Secrets from My Macrobiotic Kitchen with Julie S. Ong

Eat better. Live better. Love better.

Tag Archives: energy


by

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.


by

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!


by

Embracing the Beloved

There comes a time in the seeker’s life when he discovers that he is at once the lover and the beloved.
~Sri Chinmoy

Are you ready to kindle your soul and embrace the sacredness of life on all levels of your being? Any time you spend in the wild is an opportunity to develop an intimate relationship with nature. As you begin to trust the relationship, the healing energy of nature merges with your being, and you become more open to receiving universal energy.

A relationship with nature is no different than a relationship with a person. If you have a lover, then you want to spend time with him or her. The more time you spend together, the closer you two become until, eventually, you begin to trust the relationship. You begin to relax into the arms of your lover, and you move in sync together. Does this sound familiar?

In the beginning, a new relationship is a little scary and exciting all at the same time. Perhaps you are meeting someone for the first time, and you are not sure how to behave. Can you relate to this? Likewise, this same feeling happens when you go out into the wild. In the beginning, it’s very powerful, but it may be a little scary as well. These feelings mean that a powerful potential exists, that something really magical can happen.

As you develop a profound and loving relationship with nature, you will feel more open. Take a moment and lie down in nature, and feel yourself let go. Pay attention to any sense of discomfort and be open to it.

  1. Ground yourself by connecting with your body. Are there any places where you feel tension? Tension may appear as shallow breathing from holding diaphragmatic muscles tight.
  2. If the body is contracted, this is will be reflected in the mind and emotions which are also contracted. What emotions do you have? How do you feel?
  3. What thoughts are you having?

If you trust it and give it time, go back into the wild on a regular basis. Your relationship with nature will open and flower, deepening along with mystery of life. Embracing what you love opens up a profound path of healing from the inside out. So, developing a relationship with nature is really about developing a relationship with yourself.


by

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:

  1. Good health
  2. More energy for deeper self-reflection
  3. To realize your unity with nature
  4. 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?


by 2 Comments

Embracing Nature

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.
~John Muir

Do you have a favorite place to play in nature? Nature provides many places in which you can both play and pray. Tension dissolves as you embrace nature, which is the natural state of oneness with the present moment. By strengthening your awareness of the present moment, you can cultivate a deeper connection to nature. Your senses are the secret to connecting with universal energy for healing in body, mind, and spirit.

In the blog “Walking Meditation,” I spoke about the importance of mindfulness. Mindfulness is the profound ability to perceive present awareness. This is the process of unlearning the habit of focusing on past and future. Instead, you learn to focus on one thing at a time without being overwhelmed by distractions. The more time you spend in present awareness, the more you become aware of subtle distractions. As these distractions drop away, your awareness of the present moment deepens. Bliss, joy, and happiness manifest. These are nature’s gifts that come with cultivation of mindfulness.

Embracing nature in the present moment is how you cultivate your connection with the outer world. Your energy is constantly exchanging with nature and vice versa. For example, nature provides food for your sustenance, and this food is eventually returned to the outer world. Can you see how boundaries are self-imposed?

You can turn around your everyday mindset of separation with nature through your senses. Every sense organ can become a doorway to an experience of natural connection. Close your eyes and take a moment to smell your food. What does this smell remind you of? For example, when I smell sea vegetables, I am immediately connected with the ocean. I imagine the waves crashing on the beach, pelicans gliding over the water, and boats sailing on the horizon. Through my sense of smell, I experience myself as being part of the whole family of life. Can you see how everything experienced through your senses connects you with the outer world?

By cultivating present awareness through your senses, you connect with Mother Earth. This pathway of coming into union with nature connects you to universal energy. The best part is, your meridians (energy pathways) begin to open as blockages are dissolved, bringing organ systems back into balance to create a healthy long life.


by

Walking Meditation

In beauty may I walk.
All day long may I walk.
Through the returning seasons may I walk.
~Navaho Prayer

Mindfulness is a state of being in the present moment. It is common in your day-to-day existence to “walk” through life unaware of your present experience. You may hold on to thoughts about the past or the future. Practicing mindfulness through walking meditation allows you “be in the present moment.”

Connecting with your body, emotions, and thoughts can help to bring you back to the present moment. To become more mindful, use this process as you begin walking meditation:

  1. The first avenue of mindfulness is body awareness. Your body has a sacred language which can communicate when something is out of balance. Begin the walking meditation by “grounding” yourself in your body. Notice any physical sensations as your feet touch the ground.
  2. In Buddhism, the word “citta” refers to both mind and heart. As you do walking meditation, become aware of your emotions and state of mind. Follow your emotions on your journey, and watch how they change as often as your state of mind changes. You may start off feeling curious and interested about the practice, but by the end, you may feel joyful and relaxed.
  3. Notice that your thoughts also change throughout the exercise. They may be busy and distracted at the beginning and become more focused and calm when you connect with the meditation practice itself.

Being aware of your emotional and mental states during walking meditation helps you practice being in the present moment. As you fill your mind and heart with beautiful experience of walking, you focus less on distractions and illusions. Rather, you are deeply aware of your present experience as you become more centered.

As you practice, you develop greater awareness of your emotions and state of mind. With this awareness, you can be more receptive to universal energy as well as inner guidance. As your mind becomes more centered, you are more open to the beauty of the world both inside and out.


by

Cleansing Your Aura

Eventually you will come to understand that love heals everything, and love is all there is.
~Gary Zukav

Today, people believe their thoughts are their own, quickly choosing words and speaking without showing proper respect to the spiritual origin of the thoughts. However, all thoughts are not your own; they are from the spiritual realm.

You transmit your thoughts into the universe like a radio signal. Other people can pick up these signals and react to your thoughts. You may even react to other people’s thoughts. If you are sensitive to other people’s thoughts, you may feel drained around someone whose aura (energy field) is heavy and dark. Cleansing your own aura can help you feel lighter and more receptive to universal energy.

Because your thoughts make up your energy field, you can keep your aura clear with positive thinking (affirmations). Choose your words carefully. Before you speak, feel those words in your heart and know they convey the truth. Then you can speak the words from your heart, allowing universal energy to flow through you.

If you come into contact with someone who has limiting thoughts, use sacred rituals to cleanse your aura:

1. Visualization

Close your eyes and imagine your aura becoming cleansed with showers of white light.

2. Burn Sage or Incense

Fire and smoke have cleansing power. They have the ability to alter the energetic field of a person or a space.

3. Spiritual Thought

Chanting, meditation, or prayers, which invoke your spiritual source, have the power to attract assistance in achieving your goal.

4. Loving Shield

Love heals all things, so imagine yourself surrounded by a protective loving shield.

5. Water

Water symbolizes new birth and change. It cleanses your energetic fields on all levels, recharging the mind, body, and spirit.

6. Nature

The easiest way to cleanse your aura and ground yourself is to connect with Mother Earth. Use natural elemental forces in food and plants to brighten the energy in a space.

7. Animals

Intuitively, animals can pick up your thoughts and emotions. With their unconditional love, they help bring you back to the present moment.

In your journal, make a list of inner and outer resources that help ground you when you feel tense. Inner resources may be meditation, humor, or prayer. Outer resources may be writing in a letter, listening to music, or taking a walk. Finally, write positive evidence that validates your ability to stay in your own energy. Remember, you’re a work in progress, so enjoy the journey!


by

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.


by

Creating Abundance

Some people believe that the love of money is the root of all evil, while others believe that money is the path to happiness. However, from a spiritual point of view, money just represents energy and the means for manifesting your ideas. When money is passed freely from person to person, this symbol of wealth engages universal forces to manifest mental images into physical form.

When you have issues with money, you create blockages in the energy flow. Your ideas do not materialize and you are unable to move forward. But when you believe you are abundant and money comes easily, you become the creator of your life and use money as a means to manifest your ideas. It is important to have universal energy flowing freely within you so you can give freely, knowing your own abundance is within you, and trusting that you are provided for.

Recipe for Success: Creating Abundance

Using these questions, create a recipe for what you desire in your journal:

  1. List your ingredients, which are the components you need to fulfill your vision.
  2. 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.
  3. What thoughts and beliefs will you have when you have it?
  4. Visualize what actions you will take when you have it. Remember to visualize in Technicolor, Techni-sound, Techni-everything.
  5. Every great person has a great team behind him or her handling the details. What team members do you need?
  6. What are you inspired to do right now to amp up your energy that will carry you forward?

Money is a symbol of abundance, energy that is flowing and circulating in your life. When you have lack thoughts and save (hoard) money, you indicate to Spirit that there is a barrier to opportunity and creativity. Inspiration cannot flow when you are hesitant to share wealth with Spirit and acknowledge your Oneness. The words “In God We Trust” had power when they were written by the fathers of our country, suggesting that money is backed by spiritual forces. The physical objects you desire are symbols of the spiritual abundance of Love, Joy, Freedom, and Peace that you are lacking in everyday life. When you desire physical wealth, your ego is seeking to find the happiness your higher self knows is already within you.


by

Journal Break!

I’ve spoken a lot about the power of your journal, and now it’s time to take a break and make sure that you are keeping track of all your progress. This will help you immensely as you look back on how you started your spiritual journey and on how far you have come since you first started.

Use your journal to document three major elements of your life.

  1. Body
  2. Emotions
  3. Thoughts

This can help you discover areas in your life that you would like to change. Of course, this is your journal, so you can feel free to add in any other relevant areas of your life. Just be sure to write about the above three issues, though, because that is how you will really be able to document your progress.

Recipe for Success: Positive Evidence Journal

Develop your awareness of Spirit by writing positive evidence in a journal. Follow these simple steps:

  • In the morning, write your screenplay on the left page.
  • In the evening, write what happened during the day on the right hand page.
  • Remember to express gratitude for the abundant opportunities and blessings in your new life.

It is acceptable behavior in this society to put other people’s needs first, while sacrificing your own needs. Living within this norm, it is easy to set the intention for going to work and spending eight hours a day at the office, since people are often reluctant to set the intention to put their own needs first. Here are some hints for when you want to connect to your truth.

  1. First, listen to your inner voice, and then, set the intention to receive help from your Bliss Guide.
  2. Second, be as detailed as you can in the creation of your day. For instance, when you are planning your day, include the times you will do something and how long you plan on doing it. Include time for your passions. Be specific.
  3. Pretend that you are a secretary, making out the schedule for your boss. She is relying on you to plan out her day, minute by minute. She trusts you to create a day filled with important appointments as well as relaxation time (down time). You will find that not only will you will get more done, you will create the day that you want. You will live from your truth.
  4. Then visualize your day in Technicolor, Techni-smell, Techni-sound, Techni-everything!

Your thoughts and words have the power to create endless experiences. All it takes it your imagination and listening to your heart to be who you want to be. Have you ever envisioned your day and then lived it moment by moment, watching the drama play itself out? It’s almost like déjà vu, except that you created the day through visualization. When you have envisioned a scenario, it is as if it has already happened, because the spiritual world will manifest the desire into action. Now’s your chance, so live your life to the fullest!