2015 - Page 6 of 13 - Sarah Wilson

Two funny stories from my time in India

November 6, 2018August 12, 2015 by Sarah Wilson

Funny moments, like sad songs, say so much. But really only when you’re still enough to notice the wonderful connect. In fact, humour, wryness, irony and calamitous coincidence are mostly joyful by virtue of the fact that we’re ensconced in stillness when we notice it (and can only notice it when still).

Here’s two you might like to get still with from my India stay:

1. The Perfect Cow Puja

One day we did a nine-hour cow puja. This entailed eight hours of chanting and adding flowers to an elaborate shrine of candles and gaudiness from 8am until the climax when the big old cow, that’s been waiting outside chewing cud, is led inside to the mud-brick meditation room. It’s positioned, with a fair bit of fuss and opining from all involved, to face east with its back to the shrine, its docile face to us. You get

The Aboriginal healing gift Australians need right now

November 6, 2018August 11, 2015 by Sarah Wilson

There’s an indigenous practice called dadirri for healing trauma.

It also brings wisdom and wholeness.

Dadirri means inner, deep listening and quiet, still awareness. It’s a “tuning in” experience (best done outdoors) with the specific aim of reflecting on nature to find, and connect with, our inner selves.

It entails going bush.

It’s something everyone has, but it’s not always tapped.

It’s a technique that, when practiced often, can neurally rewire us, can heal us.

Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit

November 6, 2018August 6, 2015 by Sarah Wilson

I gravitate to reads about walking. Especially those that extrapolate the connection between mindful reflection and walking. Hence today’s review of What I’ve Just Finished Reading.

Wanderlust: A History of Walking, by Rebecca Solnit

Background to why I read this book: Walking and reflection sustain me through my angst and anxiety. My current theory:

Walking works to the same pace as reflection, thus the former ekes out the latter.

So much in life works too fast for discerning reflection. Most of what we do frazzles us. Walking brings us back to a dignified, even, expansive space.

Hand-writing (journal writing) does the same.

US-based writer Rebecca Solnit touches on these themes in her dense and often feminist treatise on the purposeful stroll. Nicely, I read it during my clinic stay in India, which prescribed no movement apart from a little gentle walking. I found the book in the clinic “library”. Of course I did. It was exactly what I needed to read. Life works like that.

The gist you need to know about: Wanderlust is a series of essays that esoterically explores random

A One-Pot Wonder Skillet Cookie recipe!

August 5, 2015 by Sarah Wilson

It is no secret that the new IQS One-Pot Wonders Cookbook is possibly my favourite cookbook yet. It’s all about making delicious meals simple, affordable and sustainable. To give you a little glance at what’s inside, I thought I’d share one of my favourite dessert recipes from the book: The Choc Chip Skillet Cookie.

Choc Chip Skillet Cookie from the IQS One-Pot Wonders Cookbook

This giant cookie is the perfect way to serve up dessert at your next dinner party. Place it in the middle of the table, serve it with a side of cream and watch the happy faces. Just like all the other recipes in the book, the Choc Chip Skillet Cookie is prepared using only one single dish. Less time spent preparing and washing up, more time talking to your mates!

What else can you find in the book?

A stack of recipes, all prepared in one single dish.
Most meals are under $5, some even under $3 per serve.
There’s a whole section on Sunday Cookups, geared towards creating waste-free dinners and delicious leftovers for the week.

Louis C.K.’s decision-making rule

November 6, 2018August 4, 2015 by Sarah Wilson

Making decisions is a theme on this site. It’s a theme in my life as I grapple with the confidence, laissez faire-ness, certainty and surrender inherent in good decision-making.

Today I share brilliant US comedian Louis C.K.’s approach. He, too, grapples with the descent into despair that decision-making can induce. He’s developed a 70 Per Cent rule:

“These situations where I can’t make a choice because I’m too busy trying to envision the perfect one—that false perfectionism traps you in this painful ambivalence: If I do this, then that other thing I could have done becomes attractive. But if I go and choose the other one, the same thing happens again. It’s part of our consumer culture. People do this trying to get a DVD player or a service provider, but it also bleeds into big decisions.

“So my rule is that if you have someone or something that gets 70 per cent approval, you just do it. ‘Cause

Read more

An overview of why I think Adam Goodes holds a mirror up to us.

October 23, 2018July 31, 2015 by Sarah Wilson

I rarely feel compelled to respond to low-brow, destructive trolling and ill-considered outrage. I don’t like to add fuel to fires that I don’t think light up the world.

But on this occasion I feel some education is required following some very ignorant, small-minded, unproductive and hypocritical feedback to my recent comments on social media regarding Adam Goodes and how the stance he’s taking holds a mirror up to racism.

So.

For anyone arguing he deserves the booing (ergo, it’s not racist) because of the 13-year-old girl incident, please read this.

For anyone arguing he deserves the booing (ergo, it’s not racist) because of his “aggressive” “war dance”, please read this.

For anyone arguing he deserves the booing (ergo, it’s not racist) because of his Australian of the Year speech, please read this.

For anyone arguing the booing has nothing to do with race but is instead because he’s become “too political” or “too outspoken” (a la Mark Latham, Jeff Kennett and various shock jocks today), I say: that makes ZERO SENSE!! Adam Goodes speaks out on race (appropriately and rightly so). We’ve lauded him as Australian of the Year for this. To say he shouldn’t, or that we don’t like that he does, is race-based at a bare

Could you have chemical intolerance? What next?

July 17, 2018July 30, 2015 by Sarah Wilson

I make it a personal mission to live my life as toxin-free as I can. High toxic loads aren’t good for any of us…even more so if you’re struggling with autoimmune disease.

Could you have chemical intolerance? What next? — Image via Pinterest

For anyone with autoimmune issues, chemicals and heavy metals seem to be both the cause and effect. Research published in the Journal of Applied Toxicology shows that approximately 20 per cent of healthy people demonstrate an immune reactivity to chemicals. This essentially means the body flags chemicals to the immune system, which in turn fights to destroy those toxic compounds.

Introducing chemical intolerance

Over time, if the toxic load is too heavy and your immune system starts struggling to fight the toxic compounds, this may trigger an autoimmune process known as chemical intolerance.

Chemical intolerance usually evolves in two stages.

In the first stage, the body’s natural ability to tolerate chemicals and toxins is gradually broken down.
In the second stage, an ordinary exposure to an environmental compound (traffic exhaust, perfume, a drug, or other chemicals) suddenly triggers an immune response.

One month without exercise, soap and loo paper…

July 29, 2015 by Sarah Wilson

I just got back from a month in true retreat. I was rather cryptic about where I was heading and I committed to not sharing my experience in real time on social media. Golly, what freedom! I’m happy to now flesh out the details because I reckon a few of you will find them interesting.

Refugee chic: I took to winding my hair in a rag. — I took to winding my hair in a rag.

Where did you go?

India. To a hard-core Ayurvedic clinic – Vaidyagrama – in Tamil Nadu, an hour from Coimbatore, which is just north of Kerala. Which is to say, eons from any semblance of a tourist trail.

Why?

As many of you know, my autoimmune journey is a perpetual one. I manage my disease. And I do this by experimenting. I’d been told for years that Ayurvedic treatment was a boon for AI. I very much subscribe to the Ayurvedic tradition of yoga, meditation and the eating principles of this ancient discipline. But I wanted to see if a committed 3-4 week panchakarma (see below) treatment would take my healing to loftier heights.

I’ll be frank. I didn’t want to go. My acute sense of smell and hearing rendered India a torturous prospect. Every bit of me wanted to go hiking in Switzerland. And I even had an escape plan if I couldn’t cope (I’d researched

Intermittent fasting for food addiction? Let’s discuss.

November 6, 2018July 28, 2015 by Sarah Wilson

I’m a cautious fan of intermittent fasting and have previously shared my thoughts on the best way to go about it. But I picked up on something in an interview with American integrative doctor Chris Kresser recently that stoked the fasting fire a little.

As something of a side note to his ramble about how he personally flirts with this particular food fad, he mentions the spiritual aspect of intermittent fasting:

“Where for some people who can get a little addicted to certain aspects of food or certain types of food or our relationship to food starts to feel a little bit out of whack, then intermittent fasting can be one way of resetting that.” He goes on:

“(Intermittent fasting) can really set you free from some habitual patterns around food.”

I reflected on this a bit. I personally have rigidity around a few food issues. I get anxious when a meal is not a proper meal. And I’ll eat a heaping meal even if I’m not hungry. I struggle to respect my appetite. To manage this

The I Quit Sugar One-Pot Wonders Cookbook is here!

July 27, 2015July 22, 2015 by Sarah Wilson

Most of you know how much I love stretching out meals to make them more sustainable and cheap. I tend to bore my mates with the topic. It was inevitable, then, that the I Quit Sugar team would conspire to shut me up by creating a One-Pot Wonders Cookbook featuring my favourite no-brainer, densely nutritious shortcuts for getting meals onto the table.

Here’s why I love it so much:

* It’s simple on a stick. All 33 recipes can be prepared in one single pot. Less chaos, less washing up.

* It’s sustainable. The Sunday Cookups a geared at creating waste-free dinners that provide you with leftovers during the week.

* It’s affordable. Most of the dishes are under $5 a serve, some are even $3.

Forthwith some pretty pictures that tell the wondrous One-Pot Wonders story: