Aging Consciously

By Namaste Staff Writer

An elderly couple had dinner at another couple's house, and after eating, the wives left the table and went into the kitchen.

The two gentlemen were talking, and one said, "Last night we went out to a new restaurant and it was really great. I recommend it highly."

The other man said, "What is the name of the restaurant?"

The first man thought and thought, then finally said, "What is the name of that flower you give to someone you love? You know, the one that's red and has thorns."

"Do you mean a rose?"

"Yes, that's the one," replied the man. He then turned towards the kitchen

and yelled, "Rose, what's the name of that restaurant we went to last night?"

In our culture, it’s just assumed that when most of us age, we will begin losing our faculties, especially our ability to remember. Loss of health and mental faculties have come to be equated with aging.

But loss of mental acuity and severely declining bodily health do not automatically go hand-in-hand with aging. There are too many examples of people who simply grow old and wear out, dying peacefully instead of in a decrepit condition.

It doesn’t seem to occur to many in western society that what we do with our bodies and minds our whole life long tends to affect how we spend our later years. The way we have eaten for decades, used or not used our minds, exercised and in other ways cared for our physical bodies has a huge impact on how we will pass the last five, ten, or fifteen years of life.

The “golden” years are often a miserable experience for people. Right when they have accumulated enough resources, and have the time, to participate in some of their favorite activities, they find themselves greatly restricted in their ability to enjoy their days. I am watching this happen to an elderly friend of mine right now, and it deeply saddens me to see someone who so enjoys life no longer able to do so much of what she wants to do. But for most of us, it doesn’t have to be this way.

Ron Garner’s book Conscious Health is quite different from most other books about health, in that it takes a wholistic approach to just about every area of our daily lives that have an impact on our health. In fact, Ron shows that there isn’t any area of life that doesn’t affect our health.

Instead of offering quick fixes, this book asks us to consider every aspect of our lives—from the way our food is grown, how it is prepared, and the kinds of food we eat, to our outlook on life, how we think, our beliefs, and whether we are being true to ourselves in the way we live or simply fitting in with the expectations of others.

The body works synergistically. That is, all the parts affect each other. Which means that you can’t pop mega doses of vitamins without upsetting the balance of specific chemicals in the body, any more than you can go around complaining about the way your day is without undermining the sense of well-being that is the foundation of health. You can’t shower in chlorinated water, then buy bottled water to avoid chlorine, and think you are benefiting your body. You can’t make fresh vegetable juice, then nuke your dinner, and expect to feel tip-top.

Ron doesn’t ask us to follow his personal health regimen, because each person’s body is unique in some respects. Instead, he shares his experiences of discovering his individual health needs, and he illustrates how we can become conscious so that we make wise decisions for our particular makeup, metabolic type, and life situation.

Conscious Health is a book you’ll not just read, it’s a book you’ll keep close at hand and go back to again and again. It’s a vital key to taking charge of every aspect of your entire life.

Live consciously, in full awareness of all that you are and all that you participate in each day, and you may just find that you can remember your partner’s name in old age.

A Dash of Dining

By Namaste Staff Writer

Do you realize that you have a different relationship to food and beverages from the people you share meals with? This is because the way we each learned to eat took place in a different constellation of physical and emotional influences.

One of the important events in my day, just about every day, is dinner time. It was this way in my childhood. It helped that my grandparents and parents were grocers, which fostered an intimate relationship with food.

These were the days before everything was canned or shrink-wrapped. I understood where meat came from because I visited the farmer with my father. Unlike many city kids, I knew how a dairy was run. And I regularly accompanied dad to the mill where the stream turned the millstones that ground the wheat.

Mom prepared dinner each evening, everything made from scratch. Pies––savory and sweet––casseroles, homemade dumplings. But mom wasn’t the only cook in our house. Dad baked bread, and I have vivid memories of it rising in large bowls with damp tea towels over them on the hearth in front of the fireplace.

If our relationship to food is individual, so is our talent for cooking. For some, it comes naturally. It’s that way for my son. He has a flare for it—the ideal combination of spices, the perfect degree of doneness.

For me, learning to cook didn’t come easily. In the movie Mrs Doubtfire, Robin Williams is divorced by his wife. So when the kids come to visit, he has to provide them with a meal. I roared with laughter when I saw this movie because I was once a Mrs Doubtfire. Though I remember many hours passed messily in the kitchen as a child, as my brother and I mixed flour and water in imitation of mom, I emerged into adulthood unable even to boil an egg and get it right­­—the white was either not done, or I cremated it because I got distracted and it boiled dry.

These days dinner guests occasionally say to me, “I could never have you to my home, I couldn’t cook like this.” Amazingly, they are in fact complimenting me. What a transformation a person is capable of experiencing if they are open!

But I think the comment about not having me to their home misses what preparing a meal is all about. Preparing food ought to be a form of self-expression, and fun, not a means of impressing each other.

So I’ve learned to laugh at my Yorkshire puddings when they don’t rise and turn out like hockey putts. Like the first time Helen Hayes cooked turkey for her family, she gave fair warning as she went into the kitchen to ready it for serving. “If it isn’t right,” she said, “I don’t want anybody to say a word. We’ll just get up from the table, without comment, and go down to the hotel for dinner.” When she returned, she found the family seated at the dinner table, wearing their hats and coats.

When we are striving to impress, we undercut the enjoyment of preparing food. Ego generates tension, replacing the flow of pure pleasure. Once in the mindset of impressing someone, we lose what dining is all about.

For me, dining is an exercise in being present in the now, celebrating the wonder of life, enjoying rather than rushing through things. Taking time out each day to dine healthily and heartily is a means of de-stressing. To savor the food instead of inhaling it before you race off to some event—to share dinner time for fun, romance, and relaxation—goes hand-in-hand with a more wholistic lifestyle, a lifestyle of which we in fast-paced western countries are sorely in need.

It’s not more neon signs for fast food that our cities and towns need, it’s a home-cooked, wholesome dinners at the dining table, and more great cookouts with friends.

When there’s more than one of you, dining is an opportunity to reconnect with each other after the hectic pace of the day. It’s a way to touch each other’s hearts, look into each other’s eyes, perhaps with soft candlelight instead of the fluorescents of the office, and share your joys and your concerns. Creativity, connection, conviviality—these are the fruit of a breakfast, a lunch, a dinner at which you dine instead of dash.

Eating, then, is about more than satisfying hunger, more than physical nourishment. A conscious approach to eating means that, as far as possible, you grow food, prepare food, and eat food in a manner that caters to the hunger of the soul.

For me, this is reflected in my devotion to organically produced foods. The extra that organic foods cost are a vote for my health, and a way of caring for the earth by poisoning it as little as possible.

Fresh, wholesome produce tantalizes my palate come evening. From being a person who once hated cooking, I’ve become someone for whom chopping and seasoning is a good way to unwind after the day—a therapy rather than a chore.

Some have remarked, “You mean you cook for just one every night?” I feel like looking around and asking, “Do you see anyone else?” It’s like when you go to a restaurant and the maitre d’ asks, “Just one?”

I hear people say, “It seems pointless to cook for one.” They find fixing dinner for just themselves a lonely experience. But Thomas Merton once said that “a person who fears to be alone, will never be anything but lonely.”

What do you do if it causes you to feel anxious to prepare and eat dinner alone?

There’s a part of us that’s able to step back from our anxieties and watch them from a distance. This part of you that can watch yourself is a deeper you that knows no fear. It’s the you that cannot help but love yourself, nurture yourself. So if you become anxious about eating dinner alone, and you start telling yourself how awful it is, simply become an observer of such thoughts—and amazingly they dissipate. (You can learn more about how to do this from several of our Namaste Publishing books, CDs, and DVDs, found on this website—especially The Presence Process, The Power of Now, Stillness Speaks, and A New Earth.)

We are talking about eating consciously, instead of just going through the motions. The ability to savor food and hold an awareness of our connection to the earth is a barometer of personal development.

In your own unique style, invest time in dining. You may opt to barbecue, or go out to eat, or take a picnic to the beach or the park. One of you may prefer to cook, and one clean up. But whatever your style, savor the entire eating experience.

Become conscious about every aspect of your body and its health. To help you, we offer a wonderful book, Ron Garner’s Conscious Health. It’s about far more than vitamins and minerals. It’s a wholistic approach to life.

Your Daily Dairy Diet

By Namaste Staff Writer

When I was in elementary school in England, our 15-minute break at 11 AM each morning began with the handing out of half-pint bottles of milk, which had been delivered fresh in crates that very morning. The milk was free, and its consumption mandatory, part of a government program to ensure that children received adequate nutrition for their growing bodies.

I never liked milk. All those years, I forced myself to drink it. But I wasnÕt allowed to listen to my body back then.

It turns out that, while we are told continually that "milk is good for you," most milk isn't all that good for us after all.

Today, I do drink milk, and enjoy it, about a quarter pint a day. But it is a very different kind of milk than comes from most supermarkets. It's also different from the pasteurized milk that was forced down me as a child. The milk I'm referring to is raw, unpasteurized, non-homogenized. It is also from cows that graze in fields that have never been treated with chemical fertilizers.

I find myself thriving on organic, grass-fed, raw, untreated milk. Mostly, I consume it in the form of kefir. It is whole milk, with all the cream present, and it is fermented. Sometimes, I add a handful of fresh, organically grown blueberries, strawberries, or raspberries into the mix, according to what is seasonal.

The internet is making more and more wholesome products available to us. You can buy raw, grass-fed cheese online in a number of flavors. You can buy whey powder that's been produced healthily. You can find a cow-share program and have a supply of healthy milk.

Contrary to all the hoopla about drinking your "pint of milk a day," pasteurized milk isn't good for us. The pasteurization process destroys enzymes, which renders the milk acid-formingÑand we already get far too much acid-forming food. Plus, pasteurized dairy products form an over-abundance of mucus. Also, dairy is highly concentrated protein, which we can have too much of once we stop growing.

Even good dairy needs to be balanced with lots of alkali-forming raw vegetables. If most of your food is coming in the form of packages and cans from supermarket shelves, you are setting yourself up for illness, especially in the later years of life.

Also, some are allergic to dairy. It's important to watch for signs of this in infants and children especially. Although it can be difficult to diagnose the difference between milk allergies and lactose intolerance, symptoms can include: irritability or colic, upset stomach, vomiting, gagging, refusing food, loose stools possibly containing blood, wheezing, and skin rashes.

Ron Garner's book Conscious Health is enormously helpful because it teaches you to investigate for yourself to take responsibility for what you put in your mouth. A great deal of what is promoted as "good" for us simply isn't. With Conscious Health, you'll discover how to make wise choices for yourself and your family.