1) THOUGHTS
A thought comes in: “I’m the best” or “no one loves me”. It’s just a thought. It’s not personal and we cannot stop them. 2) IMAGINATION Thoughts create images. “No one loves me” will show us, in a split second, images of the past where we experienced not being loved and images of the future where we imagine what that will look like. The key here is that this is just imagination. Even if it’s an actual memory, it’s not what’s happening now. 3) SENSATIONS & EMOTIONS When we see the image, we FEEL it. It’s like sitting in a movie theater and you begin sweating, your heart races, you cry - and you know it’s a movie! The movie of the mind is even more sensational because it’s using images of you, your past, and your imagined future. This movie theater is playing, subconsciously, 24/7. Which means we tend to FEEL the things we’re thinking even when we don’t know we’re thinking them. And so we believe. 4) EGO & BELIEF Belief is the result. Thoughts flood in, images follow, sensations follow, and then our egos attach to the sensations and thoughts as our actual identities. “Yes, I feel so bad because no one loves me”. Belief is biological. The more we attach to it, the more we feel it. If the belief is painful, we feel more pain and our lives grow from that pain. This is where addiction comes in, bypassing your own needs, resenting others, and not feeling like you have any choice or freedom. If the belief is peaceful, we feel more love and openness. From there, a grace blooms and we believe we are safe, the world is here to support us, and it’s possible to get our needs met. We don’t take other people or things personally. We don’t have to use substances or people to feel better. So imagine if you practiced enough to tell the difference between imagination and reality? Past & future vs. present self? Thought vs. belief or identity? Imagine if you knew you had a choice in which thoughts you believed? You would then be in total control of your peace or your hell. And I’m not talking about the world around you being peaceful. I’m talking about the world inside of you. It’s a state of not needing to change anyone or anything around you, because you don’t react painfully anymore. I’m not perfect at this yet, but my hell went from a daily experience for years to a fleeting experience that only lasts minutes most of the time. On a really bad day, it might last a few hours. And even then - I am aware of what’s happening and I’m just allowing it vs. believing it. See where you are in these stages I’ve outlined. Can you meditate on a stressful situation and see each of these steps, or do you go right to belief? Be kind to you wherever you are and use this as a guide.
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Today I counted twenty people this week who, laden with guilt, told me they're enjoying this forced isolation. That this is "just what they needed". That they "have never felt so good". That their "bodies are more relaxed than ever". For those of us who are healthy and quarantined, this is a major gift. We get the permission to sit still, to breathe deeply, to stop comparing, and to allow ourselves to integrate this new way of living and being so we do not revert as soon as the quarantines are lifted.
For those who cannot quarantine because they have to change someone's hospital bedding, or dress someone's wounds, or share the air with an over-filled Intensive Care Unit: I nearly weep at your service. The fear, the courage, the love you must be holding actually causes a pain in my chest. I am so grateful that the dying, the ill, and the recovering have these angels over them. For those who are dying, stricken ill with this virus, or dealing with any other health crisis that may be overlooked because Covid-19 is in the spotlight: I imagine you daily, from my place of privilege. I eat my healthy food, I walk my daughter up the mountain, I revel in watching my wife journal with our two cats, & I give thanks for each client that continues to work with me and pay me. I also give thanks for each client who cannot pay me and for whom I continue working with. I live my beautiful life, enjoy this quarantine, and fully commit myself to loving my experience AND holding space in my heart for those who are not having as much fun as I am. For me, that is true compassion and love. It does not have to be taboo to enjoy this and find great healing in it. Suffering does not need more suffering. It needs more love, compassion, clarity, and strength. And that comes from the vitality of each of us, which comes from grounding into our own reality's and thriving in them, doing what we can, and accepting what we cannot. Exercise For Peace We are all experiencing a lot of fear right now. What we read, what we see, what we hear - it's everywhere. This doesn't include the stress of our friends and families as they express their fears to us. Fear is the result of projection, the imagination of what's going to happen. Peace & balance are the result of being still & present with our current state without projection. So close your eyes, take a breath, and notice where you're clenching or constricting. Notice the image that matches the sensation. What you heard, what you're imagining, what you fear - just hold that thought or image in your mind. Really feel how you physically feel that image/thought. Where do you feel it? What does it feel like? What do you do with it? Do you eat, go to the phone, curl inwards, etc? What emotion correlates it? Now, open your eyes and see your current environment. Feel your breath go into your lungs. Feel your body in the seat. Look at the room around you. Physically feel your current reality. And run that through the same questions. Where do you feel it? What does it feel like? What do you do with it? Do you eat, go to the phone, curl inwards, etc? What emotion correlates it? Compare the sensations of the imagination vs. your actual reality. This is a practice to start noticing the difference of projection vs. your present moment. Give yourself permission to experience your present moment. We must respect our projections and fears, but we don't want to believe them. I love you all. Let's keep our circle of peace and safety going. Feel free to ask questions, request themes for free webinars and share anything that I could be part of to help. xo, Luis Hello, my dear friends.
I feel more grateful than ever to have you in my life now. The world is pausing. There is great suffering, fear, and relief. Everyone is having a different experience, yet everyone is affected by the same situation. This is connection on a global level. If we ever doubted our connection and interdependence, we cannot any longer. We have experienced the privilege, the magic, and the service of a society running non-stop for the last many decades. This is the first time that most of us have felt it slow down. How does it feel? For some, we are reminded of the quiet place inside of ourselves that we just wouldn't give permission to enjoy and indulge in. We are left feeling a huge sense of relief as we happily cancel all impending plans, obligations, and ideas of succeeding so we can just be with ourselves, our loved ones, and live much slower and simpler. For others, we fear that our bodies cannot maintain health during something this severe. We are either experiencing, or fearing, the stress of an aggressive virus on a very weakened system. We feel vulnerable & alone. And then there are those of us who have lost our jobs. We've lived paycheck to paycheck and had no backup plan. We are without the security we have come to know, rely on, and work hard for. We don't know what to do next and every memory of scarcity and/or every imagination of failure enters our minds. The brilliance of this moment is that all of these states are shared. The relief, the fear, the loss of money, the triggers, the stillness. These are shared across all countries, classes, races, genders, peoples. I am reminded of how human we all are. How tender we are. How interdependent we are. This is what brings me comfort during this time. I have no interest in promoting my online class right now. In fact, I cancelled it until later in the year. I am more interested in joining the global stillness, doing less, and offering my services during a time they're very needed in a way that's affordable and easy. I'm still sitting with what that looks like, but I write this as a request: how can I help you? I mean this. I want you to tell me how I could help you, your community, your family, your business, your organization, etc. Inspire me with your need and I will feel what resonates and offer what I can. For now, I leave you with two beautiful offerings from two beautiful people and they cost absolutely nothing. But do follow them, comment, and thank them for their services. Regulation has become the phenomenon that I'm most interested in. I see it everywhere: the body's need to find balance, safety, and restoration. Every decision we make comes from an unconscious need to regulate. Every thought we have regulates or dysregulates our systems. As do our environments.
Addiction, over-eating, having an affair, violence - these behaviors are all from a need to regulate and feel safe. Just making love, eating good food, and helping someone is. They extend from the body's inherent wisdom of fight, flight, or freeze when it experiences or perceives threat. When we grow up with trauma, we have limited resources of regulation. This could mean your parents were unable to help you feel safe. This is just one example. When we grow up with little resources of regulation, we develop coping skills & habits to help us regulate the best way we know how. For some, it's drugs. For others, it's food. Most commonly, it's other co-regulators. Our lover, friends, co-workers, and family members. We rely on other people to make us feel safe and regulated. My goal for myself, and all people, is to develop self-regulation. This is the ability to feel safe within your own discomfort and communicate to your own mind and body to learn what it needs and to meet those needs yourself. It's an incredibly beautiful lifestyle because you simply do not depend on anything or anyone outside of you to make you feel whole. It frees you up to love others without conditions and it invites a radical honesty that is so freeing. Sure, people and good food are still desired and appreciated - but you don't need it. To learn self-regulation, you first need to identify how dysregulation feels in your body and what you do with it. I'm wanting to impart the importance of this word "regulation" on you now so you can begin experiencing it in yourself. I want you to ask yourself a few questions: 1) How does it feel in my body when I'm regulated? Where do I feel it? 2) How does it feel in my body when I'm dysregulated? Where do I feel it? Telling the two apart is vital. Once we learn to distinguish between the two, we become self-realized in that we begin to understand our behaviors, our needs, and our addictions. We can release shame, guilt, and judgment and just innocently notice: that's just my body regulating. Regulation feels grounded, calm, and soft. Our breath goes deep, our shoulders relax, our necks soften. We are able to sleep and digest. Laugh off stressful situations and stay connected to ourselves and our own needs in the midst of other's. Dysregulation feels tight & clenched. We may feel nausea, have a lump in our throat, or pressure and tightness in our chest. Learning how to tell the difference helps us understand where our bodies are, where our thoughts are, and what our needs are. I'm going to be offering a FREE intro to somatic awareness. It will be a 30 minute webinar and you will all be invited! Once you can be lead into experiencing the difference between regulation and dysregulation you will begin the journey of understanding your entire life and learning how to navigate through it in a way that is conscious, compassionate, and satisfying. Please forward this email to anyone interested. They should sign up for my mailing list to begin this journey. I will be announcing the date in the coming weeks.
Oh, perception. That strange realm that no two people will ever exactly share, but some get close. It's a looking glass, magnifying glass, binocular, and kaleidoscope all at once. It's not the experience itself, but how we see the experience itself. So who can ever know the absolute experience? Welcome to humility and curiosity.
Perception is what makes or breaks trauma, suffering, PTSD, depression, and any other chronic stress or anxiety state. Perception is in the ego because it's how we identify events and people, which creates the sense of "I know" and then "I believe". If you're open to changing your perception, you're open to changing your entire life, which is simply what we think we know and believe about ourselves and others. For Americans, we are on a particularly different journey of perception and identity. You see, culture was/is the antidote for perception. Culture is more than just shopping and art. It's the food we eat, the colors we wear, the spices we cook with, the music we dance to, and the language we speak to one another in. Culture adheres to a set of rules, orders, rituals - thousand year old rite of passages and daily cycles that give its people identity and sense of self. Not much to argue with or to try to understand. There's belonging, there's identity, and there's an agreed upon way of life. I think of the Hasidic community in north Brooklyn who dress alike, eat alike, and carry on much like a school of fish. One large concept, form, and flow moving as one. But even within such confinement, some perceive safety and some perceive threat. Just read Johnathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. America is the youngest culture on the face of the Earth. It's a melting pot of thousand year old cultures slowly transforming into being American - whatever that means. I find this particularly interesting because our perceptions are so wildly different from one another and we are trying to figure out why our democracy isn't working. There's no agreed upon culture! So without culture, we're in a beautiful and brutal frenzy of perceptions trying to be proven, understood, and passed. Laws that work for one group of people and not another. Religion that works for one and not the other. Politics that work for one and not the other. So what's the antidote to that? For me, it's the practice of understanding other's perceptions so that I cannot be so angry, disappointed, or afraid of the "other side". The use of curiosity instead of defense as a tool to learn and become open to understanding the perception of the other side. If you're a democrat, learn and understand the perception of a Republican. If you're a man, learn and understand the perception of a woman. It's not about losing your own perception, it's about growing it. I don't think we should be segregated culturally. Even if I did, too bad. It's done. We are mixing faster and faster and I find that to be the great enlightenment of our time as human beings. The ability to understand vs. go to war. Understanding is the antidote for war. The war within and the war out there. When I understand I cannot hate or fear. All I can do is accept and, if I stay still and feel that, forgiveness comes naturally and I hit a peace of mind that is so delicious and is a much more effective place to come from if I'm trying to connect, communicate my needs, or make change. Good morning friends,
You can all imagine how many people walk into my office crying, enraged, and in total fear just from listening to NPR on the way here in their cars. Whether it's a sexual assault hearing, a Donald Trump speech, or something on someone's Instagram feed - triggers abound! Understanding what a trigger is and what to do with it is life changing. It shows us what's left in us, what's unresolved, what residue still exists from past trauma and stressful experiences that is rising up to be heard and resolved. A trigger is anything that stimulates a feeling, emotion or thought we're already carrying around. For example, many women in my practice are finding the president very triggering because, to them, he represents all the oppressive and painful experiences that they have had with men. A trigger is an opportunity for an outside stimulus to bring something up in you that has yet to be fully dealt with. Essentially, until the trigger vanishes you're carrying it around. This is not to say we put up with abuse or blame ourselves for our reactions. What I am saying is the reaction is ours and it's informed by our own traumas that deserve attention. Triggers are our bodies trying to communicate and connect with us, but it's easy to turn them into a projection onto another entity, which literally translates into giving your energy, your power to someone else. So what do we do? I have found 4 steps that work really well for me and others in my practice: 1) Feel 2) Identify 3) Understand 4) Uncouple & Re-organize Feel the trigger. Notice where it lands in your body, what it feels like, if it spreads or if it stays in one area. Is it the same area every time? Notice how your body physically responds to the trigger so we can make it less about the trigger and more about you. After all, that's the most immediate and practical change that can take place - the war within the self. Identify what's being triggered. Feel the tension in the belly, the heaviness in the chest, the tightening of your jaw and send your breath into it. Use the sensation to identify its origin. Find the phrase that triggered the sensation, the thought, the fear. Often times a memory or a person will come up, just follow it without linear reasoning or intellect. It's your body showing you information. Understand why this is your trigger. Why does a phrase make you nauseous? If it's a phrase that triggers you, try to find out what part of your life or yourself it brings up. If it's a person, try to find where a person like this has been in your life. If your body showed you a memory or an image, understand why that visual or memory is associated with this stressful sensation in the body. Take your time. This can take days to weeks. Uncouple the triggered feeling/emotion/thought from the trigger. A real life example: I had a client the day after Trump was elected and they felt completely frozen, hated Trump, were totally traumatized by his Presidential win. After doing these steps with me, their body showed them that Trump triggered memories of abuse from their father. It was so deep and, once we uncovered it, we were able to uncouple and re-organize the body's complex emotions around all of this. The result was their ability to, when triggered by Trump, relocate their emotions back to their own father and do therapy around that. Gradually, healing around the father trauma took priority and now this person doesn't even flinch when they hear a Trump statement or rally because they know it's about their father, not the president. I know from my own traumas and doing this work that there is a depth of freedom that we all have the ability to experience. Questioning our triggers, using self inquiry, and listening with a humble curiosity as to why does this person or thing cause me pain instead of "knowing" that this person or thing is my pain is the difference between disempowerment and empowerment. I have the rare privilege of making a living from witnessing other people breakthrough and heal their own lives. It's really phenomenal and I've only recently allowed myself to accept it and feel so much gratitude toward my clients and myself for manifesting it. I want to share all this wisdom I experience with the world, through a book, through webinars, but the thought of that has stressed me out and overwhelmed me. So I turn to you, my reader, on my humble mailing list and offer you the jewels I've gathered and held onto. Some I've found myself, someI've been graciously and courageously given to by others. Today, I write about expectations. Expectations are amazing. There is no quicker way to distract you from the moment than with an expectation. To have an expectation, we have to project an idea or an image onto something or someone. An idea or an image that hasn't happened yet. Most of the time, it never will happen. Sometimes, it does. Still, every free minute of your experience leading up to that moment is spent processing and reacting to the expectation. Stress, fear, anger, doubt, worry, anxiety - all stem from expectations. PTSD is an expectation that something traumatic will happen again. Disappointment comes from someone or something (or ourselves) not living up to our expectations. Fear is expecting something horrible is going to happen. Insecurity comes from expecting to be like something or someone else. Expectations limit our experiences, rather than open us up. Without expectations we're curious, interested, inspired, learning, and in a place of love. It's simple: we can understand and love, or we can defend and fear and hate. Letting go of expectations is a practice I have every second as a father. I have so many expectations of my daughter running through my head, expectations for all of her friends, and expectations of myself as a parent. When I let go and open up to all possibilities, I'm able to love her in every moment and am instantly more connecting. When I'm expecting I'm really just projecting and evaluating, rather than observing and connecting. I truly love the work of Byron Katie. She's one of the great masters of self-inquiry. Learning to question your ego and the thoughts that come up when we think of others, ourselves, and our world. If I could offer anything, I would encourage everyone to do 'The Work' which is a formula of self-inquiry to open our minds and surprise our egos. This page gives you everything you need: http://thework.com/en. The hardest, yet most satisfying thing is to open up our ideas of life and not limit ourselves with expectations. It is then we can be vulnerable, open, surprised, inspired, curious, and in loving connections to ourselves and everything around us. Men and women deserve equal opportunities. Earning money, having a career, voting, the right to choose - these opportunities should be equal regardless of race, gender, and sexuality. Women have come a long way in the last 50 years. The sexes spend more time together than ever before. Look at tribes, traditional families, and the 1950s household. Women stay with women, and men stay with men. This is the first time in the history of the society that we spend so much time together and switch roles. It’s a brilliant experiment whose time has come, but we must move into it with proper understanding of one fundamental fact: men and women are different.
Plain and simple. We are biologically, spiritually, and intellectually different. Dismissing these biological differences creates unrealistic expectations on men and women and widens the gap between the sexes, making it impossible to learn how to co-exist peacefully and enjoyably. I see this in heterosexual couples that I counsel. Once they learn to accept their biological differences, an incredible amount of understanding and beautiful, almost unreal communication and connection enters like never before. And it stays. We understand that women are dominated by estrogen and men are dominated by testosterone. These two hormones greatly affect how we act as sexual, physical, intellectual, and emotional beings. Camille Paglia is a radical liberal feminist whose work I absolutely love. She has two theories I stand behind: Estrogen is a secure hormone of the nurturer, whereas testosterone is the insecure hormone of the creator. Simply put: women have their sense of identity upon their first period and men create their identity largely through accomplishments and proving their work. I know this to be true just from being a man, and by the work I do with men and women. It doesn’t mean women cannot achieve and men cannot be secure. It simply suggests that the dominant hormone tends to greatly influence how we respond, react, and interact with our community/society/world. Men are driven hormonally to prove themselves in a way most (not all) women are not. 2) Sexuality is subconscious, primitive, and somatic. Which means it is happening in the body long before it enters the conscious mind. This is especially true for men, again, hormonally. Men in America (and possibly everywhere now) have lost the brotherhood. Once a coven of elders, fathers, uncles, and brothers who facilitated rites of passages into manhood, these groups helped young men develop platonic intimacy with their fellow man, security in their masculinity, and helped them understand their sexual powers and how to control them with boundaries. The brotherhood has since been replaced with movies like American Pie and other media renditions of the modern young man. Beer guzzling, arrogant, ignorant and over sexualized to the point of utter insecurity and desperation. This is what we feed our boys. This and wrestling. A hyper masculinized culture, mixed with testosterone, is a breeding ground for out of control sexuality and a complete lack of awareness of one’s sexual energy and boundaries. A woman walks in a room feeling liberated in a sensual, beautiful outfit and a man’s somatic body and unconscious mind is thinking: sex. Once this is understood a major shift can take place. Our dismissal of these biological differences and how they affect us has created a villainous archetype for all men through shame and judgement, while largely underestimating women’s abilities to protect themselves and be powerful. Garrsion Keilor once said “A world without sexual harassment is a world without flirting”. And he was right. Someone’s personal rejection or offensive take of another’s sexual, intellectual, or physical energy doesn’t mean they’ve been harassed. It just means they’re not sharing the same reality. Most cases are innocent mistakes, and the media is forcing us to label it harassment and pick sides. Bureaucracy, authority, and government is standing between men and women. We can see this with the recent sexual harassment allegations when the formerly mentioned MPR host Garrison Kiellor is fired, defamed, and his looks are ridiculed on TV because of one allegation before he’s even been found guilty. Removing due process is a fundamental pillar of a fascist country. Even a police officer who badly injures or kills another human being retains their positions until due process finds them guilty or not guilty. Being offensive or offended is not a crime. Free people have the right to express and reject anything they wish. The words we use, the mannerisms we speak with, the way we communicate with touch - these vital, sensual, somatic expressions make us human. The large capacity for error, awkwardness, and offensiveness is part of our experience and to remove that would be like removing your brain to prevent depression. We need to understand the difference between sexual harassment and bad boundaries. When someone uses sex (or any other condition for that matter) as a threat to your life or your job then yes - you have been harassed and threatened. This should be reported immediately and investigated. Often, when it’s sexual, the person being harassed is met with such shame (especially if they gave in) and that shame freezes us because it’s traumatic. This is when you seek a therapist or healer to help you clear the shame and trauma, move through it safely, then take action when you feel ready. On the opposite spectrum, when someone has bad sexual boundaries (no threats, just actions) or you have a full-on affair with your boss because they are well known, can give you a raise, or for any other intimidating or gaining purpose - this is not sexual harassment. This is simply bad boundaries and it should be met with a firm “no” or a nice big slap in the face. End of story. I know plenty of people in these situations - I’ve been in them myself when I worked at a gay piano bar in the West Village! You just say no and walk away. If the person continues, then he or she has entered the realm of harassment and needs to be reported. There are sadistic, psychopathic people in this world who have no clue about reality and they have no gauge or empathy for how they’re affecting others - some who even want to do harm. These people are dangerous and make up the bulk of sex offenders. Then, there are men and women who are sharing pheromonal (hormones emitted that send subconscious, somatic signals from one person to another) space and neither of them have a clue about their sexual power over one another, as well as their sexual boundaries. They are innocent and ignorant. Do not confuse the ignorant with the psychopathic. This is what we’re doing and it’s creating a war among men and women, and a huge mob that is defaming, ridiculing, and ruining people’s lives. I reject this out of love and compassion, for I do not believe in mob rule. The Witches of the 17th century, Native Americans, Japanese, Jews, African Americans, Muslims - there’s always a new villain who is stoned by the mob. We need to understand that what we fear is what we unknowingly are. It’s a shadow part from our past, or simply unexplored within ourselves. We are many things made of everything. We are multi-dimensional. We have judged, and we will be judged. We have hated, we will be hated, We have loved, and we will be loved. This is true empathy and compassion. This is the way to heal this. Understanding we are all of the same nature, of light and dark, of ignorant and enlightened. This humility, this humble perspective connects us so deeply and so sincerely with one another so that we can stop creating enemies and we can start understanding where someone is coming from, having compassion for their own pain, and at the same time realizing our own power and self worth so we can create our futures without bureaucracies doing it for us, and without the news and the headlines telling us how we should feel and who we should hate next. As Richard Bach so beautifully wrote: hate is love without all the facts. I want to close by saying that sexual abuse, assault and rape should never be justified or tolerated. These are serious violent offenses that stretch beyond bad boundaries, harassment, and ignorance. These are intentional crimes against someone and their body. If you or someone you know is confused between what’s been done to them, it’s important to reach out to a therapist or healer that works with sexual abuse. In safe space, you can reclaim your innocence and make sense of what was done. Then you will find your next step to healing from it. I recommend that everyone reading this write down the following ingredients: soaked mung beans, brown rice, onions, garlic, ginger, and curry powder. Okay, the hard part is over. Now all you do is simply throw everything into a pot, simmer for 45 minutes, and eat it for three days. That's it? That's it!
Traditionally, it consists of yellow split mung beans, however I like to use green mung beans that are soaked and/or sprouted for deeper detoxification properties. I also find these more effective for the modern world than the split version (which yields less enzymes than the sprouted green beans) when it comes to cleansing. Kitcheree is an ayurvedic and yogic traditional dish that works to balance the digestive system, detoxify the body, and cleanse the mind. It does this in very simple, yet profound ways. The Trinity Roots Garlic, ginger, and onions are powerful alone but when you combine them in a dish, you create a high sulfur, high selenium, and high antioxidant formula that helps to increase circulation, move out old lymphatic fluid and wastes, greatly reduce inflammation, and detoxifying the tissues in the body. When you combine curry powder, which contains turmeric, with these you amplify its ability to reduce inflammation. Sulfur is also a collagen generator which creates new beautiful skin, strong ligaments, and flexible bones - which you want! Mung Beans and Brown Rice Not only are mung beans highly detoxifying, they are also cooling for the body, good for your liver, they act as a diuretic, and are even good for recovering alcoholics (Paul Pitchford, Healing With Whole Foods). Mung beans are one of the easiest beans to digest, yielding no gas or bloating - especially when they're soaked and even more so when they're sprouted. Combine them with nourishing, cleansing, and pH balancing brown rice and you have yourself a complete protein that strengthens, heals, and detoxifies the body without messing with blood sugar levels. This is ideal for diabetics and hypoglycemics. Mono-Diet The foundation of a kitcheree cleanse is, essential, mono-dieting. This occurs when one eats only one type of food or one type of dish consistently for several days to several months. Mono-dieting allows the body's digestive organs to anticipate which enzymes need to be made so that digestion can become faster and more efficient. Once the body is used to eating the same food, those organs (liver, gallbladder, pancreas) can finish digesting early, get more rest, and turn more of their energy toward self-cleansing, restoration, and regeneration. Cleansing The Palate Eating simple food without salt, sugars, and oils cleanses the palate and, the longer the mono-diet is endured, the more sensitive your taste buds will become to these foods when they are included in your diet again. This is helpful, as it makes one less tolerant for overly fatty, salty, and sweet things. Cleansing The Mind This is, without a doubt, the most challenging aspect of any cleanse. When you're eating only kitcheree you are free from the distraction of what to cook, or what to eat, or what to buy. You're free from the constant nagging voice in your head that wants you to satisfy your sweet tooth, or snack on something to make it through a task you're working on. The freedom from these distractions sounds lovely, but it can be quite hard to deal with. When we're not distracted AND we're cleansing years of chemicals and feelings from our bodies we tend to become irritated, panicked, emotional, anxious, angry, and just about every other emotion one can think of. Prepare For a successful cleanse, it is vital to have support from your friends and family. You have to set up something for yourself to focus on that isn't food oriented. Don't start a cleanse if you're about to embark on a stressful project, or are going away for one week to your favorite place with all your favorite foods. I love to cleanse when I have several days away from work and people, and I can just compose music all day, read books, hike, go on walks, and simply take it easy. Not being bound by time or aware of time is extremely helpful during a cleanse as well, since we're so time-programmed as to when we should eat and snack. Start So, you think you're ready to try a kitcheree cleanse? I think you are too! It's so easy and delightful that you may become addicted to it, which is entirely perfect! One can do a kitcheree cleanse for several weeks to several months. Your body will tell you when it's craving something new. For my kitcheree recipe, go here. You can use the individual spices I have on that page, or you can simply use 1-2 tbsp. of curry powder instead. Either one will be beneficial. Just make sure your curry powder is salt-free. Once you make your kitcheree, eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for 3-10 days. You do not need to worry about coming off the cleanse in any specific fashion since you're already eating. Just be gentle and do not eat portions that are too filling for the first few days. To speed up the cleanse, replace breakfast with raw fruit or herbal tea and only eat kitcheree for lunch and dinner. Steamed vegetables or salads can be served on the side with kitcheree as long as you stick to the guidelines of no oil, no salt, and no sugar. Eating your way to being more fit, creative, young, healthier, and energetic is certainly one of my favorite ways to transform my body. I hope this information helps to transform yours. |