Category Archives: love
Chew Your Way to Love
Ready to spice up your love life? We all know that chewing is an important part of healthy digestion. But did you know that how you chew can affect the quality of your relationships as well?
Chewing not only improves your digestion and reduces risks of illness and disease, it can also boost your sexual health and deepen the intensity of your relationship. This is because how you absorb foods impacts your sexual vitality. Here are 5 eating-related lifestyle adjustments you can make to improve your digestion and revive your sex life:
1. Eat at regular times
A regular mealtime schedule brings rhythm and balance to your daily routine. When your digestion functions on a predictable cycle, you are in harmony with the natural order, and your relationships with people, animals, food, and yourself are more nurturing.
2. Sit down to eat
The stress of eating on the go–running, standing, driving, doing business, concentrating, and reading–can lead to ulcers and poor digestion. Sit down to eat and avoid multi-tasking. Mindfully eating allows you to fully enjoy your meal and your partner’s company without distraction. This simple step not only improves digestion, but also cultivates gratitude for your food and relationship.
3. Chew more
Digestion begins in the mouth. Amylase enzyme in saliva breaks down carbohydrates so the body can more easily absorb them. The more you chew, the more complex carbohydrates (like brown rice) are converted into simple sugars and become naturally sweeter. Chewing foods 50-100 times not only improves digestion, it also allows you to more easily embrace the sweetness in life, including being with your partner.
4. Eat a moderate volume of food
Skipping meals, dieting, overeating, or under eating can all weaken your digestion, which becomes overworked and exhausted. Eating a moderate amount of food restores digestive function and boosts sexual vitality as you absorb more nutrients and energy.
5. Stick to whole foods
Over time, eating rich, heavy, or greasy foods, such as meat and hydrogenated oils, burdens digestion and blocks sexual function. Cooked whole foods, like leafy greens and grains, nourish digestion, help cleanse the body, and revitalize your reproductive organs.
Healthy digestion not only strengthens your body from the inside out, your relationships will become sweeter as well. Happy chewing!
Romancing Your Food
If a man be sensible and one fine morning, while he is lying in bed, count at the tips of his fingers how many things in this life truly will give him enjoyment, invariably he will find food is the first one.
~Lin Yutang
Eat with the fingers, drink with the nose.
~Joseph Delteil, ‘La Cuisine paleolithique’ (1964)
In some countries, like India, the art of eating with your hands is viewed as a sensual experience. By involving as many of the senses as possible–sight, touch, smell, and taste–you not only deepen your relationship with food, you can also reconnect with your partner on a sensual level.
Next time you sit down to a meal with your partner make it “fingers only.” Reconnect with each other on a more intimate level by feeding each other healthy finger food. Here are three finger foods to romance your lover:
1. Sexy “finger food” includes desserts and elaborate fruits
- Vegan chocolate covered strawberries
- Peeled grapes
- Vegan coconut macaroons
- Chopped dates rolled into balls and covered in coconut
2. Healthy bite sized “finger food” includes appetizers and snacks
- Mushrooms stuffed with grain and nut pilaf
- Pita pizza baked with squash sauce and veggies
- Whole wheat crackers spread with walnut and roasted mushroom pate
- Greens rolls or sushi filled with grains and veggies
- Spring rolls and dumplings
- Bite sized tempeh sandwiches
3. Foods that are dipped into a savory sauce or dressing
- Veggies dipped in pumpkin seed sauce
- Spring salad greens dipped in vinaigrette
- Green or black olives dipped in hummus
This Valentine’s Day, design a romantic “lovers only” meal using finger foods. You will not only enrich your connection with your food, you will also nurture a more intimate relationship with your partner.
Are you ready to boost sexual vitality?
Love is of all passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart and the senses.
~Lao-Tzu
Sex without love is as hollow and ridiculous as love without sex.
~Hunter S. Thompson
Are you ready to ignite the passion in the bedroom? Want to activate some sexual healing? Nurturing an intimate, loving relationship with your partner begins with your health. When you are whole in body, mind, emotions, and spirit, your love life also becomes more fulfilling. The best way to spark your love life is by eating healthy whole foods.
Whole foods, like vegetables, contain vital life force energy or “chi” which supports and nourishes you on all levels. This chi is what revitalizes your overall health.Whole vegetables include all portions of a vegetable: the greens, center, and roots.
1. Leafy greens
Collards, kale, and dandelion greens have upward growing, expansive energy that supports the upper half of the body, like the heart. Leafy greens help you open up to love and joy and improve social communication.
2. Round vegetables
Round vegetables represent the balance point between the root and greens. This is the center of the plant, which has stabilizing energy that nourishes the middle organs in the body. Foods with centering energy are round vegetables like squash, cabbage, and onion. These foods are naturally sweet and allow you to embrace the sweetness in life, like enjoying being with your partner.
3. Root vegetables
Root vegetables grow downward and have grounding energy. This strengthening energy nourishes the lower half of the body, including the reproductive organs for increased sexual vitality. Examples of root vegetables are carrot, burdock, parsnip, and kuzu root. The hardy nature of root vegetables brings an enduring quality to your relationship.
Whether you want to improve communication or boost sexual vitality, eating whole foods can activate bliss on many dimensions. When you are whole on all levels, your love life improves as well.
Healthy Relationship Tip
Expressing your feelings to your partner helps him or her understand your perspective while opening up lines of communication. When expressing your feelings, use the “I feel” technique.
The “I Feel” Technique
- Begin by stating how you feel. Remember to focus on expressing emotion (“I feel . . . “) rather than belief (“I feel that . . .”).
- Be specific in describing your emotions. Instead of using words like “upset,” use descriptive emotions like “angry,” “sad,” “frustrated,” or “irritated.”
- Identify the situation that is a trigger. Instead of blaming, state what it is about the situation that is creating the emotion. (“I feel frustrated when you . . .”)
The first step is to express your emotions and validate your feelings. This is the beginning of discovering what your story or belief is about the way things “should be” that triggered your reaction.
The Aphrodisiac Twig
While sensuous aphrodisiacs like rose or chocolate take center stage on date night, twig-like burdock root has largely been ignored. Growing deep in the earth, burdock’s downward gathering energy nourishes the lower half of the body, including the reproductive organs. But unlike stimulants that activate the adrenals temporarily, burdock provides healing benefits that are long lasting. When your reproductive organs are healthy, so is your sex life.
Adding meat-like flavor to this beautiful kinpira dish, burdock root is cut into brown matchsticks.
Deeply strengthening to the intestines, kidneys, and reproductive organs, burdock root is also used in the macrobiotic diet to purify the blood and cleanse the liver. Its meaty flavor enhances sautes, stews, soups, and gravies. A traditional Japanese healing dish called kimpira uses braised burdock and carrot. Because it contains volatile oils, saute burdock a few minutes to allow oils to evaporate before adding burdock to a dish.
Burdock, Carrot, and Caramelized Red Onion Kimpira
Serves 6
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium red onion, thinly sliced
1 cup burdock root, matchsticks
3/4 cup carrot, matchsticks
1 pinch sea salt
- Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a heavy skillet over medium heat. When oil is hot, add red onion and saute until caramelized. Remove onion from pan and set aside.
- Add 1 tablespoon olive oil and burdock and saute over medium heat 5 minutes, stirring often.
- Add carrots on top of burdock. Add enough water to cover the bottom of the pan. Bring to boil, lower heat, and simmer 20 minutes, covered, or until vegetables are tender. Add water if necessary to prevent pan from drying out. Season with salt. Continue cooking, covered, 2 minutes. Remove cover and cook until water is evaporated. Top carrots and burdock with caramelized red onion.
Whether you are feeling lethargic or just want to improve your sex life, burdock is a natural way to increase youthful vitality in all the right places–without pills or surgery!
Nourishing the Spirit
This pleasure, appears as poison in the beginning but is like nectar in the end, comes by the grace of Self-knowledge.
~ Bhagavad Gita
Love is the energizing elixir of the universe, the cause and effect of all harmonies.
~Djalal ad-Din Rumi
How would you like to transform ordinary food into healing elixir Ambrosia? Like Greek gods and goddesses, you have the power to transform everyday food into nourishing nectar through the healing power of intention. More than its biological effects on the body, food contains divine essence, your source. A loving, meditative awareness of food, when consciously cultivated, becomes a bridge to Mother Nature, the Divine, the mystery that is life itself.
Spiritually imbued food is food that has been transmuted with loving, healing energy. Your thoughts and state of mind directly influence other living beings, such as soil, plants, and animals. Likewise, you can transfer energy within your own system into your food, changing it from one form to another.
Spiritual ceremonies (chanting, rituals, prayers, cooking) initiate this transformation of energy from one form to another. By viewing food preparation as a sacred ritual, you can use loving intention to improve the quality of food for healing. In his book Messages from Water, Japanese scientist Masuru Emoto had amazing results in his experiments on water. He discovered that water exposed to limiting thoughts deformed crystals, while water exposed to loving thoughts created beautiful crystals. Does this inspire you to set your loving intention before cooking?
Like a divine offering to the gods, food transformed by love provides nourishment for the spirit. So, when you sit down to eat, say a prayer to acknowledge the contribution of all living beings to the food: sun, wind, rain, soil, plants, farmers, animals, friends and family. After all, much love went into transforming your food into Ambrosia!
Cultivating Universal Energy
I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.
~George Washington Carver
Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
~Kahlil Gibran
Did you know the natural state of your heart when unblocked (no contractions or distractions) is unconditional love? Unconditional love radiates naturally throughout nature and the universe. Cultivating universal energy helps you open up this pathway of giving and receiving. Then unconditional love can shine from your heart naturally; the radiance of the sun mirrors the radiance of the open heart.
Reasons to cultivate universal energy:
- Good health
- More energy for deeper self-reflection
- To realize your unity with nature
- To clear away mental and emotional blockages that prevent you from realizing your source
Mother Nature is balanced. By connecting with her, you can rebalance yourself. Walking barefoot on the grass is a fun and easy way to do this. An acupressure point on the bottom of the foot, called Bubbling Well point (K1), is where you kiss the earth, give love, and receive vitality. (An alternative is shoes with leather or cotton soles to make a direct energy connection with Mother Earth.) By allowing your whole foot to embrace the earth, you become a natural conduit for universal energy. Can you feel a thread of energy traveling from the earth, through your body, to Heaven? Your body is where Heaven and Mother Earth join in you.
This flow of energy begins to accelerate throughout your body to open your heart. When you cultivate universal energy, your heart naturally opens in state of unconditional love. As natural radiance of heart begins to manifest, you connect more deeply with the Divine. How open is your heart today?
Loving What Is
Resistance is thought transformed into feeling. Change the thought that creates the resistance, and there is no more resistance.
~Robert Conklin
Is it difficult for you to love yourself and openly express your truth? Holding onto the past and feeling unfulfilled can be a safe route for you, if that is what you are familiar with. But to life your life to the fullest, your success lies in releasing resistance and staying in your authentic energy.
If you choose to hold onto grievances, you fulfill a story of yourself, which is that you are limited, worthless, unloved, etc. Focusing on your limitations can help you stay in your comfort zone. However, resistance is often an indicator that your true needs are not being met. This is an unnatural state, because you are not living your truth and energy is blocked. Have you ever heard of a flower saying, “I cannot grow today, because I’m not good enough?”
Yet, when you focus on your inner beauty and unlimited potential, you surrender to BEING and your potential expands. If you want to be greater than your self-image, ask yourself what is holding you back, and speak your truth about what you really want. Are you ready to let go of past grievances and live your dream?
Remember, thought is the precursor of manifestation, so think yourself into your dream–visualize the story that represents your truth. Ask yourself what is the path of loving what is and go with the flow. My client, Lumina, did just that, transforming a limiting situation into a beautiful journey of healing and self-acceptance.
Ready to begin a sacred relationship with herself, Lumina received divine guidance telling her that uterine cancer (BeaUterine cAnswer) was the beautiful answer. Here was her opportunity to walk her path and connect with Love. Through macrobiotic cooking, Lumina was able to reach inside herself for the answer to healing. This was a transformative experience that allowed her ultimately to love herself.
“I had no idea that literally letting go of crap would also be a letting go of ‘crap’ on so many levels,” she says. ”That night, subconsciously I wanted so badly to hold onto all that I felt was holding me together. Where would I be without my angers, fears, heartaches and resentments? Who am I without all the walls and protection? I’ve learned that without them I am nowhere near empty or dead but am full, whole and more alive than I have been in years. Being able to still love myself through all of my fears, angers and resentments I’ve found that I can love my family with theirs and that today, tomorrow or next lifetime-I will be there for them. That old vision of payback is no longer where I get another day’s strength to go on without the support of my family. It’s the new vision of my heart no longer being broken that gives me all of that and more.”
Through the blessing of cancer, she chose to manage her thoughts and behaviors to align with her truth. By acknowledging that her old stories were no longer serving her, she could release them. She chose new stories that more accurately reflected her inner beauty and unlimited potential. Her blog (http://www.beauterinecanswer.com/) is her way of journaling positive evidence that reflects this new change in perception.
Lumina’s journey shows that life is about choices, not chances. It really is very simple; it’s about being open to living your dream. And don’t worry about what other people think of you, just think about what you want. Life is an exercise in staying in your own authenticity.
Allure of the Rose
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
~Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)
Wondering what to give your sweetheart for Valentine’s Day? Try roses for women and patchouli for men.
Roses For Women
Roses not only make a beautiful gift, they are sensual as well. The rose has been used for thousands of years as a female aphrodisiac, in love potions, perfumes, and massage oils. The sedative property of rose oil lowers inhibitions by helping to soothe emotions that block arousal. In aromatherapy, essential rose oil is used by women to alleviate depression, impotence, insomnia, frigidity, menstrual disorders, and headache.
You can make your own aphrodisiac by adding organic rose water in tea or your favorite beverage. (Add a third of a teaspoon rose water, which is rose essential oil diluted with water.) Or try this recipe for tea, using your own organic rose petals.
Rose Petal Tea
This tea stimulates appetite and improves digestion.
1 cup organic rose petals, rinsed
3 cups spring water
brown rice syrup, to taste
- In a saucepan, bring water to boil.
- Pour boiling water over rose petals in a teapot.
- Steep 5 minutes.
- Pour tea in cups and sweeten with brown rice syrup, to taste.
Patchouli For Men
While women prefer the smell of roses, men are attracted to the scent of an aphrodisiac called patchouli. Found in half of men’s colognes, patchouli has sedative effects like the rose, helping women relax and lower their inhibitions. The widely held belief is that patchouli stimulates the pituitary gland to release endorphins, opiate-like hormones that block pain and promote a feeling of euphoria.
Therapeutically, patchouli helps relieve depression, nausea, headache, abdominal pain, anxiety, and frigidity. (To treat anxiety, apply patchouli externally in small doses, as too much can be a sedative.) As a culinary addition, this herb can be used in many foods, alcoholic beverages, and soft drinks.
Whether it be the allure of the rose or the patchouli, natural aphrodisiacs can turn a good date into a spectacular one!
Health is Wealth
The power of love to change bodies is legendary, built into folklore, common sense, and everyday experience. Love moves the flesh, it pushes matter around…. Throughout history, “tender loving care” has uniformly been recognized as a valuable element in healing.
~Larry Dossey
The founder of macrobiotics, George Ohsawa, said that it is very easy to cure a disease with macrobiotics, but it is much more difficult to cure the person. He meant that just by following the principles of macrobiotics and eating healthy foods, the person will cure her illness, but if she holds resistance in his body, she will go back to old habits and the dis-ease will return.
Let’s look at the underlying cause of dis-ease, which is the belief that you are separate from the whole. You must be willing to undergo a transformation on all levels for healing to occur. Because thought is the catalyst for action, it is a your thoughts that manifest dis-ease, and if these thoughts are not changed, you will continue to be stagnated.
Your thoughts have the power to affect your choice of food to eat. By managing limiting thoughts, you can make better choices in terms of food and lifestyle, change your eating habits, and achieve a healthy body. Eating energetically balanced foods strengthens your aura, which in turn helps you continue to manage your thoughts. In this way, healthy food is the foundation for spiritual thinking. For example, in Hinduism, those who meditate avoid eating garlic and onions, because these foods carry a certain energy which agitates the mind.
Energetically balanced food is important to keep your body strong to achieve all you want to accomplish. Your body is a tool, which will manifest your ideas, if you take care of it. If your body is healthy, your mind will be healthy, as well, since the energy of body, mind, and spirit are merged and influence each other. When your organs are healthy, your emotions will also be balanced. Spiritually speaking, food carries the essence of the universe, which nourishes you on many levels. When one level is imbalanced, it affects the other levels, and you become unable to function wholistically. Thus, you may see yourself as a victim, choosing to become dependent on others to make choices for you. However, when you are healthy, you can make decisions for yourself and participate in the growth of society.
Besides providing important nutrients, such as protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals for healthy organ and immune functions, the role of food in health is important in maintaining overall energetic balance of the body. Cooking is an alchemical process, so you can adjust your cooking styles to balance the constitution and condition of your body to prevent and recover from illness.
You can also eat according to the seasons, which imbue food with certain energetic qualities that nourish your energetic body. As each season unfolds, plants absorb the energy of the sun and environment. This seasonal energy is incorporated into the leaves, which is then transmuted into your aura when you eat them. Just as miso is aged for two complete summers to produce the full enzymatic activity necessary for fermentation, plants contain the activity of all the seasons.
Your energetic body is fluid and changing in response to the subtle frequencies of the universe. This energetic body manifests as your physical body. So, if your main channel of receiving universal energy is blocked, then growth of your body is stunted and illness develops. Healthy food and loving thoughts help unblock your meridians and nourish your main channel (spine), so that you can receive universal energy and live in harmony with nature.
When you forget or choose not to listen to your intuition, you rely on information from outside sources for guidance on your food choices. When your energy is out of alignment with nature, your body can become weak and vulnerable to attack from viruses and bacteria. But when you live in harmony with the environment, you can learn to listen to your intuition. An energetically balanced diet allows you to receive energy from the universe so that you can communicate with your inner guides. By listening to your intuition, you can regain health by eating foods that balance your constitution and condition and your immune system and organs clean up cancer-causing toxins and pathogens.
Your awareness of your Oneness with nature becomes clear when your universal antenna is open. Eating food that is balanced and avoiding extremes allows you to be grounded, while aligning our energies with that of the universe. By eating food that is clean of toxins that create stagnation, your body is able to receive universal energy to manifest health in the wholistic sense. This health and wholeness is true wealth, because it is not achieved through any material object. So, remember to include some good old fashioned TLC in your cooking!
Keep Your Motor Running
When it comes to living a wholistic lifestyle, a change in diet is oftentimes the hardest part of the transformation. I know that sometimes nothing tastes better than a Big Mac, but our bodies naturally crave something much more nutritionally balanced than cheap meat topped off with random condiments and out-of-season vegetables. So if it is not enough for you to think of all of the advantages you can get by eating a better macrobiotic diet, think of all the disadvantages you can avoid by making some simple dietary adjustments and becoming one with nature and with yourself.
Creating Your Goals
As the creator of your life, you can design your vision as general or as specific as you like. Some people like to be in the flow with universal forces, accepting situations as they come, feeling grateful for the gifts they receive. These people are like reeds in water and bend with the current, moving in harmony with universal forces. Other people like to plan their life, taking an active role in creating their future, planting the seeds to harvest the fruit they wish to eat later.
In macrobiotics, the first approach is more yin in nature, passive and receptive. The latter approach is more yang in nature, active and direct. Since the universe is a balance of both approaches, I suggest making appropriate choices to create the life you want, while being open to unexpected gifts that come your way.
The following goal setting format is a general approach to creating your goals (this tool is also useful for New Year’s resolutions). If you want to get more specific with your vision, add some details like dates. Then visualize how you will feel when they magically appear.
Recipe for Success: New Life Goals Format
By Dave Cunningham, Front Runners LLC
- For each category below, consider the first things that come into your mind. Don’t question it or try to think it through. Just write it down (or ask someone to write as you speak). For some categories, you will immediately think of several goals. Again, just write them down (or dictate them to someone who will write them for you.
New Life Categories
- Physical
- Spiritual
- Mental
- Emotional
Optional Categories
- Career
- Relationship
- Financial
- Other
- After writing goals for the categories, go back and read through each one. Prioritize them. You may want edit them or add others or delete them altogether. Go ahead and do so.
- Finally, make a finished list of goals by category.
- Now make a sacred agreement with yourself that you will read them every day for two weeks or a month or whatever you are comfortable with. Then do it. Over the period of the year, you will think of re-reading your goals. When you do, do so. It will become less important, because the acts of writing them down and reading them regularly in the beginning (or January for New Year’s resolutions) will plant them in your mind and heart. You will effortlessly follow the path to achieving your goals.
To get the long term goals accomplished, you must do short term goals step-by-step in an organized fashion. Dividing the yearly goals into twelve monthly goals makes the vision less overwhelming and more attainable. When you surrender and release limiting thoughts and beliefs on the inside, you become open to the many opportunities on the outside that you were unable to see, because you were blind to them.
| A Personal Note Everybody has different needs in their lives, so your list may look quite different from someone else’s. When you try to determine your optional categories, think of what means the most to you. Is it playing with your children? Is it spending time in the garden? Is it trying new and different things? Whatever it is, add it to your list of optional categories. Only you can dictate your priorities, so make sure to include everything that is important to you. |
Let’s reiterate these points by exploring two quotes by men who had a clear grasp on their life ambitions:
“There is no security on this earth, there is only opportunity.”
~Douglas MacArthur
“When written in Chinese, the word ‘crisis’ is composed of two characters – one represents danger and the other represents opportunity.”
~John F. Kennedy
I cannot stress the importance of opportunity enough, so it is a good thing that Douglas MacArthur and John F. Kennedy could!
Recipe for Success: Creating Your New Life
Create a recipe for your New Life in your journal. For each category, list your ingredients, which are the components you need to fulfill your vision. Then answer the following questions:
- How will you feel? Remember why you want this vision. What is your passion? Connect in with the essences of your feelings. What do you really want? Examples are Love, Freedom, Joy, and Peace.
- What thoughts and beliefs will you have when you live your new life category?
- What actions will you take?
- Every great person has a great team behind him or her handling the details. What team members do you need?
- What are you inspired to do right now to amp up your energy that will carry you forward?
Recipe for Success: Step-by-Step Guide to Monthly Goals
For each month, list the following for each new life category:
- What are your goals?
- What are your dates and time frames?
- What actions will you take to accomplish your goals?
- What is your progress so far?
- What are your limiting thoughts and beliefs that are holding you back?
- What you will allow Spirit to offer you? How you will allow Spirit to love you?
- What you will allow for yourself? How you will love yourself? (Connect with your Bliss Guide for the answer to this one.)
- Visualize yourself receiving the gifts in Technicolor.
- List the opportunities and positive evidence as they appear.
- Be grateful.
Actively participating in the creation of your life instead of reacting to what comes gives you more awareness of your own power as you follow your bliss. This trust of your intuition will become stronger everyday, and you will be better able to speak your truth and teach others to do the same. As each day begins, you will reflect on what your goals are and visualize yourself attaining them.
Because the mind does not distinguish whether the event is happening now or in the future, the emotions of gratitude that arise will create a flowing energy that manifests the event. The most important thing you need to improve your life is to remember that you are connected with the universe and to speak your truth, using your inner guidance. In this way, you can live a balanced life in peace and happiness.
