It is simple really: Love

Yup, dont really have much to say right now except Love. It is pretty clear that there is only one thing that matters. Only one thing in this world that bridges Everything. Actually it even bridges the worlds. Love brings with it a light that is brighter than anything. It eliminates strife and confusion. It pacifies fear and squelches the fire of conflict. Love creates space and is the breath of freedom. Love is the clouded caravan on which joy rides. Love is everywhere and is accessible even in the darkest depths of dispair. Find yourself a way to bring love richly into your life again. Open that door of Divine love and shine. It is your birthright. It is you. Choose love first. I choose love!

A new day; a clear vision

Wow does time fly when I my only nutritional intake is vegetable juice and tea!

Since I was last posting, I have adventured both inside my body and outside. On the inside I have been cleansing and working an amazing piece around my vision for my future. On the outside, i took a little road trip up the California coast to Point Arena to visit a friend on an amazing piece of property. A couple friends from Kauai gathered as well and we shared a moment of play and reflection, nurturing our body, mind and spirit. I left here feeling like I was gone from my daily grind for a week or more and it had only been 48 hours or less. Talk about rejuvenative! Time disappeared as we drank tea in the misty clouded mornings, watching the wind blow the redwoods and waist tall grasses. Time managed to stay away while we lined up in the dance studio on the property, all four of us actively engaged in our own yogic/healing practice. We played in a local river that cleansed the seasonal build-up of our lives, and skipped stones like kids while sharing stories of our trials and tribulations of our past. We ate simply. Clean deliberate meals made with fresh ingredients and most importantly, love. We soaked in the indoor tub and stood under the rushing cold spring water to shock those toxins out. We basked in the sweet playfulness of our connections and then we all went our separate ways. Back to the daily lives, which for all of us, really isn't a stretch from our time together in the Mendicino retreat.

As you read you may sigh as you long for time like this. Time where you can breathe and relax without feeling like you are letting your guard down too much. Time where the kids are silent and playing peacefully, or time when the phone has finally stopped ringing. Ahh, the triggers and trials of our modern lives!

The reason this little retreat was not so far from our daily lives is because we choose to live each of our moments walking with this presence. We choose to simply show up in the most clear vision of our selves possible. Our lives in the daily grind are filled with the same triggers of emotions and honking irritable drivers as yours. It isn't like we are living in some rainbow filled utopia with flutes playing in the background, like those silly pharmaceutical antihistamine commercials. We just take that little extra fraction of a second in one of those triggered moments to breathe and know that whatever the situation is, it is not about me. It is someone or something else that is having a moment of expression with their emotions. If you can let their emotion pass right by you and wish them clarity for their moment, there is no transfer of emotional negativity. It is good to recognize and empathize, but refrain from taking the emotions on. They are not yours, plain and simple. They belong to the other person. Now, if it is a situation that spurs the trigger, keep breathing. This too will pass. Having an attachment to an outcome leaves inflexibility when opportunity arises in the least expected forms. Yes, easier said than done, but I look forward to sharing some of those easing processes with you all in days to come.

In the mean time, The BEST place to start is to find ways IN your daily life to find that peace you find while on a "vacation". First, identify the things that will get you breathing deeper with more conscious awareness of your breath. Find natural ways of decompression. Sluggin down a six pack of organic ale is not what I mean by "natural". We are talking about regenerative, nutritive movements. Take a yoga class once a week, Take a walk when you get home from work instead of sitting down in front of the TV. Make a beautiful meal. Second, whatever they may be, Make time for them! Also know that the more you are consciously aware of your present moment, the easier it gets to find moments to fill with all the goodness that takes you back into that peace. I find cooking does that for me. So does my morning yoga/meditation/qi gong practice. If you are finding it difficult to create the extra time for a daily practice of some sort, let go of what you may think of a "practice." I "practice" while sipping my tea, or while driving. It is simply an act of conscious breathing. This connects the mind/thoughts with the body while creating a space of peace for the spirit to come back to.

All in all, in each moment we breathe. We have little choice in this matter. We can choose to stop breathing, but unless we are very practiced in a couple esoteric traditions, we loose consciousness quickly. Choose to use each breath as an opportunity to reconnect with your self. This is the easiest way of getting to know yourself so that you can begin to fill your moments with the peace you are looking for. We continue to live the grind of modern day life, but as we change the way we breathe, we change the way we live, and we fill our lives with sooooo much more gratitude and love. The daily grind then changes as well. It becomes so reminiscent of our peacefull love filled retreat time.

My juice cleanse

I am officially on day 4 of a 10 day juice cleanse. 10 days without all my culinary vices (stomach grumbling)...today was really hard. I had a catering to do and I mustered all my will not to eat the seared steak marinated in thyme caramelized onions. Or the quinoa salad with myriad veggies and pesto vinaigrette. Or the roasted chicken sandwiches with kale, cucumber, thyme aioli, and goat cheese on local sourdough. I didn't eat any of it! Instead I drank some amazing juices. Started my day with a cucumber, blueberry, kale, chlorella, basil smoothie. Threw back a few palmfulls of fresh bee pollen to boost my b vitamins. Later I dined on a half gallon of veggies geared to clean my blood and stimulate my liver and lungs into heavy cleanse. The list: dandelion greens, kale, celery, butternut squash, turnip, ginger, cucumber, cilantro, basil, garlic, cauliflower,...and I know I am missing somebody out. But, that is the general list. Some medicine in a jar for sure. I couldnt even finish it all as the mix was too warming on the digestion. Not enough cooling ingredients, but It has me detoxing my little liver! This evening I redeemed my lunch with a dinner smoothie made of cucumber, zucchini, cilantro, avocado, Hawaiian hand hewn salt, raw apple cider vinegar, and burdock root. This mix tastes like some of the best gazpacho I have ever had.

So you may ask, "Why?" Why the cleanse? Why Juice? Why put yourself through the misery of making that mouthwatering food and not eat any of it? I imagine you may have other questions and you can feel free to ask away. It simply comes down to how I nourish myself. I feel it is time to help my body through the changes that my mind and spirit are going through at this time. In order for me to arise to the next level and continue on my path, I have to clean this physical body out to match the mind and spirit.

In our day to day movements of eating and drinking, we have the foods that are good for the body and foods that are good for the mind and spirit. Sometimes they are not the same. I find sanity in a HUGE bowl of fresh hand made pasta with carbonara sauce. My body doesn't necessarily agree though. Here is where the cleanse comes in. As we eat foods that are hard or difficult for our body to digest, we tax our digestive system little bit each day. Some foods get broken down and some don't. Some come in with parasites pesticides on them. Some even stay inside and get stuck. As foods do their little dance in our belly's, toxins can build from a huge list of factors resulting in a compromised immune system. I am totally oversimplifying the equation here. We will no doubt cover more of this later. But, what I am reaching for here is an understanding that we can easily toxify our system without even knowing it.

Queue Juice. The juices I am making are nutrient dense, easily assimilable materials that give my digestive system a break from its amazingly diligent hard work and give the other organs a chance to release all the other stored ugly stuff they can. Since I have a very robust and healthy physical standing, I have chosen to go big and use vegetable ingredients with specific medicinal properties in very large quantities. These juices are not the juices you get at your local natural foods market or cafe. I am looking to heal. And that means diving deep.

I was willing to make the food for the catering today and not eat any because I know that the abstinence from this food is what is bringing this healing state right now. This is my time to break from the habits and vices I choose and have chosen in my past. There will always be one reason or another to not continue. And here we are again with a choice. I choose to heal and cleanse myself so that I can raise my bar and step up to the next level. I choose to prepare the food that I love and the food that my fellow students/catering clients love. I have a choice and I choose to heal. I choose to nourish.

Like the tides of the ocean, toxify then cleanse. Toxify then cleanse. After some time the cleansing will be a part of your daily nourishing traditions. You will be eating and drinking what your body needs when it is asking for it. Just keep listening. It really does know best! Now, go get yourself a green juice!

My morning nourishing tradition

This morning I woke as the sun rose, which is pretty typical for me now adays. I LOVE it! To wake with the rising sun and really let my rhythm match the natural rhythm around me...ahhh I an nourished! So there I am waking, still in bed and now sweetly smiling at the sounds of life coming alive outside.

Naturally or rather unnaturally, most of us including myself do not always wake up on the sunny side of the bed. Sometimes we wake from dreams that leave something to be desired or it is a violent alarm screaming from the bedside nook that is the troubled start to the day. But since we always have a choice for our moments, each one of them, and how to show up in those moments, we can rewrite the negativity and start with a new fresh clean chalkboard whenever we choose. Yes, whenever. Our own egoic self is what stops us from really nurturing our body mind and spirit all day every day. I wont quite get into that yet....that is a different post.

But in the meantime, say I have started my day pretty troubled for some reason. I am groggy, frustrated, and salty at the world! Well....my nourishing tradition begins here: I first brush my teeth to get that awful taste out of my mouth(physically yes but more metaphorically), and then step outside. I drop my connection to my phone, my computer, anything and everything else and I do my morning practice. I have the fortune of living in a part of the world where being outside in the morning is possible and quite tolerable (blessed and blissed here actually). So I do my Yoga/Taiji/standing Meditations outside for the world to be my witness and I let go of everything I may have asssumed, everything I may have expected and everything I may have wanted to control. I just stand in me. I allow myself to be present with how my body feels, where it aches or radiates. I allow myself to connect in my entirety. I do it for a little longer than I can handle just to push my own limits. I give thanks to the powers that be and then off to the races I go!!

My day begins and I am nourished. Just that little time spend connecting with my whole entire person, body mind and spirit, I clear all doubt and am empowered for whatever chaos may come next. My body and mind stay flexible so that when things mysteriously go awry in the moment, I can move like water and be the path of least resistance to solve my problems as they arise. I welcome you all to start a morning practice. No matter what it looks like. Maybe your favorite yoga teacher has some juicy words to enliven you day while you spend your morning in class, or maybe it is a simple walk around your block to touch the earth and the heavens before you work begins.

Either and every way you can find that time, create yourself your first nourishing tradition. It starts with you and only you every morning. You can curse it or you can praise it. Love yourself in the greatest way possible. You have a choice, you ALWAYS have a choice. I choose to praise it and to sing it!

Now, off to work I go!!!

I am Back! Sort of.....

So I look at my last posting on my first blog today and see that it was posted in 2007. I tried logging in and the email that was attached to the account wasn't even in use! wow...

So i return now to do a little writing on nourishing traditions. Not the book by Sally Fallon. The kind of activities that we do on a daily, even momentary basis that determine our over all health and wellness. Eating sleeping walking breathing...and everything in between. These activities generally take the shape of patterns and habits as we get comfy with one action or another. AKA: a tradition, big or small.

For example...we all have a morning eating tradition. Some of us eat a little; some of us eat a whole mess of strange stuffs. What is yours? Do you feel it is nurturing?