Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Some Vegan Recipes


Recipe 1:  Oatmeal with Apple Sauce and Cinnamon (make sure the Apple Sauce is Organic and has nothing but Apples).

Recipe 2: Lentil Soup with Red Lentils, Garlic, Ginger, Turmeric, Coconut Milk, Onions, Dill, Chives, Kale, Wakame, Basmati Rice, and Spinach.

Recipe 3: Salad with Lettuce, Green Peppers, Shiitake Mushrooms, Organic non-GMO Tomatoes, Italian Parsley, Cilantro, Basil, Zucchini, Yellow Squash, Miner's Lettuce, Chickweed, and Spinach.  Dressing:  Lemon Juice, non-GMO Tamari, Tahini, Garlic, and pure water.

Recipe 4: Steamed Carrots, Sweet Potato, Yams, Yukon Potatoes, Peruvian Purple Potatoes, Cabbage, Purple Cabbage, String Beans, Peas, Kale, Basil, and Spinach.

Recipe 5: Water Stir Fry with Onion, Garlic, and Ginger (the base), and with Baby Bok Choy, String Beans, Green Peppers, Broccoli, Daikon Radish, Shiitake Mushrooms, Water Chestnuts, Mung Bean Sprouts, and Celery.

Recipe 6: Smoothie with Bananas, Mangoes, Blueberries, and Coconut Juice.

In the above recipes, except the first, I have named more ingredients than needed.  If you just get a few of them, it will be fine.  Much depends on what is in season.



 

Monday, July 28, 2014

Healing Vegan Diet

I am writing this post because a number of people have asked what the optimal supportive diet for our health is.  What I recommend is a Vegan diet that has these characteristics:

Gluten Free

Non-GMO
Alkaline
80-10-10 (80 percent carbs, 10 protein and 10 oil (at most))
50 percent Uncooked Fresh
Herbal teas
High Carbohydrates
Organic
Locally Grown
Unprocessed Foods

Just to be clear, the Vegan Diet means that one does not eat any animal flesh, dairy, or eggs.

There are some arguments against the Vegan diet that I wish to address.  One is that "Vegans do not get enough protein".  The truth is that most humans are eating too much protein.  When we eat more protein than our body needs to rebuild its tissues, then the extra protein needs to get used as fuel.  The process of protein to energy conversion in our bodies is not as efficient as carbohydrate combustion and produces uric acid, among chemicals, as a by product.  This tends to create an high acid condition in our bodies, forcing it to leach calcium from the bones to alkalize the blood stream, and thus eventually leading to osteoporosis.  The high acid condition in our bodies also has other side effects, like arthritis, rheumatism, and gout.  All of these relate to high acidic blood irritating tissues.

Two is that "Vegans do not get any vitamin B-12".  This is partly true.  For one, you can use supplementation, which would be good for anyone, Vegan or non-Vegan, through sublingual, liposomal, delivery Vitamin B-12 or even Vitamin B-12 injections.  Given that humans are undergoing higher stress lifestyles and are tending to exhaust their B Vitamin reserves more quickly, supplementation here may be useful.  My own preference is to use Nutritional Yeast, not to be confused with Brewers Yeast, which is loaded with B Vitamins and which is a natural product.  Contrary to some misinformation, taking Nutritional Yeast does not cause Candida overgrowth in the body, but can actually help reduce the percentage of Candida yeast in our body back to the 20 percent or less than is usually there.  The secret of keeping Candida under control is to avoid white sugar and refined wheat flour, its two favorite foods, while taking a lot of probiotic fermented foods, like Kombucha, Sauerkraut (the real homemade stuff or a product that does homemade quality for you and uses a good salt like Himalayan Salt, and not the superheat processed regular salt which does not fully dissolve in a glass of water and is highly likely to not fully dissolve inside your body), Apple Cider vinegar (the kind that is still "alive", not the over processed version), and Coconut Milk Kefir.

The probiotic foods will, given some time, create the natural intestinal flora that will produce the B Vitamins that we need, including Vitamin B-12.  This means, even on a good Vegan diet, that we can get Vitamin B-12 by producing it in our bodies, in our intestines, with the right kind of bacterial cultures helping us.  Unfortunately, given the kind of random addictive, additive laden, market driven, product driven, advertisement propaganda driven standard American diet, the natural intestinal flora that is meant to be there has long been replaced with Candida overgrowth and other toxic pathogens.

If I thought that people could actually be healthy on this kind of Standard American Diet (SAD for short), I would happily keep quiet about diet altogether and let people figure all this out on their own.  But without people noticing, behind the scenes, as certain industrial processes have been perfected, the diet has gotten less and less healthy and worse and worse, without the product labels reflecting the significant changes that have made the diets inferior to what they once were.

Here are some of the product labels that should be on some food, if the labels were honest:

Raw Almonds:  Honest Label:  These Almonds are irradiated with Cesium 137 in order to increase shelf life, while killing the Almonds life force so that you can no longer sprout them, and while producing other random toxic byproducts so that these toxins actually prevent certain bacteria from prematurely spoiling the product so that it has a longer shelf life as a result.

Corn:  Honest Label:  90 percent of the corn used in the world is Genetically Modified by the addition of genes coming from Bacillus Thuringiensis, which was once cultivated to produce a natural pesticide that was helpful in killing many insect pests that invaded mono-culture industrial farms, and which, because it was added externally to the plant, could biograde through the action of sunlight and water, but now, thanks to genetic modification via aggressive injection of the BT gene, is being produced inside the plant by the actual cells of the plant, so that the natural pesticide can no longer biodegrade in the environment, but now is inside the corn when it is eaten.  This corn was fed to rats over a period of two years, with the rats themselves not wanting to eat this corn, being force fed through a funnel in their mouths, and after two years having cancer tumors all over their bodies.  The chemical action of the BT pesticide kills the insect pests by drilling holes in their intestines.  There are some inclusive studies that suggest that it also drills holes into mammalian intestines leading to an increase in allergic reactions among affected populations.  There may be other side effects due to the gene interacting with the complex genetic programming of the plant, like more aggressive drilling of the corn pollens into the eyes of people, when the pollen encounters a moist surface that reminds them of the stamen moist surface it expects to find.  There is also a chance that during the breaking down of corn during digestion that this loose BT gene may float freely and be incorporated into the cells of human beings who may then have an auto-immune illness with their own cells producing the same BT pesticide inside themselves.  The parent company that holds the patent on GMO Corn, Monsanto, did only two six month studies on rats, neither noting the rat resistance to eating the BT corn, and was passed through EPA and FDA approval, from government agents some of who were found to be ex-employees of the same company.  No safety studies were done prior to approval one the effect of GMO corn pollen on humans with or without allergies nor were their products labeled as GMO so that people could link cause and effect in their own experience of using these products.  The study that showed cancer tumors in rats from eating GMO corn was published in a scientific journal that was later bought up by the same biotech company, who then installed their own employee as editor, who then retracted the study.  The same study has since been republished in another reputable scientific peer review journal with a critique added concerning the actions of said company and concerning the secrecy of the two earlier six month studies that did not allow proper peer review by independent objective third parties and also concerning the lack of scope concerning what was tested (not studies on the effect of cross pollenation or of the impact of pollen interacting with allergic and non-allergic humans).

GMO Soy:  Ditto the corn label minus the rat study.

GMO Wheat:  Ditto the corn label minus the rat study.

Chicken:  This chicken muscle tissue was processed from chickens which have been fed by GMO soy, wheat, and corn, plus the blood of their parents, plus antibiotics and other chemicals, under painful conditions where the chicken was perpetually suffering and exceting stress chemicals into their bodies.  They have sometimes been driven so crazy in their captivity that they start wildly pecking each other through their cages until they are de-beaked, which causes them to feel perpetual pain by the severed nerve and be still having the emotions that drove them to madly peck each other.  They are so diseased by these factory farming conditions that they have all kind of pathogens inside them that require the said antibiotics.  Some researchers are concerned that the chickens are incubation chambers for the possible rise of super-pathogens that will be immune to all the antibiotics that our society has discovered and that the super-pathogens may be able to cross species lines and infect humans and other animals, continuing to mutate rapid to adapt to methods of eradication, just as they would have done inside the chickens.  Because of this, even with the antibiotics, the chicken muscle tissue is washed of fecal matter and possible alive pathogens through an ammonia and chloride wash, before being put into the market place, the smell of these chemicals is still present even at the end product stage.

Cow:  Same as chicken with the exception of the beak stuff.


Turkey:  Same as chicken now, though it used be an exception where one could get better meat.

Free Range Chicken:  Same as above for regular chicken with the exception that they go out of their cages and into the sunlight for about one or two hours a day.

My personal belief is that if the labels detailed exactly what conditions are food went through to get to the grocery store that we probably would not want to eat it and we would instinctive know that the food is adulterated in some way that makes it less desirable and less healthy to eat.  This is also why I feel we should support local farmers who are happy to have us visit their farms and who have nothing to hide.

I want to belabor the lack of good quality in conventional foods that are part of the Standard American Diet, especially the GMO foods.  The wheat, soy, and corn products are about 90 percent GMO.  Strictly speaking, if a GMO seed is grown by organic methods, then it can carry the organic label.  Since many GMO farms are next to organic farms, the cross pollenation can infect the organic farms and these GMO offspring would likely be GMO contaminated, and pass organic food standards and could be sold as organic.  Curiously enough, when an organic farmer tried to sue the GMO farm for contaminating his fields with inferior genetic material binding his organic crops, the judge, who was an ex-biotech employee, ruled in favor of the GMO farm and required the organic farmer to pay for using GMO patented seed.

The GMO crops are paired with the use of Round Up which is a powerful weed killer which was part of the chemical cocktail called "Agent Orange" that was used to defoliate Viet Nam, cause neurological damage in American war veterans, and poison that land and people of Viet Nam so deeply that they are still recovering from the effects.  Round Up kills weeds by binding minerals from the plants and is heavily sprayed around the GMO crops to keep the weeds under control.  This means that the GMO crops are have less mineral nutrients and are therefore more acidic (minerals are the alkalizers in the diet).  Acidic conditions in our blood stream give pathogens an advantage when fighting our immune system and make us have to fight longer with a handicap.

It seems that the weeds and the insects are adapting to these fanken crops, and another biotech company is thinking of released a GMO crop with 2,4D added to the weed killing cocktail, another ingredient in Agent Orange.

I am mentioning the above as a background why I feel we need to shift into a Vegan diet.  Again, I would rather that everyone merrily eat whatever they want, but as a healer I just need to voice what I have learned from my experience working with people, about what is working and not working.  I would prefer, for the sake of animals, that everyone was Vegan, but my motivation for writing these notes is the other reasons for being Vegan, namely that all beings be happy and healthy.  I am also indirectly showing two things.  One is how a Vegan diet does not have the health problems of the SAD diet.  Two is that certain kinds of Vegan diets will have similar problems (if they include GMO corn, soy, and wheat products).

When people say that they have tried the Vegan diet and it did not work for them, it may be lack of consideration of all the other factors I have been reviewing in this post.  Merely eliminating animal flesh, dairy, and eggs, while being a very positive step towards good health is, unfortunately, not enough by itself.  Even eating all the right things is not enough.  From years of eating a lousy diet, our bodies need to undergo special cleansing procedures so that when we do eat a high quality Vegan diet that we will be able to utilize the nutrients that we are getting.

Due to dairy products, which have casein, which is essentially Elmer's Glue (the smiling cow on the label is no accident), our intestines are gummed up.  Clove oil and Chai Tea with Clove in it can help to break down this glue, along with other cleansing herbs.  Again, I am talking about homemade Chai and not the mass produced versions out there.  If you are going to buy Chai, make sure that it is created with standards rivaling a good homemade Chai.  The tea needs to have the original intention of the Chai, which was to be a medicinal herbal brew that one could take daily, having ingredients like Green Tea, Cardamom, Ginger, Mint, and Clove.  There are other cleansers worth using, but this can at least start the process.

A shopping list:

Bananas
Oranges
Lemons
Mangos
Peaches
Apples
Blueberries
Raspberries
Blackberries

Zucchinis
Brocolli
Cauliflower
Baby Bok Choy
Onions
Garlic
Purple Cabbage
Green Cabbage
Carrots
Cucumbers
Green Onions
Potatoes (Yukon Gold, Purple Peruvian)
Sweet Potatoes
Yams
Green Peppers
Mugbean Sprouts
Green Peas
Kale
Spinach
Bedstraw
Red Lentils
Green Lentils (harder to cook thoroughly, soak first)
Chickpeas (Hummus, soak first before cooking, add lemon)

Ginger
Galanga Root
Turmeric Root
Chives
Dill Weed
Dill Seed
Fenugreek
Burdock Root
Dandelion Root (and Greens)
Stinging Nettles
Cloves
Sencha Green Tea
Pu Erh Tea
Pine Needles (caution 3 varieties are toxic)
Licorice
Rosemary
Mugwort
Lemon Balm

Sunflower Seeds
Sesame Seeds
Basmati Rice
Quinoa
Millet
Buckwheat
Oats
Pine Nuts
Walnuts

Olive Oil (low use see percentages above)
Sesame Oil (low use)
Walnut Oil (low use)
Hemp Oil (low use)
Flaxseed Oil (low use, mix with others to preserve)

The above list is not meant to be exhaustive, just to give a start.  I also included a few wild plants that may be very hard to find at a grocery store or coop, but the price is right when you find them in nature.  Making soups and doing stir fry is possible with the items on this list.  I recommend a lot of mono-meals with fruit or fruit smoothies.  Banana, Mango, and Coconut Juice makes a tasy smoothie.  Cucumber, Banana, and Mango is very alkalizing.  Ginger (powder), Fenugreek (grind this), Clove (grind this), and Dill Seed (grind this) makes a good "Kapha Balancing Tea" when we are overweight and bloated, and is a good general balancer and healer otherwise.  If you are doing stir fry, try not to overcook.  Due to the nature of a good stir fry, it is almost like fresh veggies in nutritional quality and is more sterile (some fresh food needs proper cleaning, like ozonating the veggies in water, especially when manure fertilizers were used).  When people are used to cooking animal flesh, higher heat is needed for some sterilization and this kills some of the vitality of the plants.  People with this background need to rethink and refeel this cooking difference.

What I find is that people have been conditioned deeply to think that a lot of protein is needed.  Yet mother's milk is less than 10 percent protein.  If we do not need more than 10 percent protein when we are doubling and tripling the size of our bodies, then we do not need more than 10 percent as adults.  As mentioned above, when we eat too much protein (which is the SAD diet norm aka 40-30-30) our bodies gets acidic and has more waste products to remove.  It is not as pure a food.  It can temporarily feel more energizing to people, eating animal flesh, when candida is present at above 20 percent or when a person has been eating a low carb Vegan diet with too much protein also, but in the long run it is better to adjust to 80-10-10 (the ratios of human mother's milk, it is also the ratio of Bananas, Quinoa, and Buckwheat).  The oils mentioned are all low heat oils.  High heat oils are not needed in a healthy Vegan diet.  It is recommended that one stay away from high heat fried foods.

The above is an introduction and overview to a healing Vegan diet.  I hope to add more thoughts about it and to develop some important themes, and give some recipes too.  I wish that this introduction were really all that one needed, but more needs to be shared.  Hopefully it is enough to get one started and can serve as an outline to find out the rest.

Saturday, July 5, 2014

A Healing and Nourishing Vegan Diet: Intro

I am writing this post, because in doing my healing work I often find myself motivated to address dietary issues that can support the long term healing of a person.  I wanted to write my recommendations here, so that people could refer to them if they wanted to and know what kind of guidance to follow.

I believe that the vegan diet is the most karma free of the diets that people can choose to follow.  Whenever one eats animal flesh, some animal had to die in order for us to be eaten.  Not so with eating from the plant world.  There are some who argue that a vegan still kills plants and that there is no difference between killing a plant or killing an animal.  But there are a number of very important differences.  One is that plant are pre-individualized.  They do not generally carry the energy of an individual sentient who is reincarnating through a death and rebirth cycle.  When I have done reincarnation regression work, I have not run across anyone who remembers being a plant.  I have run across a few people who remember their magical training in some traditions and have projected their consciousness into a plant form.  I have even heard of some people even projecting their consciousness into a tree form during death and hanging out in such a form for a while, but usually it is a stage in a journey into another incarnation and does not feel the same of actually undergoing the process of reincarnation.

There are other important differences, too, one is that in order to eat animal flesh, the animal has to be either severely impaired, as in chopping on a limb to eat or killed.  When an animal is killed, it is killed in the same exact way as an animal, either smashing the brain, stabbing the heart, or puncturing the intestines (which then hurts the brain and heart, and only causes death when these are affected).  Animals still mourn loss of their children or parents, fear death, avoid pain, and have emotions of love, anger, fear, sadness, laughter, and joy.  While plants have something like these states, they are in a kind of proto-form.  They are not yet developed to the point of becoming a vehicle for an individuality to live through.

Another important difference is that animals are usually killed in the prime of their live, roughly mid-point between birth and death by old age.  Hence the term "prime rib".  Plants are usually harvested later in their life cycle and are often not killed at all.  Skillful pruning of the leaves of a plant can actually help the plant to live a healthier life.  There is no way of cutting off animal limbs to eat without impairing the animal.  Plants often offer their fruit to be eaten and use the animals who eat them to carry their seeds to new locations.  Eating the fruit of the plant does not kill the plant itself.  Many of the leaves which are harvested from certain plants are, for instance, the lower leaves which will touch the ground and sometimes conduct some blight to the rest of the plant.  By pruning these lower leaves while still healthy, we encourage the life force to feed the upper leaves.  Artful pruning, again, allows us to keep harvesting food from plants while actually helping the plant to grow.  We can also thin out plants so that they live in harmony with each other in a crowded space and allow them to be healthier than if they just battled for dominance with each other.  We can also feed the soil, water the plants, compost, and many things to help plants to thrive and get rewarded by some food in the process.  This is a synergistic relationship that is rare with animals and their hunters.  Granted, some hunters may thin out a herd when it gets too overpopulated, but the massive animal flesh consumption of modern factory farms goes way beyond such a limited kind of hunting.  The modern factory farm, too, generates so much cruelty and suffering for animals that people are literally eating the suffering of animals along with their flesh, showing up in all the hormones that squirt into their bodies.  Plants do not have this kind of emotionality and are cleaner in this regard.

I disagree with modern science that says that we are omnivores.  Our canine teeth are evolutionarily "vestigial", meaning that such carnivorous tendencies are really part of our evolutionary past, not our present time.  I think that more precisely we are vegans, descended from fruitarian guerillas (showing up in our inability to produce our own Vitamin C, along with a fruitarian monkey and fruit eating bat, all of us are meant to get our Vitamin C from fruit).  We are vegans with an emergency omnivore back up system.  The Paleo diet is a good example of this.  It seems to have arisen from a time when food was scarcer, but the long term eating of animal flesh had the side effect of a much shorter lifespan.  Just because we can digest something does not mean that we should eat it.  It seems that humans were only meant to eat non-vegan food when other food was not available, but not as a permanant lifestyle.
 

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Cleansing Herbal Teas

I found that the following website had some good thought about how to do a cleanse:

http://www.amazing-green-tea.com/cleansing-tea.html

There are two charts on the site, one showing organs and symptoms and the other showing which herbs you might take.  The site seems to require about medium skill with herbs in the sense that it is good information to fine tune your own herbal combinations.

I have been discovering in personal experience how to use Cayenne Pepper powder.  It is a very powerful cleansing and stimulating herb.  There are definitely contraindications to consider in its use and considerations about timing in its use (whether on an empty stomach or with a meal).

I am valuing its aggressive way of breaking up mucoidal strands from left over dairy in the system.  Although I have been Vegan for about 28 years now, I found some cheese slipped in at a restaurant, and was enough to produce mild asthmatic symptoms.  I also got a flu bug and my allergies aggravated, even though I had felt 99 percent free of them for over a decade.  It seems that aggressive herbs are necessary to really push out casein (Elmer's Glue) from the system.  I am using this healing challenge as an excuse to do a deeper purge of my system.

I have been looking for synergistic herbs to help this process and as well as using a squirt bottle to do a kind of nose gargle (like a neti pot, but a little more aggressive, I squirt tepid water with baking soda and salt while blowing through the nose OUTWARDS).  I also found a kind of homemade nasal spray that it about 4 cups of pure water with one drop of peppermint, thyme, tea tree oil, and lavender), done a little bit in time before the nasal gargle.

I found that sprinkling cayenne powder on hot air popped organic popcorn (with olive oil, Himalayan salt, nutritional yeast, and dried dill weed lightly sprinkled on it too).  It seems that the cayenne creates a small cayenne mist that goes into the nose and makes me snort out a lot of phlegm.  It is getting milder in reaction now, and only stings a little.  I am feeling a lot cleaner inside.

Again, as a note, I am not endorsing others doing this, just recording my own process and what is working for me.  I am experimenting and it seems that there are not adverse side effects.  It is still an intense cleanse and it may not be for everyone and some may need to modify the process in some way to adapt it to their needs (or try something else).  I figure, though, that if we all share our experience that it will help us evolve our herbal knowledge.

Friday, June 22, 2012

Smoking Cessation

I wanted to share some notes on "smoking cessation" or "quitting smoking".  Tobacco smoking, with nicotine and even arsenic within its ingredients, is an especially toxic and addictive brew.  It seems to help carcinogens develop into full blown cancer.  It may have been at the root of one friend recently dying and seems to have been the main catalyst for another friend to have a cancer flare up.

Because I have not been a tobacco smoker, some of the notes expressed below have had only partial validation in personal experience.  I have been able to use process oriented hypnotherapy to help one person successful and nonreversibly end tobacco smoking, without any strong withdrawal symptoms, by going into the underlying anger issues and clearing them.  Anger energy, when transmuted through meditation, becomes self empowerment, clear relationship boundaries, and creative evolutionary purpose.  The person in question did send me an email after 3 months to say that she was still not smoking and still doing well.  The guided meditation took only 15 minutes to do, after some basic induction and breathing meditation (one hour total).

Before she did the meditation, she followed a few suggestions for one month, before this:

(1) Switch from regular commercial tobacco cigarettes to Native American cigarettes.  The former has ingredients added to make it more addictive, like arsenic.  It seems that these extra ingredients are easily weaned off of, if eliminated first by switching to a more benign cigarette.

(2) If you smoke a cig, then you must only smoke.  This means not to smoke and talk, smoke and watch TV, smoke and do anything else.  You smoke only when you are able to concentrate attention on the process.

(3) Only only smoke to satisfy a craving and then only smoke enough to satisfy the craving.  If you are attentive, you will become sensitive to when it is just the urging of habit or when it is a strong craving propelling you to smoke.  You check in to make sure, even try to resist a little to make sure it is a strong enough craving.  Then you take each inhale of smoke slowly and with no hurry, then exhale slowly with no hurry, feeling how you feel after each inhale/exhale.  When you notice that the craving has been satisfied, then you stop smoking any more at that time.  It usually only takes a few inhales of the smoke to do this.

Following these 3 suggestions has allowed people to drop down from 1 or 2 packs a day down to 5 cigs a day (in about 3 weeks).  It seems to give the body a chance to metabolically adapt to less and less nicotine running through its system.  It seems, too, that anger starts coming up when it is down to just 5 cigs.  It seems that those around the smoker will notice this before the smoker does.  The hypnotherapy helps process the anger that surfaces.  If the underlying anger is released, much of the addictive drive will end with this.  Emotional repression is part of the addictive drive.  It is the hidden benefit that keeps the addiction in place.  When the emotions are dealt with, the force of the addiction is much more manageable.  Tobacco smoking represses the anger very well, so that the person can become oblivious to the anger that he or she carries inside.  It will show up in the judgmental thoughts that are expressed, often in front of the TV while the news broadcasts are happening, towards favorite targets like Liberals or Republicans, Feminists or Evangelicals, Greedy Corporations or Communists/Fascists, etc.  Process oriented hypnosis is about looking at all this judgment without judgment, seeing what it means, and seeing if a new relationship can be found.  All without one suggestion to actually end smoking being implanted.  The antidote is the "mirror like wisdom" which is the mirror of karma, how everything is unfolding perfectly and how everything is reflecting back our own judgmental thoughts.

The reason why I am putting these notes into my herbal blog is because I have intuited that there is some further support from Lobelia.  I found that a few sites gave a caution about using it in large doses.  But I found that the large doses that seemed to have the largest and strongest precaution are when Lobelia is prepared as an extract and taken as capsules (Lobelia Sulfate).  I would not recommend capsule use in this case.  It seems that a tincture or infusion is very safe, and that low dosage is adequate to get the benefits.  If some nausea feeling arises to reduce the dosage until it is not felt.  Only increase the dosage in stages so that you can feel each level.  Though part of my idea in energetic herbalism is that you do not usually have to push a dosage high enough to cause nausea.  I would take this as a natural signal of the body that we are going too far.  Some herbalists did push a higher dose and had the vomiting be part of the therapy.  Understandable, when you make something that intense,  precautions become more necessary and you have to know what you are doing.  Several sites warned against use while pregnant.  This is obvious when nausea level doses are used.  The warning may or may not apply to low and usually safe doses.  A lot of companies repeat these warnings to cover themselves legally.  I could not find any testing or reasoning to support this, but pass it along.  It is probably wise to play it safe here.  I need to also state by caveat that you do need to know what you are doing with herbs, to respect your own biochemical individuality, and to seek the guidance of a health professional.  If you choose to take responsibility for your own health process, then it is important to double check any process shared in any blog, book, and discussion with your own wisdom, prudence, and experience.

I have been using a Lobelia tincture to help relieve some asthmatic symptoms that have resulted from a recent allergy and/or flu.  It has been helpful and feels very safe.  I have also found that cayenne, in very small doses, also helps to break up mucus and allows me to cough up more phlegm.  I have also been nose washing with a regular very clean squirt bottle (rather than a neti pot).  I mix a little bit of baking soda and salt into the tepid warm water.  I then squirt it up my nose while exhaling through the nose forcefully.  It is kind of like gargling in the nose.  It feels a little gentler than the neti pot process for me and seems to do something similar.  I am still experimenting with cayenne as far how to take it in.  The best so far seems to be to sprinkle it on some hot air popped organic popcorn (with some Himalayan salt, olive oil, nutritional yeast, and dried dill weed powder).  I going to experiment with a small amount in a tea and see how this compares.

My intuition is that there are supportive herbs like Marshmallow Root, Red Root, Echinicea, Eucalyptus, Anise, Licorice, Fennel, and Slippery Elm, and probably many others, to help the process be gentle, effective, and smoothing.  I have not experimented enough in this direction yet, but hope to post some notes on how different combinations feel for me.

As a cautionary note, when one is quitting a very long term and toxic habit like cigarette smoking, the toxic build up can be a lot.  It might be good to keep following through with a liver flush and some gentle detox teas.  One friend who successfully quit had black tar like stuff ooze out of his skin while taking hot showers and that noticeably showed up on his towels.  Because of how much toxic build up might there, you might get some strong detox reactions as your body adjusts.

There seems to be a way of combining lobelia and mullein as something to smoke as a substitute for tobacco and which seems to help heal the lungs.  But this is a use that I have not experimented with for the reason mentioned above.  If someone has use it this method, I invite the person post something in this blog about it (as scientifically and personal experience based as possible, like how many cigs a day was the habit, what were the side effects if any, what dose for how much days, and how the experience felt, how well did it help the craving to go away or not, etc.).

I would recommend a person also get off dairy products and at least cut down on eating cooked animal muscle tissue (meat).  It is actually easier to reduce both at the same time, rather than each separately, because dairy and animal flesh neutralize some aspects of each other.  If possible, go vegan, but give yourself permission to follow your cravings with awareness (parallel to the suggested rules for cutting down cravings for tobacco), trusting that your body is adjusting in stages to a cleaner internal condition.

You will probably gain some weight from not smoking.  This weight gain is not what many people usually think it is.  It is from your body rehydrating, getting the water it needs.  Cigs dehydrate and it is part of the overall toxic effect.  We need more water than we are usually getting.  If we are getting enough water, our urine is usually very light yellow or clear in color.

What I have learned as a healer is that the more intense the process a person is going through, the gentler the support.  Gentle can be very effective, even more effective, than being intense with our process.  When I am unclear about what to do with support like bodywork or herbs, then I use subtle energy work.  I spend time gently opening all the meridian flows and make sure the person absorbs the energetic blessing (and recommend ionic minerals if they do not), and lots of very pure water or a gentle herbal tea.  It is amazing how much detox can happen with this level of support, with the body pouring out a lot of dark urine to detox itself.  It is one of the many signs of how useful energy healing (with breathwork) is.

I would recommend that a person who wishes to do "smoking cessation" get support from a health professional and/or from an energy healer, particularly from one who can be nonjudgmental and supportive of the process, and who understands that "gentle is powerful" and that "more is not always better".  If you feel unable to find someone in your own area, I can give some support via phone and via remote energy healing.

I have no moral issues with smokers and have some friends who are still smokers.  I do have a wish that they release the habit for the sake of their own health and happiness.  I do feel that meditation can provide the benefits of calm and peace that they seek through tobacco, and with less side effects.  I have been a little more vocal about inviting people to do this shift into nonsmoking since a friend had died from tobacco use recently.  Sometimes we fall into the comfort of a familiar toxic habit and something needs to jar us into being proactive in ending it.  I want to state that I think this is worthwhile.  I find, too, that cigarettes are one of the better defended habits.  A person really needs to decide to end it, and really want to be free from this habit, for it to end.  I would like to share that ending it does not have to be very hard.  There is support possible.  Anger is a separative emotion.  It is a way of distancing oneself from being deeply interpersonal with people.  The cigarette personality does not really like getting help from others and feeling vulnerable this way.  Even choosing to get some help and support helps to break this trance.  A person does not have to go it alone.

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Inner Cleanse and Liver Flush


I wanted to write some notes about some cleansing processes.  I have been asked a few times about a Liver Flush formula that has worked for me in the past and consists of two phases:

A tea with equal parts of:
Peppermint
Fennel
Yellow Dock
Burdock

Nowadays I would also add:
Dandelion Root
Fenugreek
Clove (1/4 the amount of the others)
Triphala (1/4 the amount of the others)

to the formula.  Two tablespoons (3 tablespoons you add the other ingredients) and two cups of water, bring to boil, and simmer for 5 minutes.  The process yields one cup of Liver detox tea.

You want to prepare the above tea as a chaser for the powerful liver flush brew below:

2 Oranges
1 Lemon
1 Garlic clove
1 Ginger knob
2 tablespoons of Olive Oil

everything but the Olive Oil ran through a juicer.  Orange has the peel removed, the Lemon does not have the peel removed (unless it is not organic).  It is a slight foul brew and the tea is a welcome chaser to wash it down.  They work well together.  Many people have found the tea alone to be effective.

As always, please check with your health professional if you have any concerns about the use of this formula and respect your own biochemical individuality.  This formula is fairly safe, but the juiced portion of the formula is very intense and may bring up a lot for people to release.  Sometimes anger issues get intensified (and others around you may be more aware of this sooner than you are).  If it is too intense, just stay with the tea longer.

It also helps to have a cleansing diet at the same time.  If you are not already Vegan, then temporarily become Vegan for this cleanse.  Eat lots of salad with fresh grated carrots, any kind of leafy green, no raw onions, and perhaps some Daikon radishes (thinly sliced).  A small amount of rice and lentils for substance can be added.  Triple Leaf Detox tea is a very good conventional brand tea that helps to detox the body and is a useful supplement to this process and is very inexpensive.  Fresh juices, both from fruit and from vegetables, also helps this detox.

About 10 days in a row with the formulas should be enough, though a few have gone for about 21 days with a deeper cleanse happening and even some gallstones being released (a little extra Olive Oil helps to move them out).

I would also add a tea made of warm water and a teaspoon of Triphala powder a few nights before going to sleep, to help detox and heal the intestines.  This should be gentle enough to continue with longer if you are finding benefit with this.

If you have cheese in your diet, you may need to dissolve all the mucoid strands in your intestines first, so that your body has a cleansing path to remove the toxins from itself.  Cheese is about 70 percent Elmer's Glue (there is a smiling cow on the label for a reason, though in reality the cows are not smiling all that much).  If you want to get clear on this, buy some casein free Vegan cheese, cheddar cheese, and Elmer's glue to compare, notice the gooey texture of two of them, and how the Vegan "cheese" does not have it and barely melts right.  There are some special herbal formulas to cleanse the colon of mucoidal strands.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Raw Pea Soup Version 5


I made a recipe of "raw pea soup" this morning.  It consisted of about two cups of frozen peas, covered with filtered water and then blended in a powerful blender (in my case a 1/4 horse power one).  Then I added a small amount of apples, mangoes, and pineapple for sweetness, and then blended again.  Then I added parsley, basil, turmeric, ginger, and cilantro, and then blended, occasionally adding water to thin the liquid enough so that the blender does not work too hard, but not enough to spoil the cream soup texture.  Added about 1/4 cup of Tahini, 1/8 cup of Miso, some shakes of Himalayan salt, two shakes of Tamari gluten free soy sauce, 1/2 tablespoon of chili paste, and two squeezes of lemon juice, and then blended again.  Added 1/4 cup of corn, and then blended again.  Added some Flax Seed Oil (3 tablespoons) and Eschium Oil (2 tablespoons) for Omega 3's and just pulsed on low power (to preserve the delicate Omega 3's).

The tahini and peas have a fair amount of protein.  Pineapple has the enzymes.  The Himalayan salt has ionic minerals.  There are many herbs with good medicinal properties in this mix.  There are natural fruit sugars for some good energy.