healing as an art form

The term healing arts has been around for a while but those physicians who truly practice this kind of art are few and far between.  Most of them go into the field to help, but then buckle under the system's culture and forget their original quest.

Healthcare in general has become so bureaucratic, so computerized, so impersonal, so technological and technical, so pharmaceutical, and of course so incredibly expensive.  Where did the healing touch go?  Where the compassionate conversation in supporting the patient emotionally?  Where the deep understanding of an affliction and how to heal it uniquely and individually?  Standard treatments instead.  Private practices are becoming ever bigger, and doctors often take as little as ten minutes to come up with diagnosis and treatment.  Next! Hospitals are no better.  Heartless money making machines, not temples of healing. 

Victoria Sweet, MD, writes on healing as an art in Spirituality & Health Magazines's article, "The Secret of Healing Touch," which is excerpted from her book Slow Medicine.  Sweet talks about the art of her touch, knowing just what the patient needs, and the importance of compassionate bedside manner.  We yearn for doctors like her, who practice healing as an art form, combining science and inner wisdom.   

When we acknowledge the importance of touch, deep dialogue, compassion, and true understanding of what ails a patient, when we make healing holistic again through human connection, when we integrate the scientific with the holistic diagnosic process, then healing is an art form.  

we've got it backwards

The farmers I buy my produce from are some of the most important people in my life.  What they grow goes into my body and literally becomes me.  How they grow their produce has a direct influence on my health and wellbeing. 

The nursery and preschool teachers who nurtured and taught my children were some of the most important people in their young lives.  Together with my husband and me they were instrumental in forming their early impressions and life experiences. 

Farmers and early childhood teachers should be compensated royally for the importance of their role in our lives.  Yet, the sad reality is that these are some of the least compensated professions, as a recent NY Times article states about kindergarten teachers, while the average farmer salary  is between $24K and $31K according to ziprecruiter.com.  Instead, we pay movie stars, football players, business and financial people, or tech start-ups, fortunes.  But how much do they contribute to our immediate health and wellbeing, or to building the minds of the next generation?

What is behind this incredible distortion?   A crumbling value system.  We've really got it backwards.  We worship entertainment and making money more than forming the next generation's minds or what we put in our bodies.  What do you think?

cook more

The other night we went out for a bite to eat after a talk I gave.  I love going out for drinks or something to eat.  It's good to get out of the house, it's good to be among people, it's good to do something to break up the week.  

At the same time I am becoming more discerning about what I put in my body, and it seems that the number of restaurants with the food I care to eat is quite small.  Hence we go to the same places all the time.  Except for the other night.  We went to a place we usually don't go to.  The food lay heavily in my stomach.  While it was nicely presented, it seemed very bready, and I couldn't even finish the two appetizers I had ordered. 

The best and cleanest food is the one I make at home because I know exactly what's in it.  I don't really know what's in take-out and restaurant food.  Even the better restaurants use more salt and sugar than I would in my home cooking.  Even with the better restaurants I don't know what oils or fats they use.  Nor will they necessarily cook with organic ingredients, produce or otherwise, unless they specifically advertise it.  And unless they say so, their meats are likely not to be pastured or grassfed.

So - cook more, invite friends over more often, have more potlucks.    You'll eat better, socialize more, and save money on top of it.

rhinoceros gazing at full moon

Love that name for a qi gong exercise.  Recently I took up qi gong again, a very gentle yet powerful, ancient Chinese practice that is thousands of years old and is so much more than exercise.  I love exercise forms that do more than just get you to move your body.  Qi gong promotes wellness by moving the qi or life energy in your body around to circulate it more freely and unblock energy channels along the way.  It is a very slow practice that doesn't look like anything much when you observe it from the outside.  Yet it turns out to be incredibly complex.  Qi gong requires intense mental focus because it entails the coordination of many aspects, such as eye movement, breath, different body parts, awareness of postures and precise positions.  And because the movements are so slow and repetitive it also promotes endurance.

Qi gong works well for me as a meditation in motion, and that is what it is often called, because I don't have much patience with sitting meditation.  With qi gong I am so busy focusing on the various aspects of my body that I am never bored, no matter how many repetitions of the same exercise, and I cannot not be totally in the moment.

I admire our teacher who, on top of doing the exercises with us, talks us through them in a slow, meditative voice, all the while noticing when someone locks their knees, hunches their shoulders, or cringes their face.  Then she gently makes us aware of how to improve the posture by a nod of the head, a movement of her eyes, a constructive comment or a prodding question.  Powerful!  What movement practice do you enjoy and why?

stop counting calories

You can stop counting calories if you eat a balanced diet.  My understanding of diet has shifted fundamentally over the past few years, and our entire culture is catching on fast that a balanced diet is different from what we thought a balanced diet was twenty years ago.   

Our official food pyramid is changing in real time, and has not yet caught on to the newest research, revelations, and understandings of the deeply intertwined relationship between what we eat and our health.  For fifty years the food industry sent us looking at lack of exercise, fat, cholesterol and those bad eggs, as the culprits of our dreaded civilization diseases.  But lo and behold, it's the carbs that send our system for a loop - it's them.  They are inflammatory, cause blood sugar ups and downs, food cravings, mood and hormonal swings, short-term energy bursts with predictable lows soon after, and the dreaded weight gain or inability to lose it.  They've only been in our diet for about ten thousand years ago, when our society turned agrarian, and thus our systems are not well adapted to them.  Most of all, carbs are addictive.   That's why it's so difficult to stop after one slice of pizza, one slice of crusty country bread with butter, or one cookie. 

Hi in carbs means also high in calories - cut out the carbs, stop calorie counting.  A low carb diet excludes sugar, and all grain products like bread, waffles and pancakes, pasta, grain flour, couscous and such, as well as starches like rice, corn, and potatoes - at least most of them, most of the time - sigh, if you must.   It includes lots more vegetables and fats than what you may be used to.  Since switching to a low carb diet I naturally, and completely without effort, calorie counting or other shenanigans, went back to my pre-kids weight.   I eat the French Paradox and don't put on an ounce of fat.

Switching to a low carb diet requires a big mental shift for sure, but you can do it gradually, especially if you are not a natural in the kitchen and rely on ready-made items.  You might replace one carby pantry item a week, or, if you are more adventurous, you can empty your pantry of carby items cold turkey - then the pasta won't be lurking on the shelf, beckoning for an excuse.  A low carb diet with enough good fats also stops food cravings!  Hence you can eat until you're satisfied - no calorie counting, no guilt.  I managed to avoid a whole Christmas dessert buffet, other than the strawberries, without too many regrets, because I was already satisfied and didn't crave the sugars in front of me. 

Many of us are forced to make this shift for health reasons.  Besides, who wants to be on meds for the rest of their life?

Please reread these earlier related posts, "let food be thy medicine," and "on losing weight."

conquering negative thinking

Always seeing the glass half-empty can send you into a perpetual negative spin and eventually leave you depressed.  Yes, for self-preservation purposes we are evolutionarily wired to react faster to negative than to positive news.  However, it is important to realize that dwelling on negative thoughts keeps you stuck in the past and is self-perpetuating.            

How to get out of that vicious cycle?  Psychotherapist Lesley Alderman explained in a recent article that it is important to actually acknowledge your negative thoughts in order to move on, rather than suppressing them.  The first step to any self-improvement - wanting to change a behavior or pattern - is always to become aware of what you're doing.   Many depressed people actually deny that they are depressed; they don't realize that they keep producing unhelpful thoughts and are on a hamster wheel of negativity.  That is fooling yourself, burying your head in the sand.  Without interior work there can be no improvement. 

If you believe that everyone is out to get you, that people don't appreciate you, that you're alone, that there is a lot of negativity in the world, that things are not going well - maybe it's time to take a big long beautiful breath and acknowledge that you are the one who has been producing all these negative thoughts and beliefs.  If you are ready for change, if you are ready to think positive thoughts, uplifting thoughts, go see a funny movie and make a conscious shift - housekeeping of the mind needed.

eating healthfully takes time

No beating around the bush - navigating this crazy world's food system, and eating healthfully, takes time. 

All the reading and research take time.  Granted, I love food, and the food system interests me, not in the least out of a sense of concern and self-preservation.  Every time I find out something new and relevant about diet or food I try to incorporate it into my ways of shopping and cooking.  That makes things more complex - discerning fact from fiction, understanding what particular research results and dietary recommendations actually apply to my family, sourcing new items, and finding ways to prepare additions to our food selections.

All the shopping takes time.  I go to a lot of different places to shop as reasonably as possible, for as much variety as possible, to buy as locally as possible, to get the most organic and least sprayed foods possible, to buy pastured meat and eggs, find the most healthful seafood, and to research and buy those items I cannot find locally online or through my food coop.  It takes time.

All the preparation takes time.  Cooking from scratch takes time, no way around it.  Most of my meal prep time goes into preparing produce since I often make several vegetable dishes, some raw, some cooked.  But I, too, use short cuts - see an earlier blog post, hurry-nights, on that - my own fast food ways.  And I love leftovers, frozen for a later point in time, or simply for lunch the next day. 

Ultimately, you, the consumer, are responsible for discerning what information is relevant to you, what is healthy for your body, what diet makes sense, what food items to buy, and how to prepare them.  Make no mistake, the current food system is not designed to provide you with the most healthful food, but to make money by selling you product - product earns more than produce.  Hence big-ag and big-food's cat and mouse game with you, the consumer, to manipulate you by hiding facts that would prevent you from buying more of their stuff.  Spend some valuable time to read between the lines and dig deeper.  Whole unprocessed foods have no hidden agenda, only packaged and processed foods do. 

water is amazing

What do holy water and homeopathy have in common?  The late Masaru Emoto wrote several books on his famous water experiments that showed how water supposedly could be "programmed" with a message.   Lynne McTaggart, journalist, and author of several books on intention, also conducted a series of water experiments with the help of a team of scientists, as narrated in her most recent book The Power of Eight.  Those experiments seem to indicate that water reacts to intent or consciousness, or can carry a message.

The idea behind holy water in church is the same, to imbue water with the frequency of universal love, and use this water to bless the members of the congregation. 

Now we're on to homeopathy.  Mainstream scientists and medical researchers have always had a problem with homeopathy, which uses remedies in such minute concentrations that the original substance can no longer be detected with regular scientific testing methods.  Moreover, and here is where homeopathy goes completely against the grain of mainstream beliefs, the greater the dilution, the greater the potency and effect of the remedy.  I have experienced myself how potent, effective, yet gentle, homeopathic remedies can be, especially in the higher dilutions, and when diluted in water.

It seems thus that water can carry a message, a message in the form of a frequency imprint that our body's electro-magnetic system is able to decipher and use. You may have heard that something is held in the cellular memory.  Given that our body is made up of around 60% water one wonders whether all our thoughts and beliefs are held specifically in the water of our cells.  Any thoughts?

better wine

Glyphosate residue in my wine?  Quite a while ago I expanded the organic conversation by writing about organic seeds and organic cut flowers.  Organic wine is another area to expand your organic awareness to.

Just like organic produce, organic wine comes from grapes that have been grown without chemical fertilizers and pesti/fungi/herbicides, all of which inevitably end up in your body, and on top of it leave of course the soil contaminated. 

Organic wines have been shown to have up to one third more of the much talked about longevity promoting antioxidant resveratrol (and which you could ingest in pill form - but it's so much more enjoyable in the form of red wine).  Organic wines are also chemical contaminant free, and, depending on the wine, may even be without those added sulfites (the less of those the better as well - that stuff adds shelf life but not health).

Because organic wines are now available for the same price as conventional wines (yes, indeed!), I have switched over to buying organic wines and bubbly exclusively.  It's better for my health and it's better for the environment and it does not cost any more money.  No reason to buy conventional.

A1 or A2

Food is a minefield these days.   Now I am learning about the two different milk proteins, A1 and A2 casein, that cows exhibit based on breed.  It so happens that the Northern European cow breeds, Holsteins, Friesians, and Ayrshires, mostly produce the A1 protein, which, as Steven Gundry reports in his The Plant Paradox, supposedly wreaks havoc in the pancreas and is likely a major cause of Type 1 Diabetes.  Most cows in the US, Australia, and New Zealand are of this type unfortunately.  Therefore, neither their milk, nor their cheese, yogurt, butter, or any of their other dairy products (save sour cream, cream cheese, or heavy cream) are beneficial to us, according to Dr. Gundry.

Goat and sheep milk, and their dairy products (eat more chèvre or feta), are free of this protein, as are all Southern European cow breeds' milk products.  If you or your children drink fresh milk, consider looking for A2 milk.  When buying cow milk cheese and butter look for products from France, Italy, Spain, or Switzerland, countries which prefer other cow breeds, all of which have the A2 protein.  I'll let you know about my six-week trial diet.