Secrets from My Macrobiotic Kitchen with Julie S. Ong

Eat better. Live better. Love better.

Tag Archives: senses


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How do I love thee?

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:

  1. What sensations do you notice in your body? Is there tightness in your shoulder muscles? Or are you relaxed and at ease?
  2. What emotions are coming up for you? Are you feeling fearful or anxious? Or do you feel peaceful and loving?
  3. 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.


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Are you ready to awaken the healer within?

Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains.
~Diane Ackerman

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.
~Alan Alda

Ah, morning! The fresh smell of dew on the grass and the musky odor that comes out of the earth when the sun comes up! What smells entice you into nature? Cultivating mindful awareness of your sense of smell helps you strengthen your relationship with nature and universal forces. These universal forces are also known as intuition or inner guidance. Your sense of smell is a profound resource you can use to awaken your intuition for healing from the inside out.

Connecting with inner guidance may be new for you. You may have learned to shut your body down, instead of savoring what your body is doing and being guided by it. Mindfully focusing on your sense of smell can help you notice your energy shifting. This process can help you awaken your intuition.

  1. While seated, ground yourself by placing your hands on your abdomen. Scan your body for areas of tension. Tension may appear as tightness in shoulder muscles.
  2. If your body is holding tension, your mind and emotions will reflect this. What emotions are you feeling (for example, sadness, oppression, anxiety)?
  3. What thoughts are you having?

For contrast, smell your favorite herb while you focus on your body, thoughts, and emotions. Finally, do the exercise again, but this time without smelling the herb. What did you notice in your energy as you did the exercise before, during, and after smelling the herb?

Practice awakening your intuition through your sense of smell and notice how your energy shifts. As you begin to listen to your inner guidance, universal energy will flow through you as the natural healing process unfolds.


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Sensing Your Food

Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams.
~Ashley Smith

Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes

Do you remember as a child how fun it was to play in the grass and smell the flowers? That fun doesn’t have to end. Your awareness of the world is dependent on your senses, which are part of your body. Through your senses, you can experience the natural state of interconnectedness between you and everything around you, even your food. Cultivating mindfulness can enhance your relationship with food and help in the healing process.

Focusing on your senses helps you become mindfully awake and perceive the vividness of each moment. Rather than separating you from your food, every sense organ can become a doorway that provides the experience of natural connection between all beings in nature. Does this make sense?

When you experience yourself as being part of the whole family of life, you become open to universal healing energy. Everything you see is a communion of you and nature, no separation, joined through your senses. Use smell, taste, sight, touch, and sound to connect with your food.

Let’s focus on your sense of smell. To develop a conscious relationship with food, smell your food when you are:

  • Standing at the produce counter in the grocery store
  • Buying grains and sea vegetables in bulk
  • Cutting vegetables for a recipe
  • Washing rice before soaking
  • Cooking a meal
  • Adding herbs and spices to a dish
  • Walking through a garden
  • Sitting in a restaurant

Now practice using your senses of sight, touch, taste, and sound. As you use your senses, you can develop an intimate relationship and profound respect for your food. Can you see how this deep respect and reverence helps to strengthen your connection with nature and allows the healing process to unfold?


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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.