What is wonderful about macrobiotics is that it is not only a diet – it is a whole system of living – a healthy lifestyle which will automatically bring positive results to anybody’s life.
To follow a macrobiotic lifestyle requires that we make changes.
1) Change the way we eat.
2) Change the way we conduct ourself.
3) Change in attitude.
All around us everything is in perpetual motion; nothing remains the same. When we become too rigid we avoid change. In order to change we have to become flexible, and this will make it easy for us to learn new skills and cultivate new habits. It is a matter of will united with discipline that gives us the power to try new things for a period of time until they become second nature,
For a quick change it is always best to start with food and as we progress, the chemistry of our body changes. After a while we start to see improvements in our health, and subsequently our outward direction starts to shift.
As you concentrate in creating new positive habits, the old negativity will drop off, and it is like reprogramming your computer…some of the old data is no longer needed.
Food is the foundation of our health; one’s diet also alters the mind and emotions. Everything has an effect on our being, though it may be on a subtle level. All that we do through the day effects our energy and balance. A change on any aspect or portion of our body has an effect on everything else, including the world and the Universe.
Noting lasts forever: day turns into night, night into day. Activity is followed by rest, rest by activity. Success follows failure and failure follows success. What has a beginning also has an end.
We have the power to control our health and the way we feel, depending on what we choose to put in our mouth.
WE ARE WHAT WE EAT
In Modern times the Human race has forgotten this simple statement made by Hippocrates (460 BCE- 370 BCE) the father of western medicine:
“LET FOOD BE THY MEDICINE AND THY MEDICINE BE THY FOOD”
Because this beautiful simple statement has been forgotten, many people today fill themselves up with pills of all types, prepared by pharmaceutical companies that don’t use food to make them, and people live in fear that an illness will come to debilitate or even kill them so they take all kinds of chemicals even before the illiness arrives.
By this we don’t mean to say that medicine and science are useless. Why not seek relief from pain or infection using medical science? Modern medical science is a marvel and a wonder to behold. One has only to experience the “miraculous” recovery of an accident victim in intensive care to appreciate this in full depth. But health is more than following the rules of medical science. We must follow other rules – of nutrition, of tradition, and of common sense. It is up to us to make the decision in how we eat and how we think of our health each day.
So many people use their stomachs as trash cans, throwing in it all type of stuff that is called food but is not food.
Prepared food, ready to eat in the stores are often full of pesticides, weed killer chemicals, additives, growth hormones, fertilizers, and preservatives.
We eat food from a can which has absorbed its metal. We eat frozen foods, and left-over old foods that have lost all their nutritional value, because they have been sitting on a shelf or refrigerator for months or years. Even the salt used in that food is highly processed and causes excessive fluid retention.
After eating, we wash it down with ice cold carbonated drinks that bring our systems into shock by slowing down the digestive processes, and then we wonder why we don’t have any energy without a shot of caffeine?
Over the days, months and years, we have exposed our bodies to an incredible amount of toxins from the food we eat, the air we breathe, and the chemicals in our homes, work places, and cars. So we wonder way we don’t feel good.
We have completely forgotten that there are cycles and laws in nature that we have to follow and re-learn to change with the seasons. There are rhythms in nature that have laws and we need to live in accordance with these laws.
As we begin to change, we start a voyage in a life of self discovery. Once we clean up the excess and debris of decades of blind consumption, we discover that:
Body, mind, and spirit are one….and as we calm down; stress has less power over us.
Our ancestors lived more in contact with nature. Since we started to live in densely populated cities full of smog and stress, we have lost that connection. We need to return to balance.
From balance comes a certain level of “surrender”, knowing that we don’t know all, and that all true knowledge, wisdom, understanding comes from our hearts, our intuition, our Higher-Selves.
Quantum physics has thought us that everything in the Universe is interconnected and at the base all is composed of the same stuff ” pure energy”. The scientists have called this “Unified Field.” They say that this unified field of consciousness holds all the laws of nature. As a consequence everything we do, affects everything around us.
ABOUT CHEWING . . .
Chewing gives us the ability to digest food and absorb ideas.
The more we chew, the more we digest food, and the more we absorb ideas. It is physical and mental.
Chewing helps to stabilize the Pituitary gland, which helps to balance many functions of the body.
Chewing from both sides of the mouth will balance both sides of the body.
Chewing circulates body fluids; to make things circulate in our life it is important to chew more, especially if we have some kind of difficulties in our life.
Chewing with an open mouth makes us lose energy.
Chewing with a closed mouth circulates energy and absorbs it.
Chewing promotes better thinking.
The Earth and the Heavens’ energies touch each other in our mouths as we chew.