Being Well

CLEANSE AND RENEW

There is an art of depth and frequency to the cleansing fast and you are a fortunate one to have an appointment with the desire to let go of the habit of food for awhile and get the habit better under control. Practice the discipline of the habit of eating consciously, understanding more about how you eat and what you eat even though it is like getting a team of wild horses under reign!

Food causes you much suffering and you may not even know it. The reason is food is often ingested unconsciously. Eating often becomes an attraction without your presence of mind at the event! The habit of ingesting is often used as a balm for mental and physical discomfort but it is rarely remedial. If you have or haven’t digressed to a disease because of eating unconsciously, (eating to live instead of living to eat), doing so in unhealthful ways, then a venture into the art of conscious eating/drinking, the fast and cleansing can serve you well.

Health rarely declines in a natural time ordered way. In these times there are a couple of driving forces to consider behind this. One is the global chemical saturation of the earth, air and water needed to produce human food sustenance. There is also a ton of junk food created for human consumption since the dawn of the industrial age. These have caused a corruption of the tellurian human body. The body is in such a state that it often suffers a toxic overload and breaks down. Apart from environmental clean up, managing this situation requires a better understanding of and care for your digestive tract. You need a healthy diet, suitable for you, pure water and a good functioning of your organs of elimination. This functioning is well aided by cleansing and fasting. For good and thorough digestion there must occur several processes that are all equally important: ingestion> digestive fire (right amount), >absorption >assimilation >elimination of waste. Everything after ingestion may not be functioning well because an understanding and care of the digestive tract and how it works is missing. For instance, let’s say you eat a couple of beef tacos (did you chew them well?) and then follow it with a bowl of grapes and then some chips and top it with some soft drink or a beer. Call it backsliding at the next point of diminishing returns. Your digestive functioning comes to a grinding halt. Incompatible food combining and the deluge of liquid ferment putrify the undigested food. Everything stagnates. Your body will have to put forth a huge extra effort to work out the problem. You will most likely get some kind of big ache somewhere. It is amazing how "normal" indigestion has become as well as all the aches and pains that come as a result of it which are usually addressed with a band aid remedy like an antacid. These will offer a short term relief but deeper health issues develop over the course of time. Add:You have to work hard to break down your body with eating habits but after enough time, the system falters. The human body is amazingly resilient though and you can recover in a shorter amount of time with the right healthful applications.

A live organism such as your human body can thrive and decline in a natural time ordered way along nature’s timeline. The digestive tract however can be a huge help or impediment. It is the one system in your body that can rot you from the inside out due to the dysfunction of elimination and take every other bodily system down with it. As we have learned from medical science many of our diseases start in the gut. If the function of elimination fails, toxins build up and back up to your system of vital organs. It is not a comfortable subject but the human body in these times has an overpopulation of parasites. Do some research that will benefit you and look at the faces of parasites. These are strange critters and some of them look like they should be wearing a top hat. Spiritually consider the question "what’s eating you (or who)?" Parasites are the physiological counterpart of harping negative thoughts and emotions. It is often said "the mind and the body are one". If you have continual negative thought/emotion harassment in combination with an unhealthy diet, you are probably colonized by parasites. Their offspring called flukes migrate from the digestive tract out into the peripheral regions of your bodily system. Parasites thrive in a toxic bodily system.

I really embrace the idea "love yourself as you are" imperfect digestion and all and of course loving others. A good way to love yourself is to address how your physical body, your vehicle, is being maintenanced. Taking care of your body at least as well as you take care of your car will contribute to the increase of the higher energies of your mind and heart, a love and appreciation for yourself and everything. It is easier to tap in with a healthier digestive tract. Digestive improvement through healthy diet, cleansing and fasting can play a part in a body’s rejuvenation so that a person will feel better mentally and physically.

I surmise that a million years or so from now the digestive system will start to devolve. There is some info out there regarding how human beings are evolving from a carbon base to crystalline, into beings whose chakra systems will transform more of the energy of light and humans will crave food less and less. Yogis, mystics, philosophers, physicians, saints, and sages etc. have known about this and this is one reason why they fasted and avoided being bogged down with the gravity of grave digestive issues. More about this later! I will be coming back to the topic of diet and cleansing in future posts as we go forward through these Aquarian Chronicles and I will share some of my own experiences with cleansing and fasting. It has been challenging and highly rewarding! Wishing you well in every way!

MEAT RETREAT

"What happened had to happen."   Native American Elder

Over the last four decades of practicing vegetarianism, once in awhile, a fuse would trip in my intent to renounce a familiar craving. I blew it in deep social sentiment while sharing a meal. I blew it in the longing to belong to the company of family and friends I was with or in nostalgia when masking aromas triggered happy memories of childhood days. I blew it in in the vague dissatisfaction that triggered and stimulated craving accompanied by the sequences of habitual emotional recycles such as boredom or frustration. And I give thought to those who give no conscious thought at all to the intercourse of it, coming to mind the histories of hordes and plunder, the exoduses of the masses, the extraction of beating hearts, lusty promises of satiety and inebriating contracts with spirits of all kinds. And what I derive by my sense of the ancient is that the habit is deep in our helix, imbued with the ancient burn and brandings of the breeding, slaughter, and consumption of animals.

During these decades, I’ve practiced dietary disciplines that have had an interesting weave of various kinds of trends. There has been a refining process occurring in my dietary journey and I have noticed and heeded to dietary urges that have occurred throughout. In the departure from eating meat my state of mind, energy level and my digestive system functions did not falter. In these I did in fact experience a considerable amount of positive changes that I can attribute largely in part to the delete of eating meat. As far as some of the most important concerns regarding a vegetarian diet, I discovered plant based proteins and healthy fat sources such as greens, sea vegetables, nuts and seeds; and I learned many interesting ways to prepare them. I learned how to source B12 and iron rich hemoglobin with fermented foods, good bacteria and raw plants high in chlorophyll.

Scientific facts abound on the when, why, where and how of meat eating and there is not whole lot of information out there that is without controversy on both sides of the fence.  I am not a scientist in the usual sense of the word, but I do like to take the road less traveled in my investigation and research related topics such as animal husbandry and war, histories of crop growing, the biology of criminal behavior and brain nutrition. Personally the experiences of being well and not being well physically and emotionally have been plenty enough proof for me to embrace a vegetarian diet. I have so far not had to take a medication but once or twice (antibiotics) and I have sought my own personal investigation of remedial courses and experiments regarding the causal. However, what is proven by myself for myself regarding meat eating may be different if you are not sharing in the same kind of experience. Today for most people, not eating meat is not an option and many think it’s a crazy idea. I often hear complaints like “I have to eat meat because my energy or iron levels are low” or “I’m just not getting enough protein.” “I just don’t feel right”. And these are all legitimate complaints although I am not so sure these are not for the most part “all in the mind”. The transition to vegetarian practice has to have a good base of information to work with so you know how to feed yourself. Transitioning from a meat eating diet into vegetarianism can be challenging but change usually is. It’s good to remember that change must come about very slowly, especially something that runs in the blood like a million years of meat consumption.

We as a carnivorous species have an immense body of very fascinating history behind us. Geography and climate have been the strongest influences in the increase of the consumption of animal flesh. Anthropological research indicates that this increase has contributed to a steady growth of brain size through time. We are much changed from the early hominids of 3 million years ago but not so from the modern homo sapiens who were the hunter gatherer societies that emerged and developed through the Paleolithic era that began some hundreds of thousands of years ago. The contribution of meat consumption to human intelligence is debated. But let’s suffice it to say a lot of the time we do not behave as though we are members of an intelligent species. So I guess a few question need to be pondered like “What is meant by intelligence?” “How and to what do we apply it and to what caliber?”

In later developments and transitions into the modern human the industry of meat and the escalation of the rise of meat consumption started with the beginning of agricultural practices which led to the end of the hunter gatherer era. There is an interesting parallel at the inception of this new “Holocene” era (modern era we are now in). This point in time marked the expansion of human settlement, land tenure, crop growing and animal domestication. These were extremely time and energy intensive and how better to implement workforce than to enslave other human beings and of course the animals? Feudal systems arose from the practice of slavery and also did the assumptions of the idea of a human hierarchy based on property, possessions and slave labor. These were also the earliest beginnings of the human notion of power over nature and ecological demise. These have coincided with an escalation of human violence. Our modern human history of the last 15,000 years reveals unattested witness and record to the steady rise of human behavioral violence and heinous atrocities against each other. Tool development has culminated in large scale production for the purpose of massive and widespread human destruction with an unprecedented expenditure of human lives and resources through the recurring casualties of large scale world wars.

VEGGIE BURGER

In present research circles of human behavior and the new nutritional sciences, meat consumption and the manufacturing processes that drive it are found to have, although not cited as the raison d’etre, a significant connection to violent human tendencies. The idea that meat consumption and the spawn of its industries of embalmed cruelties have exacerbated the biochemistries of violence in human behavior is very new to more than a few and is presently being examined.  Violent behavior has a biochemical profile. The blood is the medium for this examination in the study of food metabolism breakdown and affects on the human physiology (in particular the endocrine system) and following, affects on human psychology. It has already been shown that a byproduct of meat consumption is the escalation of urea in the blood contributing to a high level of adrenaline and the increase of anxiety and nervousness.

Consider the steady decline of our physical and mental/emotional health manifesting in many modern diseases such as neurological dementias, heart disease and cancer. These are shown to have a causal connection to foods. The overconsumption of the agricultural “bounties” of our era such as genetically modified animal products, wheat, corn, rice and soy are presently being implicated in several health conditions. There is also the immense toll taken on the earth from deforestation and the massive toxic waste overload produced in order to maintain the animal production industry for human consumption.

The practice of Vegetarianism over the course of these decades has not been much of a struggle. It seems I came to life prepared for the task mentally and physically. Early in life I found meat eating to be an uncomfortable and strange experience. I recall having a keen sense of the sentient life of animals. I hugged cows, rode ponies bare backed, marched with ducks, roosted with chickens, saved mice and bats, and collected crawdads and fireflies and remember animals very clearly expressing their feelings. I discovered pigs to be just as smart if not more so than canines that (in our culture) are not found on dinner plates. I found out in many haunting ways wherefrom and how meat came to the table but the knowledge of how it does so today is much more upsetting.  I am a link in a very ancient line of flesh consuming generations and civilizations but I feel strongly about helping to create a more peaceful and compassionate world. For me this includes breaking the chain and setting a precedent for what it is to be human for the NEXT million years. And I wonder that humans will eventually slough off the meat habit on the evolutionary timetable somewhere down the road. Genus Homo is still evolving!

PHYSICIAN’S COMMITTEE FOR RESPONSIBLE MEDICINE
Don’t Vegetarians Have Trouble Getting Enough Vitamin B12

http://www.pcrm.org/health/diets/vegdiets/dont-vegetarians-have-trouble-getting-enough

PROTEIN METABOLISM ISSUES

http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/blood-urea-nitrogen

http://www.livestrong.com/article/35072-foods-avoid-creatinine-high/

ANIMALS HAVE FEELINGS TOO
http://www.farmsanctuary.org/events/gene-baur-speaking-tour-upcoming-events/

I FEEL IT IN MY BONES...

My grandson gave me a basic synopsis of the death scenario.When you die you get buried.  Your soul goes up to heaven and your bones stay in the ground. It's in memory of our conversation that I will write about bones.

Bones in their composition are largely crystalline (calcium, phosphate etc) bound with protein bundles that are collagen. Ligaments and tendons are largely composed of collagen. Collagen gives bones resiliency. 

Nutritionally, more and more is being made known about the rampant inflammatory conditions that preclude bone and joint problems. Only recently in the industrial age have we been consuming junk food and developing an entirely different food consumption from the one that has been available to our biochemistry for the last 10,000 years. Our digestive system has been the same for about that long too! Much of the composition of our biochemistry is composed of all known mineral elements, except for a couple. All known mineral elements are leaving our food sources due to agricultural practices and environmental conditions.

Basically the overconsumption of junk foods and junk beverages, eating habits and food combinations have created an imbalance in the ph of the blood. The blood is said to be overly acidic. The ph of the blood fights to keep the blood at the alkaline level of around 7.0. Over alkalizing the blood hardly occurs but eating a wide variety of healthy foods and exercising can help maintain a proper ph level. Most people have a problem with too much acidity in the blood and so the blood leaches calcium from the bones and cartilage in an attempt to maintain its ph level. Acidity originates in the digestive processes which start in the mouth with little or no chewing and mixture of the food with saliva. Chewing and saliva transform the food to be ingested into a more alkaline state. Your saliva is perplexed by things like twinkies, but might even work with one if it was chewed well enough. One thing is you could be diverting a lot of the energy your body uses for trying to digest to your creative life instead of suffering the bog of energy lows inherent in too much junk food and beverage consumption. Tipping the scales of the consumption of junk foods, red meat, refined sugar, and alcoholic, carbonated or caffeinated beverages are the main culprits. You are also setting yourself up for blood born parasites, yeast, and other critters who are alive and defecate. Sorry to be graphic about this, but be informed!

When calcium starts to leach from the bones this sets into motion a cascade of biochemical imbalances. You can read about these things if you want to know more in depth. The dynamics of food and metabolism and biochemical exchanges is complex but you may find them very interesting! You might check into the research regarding calcium deficiency and how it is scientifically linked to many of our modern day diseases such as cancer, heart disease, kidney disease and osteoporosis. Another thing is that since the onset of the industrial and technological era, people are not outside very much, so the vitamin D3 which is very much needed in the metabolism and production of calcium, is lacking.

On another level, bones process information from electromagnetic fields in the environment and the spectrum of light. By ions (minerals that lose or gain electrons in order to obtain a stable electron configuration) and the forces of the earth’s magnetic field, bones are the first physically organized system to manifest in concert with the central nervous system. Bones are intelligent, composed of the oldest minerals in the universe, and co-evolved with “organic” life forms. They are foundational and are subject to the initial impressions of survival, safety and security. Through life they will also be effected while one is struggling to negotiate survival in many ways emotionally and mentally. For instance a mental programming dedicated to the question of “am I going to survive this month?”,  say due to a lack of resources; or "I am not going to survive this (emotional bullying" may indeed have an effect on the bones! They are particularly subject to the vibrations of external sounds by their most delicate structure, the cochlear bones of the inner ear. There is something beautifully cosmological about this as there is a conch kind of structure for sound in the head. Bones resonate. They resonate the flow of thought through the meridians. What is flowing in the meridians is electrical and energetic, and so the connection with the dynamics of ions, and electrolytes.

So how to take care of your bones?  Meditate and get out of panic. Exercise and get flexible.  Study a food lifestyle for yourself. I can say milk is bad for you, but perhaps not. You might do fine with milk. From what I have learned raw milk is best and goat milk is even better. Wonderful herbs for the bones can be used in tea form. Horsetail (silica), nettles, oatstraw, red clover, peppermint and others. Use calcium supplementation  (citrate, chelate, ionic or colloidal ) One thing about calcium supplementation, not the right kind will not work very well. Think of flexibility instead of hard bones. It might be a good idea to get a broad spectrum liquid mineral supplement. Seaweed like kombu, nori kelp and dulse are very high in mineral content. It’s best when you can get your nutrition from food. Get early sunlight, late sunlight (toast instead of roast), wearing tinted sunglasses is questionable. Dark leafy greens are good sources of calcium and learning about eating consciously will contribute greatly to bone health.

A HEALTHY GENESIS                                            

I started out early in life at my mother’s home in the mountains of West Virginia. This was where I first felt my pioneering spirit and deep connection with nature. My first impressions of life were idyllic and I was just plain enchanted with the natural world around me. I was always exuberant and barefoot. I loved to breath in the fresh mountain air.  I remember my grandmother shouting things like, ”Nicki get out of that apple tree, yer gonna fall and break yer neck!”  “Nicki get out of the strawberry patch!” (or cherry tree). No problem because the hillsides were pink with wild strawberries, there were wild cherry trees, wild tomatoes, currants, plums and the mountain springs thick with the brambles of raspberries and blackberries. The abandoned strip mine roads were laden with concord grape vines. I loved to eat then because the food was just pure nectar and I didn’t have to imagine, even for a second, from where came the source of this cornucopia! Everything was so delicious and perfect for my hearty appetite.

In the early 1950’s before my grandmother had running water in the house, we carried water from a particular spring which not only had the best tasting water in the world, but also place I could retreat. It was a place where I could  visit with faeries and elves and converse with magical beings in the depths of the spring among mosses, ferns, butterflies, flowers and beams of honeyed sunlight. I really liked to hang out with the cows and I was so excited to start the day that I would often wake up right before my grandmother and her alarm clock which was the rooster! I would lie between the feather beds and listen to her soft steps into the kitchen where she would start the fire in the wood cook stove. I loved helping her with the chores which included milking the cow for churning butter and making buttermilk. Farm life was not so hard for me because unlike my mother’s family only had only a little imagination about all that went into hacking a life out of the wilderness a couple of generations before. These early impressions of the natural world greatly influenced my path in life. I recall sickness was not so common among us and you most often died of something when you got real old. I remember only one person to get sick with cancer and that was truly a great and remarkable upheaval in the community.

It seemed that all of a sudden, the modern age was upon us. Around 1960 fast food establishments, supermarkets and mini marts started to spring up everywhere. A drive to the A&W or Dairy Queen was considered a pretty exciting venture. By the time I was in junior high school, I had long departed from the farm life I knew and loved so well. At this time came the rise of agriculture and corporate business practices. This was accompanied by a growing and predatory chemical industry and its involvement in food manufacturing and commodities with its unchecked industrial pollution into the water and air.

Right away I began to notice an increasing occurrence of fast food wraps and plastics trashing the environment and I sensed a general disrespect for the natural world such as piles of instamatic camera stuff thrown down around a beautiful waterfall scene on a hiking trail or “SHAWN LOVES TERESA” scrawled with unwashable paint on rocks and boulders. It was depressing to me. I was not feeling well as a teenager by then. Those were tumultuous times and I suffered headaches and side aches. I am grateful that my Mom always had 3 meals a day on the table. She was a great cook. Even so, I was eating a lot of junk food, meat and soft drinks. By the time I was in high school I had recurring headaches and stomach aches and my back often went out so that I could barely move.

Along with the cultural revolution came many of the neighborhood health food stores and co-ops so that by my late teens and early twenties, along with my new interest in yoga practice came the inspiration to get back to basics. I found a mentor on my search here in Columbia and she cooked me my first “vegetarian meal” on my  birthday. I will never forget it. It was roasted potatoes and eggplant parmesan with cheese sauce and a salad made with greens from her garden topped with a balsamic vinegarette. Then she gave me a tea made from her herb garden. Ok here we go! Shortly afterward I moved in with her on her little farm out Bluff road with yep, you guessed it, cows and chickens. A friend later gifted us with a baby wild pig and the relationship with “Louisa” punctuated my vegetarian determination by becoming one of the smartest animals I ever met. I think it was she who led me into a curiosity of a history of animal domestication and human evolution and the feelings and thoughts I hold today about eating fellow creatures. I have to honestly say though that these days, I myself have eaten flesh foods on occasion. I feel that in the future that habit will most likely cease.

Yes it is high time that we get back to the basics where food and health are concerned. There are many “research and cure” coffers, but I feel much of the obvious and causal has been blindsided. Human health conditions continue to deteriorate and before our species annihilates itself with a total disconnect and disregard of the natural world, we have to get down to the business of restoring the natural world to a healthier state. We have to rid ourselves of the causes of our demise, excesses in chemical production and waste saturating our life sustaining sources (earth, wather, and air), lack of intelligent human waste management and most importantly, we have to become aware and heal the mental/emotional conditions that have manifested our demise. Consider that a great number of the world's population  are in near deprivation. Theirs is a dismal view of life on earth and thoughts of health and environmental ideas are far far away. They are members of our human family too.

I hope you will reflect on my writings and feel free to comment!