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.

giving is good for your health

Having just finished Lynne McTaggart's new book The Power of Eight, which compiles ten years of research on intention experiments, it becomes evident that giving is more health inducing than receiving.  Time and again, the author observed, with skepticism at first, how participants in her intention groups healed more so when they sent healing intentions than when they received healing intentions.  Wow!  Goes so much against our grain of thinking.

Research had already shown that volunteering is good for you, and that a good social network promotes longevity.  But Lynne's experiments now indicate clearly that, "it is better for your health to do the giving," and that, "giving also appears to be central to longevity."  She also refers to what psychologists call the "helper's high," feeling great when you do good.

Over the decade her research was conducted about two thirds of her participants healed as a byproduct (if that is a way to express this phenomenon)  of engaging in sending regular healing intentions to others.  Just wow!  So, instead of wishing or praying for your own healing, or having others send you healing thoughts, looks like an easy way to heal is to send healing thoughts to others.  Give in order to get!  That takes a shift in thinking.  

oh those lectins

Looks like lectins are culpable of just about any disease, from auto-immune, to heart, to diabetes, to anything inflammatory, digestive, and even respiratory.  Turns out that lectins destroy our gut inhabitants and intestinal wall, causing havoc all over the body because the immune system collapses.  Lectins, and gluten is only one of many, albeit supposedly not the worst one, are toxic plant proteins that protect seeds from germinating too early and animals from eating them. 

Turns out that some food preparation techniques were developed to remove lectins, but we forgot about them - techniques like fermentation, soaking nuts and grains before consumption, peeling and deseeding peppers and tomatoes, pressure cooking beans and quinoa.  But there is more to the lectin story.         

I am currently reading Steven Gundry's The Plant Paradox.  Dairy is another pitfall (don't consume dairy from the ubiquitous northern European Holstein cows, only from southern European cows); grains, and in particular whole grains, are out because of the particularly toxic lectins in the bran (if you must eat bread, white sour dough is it, and no whole wheat pasta either).  Another one of Gundry's gripes is the nightshade family (peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, potatoes), and lastly squashes and beans.  These last three vegetable families were only brought from the New to the Old world about five hundred years ago, and therefore our digestive systems have not developed a tolerance to the lectins in them, hence their toxicity to most of us.  Digestive systems adapt over thousands and even millions of years, so five hundred years is nothing.

It sounds like this diet is a true panacea, and the book is a must-read not only for all healthcare practitioners, dieticians and nutritionists, but pretty much everybody else as well.  Will keep you posted, trying it myself.

a pregnant pause

A pregnant pause..........is a metaphorical pregnancy that builds tension, in communication used to  build suspense.  In expanding the notion beyond communication it becomes a moment full of possibilities, full of as yet unrealized creative power. 

All creative processes are preceded by such a period - when ideas are churning, perhaps somewhat chaotically, awaiting order by the creator.  The pregnant pause may be understood as the quiet before the creative storm, or the perhaps somewhat random accumulation of information and materials from which a new creation will be born.  This period feels full of energy, full of impatience about the tension between the lack of order of all the accumulated ideas or materials, and the desire to build artistic order from it.  The intriguing thing about the pregnant pause is that the outcome is as yet unknown, yet is full of potential and possibilities.

It's not about the destination but the journey, as you know.  The pregnant pause is the time before the journey actually begins.  It's the point when you revve up the engine but have to hold back until it's time to start.  Winter is a pregnant pause before spring's burst of growth and unfolding.   Standing in in my kitchen in the evening, contemplating my dinner supplies and knowing I need to make a meal from what's in the fridge, is a pregnant pause.  I can create any number of meals from the many available ingredients, it's up to me to decide which ingredients to use, and what to make with them.

Culturally we are somewhat in the midst of a pregnant pause, a tumultuous time full of change, chaos, possibilities, chance for reconfiguration and redefiniiton, an incredibly creative time full of potential and possibilities.  What is your dream for the future?

delicious words

Words can be expressive beyond their attributed meaning.  While we associate a specific meaning with the word flour, the word itself is not exactly remarkable.  But there are words beyond those mundane ones like flour, or dog, or tree.

An onomatopoeia is the first kind of word that comes to mind when I'm thinking of fun words, delicious words, words that taste good in my mouth when I say them out loud, or that are delightful in my mind when I read them.  An onomatopoeia is a word based on the sound it expresses.  Yikes is such a word - it sounds like lightening strikes.  When you hear meow you can imagine that cute kitty sidling up to your leg and talking to you, and you can hear that croaking frog croaking when you read the word ribbit.

Of course there are synonyms for the word delicious, and they are delicious in their own right.  Taste them in your mouth, slowly - luscious, scrumptious, or ambrosial.

Then there are delicious words that convey such a wonderful experiences that I call them delicious.  Enjoy these words for wonderful feelings - exuberant, tickled, giddy, glorious, euphoric, on cloud nine, in seventh heaven, elated, and enraptured.  Wouldn't you want to feel like that?  Now savor some words for wonderful sights - exquisite, fantastic, stupendous, wondrous, and sublime.   Just leaves me speechless....

To close, here are words of mysterious meaning because they are so uncommon that we don't know them, hence can't use them.  Enjoy these funny sounding words -  absquatulate, bobsy-die, floccinaucinihilipilification, haruspex, kinnikinnick, luculent, ogdoad, peely-wally, snollygoster, and finally triskaidekaphobia.  Just delicious....