A Message from Michael

Health and Happiness

I have come to witness the amazing healing benefits of happiness. Probably the most profound healing I have seen has been of that from the heart/spirit. When aspects of life are a true reflection of the spirit, the body is in harmony. This is a fundamental key for any type of healing. There are many ‘intellectual’ eaters that pay no attention to what truly resonates with them. Although some find success with this, the standard protocol of measuring things, blindly following new research, and paying no attention to the body’s feedback can lead some to a pathway of degeneration. With a receptive mind state, we can listen to what the body and spirit want, and find the path to healing or improving our health. Part of this requires that we eliminate the personal ‘struggle’ that comes from within when we want change.

The body can help create a clear mind, required for necessary awareness to be guided properly in our healing. A diet in whole foods, along with regular movement and compassionate living enables this.

Working with the Health of the Spirit

It is important to understand that the body and the spirit are integrated as one. When the body purifies, so does the spirit. Likewise, when the spirit is purified (such as eliminating poor habits or beliefs), so does the body. An example might be a sore throat that clears up when resent is finally resolved through forgiveness. Another example would be the increased fulfillment in daily life when good food is eaten – alternatively, it is common to feel down about life when a degenerative diet is consumed.

Why Do I Promote a Healthy Diet?

Food acts as a profound medicine that works very deeply and over time. It is our regular habits (including dietary) that have a significant effect on our health at a deep, interior level, affecting the essence of who we are.

Seeing healing and change as a long term process gives us the advantage of more permanent, lasting change. There are many modalities that treat temporarily, but few that create lasting change. It is this type of change that offers the greatest amount of change.

Food and Eating

I teach about food, and eating. The process of digestion is essential to what we acquire in the body. Poor digestion (created by poor eating habits and food choices) can result in faulty metabolism of food, encouraging pathogenic growths such as yeast and fungal overgrowths, obesity, hardening of the arteries, mucus and other types of non-essential fluids and material in the body. This can be created even from eating the healthiest foods, if we are preparing them or eating/digesting them incorrectly.

To begin, sit down when eating and become aware of your food. What are you eating? Is it food? Do you like it? Are you chewing thoroughly? How does it feel? Is this something you were attracted to, or are consuming unconsciously?

Food vs. Supplements

Isolated nutrients purchased in supplement form lack key ingredients that food otherwise contains. Supplements are rarely natural, and are nearly always devoid in certain cofactors that are essential for the proper use and functioning of the nutrient. Consider 6 mg of vitamin C consumed in food is as effective as 1500 mg supplemental vitamin C. There are countless other aspects of food that haven’t been discovered or researched by modern science, including Qi – vital energy which is primary in Chinese medicine.

Time

Fast. That’s the current priority. There is a price to pay for our very convenient lifestyle. Our modern day paradox of abundance and poor health seems to go unnoticed by most. Very often, improvements are made when we do less, eat less, have less and go slower.

Energy

Many people are plagued with energy issues, but don’t realize they’re eating an energy-less diet of refined, energy devoid foods that cannot sustain us, no matter how much of them we eat. The distribution of energy in the body is worsened by overeating and especially from the refined foods diet, or that of overeating animal foods – two common tendencies in the west. Relative energy can be increased by proper digestion, and eating energy-sustaining foods such as those high in fibre and protein, with regular movement and a stress-free lifestyle.

Extremes

The notion that if something is good, more must be better is only partially correct. Often if something is good, the amount or rate need not be changed. Sometimes if something is good, even less is better. We are sufficiently fed, paid, educated and loved to enough to experience any level of happiness, but we’re often not. Seeking extremes is common, usually as a result of deep, underlying emotional states or wounds that keeps us in cycles of desire.  Any extreme, from overeating to fasting can be harmful. There is value in ‘just enough’, especially when gratitude is present.

Turning around a cruise liner requires time and subtle shifts. With slight turns of the wheel, the ship takes on a whole new direction in time. Turn the ship 180 degrees and very quickly, and it flips on itself.

What do I Suggest?

Firstly, I can’t suggest anything specific for you, because I am not you. What is most important for any change, is that you start at where you are. Sometimes this requires forgiveness, but always requires awareness. Doing this alone can often give us the insight and guidance of what foods are best to be eaten. However, if the mind is cloudy and stuck with unhealthy behaviours and habits, the following diet when eaten properly builds our awareness and initiates healing in all dimension:

• 40% vegetables, cooked/raw based your constitution (you can usually tell what’s best)
• 20% whole grains – with no flours if healing, but otherwise whole, ideally soaked and fresh
• 15% legumes, beans and pulses, nuts and/or seeds
• 10% fruit (when appropriate), seasonings, unrefined oils and other whole food products
• 15% animal products; goat’s milk products and eggs, and good quality meat

With anything, I promote that we find our personal dharma – meaning, what works for us individually. Those who succeed in healing often have come to understand what works for them and what doesn’t, which is perhaps the most efficient route to effective healing.