Simone's Kitchen

The Physical body is the temple of the soul. The body houses the soul on it’s journey toward perfection. The body has specific requirements which must be fulfilled for it to function smoothly and have longevity.

To enhance your life on all levels (body, mind and soul) adapt your lifestyle to be in harmony with nature.

In the short term these changes may seem a real effort but in the long run you will experience such benefits that you will never look back.

 

Eating:

• Try to cultivate an awareness and gratitude for the food you eat. Begin each meal by giving thanks.

• Refrain from drinking during meals. As this will dilute your digestive juices and make digestion more difficult.

• Chew your food well. Remember digestion begins in the mouth.

• Try to eat at regular meal times. Chaotic eating makes us chaotic.

• Avoid late night eating. When you eat late your body has no time to digest, forcing it to work instead of resting and repairing as it should. Preferably don’t eat for three hours before sleeping.

• Avoid electric and microwave cooking. Even just heating up food in the microwave destroys the quality and disrupts the body.

Body Care:

• Use only pure cotton next to your skin, avoid synthetics and wool.

• Minimize the use of appliances with electro magnetic fields such as televisions, computers, cell phones and electric blankets.

• Exercise When you are feeling a bit down do some yoga or just go for a walk, this will make you feel better in the long run than any of the short term fixes we often turn to like television, chocolate or junk food.

• Body Scrub Scrub your entire body with a hot damp towel preferably each day to activate circulation and deeply cleanse your skin. Fill a basin with hot water use a cotton wash cloth or cotton hand glove, dip cloth in the water, wring out well and starting with your face, wash massaging in a circular motion. The idea is to stimulate circulation, so scrub gently until the skin is pinkish and then move on to the next area. Wash your whole body this way from head to toe. Now feel how your skin begins to breathe more freely. Don’t go crazy, 10-15 minutes is enough time!

• Don’t take a shower everyday. Long showers, especially hot ones, wash away our minerals and soaps dry our skin unnecessarily. So body scrub more and shower less!

• Use natural cosmetics, soaps, shampoos, toothpastes, body care products and house hold cleaning supplies. Some of my favourites are Weleda, Lavera and Dr. Hauschka skin care products.
• Cultivate a positive and bright mental outlook. Turn difficulties into challenges and adventures.

• Meditate Meditation is wonderful to calm the mind and centre yourself especially when you are feeling edgy or agitated. I have found T.M. (Transcendental meditation) and Vipassana meditation work well. Both can be practiced by all faiths.

• Pranayama (Breathing) exercises are a powerful medicine. Think about it, of everything we take in, breath is the thing we can do without for the least amount of time! So the quality of our breathing does make a big difference to our health.

This may seem an extensive list but just try a few and see what happens.

Prayer of Gratitude
From this infinite this food has come to us.
By this food we realize ourselves on this planet.
To this food we are grateful.
For nature and people who have brought this food, we are thankful.
This food becomes us.
By eating together we become one family on this planet. Through this food we all are one.
Let us love each other in this life.
Let us realize our endless dream.
(Michio Kushi, Aug 1984)