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The Tao of Health
Conscious Connections
A Healthy Liver: Eating the Five Element Way
In our online food class: Healthy Eating—The Five Element Way you can learn how to create a healthy, balanced body by balancing what you eat—based on the Five Tastes of Food.
Here’s a class discussion we had recently about how balancing the tastes of food in a meal can affect health.
Stillness ... then the bat
Flying among
the willows
Black against green sky
— Basho
Question
Since I have found I enjoy the addition of a sour component to several foods I often eat, does that indicate my liver may be out of balance? I would not describe the situation as being a craving as such. It seems like it is more of a flavor enhancement kind of thing.
Answer
Yes, your choice of adding the sour taste to your food is an indication that your Liver could use some rebalancing—and enhancing the flavor of your meal with a bit more of the sour taste may be just what your Liver needs.
On the other hand, to make the point: If one were craving sour food, that would indicate a more significant imbalance with the Liver energy, which might require a more vigorous technique like acupuncture or Chinese medicinal herbs to get the Liver rebalanced.
Keep an eye on your consumption of sour tasting foods and see how much of them you’re choosing; perhaps make some notes in your food journal.
There are also Chi Kung exercises you can do to keep your Liver balanced; (we’re planning to show some in a future course).
Please let us know if you have any other questions.
How To Protect and Strengthen Your Lungs In Autumn
Dancing gold
The forest rustles
Alive with surrendering leaves
— Lao Xian
Fall has begun. This is the time of year when the Lungs and immune system are working hard to help your body adapt to the changing weather.
Working together, your body’s organs are a networked system that receives, transforms and transmits energy. A balanced system is a healthy system, and in Autumn, you want to make sure that your Lungs get tuned-up.
Lungs Are Most Sensitive In Autumn
The Lungs are the focal point of your body’s energy network in Autumn. Now is the time to do some very simple things that will protect your Lungs from the forces that cause cold and flu, and prepare them to deal with the dampness and cold that comes with Autumn and Winter.
Five Ways To PROTECT Your Lungs
- Use a scarf or collar to cover the front and back of your neck when you go outside.
- Avoid drafts and wind.
- Wear a dust mask, or other cover, when working around dust, spores or other airborne contaminants.
- Use Chinese medical herb formulas, or other internal protection, to guard against colds, flu and other contagious illnesses.
- Be mindful of any intuitive insights you may have regarding your health.
Five Ways To STRENGTHEN Your Lungs
- Eat foods that nourish the Lungs. These include: daikon radish, lotus root, maiitake mushrooms, and Chinese herb formulas.
- Get enough sleep.
- Reduce and keep stress low. (Easier said than done ... but doable.)
- Pace yourself. Make sure to save some of your energy).
- Begin developing—or maintain—an inner practice like meditation or deep breathing to help your body relax and rejuvenate.
So, as the days continue to shorten and the nights get longer, remember to slow down to match the deepening of the seasonal energy.
Conserve and enjoy!
The Simple Joy of Creativity
“Those who flow as life flows ... know they need no other force.”
— Lao Tzu
In this current climate of economic and financial turbulence, where people are losing money and their sense of security, this is a good time to examine how to be creative so new things can grow where others have diminished.
Consider your body and mind as the field from which creativity emerges: when well tended and cared for, a satisfying yield is likely. And like balanced soil is necessary to create a crop, a balanced body and mind is the ground from which creativity flows.
Creativity flows along a broad spectrum: from focusing your intention—to allowing unintended insights to bubble-up intuitively—to perhaps a serendipitous set of events which presents an unexpected opportunity.
Being Alive is Creative
Each of us is the em-body-ment of creativity because that’s what being alive is: new cells are constantly being created; new breaths always coming; new thoughts constantly popping into awareness.
So regardless of what you do, or don’t do, you’re always in a creative moment.
Your personal creativity shapes the creative flow to suit your desires when you focus your attention and intention on what you want to emerge in your life.
This personal effort, mixed with a touch of serendipity, enables new and interesting things to emerge that weren’t there before. The result: a feeling of satisfaction and inspiration.
When we’re being and feeling creative, even if the tenor of the times is discouraging or challenging, we can still feel joy and sense purpose in our life.
Easy Ways to Feel Creativity
It’s important to experience creativity.
By becoming more familiar with it, and encouraging and nurturing it, you can have more of it in your life. And you don’t have to travel far to find it: It’s in your neighborhood; right under your nose.
Nature is a wonderful place to observe creativity-in-progress:
1. Watch a seed opening and sprouting over several days.
2. Watch clouds form and glide across the sky.
3. Watch leaves sail down from tree boughs.
Look around … when you’re open to creativity … you’ll encounter it in the most common places … because Life is creativity.
Be Creative
We’re alive … so we’re creative. We create sound when we speak or sing. We create air flow changes as we move through space, especially if we are running or riding a bicycle. We create lots of things just by our mere existence.
Then there are all the activities which we consider creative: painting, playing music, sculpting—all the arts are in this category.
Once you become aware of the creativity all around and in you, then you can choose how you want to engage with it. Explore it, expound upon it—allow your personal creativity to shine throughout your life. It’s meant to be that way.
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)—(206)-842-6936—to learn more about creating the life you want to live.
Kitty offers consultations—in-person, online, and via telephone—for you to better understand the process for creating and maintaining a feeling of health and well-being.