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Maintaining Sanity

April 20, 2010 in News, Personal Health by bursty | 4 comments

macrolunch

I have a sneaking suspicion that macrobiotics and similar eating habits attract obsessive compulsive types.  Now, don’t take this personally, I don’t mean you, dear agad readers!  You’re all amazing and I’m sure your mental capacities are completely intact.  But I see it happening in myself, sometimes, and I have to stop and be like “woah, lady - take a deep breath …”

Perhaps it comes from knowing too much or thinking too much or reading too much … too much of something?  But with all of the information out there about health, and the dawn of the internet age, and blogs and books and you tube videos and etc. etc., it’s easy to get yourself all up in a tizzy about various things from microwaves to supplements to chemicals to who knows what.  The fact is that almost anything can be linked to anything else - and has been, in one way or another, through this or that study, by this or that doctor / nutritionist / medical student / healer / what have you.  Just look at studies that are trying to figure out what causes cancer!  The list of correlations among various types of cancer and various types of lifestyles is endless.  So how to deal with all of this information and still live a relatively normal life without ending up in a mental institution counting the particles of pollutants you are breathing in on each breath, and the levels of chemicals present in your water and how they are affecting your body??

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Clear your Throat [chakra]!

March 30, 2010 in spirituality by bursty | 1 comment

bluebird

Vishuddha, the fifth chakra, is located in your throat (or just above it, in the energy field).  This chakra vibrates with the frequency of sky blue, and it represents your voice center (pretty intuitive, right!?).  A person with a healthy, open and clear vishuddha speaks openly and truthfully to express herself to others.  This chakra is associated with the thyroid gland, which is very important to regulating our body’s homeostasis (especially metabolism).  The area of the throat chakra is also in control of talking, hearing, chewing, swallowing, and breathing (many of your senses!). 

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Feeding the Heart Chakra

March 24, 2010 in Vegetables, spirituality by bursty | 4 comments

green

Anahata, your fourth chakra, is located at your heart center.  If you bring your hands together at the middle of your body, straight in from your elbows, your hands are just over (or in) anahata.  Anahata is a beautiful chakra (they all are, but this one is particularly emotive).  It is your center of emotion, unconditional love, compassion, and also sadness, fear, and grief.  The task of this chakra is achieving and maintaining self-love so that you can give unconditional love and compassion out to others and the world.

It vibrates at the frequency of the color green, and it is the center chakra — the one around which all of our other chakras turn.  Therefore, affecting the energy of the heart chakra more than the others affects all of the others directly.  When the heart chakra is out of balance you may feel sorry for yourself, paranoid, indecisive, afraid of letting go, afraid of getting hurt, or unworthy of love.  Physical illnesses include heart attack, high blood pressure, insomnia, and difficulty breathing. When the heart chakra is balanced you may feel compassionate, friendly, empathetic, desire to nurture others, and see the good in everyone. Body parts for the fourth chakra include heart, lungs, circulatory system, shoulders, and upper back.  (see here)

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Nourishing the Solar Plexus

March 17, 2010 in Personal Health, spirituality by bursty | 6 comments

yellow

The third chakra is known as the solar plexus.  In sanskrit it is manipura which means “lustrous gem”.  Your third chakra is located just below the bottom of your ribs — it is associated with self esteem, intellect, power, and vitality.  In Kundalini, it is known as the nabhi chakra, and the task in balancing nabhi is to achieve satisfaction with what is.  An imbalanced manipura manifests in worry and anxiety for things that are to come or for things that one wants (materialistic).  The third chakra also demands that we honor ourselves with self respect.

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Nourish Your Second Chakra!

March 9, 2010 in Personal Health, spirituality by bursty | 1 comment

orange

Continuing with the theme of nourishing the chakras that I started last week, I thought we’d delve into the world of second chakra healing and opening.  Svadhisthana (sanskrit) means “dwelling place of the self”.  This chakra is located a couple of inches below the naval, and it is the center of creativity, procreation, emotion, and sensuality.  Svadhisthana vibrates at a slightly higher frequency than muladhara, similar to the color orange.  Where muladhara is focused on meeting one’s physical needs, svadhisthana begins the work of relating to others — specifically one other individual (first your mother, typically, during your first year of life).  

The tasks of balancing this chakra include allowing for emotional and sensual movement, opening up to pleasure, and learning to “go with the flow”.  So when your second chakra is unbalanced you might feel a tendancy to control, avoid, or ignore your feelings.  You might experience emotional rollercoasters and overly emotional reactions to things out of proportion to the stimulus.  This being a feminine chakra (where muladhara is a masculine one), it promotes wisdom and acceptance.  When it is balanced you feel even and open in relating to others, and you are able to express yourself freely and with passion — painting, dancing, writing, singing!

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Food to Nourish Your Root Chakra

March 4, 2010 in Personal Health, spirituality by bursty | 2 comments

muladhara

In an attempt to incorporate some energy work into my writings on AGAD, I’m going to take some posts in the coming weeks to explore ways that you can [macrobiotically] nourish each of your seven major chakras.  As the last few posts demonstrate, I am a big believer in the energy side of macrobiotics — intuitively discovering the yin/yang energy of foods, as well as the various energies that surround me on a daily basis.  Although you can have energy work done to your body by a healer to balance out the chakras, you can do a lot to balance your chakras simply by being aware of them, and intentionally nourishing each one with meditation, movement, and food.

So let’s start off with the first chakra, the root chakra.  This chakra is located at the base of your spine, and its extensions are the legs and feet, which connect you to the earth.  Muladhara in sanskrit, this is your center of security and trust.  Read the rest of this entry »

The Energy Connection

July 1, 2009 in Personal Health, spirituality by bursty | 3 comments

birdhouse-apple-tree-may

“Our cells are constantly eavesdropping in on our thoughts and being changed by them… A remembered stress, which is only a wisp of thought, releases the same flood of destructive hormones as the stress itself.”

-Deepak Chopra, MD

My newest venture in energy work is reiki.  This past weekend, I became attuned to reiki level I.  I’m going to sprinkle some reiki theory and tidbits into my writing here on agad… because I think it is amazing, and also because I think that it fits in nicely with macrobiotics.  A big part of macrobiotics is respecting and recognizing the energy in our food, and how those respective energies affect our bodies when we put the food in them.  Reiki is about the energy of our bodies and our chakras, and healing.

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HalfroMacro–Liverin’ the sweet life!

October 19, 2008 in HalfroMacro, Personal Health by BearofGold | 4 comments

 

I love me some sweet. After a meal, I like something sweet. In the middle of the afternoon, I like something sweet. For breakfast in the morning, if it’s not a little sweet, it’s not breakfast. In my love of sweet, I long ago learned to appreciate my liver and pancreas.

It is an interesting experience to sense your own blood sugar levels. Many people are aware of the feeling of “hypoglycemia” or low blood sugar levels: feeling faint and low in energy when you’ve missed a meal or completed a hard workout. The other end of the spectrum, hyperglycemia, something that we are less aware of.

When you eat white sugar or white flour, there is not much break down that the body needs to complete before the glucose is ready to circulate in the blood stream. White sugar, for one, is broken down the minute it hits your mouth by amylose in your saliva. In a matter of minutes it is ready to be absorbed by your intestines and coursing through your vessels, bathing all of your tissues with sugary-energy. Most times, the tissues of your body do not need that heavy burst of energy, unless you’ve just completed an ultra marathon or a world’s-strongest-person competition.

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The Healthy, Happy Kitchen

August 28, 2008 in Macro Home by bursty | No comments

Macrobiotics is about food - mainly. But, as we have written about in several other posts, it is also a worldview, a spirituality, and ultimately, a lifestyle. The way that we prepare food is an important part of the macrobiotic process. Not only do macrobiotics subscribe to the idea that foods, themselves, have energies, but we also believe that the emotional and physical energy that goes into the preparation of the food is important to the energy that is ultimately nourishing our bodies. This part is something that we are only just beginning to explore in our macrobiotic practice. And, it just so happens, that we are moving. As we pack up all of our kitchen items, our canisters full of whole grains, and our already-well-worn macrobiotic cookbooks, I’m curious about the energy that our most-practiced cooking patterns infuses into our food.

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