How a Holistic Approach to Food Can Lead to a Holistic Approach to Life

 

Please join us at Pleasant Stone Farm in Middletown on Tuesday, November 19th at 7:00pm

Consider your own relationship with food.   Do you love it, savor it, feel good about it, and does it nourish your soul? Or is it perhaps riddled with guilt, confusion, or questions and misgivings about the state of our food?

Susanne Meyer-Fitzsimmons, a holistic adventurer and writer, will discuss the creation of a deeper dialogue between us, our bodies and our food, which is too often non-existent or dysfunctional, and how this dialogue can open our awareness to a more holistic way of living on many other levels.  Susanne will share her experiences of growing up in a different food culture from which her passion for food arose, discuss holistic ways to positively engage with it and create a conversation that may enhance your relationship with food as a gateway to a more holistic lifestyle.

The event is free but we do ask that you register. Please call Pleasant Stone Farm: 845-343-3040.

eye candy for you and me

Do we need beauty in life?  I always thought that New York City was not a particularly beautiful city (character yes, beauty not) compared to perhaps Amsterdam or Paris or a Tuscan village. While beauty is not everything, and some beauty comes from within and lies deep, I do find that beauty enhances my life tremendously.  It adds harmony and pleasure to my life.  It makes my life more pleasant. I like it when our dinner table is nicely set, it pleases me to have flowers around the house, I love the joy of color (in clothes, in food, in decor, in nature), and I appreciate good design.

We may not need it (in Maslow's hierarchy of needs it would be way at the top of the pyramid in self-actualization), but it sure is nice to have.  We can become more aware of its effects on our moods and actively seek beauty out and consciously add it to our life.  I am not much of a movie goer, but in the past few years I saw two movies (on a big screen in a theatre, not on Netflix) that were extraordinary eye candy:  Kung Fu Panda II and Mirror Mirror, watching pleasure through and through, Kung Fu Panda for its exceptional landscapes and amazing details, Mirror Mirror for its exquisite wardrobes, landscapes, decors and use of color.

Add some color, add some beauty, add some quality to your life!

and now about aromatherapy

Here is another gentle holistic therapy that acts on the entire body/mind/spirit continuum without side effects (unlike allopathic medications, which alter the body chemistry to counter-act symptoms and do so with side effects).  Aromatherapy, in contrast to homeopathy, which I wrote about recently, is a very ancient healing modality dating back thousands of years.

Essential oils are distilled from different plant parts and are massaged into different body parts, inhaled or even ingested.   Many essential oils have anti-viral, anti-fungal, anti-bacterial and anti-parasitic properties, and may be excellent substitutes for antibiotics and other drugs with side effects.

I put a few drops of tea tree and eucalyptus oil in a bowl of hot water and inhale the steam for treatment of viral or bacterial infections of the respiratory tract.  Lavender oil (diluted in water and sprayed on) heals scar tissue and burns.  When my children had ear infections, I dripped a bit of warm (not hot!) olive oil with a drop of tea tree oil (or garlic, oregano or cinnamon oil) into the affected ear, put some cotton in it, and repeated this a few times a day.   The ear infection usually cleared without the use of antibiotics. My daughter swears by a drop or two of lavender on her pillow to sleep well.  Instead of commercial mouthwash I rinse with a few drops of peppermint and tea tree oil in water after brushing my teeth (tea tree is  anti-bacterial, peppermint is anti-inflammatory).  When my children had colds I used to put a diffuser in their room overnight with a few drops of eucalyptus and tea tree oil.

The sicker our body and our emotional health, the lower the frequency of the body.  Different essential oils have different electrical frequencies.  A properly trained aromatherapist can realign the body's "out-of-tune" frequency through a combination of different oils and different application methods on different body locations.  This is obviously much more complex than my little home remedies.

Please take a look at these links for further inspiration and information:  University of Maryland Medical Center on aromatherapy, www.aromatherapy.com, and health.howstuffworks.com.

On a different note, essential oils, such as citrus oils (lemon, orange) or herbal oils (rosemary, thyme) can be used in cooking and baking (cinnamon oil) by adding a few drops to cake or cookie dough or salad dressings for example.

Happy healing and happy cooking!

smile, it's free

Not only is it free, as week-end workshop facilitator Cynthia Bianco said to us, it is also highly infectious.  Try not to smile when someone smiles at you - it feels quite awkward.  But it's usually a one-way street.  How often does it happen that someone smiles at you when you put on a stern face?  However, when you directly smile at people, most can't help but smile back at you.  And, lo and behold, the world becomes a friendlier place. Smiling immediately turns your energy around from negative to positive.  They say "fake it 'til you make it. " That's good advice since body and mind are interconnected and influence one another.  The more you gently remind yourself to smile, the more it becomes part of an inner radiance.

One of the women who attends an energy development class I regularly go to struck me because she always has this radiant contagious smile on her face.  It makes the whole room shine and it actually feels weird not to smile back.

Yesterday morning I had a chat with my daughter's camp van driver.  On my way back to the car a worker, who was painting some woodwork on a store entrance, smiled at me spontaneously.  I realized that I was still smiling from my conversation with the van driver and that my smile spread outward like a ripple effect.

Try it sometime - walk down the street smiling and see what happens.

P.S.: Also see a previous post on positive thinking.

:) ;) :(

The emoticon, a newly created word for a new communication platform, is starting to show up in corporate email communications.  The NY Times wrote about it not too long ago.  The word is a contraction of "emotion" and "icon." So much of our communication now goes via email, no longer by telephone conversation or formal letter.  Email is a more casual way of communicating, and we are quick to type away and push the "send" button without pondering the consequences of "quick."

Although we cannot see a person's face during a telephone call, and therefore cannot read facial expression, we can still hear and interpret voice modulation, which tells a lot about a person's feelings or emotions.  A letter is a formally written document.  We take time to hone the wording carefully, and read it over a few times so it sounds just right before sealing the envelope and sticking the stamp on.

An email lacks both these qualities and with it the emotional content which contributes so much to our interpretation.  We don't spend enough time honing the wording of emails because it is a quick and casual communication.  Because emails lack emotion they can easily sound curt, abrasive, even unprofessional or demanding. That's where the emoticon comes in.  People are sensing emails' emotional lack and are adding it back in with the help of emoticons.  Emoticons emulate facial expressions such as a wink ;), a smile :), or an expression of dislike or disapproval :(.  They add the human element back into this form of  electronic communication.

 

don't frack our future

Instead of digging into our earth, chopping it up, fracking it and injecting chemically laced water into it, carving some out of it, plundering it, hollowing it out, throwing our trash onto it and burying trash into it,

making a mess of it, plundering and raping it,

let's respect our earth, appreciate it for what it gives us, honor it, cooperate with it, and understand it.

stop and smell the roses

Why do we like stories so much?  Steve Almond, author and creative writing professor,  says that the narrator “is the guide who makes sense of the story.”  We used to TELL stories, then we WROTE stories, now much of our story telling comes in the form of horrific pictures from the media.  Storytelling has become fragmented – why?  Because our story is changing and we are confused about it. The old stories, such as our Western creation story, are obsolete.  Even our president deplored that he might not have narrated a good enough new story to the American people.  Of course there are all sorts of stories, local and global.  Stories illustrate where we come from, where we might be going, what’s going on around us, and how it all hangs together.   But, as Almond writes in his very good story on stories, our present storyline is being overshadowed by “glittering fantasies of violence and fame.”  He is wondering whether “…the story of our species…has simply become too enormous, too confused and terrifying, for us to grapple with.”

Stop, and question, and wonder, and discuss, and read, and make up your own mind about our current story.  Don't let yourself passively be assaulted by the zillions of fragmented and incoherent pieces of visual and verbal mis- dis-  and actual information.

Stop and smell the roses sometime.

photo by Deborah Fitchett

out with the old, in with the new

Although time is our own invention it seems to serve us well – at least most of the time.  And just as we need our Mondays (to clean, get organized and start fresh in little ways), we need a new year for a fresh start in bigger ways and to bring closure to the previous one.  That way we don’t have the impression of existing in an endless timeless cloud.  I know, New Year’s resolutions usually quickly dissolve.  Still, they are important, especially if we are not used to taking stock during the year.  It’s good to pause and breathe and assess where we have gone in the past year and where we ‘d like to go in the coming year and years. So make a plan.  Here’s to 2013!

'tis the season - stress less, enjoy more

I have to remind myself of that between writing Christmas cards, buying presents (we have simplified our life by buying only for the children in our family – it’s not like the adults need more stuff), attending school concerts (I like those, the atmosphere is always very festive, and music inevitably boosts my mood), daughter telling me we need to bake Christmas cookies (I don’t need that stress in my life right now), planning her birthday party (Harry Potter this year, can’t do away with the birthday party, for sure), and various Christmas and New Year’s dinners (that’s with people, but of course it is easier on me if we get invited than if I have to do the inviting, and planning, and cooking). 

So, the part I really enjoy about all of this, always, ever – is the people, the conviviality, the togetherness, the sharing.  I like a good conversation over reasonably good food and wine (I am not too picky when get invited, that is a real treat in itself).  Think about it – it really is about our relationships and interactions with people.  The other holiday stuff we fill our lives with is self-induced stress brought on by social conventions and feelings of obligation.  So it is good to pick and do that which brings us joy and satisfaction and eliminate the rest from our life (I wished I could eliminate all the chauffeuring I do for the kids in the afternoons, it makes for a very unproductive part of my day).

Monday, Monday

What would life be without Mondays?  Our house is usually a mess by Sunday and I am glad that Monday comes around.  The beds get made again, the dishes get washed and put away again, the carpets get vacuumed, the clothes get hung up again, and stuff gets picked up and put in its place.  We need Mondays for a fresh start, to clean up and get organized again, get our head out of the week-end cloud, and simply as an opposite to week-ends.  As much as we grumble about climbing out of the warm bed at 6AM on Monday morning, we need our Mondays.  Mondays are good for us.