"Opening of the Heart Chakra" by J Slattum

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “integrity” as “firm adherence to a code, incorruptibility, soundness and completeness.”

When imagining the integrity of your body, imagine its “code.” Given everything it needs, your body will be sound and your immune system will do its best to keep you incorruptible.

There are genetic dispositions that make you more vulnerable, perhaps, to blood sugar imbalances or gluten intolerance. Whether or not you turn those genes of illness on, it’s true that you can turn them on.

But beyond that physical layer of what is just-plain-true about you, there is a code of your heart.

Your heart might soar when birds come to your birdfeeder or when you hear the saxophone or when you salsa dance. There’s no right or wrong about it, it’s just-plain-true about you.

Chances are that somewhere along the way, this just-plain-truth about you got obscured by social norms, responsibility or a harsh judgment by someone you respected. There are many things that can obscure and interrupt the “code” of your heart.

In a similar way, there are a great many things that can obscure and interrupt the “code” of your body. Things like white flour and sugar, caffeine, drugs, toxins and stress can corrupt the “incorruptibility, soundness and completeness” of your body’s unfolding.

Anxiety, depression and anger, as well as diabetes, high blood pressure, skin rashes, painful PMS, headaches, etc., are all signs of physical imbalance.

These are signs that your body’s integrity has been breached. Left to its own devices, your body ceaselessly works towards healing and balance. Those efforts can be lost amidst a sugar addiction, trapped emotional pain that expresses itself in the form of bingeing or a continuous denial and overriding of fatigue.

When people begin to support their body’s healing, their physical integrity starts to shine. This can be a slow process if you’re starting from a place of profound imbalance, but it never DOESN’T happen.

Your body is a living organism with a sacred code of life force running through it. When the integrity of that sacred code is protected and supported, something happens with the integrity of your heart.

When you get around what you love and have always loved, you start to shine.

It’s like the state of physical balance and vitality is a prerequisite to coming out as yourself.

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.”
–Mary Oliver

Deeply nourishing yourself is an act of self-love. Nourishing your body with nutrient-dense ancestral food, lots of water and sleep and an exercise routine that IS your spiritual practice is paying homage to the sacred code that runs through you. You did not design it but you are its custodian.

The soft animal of your body is a wise creature that yearns for healing and vitality.

Trust it.

When you honor your body in this way, you pave a path before you of deep integrity. You create a container for the light of your heart to shine without shame or second-guessing.

Come out as who you really are. Don’t wait to give your gift to the world.

Start by eating more kale.

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Holly Noonan writes about self-nourishment and food empowerment every month in her Mind Body Nutrition Newsletter.

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When a tree is truly nourished, it is enlivened by the richness of the web of life that supports it. The richer that life force, the more enlivened that tree will become. The decomposing matter, the mycelium, the humus, the worms, the minerals, the moisture, the sunlight and the clear air all enliven the tree. It grows robustly and then it, in turn, can support other life.

If it is a fruit tree, for example, it can enliven a child with the life force that it has concentrated into its succulent, seed-bearing fruit.

When a human child is the recipient of vibrant life force through vital, nutrient-dense food, that child’s organism can unfold according to the unamended design in their dna, so to speak. If they also receive other important nutrients like safety, love and learning, their full potential can’t help but unfold.

Just like powerlines that cut a gash through an otherwise robust tree, processed food, emotional pain or lack of safety can change how that child’s design unfolds. Read more »

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Sometimes you have to be willing to gain a few pounds to find your body’s equilibrium.

When we get out of our groove, the fastest way back to balance might involve eating non-ideal food. Does that seem scary? It involves a trust in your body. That can be hard, especially if we’ve spent years trying to ignore, override, subvert and tame our bodies.

When your body is nourished, it doesn’t overeat. When you leave it to its own devices, the fear is that you will never stop eating, that you will let yourself go and all hell will break loose. You may think you NEED the guilt and shame and discipline and willpower in order to override your body’s impulses.

But wait, can I point something out?

The rational, patriarchal, Western mind has “succeeded” in conquering Mother Nature. The continents were “discovered” and colonized. The metals were mined, dams were built and civilization has crept across our planet like psoriasis.

Is this the kind of success you would like to emulate? Read more »

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Everyone likes to feel confident and on top of stuff. Staying in your comfort zone can have you feel confident all the time. But isn’t it the REALLY confident people who are willing to get uncomfortable? Doesn’t it take resilience and aplomb to be willing to fail, look dumb or feel awkward?

Sometimes when you roll with what life offers you, you get what you need in order to grow, but it’s not what you had wanted. You may have been aiming for something a little more comfy.

This has 2 implications with food.

One is this: perhaps you are stretching yourself professionally, emotionally or sexually and the unfamiliar territory inspires a ravenous craving for comfort food. There’s no right or wrong about it. It’s just an invitation to remain conscious when you least want to. Food is a sure fire way we can comfort ourselves when we are being brave enough to grow. Just staying present is doing the work.

The other is this: Read more »

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Humanity is on the threshold of a change in epoch.  10,000 years ago, when the first humans engaged in agriculture, there were estimated to be only one million of us on the planet. These 10,000 years later, we are nearly 7 billion with a “B”. Quite a success story. Or is it…

Other epoch changes besides the transition to agriculture were the renaissance, the European colonization of the globe, the Industrial Revolution and more recently, the digital age.

Each of these game-changing shifts in human culture was necessarily accompanied by both a change in food, and an expansion of consciousness.  (And it’s no coincidence! Food acts as either a facilitator or an inhibitor to consciousness!) The progression from cave men squabbles to burning heretics to corporate exploitation of people and planet is also a culinary narrative as well as one of human consciousness.

The human consciousness narrative is one that proceeds from a brutish place of fear and psychic separation, to a place of emerging tolerance and love. (Not long ago it wasn’t politically correct to be tolerant, for example.) Fear equals separation. Love equals compassion. We no longer feel it is acceptable to burn people alive because the basic level of societal compassion has been elevated.

Many legal systems (a feature of evolving human consciousness) now make discrimination illegal.

The enlightened people among us love all people equally, and we now have, for the first time in human history, an exponential surge of people who recognize this non-discrimination as the hallmark of an enlightened person. (Instead of, say, a crazy person.)

The consciousness-shift that is emerging in the new era (starting in 2012, if we believe the Mayans) is characterized by this increased human experience of tolerance and compassion (love) and the re-emergence of the feminine gifts of “receptivity, intuitive guidance, tenderness and fierce inclusivity.”

“My very best decisions and strongest maneuvers have been fuelled by what would typically be labelled as “feminine characteristics.” This counsel may sound like it’s only applicable to 50% of the population, but receptivity, intuitive guidance, tenderness, and fierce inclusivity are transformative powers that anyone can wield. Our future depends on it.” – Danielle LaPorte

Wielding these transformative feminine powers will serve to balance out the destructive, conquering, patriarchal machine that has wrought such havoc on the planet and has fulfilled its task to deliver us to this threshold.

The food we are consuming on Planet Earth today is both facilitating and inhibiting the emergence of this new consciousness. Read more »

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In my twenties, I traveled for 6 years outside the United States. It wasn’t because I became voraciously curious about food or because I loved to learn languages. (Though I did.) The core motivation for my travels was human potential.

I wanted to know what I was made of and how human beings worked. I was especially fascinated by what was universal and how people communicated across boundaries.

Everyone has topics that they are innately drawn to (and others they are averse to) and these affinities and aversions, by default, inform the path you create for your life.

I wanted to know what would make a human being fulfill their potential (and if possible, me!) Read more »

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Are you a plant person? Do you notice that inner sense of satisfaction and joy that comes when you notice new growth on a plant you are tending? It could be a houseplant or a garden full of plants. There’s a feeling of “Cool, I did it, I gave this plant the elements it needs to thrive.”

Those elements are the right amount of sunlight, (sometimes you have to move the plant around to find it’s “happy place,”) the right amount of water and food and an unbroken attentiveness.

If it’s a flowering plant, I feel clear, strong joy with a full flowering and a mild sense of concern when the flowering is impaired in some way. I wonder, “What can I do differently to nurture this plant to it’s fullness?” I might prune it, water it differently, attend to it, breathe on it. Read more »

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I’m 40. While some of my friends are starting to complain about “age-related” aches and pains, I’ve been going in the opposite direction. The chronic illness I developed in my early 30s is getting harder to see in my rear-view mirror. It’s gone, and I watch chronic complaints disappear over and over with my clients. What a treat to watch! Here’s the road map for how to make that happen for YOU.

1.    Eat Gobs of Vegetables– Eat more of what you already like. Try vegetables you’ve never had. Join a CSA and try to really eat it all! That’s right. Eat MORE.  Don’t focus on what to cut out, just get more of these nutrient-dense, antioxidant-packed foods into you. They clean out your liver, help you think clearly and make your skin shine.

2.    Do your inner work— If you go through life without facing painful events that leave traces on your consciousness, you naturally close down and feel less and less as you get older. When you face your stuff, it can be very unpleasant for a short while, but the reward is that you get reconnected with the full life force that is available to you. It’s worth it. Be brave. Read more »

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We are on the cusp of a new era of consciousness on the planet. The whole hub-bub about 2012 is about this shift. It’s a transition from masculine to feminine consciousness, meaning those humans (men or women) who resonate with the earth’s unfolding creative, dynamic, careening, ever-changing life force, will be better prepared for a future that holds a tremendous amount of change in the next 50 years.

A major determining factor on whether you will be one of the clear-minded, flexible, sensitive creatures who rides the universal flow or one of the clamped-down, stuck, recalcitrant, comfort-seekers is….of course…. THE FOOD YOU EAT.

I have noticed both a decline and a crescendo of human consciousness in America. (Have you?) The primetime network TV shows seem to be getting more crass, more violent or vulgar and yet… the artists and visionaries and healers I know are galloping over their life-hurdles at an apparently accelerating rate. The environmental and political news gets ever-bleaker from around the world, and yet quantum physicists are agreeing with the Dalai Lama. (and Einstein might have too.)

Read more »

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Have I seemed a bit quiet lately? I feel quiet. Lately, I haven’t felt like climbing up onto my soapbox and squawking about revolutionizing food or health or human consciousness or any of the things that need to be revolutionized.

As many of you might know if you follow my blog, 2010 was a year of massive transformation for me. I got divorced. I bought and renovated a house. I turned 40. Then to cap of the year, I fell in love. Since January I have been in a program at the Empowerment Institute designed to help me clarify my vision and sweep my consciousness of any impediments that stand between me and that vision. (Then show others how to do the same.)

Something is brewing. I am quiet for a reason. My core is being reorganized and refined. My message will be different after this process has fully unfolded. I am in a chrysalis. Inside this chrysalis, my heart is glowing in pulses. It’s getting stronger, brighter, clearer.

My son and I are leaving on Saturday for Costa Rica to stay in a house right on the beach for a week. Somehow I know that hearing waves crashing 24/7 will work this process, even (especially?) when I’m sleeping. Read more »

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This interview took place January 25th 2011. Join us for a  conversation with one of the leaders in the field of human potential. Gail co-founded the Empowerment Institute with her husband (David Gershon- see first interview) and has spent decades midwifing people into their power. We’ll discuss Gail’s book, “Returning to My Mother’s House” about her own journey towards empowerment– one that took a detour through patriarchy and misogyny– and we’ll learn how and why embodying feminine principles can become the core of a woman’s true power, even in our fast-paced culture.

Gail’s work has influenced thousands and had an incalculable ripple effect. Dr. Christiane Northrup, a Maine native and a graduate of the Empowerment Institute with Gail and David, describes Gail’s work as “work that heals all of us.” Read more »

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Last week I collaborated with Kerry Altiero from Café Miranda’s on a Gluten Free cooking class. (What fun! Kerry’s a loose cannon! Bursting with creativity and ribald humor…)

His emphasis in the class was on how very MANY possibilities there are to enjoy when you decide to forego gluten. (He created a delicious risotto, gorgeous polenta with cheese and roasted tomatoes, a white bean ragu, a curry dish, even mac and cheese!)

One of the questions asked of me during the class was this: “Do I really have to give up all the foods I love best for the rest of my life in order to be healthy?!?”

Hellz no! Read more »

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When we lived in Japan for two years, we got acquainted with the Japanese conception of an “inner” face and an “outer” face. The first is true, private and only revealed to intimate friends and family. The second is public, proper and “mature.” In fact, it’s considered childlike to reveal one’s inner face, with its true emotions and candid thoughts. One mustn’t do THAT. I was all wrong, all the time, on that one.

The truth is that many of us deal with this kind of psychological split. We get the message– loud and clear– about what is acceptable and respectable and god forbid our truest, inner spirit wants to join the circus or come out of the closet or make art. I know someone in whose childhood home almost any artistic endeavor was disparagingly dismissed as “underwater basketweaving.” Sound familiar?

The outer-mandate/inner-truth split could be anything though. It could be a military/birdwatching split, or a dancing/computer-geek split or a Cattle Rancher/ Vegetarian split (or vice versa on any of those!) Read more »

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This interview is with Deb Moskowitz, a licensed naturopathic doctor who specializes in hormone balance in women. She has developed over 30 natural products available in health food stores, pharmacies, and doctors’ offices and is a consultant for natural products companies, medical laboratories, and integrative wellness centers. Dr. Deb is an author and editor of “A Women’s Health Resource – A Guide to Health and Hormone Balance” and a co-founder (with Dr. Barb MacDonald) of Wellness Designed, a Naturopathic Family Medicine practice in Camden, Maine.

Our conversation explored Dr. Deb’s expertise in human biochemistry, her healing philosophy, and her newest endeavor to open a comprehensive Integrative Health Center in Camden, ME, offering naturopathy, homeopathy, acupuncture, nutrition classes and counseling, massage, saunas, pilates, yoga and many other healing modalities under one roof. Read more »

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Ever had writer’s block? Do you have a creative pursuit that you love but you can’t seem to “keep the flow?” Ever wonder what your food has to do with creative and emotional stuckness?

Now is the perfect time to test this. Halloween is coming up so you will have undoubtedly have access to crappy candy and you can sort of take a reading of how clear you feel afterwards. Can you think? Are you buzzing, aching, craving or just fine?

Some people can get away with eating junk food without immediate physical effects like a stomach ache or clear loss of mental clarity– but it ALWAYS manifests eventually. For those of us who experience physical pain from eating junk food, we are the lucky ones. Pain is motivating. Read more »

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This is an interview with Barbara MacDonald, a licensed naturopathic physician and acupuncturist who complements her evidence-based approach to healing with herbs, cranio-sacral therapy and mind-body-spirit techniques. She has co-authored The Breast Cancer Companion and has had an emphasis on holistic cancer care, especially for young survivors, since the beginning of her clinical practice in 1997.

Barbara moved back to her home state of Maine from Oregon in  May 2010 with her family. Our discussion will center on her personal journey to this work, her very dynamic healing philosophy and her partnership with Naturopath Deb Moskowitz (below) in Wellness Designed, a Naturopathic Family Medicine practice in Camden, Maine.

You can leave your questions and comments below.

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This recording took place July 20th at 7:30pm EST and is a conversation with Medical Intuitive and Life Coach Bela Johnson.

For 25 years, Bela has been working with people’s bodies doing a type of body work that clears and balances a person’s system, while also addressing the emotional life through a Jungian model that works with Archetypes. Bela has a unique way of clarifying our challenges from a bird’s eye perspective and then catalyzing our next most important action.

In this call, she talks about 5 Principles that, if we follow them, can help us lean towards growth, maturity and peace. Read more »

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“Beautiful Skin from the Inside Out”– This double interview took place on June 22nd at 7:30pm EST. It’s a discussion with

Rheal Day Spa owner and healer-aesthetician Rhonda Nordstrom on how to walk the path of holistic beauty and green living

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and holistic health counselor and cooking diva Tina Annibell — who healed herself of cystic acne–for a discussion on what exactly makes your skin glow MORE as you age– the natural way.

To listen now, click the link below:

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This interview took place May 25th at 7:30pm EST with master healer Amy Jenner, Five Elements Medical Chi Gong Practitioner for a discussion on Overcoming Chronic Illness.

Lyme disease, fibromyalgia, candida, IBS, chronic fatigue or frequent headaches… these are all ways in which our bodies alert us to something having gone very wrong. If you suffer from any of a myriad of chronic symptoms, then you know that managing the symptoms does not actually heal the root cause.

It simply makes them more tolerable. There is Hope! The Five Element System of Chinese Medicine is a 2500-year-old method of healing that brings people back into balance, allowing the profound healing that arises out of the deepest intelligence of the body, mind and spirit to occur.

Amy Jenner has been teaching Five Element Theory and Practitioner Development in Rockland, Maine since 2006, when she joined Stillpoint. For eight years prior to that, she maintained a Healing practice in Massachusetts.

To listen now, click the link below:

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–How to Kick Fear’s Ass and Live the Life You’re Supposed to Live–

This live call-in interview with Leah Shapiro of www.DefytheBox.com took place Tuesday September 21st at 7:30pm.

Leah is what I would call an “authenticity coach.” Her goal is to hold people accountable to their truest selves, no matter how unacceptable that might be to the social structure surrounding them.

Is there a part of you that dying in the situation you’re in? If you are GREAT at your job, but you hate it, are you a success? Can you live fully when the truest parts of yourself are pinched off? Can you even be healthy if you live like this long term?

Leah walks us through the process of shedding the shackles of what *seems* right in order to discover what *FEELS* right. Fascinating Stuff! You don’t want to miss this interview!

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