Without Nature we do not have our health.

I had always been told that Blackberries and Raspberries “boosted blood” and gave us energy. I absorbed the family lore and have built upon it. I now know that these two berries are power-packed with antioxidants, vitamins and minerals and are nature’s antibiotics. These facts actually back up the “blood boosting” capabilities accepted and known by the older family members.

I look back at the older generation and recognize their innate knowing and understanding of Nature and its relationship to our health. Without Nature we did not have health. They may not have known about antioxidants and minerals and vitamins and how they all relate to cellular function but they did know that iron (among other elements) is found in these two berries and that it offered us energy and health. I have been thinking about this and know that iron is necessary to attract oxygen from the air, food and water to stimulate the body’s metabolism and boost energy levels. When this happens, the tissues can slough off the accumulated toxins much easier. This is the perfection of Nature and the timing of the growth of various fruits and vegetables. Everything works together in harmony. To step away from Nature is to be out of harmony and this produces a toxic load for our body to deal with. This means the body becomes to acidic and ripe for imbalance and disease to take root.

The older generation may not have known the chemical components and what each element did but they did know that nature has wisdom and to eat in rhythm with Nature offered health. They were wise enough to know that the foods that came available according to season and weather were what the body required. An example of this was to have cucumbers and tomatoes ready to eat in early summer. They were placed in a bowl of malt vinegar and were used as raw foods. This was said to stimulate the liver and clean up the body. I have learned that this dish acts as a “detoxer” and is a perfect salad dish after the heavier warming foods of winter. This is yet another example of living their wisdom. My aunt is 86 years old and is living on her own in New Zealand. She still maintains a large garden and I feel has a strong constitution because of it. She would say it is common sense to have your own garden…and I agree with her!

Another memory of axioms heard in regard to healing was, “you often get worse before you get better.” I have been thinking about this and what it means to me. I know we do not develop serious illness or toxic tissue over night and therefore we are not going to heal over night. Just as we do not become 50 pounds heavier over night, we will not wake up the next morning to be wearing a svelte figure again. If we get sick and are carrying a large toxic load we have to be patient with ourselves and work in harmony with Mother Nature and allow natural law to reverse the damage to our body.

I feel the body returns to health by back-tracking through the illness or weight gain until it can finds its pattern of health. I think of getting lost while driving and attempt to reverse my course until I find familiar roads again. This pattern makes “sense” to me and allows my mind to expand on the memories of expressions passed down through the family.

oxygen as part of our chemical design

My thoughts this morning….I have been thinking about our chemical design of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen and a small percentage of essential minerals and how the body feels as energy when balanced… not only within me but how it feels when doing NDP™ on another…..what about the cellular energy when it is in a more acid state? What happens to it? What does the energy feel like? Can I identify it as chaotic? It would have to be because it is not balanced.

Just take oxygen as a part of our chemical design. Oxygen helps to neutralizes acidosis in the cells and this allows the cells to replicate themselves accurately and contribute to the health of the person. Exercise brings in added oxygen to the cells. Water brings in 2 molecules of oxygen to feed the cells. Fresh foods (raw) contribute to the alkalinity of the cells through enzyme activity and oxygen. All work together to give life through….selection of:
· Air
· Food
· Water
· Mastication
· Absorption
· Elimination.

If there is a break in this pattern then there is a break down in the cellular function which means a break down of our health. The waste produced by foods is highly acidic and if we are not eliminating then we are reabsorbing the toxins and adding to the acidosis of our body. Urine and sweat is how the acid waste is excreted from the human body when the energy is balanced, and when the body is not balanced, the waste circulates through our systems and eventually accumulates in our capillaries and begins to clog up and disrupt the natural function of the body. This increase in acid immediately short circuits the oxygen from being utilized and we have embarked upon a slippery slope towards disease and an early death.

For example, the body creates lactic acid when physically pushed hard. When excessive physical activity is had and the body is not fully supported with plenty of water and fresh raw foods to help the cells neutralize the accumulated acid waste, then the lactic acid acts as a poison to the cell. With this in mind it is easy to see that keeping the body in a pH balance is our best (and critical) method of defense for health.
And so my thoughts go this morning.

Variety as the spice of life.

I woke up with this thought of variety as the spice of life. It is something I have heard since I was knee high to the grasshopper. I am not sure I knew what it meant other than it is good to try different things. And so my child mind has grown up.

I have been thinking about variety and how we must have variety in the foods we eat, not only daily but seasonally, and how much of this is habitual. Then I was thinking about exercise and the same thing applies. We know that we become physically unbalanced or hurt if we do the same exercise repeatedly. We have a concept of mixing the exercises up to cover the basic large muscle groups such as something for the legs, which usually doubles as a cardiovascular exercise, them we do something for the chest and triceps and them back and biceps. So by the end of the week we have pushed and pulled and worked our legs and if we are lucky and motivated, we have done some abdominal work. Once we get a “program” we tend to stick to it.

This is the same pattern as our eating. We have foods we like and we generally stick to them. At the end of the week, we have been on an exercise “diet” and we have also been on an eating “diet” and when the thinking is habitual, we have a thinking “diet.”

I use the word “diet” deliberately. The first 3 letters of the word spell “die.” The Concise Oxford Dictionary has defined diet as “…feed (person, oneself) on special food as medical regimen or punishment. Diet originates from the Greek word, diaita, meaning “way of life”.

Our “way of life” has become a form of punishment because there is no variety in our thinking, in our attitude, our choice of words, in our choices of food, and types of exercise we do, or do not do. No variety in life equals no spice! Spice to me is animation and living to the full sensory, thinking, loving emotional experience possible. If we are not doing this, then we are living the opposite and punishment of stasis becomes the norm. Our lives on all levels and facets become conditioned and squeezed into a box of conformity and habit. This comes down to mindless movement and mindless eating and all stem from a mind that is not thinking leaving us with less mind. We seem to stop thinking once we have a routine established and we become robotic sleepwalkers. This is not living.

There are some things that are good to have as routine to make our transitions from sleep to work easier. Routines are good to have in that they allow an easy flow to occur. Then there is the fine line between routine and habit. In my mind, the difference is habit goes with an unthinking mind and routine is about being conscious and when one is conscious then adaptability and flexibility are infused into routine. This offers us organization and structure within and without.

I am not focused on what the numbers on a scale say and have not been at any time in this life but this does not mean I have not been on a diet! I did my first food diary years ago now and was amazed to discover just how habitual my selections had become. I was buying the same thing week in and week out with a modicum of variety. I like vegetables and fruits. I discovered I was buying the same fruits and the vegetables did have a slightly broader range than the fruits. Once this came to my attention I shifted gears immediately and tried to vary the fruits and the vegetables and felt the difference immediately within my cells. It really is about being conscious, being mindful, and changing. This is the spice of life.

some other links worth reading.....

I offer these two links that offer different perspectives and are interesting...at least they are to me. Do check them out. I do not think you will be disappointed.
Go well into this very grand day....carpe diem!


http://spiritualphilosophymymusings.blogspot.com/

http://michaelslight.blogspot.com/

This blog is posted by a good friend of mine so i hope you enjoy her writing as much as i do....
Raewyn

sugars, fat and inflamation of cells

A client showed me what he was using to snack on and the first ingredient was fructose and a little further down the list of ingredients was high fructose corn syrup. I was amazed and not surprised that he was struggling to lose a few pounds.

Fructose is as deadly in the body as high fructose corn syrup. It is a bit like putting sugat in the gas tank of our car and expecting good performance! These sugars are what I call “dead food” (as in lethal!) because they have no vibration as a result of having absolutely no nutritional value. I feel the same way about processed cereals. The contents may have started out as living foods but in the process of getting it into a pretty box for supermarket shelves, the “living foods” had the stuffing knocked out of them and any relationship to life and goodness that could be transferred to our cells is totally gone in the end product. The food has no life-force left in them.

The infusion of fructose, and high fructose corn syrup into “food stuffs” really should be held up as an offense against humanity as detrimental to our health and well being. These chemicals hold no enzymes to begin the break down of foods, nor do they contain any vitamins or essential minerals. Because of this lack, these “dead foods” interfere with the natural functions of the body and impede essential organs from using essential minerals. When I see the word “essential” I take it to mean I require them to function well.

If we look at when fructose corn syrup became imbued in the American food chain and looked at the dramatic rise in obesity and related illnesses, I feel we do not have to look too far to see a direct correlation to the synthetic, artificial “foods” we have been ingesting. We have to look at the quality and the quantity of our foods, air and water we are taking in. This is just one small example of how we are killing ourselves and creating a lot of pain and discomfort along the way. These synthetic foods we are eating are setting up a tremendous inflammatory state within our cells because these “foods” do not follow the natural (Nature) pattern of our design. It is well known that the body is challenged to heal and lose excess fat when the cells are inflamed. To eat “foods” containing high fructose corn syrup, for example and man-made synthetic chemicals is a perfect recipe for inflammation of cells, excess fat and all diseases that it brings with it when the body is out of balance.

We are going to be as healthy as the soil and the foods grown in it. Steiner has this part of the equation for health correct. To look around at the general population we can see that we have a major health problem. We have an epidemic of excess fat, and this epidemic is symbolic of our underlying dis-ease. It is in our face and we cannot miss the importance of what we are showing ourselves. We have a choice to be balanced and healthy and to do so we have to accept responsibility to change how we think and act. We have to line up our thinking, with our words and our behaviour with our commitment to change. No one can do this for us, nor can we do this for others. It is all our very “in our face” personal choice and to act on the decision to change is our gift of love to ourself.

We have separated ourselves from mother Earth and Nature and in doing so; we have separated ourselves from our health. Obesity and its related risk factors (heart disease, strokes, diabetes, hypertension to name a few) all have a direct link to the quality and quantity of what we are eating, drinking, breathing and movement of mind and body.