Year: 2011

my chat with Deepak Chopra…real deal or frantically caught up?

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This week my body travels, I stay home

90795 8 468 my chat with Deepak Chopra...real deal or frantically caught up?

Sometimes, in the course of writing this column, I come across a breed of self-helper I can only describe as disenchantingly full of it. Edward de Bono is one such (sorry to be so frank, Lateral Thinking fans). Then there are those who, well, I just can’t seem to put a finger on them – are they the real deal or do they simply have a book/webcast /workshop to flog?

Deepak Chopra, possibly the most well known mind-body and spirituality guru in the world, is one such.

I met Chopra during his recent Australian visit. He was running ludicrously on time. In fact two minutes early. And so, as I stood waiting to be greeted, he filled the 120 seconds tap-tapping wildly on his phone. When done, he immediately pointed out we’d spoken before. We had 18 months ago. How the hell did he remember? And what a bugger he did. Because back then I also struggled to get a grip of the guy, and so never wrote up the interview. I got the feeling he knew this, too.

I’d followed Chopra on Twitter, but had to unfollow him after a week – his updates were relentless and mind-boggling frenetic, passionate sprays at critics interspersed with conscious-raising inspira-bombs. Which, to my mind, jarred with his calm, centred, non-attached Perfect Health messages that I’ve always found so compelling in his books.

And I guess this is at the knobby kernel of my un-ease: how can the dude preach one thing and seem to live by another?

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get your stuff sorted

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You’ve heard of The Story of Stuff Project? I’ve mentioned it a bit here, especially in regards to the story of stuff in cosmetics.

It’s a movement helping us all to consume less stuff. Because we don’t need it, it makes us unhappy and, frankly, it’s killing us. I grew up with these messages from my parents and then was exposed to the opposite extreme during me time editing Cosmopolitan magazine. I went from a niaive lack of engagement in consumption… to total abhorrence of it. Our eternal grasping for stuff is upsetting. It upsets us.

Anyway. If you haven’t seen The Story of Stuff, here it is below OR, come see Annie Leonard, the chick in the video and behind the project, in person. She’s in Australia next week. I’ve posted the dates below.

Good and important… stuff. Book in to hear her talk!

Wednesday, October 26th
Time: 6.00 PM for 7.00 PM
Location: Mullum Civic Hall – Dalley Street,  Mullumbimby
Cost: $10/12 at the Door, food and drink available
RSVP to [email protected]
Hosted by the National Toxics Network

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when failure is totally an option

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This is an ad for a global sneaker brand, I know. And it’s been, no doubt, developed by a team of brand psychologists who conspire to manipulate the human mind for consumerist outcome.

But.

Gosh, it’s good and touching.

We need to hear from other people – especially people we regard as successful  – about how they failed more than they succeeded. For two reasons.

So we know success isn’t something magical and based on luck. That it’s about hard work. And we can all do hard work, right?

And also to remind us that we ONLY succeed by going DOWN into failure. Going down means we then build up “success strength” in the grapple back out. Going down buys us the time to know what we’re doing. Going down cements what we really want (because you have to have something to aim for when you grapple back out). Going down means when we succeed, we’re the real deal, not just a fluke.

To really get the message, you need to see this, too:

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my chocolate nut balls (healthy nuff for breakfast!)

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Over the weekend, my partner in “Sunday mornings on the deck eating eggs + reading the papers” crime Lizzie and I made nutballs. This is them…

nutballs finished my chocolate nut balls (healthy nuff for breakfast!)

Three things you need to know:

1. These balls of goodness are so healthy and anti-oxidising that you can eat them for breakfast. And just to test the theory, I did so this morning.

2. They are not addictive and you won’t eat the whole lot in one sitting. How so?

They contain ZERO sugar

They are rich in good fats that fill you up pleasantly and fast. Seriously, no desperate hankerings afterwards.

3. Lizzie and I are the two most impatient women on the planet: we whizzed these together in three minutes, including the taking of pretty pictures.

The recipe is derived from a nutball recipe Nora Gedagaudas sent to me. We kind of modified it, throwing in stuff we liked. You seriously don’t have to worry about exact quantities. You can’t stuff this recipe up! And don’t be afraid of the butter and coconut oil. It’s goooooood for you!

my sugarfree nutballs

  • half a  jar of almond spread
  • 250g or so of organic nuts. We used almonds, brazil nuts and walnuts for their hormonally healthful properties. We tried using a stab-mixer, but it turned them into a powder, so promptly switched to a large food processor).
  • 1/2 cup of raw cacoa powder (to taste)
  • 2 big handfuls of shredded coconut
  • 1/2 a stick of organic salted unadulterated butter. Or use the whole packet (200-250g) if you don’t have coconut oil.
  • 4-5 heaped tbls of coconut butter (coconut oil)

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I got rid of comments so I could hear the conversation

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This week in Sunday Life I remove comments from my blog. Just for a bit.

111735 5 600 I got rid of comments so I could hear the conversation
Illo by Geoff McFetridge

When I’m feeling a tad on the smug side of my life situation, I find a little visit to the comments section of my blog sets me straight. In the main, comments on my blog are helpful sharings of tips and links. But every now and then a snarky interloper pipes up, like a foul air bubble in the lower intestine, to pull apart the most banal detritus of my existence.

Such as whether I Photoshop out a gap in my teeth.

Or how many times I say “um” in a podcast.

I find it a practice in mindful ego control, mostly. I observe the snarkiness bubble to the surface. Smile. And accept that I put myself out on a limb by having a public blog, ergo I must accept some flack. And then I let the stinky snark float on past, ignoring the urge to pop it with well-crafted comeback. It’s a bit like handling a toddler: acknowledge good behaviour, ignore bad behaviour. With time, I’ve developed a lovely Teflon calm from the process.

I’m lucky, though. I’ve only had to remove two comments in almost two-and-half years of running my blog. But this is not the norm. Monitoring comments has become a laborious chore for many (some bloggers I know remove 40 per cent of contributions daily). So much so, a growing number of the big blogging names have dropped their comments sections altogether, despite the commercial reality that comments are traffic drivers, which, in turn, are monetisation drivers.

This is no trifle issue. It’s dictating news agendas, hurting people in humiliating and irreversible ways and driving some to suicide. Nasty comments can be hate-bombed into the interweb by cowards who hide behind pseudonyms and there’s nothing that can be done to discipline or control them. Unlike a hand-posted letter to the editor of yore, these comments are not carefully and mindfully prepared. And social media commentators argue commenting contradicts the original notion of the social media “conversation”. They’re more akin to an impulsive heckle at a footy match – unaccountable and mostly about me too-ism. As a result, the Australian Press Council last month called for a discussion on online reader comments as part of their broader enquiry into media standards.

Apropos of something, I love the Swedes. They’re so often the first to buck the system, mostly in the nude and incorporating a community garden. Last month they led the way once more when three of the nation’s four newspapers banned anonymous online comments.

All of which has got me thinking: should I take a stand and drop comments on my blog?

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healing autoimmune disease #10 (a podcast)

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I posted my interview with Nora Gedgaudas last week that detailed the whole paleo diet thing. I’m two weeks in and am noticing amazing differences – which I’ll report back on.

ifeelgoodtoday healing autoimmune disease #10 (a podcast)
Photo by Santiago Design

Anyway, I know a lot of readers on this site have an auto-immune disease of some sort. Nora very kindly talked me through her tips for anyone suffering AI, specifically hashimotos. It all fits. I’ve been told for years the paleo diet is ideal for AI issues. I thought you AI types out there would find it useful (apologies to everyone else…and apologies for my rambly chat…I was having a very “thyroidy” day that day…and you know how that goes…)

Remember, Nora’s out here in Australia in November with Nourishing Australia. I really recommend making it to one of the sessions.

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Nora then went the extra mile and emailed me to confirm many of her complex points (your head spinning much from listening to the above?). I love that she uses the word “modulation” as the approach that needs to be taken.

It’s so very much about modulation.

The primary issue at hand is IMMUNE function (specifically, a need for immune modulation).

Most if not nearly all cases of autoimmune thyroid are profoundly tied to gluten sensitivity and/or celiac disease (either as an initiating or complicating issue).  Avoiding ALL gluten and whatever cross-reactive compounds you have a sensitivity to should be 100%, immediate and permanent.  Nearly all available testing for gluten sensitivity currently is quite unreliable…so if you think you aren’t gluten sensitive you may want to seriously reconsider revisiting this though more in depth testing.  If it were me, I’d just assume an issue with gluten and avoid it like the plague.

Healing your gut is hugely important in this.  It will be impossible, btw, without generating healthy glutathione levels.

Shoot for between 80-100 ng/mL 25 OHD (vitamin D) in blood tests.

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I find what happy women get right

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This week in Sunday Life I’m unbalanced

20110824 pray for swell1 7 I find what happy women get right
Photo by Eugene Tan via Aquabumps

I believe I’ve found the very latest first-world lament. “I’m so sick of trying to get enough ‘me time’,” my friend Sal shared over the phone during the week. “I think it’s easier just to be overcommitted and be done with it. Know what I mean?”

I would’ve coughed up my latte. Or my chardonnay. But I was too busy eating my organic, grass-fed granola.

Actually, I’ve been waiting for someone to pipe up along these lines for a while. The pursuit of life balance has become yet another thing most of us are crap at, which means it’s yet another thing we feel compelled to master, which means it’s yet another thing to add to our to-do list.

Life balance is elusive. Just how do you ensure the right balls are in the air in the right ratios? For every new commitment you take on, do you allocate the same amount of time for sitting in a bath or Cooking a Quality Meal or doing a Meaningful Craft Project with your kid? If a passion, work project or a sick partner suddenly require more of your time, do you have to put on the breaks? “Woah world! No can do – I’m behind on my yoga class quotient!”

Scoff not. A friend told me they were stood up recently by someone citing they were “owed some hang time”. Hang time. Me time. I get it. But, seriously, the idea of “owing” it is as dispiriting as Sunday night ironing.

It’s a reality, of course, that most of us need more hang time. Life is well out of whack. But is fighting the tide, constantly trying to redress things – tit-for-tat-ish – the solution?

How about I pause then to cite the very latest research that answers such a hypothetical.

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my three favourite words: “haimish” + “hygge” + “truc”

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I can get obsessed by words. I’ll say them over and over in my head. Or they take on a colour or a smell. Mostly they take on a shape. I was obsessed with “common” when I was a kid. I wrote it over and over in books. Not because of how it sounded (or Lord forbid, what it meant)  but because it looked like a caterpillar.

110942 1 600 my three favourite words: "haimish" + "hygge" + "truc"

I get Gary And Greg mixed up always, because visually they’re the same shape. See what I mean?

But I have three favourite words. I adore them for their slighly onomatopoetic value and because they “suggest” a mood, a feel, a vibe, rather than spell something out aggressively. So that when you say the word, you just “get” it, even if you can’t point to it. Not surprisingly, perhaps, there’s no English equivalent for any of them.

1. Haimish

A Yiddish word that suggests warmth, domesticity and unpretentious conviviality. A cosy, tatty, daggy bar where the hot chocolate is served in 1970s pottery mugs is haimish. A night in with girlfriends under a doona eating stew repeats is haimish. Going home to mum and dad’s and playing boggle while drinking sherry is haimish. David Brookes at NYT wrote a wonderful ode to the word recently, extrapolating the idea out and suggesting we need to seek more of it in this individualistic culture.

2. Hygge

This one is a danish word pronounced “hoo-gah” and it kind of means “cosiness”, but as a Dane will tell you…it means so much more. It defines the core of Danishness as “chic” defines the French. One definition I’ve found says it’s the art of creating intimacy. So it’s an act as well as a feel – a verb and an adjective. Hygge is also something you consciously strive for…it’s about connecting in a cosy, elegant, unfussy way. It’s about weaving friendship and intimacy with ease. Let’s get hygge with it!!!

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