Chinese Wisdom and Energy Today
January 24, 2008
Not everything is obvious.
I have found that sometimes a story can carry more energy … more meaning … and more wisdom when it puzzles me at first glance. I wonder what you will take away from this brief tidbit of traditional Chinese wisdom.
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Tsze-lu asked about energy.
The Master Confucius said, “Do you mean the energy of the South, the energy of the North, or the energy which you should cultivate yourself?
“To show forbearance and gentleness in teaching others; and not to revenge unreasonable conduct:-this is the energy of southern regions, and the good man makes it his study.
“To lie under arms; and meet death without regret:-this is the energy of northern regions, and the forceful make it their study.
“Therefore, the superior man cultivates a friendly harmony, without being weak.
-How firm is he in his energy!
He stands erect in the middle, without inclining to either side.
-How firm is he in his energy!
When good principles prevail in the government of his country, he does not change from what he was in retirement.
How firm is he in his energy!
When bad principles prevail in the country, he maintains his course to death without changing.
-How firm is he in his energy!”
How firm is your energy?
The Essential Mix
January 20, 2008
Those of you who love dance culture will recognize this title.
If we are to attain an outrageously energetic life one of the steps is to feed the body the essential nutrients it needs.
There is so much written about nutrition that it all seems overwhelming. Everyday some new essential nutrient is added to the list of “must ingests” and others are called into question. Couple with the hysteria of the baby boomers to stay young and nutrition and eating clean seems a mind field. Please pass the chips! We have turned our food into the enemy.
I am going to share with you what worked for me. I call them the 4 pillars and they are the basics of taking care of yourself.
The first is clean water. If you are drinking filtered water you are advised to take electrolytes. No matter how excellent your municipal water may be it contains chlorine and often fluorides which you do not need and some believe to be harmful.
The second is full spectrum digestive enzymes which means they must contain, amylase, lipase, protease and lactase at a minimum. Most of us are not digesting our foods properly and therefore not making use of the nutrients we ingest.
The third is Omega 3’s. In the hysteria over blood fats and their relationship with heart disease; and the over processing of our foods; these essential fats were lost in the North American diet. Omega 3’s have too many benefits to even list. Look for medicinal quality Omega 3’s when derived from cold water fish. Flax seed is an economical choice, chose organic flax and the dark brown seeds. These seeds must be ground to release the Omega 3’s.
The fourth pillar is Alfalfa, which is a natural and gentle cleanser of your intestinal system
Remember I am not a medical professional and I am not offering medical opinion. I am simply a layperson who was forced to search out nutritional health because after my pregnancy I sunk into depression and despondence that was cured by changing what I ate and through this process discovering I was lactose in tolerate.
Food allergies are often the undiscovered causes of many illnesses. My friend recently discovered that eliminating milk and wheat from her diet caused a miraclous disappearance of the symptoms of arthritis. We will take a look at food allergies another time.
So there is a beginning in respecting your body’s nutritional needs another small step on the way to Outrageous Energy Living.
Namaste, eh!
Fear and Loathing
January 20, 2008
Come, come whoever you are, no matter how many times you have broken your vows, come, come again………this paraphrase of a Sufi song, reminds me to be kind to myself when I don’t do the things I said I would do.
I think often of another gem from Chinese culture, “it doesn’t matter how many times we fall down, it’s how many times we stand up”. Sometimes the bumps and bruises of life cause us to become cynical about the goodness of the world.
Trying is a much maligned process in popular self-help culture, as is hope. Some pseudo gurus say that “trying” and “hope” predispose the action to failure. I do not think so.
Hope and trying are two behaviors that lead to self love; and self love is a path to happiness and success. Happiness is not possible without loving yourself.
Some would argue that success is possible without forgiveness. There are many famous people who have built there image and empire on revenge and destructive competition. I suggest if you loath other people it is a reflection of your one self-loathing.
Outrageous Energy Living is a way of the warrior. I am not talking about blood and gore and heads chopped off here.
I use warrior to mean “one who is brave”.
The first step in warrior-ship is not being afraid of yourself. When we are afraid of ourselves. We imagine the world as a dangerous and fearful place and we become selfish believing our selfishness will protect us from the world.
We want to amass great wealth, live in a gated community. This accumulation of material possessions including money are often used as a way to absent ourselves from the world. We are here to love in the world and be happy, rejoice in our lives and in the lives of others. When we truly love ourselves we begin to see and love the world and the people in it; we become warrior, unafraid to venture into reality.
“If we are willing to take an unbiased look, we will find in spite of all our emotional and psychological ups and downs, there is something basically good about our existence as human beings. Unless we can discover the ground of goodness in our live, we cannot hope to improve the lives of others. If we are simply miserable and wretched, how can we possibly imagine, let alone realize, an enlightened society?” These are the words of Chogyam Trungpa.
So forgiveness starts with self.
Recognize your own divinity and your flaws.
Trungpa speaks of the tender heart, the heart that goes out into the world and stays loving and kind no matter what happens or how other people treat you. This is bravery, this warrior-ship. This is grace and elegance in the art and practice of life, this is warrior-ship.
So how do we begin to love ourselves, to treat ourselves well. Some would say take a bath, buy yourself a present. The is OK as far as it goes.
I suggest that the first step to self love is silence. Simply let yourself have some quiet time each day. Many people would say oh, you want us to meditate. Meditation is a good thing and I practice personally.
I was overwhelmed by the chaos in my mind and meditation was a chore and another reason to beat myself up “a should”, until a friend gave me Jon Kabat-Zinns book “Wherever You Go There You Are”.
This book liberated my mediation practice. This wonderful man simply said if you can be still for five minutes that is wonderful, if you can sit for 20 minutes that is wonderful. Until I read Zinn I had decided that since I did not mediate at dawn that it didn’t count. Zinn says anytime is a good time. So any time is a good time for mediation, any place is a good place and every second of silence counts toward peace of mind. Liberation! Yahoo!
I am after some 20 years of stop and start sitting, I am a restless meditate. I have learned to use meditations that use movement such as Tibetan hand mediation and walking mediation and “standing outside quietly and appreciating nature”, on the days when I find it impossible to sit still. The later is my own invention. The desire to move and meditate drew me to the Sufis, who dance to pray. What a outrageously delightful idea.
So step one for warrior-ship is cherish yourself through stillness.
I leave you with this wonderful poem today.
Last night, as I was sleeping
I dreamt –marvelous error!–
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
and the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.
This poem comes from the Spanish poet Antonio Machado, translated exquisitely by the master Robert Bly.
Come, come whoever you are, not matter how many times you have broken your vows, come, come again.
Namaste.
Your “maybe someday” dreams
January 17, 2008
Tim McGraw has a wonderful song.
When you click below, you’ll hear how he’s speaking with a man who was diagnosed with a fatal illness, and then starts living every moment to the fullest, only to later find that he’s still living.
What it teaches him is not to put off the important things for a later time, but instead to live in the now. Every time I hear the song, I start thinking about all of my “some day” dreams and try and find one that I can do now.
Do you have an important “maybe someday” dream?
Energy, From Age One To One Hundred
January 17, 2008
Here’s a splendid short little film.
It shows people from one to one hundred banging on a drum. I was charmed by it, and you may be too. It delightfully displays energy in a mere 100 versions of the infinite variations. Ms. 91 and Mr. 99 are particularly wonderful.
If you have difficulties ahead ….
January 17, 2008
This story is about a flowing stream that ran into a desert.
This stream, the story teaches, worked itself across the country for agesand experienced little difficulty. It ran easily around the rocks and quickly through the mountains. No obstacle, it seemed, was too much for this fresh and life-giving water.
Then, suddenly, it arrived at a desert.
Just as it had crossed every other barrier, the stream tried to cross this one, but it found that as fast as it ran into the sand, the waters disappeared. After many attempts, the stream became very discouraged. It appeared that there was no way it could continue the journey.
Then a voice came in the wind. “If you stay the way you are, you cannot
cross the sands. In fact, you will only become a quagmire. To go further,
you will have to lose yourself.”
“But if I lose myself,” the stream cried, “everything I have ever been will be
lost.”
“Oh, on the contrary,” said the voice. “If you lose yourself, you will
become more of what you were meant to be than you ever dreamed.”
So the stream surrendered itself to the hot, drying sun. And the clouds
into which it was formed were carried by the raging wind for many miles.
And once it crossed the desert, the stream poured down from the skies,
fresh and clean, and full of the energy that comes from storms.
This story comes from the book, “Women Strength” by Joan Chittister who began the last chapter with this fine version of the very well known Sufi teaching story.
We’re OFF
January 15, 2008
The Outrageous Energy Living way is on the road for the next 6 Mondays and one Saturday. 
The awesome group who committed to the program will chart the oceans of energy and find out how outrageous energetic and productive they can be.
We had a fabulous time and your hostess Mina treated us like royalty.
Thanks Mina!
I was talking to my old friend John who signed up sight unseen for Outrageous Energy Living, he told me how much he is looking forward to having an outrageous amount of energy.
As we talked he told me that when he goes out into the world and hears other’s tell their stories he realizes who lucky he is, that other people have had more challenges.
Well … the Good News is that John and everyone else in the workshop is about to find out how unique and energetic they are. As Nelson Mandala said “our greatest fear is not that we are too small but too large”.
We are going large, awesome and outrageous!
Loving Yourself, it’s Outrageous
January 11, 2008
One of my favorite poems in the world is “Love after Love” by Derek Walcott.
This poem came to me through David Whyte’s book “The Heart Aroused Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America”.
I was reading David Whyte’s book because I went to a Deep Trance Identification Workshop in California with Stephen Gilligan who is a Eriksonian hypnotist extraordinaire one of the few living people who trained with Milton Erikson, but I digress a lot actually.
So here it is, hopefully I am not violating any copyright laws but keying it in.
Love after Love by Derek Walcott
The time will come
when, with elation
you greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in you own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine, Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, who you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes.
peel your own image form the mirror.
Sit Feast on your life.
Today in this moment Feast on your unique and outrageously beautiful life.
<3
Namaste, eh!
B — The Energy Vitamins —
January 8, 2008
First, I want to say that you DO NOT need vitamins to have Outrageous Energy.
In fact, I will mention vitamins only occasionally at my next Outrageous Energy Seminar . But I do get many requests for information about this subject, and it’s one that is of particular interest to me.
Here’s a quick little article that gives a quick and reliable overview of the various B vitamins … pro and con…. and how to safely consider B vitamin supplimentation.
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Vitamin B: The Energy Vitamin
By: Dr. George Obikoya
The B-complex vitamins are actually a group of eight vitamins, which include thiamine (B1), riboflavin (B2), niacin (B3), pyridoxine (B6), folic acid (B9), cyanocobalamin (B12), pantothenic acid and biotin.
Many people consume foods fortified with vitamin B, but the typical American diet high in processed, cooked and microwavable food gives us only a fraction of the B-vitamins we need for good health. There are a number of ways to make up for this deficiency, but liquid multivitamins are generally considered to have the advantage over all other supplements.
The B vitamins are vital to a vigorous and energetic long life. What’s more, you can get serious health problems if you lack them. B vitamins are easily flushed out of the body, and people on weight-loss diets, alcoholics or those who take antibiotics or seizure drugs are even more prone to having vitamin B deficiency.
While it is safe for many people to take three times or more of the RDA (Recommended Daily Allowance) for B-vitamins, each of us has unique requirements based on our own individual physiology and lifestyle. Hence, it is important to check with your doctor before beginning a vitamin regimen in order to determine your proper dosage. Because deficiencies usually include more than one B-vitamin, and because the B-vitamins work best as a team, you should take a B-complex supplement along with any single B-vitamin in order to achieve their synergistic effects.
B1-Thiamin: Thiamin is necessary for adrenal gland function, proper immune performance and the synthesis of neurotransmitters. It also plays a role in the metabolism of food and alcohol. The RDA for thiamin is very low and does not consider increased thiamin requirements that result from an unhealthy lifestyle, old age or disease. Seniors typically have lower thiamin levels and should be aware of symptoms such as poor memory, fatigue, muscle weakness and blindness, and in time even heart disease, brain damage or death. Because thiamin, in combination with alpha lipoic acid (ALA), encourages the nerves of the skin and the blood vessels to regenerate, people with diabetic neuropathies often feel relief from pain when they increase their thiamin intake along with ALA.
B2-Ribofiavin: Riboflavin is required for energy production and oxygen utilization. The symptoms of low riboflavin include fatigue, blindness, anemia and crusting around the mouth.
Doctors sometimes prescribe riboflavin to prevent migraine headaches and to alleviate arthritis pain. Recent research suggests that riboflavin may also play a role in the prevention of cancer.
B3-Niacin: is also necessary for the body’s production of energy. It is also useful in treating high cholesterol, schizophrenia, neurological disease and Raynaud’s syndrome (a blood vessel disorder).
If you intend to take high doses of niacin, you should use “flush free” niacin. Besides lowering LDL (low-density lipoprotein or “bad”) cholesterol, niacin, in combination with vitamin C, can reduce the body’s production of lipoprotein (a), a risk factor for heart disease. Let your physician monitor you if you are taking high doses of niacin.
B5-Pantothenic Acid: is obligatory for energy production. It is also required for proper immune function and adrenal stress hormone production. It is sometimes referred to as the “anti-stress” vitamin.
B6-Pyridoxine and Folic Acid: work together to regulate the levels of homocysteine, a byproduct of protein breakdown that damages arteries and makes them prone to cholesterol deposits.
Folic acid is especially important for women of childbearing age, as deficiencies of this nutrient have been linked with birth defects. Women on birth control pills, pregnant women, all women of childbearing age, as well as alcoholics, heart disease patients and people taking antibiotics should make sure they take between 400-800 mcg of folic acid per day.
B12-Cobalamin: is required for normal gene function, energy production, the formation of blood cells and proper immunity.
Choline and Inositol: Choline is necessary for building your cells and severe deficiency can cause death. Because of its anti-inflammatory nature, choline supplements of 1,000 mg are effective and safe for treating asthma and arthritis. Inositol deficiency can lead to severe mental problems. Hence, inositol helps in the treatment of depression, panic attacks, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, with a daily dose as high as 12-18 gm. It is also used to prevent hardening of the arteries, protect the heart and treat cancer. Two daily B-complex capsules should provide sufficient amounts of these two vitamins for most people.
Biotin and Paraminobenzoic acid (PABA): Biotin is required for fat and protein metabolism, effective immunity and gene function. Biotin deficiency is most common in the elderly, people with diabetes and in those who take too many antibiotics. PABA is necessary for the metabolism of amino acids and in the formation of blood. Biotin and PABA deficiencies are rare and people can usually get enough from a good B-complex supplement.
The B-complex vitamins receive less media attention than the other vitamins but as you can see from reading this article, they are fundamental for life. As such, a daily regimen to acquire all of them, such as a liquid multivitamin, is an excellent way to prevent the diseases and conditions described in this article. They work together as team members, which keep your body functioning normally and provide you with the energy you need to conduct your daily activities. Plus, B-complex vitamins can help prevent many diseases because they repair nucleic acids and immune cells.
If you would have a question about this article, or about energy for yourself, you can contact me via email at my contact page on this website.
PS… the beautiful picture at the top is a model of the B12 molecule
Are you a “dog” person or a “cat” person”?
January 7, 2008
If a dog jumps in your lap,
it is because he is fond of you;
but if a cat does the same thing,
it is because your lap is warmer.
