as mentioned in the posting by www.mary-jo.com, this season change has been very interesting.  being as supersensitive as i am, i feel that being in retreat is a good strategy, sept 28 is just next week and mercury is starts to go direct at that time. 

this is my usual time to do a brown rice fast.  i have done it every year since 1996.  my shiatsu teacher, karen cruikshank taught it to our class and it has stayed in my yearly routine since.   the body is a balance of acid and alkaline.  ideally it is best to be on an alkaline diet but most foods are acidic.  so after a summer of feasting on the fresh foods, my goal is to do a cleanse in preparation of winter, the season of dead and imported foodstuff. 

you can look up the various ways to do the rice work on google.

the first chill of autumn is when i start.  it is interesting that we try hard to postpone most of life.  today i saw a woman crossing the street.  she was wearing a summer dress with a heavy sweater and flip flops.  this was about 9 am.  she was carrying a coffee and puffing on a cigarette.  what made it interesting for me was that her feet were uncovered with socks or shoes, leaving her exposed to the chill of the ground.  the legs are a direct conduit to the cold of the ground and from the foot the energy lines go to the lower back and the vital organs of the kidneys and the intestines.  cold contracts.  luckily she had caffeine to boast her adrenals and a cigarette to numb the lungs, the lungs and the large intestines are interconnected as organs…like kissing cousins.

it made me realize that to becoming conscious of the body has been the greatest gift of my life and i truly am grateful to be observant and respectful to all that keeps my spirit travelling on my path.

to continue, the rice fast is easy to do.   today i made a pot of  organic brown basmati.  i started with  three cups of rice.  i washed it in alkaline water.  separated the amount.  put one part into the rice cooker and the other to soak in the fridge.  this makes me rice for today and changes the texture of the rice for tonight’s pot of rice making.  i did not have time to eat the rice at home, so i put rice into two containers and packed it with a large bag of seaweed.

the purpose of this fast, cleanse, diet, is to clean out the large intestine and to help the body lessen the acidity levels.  to understand this. you have to know that everything is acid to the body.   stress, toxins and all the food groups other than green leafy vegetables.  the body is a smart machine and it buffers this acidity with minerals from your foods, and in most cases, the minerals from your bones and muscles.

http://www.essense-of-life.com/moreinfo/foodcharts.htm

as you can see, it is a large list for acidic foods and a rather restricted list for alkaline.  so that is why i found ionized water, i knew that the road to alkalizing water was for me.   it is easier to alkaline with water than it is to do the fasts and cleanses that i use to in my past.

still my body is aging and metabolically it needs to cleanse more than a younger body. 

the basis of a rice fast is from the macrobiotic school of food.  using yin and yang, acid and alkaline, the thought is to create an environment that is beneficial to the blood, which operates at an optimum of ph of 7.3.  ph is the ratio of hydrogen to oxygen.  when the ph is alkaline, the solution is said to have more oxygen.  when the solution is said to be acid, it contains more hydrogen.   the body buffers the acidic reaction with minerals that come from your food, water, muscles and bones.  that is how osteoporosis occurs, as the body acidifies, the calcium is taken from the bones  to balance the blood.

sugar is the biggest culprit in today’s society as well as excess protein consumption. 

i find that this fast is wonderful in that it trains the palate to understand where real food energy come from and where we should find it.  from whole foods and grains.  when we are conscious of this energy feed, we can see that stress comes from within, not always from outside the body.  we have a war that is occurring internally and it is the organs that are the casualties. 

today i read in the news that there was a baby who was born in indonesia, who weighed 19 pounds at birth.  his mother was a diabetic and because of the glucose levels of her blood, she made a very large baby.   he was living a sugar diet from conception. 

funny thing was when i had my son.  i became gestational diabetic and hypertensive.  i was given to a specialist to educate me on my diet.  he was fascinated that out of all his client base, i was the only person he saw that managed my diet enough to not receive insulin for the diabetes.  that for me was an amazing fact.  i am sure he had had hundreds, if not thousands of patients…that was a strong statement.

now that i am approaching 50, i am inheriting the age stress diseases of my genetics.  i have extreme high blood pressure.  so what i practise is not for my baby any more, he is now ten.  it is for me.   one thing  am learning is that a healer is mainly learning to heal themselves.  i am blessed to have so many tools to communicate with me.

so i ate my brown rice this morning in the staff room of yyoga.ca.   with my nori.  no oil, no soy.  just mineral/dirt.  my body enjoyed the lack of embellishments.  it is such a relief to have plain food.  remember i had a ten course chinese meal on sunday.  i was definitely having to work off the loads of seafood and birthday cake!  i was not about to miss a good fancy chinese dinner with anna’s mango whip cream birthday cake.  i would not usually partake but it was my mom’s 81 and i did not want to be rude.  which is the reason most of us overindulge, to be polite and to be part of the clan.

i will take a picture at the end and you can see what the results will be.  it will show in my face.