Oh Those Bitter, Not So Sweet, Sugar Blues

Yep!  It happened again.  I got into the sugar.  It started off with helping a friend make a maple syrup sweetened, gluten-free, almond-meal based, lemon wedding cake for her son.  The cake was amazing, light and lovely and so was the frosting, a white chocolate ganache.  It was also made with very clean and pure ingredients, organic cream with fair trade, white chocolate, organic chips.  Ah, but therein lay my downfall.  The chips were sweetened with organic, yet still refined sugar.

It took us two days to make the cake, working steadily.  And it was a masterpiece with white chocolate peony petals and beautiful pink and white fresh roses.  But alas, tastes of the ganache awakened the sleeping sugar monster within me.  The days that followed had little bits of sugar here and there, not too much, but soon the cravings reached a crescendo in all three of that day's meals containing sugar.  Then the following morning, along came the blues. 

When our bodies are healthy and well nourished we handle stress better and roll with the punches when they come.  But when we are depleted, which sugar does to most of us, with it's destruction of our gut flora and subsequent inadequate nutrition, along with the emotional swings from high to low, then we really feel the blows.  

It is not just our emotional health that suffers, we can loose our physical stability as well.  Aches and pains and swellings set in.  Flare ups of inflammation attack our joints and pretty soon we hurt all over.  Add a little refined wheat flour or alcohol into the mix and you've got a recipe for sleepless nights and dreary days feeling tired, run down and generally awful.

Blessedly, I don't fall into this hole very often anymore.  And when I do I can usually pull myself out with the help of probiotics from eating sauerkraut and kimchi.  These quickly restore my gut flora and put an end to that sweet tooth.  But years ago my sugar downfalls used to happen with every holiday: Christmas and New Years in winter, Valentines and Easter in spring, the 4th in summer and Thanksgiving in fall.  Top this off with Birthdays and other personal celebrations and Voila! we've got a series of swings, high and low, from cradle to grave.

For decades I would successfully quit and fall, quit and fall, quit and fall, year in and year out.  I always felt fabulous when I quit, full of energy and joy, raring to go.  Then I'd fall and get grumpy, sore and tired.  You'd think I would have managed a clean break sooner.  But we are talking about addiction here.  Sugar is every bit as addictive as cocaine, and it similarly erodes our health.  

In the U.K. they have begun to implement programs for curtailing sugar addiction and it's subsequent health damaging effects.  Diabetes, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, arthritis, virtually all inflammatory diseases, along with depression can be mitigated and even reversed by eliminating the refined sugars from the diet and focusing on quality nutrition, fresh from the garden, instead. 

Today, I'm just one day "dry."  And my sometimes sore morning feet already feel a little bit better.  May your spirits and health rise like mine as celebrate our freedom from junk foods and other addictions together.

Creating The Life That We'd All Love To Live

Join me now and everyday, twice a day, in creating a life for ourselves that we'd all love to see.  As you wake and as you drift into sleep, let yourself strengthen the muscles of creation through imagination.  Everything any one of us has ever achieved was first felt in our hearts, visualized in the mind, and then given our energy to it bring forth.  So, let's do this, let's create together a world that we'd all love.

Beginning with the microcosm of our own lives and moving out to the macrocosm of our planet in universal flow, let's start with our own center of energy.  This is known as the 'dan tien' or 'sea of chi' in Chinese medicine and it is located right near our navels.  This was the first source of our physical energy for us when we were in the womb.  And it is the place of power and life force energy for creation in our lives today. 

Get a sense of this area in your body and begin to fill it with your great love of life, love for your own life and love for all of life.  Let yourself see this as a small swirling galaxy of creative energy.  You may like to visualize it as thousands of little stars or as a golden swirl or as flowing white light.  However you see it, realize that it is full of potential, coalescing there, right in the center of your belly.  Know that it is imbued with your love and your best intentions for your self and for all. 

Let this energy move and swirl and begin to grow.  See it becoming larger, encompassing your whole abdomen, then flowing through and around your whole body.  Now, let it grow to include your auric space.  See it expanding even more, larger and larger, allowing it to fill the space of your home, then of your neighborhood, your community and your nation.  See it continuing to grow, this beautiful, swirling energy, embracing our whole world, our solar system, our galaxy and even the entire, ever-expanding universe that we all share.

Know that this beautiful swirling creative energy holds the totality of everything.  It can create and give to us whatever we desire and it can take away and transform whatever we no longer need.  It holds and allows the perfect balance of giving and receiving for each and every one of us right where we center ourselves in it's energetic flow. 

Here in this swirling flow, we are each nourished, find wholeness and become complete.  We are free to select and release whatever it is that we desire or need from this universal source of energy.  Here we are actively engaging with creation, in harmony with the highest good for ourselves and for all.

Now we can begin imagining what we would love to see in our lives.  Think of whatever that is for you and picture it, clearly, morning and night.  Know that the creative energy of the universe will align itself with you and your intention and help you to find your way spontaneously into the choices in your day to day life that will result in the manifestation of your vision.  Perhaps you will find yourself eating differently or playing more, maybe you bump into just the right person or take some simple action and all of these, subtly but steadily, begin to create the changes that you'd like to see in your life and in your world.  Your most beautiful future reaches out it's hand and gently pulls you right toward the life you'd most like to live.

Emergency Burn Care

Please enjoy this eight and a half minute long video on various methods to help speed the healing from burns using Aloe Vera, Golden Seal root powder, homeopathics and other wonderful natural remedies. 

© Josephine Laing 2016

As a Clairvoyant Healer, Spiritual Counselor and Intuition Instructor, I share many tips for leading a healthy and fulfilling life.  Please be advised that I am not a doctor. Nor am I licensed in any healing modality. However, I have had years of experience in alternative and complementary health and healing. All healing programs, including standard western medical protocols in addition to natural therapies, can cause harm rather than the benefit that you may be searching for. After all some people can have a strong reaction to something as seemingly innocent as peanuts or strawberries. Therefore, anything that I may recommend in these blogs and videos could be dangerous for you to try. So, it is important that you Ask Your Doctor First before trying any natural healing protocol. However, most medical doctors have little experience regarding natural healing programs and herbal medicine. So please understand if your doctor is unfamiliar with these ideas.

Healthy Nutritious Desserts

Here are some wonderfully delicious and nutritious desserts for you to try.  These have no refined sugar, nor any toxic ingredients. They are wholesome, sweet and simple treats for you to make in your own kitchen that will nourish and delight you.  Enjoy!

Rescue!

The other day I saw a short video of a rescue that a man did saving the life of a dog in Russia.  The dog had somehow walked out about ten feet onto the spill way of a dam.  There on the perilous edge, with several inches of water flowing underfoot, the dog froze in fear, unable to move to save it's own life.  A spontaneous rescue team assembled with on-lookers overhead.  One man with an assistant had climbed down onto the spill way and then inched his way along the slippery precipice, slowly and carefully approaching the dog from behind. 

When he reached the animal, he patted it in friendly way, speaking softly to it and gently took hold of it's collar.  Then ever so carefully, dragging the terrified and immobilized dog with him, he backed his way to safety.  At that point, he tied a rope, which was dangling from above, around the dog's chest and neck, creating a sling.  The support team from above then hoisted the animal up the sheer concrete wall to safe ground and the man and his assistant climbed back up the ladder to join them.

It was quite a sight.  And it left a deep impression on me.  Here was this man, brave beyond belief, saving the life of a dog that he didn't even know.  Why would someone do such a thing, at risk to all they hold dear?  Not only was his own precious life held delicately in the balance, but the lives of all who love that man or depend on him for their means of support, their lives were also cast into jeopardy.  Yet, at times like these, we think of none of that.  We simply step up and do what needs to be done.  We run into the burning house to save the cat.  We jump into the deep water, even if we don't know how to swim, to save the child from drowning.  One might ask why is that?

In a lecture that I saw by Joseph Campbell, years ago, he said, this is because, "You and the other are one."

Now, that certainly puts a damper on the whole 'survival of the fittest idea,' doesn't it?  In fact it smacks it right in the face, because the deeper reality is our interconnectedness.  It's all of us or none of us. 

My husband last night was commenting on war.  He said that the 'casualties' from the recent Gulf Wars have now totaled more suicides among returned vets than battle deaths.  He also said that an older friend of his, who was in World War Two, once told him that they all tried not to shoot anyone.  They just impressively blew up the surrounding areas in hopes that the "enemy" would retreat. 

All of the great spiritual traditions inform us that we are all one.  There is after all some version of the Golden Rule in every one of them.  "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."  Yet instead, too often our religions teach us separation.  We are told that their way is the only way to union with the Divine and that all others must conform to their beliefs or be condemned.  And, much more tragically, way too often, our religious doctrines see others who don't conform, as being worthy of slaughter.  These are dangerous ideas and they have plagued humanity for way too long. 

This premise of separation also holds true for our patriotic affiliations.  We value our own familiar ways of being over the ways of others.  However, I also recently saw a video on how extensively our ancestry is shared.  In it, an Englishmen denounced all Germans, and an Irish woman denounced the French until they gave some saliva and allowed it to be tested to see how much of their own genetic material was shared by the genes of the others.  Then they realized the folly of their formerly passionately held opinions and saw how denouncing the others was denouncing their very own selves.

The time has come for us to all rescue each other from these dogmas of separation and realize that we are all one.  Each and every one of us is a part of the great stream of life.  We all contain our one little drop from the ocean of Divinity.  And the time is upon us now to embrace this truth.  Not only for us humans in regards to other humans, but also, in regards to all of life.  What we do to the other, we do to ourselves.  If we were to let another die, we would be letting a part of ourselves die.  And the man with the dog on the cliff of the dam demonstrated that to me that with his courage and his deeper instinct of oneness.

© Josephine Laing, 2016

A Simple Nurturing Chicken Soup

This is a simple old time healing recipe that you can easily make and enjoy.  For your friends, who are not vegetarians, this is a wonderful way to show that you care.

© Josephine Laing, 2016

An Elder's Simple Wisdom

A friend of mine was raised in Peru.  She was there recently visiting her elderly mother and was reminded of a beautiful instruction her mother had given to her when she was young.  It was this, "While you are out walking, it is good to sing and smile.  Then, no one will be afraid of you.  And if you can't sing, then whistle."  

My friend also said that while she was growing up they had a neighbor who would sing out his songs in a booming voice.  Everyone always knew where he was and how close to home he had come.  I shared this with my husband and he told me that one of the elders he had met sometimes said that it is a bad man who has no song in his heart.  

Such profound and simple wisdoms, and we know them to be true.  Most all of the time, when we hear someone singing or whistling as they walk by, we are instantly put at ease, especially if they grace us with a nice friendly smile.  

After a severe head injury, another friend of mine was very distressed to realize that upon awakening she no longer had a song playing in her mind.  She mourned and wept for the loss and then was ecstatic some months later as her healing progressed and her day-to-day songs were returned to her once more. 

Some years back, still another friend of mine shared that her daughter had found the man she wanted to marry and introduced him to her parents.  I asked my friend how she liked the young man.  She said, "He's great!"  We love him!  And guess what, he whistles!"  She was overjoyed because as she said, "It's always the sign of a happy heart."

Our brains and hearts and minds are remarkable and as we sing and whistle and smile we connect with others and feel that all is right with the world.  And we stride forward into the beautiful moment of Now.

© Josephine Laing, 2016