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 edition
you will find:
Events & Announcements
Living Vibrantly with Emotional Poise
Hot Raw Deals for Local Folks
So What IS Natural Hygiene?
Summer Recipes
Dear Readers,
I hope you found a meaningful way to celebrate the Summer
Solstice, and welcome summertime!
I have been extra busy preparing to host natural hygienist
and health leader and author, Don Bennett, for a whole
month beginning in early August. We are booking him to
give free talks at several Ann Arbor and surrounding area
venues throughout August, so you'll want to check the
calendar link provided in the announcement segment that
follows, and come to as many of his talks as you can!
It's time to register for
our Vibrant Living Weekend
retreat, taking place Sept. 6 and 7, 2008.
You'll want to take advantage of the early-bird discount,
this month only! The link for all the information about
this special retreat is:
www.health101.org/
I am excited about another
program I'm offering this
summer: my first ever kids' health camp! We'll do lots of
yoga, arts & crafts, and have fun in our raw kitchen
creating healthful all-raw snacks & lunches together!
Visit this link to learn all about this unique 5-day camp:
www.livingyoganow.com/
Happy summer,
Ellen
******************************
Events & Announcements
Vibrant Living Weekend: September 6th - 7th, 2008
in Chelsea, MI. Mark your calendars!
Natural health leaders Don Bennett and Ellen Livingston
will offer a two day retreat at beautiful Friends' Lake
outside of Chelsea, MI. Expect plenty of raw food and
natural health teachings and discussion, yoga, delicious
raw meals, and more. Click this link for all the details:
www.health101.org/
And for a complete listing of Don's FREE public speaking
events in August and September, click on
NEW! Kids Love Yoga & Fresh Foods! 5-Day Camp
engages kids in the fun and power of creating true health for
themselves through yoga and
fresh foods. Hands-on learning will
inspire and educate kids how to treat their bodies with
respect and loving care, for vibrant and lasting health and
well-being.
One Fun Week! Aug 2-8, 2008, 9am-2pm For all kids aged
8-12
Click on www.livingyoganow.com/
details! Space is limited.
NEW! "Living
Vibrantly, Level I: Learn to live the 80-10-10
diet & lifestyle for true health" Our
next 8-week session
begins Saturday, Sept. 27 in Ann Arbor.
This is my "Living & Learning the 80-10-10 Diet & Lifestyle"
course, with a brand new name!
Empower yourself with the information that can set you
free, and enable you to create true health.
We will meet 8 consecutive (almost!) Saturdays from 10 am -
12:30 pm, beginning Sept. 27.
Click on www.livingyoganow.com/
all the details, and what graduates are saying about this
course!
Fun Summer Yoga Classes:
Wednesday mornings, 9:30 - 11
in my home studio, followed by a raw snack treat. See
www.LivingYogaNow.com for details.
Join at any time, your first class is free! $15 drop-ins,
or save with a 10-class pass.
Monthly Thursdays at Arbor
Farms Market: My next talk is
July 24th, 7-8:30 p.m. "Simply Delicious Summer Soups!"
Please pre-register by calling the store, 996-8111. $10.
NOTE: This month it's a 3rd Thursday instead of 4th
Thursday!
Raw Food Potluck July 27th (note this is the FOURTH
Sunday instead of the usual third!)
1 - 3 pm at 1801 Avondale Ave. Call 995-0875 for details
or visit www.LivingYogaNow.com under "Services".
******************************
Announcing
the new Vibrance magazine!
Our favorite health magazine now has a new look,
and a new name to go with it!
Living Nutrition
magazine has become Vibrance
magazine. The exciting first edition is now available
at Arbor Farms for $6. Or save money and subscribe
by calling Ellen at (734)995-0875, or email
******************************
www.YogaToday.com is a great website I have just
discovered! There is a free one-hour yoga video session
every day, always new, and different levels provided.
Well-known teachers. Check it out!
******************************
Living
Vibrantly with Emotional Poise
Ellen Livingston
We are a culture that has learned
to suppress our natural
flow of emotions with various kinds of sensory and bodily
over-stimulation. These include television, computers,
cell phones, over-working, over-exercising, and
over-eating, as well as consuming stimulants such as salt,
sugar, strong spices, and caffeine, and eating heavy, fatty
foods that require all of our energy for their digestion,
leaving little with which to feel our emotions.
We are a culture that manages
our fear through constant
busyness, and constant pleasure-seeking. What is it that
we are so afraid of? I believe it is the emptiness, the
boredom, and the undiscovered or unexpressed purpose that
we sense underlying all of our frantic and sometimes
meaningless activity. We are uncomfortable with intense
emotion, both positive and negative, so we seek ways to
cover it up and hide it from our experience. Intense
emotion requires that we become fully alive, and fully
awake. Our world has become so filled with violence and
environmental destruction, that we have become afraid to
think and afraid to feel, because we fear that our thoughts
and our feelings just might be too powerful for us to bear,
or might require us to take action, or to make big changes
in our lifestyles and relationships.
Looking your fears in the face,
and being honest with
yourself requires a great deal of courage. Sitting still
with your feelings, and simply allowing them without trying
to "fix" them, requires faith. Taking stock of your life,
your dreams, your goals, and your purpose - this, too,
requires strength. Deep down we yearn to live in truth,
and our pain is great when we know intuitively that we are
not.
When you begin to live healthfully,
heeding the laws of
nature, your body-mind-emotions experience big shifts of
perception, and heightened awareness. As you feed yourself
the raw fruits and vegetables for which you are
biologically designed, and make a place in your lifestyle
for other requisites of health such as sunshine, fresh air,
healthful exercise, and sufficient rest, your body is able
to initiate a profound detoxification. Your body will
eliminate chemical and other toxins, as well as bring old
emotional "baggage" to the surface for release.
There may be a short period
of time during which the
effects of your body's detoxification efforts cause you to
feel worse, both physically and emotionally, and you will
need to summon your courage to trust this process and just
be present with the temporary discomforts. But then you
will begin to feel better, lighter, brighter, and more
alive. Ironically, feeling better can also cause
discomfort, as this whole transition can bring about a
massive shift in your experience of who you are (on
balance, this is a good thing!).
As you drastically lighten
your digestive load through low
fat raw vegan meals, nerve energy is freed up to process
emotion. As your body eliminates toxins that have been
stored in you for years, your life force can begin to flow
unobstructed again, and you can experience a cleaner, more
energized state of being, becoming capable of clearer
thinking, and a fuller range of emotion. Old emotional
"wounds" now demand release, and new thoughts seem to
require you to undertake more changes (changes which will
ultimately be for the better).
What will you do with this
new experience of yourself? It
can feel so unfamiliar and thus ungrounding that many
people retreat back to their former ways of comfort-eating
and comfort-habits. Many of these comfort foods and habits
are truly addictive, and as you begin to "clean house",
their pull may sometimes seems to intensify and literally
test your resolve! In order to sustain a light raw food
diet and a healthful, natural lifestyle it becomes
paramount that you be willing to grow to embrace your full
emotional experience, and that you be willing to rise to
the challenge of becoming an individual who thinks for him
or herself.
It becomes important that you
be willing to look your fears
in the face, acknowledge them for what they are, and
channel the energy that has gone into blocking your
emotions into now accepting them. They are simply
emotions: a normal, natural part of who we human beings
are. If allowed to flow naturally, and with our full
awareness, they will not cause harm.
Once you have begun to face
your fears, and to allow your
natural emotions, you can harness the energy needed to
begin the empowering process of discovering your life's
purpose, and defining your highest goals. With this new
road-map, you can now view change as an exciting process
which allows the unfoldment and full expression of your
natural, authentic Self. It is time to live your truth.
Getting support can make all
the difference in navigating
these uncharted waters gracefully and with success. You
can find books, tapes, a coach, a spiritual practice, a
yoga teacher, and/or a close friend to help you process
your experience, release long-buried emotion, and deepen
your understanding of yourself. Nature is a great healer:
you can find soothing comfort and grounding connection by
spending quiet time in nature. Meditation, or sitting
still and simply focusing on your breath - your life
force, can facilitate the gentle, safe opening of the self
to a truer, clearer, fuller expression.
When you commit to finding
the necessary support, and to
summoning the courage to grow into your true self, you
begin a process of exciting liberation! Fear and other
intense emotions can now become the beautiful, helpful
tools they are naturally meant to be, and the friendly
guides who can keep you headed in the right direction if
you will heed their wise messages. In time, you will find
yourself living vibrantly with emotional poise.
"Our deepest fear is not
that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve
the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other
people won't feel insecure around you.
We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It is not just in some of us; it's in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give
other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fears, our presence
automatically liberates others."
~Marianne Williamson
******************************
Hot raw deals for local folks:
2.99 watermelons at Busch's
on A2 Saline Rd.; 2.99/lb.
juicy organic peaches at Arbor Farms (I bought
a case of 56 for 10% discount, put half in the fridge to
slow the ripening while we ate the other half - it worked
out perfectly and we finished them all before any
over-ripened) and $6.99 organic cherries; 2 for $5 bins
of organic greens at Meijer on A2 Saline Rd, as well as 2.49
organic blackberries & 2.99 organic raspberries, & 2 for $5
organic cantaloupes, commercial honey rock melons 3 for $5;
big flavorful ataulfo/champagne mangoes at The Produce Station
for .99 each (15 in a case
for discount; the other mangoes there
are not very good right now); the Meijer on Jackson Rd.
has a line of affordable frozen fruit called Meijer
Organics.
Seasonal wild edibles - free food!
Mulberries! Most people consider these nuisance weed trees,
and are happy to have you pick them before they fall and make
a mess. Look for large trees heavy with big dark purple berries
that look like long raspberries. Mulberries are ripe when very
soft and dark, and easily plucked from the tree. They are great
on salads or blended in dressings.
Raspberries! Look for wild ones in woodland areas, or at
the edges of woods - wherever they can get just enough sunlight.
******************************
So What IS Natural Hygiene?
A turn-of-the-century dictionary
definition of hygiene was
"the study of the science of health". Hygiene may be
further defined as being the science and art of restoring
and preserving health by those substances and influences
that have a normal relation to life: healthy food, pure
water, sunlight, rest, sleep, relaxation, physical
activity, play, comfortable environment, and positive
social relationships. It covers the total needs of humans,
and not merely a few of their requirements. Hygiene is
neither a practice of medicine, a "healing art", nor a
system of therapeutics. It offers no cures, does not
pretend to cure, and in fact strives to debunk the popular
notion of cures. Instead, hygiene emphasizes that adherence
to its principles, which are based on the Laws of Nature,
permits the body to heal itself.
(From Don Bennett, DAS, www.health101.org )
Health results from healthful
living! Health is our
natural state, and health-care is self-care. The symptoms
your body creates, which we label "disease", are simply
indications that processes are underway that are needed for
efficient and complete healing to occur. Suppression of
these symptoms, by any means, may have negative and even
dire consequences. Your body is self-cleansing,
self-repairing, self-regulating, and self-healing, IF you
don't get in the way, and IF you give it what it requires.
To recover health, you must remove the causes of disease,
avoid suppressing symptoms, and provide the conditions of
health.
For more information
and resources:
www.health101.org; www.
www.LivingNutrition.com
www.LivingYogaNow.com
******************************
Summer Recipes
Raspberry Refresher, from Rozalind Gruben-Graham
Chop and mix tomatoes and cucumbers
- lots of each!
Cover with a blend of raspberries, tahini, and fresh mint
leaves to taste.
(note from Ellen: for one person, 1-2 oz. of tahini will
be plenty; get RAW tahini from the refrigerated section at
a natural foods store)
Peaches & Cream, from Dr.Tim Trader & Laurie Masters
This low-fat, well-combined dessert is a refreshing treat
on a hot summer day!
4 large peaches, sliced
4 bananas
½ cup water
Instructions: Blend bananas and water. Pour over sliced
peaches and serve!
Almost Instant Soup, from Dr. Douglas N. Graham
Tomatoes
Celery
Instructions: Blend 2 celery stalks for every tomato that
goes into your blender. Leave this soup slightly chunky
for more chewing pleasure. Adding any ONE of the following
ingredients will pleasantly and completely change the taste
and feel of this soup:
Cucumber, Bell pepper
Parsley
Citrus of any type
Pineapple, Kiwi
½ ounce of any nut or seed
******************************
"You will never stub
your toe standing still. The faster
you go, the more chance there is of stubbing your toe, but
the more chance you have of getting somewhere."
-Charles F. Kettering
I love this quote, but I would
change "faster" to "more
directly". So often we move fast, but without clear
direction. While we do get "somewhere" at this speed, it
may not be where we really wanted to go!
******************************
"He that leaveth nothing
to chance will do few things ill,
but he will do very few things."
-Charles Baudelaire
As you journey courageously
onward, be willing to take a
few chances for your health, it's worth it!
******************************
To your radiant health and energy,
Home | About Ellen | Services | Products | Articles | Newsletters | Contact
Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Purchase Agreement
Copyright © 2007 Ellen Livingston