A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.
~Thomas Carlyle
Do all things with love.
~Og Mandino
Want to find love fast and keep love forever? Because expressions of love and gratitude are so important in a long term relationship, one way to jump start your love life is by reconnecting with Love. Preparing food from your heart is an ideal way to connect with loving energy, so the best time to do this is when you are washing your whole grains. To enhance your connection with Love, remember to open up your heart to joyful experiences.
The process of washing brown rice is an ideal opportunity to harmonize with Nature and revitalize loving energy. The more you cultivate Love, the more you will experience it. The love you add to your food is the secret ingredient to a long lasting, loving relationship.
Learn how to wash brown rice in this video. As you caress the grains of rice, feel love and gratitude for your food. Take a few moments to do these exercises to help you notice a shift in your energy:
What sensations do you notice in your body? Is there tightness in your shoulder muscles? Or are you relaxed and at ease?
What emotions are coming up for you? Are you feeling fearful or anxious? Or do you feel peaceful and loving?
What thoughts are you having? Are you distracted by the past? Or are you focused on the present moment?
Remember, Love attracts Love. So, the more you express love and gratitude, the more your relationship will evolve into a deeper, richer experience, even an exciting eternal love affair.
Healthy Relationship Tip
In some languages, the word love can be expressed in many ways. For example, in Greek, there are many words for different kinds of love:
Eros means “passionate, romantic love” with sensuous longing, such as in dating or marriage.
Philia means “friendship” between family or friends.
Agapē means “love” in reference to general affection, such as for a good meal, one’s offspring, or one’s spouse.
Storge means “natural affection” used exclusively for one’s children or family.
Thelema means “desire,” such as to be occupied with something.
Love is the universal language that transcends time. So, to find love fast and keep love forever, start by finding how many ways you can say “I love you” to your Beloved.
Ready to spice up your love life? We all know that chewing is an important part of healthy digestion. But did you know that how you chew can affect the quality of your relationships as well?
Chewing not only improves your digestion and reduces risks of illness and disease, it can also boost your sexual health and deepen the intensity of your relationship. This is because how you absorb foods impacts your sexual vitality. Here are 5 eating-related lifestyle adjustments you can make to improve your digestion and revive your sex life:
1. Eat at regular times
A regular mealtime schedule brings rhythm and balance to your daily routine. When your digestion functions on a predictable cycle, you are in harmony with the natural order, and your relationships with people, animals, food, and yourself are more nurturing.
2. Sit down to eat
The stress of eating on the go–running, standing, driving, doing business, concentrating, and reading–can lead to ulcers and poor digestion. Sit down to eat and avoid multi-tasking. Mindfully eating allows you to fully enjoy your meal and your partner’s company without distraction. This simple step not only improves digestion, but also cultivates gratitude for your food and relationship.
3. Chew more
Digestion begins in the mouth. Amylase enzyme in saliva breaks down carbohydrates so the body can more easily absorb them. The more you chew, the more complex carbohydrates (like brown rice) are converted into simple sugars and become naturally sweeter. Chewing foods 50-100 times not only improves digestion, it also allows you to more easily embrace the sweetness in life, including being with your partner.
4. Eat a moderate volume of food
Skipping meals, dieting, overeating, or under eating can all weaken your digestion, which becomes overworked and exhausted. Eating a moderate amount of food restores digestive function and boosts sexual vitality as you absorb more nutrients and energy.
5. Stick to whole foods
Over time, eating rich, heavy, or greasy foods, such as meat and hydrogenated oils, burdens digestion and blocks sexual function. Cooked whole foods, like leafy greens and grains, nourish digestion, help cleanse the body, and revitalize your reproductive organs.
Healthy digestion not only strengthens your body from the inside out, your relationships will become sweeter as well. Happy chewing!
If a man be sensible and one fine morning, while he is lying in bed, count at the tips of his fingers how many things in this life truly will give him enjoyment, invariably he will find food is the first one.
~Lin Yutang
Eat with the fingers, drink with the nose.
~Joseph Delteil, ‘La Cuisine paleolithique’ (1964)
In some countries, like India, the art of eating with your hands is viewed as a sensual experience. By involving as many of the senses as possible–sight, touch, smell, and taste–you not only deepen your relationship with food, you can also reconnect with your partner on a sensual level.
Next time you sit down to a meal with your partner make it “fingers only.” Reconnect with each other on a more intimate level by feeding each other healthy finger food. Here are three finger foods to romance your lover:
1. Sexy “finger food” includes desserts and elaborate fruits
Vegan chocolate covered strawberries
Peeled grapes
Vegan coconut macaroons
Chopped dates rolled into balls and covered in coconut
2. Healthy bite sized “finger food” includes appetizers and snacks
Mushrooms stuffed with grain and nut pilaf
Pita pizza baked with squash sauce and veggies
Whole wheat crackers spread with walnut and roasted mushroom pate
Greens rolls or sushi filled with grains and veggies
Spring rolls and dumplings
Bite sized tempeh sandwiches
3. Foods that are dipped into a savory sauce or dressing
Veggies dipped in pumpkin seed sauce
Spring salad greens dipped in vinaigrette
Green or black olives dipped in hummus
This Valentine’s Day, design a romantic “lovers only” meal using finger foods. You will not only enrich your connection with your food, you will also nurture a more intimate relationship with your partner.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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?
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.
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:
Good health
More energy for deeper self-reflection
To realize your unity with nature
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?
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!
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.” ~Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)
Wondering what to give your sweetheart for Valentine’s Day? Try roses for women and patchouli for men.
Roses For Women
Roses not only make a beautiful gift, they are sensual as well. The rose has been used for thousands of years as a female aphrodisiac, in love potions, perfumes, and massage oils. The sedative property of rose oil lowers inhibitions by helping to soothe emotions that block arousal. In aromatherapy, essential rose oil is used by women to alleviate depression, impotence, insomnia, frigidity, menstrual disorders, and headache.
You can make your own aphrodisiac by adding organic rose water in tea or your favorite beverage. (Add a third of a teaspoon rose water, which is rose essential oil diluted with water.) Or try this recipe for tea, using your own organic rose petals.
Rose Petal Tea
This tea stimulates appetite and improves digestion.
1 cup organic rose petals, rinsed
3 cups spring water
brown rice syrup, to taste
In a saucepan, bring water to boil.
Pour boiling water over rose petals in a teapot.
Steep 5 minutes.
Pour tea in cups and sweeten with brown rice syrup, to taste.
Patchouli For Men
While women prefer the smell of roses, men are attracted to the scent of an aphrodisiac called patchouli. Found in half of men’s colognes, patchouli has sedative effects like the rose, helping women relax and lower their inhibitions. The widely held belief is that patchouli stimulates the pituitary gland to release endorphins, opiate-like hormones that block pain and promote a feeling of euphoria.
Therapeutically, patchouli helps relieve depression, nausea, headache, abdominal pain, anxiety, and frigidity. (To treat anxiety, apply patchouli externally in small doses, as too much can be a sedative.) As a culinary addition, this herb can be used in many foods, alcoholic beverages, and soft drinks.
Whether it be the allure of the rose or the patchouli, natural aphrodisiacs can turn a good date into a spectacular one!
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.
Secrets from My Macrobiotic Kitchen with Julie S. Ong 