Whole foods are unadulterated foods. If the food item on the grocery store shelf looks different than when harvested, it has been adulterated. Even a wrap made from almonds or coconut is now a processed food. If you buy items already cut for you, such as butternut squash cubes, this is not processed, but you are paying more for this item than you do for the whole food item. This week I enjoyed a carrot, celery, cilantro, ginger, and half a lemon juice while I was food shopping, and I did it as a practice of high nutritional content. I like to eat my veggies most of the time and get the fiber benefits of the whole veggie, but in this case, I don't usually eat the lemon rind, so there's that added benefit here too. A good thing to mind regarding juices is that the sugar content without the fiber can mess with your insulin levels, so choose wisely. I rarely order a name-brand combo from the menu. Lastly, please drink it slowly. Enjoy it, savor it. As with all your foods, chew entirely to support better digestion and please with your mouth closed.
Holistic Health reminds us to factor in the whole experience as a human being, considering the physical body, including the structural, nutritional body and body systems, and the emotional body, as well as our inevitable spiritual evolution, which we will get to in a moment. A holistic approach to healing and wellness is a continuous unfolding. It's a dance if you will, and please do, dance, that is. It is incredibly healing to move your body freely with this ebb and flow of an inner direction directing you this way and that. It's an undulation of involution and evolution in the same way you were shaped and formed in the womb. We were created in movement and, yes, in Stillness, but not the kind of stillness that means sitting around or stopping your exercise because of an injury. It's essential to find a way, any way, to keep moving. I include breathing as a movement, but whatever you can move, let's keep those parts moving too. The lymph is a critical system. Please move your body by walking, avoiding too much sitting, and breathing correctly, and you can check out one of my lymph routines on my youtube channel. https://youtu.be/FoxEsTDLdb8. So if you haven't got up and gone lately, do it before your get-up-and-go is gone; then, you will have to embark on a much more significant leap than stepping out of your comfort zone.
Stepping out of our comfort zone can be an act of courage. It's not always easy, and when you do it, I hope you take a moment to connect with your strength and commitment to yourself. It gets easier to lean into life and challenges when we feel connected, whole, and complete. Sometimes other people can be a stand-in and hold space for us, and we feel supported, not alone. Sometimes we feel complete when life seems to be going our way, meaning we want something to work out, and it does. At that moment, there's a relaxation in to life; you might even call this allowing or contentment. And, then, there's wholeness.
You are whole and complete, always. A connection can be felt when another person stands in as a friend, but it is because you are that, that you can feel it. It is just appearing as happening between the two of you. You are the one feeling connection. Who knows what the other is feeling, and it doesn't matter. They are probably feeling it too, but that's not the point. Relaxing into life is available even when it doesn't work out how we thought it should. You begin to have a direct connection to this universal truth that you are whole and complete when you take the time to align yourself and recognize your wholeness. You are a spiritual being having a human experience, returning home to the Self. How can you know this to be true? Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice.
Thank you my friend, Peter, for this beautiful image.