Consciousness

Hello everyone! It's been a while. I got back from London, worked for a couple of days, and then caught a flu that lasted until today basically. It was my body's way of telling me that I needed rest. And I think I deserved some rest too, after all my dissertation stress. But now I'm here and the first thing I'll write about is an idea I had yesterday. I decided that every week we could introduce something here that has inspired us to a healthier life, or opened our eyes to a more truthful view of health. It could be a book, a film, a website, a blog, a lecture, or anything else really. And it can be about physical, mental, or spiritual health, as our intention here is to focus on all of these aspects.

So, to begin with I want to introduce a 3-part film called The secret power of the mind that I watched yesterday. Unfortunately, I saw it online through the Finnish tv, and although the original documentary is Danish, I couldn't find another version online. But for those of you who can't watch it, I'll try to write a summary of what it's all about.

Watch it here (the first part is only available for 10 more days so be quick).

This documentary shows how science is actually doing a lot towards understanding consciousness, even if these studies are often kept from us by the media. Consciousness is an aspect of the human that is probably the least understood by science, and it has widely been believed that our consciousness is in our physical brain, and therefore in our physical body. However, since time immemorial many people, who have often been stigmatised as lunatics or psychotic, have understood that we are much more than our physical bodies. Religions also share this belief, which can be seen in the different ideas about afterlife, and no religion states that the life of the soul ends when the body dies. Now science (or the people who ask the questions that science tries to answer) has evolved to a point where it is becoming increasingly clear that our consciousness is not restricted to our body. In the film, many different such studies are demonstrated, from the power of meditation to telepathy to near-death experiences. These studies all show that such phenomena can no longer be explained through conventional scientific ideas, but a complete change in the way we understand ourselves as humans needs to occur. In other words, we have a body, but we are not our body. Now, many people are already very familiar with these things, and for them this is nothing new, but I think what is so extraordinary about the film is that people who are confined to conventional ideas will soon have to open their eyes because they can no longer use science as a comforting ground for their scepticism.

Where I wanted to arrive with this is the idea that the more we understand that we are not our bodies (or our brains, or even our minds), the lighter we will feel and the happier we will become. I have a lot more to say about this but I'll leave it to another post soon to follow.

Emma

Dessert success

Yesterday my mom, older sister and me had a raw Mexican fiesta, and it was super good. Everything was raw and vegan, except for the tortillas and nachos. We had nachos with guacamole, followed by raw burritos, which were delish, after I had to run to the store to get us some new tortillas, as the gluten free ones I'd bought at first tasted like toothpaste. I kid you not. 

Anyhow, this all led to all of us being so full there was no room for the planned dessert, so I decided to make that for me and my mom today. I got the recipe from my raw food book, by Erica Palmcrantz. Obviously the recipe involves no flour and no dairy, but somehow it manages to still be super good. All you need is some brazil nuts, macadamia nuts, lemon juice, honey and berries. I actually wonder is it would be better with maple syrup, I'm gonna have to try that and get back to you. Soak the nuts for at least two hours, then blend everything except for the berries, and enjoy!

Anna

Breakfast for champs

For a while now I have been systematically going through all the breakfast recipes in my raw food book, more or less successfully. A few days ago I made a nut porridge which it took me about 5 hours to eat because it was so heavy, and I didn't even finish it. Other than the nut porridge there has been some fruit porridge and one or two smoothies. Anyhow, yesterday I tried what is now my absolute favorite breakfast of all time, and so simple I'm quite ashamed I haven't thought about it myself. It is simply berries (I've used raspberries and blueberries, and today I had raspberries and blackcurrant) a banana, a few crushed hazelnuts and some honey. Obviously you have quite a lot of options with this, as you can use any berries you like, and the same goes for the nuts. I like to have the banana in there because it's the most filling fruit I know, so it keeps you full longer. I've also been using frozen berries, as berry season is pretty over here in the north, and apparently the frozen berries you can buy at any local store are bound to be flash frozen right after harvesting in order to lock in the nutrients, so they're not really that much worse than fresh ones. Surely better than the fresh ones transported from another country or continent.

Anna

If at first you don't succeed...

The first week of my 21 day cleanse went superbly, for the first 6 days. Come Saturday night and all of Sunday, I failed, miserably. So on Monday I started from day one again. And with better equipment as well, as I got my blender back (it isn't really mine, it's a remnant from a previous relationship, recycling all the way!) and my precious raw food cookbook. In light of my previous failure, I'm determined to make it this time, and have so far been better at planning my meals etc. As I'm working almost all the time, every day, I need to have meals which are easy to take with me to work and to prepare in advance.

I start every day with a glass of water with some lemon juice and cayenne pepper in it. To work I bring my green morning juice, which looks absolutely poisonous but is totally delish. I also take some lunch, which today consisted of zucchini "pasta" with vegan pesto, and some snacks, which can be nuts, fruits or a smoothie if I feel like making one at 4am. When I get home I have dinner, which can be pretty much whatever I feel like making. Today I had a delicious avocado and sprout salad with parsley and chickpeas.

The effect of eating like this has so far been tons of energy, a bit too much actually, and bad skin-a sign that the toxins are making their way out of my system. My tummy is also much happier, apart from the times I od on raw chocolate, which has happened once so far, and it was completely nauseating so that won't happen again. I eat less than I would normally, which is a good thing. I'm never starving, and my blood sugar levels seem to be fairly stable, ie I don't crash at any point. Thus my conclusion is that I feel better all over by eating like this, I only wish my skin would clear up already. I will now start working on my meditation, and to incorporate yoga into my work-out routine.

Anna

Buzz Balls

Being on a strictly vegan, gluten free plus highly raw diet makes you miss certain things, like chocolate balls, which we used to whip up at any given time when I was a kid. To my happy surprise, I found a recipe for something similar, at least they share the cacao and sweetness, on the Wellness Warrior, which btw is one of my favorite sites at the moment.

These were super easy to make, and all the ingredients were things I already had at home.
what you need is:
1 banana
3,5dl oat bran (or rolled oats or some other raw gluten free oat version)
2 tsp raw cacao powder
1 tsp maca powder
1 tsp bee pollen
0.3 dl maple syrup
0.6 dl sultanas
cacao nibs for rolling
Mix everything but the cacao nibs and then form into balls which you roll in cacao nibs. Leave in the fridge for about half an hour before eating. 


Anna

21 day cleanse

On Monday I embarked upon my very first 21 day cleanse, which I found in a book called Crazy Sexy Diet by Kris Carr. The deciscion to do so had been made a long time ago, when I bought the book, and I'd just been waiting for "the right time" which we all know is whenever you want it to be. So I quit making excuses, and decided to go for it.

The cleanse in the book isn't really what I was expecting, I thought it would be more like fasting. Turns out it's just 21 days on a vegan, whole raw food based diet. Low-carb, no alcohol, no nicotine, no caffeine, no sugar, no nasties. This is actually exactly what I need, and a super good way to start your new life. A life in which I plan to ditch pretty much all carbs, all gluten, definitely all dairy, and try to have an about 70% raw diet. Nothing too challenging you know.

The first day I started with was is to be my breakfast every day for the coming three weeks, a green juice filled with veggie goodness. It was the first time I used my brand new juicer, which I fell in love with immediately. If there is even the slightest bit of the "destoyer" gene in you, you will love this appliance. Can there be a better way to start your day than to watch celery, broccoli, apples, kale, romaine lettuce and ginger be shredded and pressed for every single drop of juice in them and the end result is you left with a big glass of green tastyness? The answer is no.

For lunch I had an eggless-egg-salad for two days, and for dinner a huge kale salad and some quinoa salad. This has all been quite a winning combo, and today I had one of the tastiest quinoa beetroot salads I've ever had. I still haven't managed to buy a blender (my old one is at my sister's apartment as my living arrangements at the moment are quite a mess) so I haven't had that big of a variety in my foods. What strikes me as the biggest change with this diet is, once you let go of basing your whole meal around carbs, which is what we do most of the time, you are left with so many choices I sometimes have a hard time choosing what to eat. I have the entire produce section of the store available to me, and my options are limitless, so I don't see it as a very hard thing to continue with these eating habits for a long long time.

I have also noticed a lightness i haven't had before, my body feels weightless and I feel like I', able to do pretty much anything. So to conclude this post, I can say that, three days in, I can definitely recommend this to everyone.

Anna

My 10k experience

Like I mentioned in an earlier post, I have been training for a 10k race for a while, and I wanted to share some of my experience about it with you guys. First off, I had wanted to run a full marathon, but got injured quite quickly after I started training, so I had to forget that, for this year at least. Instead I decided to start training for real for a 10k race. I use the Nike+ for iPod chip, which allows me to track how far and fast i run, and they also have a quite good training program online.

At first, it wasn't very challenging at all, which was okay with me, as I hadn't been running for a while. As it got more and more challenging, I got more and more into it and made all the more progress, at least most of the time. I noticed that having a goal, something specific to be running towards, made it much more fun and giving for me. I tend to have a hard time motivating myself, in a positive way, unless I actually have something specific to strive for.

As we were getting closer to race day, I was feeling good. I'd beat a few personal bests, and was confident the race would go well. I had had some troubles with my knee, but I didn't think it would affect my run, as  I have a support thing for it. My nerves before the start were quite all over the place, a good thing as you get adrenalin from it. I ran with a friend of mine, and we'd decided to cheer each other on and run together the whole time. We were doing super well, and I was feeling great. No one ran past us, we only ran past everybody else, or at least that's what it felt like. It is amazing to have people on the side cheering you on, and at this race they also had live music every 2-3k, which was super cool. Then, at the 8k mark, my knee decides to cave. It just simply would not support me anymore. So I had to walk, or run very slowly, the last 2k. My disappointment was too big for words, but as one of my friends later said, that's sports. This gave the race a whole new meaning, because now I have to deal with my disappointment instead. What this has accomplished is simply to make me even more determined to beat myself. My goal now is to run 10k in less than 50min, and I will do it.

So that's that. Today I am starting a sort of 21-day cleanse, which I will tell you more about tomorrow.