The big question, of course, is why?  Why go raw?  Doesn’t it seem a little extreme?  The reason is simple:  I want to feel better.  I eat well, and have done for years.  But I suffer from fatigue and persistent runny noses, repeated outbreaks of herpes - on my nose to make it even better - and cellulite.  Now, none of these puts me in danger of a fast trip to the morgue.  But neither are they indicators of robust good health.  My body is communicating to me that something is out of order and if I’m not prepared to listen to my own body’s messages, then who is? I started to notice a few months ago that my “healthy” morning porridge (oats, flax seed, apple and maple syrup) left me feeling like I wanted to crawl back into bed about 15 minutes after eating it.  I also noticed that the lovely plates of pasta dished up by my Italian partner - a food I ate rarely before meeting him - had the same effect.  Fifteen minutes after lunch, I wanted to curl up in siesta land until further notice.  Sleeping and resting is normal and good, but persistent fatigue even when you get enough rest is not normal.  And I have so much that I want to do, so many things I want to accomplish, so many hopes and dreams and so much darn motivation that being hindered by fatigue was becoming terribly frustrating.  The inability to fulfill your dreams leads to a profound sense of internal agitation.  That feeling that something is just wrong.

So why raw?  Well, I know that eating animal flesh is out of the question for me.  And I’m about as healthy a vegetarian as is possible.  So what’s the logical step?  Supplementation?  Unnatural, expensive and devoid of Life Force.  So, for me, raw foods seem the most sensible next step.  I mean, it is patently obvious that no other mammal eats cooked food.  Or rather, the only other ones that do - domestic pets - end up suffering the same chronic illnesses as their cooked food masters.  My mother gave our cat daily insulin shots when she developed diabetes after a lifetime of obesity, so I know of what I speak.  Raw food just feels right.  Crunchy, colourful, tasty, zingy, energetic fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, sprouts, and even raw eggs and milk products, all conserve their vital energy, their Life Force, and then share it with the one eating them.  I look at a plate of cooked veggies and for all their deliciousness, you can tell that they’ve lost something.  Why raw?  It just feels right.

Is it extreme?  No, I don’t think so.  There are far fewer rules of Raw than in the average fad diet or detox plan.  Take, for example, the blood group diet.  You find out you’re Type O and suddenly you’re striking huge numbers of foodstuffs off your list. Or the Atkins diet, which looks simple but you try eating close to 0 carbs…it’s not an easy diet.  Nor is the GI diet, which  requires a detailed knowledge of the glycemic index of all the foods you consume, a simple diet to follow.  As a nutritionist, I know that it’s very, very hard to follow a whole list of do’s, don’ts, sometimes maybe dependings…With raw food you basically eat what you want, as long as it’s raw.  There are lots of raw vegans out there, but there are equally many who eat raw meat and other animal products.  Kind of like bears, you know?  Also, I would not think of converting my daughter to a raw diet until I am fully conversant with the scope and functioning of the scheme.  Of course, she instictively enjoys raw foods like carrots, broccoli, tomato, parmesan (yep, real Parmesano Reggiano is made with raw milk) and sprouts.  So as I incorporate new recipes into my diet, so will she.  But no, I’m not a kook and I don’t experment on the bodies of others…my own physical sheath is my living laboratory.

So it’s been three days…I’m not aiming for 100% right away…or maybe even ever.  But I am eating more than 50% raw already and I feel a difference.  Also, I’m sticking to my New Year’s Resolution to give up English tea, so that helps.  But I already wake up with more energy, move a little faster, a little more lightly on my feet.  I feel the wonderful, gentle energy of the raw foods that I eat nourishing my pranic body and think:  raws feels better, raw feels right.

stuffed dates

Above is my first raw invention:  dates stuffed with hemp seed, goji berries, almonds and stone ground tahini.

Read the rest of the article here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081218122158.htm#

My daughter is learning to speak and charmingly mixes English, Italian and Spanish in her own little tri-lingual melting pot. This evening when I was putting her to bed, she decided that she needed a little more cuddling before settling down for the long sleep. As she nestled her soft little crown of hair against my shoulder, she proclaimed “qua, happy”. (Qua means “here” in Italian). Here, I am happy, she said. I had to agree with her.
Yes, my love, we are here and we’re happy. Qua, happy. Here, felice.

A second article concerning fats was published in today’s Independent. Titled “Low-fat diets: Not fit for purpose“, the author discusses the lack of evidence behind the promotion of a low-fat diet, and charts the rise in obesity against the lowering of fat consumption. I think it’s really unfortunate that the author chose not to distinguish between types of polyunsaturated fats: those in the know understand that there is an optimum ratio of omega-3:omega-6 polyunsaturated fats in the diet and that the problem is that we are eating waaay too much omega-6’s. We should have about equivalent intakes of both types (that’s a 1:1 ratio). I do think it useful that he highlights the benefits of saturated fats in the diet: indeed lauric acid, as found abundantly in butter and coconut oil, is highly beneficial for the human organism. Yay butter! Boo margarine!

My personal experience bears testimony to this current research: I grew up in a household where tiny rations of butter were scraped onto bread, and margarine was routinely used in baking. As for oil, a drop of sunflower or canola oil was used to fry onions, but there was certainly no sign of olive oil, oily fish or flax seed oil. My brother and sister and I all suffered terrible hay fever. My sister has struggled with ezcema all her life and my brother developed asthma in his late teens. When I converted the vegetarianism at the age of 14, I had no concept whatsoever or eating well. I basically gave up meat, then moved out of my mother’s house and survived on whatever my meagre restaurant skivvy’s salary could provide me. Basically, bread, ramen noodles, margarine, peanut butter, and probably some healthier stuff like fruit in between the beer-drinking sessions. Needless to say, I also developed ezcema, had terribly itchy and dry skin, fine, sparse hair and incredibly dry eyes, especially when my hay fever kicked in around May. As I ‘grew up’ I improved my diet and paid great attention to eating well and getting fit. But, it was not until I read Udo Erasmus’ book “Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill” that I realised how I’d been punishing my body. I began taking flax seed oil and eating plenty of avocadoes, butter, and occasionally oily fish (yes, in contrary to my veggeir principles). I don’t think that I need to tell you that I no longer have bad skin or hair.

so, if you’re still not getting a regular dose of omega-3’s (and I mean daily), then what the heck are you waiting for?

desconsuelo, mal, pesar, suplicio, tortura, aflicción, angustia, congoja, daño, pena, tormento, calvario
-aflicción - agonía - agujeta - agujetas - alifafe - amargura - arrepentimiento - atrición - cimbrón - contrición - jaqueca - desolación - duelo - enfermedad - goce - lástima - mal - patetismo - pena - pésame - prueba - punzada - pupa - purgatorio - sentimiento - sufrimiento - tormento - trastorno

Clearly not all of these deal with physical pain. But then again, how astute are we when differentiating between the two? It’s not that coincidental that neckache coincides with a bust-up with your partner in which words were left unsaid (visuddha chakra). Nor it is unusual for the lungs to ache when grief is intense (in TCM, grief is associated with Lung Qi).

Net conclusion: I need to improve my vocabulary. Let’s see, how can I work ‘alifafe’ into a sentence?

Since becoming a mother 21 months ago, my Hatha yoga practice has suffered grave insults.  Rarely do I practice asanas more than twice a week and frequent are the weeks when I don’t practise at all.  However, since the beginning, I have retained in my head the concept that I am actually practising Karma yoga in the raising of my child.  In the week in which Karen Matthews was convicted of kidnapping her own daughter in order to secure reward money, it emerged that she was deemed to be unable  “…to successfully place the children’s needs above her own”.  This inability is the manifestation of a juvenile mindset; unable to delay gratification, unable to empathise.  Children are born egotists - they have no concept of a parent’s desire to sleep late, or skip dinner, or not go out for a walk on a rainy day.  Children…want…now.  And our role, as parents, is to both satisfy their needs whilst teaching them slowly to recognise that their needs and desires don’t always coincide with everybody else’s.

And so, parenting, I practice Karma Yoga.  When my daughter needs me, I give.  Love, hugs, food, attention, play, education.  Whether I achieve the objective of detachment from the results of my labour, I do not yet know.  Perhaps, perhaps not.  I suppose it’s natural that in teaching her to speak I hope to create an articulate, polite, well-spoken human being, and that in teaching her to eat I hope to develop a balanced palate, open to new flavours and textures, alive to the possibilities of healthy food and not numbed by doses of salt and sugar.  How to detach from the outcome then?  I know that it will create less anxiety at mealtimes if I detach from the desire to raise a healthy eater and instead focus on the action itself:  the feeding, the nourishing.  But, man, it’s difficult for me that she’s already choosing bread and jam over porridge and flax seeds, or pasta with tomato sauce over vegetable and barley soup.  Yes, the options should not even be available, but her rejection of lovingly prepared foods means that she goes hungry, and so I fail on both counts:  neither do I feed nor do I nourish.  And we all go to bed hungry:  she physically and I spiritually.

And so I practice daily the yoga of devotion and action.  My karma yoga as a parent stretches my limits in a way that other things have not.  I believe that parenting actually makes us better people.  I love the quote “adults don’t make children, children make adults”.  The ancient yogis had firm respect for the phases of life:  they far from believed that all of us are made to sit alone on a mountaintop in meditation until we reach Enlightenment.  In fact, one yogi in a city makes more positive change in the everyday world than do ten yogis in retreats.  And of course, the later phases of life, the renouncement, the time for contemplation, come after the family is grown and the career realised.

And so, I try not to stress about missing my hatha practice.  For today, too, I will detach from the fruits of my labour and love an cherish my daughter without thinking of her eventual adulthood and whatever surprises it may hold.  Om shanti peace.

And then a few days ago, while looking for a recording of the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves, I accidently listened to the hymn Jerusalem.  Written by the mystic and thinker William Blake, it is much-loved in Britain.  In it, the lines

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountain green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?

You know, I can’t imagine anyone nowadays writing anything about how lovely England is. Pete Doherty might pen poetry about Arcadia, but there’s little in the modern compendium celebrating England’s glorious queen, or culture, or the beauty of the landscape. The only people who openly praise England are the BNP and we all know how rational they are. Now, I am not into patriotism, but I do think that pride is important. Pride in who you are, in doing right, in standing up for good against bad, in being the best possible person, in caring and not being afraid to show it. The overwhelming lack of pride, of shame, of caring, is what allows horrors like the torture of Baby P to persist in a so-called civilised society. His mother has no shame, the official machinery that failed him grinds along but cares little, the neighbours and friends who ’saw nothing’ had so little confidence in what they saw with their own eyes that they condemned, each and every one of them, that little boy to death. Something really went wrong here and it’s not only Haringey social services who failed. It’s the way the whole of society is breaking down: the mother surfs the Internet while her child screams in the background, everyone takes notes but sees nothing, violence is all around us but we carry on as usual.

What am I trying to say here? That we need to restore some sense of honour, and dignity and pride in ourselves and our children. There will always be reprobates and psychopaths and idiots, but normal, functioning people should not allow themselves to degenerate so. Is there any way to teach this? Is there any way to salvage pride in the ruins of our corrupt and self-serving culture? I read an interesting viewpoint today, dealing with the violence in the border region of Mexico-USA (Amexica) :

‘Consider how great civilisations fall, the marks of their last days.’ He cites ancient Rome and ‘the nature of public execution’. Torture and violent public execution also marked, he says, ‘the end of the Middle Ages and Inquisition as they gave way to Renaissance and science. There are these great moments of civilisation and science, but they try to be better than they are, and when they fall, they resort to public execution. And I think we are now in a moment of crisis, in the culture of global business.’

This deals specifically with the Mexican drug-related assasinations of the past 2 years, but I read in it the kernel of the theory of how we live among such violence with the semblance of normality. And why our children and young people are so unbalanced and unruly. When you take the sum total of rapes and killings in DR Congo, carbombs in Iraq, the Taleban in Afghanistan, rape and violence in South Africa, hostage-taking in Colombia and the worldwide assaults against womenhood, you realise that we are in fact a society in decline. Rapid decline. And England, as the Mother of it All - the first to industialise, the Empire builder, the leader in times of war and crisis - is naturally going to be the first to go down. And the English people are either drowning in the quagmire like the family of Baby P, or jumping ship and moving to Spain then complaining of how much they hate England while continuing to draw a British pension from the munificent British state that so spectacularly failed Baby P, no doubt in part due to lack of money.

I have often said that anxiety resides in the space between what you know to be right and what you are actually doing.  When you are doing what you know to be right, you feel absolute surety and calm. We are a society gripped by anxiety because we know that what we are doing is wrong but the gap between that knowledge and the everyday actuality keeps widening.  There are a lot of people tossing and turning about the Baby P case and the reason is this:  we have blinded ourselves to the daily violence that we inflict upon each other, our planet and our children but once in a while the spectre pops up and reminds us just how far we’ve drifted, we look into the anxiety gap and we see…a tiny child with blond hair and blue eyes  staring back at us not with anger but with innocence.  And we see that this is what we have lost, this is what we have sacrificed.

So I have to say:  guys, what’s up with you?  I know so many women who are yearning for a better, healthier life and being held back by their partners.  I found it extremely instructive working with older British women through my post with Age Concern.  Given that women outlive men in almost all industrialised nations, I found myself working with many widows.  Although they missed their deceased husbands, what they did not miss was mealtimes.  Or rather, meal preparation.  They had lived through marriages of 40, 50 years and been confined to plates pleasing to the palates of their menfolk.  In their newfound independence, many opted for lighter, healthier foods ceasing altogether the preparation of roasts and fry-ups.  And this is not something confined to the older generation:  a good friend of mine has recently ended a 7-year relationship and what she is most excited about is amplifying her daily menu.  No more nursery food (chips, beans, pies) and hello again to chard, sweet potatoes and vegetables other than tomatoes.

I went to a yoga class whilst on a recent jaunt in Madrid.  10 attendees, all women.  The teacher is a friend of a friend, in a long term relationship with a child.  I innocently asked if her partner practises yoga as well.  To guffaws, I was told that no, indeed not.  In fact, he likes to sneak bits of meat to the kid - something his spouse abhors - and enjoys a sniff of cocaine on a night out.  You know, I wondered why she spent so much time on the 3rd chakra (Manipura), the seat of personal power.  I mean, if your own partner can’t bring himself to stop taking drugs or at least not give meat to the kid, then you’d have to feel yourself up against a big, immovable wall.  I would also cultivate my personal power.

Which brings me to the core of this post.  I am lucky enough to have someone to love, who loves me.  He is wonderful.  But he smokes, he starts the day with sugary black coffee, he eats white bread with jam, he thinks that buying organic vegetables is a waste of money, etc etc.  I’ve gotten him as far as recycling and he’s added superoods like gojis and seaweed to his existing vegetarian diet (he does eat pretty well compared to many) but you know, I still feel like my travels on my own path are slowed by the continuing presence of nasties in the cupboards.  I don’t know if I was happier when I was purer, but I know that striving to be the best I can brings me mental calm.  And of course, it would be easier in two.

So, guys, what are you waiting for?  Why are you so hooked on beer, doobs and cigarettes? Why is is that you’d rather tear a ligament once a month playing 5-a-side football than get down on a yoga mat and actually care for your body?  I can’t help thinking that the tyranny of the andro-centric society condemns us all to shorter, unhealthier lives.