Claiming

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This is a blog that has the code that technorati needs me to put in to "claim" my blog. They say do one and delete it. But isn't the whole thing supposed to be as transparent as possible?

So I claim my bog!

And I claim my id! (an excellent online tool that not that many people seem to know about!)


And I claim a tenfold return on my blog!

The Abundance People say claiming the tenfold return is the key to "right giving" to mix Buddha and Christian philosphy. I try to remember. Then I just give without claiming. Silly me. Of course Yoda says there is not trying only doing. And in yoga we learn that over efforting can be as disasterous as underefforting - any other Type A Free Spirits out there? But when i have remembered to claim a tenfold return on giving it has yielded interesting results.

And while we are on giving, Halloween always troubles me. I don't want to give candy, especially now with my newfound superfoodism. But what are you going to do, give kids an unpackaged Zen Muffin? A handful of cacao nibs? So I usually just pretend I'm not home. Otherwise the Milky Ways sit there asking me so many questions that i do not want to answer. i claim my right not to give candy and to not feel guilty. And to give the kids crystals instead. I claim the right to go back in time and not have eaten those giant bags full of white cane sugar.

Today is the day that the "veil is the thinnest between the worlds". I claim my ability to see through the veil.

Gotta go claim another cup of coffee (it's got ground cacao in it:)

What do you claim?

Adventures in Superfoods!

I'm going ga ga over superfoods! Look at this beautiful seaweed!

Spirulina? It's sooo green! Cacao? So dark and bitter, almost ironic! Goji berries? So thrilling, a crazy joyride of taste. Strange and complex and wonderfully mytseriously unsimplified. Not to mention the insane nutritional values. And the fact that after you eat them you feel connected and tuned in.

True, at the beginning of every green breakfast shake I think to myself, 'oh my god, it's so disgusting. How will I ever get through it?' But by the end I'm so sad that it's over. It's like an acquired taste that I am still acquiring at every meal.

It started when were staying with friends who had stocked up on C-Rations for emergencies.

I thought, well in an emergency I don't know if i want to be eating army food. Then it struck me that this kind of is an emergency! And that if I can't get the corporations out of Iraq maybe I can get them out of my body. (Of course in this interconnected world the idea of "my body" is even in question but that's for another post.)

And so I've gone from eating "healthy" to eating radically.

Sure I want to lose weight but at the same time I'm tired of trying to be "smaller". Less and less, littler and littler. it suddenly seemed like the wrong approach. My shift coincided with the end of a long hot overworked summer in which there was just too much grilled chicken. I had grilled chicken burnout. Was at a dead end food wise. I couldn't cobble together an easy food plan based on convenient dietetic snacky foods. Mmmm...snacky foods.

It occured to me that instead of dieting to lose weight maybe I could eat to raise my vibration, so that my eating would be part of all the other energetic shifts I've been making. And it is fanastic.

At first I went macrobiotic. A few years ago a hip chick at one of my shows gave me a copy of the macrobiotic cook book she'd written. It had the most lovely inscription. But I was in the middle of a chaotic time and changing my diet right then when I'd just made such a massive change - moving from LA to Palm Springs - long story - I'll tell you another time - just seemed one change too many.

I ate this book up! Macrobiotic means Big Life! Exactly the opposite of eating to get smaller! Big ideas, balance, yin and yang. Thank you Jessica Porter!

I started eating whole grains and sea vegetables and chewing ALOT! and watching the mountain while I did. Something good was happening. Connections. Plus I was losing a few lbs.

But it was the seaweed that really changed things. Because the seaweed is a superfood. So many seaweeds! So little time. So packed with all the minerals that we have overfarmed out of the land. Vitamins are the overtold story, minerals the story that is still kind of secret!

Then through a whole different path I fell in love with chias seeds. Yes those same little seeds they use to make chia pets. The Aztecs called them the running seeds. Then gojis, cacoa, maca maca, hemp....it's like eating life!



I'm crazy for this cacao!!

Then this story just came out in the LA Times. As if I needed anything to bolster my resolve. Apparently 70% of the food in supermarkets is genetically modified. Yikes!!!! (more on DNA in a post to come)

You really are what you eat! If you eat happy food you are happy. If you eat anxious food you are anxious. Food that was kept in prison? Trapped. Of course we also eat with our eyes and ears and all that but seriously it might be time to get radical with the actual bio intake. I am and it is making me happier, and when it doesn't it is making me feel more alive and able to cope with the anxiety.

There's so much to say on this topic and I've vowed to keep these posts to "digestible" chunks so comment your questions. I'm getting superfood smarter by the day. What was I waiting for?!! An engraved invitation? Yes, I always am. If you are, consider this kirlian energy photo of cacao yours.

Start Where You Are!

"I'm not sure where to start," I said to Greg after I went through all the trouble of setting up this blog. The ongoingness of it was clear to me, but not the first step. I'd gotten a little ahead of myself. Very me.

"Start" he said. Greg does not like to waste words. But he does like to start things.

My first yoga teacher, Jonathan at Silverlake Yoga, used to say, "start where you are". A lot. I can still hear him say it in my minds ear although it was over a decade ago. Thank you Jonathan.

One thing I've learned since then is that it's best when starting where you are to know where you are. But that sometimes you have to start where you are to find our where you are. Movement reveals. In yoga you find out you are tight in your hamstrings and that your balance is off on your left side by practicing, not by thinking you should practice or figuring our how to get ready for practicing. When you start where you are what you are saying is, I am starting in order to understand where I am. Of course in some sense you are always starting. That is the beauty of beginners mind.

Suzuki's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind is a great place to start.Starting where you are is especially good advice when the way forward seems overwhelming. Say if you have a buttload of weight to lose, a book to write, a divorce to recover from, a career to reinvent, or a planet to reclaim.

I started this blog, or at least set it up, on a full moon without realizing it. That is either beginners luck or using my intuition. Because I intend for this blog to be like the full moon: brightly reflective and inspiring, although hopefully not so crazy making that it drives people to the emergency room!

Another word for start is begin. And as Julie Andrews sang to the Nazi resisting VonTrapps: "Let's start at the very beginning. A very good place to start." But sometimes you can't start at the beginning. Sometimes you become a step mom of a teenager, get hired onto a project mid-way through, become sober at 40 or are born into a world going crazy with transition. Then you must start in the middle. But still. You can start where you are. You can always start where you are.


Personally I love a story that starts in the middle and loops back around to pick up threads. I love a spiral. In fact I believe that we live in spirals and that this idea that we are born at the begining and move along in a straight line until we die is an idea that has caused us to mis-understand life. It's as if our lives were a race and there was a loud booming voice saying: "Gentelmen, start your engines!" (Do they still say that now with the ladies racing, or is everyone who races considered a gentelman?) But even the race cars go around in laps.) photo by: Alexandre Duret-Lutz CC

I believe our lives are spirals. Like our DNA, like our galaxy, like the yellow brick road! We cover come back around to issues, themes, elements, stories, but hopefully in broader loops, with bigger challenges, rewards, deeper meanings, layers of dimension. (This isn't the first blog I've started, but here I am again and it feel sdifferent this time.) I believe that our lives are are lived in spirals and that to understand that, to really believe it and live it is one way to be 100% Happy 88% of the time!