Tuesday's thought: the new superfood

Photo provided by Glutnix

If you know me well then you will know that one of my passions is food and that it is part of my focus on wholeness.  Recently there has been a bit of a revolution going on in our household following the results of the OH's well man's medical test in which it turned out that his cholesterol was higher than it should be.  This has led to an increase in the consumption of brown pasta, brown and wild rice and recently we sourced brown self raising flour.

This last acquisition was particularly important because weekend breakfasts feature pancakes on a regular basis.  We make the drop scone variety and the girls cannot get enough of them.  They are also a good vehicle for ensuring the consumption of fruit generally bananas and blueberries which are a well known super food.  Recently however we were delighted to find out that another staple of our breakfasts both with pancakes and porridge is claimed to be the new super food.  Yes maple syrup.  In a study just reported at a meeting of the American Chemical Society, researchers analyzed the various compounds in maple syrup. They found 54 antioxidants, including five new ones.  And they found polyphenols that appear to interfere with the conversion of carbohydrates to sugar, which leads the m to think that this might be a good sweetener for diabetics.

Some are less convinced by these findings because the same kind of polyphenols are found in fruit and veg.  However we use it in moderation and I have to say that I am delighted that its natural properties have been recognised and I am sure that this has something to do with the fact that there is very little processing involved in the production of maple syrup.  No need to feel guilty about your children eating maple syrup any more.  Enjoy and spread the word especially with Easter round the corner.

re: my secret desires for my children

Inspired by Josie's writing prompts and rather last minute due to the fact that I spent much of this week away training, here comes my thoughts on what I hope for my daughters.

What I want for them is something that has taken me many years to acquire and can suffer from a wobble from time to time even now at 40. It is quite simply to believe that they can do anything. I really want them to have the confidence to take on the world on their own terms.

I still have memories of my father spending hours with me as a youngster trying to teach me to dive. I was so fearful that even his patience ran out and he got irritated. Another early memory is of my mum being exasperated with me because instead of waiting for an adult to help me prepare the stamps for my budding stamp collection, I decide to remove them from the paper myself with dire results! Years later I remember how many hours I spent studying history books trying to get at the truth of a particular set of incidents. I would then carefully reproduce that which I thought was closest to the truth. That way I got A grades whereas when I put more of myself into an assignment I would only get a B. For all these reasons and more I grew up with a burning need to get it right and I lived by so many rules.

Now I am on a quest to be my whole self and to get an ever clearer sense of how living in harmony with my authentic voice can work in a materialistic world. So that's why I say my dream is for my girls to be free to be themselves and to retain some of that initial innocence and magic that makes them so special as little people.

That said there are other things I wish for them. One in particular is that they are fluent in at least one other language. I took European Studies at University which you could refer to as a liberal arts degree if you were that way inclined but it did include French, Spanish and Portuguese and a year in Spain. Apart from my early career, I have never really used my languages and I would like it to be different for the girls as being able to communicate in other languages makes the cultures of those countries much more accessible. It also allows one to establish a much deeper connnection and sense of rapport. So I am now inordinately pleased that they know all the colours in Spanish and the numbers 1-10 and yet I need to commit to using Spanish with them, a little bit each day because having a knowledge of another language between the ages of 3 and 5 develops a part of the brain that never gets developed at another time. Also little and often is a much more successful strategy than full on for a long period of time. Thankfully we are now past the period when they used to both shout Stop that noise!

What does a foetus have in common with wholeness?

I had the most amazing experience last night and I wanted to share some of it with you. I understood for perhaps the first time what detachment was because I felt it rather than intellectualised it. I inhabited a space where there were no labels. It was so powerful because it was like going back to source or one's essence. When I reflected on it afterwards the picture that came to me was that of a foetus. To have such a strong taste of being was very energising for my soul and it felt very natural to relax into the state. This was all possible thanks to Lynn Serafinn a wise woman and good person to have on your side. It certainly deepened my understanding of self and added insight into my journey to wholeness.

re: what's in a blog?

I am so grateful to Neil Ryder one of my new twitter buddies for providing the inspiration for this post when he wrote that it was important that all bloggers produced content rich blogs. This immediately got me thinking about how one defines content rich and then made me analyse what I am trying to do with my blog and so I have reproduced my thinking for you below.

For many content rich translates into producing articles/ blogs that act as a how to guide for readers. I presume that for many particularly those that see themselves as trainers they feel that in so doing they are adding value. Of course there is a place for this kind of writing and one cannot dispute the view that it could provide invaluable advice for others. And yet that kind of writing leaves me cold. This is because I cannot see any passion in this type of endeavour, it seems rather a left-brained approach to life from people comfortable with living in the mind rather than a whole self approach to life where one has access to the mind, body, heart and spirit spaces. And that is how I came to thinking about what content rich means to me and what I am trying to do with this blog.

What I believe is that no matter what tools we consultants and coaches have in our tool bags, we are still human. This means that we have moments of great fulfilment and in equal measure we have times of despondency. To be effective in any sphere of life - home, work or social - we need to be aware of the emotional/ energy states internally and externally and have the tools to access the state we need if we are not in it/ the external energy is not in alignment with our own. In fact those who are very charismatic have the power to change external negative conditions (see Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point) but they are few and far between. On a personal level, how can this be achieved? It means developing the ability to live in the present moment as much as possible - which those of us who have young children witness on a daily basis, such a gift.

The theoretical underpinning for me is to take the view that whatever the circumstances we are at choice as to whether we create/ break partnership; at every point we have the opportunity either to move closer into partnership or to turn away from it. At a minimum this means giving the other party the benefit of the doubt and where possible loving the differences that we experience rather than critiquing them. As we all have an ego, unconditional love is extraordinarily difficult to achieve. These are the key reasons why I focus on the sorts of topics that I do in these blog posts because I am passionate about helping others access their own key to living a more fulfilled life and becoming whole. It is only from such a place that we can really tackle the major issues of this century such as climate change. And yet I acknowledge that for others this may appear insubstantial, fluffy and a bit too alternative. I am curious, what do you think?