Yoga & Vegetables around the world
I just returned from my 2017 teaching tour around the world. My workshops were ashtanga yoga in the mornings and health coaching, women on ashtanga yoga, food as medicine, plus so much more in the afternoon sessions. It was great to see everyone and so fun to share my passions, thanks to all of you who attended allowing me the opportunity to educate the world about the power of food and herbs and yoga 🙂
- Monika in Beroun summed up my workshops nicely; Eat your Vegetables,
- Don’t Miss the Appointment with yourself (practice),
- and don’t put anything on your skin you would not eat.
Eat your Vegetables. Iss Dein Gemuse, Jezte Zeleninu, Pojedo Zelenjavo, Mananca-ti legumele, Zjedz swoje Warzywa, Eet jou Groente, ‘ai i kau mau mea’ai
If you want to reach someone; you have to speak to them in their own language 😉 Hope I got the point across! Eating vegetables everyday — striving for 75% of all the food you eat each day to be vegetables is a recipe for good health and longevity. Vegetables supply us the the nutrients and anti-oxidants our body needs. The more vegetables you eat, the less oxidative damage your body experiences, the younger you look and the better you feel.
And it can reverse disease as well. Terry Wahls, MD reversed her severe case of MS by eating 9 cups of vegetables per day — 3 cups of leafy greens, 3 cups of cruciferous vegetables, and 3 cups of non-starchy vegetables each day. While she she stopped the progression of the disease by getting off pharmaceuticals and switching to nutritional supplements, this was still not enough. It was not until she translated how much real food vegetables she would have to eat to equal the nutrients she was trying to get from supplements that she was able to reverse the progression and start to overcome MS. This calculation is where she came up with the 9 cups of vegetables per day. Do we need that much to prevent diseases? I don’t know, but I work toward this goal everyday myself and enjoy good health.
Don’t miss the appointment with yourself
Have a daily practice. It can be yoga, meditation, a walk in the woods, exercise that is not too strenuous or long, tai chi, anything you enjoy that moves your body, makes you breathe deep and find a meditative mind and aids in detoxification. It can be 20 minutes or 60 minutes — or shorter some days and longer other days, ideally. Most importantly find a Mind Body Medicine/ Exercise type of practice you enjoy and do it everyday.
Treat it like an appointment and don’t let phone calls or errands interrupt you or prevent you from getting to your practice. Even if it has to be short; short practices are very beneficial. On the days of the short practice you connect with your breathing, bandhas and meditative mind and take it with you off your mat into your busy day. Here are some tips on developing a home practice to make this easier: https://www.befitbodymind.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Focus-of- the-month-9.16-pdf-7.pdf
Don’t put anything on your skin you would not eat
Manmade Chemicals are more prevalent than they ever have been in our history. These chemicals are being used without adequate testing — WE ARE THEIR TEST SUBJECTS . . . we are not faring well. A new cornerstone of your health is avoiding chemicals and helping your body detox them.
Three things you can do right now to detox or avoid exposures:
- Avoid exposures … This is the main focus of this big topic, read on! Making your own toiletries and household cleaning products is a great start. Most common areas of chemical exposures:
- Industrial chemicals and air pollution – These are hard to avoid, the best you can do is try to keep your indoor air us unpolluted as possible by not using chemicals in your house; it is actually better to open your windows than trap household air in. Also get a good air filter for your bedroom.
- Pharmaceuticals – These are poisons to your body. Most pharmaceuticals (about 75%!) cause more harm than good, and make your liver over-work to remove them from your body. Most times there are “easy” lifestyle changes you can make to reduce or remove your meds.
- Food preparation byproducts — from herbicides and pesticides all the way through the manufacturing process of foods that includes chemicals, preservatives, and plastics. In other words avoid all processed foods. Eat organic (its not perfect but its better than not) and best yet … Grow Your Own Veggies or find a local farmer and talk to him about his farming methods.
- Personal care products – This is an area where we can greatly reduce our chemical load. Personal care products are some of the most toxic. Do you know that the average woman who uses cosmetics, lotions, lip stick, fingernail polish, hair gel, etc. walks out the house in the morning with over 60 known carcinogenic chemicals on her body (!) And over 515 chemicals in general. These chemicals interfere with our bodily processes — especially our hormones and are linked to increased risks of cancer and auto-immunity. Here is some recipes to get your started making your own personal care products: Homemade Toiletries: https://www.befitbodymind.org/wp- content/uploads/2011/07/Toiletries-Homemade-pdf-6.pdf
- Metals (lead, mercury, etc.) – While some of these are hard to avoid you can reduce your exposures by talking to your dentist (don’t go to a dentist who uses mercury!), filter your water, know your source of fish, and check your cosmetics.
- Electro-Magnetic fields … This one is new to my radar …. I’m following the research.
- Stress and emotional trauma. Breathe deep and do yoga.
Here is a more in-depth article I wrote on avoiding chemicals and why: https://www.befitbodymind.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/focus-of-the-month-2.17-pdf-7.pdf
And here is an article on avoiding chemicals in household products: True Green Cleaning- https://www.befitbodymind.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Focus-of-the-month-7.17-pdf.pdf
- Drink Water. Half your body weight in ounces each day. This will help your kidneys detox chemicals. Or a quick no math option: fill 2 one quart mason jars with water and drink them each day. Drink a half quart when you wake up, one full quart during your work day, and the final half quart in the evening.
- Exercise, sweat, and get sun exposure … And love your liver! These are all ways your body detoxes. Sun exposure helps us detox while getting Vitamin D … and if time is limited do your exercise outdoors — and even better do it barefoot! You are literally getting several health accomplishments at the same time if exercise outdoors, in your bare feet while getting some sun exposure.
- Eat Detoxing Foods:
- Eat Cabbage foods. Cabbage foods provide us with glutathione, a major detoxer! When you eat cabbage food you detox through your urine much better reducing your chemical load and disease risk
- Fermented foods — those little bugs help us detox plastics and herbicides and pharmaceucticals.
- Nutraceuticals 🙂 Medical definition of a Nutraceutical: A food or part of a food that allegedly provides medicinal or health benefits, including the prevention and treatment of disease. A nutraceutical is nutrient-rich or medicinally active food, such as garlic or cacao, or it may be a specific component of a food, such as the omega-3 fish oil that can be derived from salmon and other cold-water fish. Nutraceuticals in my world look like:
- Morning tea tonic: Turmeric & black pepper, with shilajit, maca powder, black seeds, seaweed and echinacea … and many other herbs in any combination depending on my day.
- Fresh aloe from my aloe plant, chia seeds, hemp seeds, and sesame seeds in 1-2 oz. pomegranate juice, and some brine from something I fermented or a little kombucha. I drink this just after my practice each day.
I do all these practices myself, and thank goodness! I just found out through DNA testing that my body is genetically not a good detoxer — actually its one of the worst. I will write more about this in December’s article and how I use my lifestyle to prevent the disease my cells are programmed to be susceptible to. It makes a difference!