccoli sprouts, from tiny broccoli seeds bought in a big 1lb bag.  What a superfood.   You can now find tofu made from sprouted soy beans, tortillas and bread made from sprouted grains, and you can sprout wheat berries to make the fermented drink called rejuvelac, which tastes almost like a light lemonade.

            This is one more way to support our bodies in staying healthy.