Saturday 11 October 2014

Autumn, season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

From the Autumn Equinox up to Winter Solstice. 

 Day and night are equal once more as the God prepares to travel toward renewal and rebirth from the Goddess. Mabon, a Welsh son of the Divine Mother, was captured as a child and taken to the Otherworld. He was ultimately rescued and this sun festival celebrates the second harvest (or second chance). 

Autumn is a season of shadows and a time of waning light, but it is also a season of abundance, giving thanks and harvest. 
Traditions from this season include traditional walks through wilderness or fields, gathering dried plants to be used for decorating or future herbal decoctions. The altar can be adorn with acorns, pine cones, corn stalks, and various colored Fall leaves. 

This is the time for completion of tasks, the act of forgiving and the fruition of long-term goals. Celebrated all over the world.

Day and night times gradually change, the nights will be longer...in a way; the days become shorter, we will experience more darkness...



Autumn is a time to take a good look at our health and our lifestyle. Start by looking at the life around you. Are you living in chaos? Is your home in a shambles? Is there clutter everywhere? 

Now we enter new rhythms and routines,with the challenge of balancing time for work and rest.



It's time to:
Balance body, emotions with the autumn seasonal rhythms, deal with inner soul conflicts, find new energy.

Improve your health, detox, renew.


It's a time of Harvest when we gather the colourful fruits and vegetables for winter storage. 
The healing energies of Autumn time teach us how to keep in harmony with nature, being in tune with our bodies and our inner needs should promote a healthy detox and prepare us for the damp and cold season ahead. 

Our food choices should be warmer and nourish your body. Reprogramming the way we eat can help us to maintain energy, balance blood sugar levels and keep our bodies running at optimum health. 


Let's remind our bodies and souls how to listen to Mother Earth and make us stronger and more energized.

Harvest, gathering fruits and vegetables. 
Gather your energies ready for the colder season.

As an expression in nature, this is the time when crops are harvested. Leaves are changing to brilliant colors as they float gently to the ground. Gathering and elimination are the traits of this season and can be seen in nature as well as human health. You may want to consider starting with a good gathering and elimination session.

One of the most important areas of macrobiotic science is the division of life into five elements: fire, earth, metal, water, and wood. Each of those elements has a corresponding season, with its attributes and foods. What follows is a basic summary of how the elements translate into our Western calendar, and how to make food choices that are particularly nourishing for our bodies during any time of year.


Metal: Autumn, from Sept 21 to the winter solstice of December 21

During the fall a downward shift occurs; the light lessens, days grow shorter, and energy descends back into the earth for the dormant cycle. Leaves fall from the trees, the last fruits ripen, and life energy contracts. The color of the metal element is white, its flavor is spicy or volatile, and the associated organs are lung and large intestine. The hours for lungs are 3 to 5 a.m.; large intestine is 5 to 7 a.m.

Foods that enhance the metal element:

Grain: White, brown, and sweet rice, mochi
Vegetables: cauliflower, cabbage, Chinese cabbage, celery, daikon radish, onions, watercress, mustard and turnip greens, turnips, garlic, cucumber, leeks
Beans and Pulses: white beans
Fruits: Banana, pear, apples
Fish: Bass, snapper, cod, haddock, herring, flounder, sole, halibut
Herbs and Seasonings: dill, fennel, thyme, ginger root, horseradish, cinnamon, cayenne, basil, and rosemary






Macro-waves

Macro, meaning big and waves...nothing really scientific! I want to send my own waves, waves of my brain thinking, and my waves of love to you all...BIG waves...
want to make my own Earthquakes/hurricanes and Tsunamis...sending you my BIG thoughts
Food for thoughts...

Macrobiotics, my way of life, my approach to eating, sleeping, living


I am for slow living, meaningful living, appreciation of nature and all things beautiful, slow and natural
Cooking with love, respecting the seasons and the style of cooking depending on lifestyle, activities, personality...body type and individual needs

It is so clever.
it is so simple

A lot more about Macrobiotics in my future posts.

Meanwhile, I would like to share this with you. read below.

An extract from: https://www.minds.com/

The danger of microwaves

I never had one or wished to purchase one...unfortunately I have used a few and in a short period of my life about a year or two had to work in a kitchen as a chef with three microwaves ovens near me.
I had to use them to mainly heat up things, occasionally cook with them.
During that period I experience very poor health, with strange symptoms similar to ME.
I used to cycle to work and back and be so fatigued and feeling muscular/nerve pains throughout my body, especially, in my hands and arms.
Only after severe fatigue and low immune system symptoms I went to have tests done and discovered ...apart from a few intolerances of foods I knew already, that I had symptoms of being affected seriously by electromagnetic energies and microwaves ...
suggestions were, drinking a special ionized water...rest, using crystals (but they had to be massive to counteract the effects of the microwaves...) or, leave the job! I did a bit of all and immediately gave notice.
Went for a period of rest...
Incidentally I was trying to conceive, my first pregnancy was not healthy and ended up in miscarriage...I am only wondering now if that could have been one of the causes...

people with microwaves, it it not worth it...
What is the hurry? Put the kettle on, have a cuppa, put the food in a lovely pot and slow cook...it is worth the wait...lots of things you can do whilst cooking, a shower/batch, read a book...ring a friend...(if you have an aga...well...sleep)

Love,
Susannah


read on: ( from  https://www.minds.com/)

Are microwaves a benign bastion of convenience or a sinister contributor to biological and nutritional damage? A growing percentage of people are now heeding the advice of holistic health experts and disposing of their microwaves due to the dangers of microwaved food. Regardless of where you stand, humans are the only animals on the planet who destroy the nutritional value of their food before eating it, and the use of microwaves is no exception.

Microwaves are a source of electromagnetic energy (a form of nonionizing form of radiation) electronically generated. When penetrating the aliments, they trigger an inner rotation of the water molecules inside the food. This rotation triggers a friction between the molecules and the result is a rapid growth in temperature.
Microwaves use super-fast particles to literally radiate the contents of water inside food and bring it to boil. Not only has microwave use been linked to causing infertility in men, but it also denatures many of the essential proteins in the food making them virtually indigestible.

Most animals will only consume food in its natural, unprocessed state, but humans actually go out of their way to render food nutritionally worthless before eating it. Think about all the prepackaged and processed foods we purchase and consume annually. It's no wonder the state of our health is in dire straits.

Microwave ovens work physically, biochemically and physiologically, producing ions and various free radicals, which destroy viruses and bacteria, but not toxins and microtoxins. The experts have concluded that food cooked in microwaves loses between 60% and 90% of its vital energy and, at the same time, the structural disintegration processes accelerates. Also, the nutrient substances are altered, leading to digestive diseases. These microwaves can increase both the number of cancerous cells in blood and the number of stomach and intestinal cancerous cells.

Microwaves leaking radiation is a serious issue. Serious enough for the FDA to set legal limits on the leakage permitted by every microwave manufacturer. However, the only way to completely eliminate the radiation dangers associated with microwaves is not to use one. Microwave radiation has been known to cause cataracts, birth defects, cancer and other serious illnesses.
Because of these causes the microwave ovens were banned in the Soviet Union in 1976. Soviet scientists found that the microwave exposure decreases the ability of some vitamins to by absorbed by the human body, dramatically accelerates the structural disintegration of all foods and reduces the metabolic stress of the alkaloids, glycosides and galactoses.
In 1991, the Swiss Doctor Hans Ulrich Hertel made a study that demonstrated that cooking or heating food presents much greater risks for health than the traditionally cooked food. He found that people who ate microwave prepared food recorded losses in the hemoglobines and lymphoites.
In 2003, a Spanish governmental study elaborated in Murcia demonstrated that the vegetables and fruits cooked in a microwave lost a percentage of 97% of the substances that contribute to reducing the incidence of coronary heart diseases.

In Dr. Lita Lee's book, Health Effects of Microwave Radiation -- Microwave Ovens, and in the March and September 1991 issues of Earthletter, she stated that every microwave oven leaks electro-magnetic radiation, harms food, and converts substances cooked in it to dangerous organ-toxic and carcinogenic products.

In Comparative Study of Food Prepared Conventionally and in the Microwave Oven, published by Raum & Zelt in 1992, at 3(2): 43, it states:

"Artificially produced microwaves, including those in ovens, are produced from alternating current and force a billion or more polarity reversals per second in every food molecule they hit. Production of unnatural molecules is inevitable. Naturally occurring amino acids have been observed to undergo isomeric changes (changes in shape morphing) as well as transformation into toxic forms, under the impact of microwaves produced in ovens."

There are no atoms, molecules or cells of any organic system able to withstand such a violent, destructive power for any extended period of time, not even in the low energy range of milliwatts. Microwaves quickly destroy the delicate molecules of vitamins and phytonutrients (plant medicines) naturally found in foods. One study showed that microwaving vegetables destroys up to 97% of the nutritional content (vitamins and other plant-based nutrients that prevent disease, boost immune function and enhance health).

Dr. Hertel was the first scientist to conceive and carry out a quality clinical study on the effects microwaved nutrients have on the blood and physiology of the human body. His small but well controlled study showed the degenerative force produced in microwave ovens and the food processed in them. The scientific conclusion showed that microwave cooking changed the nutrients in the food; and, changes took place in the participants' blood that could cause deterioration in the human system. Hertel's scientific study was done along with Dr. Bernard H. Blanc of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the University Institute for Biochemistry.
12 Enumerated Effects of Microwaves1. A breakdown of the human “life-energy field” in those who were exposed to microwave ovens while in operation, with side-effects to the human energy field of increasingly longer duration;
2. A degeneration of the cellular voltage parallels during the process of using the apparatus, especially in the blood and lymphatic areas;
3. A degeneration and destabilization of the external energy activated potentials of food utilization within the processes of human metabolism;
4. A degeneration and destabilization of internal cellular membrane potentials while transferring catabolic [metabolic breakdown] processes into the blood serum from the digestive process;
5. Degeneration and circuit breakdowns of electrical nerve impulses within the junction potentials of the cerebrum [the front portion of the brain where thought and higher functions reside];
6. A degeneration and breakdown of nerve electrical circuits and loss of energy field symmetry in the neuroplexuses [nerve centers] both in the front and the rear of the central and autonomic nervous systems;
7. Loss of balance and circuiting of the bioelectric strengths within the ascending reticular activating system [the system which controls the function of consciousness];
8. A long term cumulative loss of vital energies within humans, animals and plants that were located within a 500-meter radius of the operational equipment;
9. Long lasting residual effects of magnetic “deposits” were located throughout the nervous system and lymphatic system;
10. A destabilization and interruption in the production of hormones and maintenance of hormonal balance in males and females;
11. Markedly higher levels of brainwave disturbance in the alpha, theta, and delta wave signal patterns of persons exposed to microwave emission fields, and;
12. Because of this brainwave disturbance, negative psychological effects were noted, including loss of memory, loss of ability to concentrate, suppressed emotional threshold, deceleration of intellective processes, and interruptive sleep episodes in a statistically higher percentage of individuals subjected to continual range emissive field effects of microwave apparatus, either in cooking apparatus or in transmission stations.
Take a look around you at every person that still uses a microwave. The largest majority are unhealthy and overweight. The more you use the microwave, the worse your nutritional state gets, and the more likely you are to be diagnosed with various diseases and put on pharmaceuticals which, of course, will create other health problems that lead to a grand spiraling nosedive of health.

Of all the natural substances -- which are polar -- the oxygen of water molecules reacts most sensitively. This is how microwave cooking heat is generated -- friction from this violence in water molecules. Structures of molecules are torn apart, molecules are forcefully deformed, called structural isomerism, and thus become impaired in quality. This is contrary to conventional heating of food where heat transfers convectionally from without to within. Cooking by microwaves begins within the cells and molecules where water is present and where the energy is transformed into frictional heat.

The following is a summary of the Russian investigations published by the Atlantis Raising Educational Center in Portland, Oregon:

- Microwaving prepared meats sufficiently to insure sanitary ingestion caused formation of d-Nitrosodienthanolamines, a well-known carcinogen.

- Microwaving milk and cereal grains converted some of their amino acids into carcinogens.

- Thawing frozen fruits converted their glucoside and galactoside containing fractions into carcinogenic substances.

- Extremely short exposure of raw, cooked or frozen vegetables converted their plant alkaloids into carcinogens.

- Carcinogenic free radicals were formed in microwaved plants, especially root vegetables.

Russian researchers also reported a marked acceleration of structural degradation leading to a decreased food value of 60 to 90% in all foods tested. Among the changes observed were:

- Deceased bio-availability of vitamin B complex, vitamin C, vitamin E, essential minerals and lipotropics factors in all food tested.

- Various kinds of damaged to many plant substances, such as alkaloids, glucosides, galactosides and nitrilosides.

According to Dr. Lee, changes are observed in the blood chemistries and the rates of certain diseases among consumers of microwaved foods. The symptoms above can easily be caused by the observations shown below. The following is a sample of these changes:
a.. Lymphatic disorders were observed, leading to decreased ability to prevent certain types of cancers.
b.. An increased rate of cancer cell formation was observed in the blood.
c.. Increased rates of stomach and intestinal cancers were observed.
d.. Higher rates of digestive disorders and a gradual breakdown of the systems of elimination were observed.
Decrease in Food Value

Microwave exposure caused significant decreases in the nutritive value of all foods researched. The following are the most important findings:
1. A decrease in the bioavailability [capability of the body to utilize the nutriment] of B-complex vitamins, Vitamin C, Vitamin E, essential minerals and lipotropics in all foods;
2. A loss of 60-90% of the vital energy field content of all tested foods;
3. A reduction in the metabolic behavior and integration process capability of alkaloids [organic nitrogen based elements], glucosides and galactosides, and nitrilosides;
4. A destruction of the nutritive value of nucleoproteins in meats;

5. A marked acceleration of structural disintegration in all foods.

How Do You Heat Your Food The Healthy WayThis is kind of a misnomer because there is truthfully, with perhaps the exception of dehydration, no way to heat food and maintain its structural and nutritional value. However, gently heating food in a cast iron pan over the stove may be the healthiest alternative to nuking it. This is the old fashioned way and it never failed our ancestors.

Toss that microwave and strive to consume at least half of your diet from raw foods, that is a huge step in the right direction to maintain their nutritional value. My mother always used to tell me that if food comes from a package, or has to be heated to be eaten, there's a good a chance it's low in nutrition. She was right for the most part, so keep that in mind when venturing the aisles at the grocery.