Sarah Wilson

eating for vata and chelating

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I’ve posted on the whole vata thing before – it’s an Ayurvedic diagnosis for A-types who move and talk fast, get flighty and unearthed easily, as well as, well, get toxic. You know, joint-achy and congested and bogged up.

rhubarbstew eating for vata and chelating

Me, basically.

And many of you, I suspect. I made the point in my previous post that contemporary culture has made us vata-ish.

Anyway, this time of year it’s VERY important to eat right for the vata type. That is to eat warm, mushy foods. Root veggies are great. Salads are not. A bit of sweetness is also good (root veggies satisfy this criteria, too). And so it was that I found this recipe on my new favourite food blog My New Roots (thank you to Ness at thelowflygingduck). It combines all the things we Vata’s need right now, PLUS the added bonus of coriander (cilantro).

Why coriander? What’s the big deal? Well, I recently found out I have high levels of heavy metals in my system (remember the toxic cosmetics story? Yeah, well…the toxic reading was quite extensive…I have mercury poisoning, too). To deal with this, one has to “chelate“. I’m doing it with Chlorella powder. Which

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Elizabeth Gilbert on showing up

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It’s TED”s fifth birthday. 1000 talks, 81 languages, viewed 1/2 billion times. So I went back and watched one of the most popular talks: Elizabeth Gilbert on creativity and the fear we have around…just doing it.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86x-u-tz0MA&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

I’ve been talking about this over the week in Sydney with friends who are blocked. They’re creative. In all different ways. They get blocked. And it drags them down because of the pressure to be creative. So I went looking for this talk.

I like how Elizabeth talks about creating psychological constructs to keep her safe from her anxiety about her block so she can keep being creative. It’s simple and reassuring.

Elizabeth says:

Don’t be daunted. Just do your job.

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what the Dalai Lama told me…

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This week in Sunday Life I try “infinite altruism”

2011 07 03 1209 what the Dalai Lama told me...

There’s something special about His Holiness the Dalai Lama, if I can be permitted such an obviousism. Something disarming. It’s the way he answers questions like, Is being gay OK? His response to a journalist once makes me smile: “I will ask ‘What is your companion’s opinion?’. If you both agree…then it is okay'”.  It’s the way he quietly takes off his shoes while presenting to 3000 people and sits with his brown fluffy-socked feet tucked under him, as he did during his recent visit.

On Friday I met His Holiness for the third time. Each visit I’ve expected it to be a bit like Christmas – all build-up, then more of the same.

But he gets me every time.

This visit I asked if it’s better to pursue happiness or altruism. He wagged a finger at me: “Altruism! Because altruism is the easiest, fastest way to be happy.” Infinite altruism, he said was his life goal. Every morning after waking at 3.30am he consciously offers his “body and mind to the purpose of others”.

“This is what brings me my joyfulness,” he said rather significantly.

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oh, and a question…giveaways? Like?

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I’ve been wondering, and I’m just not sure how I feel, so I thought I’d ask you… how does everyone feel about giveaways on this site? That is, a company paying me to have me highlight their products so a bunch of you get stuff for free? It would be product I think readers here … Read more

little announcement

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Further to my post during the week – I’m packing up, shedding my stuff…

To this end I’m having a bit of a garage sale thingo, getting rid of books, gifts, beauty stuff, clothes. If you live in Bondi, Sydney, come along.

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“The invitation”: my favourite treatise on love.

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Today I simply share this. A poem by Oriah. I’ve been thinking a lot about the kind of love I seek in my life. And then someone recited this to me.

heart shaped eggs "The invitation": my favourite treatise on love.

I found it interesting to read the poem as a message to myself, rather than as something I impose on to an “other”. It’s always better to do this when you stumble across something that strikes a chord….

The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain! I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

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I’m moving…for now. always “for now”.

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As regular readers of this blog probably know, I recently decamped from Sydney to the Byron Bay hinterland. It was a temporary thing. An experiment. To see how it felt. In the interim I lived out of a suitcase and left my stuff in Sydney.

54567 45244 I'm moving...for now. always "for now".But this week I’m actually moving my stuff up north.

My health still ain’t great. And up there/here it’s easier for me to be well. I get my food from farmers nearby – unprocessed, chemical-free – , I can sink myself each day in the ocean, it’s quiet, things are simple. I’m pulled less. I push less.

I like myself more. I unfurl.

And then I head to the city each fortnight or so for work and it’s great and it’s busy and I see my wonderful friends (and have sleepovers) and I burn myself out a little because that’s what I do. And then back to the quiet.

I’m not sure why I’m explaining things like this…but I know a few of you have been curious….

So. The move is going to entail:

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6 clever ways to eat yoghurt (the most slimming food on the planet!?)

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Another week, another “study” that shows we’re meant to be eating this instead of that. Yeah, I tire of them. But I found this one on the best and worst foods for healthy weight quite interesting.

It found yoghurt was the best food to eat to lose weight.

Below I’ve outlined the gist of the study, and then shared my favourite ways to eat yoghurt.

Picture 210 6 clever ways to eat yoghurt (the most slimming food on the planet!?)via pinterest.com

 

The study was based on three trials over 20 years. It found

  • The quality of food matters more than calorie count!!! So eating organic makes you lose weight.
  • The top five most fattening foods were sugar-sweetened beverages, red meat and processed red meat, each associated with half a kilo of weight gain every four years.
  • The most fattening food of them all?

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how to heal autoimmune disease…another post on inflammation

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I haven’t done a AI post for a while (and if you’re new to this blog you might want to catch up on some previous posts here). Which is not to say that I’m traveling swimmingly with my particular version of the disease. Nope, it’s up and down.

Picture 116 how to heal autoimmune disease...another post on inflammationvia pinterest.com

I’m still learning what flares things up. To be honest the biggest, lingering issue is inflammation. Which is no surprise. AI is all about inflammation. Healing AI, as well as treating it, is about reducing inflammation. Reducing flare-ups. And then de-exciting them smartly when they do happen. Which they will. I find this management process so frustrating. I flare up – which is to say I get inflammed – 2-3 days every week. It drives me mental.

my right side goes puffy, and my face and both feet. You’ll see photos of me where one day I look one size, the next a good size or two bigger. I can’t wear shoes.

my lips burn (the other day they swelled so much they split) and strangely, the skin of my stomach does, too.

I get brain fog. And can’t face talking to people.

I get super sensitive – to noise, light, EMFs, smells. I can’t cope with perfume or the smell of detergent. Even thoughts hurt.

and my digestion stops. In it’s tracks.

Below I’ll update with what I’m doing now to reduce the swell. (And remember: if you don’t have AI, the info on inflammation is key to good health in everyone!!!) I also thought it would be good to share this article by Dr Mark Hyman on ways to treat inflammation. It’s a good backgrounder on the inflam/AI link:

  • Inflammation is connected to almost every known chronic disease: from heart disease to cancer, diabetes to obesity, autism to dementia and even depression… as well as AI.
  • Autoimmune diseases now affect 24 million people and includes rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, thyroid disease, inflammatory bowel disease, and more.
  • Autoimmunity occurs when your immune system gets confused and your own tissues get caught in friendly cross-fire. Your body is fighting something — an infection, a toxin, an allergen, a food or the stress response — and somehow it redirects its hostile attack on your joints, your brain, your thyroid, your gut, your skin or sometimes your whole body.

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the genius of not being able to fix the copier

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This week in Sunday Life I’m strategically incompetent

114017 3 600 the genius of not being able to fix the copier
by Kyle Alexander

Confession: I get off on productivity porn.

I’m only a recreational voyeur, mind.  Late at night, in the lonely privacy of my bedroom, I like to peruse sites like 43Folders and Getting Things Done (GTD) e-courses, you know, to see how other people “File Tax Receipts in 5 Easy Steps” or “Focus like Steve Jobs, Now!”. But, I’m not a full subscriber. I mean, I’m no productivity pervert. Some of that Extreme Colour-Coding Your To-Do List stuff can get pretty gonzo!

Anyway, as a “productivity connoisseur”, I’ve noticed the biggest issue in this murky neck of the interweb right now is “waiting for” items. If you’re a productive list-making type you’ll know the list system comes unstuck once a task requires follow-up from a second party. For example, to get your report completed you need a statistic from a colleague. You email them requesting the data and delete this task off your to-do list. Done! Because you trust the item is now headed for the other person’s to-do list. BUT – oh dear – if said colleague isn’t a list person and doesn’t follow up, then the task disappears into the unproductive ether, un-accounted for Un-ticked!

“Waiting for” items drive me to distraction. They leave me in a permanent state of “there’s something I’ve forgotten”-ness. Only to interrupt me in the middle of a shower (and I have to bolt out, dripping wet, to my to-do list: “chase bloody Roger about that invoicing issue”). It’s frustrating. Doubly so because the fact the other party feels completely entitled to let a task slip so easily, while we remain vigilant, is …unfair.

So this week I set out to find a salve to such a quandary. I scrolled my favourite sites and found two ways out.

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