Welcome to another edition of The Living Yoga Newsletter,
your source for the reliable information and support you
need to reclaim your health and energy, naturally.
In this issue you will find:
Local Events
Feature Fruit: The Infamous Banana
Recipes for the Holidays
Feature Article:
You Don't Have to "Catch" Another Cold
ready to set off on my fasting adventure. This will be the
last "formal" newsletter you'll receive until I return
mid-February. But don't worry, I will still visit your
inbox with other treats while I'm gone.
Monday night class, so please let me know if you'd like to
join the fun, starting January 7th. The sense of real
community that is forming truly feels wonderful!
This month I received a fun article about bananas from one
of my readers. I first saw this article printed in The
Body Mind Spirit Guide, March 2007
(www.BodyMindSpiritGuide.com). I have distilled the best
of this information for you, adding more from other
sources, to inspire you to consider bananas a worthy staple
in your diet. I think you will be amazed, and you will
look at bananas with new eyes!
plans to a halt. If you put into practice the ideas in the
article I've written for you in this edition, you will keep
colds at bay, no kidding. Watch for Part IV of Yoga for
the Raw Lifestyle when I return from my fast. I wish you a
holiday season filled with love, peace, and radiant health.
I'll be in touch from Costa Rica . . .
Local Events
Heather's home features a special wet-bar, where she will
serve up delicious juices! Call her with your ideas . . .
if there is enough interest, she would also like to show a
movie at 3 pm, after each potluck, "Idiocracy" on Jan. 20,
and "Sicko" on Feb. 24.
Holiday Drop-in Yoga: Wednesday, Dec. 26th, 9:30 - 11 am,
and Friday, Dec. 28th, 9:00 - 10:30 am. $15 each. Come
join the fun, no experience needed! 1801 Avondale Ave.,
995-0875.
February 28th, 7 - 8 pm.
Feature Fruit: The Infamous Banana
Tree". For many tropical peoples today, the banana is
still the major dietary staple. And well it should be, for
it is a nutritional powerhouse, and contains all the
essential amino acids as well as 5.2% protein. Bananas are
economical, convenient, delicious, versatile, and available
throughout the year.
Bananas contain sucrose, fructose and glucose, and provide
an instant, sustained and substantial source of our most
natural fuel. Research shows that just two bananas provide
enough fuel for a strenuous 90-minute workout, and the
banana is the number one fruit with the world's leading
athletes.
contain tryptophan, a protein that the body converts to
serotonin, known to help you relax and feel good.
Plentiful B vitamins in bananas help to calm the nervous
system and elevate your mood, and plenty of iron contained
in bananas helps stimulate the production of hemoglobin in
the blood, lowering the risk of developing anemia.
of high blood pressure and stroke. The potassium in
bananas can also help offset potassium depletion caused by
chronic stress. Eating a breakfast and lunch of bananas
has been shown to make students more alert in school.
The naturally high fiber (of the most healthful soluble
variety) makes ripe bananas a good antidote to
constipation, as they can help to maintain or restore
normal bowel action. For heartburn or ulcers, bananas can
assist with their ability to neutralize over acidity and
soothe irritation of the delicate intestinal lining.
The inside of the banana's peel has been said to cure
warts, reduce the swelling and irritation of insect bites,
and even shine shoes!
Next to an apple, a banana has four times the protein,
twice the carbohydrate, three times the phosphorus, five
times the vitamin A and iron, and twice the other vitamins
and minerals, plus lots of good potassium.
It's best to buy organic bananas. Commercially grown
bananas are usually picked green and gassed with ethylene
to speed ripening. They are further treated with toxic
chemicals such as methyl bromide and aldicarb. Even some
organic bananas are gassed, so check with your produce
supplier and request ungassed organic bananas. It's good
to buy them green or otherwise ungassed, then ripen them at
home.
I buy them by the case (and receive a 10% discount), remove
the plastic lining from the box (because too much humidity
tends to collect otherwise), put the lid on and let the
bananas ripen in the box, rotating the bottom ones to the
top as they ripen first. Bananas that ripen with dark
streaks and blotches instead of speckles may well have been
gassed. Ripe bananas are usually quite speckled on the
outside, with no green on either tip, and are soft on the
inside. Unripe bananas contain more starch than sugar, and
are therefore difficult to digest.
Enjoy this wonderful fruit plain, in smoothies or puddings,
frozen and made into "ice cream", pie filling, or
"popsicles", wrapped in lettuce or kale leaves, or combined
with dates or figs. It's one of the easiest and most
deliciously delightful ways to powerfully boost your health
and energy!
Sources: Mind Body Spirit Guide, March 2007; Klein,
David, and Fry, T.C., Your Natural Diet: Alive Raw Foods,
Living Nutrition Publications, 2004.
***********************************************
More recipes for the holidays
Sesame Snowballs, from Susie Miller & Karen Knowler
This is one of my kids' favorite treats! A bit complex for
digestion, so be reasonable . . .
it's just a special holiday treat.
tablespoons of raw carob powder (order online from a raw
food source, or compromise and use non-raw from the health
food store), and 4 tablespoons of raw sesame seeds.
Shape into little balls and roll in shredded raw coconut.
Banana-date pudding
water to move the blade. Serve in fancy dishes, and
garnish with a sprinkle of shredded raw coconut and ½ a
date.
Pineapple Coconut Cream
the milk and soft meat of one young coconut (the white,
shaved-looking ones you can find at Whole Foods, other
health food stores, or some Asian markets).
Use a hammer and ice-pick or screw-driver to drive a hole
near the top. Drain the liquid into the blender. Next,
whack the whole top off with a big butcher knife, scoop out
the meat with a spoon and add to the blender. (You can
also use a hammer to drive a wedge, such as a chisel or
broad screwdriver, all around the top of the coconut until
you can open it up enough to scoop out the meat.)
Pineapple Salad
with a dressing made of blended pineapple (4 oz.) and raw
tahini (1 oz.). Toss in some fresh pineapple chunks, and
celebrate!
"Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances
for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a
vegetarian diet." -Albert Einstein
on December 26 and 28, all are welcome . . . . . . new
sessions begin on January 7th. We are building a
wonderful community of dedicated, health-minded
yoga students through our unique small classes.
not giveyourself the gift of health in 2008!
You Don't Have to "Catch" Another Cold!
By Ellen Livingston
Germs only cause colds in bodies that feed them. Clean up
your body (from the inside out!), and unwanted germs will
go in search of food somewhere else. How do you clean up
your body from the inside out? It's simple, really. Eat
the foods your body is designed to eat, rest when you are
tired, frequently spend time being active outdoors,
year-round and in the sunshine, and enjoy and appreciate
your life. Okay, so maybe it feels a little more complex
for most of us, but you can get started by learning to
focus your diet on appropriate foods, and learning to get
sufficient rest.
You may be eating foods every day that cause excess mucous
build-up in your body, an over-acid environment, and
general toxicity. Incompletely digested or unutilized food
in your system attracts a proliferation of germs, and you
"come down with a cold". The symptoms you call a cold are
simply your body's intelligent expressions of elimination
of the toxic overload you have burdened it with. If you
"treat" these symptoms by suppressing them with medicines,
herbs, or other so-called "natural" remedies, you will
interfere with your body's preferred (and truly natural)
healing mechanisms, and the net result of this interference
will be even lower vitality.
Mucous-forming foods include grains, dairy products, meat,
eggs, legumes, and fats, including nuts (which can be eaten
sparingly on a healthy raw diet). These are also the
acid-forming foods. These two conditions, acidosis and
excess mucous, set the stage for most disease symptoms,
including those of the common cold. With the exception of
nuts, all of the above foods require some preparation or
processing to render them palatable. Cooking damages the
nutrients in food, and when these chemically altered foods
enter your body they cannot be properly utilized, and thus
contribute to the toxic load in your body.
The human body is designed to get its fuel from fresh,
ripe, raw, organic, whole plant foods, and nothing else!
Our ideal natural diet is comprised entirely of fruits and
tender leafy greens, possibly with small amounts of nuts
and seeds on occasion. Anything else creates unnatural and
burdensome conditions in the human body, conditions that
eventually lead to overtoxicity, organ exhaustion, and
disease (the body's extra eliminative work).
Are you ready to embrace your natural diet and eliminate
colds forever? I don't imagine I'll ever go back to cooked
foods, for this one great benefit alone. I have not
experienced a cold in years, and I like it that way. When
on occasion I have partaken of some cooked grains or cheese
during my transition, I have awoken to unpleasant symptoms
of excess mucous the very next morning. It's not worth it.
Having a body that's clean on the inside is an incredible,
refreshingly wonderful experience!
each day with a quart of pure water (make it warm in the
winter!), followed a bit later by as much fresh juicy fruit
as you care for. Eat more fruit for lunch, more again
before dinner, and save any cooked or fatty foods for the
end of your last meal of the day. You'll consume less of
them, and you'll help your body to start cleaning itself on
the inside.
get as much rest as possible right away, and eat very
lightly (water and fresh fruit) until all symptoms are
gone. Food gives us fuel, but it is rest that gives us
energy. When you are sick, your body needs energy in order
to heal, not fuel. Simple diet (or having just water for a
few meals) is an effective form of rest, and will speed
your healing.
It's important to remember that if your body is coping with
a lot of excess toxins, you may feel worse before you feel
better, as you free up energy for the body to initiate some
housecleaning. So if you get a headache or other symptom
at first when you simplify your diet, know that soon it
will pass as the toxins are eliminated, and then your body
will be cleaner and you will feel better than before. Be
sure to give yourself extra rest while this productive
housecleaning is taking place.
wastes and toxins is via the lymph system. An especially
good tool for helping the lymph to flow unobstructed is
yoga. Many yoga postures effectively massage the lymph
nodes in the body, thereby reducing or eliminating any
obstructions. The reversal of gravity effected by inverted
poses also encourages the flow of lymph. It is by moving
the body that the lymph is able to move and flow, and do
its job of eliminating waste. Your heart moves your blood,
but you move your lymph, and yoga is a very healthy and
enjoyable way to move!
exceptional care of it!
state of health. It really is within reach, if you are
game for the adventure . . .
relate with the basic sanity of the earth. We become the
lowest of the low, the smallest of the small, a grain of
sand, perfectly simple, no expectations . . . If you are a
grain of sand, the rest of the universe, all the space, all
the room is yours, because you obstruct nothing, overcrowd
nothing, possess nothing. There is tremendous openness.
You are the emperor of the universe because you are a grain
of sand." - Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
The new light we shine draws others toward us, and we
become conscious choosers. Every time we act, even with
our fear, we make room for others to do the same. Courage
is contagious." - Frances Moore Lappe
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