Yes there are more and more…I’m on the verge of stuck in eating affirmation mode. I think I’ll just let it run it’s course. I’ve expanded beyond eating, which is good – I’ve included some wise sayings from other beings as well as my own affirmation-musings. Please enjoy, spread around the big wide web of a world, and add your own.
I am developing quite a collection of eating affirmations and I’m on fire with them! So, here is my first installation.
I want to honor the incomparable mother of affirmations, Louise Hay, whose work has inspired me for years. These affirmations are my creative expression, but are also an homage to her and the thousands of people I have had the honor to work with over my decades of service as a yogini – dietitian – nutritionist. One affirmation – I digest my life with ease – is v close to one she has in her book You Can Heal Your Life. My intention is to honor her work and copyright, then reach deeper into my own creative space.
Please feel free also to share these images, just give me credit and link back to this site. Blessings! Go forth and prosper!
– Annie
This recipe is spicy-sweet, ridiculously nutrient dense, and is easy but takes time, so it’s a great soup if you are hanging around the house for a half-day. It entails making a base of sautéed vegetables and spice, then cooking and blending the base with sweet potatoes, and stirring in a blended cream of coconut, cashews and fresh ginger. Yum – sweet and spicy and creamy and healthy.
4 medium carrots, chopped
4 large stalks celery, chopped
7 scallions, some separated whites from greens, diced
1 large red pepper, seeded, chopped
3 tsp (heaping!) turmeric
1 Tbsp coconut oil or cream
2 tsp toasted sesame oil
5 cups clean water
2 sizable (med-large) sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 – 15 oz cn coconut milk
1 cup raw cashews
3 Tbsp fresh ginger (about 4 thumb-sized pieces)
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
black pepper to taste
sprig or two of fresh cilantro
In a heavy soup pot, melt coconut cream or oil, and add carrots, celery, and 4 chopped scallions. Sauté over medium heat until soft. Add turmeric, a few twists of the mill of black pepper, and continue sauté until this ‘base’ is soft and smells flavorfully roasty.
Sweet potatoes and water are added to the sautéed base veggies.
Blended coconut milk with cashews and ginger. Yum.
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
If you need further evidence that environmental toxicity has serious health consequences, the NYTimes reported last weekend on a study that linked high levels of air pollution with lower birth weight babies.
Low birth weight is a powerful negative indicator – it is associated with an array of health problems later in life – from higher rates of disease to less lifelong achievement.
This is a story that I really can’t see the bright side of – except that perhaps to contribute to the growing awareness that we are all connected. No one gets out of this. Environmental activism is really the sane response to this story.
I’ve been reading shamanic writer/teacher Sandra Ingerman’s Medicine for the Earth over the past few months as part of my apprenticeship in Plant Spirit Healing. Ms. Ingerman says we can transmute toxicity in the earth through a process that begins with cleaning up our own internal dialogue. My apprenticeship with herbalist/plant spokesperson Pam Montgomery introduced me to the shamanic paradigm, and I have to say, as a yogini, one of the things that I love about the shamanic tradition is this aspect of coming into a unitive state as the first step in being a force for healing in the world. That unitive state is a version of yoga! I’ve noticed that my plant spirit healing work has helped me deepen my yoga practice – I’m more connected, as I dive inside with my contemplative work, to the living world around me – my internal landscape is broader and feels more deeply woven into the fabric of this magnificent earth.
So as I flounder myself with what to do in response to this story – how do I get more active – I’m thinking the first steps are to continue to slow up for my own internal dialogue, which can get pretty grim at times, clean that out, and practice the energy hygiene my teacher Pam taught me, as well as yogic clearing. Then for now my job is to speak. To do my best to amplify this warning that shows up in our own very bodies, that we are out of balance.
I believe that we can heal the earth, and ourselves, through waking up, honing our intention, and following our intention into the action that is our lifestyles.
Here’s my post on the food-mood connection on the Kripalu blog, thrive.
