Part the fascination (and frustration) with food and nutrition is that it’s always changing. But if you look around, so is our world. This year I’ve been blessed to have the opportunity to dive deeper into two traditional models of health – Ayurveda at the incomparable Kripalu School of Ayurveda, and the shamanic work of plant spirit healing with the wonderful Pam Montgomery. As someone with a foot in both worlds (biochemical and spirit-integrative) it’s a fascinating time of convergence. I think the overarching theme of the year, nutritionally, is that our personal choices have global impact.
Here are my top five nutrition memes for the year that was (and is for a another day or 2):
1. Microbes rule: even more than we think.
We have more bacterial cells in our lower GI than all the other cells in our body combined. As it turns out, your ‘bugs’ are most of your immune system, are critical to the health and functioning of your digestive tract, and have a hand in the regulation of your whole body.
The Wall Street Journal’s health blog is atwitter with how our gut bacteria may influence our weight. This year I’ve seen stories on our microbiota’s influence on risk for cancer, our psychology and personality, and nearly every area of preventive health. I’m grateful to be working with digestive diva Kathie Swift MS RDN who has been talking about the bugs in our gut and their ramifications for health and how to balance them for some time now. She’ll be busy in 2014!
2. Is neuroscience nodding to shamanic and tantric wisdom? Yep.
Functional MRIs, until relatively recently, were only done in animals. But now we’re seeing scans of humans brains and the story that’s unfolding seems to come straight from shamanic or tantric philosophy. In shamanic tradition it’s thought that you become the vibrational result of everything – absolutely everything including your own mental internal dialouge, food, friends, work – you surround yourself with. The work of Mary Dallman and others has shown us how sugar and stress activate the amygdala (the emotion center of the brain), and how yoga and mindfulness rebalance by activating the pre-frontal cortex (the executive functional center).
But back to vibration. This year I’ve read the biophoton work of Fritz Popp (a German physicist), and heard about how his ideas may be part of the bridge between science and spirit. His theory is that all communication within cells comes down to biophotons – light vibration. He also talks about coherence – that when vibrating entities (and we are all that) resonate with each other, it amplifies their vibrational frequencies. His work offers a mechanism to explain how I can connect through my heart with a plant – as I learned to do this summer. This work dovetails nicely with The Heart Math work and Lynn Mc Taggert’s work on the human energy fiend and intention.
Fascinating exciting, and early stuff. For me right now it’s more about the direction of thought that the confirmable quality of the science. I do think confirmation, and high quality work is and will be done on these issues of physics and bioenergy and that’s an investigation I’m excited to follow in 2014.
3. It’s the food, the whole food: supplements don’t optimize and what’s good for the planet is good for you
Colin Campbell’s new book, Whole, is the just the latest offering to question the use of supplements. While high quality supplements used with skillful moderation can be powerful medicine to a person out of balance, for most, they’re useless at best. Overused, they are the ultimate processed food.
Use supplements under the guidance of a licensed nutritionist. Generally, they are best used for short-term treatment of a specific nutrient compromise or to treat a symptom. I’m a bigger fan of using herbs and spices for wellness.
Cambell’s book is also another argument to curtail the meaty version of the paleo diet. When I evaluate a diet, one measure I use is – what happens to the earth if everyone on it follows this diet? For plant-based diets, clearly the planet thrives. For meat-heavy, dairy-heavy and refined diets, it’s a planetary disaster.
Plant-based diets are in balance – personally, globally.
4. The end of trans fat? Yes!
The FDA has recently sounded the death knell for trans fats. Trans fats are those artery-clogging artificial fats used in refined foods – hydrogenated fats and the like. They are the result of trying to make cheap oils into something that acts more like butter and lard in baked goodies and other processed foods.
No timeline yet, though industry has known that it laid an egg (that contributed to a whole lot of suffering) with this one for some time. Center for Science in the Public Interest CSPI is pushing for a 6-month deadline, and their work will keep the FDA and the food industry on task.
Very very good news.
5. Metabolic individualization and intermittant fasting (what’s old is new again – again)
The functional nutrition movement has focused on the concept of biochemical individuation for a while now, and in my therapeutic nutrition work, clearly, this is the case – everyone is different on the physical – biochemical level. Then if you add in emotions, mental self-talk, energy – well, everyone is even more unique. This sounds hauntingly familiar to the dosas in Ayurveda. Are the doses genetics? Maybe – certainly they are a old thread that leads to what genetics tells us today.
Another ancient idea that happens to be a hot area of nutrition research is intermittent fasting. Mimi Spencer and Michael Mosley came out with a book- Fast Diet – this year based on this research that proposed a 5:2 plan – to eat as you normally would for 5 days, then take only 500 calories on 2 non-consecutive days. Here’s an article on the idea.
May your 2014 be filled with good food lovingly prepared and eaten with people you enjoy. I look forward to our year together!
There is a concept in yoga called the witness that is our ability to step back from a situation – to not react but to pause, relax and breathe so that we can align a response from a deeper more intentional level. It is a handy yet challenging practice.
Here is an exercise from my book for accessing your witness. It only takes a few minutes.
A Body-Based Relaxation: Accessing the Witness
Benefits: Stress management, aid to meditation. A tool for developing insight.
Contraindications: If you are unable to lie on the floor, this exercise may be done in a bed or in any position in which you can fully relax.
Instructions: Lie down on the floor in a place where you will not be disturbed for the period of this exercise. Close your eyes, breathe, and relax. Take a few breaths just to soften into the floor.
Imagine yourself floating above your body, looking down at yourself. Invite yourself to view this body with ahimsa (compassion, non-violence), or as if this body belonged to a beloved sister, brother, or friend.
What would you wish for this beloved being’s process of self-care?
What feelings do you wish for this person to have about her caring for herself? How might these feelings change his or her life?
From your work with identifying barriers and triggers (previous exercises in Every Bite Is Divine), what would you say to this beloved being’s work on that particular issue?
Bring awareness back into your physical body, stretch gently, and journal on any insights that came from this experience.
This excerpt is from Every Bite Is Divine: The balanced approach to enjoying eating, feeling healthy and happy, and getting to a weight that’s natural for you by Annie B. Kay MS, RD, RYT, and can be found in chapter four, on pg 71-2.
I have a frozen shoulder that I thought I could stretch and oil my way out of this month, but no luck. As I re-read one of my favorite articles by one of my favorite writers, Sally Kempton, on the process of recapitulation (check it out – it’s a good one), I wonder which of the emotions in my sometimes stormy ride got lodged there and wiggled its way in. I need help for this one and am finally going to get it. I’ve fallen in therapist-love with Erin, my new PT who is teaching me how to heal – reminding me that pain is a message and teaching me how to heede the message rather than push through it.
Perhaps I need to recapitulate – interesting word. I would call what Ms. Kempton describes as integrating. The process involves thinking back to the emotionally charged events of the year – both the highs and the lows- and digesting them by describing them to others and thinking about how these events guide your path. So, you resonate with the highs – often when you acted from your higher self, and you forgive others and yourself for the lows which usually involve being human- and in the lows that involve yourself, mindfully teasing out the lessons. I’m planning to do this with Craig (my beautiful husband) this year, but haven’t told him yet. He’s been studying ceremony, so I’d better get my idea in!
At Kripalu, one of the exercises we often use in the final session of a program, when our guests have been in retreat for 5 days and are preparing to head home, is to name what they are leaving (or ready to let go of) and what they are taking home with them. It’s always a wonderfully powerful exercise, and my oh my we have a pile of things they are ready to set to metaphorical flame when we’re done! It really does set people on the path of moving into their lives renewed and clear.
Letting go, forgiving, releasing the past is a universal practice of clearing that sets us up to have space to let in the new. Just like cleaning out your closet or your office, when you release things that no longer serve you, you seem to have more room and the things that are still in there just look lovelier and more functional. The same principle is at work inside and out – our emotional states, mental states, even our energy field. I’ll write more on energy hygiene this year- something I learned a lot more about from my beloved Plant Spirit Healing teacher, Pam Montgomery.
There are many gifted teachers who can help you with clearing and integrating the past – I still haven’t found anyone I like more than the divine mother of affirmations herself, Louise Hay. I still use her book, You Can Heal Your Life regularly. Back when Craig and I spent 4 mos/year on Kauai (seems a lifetime ago) we ran into the fascinating Howard Wills, who is a combination of NC preacher and new age psychic (and just all-round lovely guy). He has a set of prayers on his website that make up a beautiful chanting practice – they are prayers of self- and other forgiveness and a plead to the divine for healing and love. Just print them off, choose the divine (God, lord, universal life force) that fits for you, and pray out loud. He says that spending the 20 minutes or so daily in this type of prayer – when you are humble and asking and open – rewires you on the energetic level and I wholeheartedly agree. I think they are beautiful prayers, and have found them helpful for many years now (I’ve used them after yoga practice and by the time I’m done my heart is as light as a feather – especially when my practice takes place on my beloved Kauai!). The other great teacher is sound healer Tom Kenyon. Wow – his work is amazing, and he inspires me – really stretches my brain – for just what a human can aspire to and realize.
Thanksgiving – a time of breathing into what we are grateful for, ties in nicely with integrating the year that was.
Here is a simple practice you can do this week (or next if this week is too about preparing the feast and feasting), either on your own or with someone you love. You’ll need – pen and paper, place to sit in meditation, bowl and matches. It is a modification of what Ms. Kempton describes in her recapitulation piece.
1. Take a few moments to sit and find your center, find the center of your heart and sit, relaxing in the cave of your heart for a few breaths.
2. Think back over the year, to the emotionally-charged highs and lows for you. Pick one high and one low, and write them down on the paper.
3. If you are working with someone else, you might read your items out loud – or maybe one low, one high. For the low, describe the trigger, emotions, responses, and the lesson of the event. Take your time to honor, feel and then release the emotion (thank you Dharani!). When you are complete, place the paper in the bowl.
4. Once everyone has gone around, you can all chant a prayer like this one I’ve modified from one Pam Montgomery taught me:
In the presence of all that is,
I honor you my lessons, life and teacher,
And I trust with all my heart,
That you will make these lessons ones of healing,
For me and for all beings.
5. Time to get out those matches! Burn the papers, and pray pray pray.
Peace and blessings to you on this beautiful week of thanks.
Annie
Here is my recent post from Thrive, the Kripalu blog. It’s on the importance of the side dishes in helping to serve all the nutritional needs of the hearts and mouths you may be feeding this year.
Enjoy your pre-holiday frenzy, if you are in one. This is the big holiday for me this year, and I am hosting!
Blessings!
This growing season (April – October) I apprenticed with herbalist and “spokesperson for the plants” Pam Montgomery. I’m so very ready to sing the praises of my teacher and what I’ve learned about our plant allies. It has changed my life for the better.
Pam’s approach draws from shamanic wisdom (though she’s quick to point out that she is not a shaman). She has developed a method of accessing the energy and spirit of plants for personal and universal healing. It’s about forming a personal relationship with plants. Then if used therapeutically, the healer channels the plant energy that performs the healing.
Pam is author of two books, Plant Spirit Healing and Partner Earth; a spiritual ecology. She teaches from her lovely (and energetically supercharged) farm Partner Earth Education Center at Sweetwater Sanctuary. If plant energy and spirit are of interest, check her out!
I have noticed in my reading of thinkers in the shamanic tradition that our internal dialogue, and getting your internal house in order is a prerequisite for this work. For me this may be the most powerful part of the apprenticeship – to take that work in myself to the next level of alignment with my aspirational self. Retire the snarky me? Well, hold the phone just a minute – fun and laughter are essential, but this work reminds me again to keep it good clean fun. It heightens my awareness of when my jokiness is not in service to the higher good, and also to practice calling others on jokes or comments that are at another’s expense (that’s a challenging skill for me to get right without injuring the one doing the teasing).
I honor Pam as a thinker and writer, teacher and conscious activist. In the world of integrative and aspiration teaching I notice two general types. One I call the guru model, where the teacher is wonderfully gifted but the student cannot exceed the teacher without triggering negative emotions from the teacher. There is an accusatory vibe even when primary sources are properly attributed and the teacher is honored – basically there is room for one star and it ain’t the student. You can probably sense this model doesn’t work for me, and I stay away from teachers who operate in the guru model. Give me the academic model any day! Where the job of the teacher is to help the student reach their full potential – to get bigger than the teacher is actually the point! Sure, it’s great when a student honors the teacher from whom they first heard an exciting new idea. But as Pam says “it’s about the plants”. I love and appreciate her generosity of spirit and a teaching philosophy that honors the universal laws of energy. Ideas and new information wants to expand, and if it is held, and if people are held with respect, the whole things just expands and expands.
I’ll report more on my experience with the Plant Spirit Healing modality – this winter, I continue to do practice sessions and some group work – it is amazing work. But it’s just right to begin by praising my teacher.
