Eating Seasonally and Locallyby Steve and Patricia Nakon
The foods that we choose every day have important impacts on our health and the environment!
Perhaps you've heard the phrase “eating seasonally and locally” and wondered what that means. Eating seasonally is simply eating those foods that are harvested in the current season. Eating locally means to eat food that is grown in the part of the country, or the area, where you live. Eating seasonally and locally benefits both your health and the environment.
Health Benefits
The secret to health and well being is to live in harmony with nature. Nature provides the foods that keep our bodies in balance at certain times of the year. By eating the food that grows around us from season to season, we receive the best nourishment to support and balance us.
In the spring, cleansing and revitalizing foods, like leafy greens and sprouts, help harmonize the body with this season of rejuvenation and growth. During the summer, cooling foods such as corn, cucumbers, and melons help to keep the body cool. During autumn and winter, when it's cold out, we need to add fuel to the furnace. The focus is on storing up energy with strengthening, warming foods such as whole grains, squashes and root vegetables.
Eating in season also leads to a heightened sense of taste. Once you've tasted a juicy, local vine-ripened tomato at the peak of the season, the pale, hard tomato you find in stores in the middle of winter may not be as appealing. This is the natural wisdom of your body guiding you toward nourishment. Eat what is harvested in the present season, align yourself with nature and keep your body healthy!
Environmental Benefits
How does what I eat affect the environment? The convenience of having foods shipped from across the country and around the world creates hidden costs, including costs to the environment. When we buy food that is produced in distant areas, transporting the food requires a significant amount of energy, or fuel, not to mention the impact on air pollution. In addition, the refrigeration needed to keep food fresh when it travels long distances uses energy and may require chloro-fluorocarbons (CFCs) or other ozone-depleting gases. When you choose foods that are locally grown and in season you not only make a contribution to your good health you also support clean air and a healthy environment!
How to Get Started
An easy way to incorporate seasonal eating into your life is to join a community supported agriculture group (CSA). These local groups provide an opportunity to purchase a portion of a small organic farm's produce before the season begins. By joining a CSA you can get fresh produce, right off the farm, delivered to a local pick up spot once a week! How easy is that!
Whether you grow food in your own garden, purchase food at the grocery store or a farmer’s market, or join a local CSA, eat what is harvested locally in the present season to stay connected to nature and keep your body, and the environment, healthy!
I was a gate agent at Miami International Airport. Sometimes I had to single-handedly de-plane and board passengers on oversold flights in record-breaking time to get the flight back out, and sometimes the scene got pretty ugly. A vegetarian for many years, I considered myself a relatively healthy young person, but I had fallen into some unhealthy habits and lifestyle choices and did not know how to relax.
It was around this time that I “accidentally” found a small book by Swami Sivananda at the airport. It was titled Inspiring Stories and instead of taking it to Lost and Found, I started reading it. It was also around this time that a co-worker noticed I was on the verge of a meltdown and said to me, “Hey, have you ever heard of this yoga retreat in the Bahamas? You should think about going there for a few days to chill out!”
"As Satsang* is the only safe boat to take you to the other shore of Bliss or Moksha (liberation), you should all try as best as is in your power, never to miss it." - Swami Sivananda
*SATSANG is a spiritual gathering with guided meditation followed by kirtan (call-and-response mantra chanting and music) and a short reading, all in the Sivananda tradition. Beginners and members of all traditions are welcome.
For directions and more information on Satsang and other events go to www.yogawarehouse.org.
On why we are called to practice and the sacredness of the yoga mat.
The yoga mat is sticky under my bare feet, a rectangle of gummy purple rubber. I spread my toes wide and ground my feet – all four corners -- flat on the mat as I am instructed, feeling everything, every millimeter of skin on rubber beginning to slide on a trickle of perspiration. The yoga mat is the center of the universe for that hour of practice. A practice toward spiritual enlightenment? Toward the integration of body, mind and spirit? Grounded in the asanas and anchored in the breath, I flow through the postures as the Chi rises from my core like a furnace heating a house. ...
Yoga Teachings to Defend Against Swine Flu and Morefrom Saraswati
Yoga and Yoga teachers help students prevent catching what is going around. Ideally, Yoga intends to prevent all disease and illness. A few nights ago, in response to a broad media buzz about swine flu, I reminded my students of yoga techniques designed to keep immune systems strong and ward off illness at its first signs. The next day, I received a query about what people can do to stay healthier in the face of swine flu and other bugs. As I was writing what I hoped were some helpful tips, it occurred to me that visitors to our Yoga2You.us Web site may find this information helpful too.
First, practicing Yoga, even once a week, boosts your immune system. The deep yogic breathing alone keeps students healthier, but new research shows that the deep relaxation part of Yoga also boosts the immune system.
It can be discouraging to keep New Year spirits bright with reports of dismal year-end financial reports and new strikes of violence bubbling over in the Middle East. There are even some who see the violence as a necessary part of "End of Days" mentality. Please, DON'T THINK THAT WAY. Keep your mind inspired during troubled times by all of life's beauty. Be daring to think about how peace might look. Use your mental energies to visualize a better reality--DO NOT become fatalistic.
If this is a struggle, you find yourself glued to CNN coverage, your mind spinning into negative thinking, give yourself a limit, and then use a mantra. Either the universal mantra "om," or a more powerful one, one that is supposed to have vibrations that support peace is "Om Namo Narayanaya [Om na-moh na-ry-ya-ny-ya]. By saying these vocally or mentally (suggested in repititions of three), instead of thinking negatively, you take back control of your mind. Yes, that's what I said--when we become too all-consumed with news coverage and/or worries, we give up control of our minds to these events. Not a good thing for the mind, really. (Write me if you want to know more about this.)
God does not want us to worry, and if you don't believe in God, then simply think how little it serves you to worry. Either way, let it go. Think of peace. Visualize peace. (Join a peace movement!) Feel peace in your own heart, in your own life, and feel that inner peace expanding outward as you contemplate on it.
If you cannot find that inner peace, try the chants. Or, download my relaxation therapy--this is not a shameless plug, just a suggestion. While it is something sages have written about more extensively and more intelligently than I could ever hope to be able to do, simply said: Don't let outside influences take control of the inside of your head. Period.
Why yoga works—simply
Ancient yogis knew the benefits that came with regular yoga practice. Today, advancements in technology enable scientists to show precisely how these ancient practices work to benefit the mind and body. Yogis have been passing on the teachings of yoga for nearly 5,000 years.
Most simply, using proper breathing, especially during asana practice, enables the average person to develop the breathing apparatus and strengthen the vital life force. Once that begins, everything else flows from it. Why yoga works is really that simple. Any time you lie on the mat and breathe, the benefits of yoga begin.
There is a saying in yoga that when we control the breath, we control the life force, and when you think about that, it's really true.
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Yoga Poetry
Attention Yogi Poets: Please submit your Yoga Poetry for publication in this corner--share your artistic light with others. (Poet keeps all rights.) Meanwhile, please enjoy these prayers and chants that follow. Namaste.
I first became aware of this prayer during Yoga Teachers Training. It is one of my favorites, and it is also a call-and-response chant that is sometimes sung during satsang. Enjoy!
A Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi
Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon,
Where there is doubt, faith,
Where there is despair, hope,
Where there is darkness, light,
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may
not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
To be be understood, as to understand;
To be loved, as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive--
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
*SATSANG is a spiritual gathering with guided meditation followed by kirtan (call-and-response mantra chanting and music) and a short reading, all in the Sivananda tradition. Beginners and members of all traditions are welcome.
The yoga mat is sticky under my bare feet, a rectangle of gummy purple rubber. I spread my toes wide and ground my feet – all four corners -- flat on the mat as I am instructed, feeling everything, every millimeter of skin on rubber beginning to slide on a trickle of perspiration. The yoga mat is the center of the universe for that hour of practice. A practice toward spiritual enlightenment? Toward the integration of body, mind and spirit? Grounded in the asanas and anchored in the breath, I flow through the postures as the Chi rises from my core like a furnace heating a house. ....gif)
“Health is wealth, peace of mind is happiness. Yoga shows the way.”
